The Touch

by Brian Lumley

  Scott nodded, patted Wolf’s head, and said, “Of course it’s a wolf thing, but you have it like no wolf before you—not in this world, anyway. And we’ll be glad of your help, if and when it comes to that . . . but what the heck, it seems it has come to that!” And looking at Shania: “What makes you think it’s now?”

  She came to him as he stood up. “Don’t be angry, but these last few days, I have on one or two occasions scanned Idossola. Also Schloss Zonigen. I’m sorry I kept it from you, Scott, but I had to try.”

  “You what!?” He took her by the shoulders. “But haven’t we already discussed that? How dangerous it could be?”

  “I was in and out as quickly as that!” she protested. “It wasn’t as if I was searching out the Mordris—I wouldn’t have dared—or even that I was doing any deep scanning in the village. I promise you, I was simply getting the feel of the place. I didn’t endanger myself, Scott. Of course I didn’t, because to do so would have been to endanger you.”

  Scott hugged her, then put an arm around her and walked her back to the house. Wolf came alongside, so close that his flank brushed Scott’s legs. And as they went indoors: “So then,” said Scott resignedly, “what did you see, hear, sense that makes you think it has to be now?”

  All three, they sat down in the study. And Shania said, “I sensed such terror radiating from the village, but only silence from Schloss Zonigen. The Mordris have the high crag blanketed, closed to all telepathic transmissions. They no longer feel the need to look outward and won’t allow me or anyone else to look in. Why else would they do that if not to ensure the utmost secrecy and security in these last few days or even hours? What’s more, your friends at E-Branch have fallen silent, too. From time to time I’ve tried scanning them and there has always been something: a tensing, an awareness, faint echoes of their presence. But now . . . nothing. It’s more than possible that they, too, are making their move.”

  Scott shook his head in something approaching defeat. “Our ‘great plan,’ ” he said wryly, “if we can continue to call it that, was to go in guns blazing and wreck their plans, the Mordri Three’s plans, at the very last moment. At first, after I’d found out about Simon Salcombe, I wasn’t much concerned that it might mean my life, not as long as it meant his. But since then—while I still want him dead, and those other Shing’t lunatics with him—there’s been you. Now I do care about my life, about our lives, and that’s weakened me. Yes, I know we must do this, because if we don’t that’s definitely the end of things, for us and everyone else . . . but damn it, we still don’t know when The End that the Mordris have planned is coming, and even if we did know we don’t have any guns to blaze with!”

  “As to when, I will find that out!” Determined now, Shania jumped to here feet. “And as for guns, I can get guns.”

  “Just like that?” said Scott. “I mean, now?”

  “That’s the easy part.” She nodded. “Just wait a moment.”

  She used the localizer, disappearing in a suck of air and a swirl of dust motes, and in a count of ten was back carrying a pair of double-barrelled shotguns and a large box of shells.

  “From a sports store in the city,” she explained. “I took its coordinates a long time ago.”

  Scott was no longer surprised or astonished by her coming and going in this manner—he had experienced that himself, and in more ways than one—but his confusion was steadily mounting. As he unloaded the weapons from her arms and placed them on his desk, he said, “But didn’t you and your Khiff say that from now on we wouldn’t be using the localizer? That we had to limit its use or something?”

  “Absolutely!” she replied. “Indeed, I dare use it for just one more long, multi-passenger trip; then for short trips only. But as long as it contains even a spark of energy it will suffice to sustain my Khiff. So then, it will carry us to Idossola, yes, but it won’t return us. After that—if there’s to be an after that—I shall use it only under advice from my Khiff.”

  And before Scott could ask any more questions: “Now we’ll need to prepare,” she continued. “You’ll be wanting to arm the weapons, and dress in dark clothing, and . . . and—”

  “—And say my prayers?” Scott snorted. But already he was snapping a shotgun open, squinting down the barrels, and shoving shells into the breach.

  “Prayers?” said Shania. “Well yes, of course. That, too, if you believe. I have already said mine.”

  “I’ve a power hacksaw in the garden shed,” Scott mused. “I could cut these down in no time at all.”

  “Cut them down?”

  “So that we can conceal them more easily,” he explained.

  At that she smiled, however tightly. “So then,” she said, nodding. “Finally you are ready.”

  “I’ve been ready for some time,” he answered, “ever since I learned that Simon Salcombe killed my Kelly, but we’ve a ways to go yet.”

  The nighttime is my time, said Wolf. I am a shadow among shadows! When do we go?

  Shania answered him. “Not until I’ve taken one final look at Idossola. You and Scott will cover, shield me?”

  “And what about your Khiff?” said Scott, seating himself beside her on the edge of the couch. “Won’t it—I mean she—won’t she also be helping?”

  “Of course, as always!” said Shania. “No need to ask. She is constant. And if we were to meet up with a Mordri Khiff—”

  I would be there to ward him off, said her Khiff, in their minds. I would try to draw off the evil in him. I would cleanse him—or he would pervert me—one or the other.

  “He, or she,” said Shania. “Don’t forget, my Khiff, Mordri One is female. And anyway, we shall try to avoid the Mordri and their crazed creatures.”

  I forget nothing, my Shania, said the Khiff. He or she, it makes no difference. And of course we shall try to avoid them.

  Then Scott and Shania clasped hands over Wolf where he sat between them, and Shania closed her eyes in concentration.

  It took a moment, a dozen heartbeats at most. Scott felt his mind go out—he sent it out—to accompany Shania’s and Wolf’s; man and creature shielding the woman, as truly a woman as any Scott had ever known, where her psychic probe went winging to Idossola. A dozen heartbeats, no more than that, but she “heard” more than enough in that small amount of time. And man and wolf, some of it passed through her to them:

  “ ‘Xavier!’ ” Scott gasped. “He’s there, and in trouble!”

  “Others from E-Branch, too,” said Shania breathlessly. “I sense them . . . they no longer shield themselves . . . too busy to try even if there was a need . . . which there isn’t because they are discovered! They are under attack, not from the Mordris but their servitors: men in the pay of the Mordris, and certain others in their sway, who dare not disobey them!”

  “It’s already started,” said Scott, “and we’re not in it!”

  Shania’s mind veered, and different thoughts came through; dark, evil thoughts . . . from Schloss Zonigen.

  Ahhhh! said a female “voice,” far off, yet as clear as day where it met with Shania’s probe. Shania Two! And will you also invade us? Beware, Shania Two. Your human friends hold no power over the Mordri Three.

  “Gelka Mordri!” Shania gasped. “Poor mad creature!”

  Mad? Mad? said a different, twittering voice: Mordri One’s Khiff. Do you wish to see real madness, Shania Two? Then by all means come here, to Schloss Zonigen! Oh, ha-ha-ha! And that was more than enough.

  “Get out of there!” cried Scott, leaping to his feet and grabbing Shania by the shoulders. And shaking her, he shouted, “Get out now—before she, it, whatever—before she follows you back here!”

  Only let her dare! growled Wolf, baring his fangs.

  But Shania was already out, and soon in control of herself. And with a final shudder: “So now we know,” she said. “And yes, it is now. But don’t worry, she won’t—they won’t—come here. Shing’t telepathy to me is like . . . it’s like words to you: all in the way t
hey are spoken. Or rather, like facial expressions, displaying a person’s emotions. I felt Gelka’s anxiety! And as for her Khiff: its challenge gives the game away. It invites us to Schloss Zonigen because it knows they may not come here, and that’s how close we are! They’re preparing to leave! We have to go there, Scott, and now. First for the sake of your world, but also revenge for the death of Shing and those other worlds, and not least for the loss of your true love. Now we must dress for the night, and you’ve yet to prepare our weapons. How long will that take you?”

  “Ten minutes, maximum,” he answered, heading for the door. And when he hurried out to the garden shed an excited Wolf went with him, his eyes like yellow lamps in the deepening dusk . . .

  In Idossola Ben Trask and Ian Goodly had turned a pair of massive oak tables onto their sides and positioned them against the heavy, locked double doors that led out front. Now any bullets from outside must either spend themselves or pass through four inches of tough timber before finding their way into the foyer, but sporadic bursts of machine-gun fire from across the square continued to speak of the enemy’s determination.

  Even more determined, however, were the agents of E-Branch in their defensive positions, upstairs and down in the Gasthaus Alpenmann. And in the frantic half hour gone by since the onset of hostilities, they had made excellent use of the advantage of cover that the hotel afforded them; an advantage that spoke for itself in the outlines of half a dozen crumpled corpses in both the square and on the outer perimeter of the car park.

  To those agents of the Mordri at the rear of the building, death had come quietly, with barely a whisper of disturbed air, a meaty thud of nailed flesh, or on one occasion the splat! of a bursting eye as a bolt passed through, wrecking the brain and shattering the skull at the back. Three of them lay still where they had fallen, victims of Alan McGrath’s and Graham Taylor’s deadly accuracy.

  But at least three more were still out there, making fleeting movements in the deep shadows but no longer coming into the open. Now and then a chattering stream of bullets would trace a line across the wall or shatter a window, but that was all. The true beauty of the situation was this: that while the defenders could see the flashes of gunfire whenever shots were fired, the attackers saw only the dark, deadly vacancy of apparently empty windows.

  Similarly, at the front of the building:

  Trask had taken out one man who had come so close to one of the shattered circular windows that he could put the muzzle of his weapon right through it . . . but that was as far as he’d got. Trask hadn’t given him enough time to squeeze his trigger, and the anonymous would-be killer had known nothing of the hot lead that traced the angle of his weapon’s barrel back to him, smashing his hands, ruining his face, and blowing half of his head off.

  And in a room upstairs Norbert Hauser had kept a wary eye on a figure behind the trunk of a tree standing central in the square; and when finally that one had leaned out and trained a gun on the front of the building, then Hauser—a marksman with his own special arms—had spent just one round of 7.62 ammunition to shoot him through the heart.

  As for the spotter, Frank Robinson, only the fact that he was inexperienced with the Swiss weapons kept him from killing several of the enemy. They weren’t ESPers, no, but still Robinson’s knack for picking them out in the night was unerring. And sensing what he could only describe as “something” in bushes on the periphery of the dark square, he’d sent a stream of bullets to riddle a man’s body from chest to groin.

  That last kill had been all of ten minutes ago, and while the enemy was still out there in some force they had obviously been taking stock of the situation, calling for reinforcements. For three sets of vehicle headlights could now be seen descending the hairpin bends from Schloss Zonigen.

  During the quiet spell Trask had sent Millie Cleary creeping through to the rear of the hotel to see how Paul Garvey and David Chung were doing: a weak excuse to get her out of what he considered the danger zone at the front. And she knew it was so because she had already contacted Garvey—briefly, telepathically—to check on his and locator Chung’s situation. But still Trask had insisted that she go and “relieve” one of them.

  Which as it turned out was just as well. For no sooner had she found the pair in a room at the rear than Chung reported an “occurrence” that left him all excited. And despite that it was strategic folly to leave two telepaths together, he had hurried through the dark hotel to Trask in the foyer.

  And now he made his report:

  “It’s this,” he said, taking Scott St. John’s paperweight from his pocket. “It’s warm—well, to my touch anyway. And I think I know why. He’s here, boss! St. John is here somewhere, and close!”

  The eyes of all three ESPers, Chung, Trask, and the precog Ian Goodly, had now more nearly adjusted to the hotel’s gloom. But as Chung finished speaking Trask saw Goodly give a massive start, staggering where he stood close to one of the shattered windows. For one awful moment Trask thought his old friend had been shot through the window, but then the precog steadied himself and said, “Yes! Oh, yes!”

  “What is it, Ian?” said Trask. “What did you see?”

  “It was like . . . a series of pictures . . . brief, kaleidoscopic,” said Goodly. “But promising, oh so very promising! It was Schloss Zonigen, Ben, and we were there. But by God, there were monsters there, too, and dead men, fighting and screaming! It was like bedlam! And there were creatures that weren’t even human, whose very touch is death or worse: instantaneous mutation and hideous disfigurement. Scott St. John was there, and a beautiful woman, and even a dog—no, a wolf!—his partners!”

  Ducking low to cross the floor behind the upturned tables, Trask took hold of the precog’s arm. “But what about that other thing you’ve been forecasting? The ‘cosmic disruption,’ or whatever? Isn’t that more important?”

  “That, too,” said Goodly, with beads of sweat on his brow. “I saw that, too, Ben. Or rather I sensed it: a colossal blast that makes a nuclear explosion look like a Chinese firecracker! And yet . . . and yet . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “I also saw us. Dirty, dishevelled, bloodied. But we were there, Ben, we were there!”

  Trask gripped his arm tighter still. “Before or after this Big Bang?”

  But the precog could only shrug apologetically. “Ben, I’m sorry, but as I’ve said it was kaleidoscopic, all utterly confused, disordered. As to what came first, I just don’t know . . .”

  And before Trask could question either the precog or the locator further—

  Coming from the steep stairwell between the reception desk and the door to the dining room, a burst of gunfire sounded and the clatter of chaotic movement. Frank Robinson appeared, staggering backward down the stairs, directing a continuous stream of fire up onto the landing. But as his weapon’s fire failed he fumbled for a spare magazine, tripped, and flew backward, shouting, “Jesus Christ! Oh, my good God!”

  Following him in no great haste, seeming to float down the stairs—and yet with paradoxically jerky or spastic movements of stick-thin limbs—came a weirdly tall, willowy figure with deep-sunken eyes, a long neck, and a long head, wearing his hair in a silvery comb that overlapped his pure white kaftan’s laid-back cowl. It was Mordri Three, also known as Guyler Schweitzer, but it was not his now completely alien appearance that momentarily paralysed Trask and his E-Branch friends. No, it was what he was guiding or leading alongside him, like a dog on a leash, with the wand-like, foot-long fingers of a foot-long hand sunk deep in one of its ears.

  And because no other description could adequately or immediately describe it, all three who saw it, however dimly in the foyer’s shadowy gloom, could only properly think of it as “some sort of thing.”

  A thing indeed! But on looking closer—and as the horrifying fact sank in—there could be no denying that this thing’s agonized, silently shrieking face . . . was that of special agent Norbert Hauser!

  38

  Shania used the
localizer, and she and Scott arrived in Idossola at the place she knew best there, the Gasthaus on the main street, no longer in use and dark. But still they arrived with all due caution, Scott with Wolf draped over his shoulders and a sawn-off shotgun in his hands, aimed forward, with his finger on the triggers.

  They were in the foyer—dusty, and cobwebbed in its ceiling—where just a little moon and starlight came filtering in through high, fly-specked windows. As Shania released Scott he crouched down, backed up to the dust-layered desk, and let Wolf kick himself free of his shoulders.

  Undignified, said that one, jumping down, but comfortable.

  “Speak for yourself,” said Scott. And then to Shania, “The place is completely empty, deserted?”

  She nodded. “This is where I stayed, but when I scanned it I could detect nothing, no one. There are several other places I could have brought us to, but this building gives us immediate cover.”

  “Except now we have to get out of here,” said Scott, “and I don’t know Idossola. I won’t be able to find my way around.”

  “Perhaps we can help you there,” said Shania.

  “We?”

  “Me and my Khiff.” When she spoke to her Khiff Scott heard what she said. My Khiff, do you remember that place high in the foothills under the crag? We climbed there once, until we dared climb no higher?