The Touch

by Brian Lumley

  “Fuck you, too!” he told the dead guard, and turned away.

  Shania asked no further questions, because she didn’t need to. She could feel something new in him, and it was a very powerful something: a Harry Keogh something.

  A stream of obscenities that only Scott could hear followed, fading to nothing as he and Wolf joined with Shania and she performed a transference back to the hotel in Idossola . . .

  43

  Their reappearance in the foyer of the Gasthaus Alpenmann was no less spectacular than the previous one. Trask and his crew, however—as familiar as they were with weird and unusual occurrences—were more relieved than startled. And even before Scott could stoop and help Wolf from his shoulders, Ben Trask was asking:

  “How did it go? Were you successful?”

  “We were,” Scott answered, nodding grimly. “The cable car . . . it fell. And there’s no longer anyone at the ski lodge who you need worry about. I could explain but that’s something that can wait till later—if there’s to be a later. Far more importantly, we’ve learned all of Schloss Zonigen’s ins and outs; or rather, Shania has learned them, and I’ve yet to get them from her. But she knows the place’s layout: its levels, passageways, rooms and caverns, places that the Mordri’s soldiers could most easily defend. And now she has to share that knowledge with you and your team—and with me, of course.”

  “She what?” said Trask, turning his head to stare at Shania. “You’ve been gone mere minutes, done a lot of damage, and still had time to learn all that? I don’t understand. But I do know that we don’t have time to start drawing maps and committing them to memory or anything like that!”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Shania replied. “All I require is your trust. You see, the Shing’t have the means to transfer memories mind to mind. In any suitable dark place, you and your people can learn all that I’ve discovered of Schloss Zonigen in a matter of moments.”

  “Moments?” said Trask.

  She nodded. “Less than a minute.”

  “All of us?”

  “Indeed. Scott, too, and even Wolf.”

  “And it’s safe?”

  “Of course, or I wouldn’t offer.”

  Trask, being Trask, knew she was telling the truth. “Okay, I’ll go first,” he said. “There’s a cubbyhole of a room behind the desk there that the Gasthaus staff must have used for safekeeping. It’s smaller than a broom closet but I suppose it will do.”

  “Boss,” said Frank Robinson, beckoning Trask to one side.

  “What now?” said Trask. “But make it fast.”

  Keeping his voice low, the spotter said, “I told you there was more to this woman than meets the eye.”

  Trask nodded. “More than meets the eye, but it still can’t avoid the skill of a spotter, right?”

  “That, too. So, do you still trust her? She is after all an alien.”

  “The way I see it,” Trask replied, “I don’t have a choice. But let’s turn that around: do you trust her? If not, don’t accept her offer. As for me, I definitely want to know what we’re going up against in that hollow crag up there. And, Frank, what you need to remember: I have a talent, too.”

  “I know,” Robinson answered, and offered a helpless shrug. “Actually, our talents don’t conflict. I knew that she was more than she appears, that’s all. You agree, but you also point out that whatever she is she’s definitely on our side. So I suppose I’ll just have to go along with it. It’s simply that I wouldn’t be doing my job if I—”

  “I understand,” said Trask. “Keep doing your job.”

  On the other side of the room Shania smiled tightly, withdrew her telepathic probe, and said, “Well, now that that’s all sorted out can we please get on with it? Time is very short . . .”

  In as little time as she had indicated, Shania’s ability—more properly her Khiff’s ability—was proven. And in the darkness of the tiny room behind the desk the benevolent creature’s near immaterial presence remained a secret . . . except from Robinson, who now knew that Shania was more than Shania. But then, he had the same feeling about Scott St. John. But whatever it was about these two, Robinson no longer feared it. No, for there were far more fearful things abroad than a telepathic wolf and an incredibly gifted man and his “woman” (however alien the latter), who were obviously on the side of everything human, right and righteous.

  And now in the minds of Trask and his team the memories of a man who had actually lived and worked in Schloss Zonigen were in flow as if they themselves had walked and worked there; they knew almost every inch of the place and were as well acquainted with it as with the towns and cities where they had been born.

  “Fantastic,” said the precog Ian Goodly. “While I’ve often glimpsed the future, I’ve never before had such clear and unobscured access to a place where I’ve never been! I even know the places where I would set up ambushes . . . er, that is, if I were on the other side.”

  To which Trask added, “That was the whole idea. And now St. John can get to those places first. Or some of them, maybe. But right now there’s no more time left to worry or wonder about it. We have to get up there, and I do mean now!”

  As he turned to Shania and Scott, the latter preempted him and said, “We’ll clear the way as best as possible, yes—starting with that roadblock—but first you’ll need to create a diversion. If you set off now your movements will be seen from their high vantage point. From then on, all eyes will be focussed on you, your vehicles, which will give us the element of surprise when we arrive on the road above and beyond them.”

  “But you’ll need more than an element of surprise to shift those vehicles blocking the road,” Trask replied. “And I’ve got just the thing, or things. You were gone only four or five minutes, but we weren’t simply twiddling our thumbs back here. The techs were out counting bodies; actually, they were seeing what they could find. They found guns, and also these.”

  Producing three more ugly-looking grenades from his overcoat’s generous pockets, he handed them to Scott. “These should do the trick.”

  Scott hung the grenades from his belt and said, “I’m sure they will—but there’s something else I would like from you.”

  “Oh?”

  “The flamethrower.” Scott glanced at the weapon where it lay on the desk. “Since it’s more than likely I’ll meet up with the Mordris first, and since we know for sure that fire is something that will stop them . . .”

  Trask nodded. “Take it,” he said. “And may your flame burn brightly—and as hot as hell!”

  With something a little less than sixty-five minutes to go, the techs brought the rented vehicles from the car park at the rear of the hotel; at which Trask and the rest of his team came into the open and quickly took their seats.

  The predawn light was less gloomy now; the misty air was still and felt cold in the nostrils and lungs of all ten people and one wolf and seemed to have a silvery tinge to it. Poetically, it was “brightening;” likewise the faint, soft glow that silhouetted the darkly looming eastern mountains. While in the near-distant northwest, gauntly towering, the great crag that was Schloss Zonigen looked for all the world like a futuristic artist’s castle, where mist spilled from its esplanade and its lights, though muted now, continued to flicker and dance.

  But there were other lights on the access road. A coach’s internal lights indicated a place where men were keeping themselves warm; every so often one or the other of the blockading vehicles would switch on its headlights, and torch beams would lance here and there, sweeping the road in a searching pattern.

  When the techs started up their motors, switching on their own lights, it was an absolute certainty that the people at the blockade saw them. Which was exactly what Trask, Scott, Shania, and Wolf wanted them to see.

  And as the cars started out of Idossola toward the foot of the crag, Scott St. John’s Three Unit crept out of the Gasthaus Alpenmann to stare at the precipitous access road and the sudden burst of activity there, indi
cated by the abrupt shutdown of all but one or two darting beams from hand torches . . . also to say (or think) the meaningless things that people say and think at such times, which were anything but meaningless:

  I love you, said Shania. I think of you as my man—but I don’t expect you—

  I love you, too, Scott cut her short. And when this is over you can not only expect me to go on loving you but rely upon it. I think of you as . . . yes, as my “woman,” Shania, and you can’t any longer be my Number Two. You’re my partner and my equal; in fact you’re a lot more than me! But I’m sure I’d still love you even if you were just you. I will love you, just for you.

  And Wolf said, I love both of you. But what’s all this sadness? I don’t like sadness. And it isn’t as if . . . as if we are going to . . . going to . . . is it?

  But it could be, said Scott. Do you know about death—for yourself, I mean?

  I had siblings, said the other. Yes, and I saw one of them afterward. Death is cold, a shrivelling, a stench, immobility. I don’t like death.

  But Scott, who now knew that death wasn’t quite like that, or not entirely, said, You don’t have to come with us. Why not stay here and wait for us?

  No, said Wolf. I was nothing before you and would be nothing without you. I would be dead by now. So where you go I go.

  And it’s time to go, said Shania, wrapping her arms around Scott. Look! Look at the cars climbing toward the roadblock.

  Scott looked—saw the lancing headlight beams of the cars where they swung around the hairpins, climbing up and up—and said, “Very well, I’m ready. We can go. But first there’s something I promised Trask.” And turning back, aiming the snout of his flamethrower into the Gasthaus Alpenmann’s foyer, he first ignited the pilot light, then hosed shimmering fire at the carpets, the pine walls and ceiling, any and everything flammable, until the entire foyer was an inferno and the hotel itself was doomed. And:

  “There,” he said, “it’s done . . .”

  As Trask’s team in their two vehicles reached the eighth of the dozen sharp bends in the narrow access road directly below the roadblock situated two hairpins or one level higher, so certain of those above opened up with sporadic gunfire. Because of the near perpendicular range and the overhanging cliff, this was in the main a fruitless effort, which at best revealed the anxiety of the crag’s defenders. They were aware of the fate of many of their colleagues who had tried to attack the E-Branch agents in the Gasthaus Alpenmann; it was possible they had also learned something of the catastrophe that had overtaken a coachload of that group’s would-be reinforcements. Also, because the cars’ headlights were now on dipped beams—which the mist cascading from on high more than half obscured—they were in any case shooting at shadows.

  But having safely rounded that bend and the next one, halfway along a contour-hugging stretch of road that was gradually curving as it climbed, and which soon must bring them into view and weapons range of the roadblock, suddenly the telepath, Paul Garvey—a passenger in the lead vehicle, along with Chung and Trask—gripped the latter’s shoulder from behind and shouted, “Stop!”

  Alan McGrath was driving; slamming on the brakes, he said, “What the bleddy hell . . . ?”

  Fortunately their speed at this point was little more than a crawl—due first to the gloom and the misty air, and second to the proximity of the roadblock—for the car behind at once shunted into them. It was no more than a bump, however, and now both vehicles were stationary.

  Trask had already wound his window down in anticipation of sounds of battle, explosions from up ahead; so far he had heard nothing. Now he looked back at Garvey. “Well, what is it?”

  “It’s Shania!” said the other. “God, she could even be in the car with us, she’s that clear!”

  “And?” Trask snapped.

  “She says we’re to creep forward—literally creep—until just one of our headlights is showing. And then we’re to fire a shot or two.”

  Trask nodded, jabbed McGrath in the ribs, and said, “Do it! They need another diversion, in order that St. John—”

  “—Can plant his grenades, yes,” said Garvey, finishing it for him.

  Their car edged forward around the curving rock wall. From somewhere close in front a torch beam lanced along the road and found them, then half a dozen more beams, slicing the gloom and the mist. Jerking the car to a halt, McGrath switched his headlights to full beam.

  Trask was out of his door in a moment, cocking his weapon, firing a burst of shots in the direction of the torches. There was shouting, the harsh stutter of returned fire, and hot lead sent a spray of sparks flying from the car’s bumper, shattered its windscreen, and reduced a headlight to so much scrap. Other bullets zipped, spanged, and ricochetted off the cliff face, but McGrath and the others had already left the car and were sheltering in the shadows and the hollow of the cliff.

  “And there’s your diversion, St. John!” Trask muttered to himself, wincing as a hail of fire continued to pour along the road. But then—

  Barely discernible as separate explosions, the deafening blasts of sound from the detonating grenades came precisely as fast as Scott had been able to yank their pins, lob them under the blockading coach and the minibuses where they were positioned diagonally across the narrow road, and fling himself back into the protective shadows of a roadside crevice, where Shania and Wolf waited for him. One, two, three, the explosions came, building to a thunderous roar that shook the ground. And accompanied by a waft of hot air and cordite stench—also by gouting fire, roiling smoke, and the screams of wounded and dying men—the explosions brought rills of smoking dirt and a hail of pebbles clattering from on high.

  Even before the debris had stopped flying, Trask and his people—all of his people, from both cars—were moving forward, their weapons chattering, picking off the reeling figures of men where they were silhouetted against the blazing inferno of a shattered minibus, the only vehicle of the three that was still on the road. As for the coach and the second minibus: a trail of sparks and scraps of burning fabric came billowing up through smoke and thinning mist, aerial flotsam from a pair of fireballs, one large, one small, that twirled end over end into the abyss. As they bounded in seeming slow-motion from ledge to winding road to stony outcrops, the thunder of their collisions echoed up from their descent into total ruin . . .

  “Scott!” Trask shouted across the rubble and the carnage at the rim of the devastation. “Scott St. John, are you okay?”

  “We’re okay,” Scott called back, coming into view from the shadows with Shania and Wolf. “Now we’re moving on. You’ll have to shove that wreck over the edge yourselves. Can you manage?”

  “Don’t worry about us,” Trask answered. “We’ll manage just fine. You get on and . . . and do your thing. Good luck!”

  But on Scott’s side of the wreckage, Shania drew him back into the shadows of the cleft in the cliff and said, “Before we can move on there’s something I must know.” And while Trask and his agents began the grisly work of clearing the cratered road, she backed deeper into the shadows and pressed her localizer to her forehead.

  My Khiff, she said. Please test the localizer. For on that last jump I sensed its weakness. Is its energy such that we may safely continue to use it?

  In tune with Shania—in telepathic contact—Scott waited for her familiar’s reply, which it seemed to him took longer in coming than was usual. But then:

  Oh, yes, my Shania, said her Khiff.

  And after the next jump, she went on, the localizer won’t be completely exhausted?

  There followed another long pause, until: It will still be operative, however weakened.

  Now Scott sensed Shania’s frown, so that even before she spoke again he knew she was concerned about something that she appeared to be keeping from him. Eventually, however: My Khiff, she said, is something amiss? Could it be that you’re not quite yourself? Your answers seem strangely deliberate, hesitant, and perhaps even contrived.

  I
have seen other minds, (her Kniff sounded thoughtful and introspective) I have learned new things, gained understanding beyond yourself, myself, our spheres.

  And Shania said, My Khiff, I may not hide my thoughts from you, but you find it the very simplest thing to keep yours from me. Now I feel you shielding yourself, something that you never did before unless it was on my behalf. Surely you would not lie to me, my Khiff?

  Her Khiff at once replied, I have only ever—I would only ever—work on your behalf, my Shania. And perhaps on behalf of those you love.

  Shania’s concern was now very obvious, but Scott was glancing at the luminous dial of his watch and tugging at her arm. “We have to be on our—” he started to say, only to freeze in midsentence.

  For now the conversation between Shania and her Khiff was being smothered, suddenly drowned out by a growing body of far, faint calls that grew louder moment by moment in his mind. And they were calls that only he could hear:

  Haaarry! Necroscope! Is it you, Haaarry? And:

  Haaarry! We feel your warmth. Is it truly you, Necroscope, come to avenge us, come to release us? And:

  It can only be him! It must, it has to be him! (Now they, whoever they were, were talking among themselves; their voices—their deadspeak voices—rising to a babble.) It is the Necroscope, Harry Keogh!

  I feel him there in the darkness.

  Haaary! Only speak to us, Necroscope.

  We’ve waited such a very long time.

  Come to us, Harry.

  Speak to us.

  Comfort us.

  Haaarry!

  Haaaarrry!

  Haaaaarrrry!

  Such pain, such torment in those voices.

  But now, suddenly, such excitement and hope renewed, growing and burning bright in those dead voices from on high . . . but never from heaven. “I’m not Harry,” Scott answered them at last, his voice husky, shaking his head and shaken to his soul, reeling there as Shania’s attention left her Khiff to focus on him.