by Brian Lumley
“Jake Cutter,” Trask said, “this is Lardis Lidesci. I heard you asking who on earth? Well, nobody on Earth, actually. Originally he’s from … oh, a different place entirely.” Trask had almost let something drop, stopped himself at the last moment. “Lardis was in the Greek Islands with another team,” he changed the subject. “When they didn’t find what they were looking for, I asked that he be sent here. He came in this afternoon by chopper from Perth.” And turning to the Old Lidesci, he said “Well? How about it?” Obviously there was something between the two of them that Jake and Liz weren’t privy to.
“Him?” Lardis looked at Jake, frowned, gave a shrug. “Can’t say. Could be, I suppose. Fit and young … and stubborn! Won’t listen to good advice, and doesn’t respect his elders too much, either! Makes him a funny choice if you ask me. But if it’s so it’s so, and who are we to fathom the ways of the Necroscope?”
“Nothing certain, then?” Trask seemed disappointed.
Lardis shrugged again, and said, “Well, the proof could be right here in the slime and the stink where these bastards burned … that’s if you really want to test your theory?”
Trask knew what Lardis meant even if Jake didn’t. He shook his head, said, “No, he’s not ready for that yet. And probably not for quite some time to come.”
Jake had been studying Lardis. The Old Lidesci was short, barrel-bodied, almost apelike in the great length of his arms. His lank black hair, beginning to grey now, framed a leathery, weather-beaten face with a flattened nose that sat uncomfortably over a mouth that was missing too many teeth. As for the ones that remained: they were uneven and stained as old ivory. But under shaggy eyebrows, Lardis’s dark brown eyes glittered his mind’s agility, denying the encroaching infirmities of his body. Jake guessed he’d been a leader, and rightly so.
If Jake examined Lardis Lidesci, it was certainly no less of an inspection that the old man was giving him. And suddenly, feeling uncomfortable, Jake went on the defensive. Frowning, he said, “I wish you’d talk to me, you two, instead of about me! I mean, you were talking about me, weren’t you?”
“About you and about someone else,” Trask told him. “We’re talking about the fellow that you think—and that we think—might be in your head. Talking about a man called Harry Keogh.”
“I never heard of him,” said Jake, but wondered if in fact he had. The name did seem somehow familiar … and felt familiar, too, in a weird sort of way. Which only served to confuse him and make him angry. “Anyway, what has he to do with me?”
Trask rubbed his chin, said, “There’s something he used to do that … well, that you seem to do, too. When Liz was under threat, you … you moved her away from Trennier. And I know I don’t need to remind you that that’s how you first came to our attention. It’s how you brought yourself to our attention: by moving in on us.”
Jake shook his head. “That wasn’t deliberate,” he said. “I mean, I didn’t have anything to do with it. It wasn’t me.”
“Exactly,” Trask told him.
Jake frowned again. “I don’t see the connection.”
“Neither do we,” Trask said. “Not just yet. But if there is one, we’re going to find out about it.” His eyes were speculative, bright with some strange emotion—hope, perhaps?—where they studied Jake’s face. But then he shrugged it off and said, “Meanwhile, Lardis is right. Decontamination time for you two. And I do mean right now.”
And Liz and Jake both knew enough—they had seen enough now—not to argue; and so headed for the command vehicle … .
When they had left:
“I missed it,” the Old Lidesci spoke to Trask. “But he did actually do it, then, this Jake? He used the Möbius Continuum?”
Trask nodded. “And that makes three times now that we know of.”
“Then we must accept that he is what he is,” Lardis shrugged. “It seems obvious to me.”
“And I wish it seemed as obvious to me,” said Trask. “It’s just that I don’t like the coincidence—that at a time such as this he turns up.”
“But what better time?” Lardis asked him.
“Or what worse?” Trask countered. “The point is, we know what he might be, but we don’t know what he is. The only thing I know for sure, it isn’t an act. He really doesn’t know what’s going on.”
“And you haven’t told him?”
“What do you want me to tell him, Lardis? That part of him has been occupied by someone who talks to dead people? Someone who can even call the dead up out of the earth, to walk again? Someone who, at the end of ‘life as we know it,’ was himself a vampire—and not only him but two of his sons, too? Should I tell him that in Starside, in your world, one of Harry Keogh’s sons was a Lord of the Wamphyri, while another was The Dweller, a werewolf? And if Jake didn’t think I was a madman, if he actually believed me, what then?”
Again Lardis’s shrug. But then, perhaps grudgingly: “I see what you mean,” he growled. “If it was me, I’d run like all the devils of hell were after me!”
“And so might he,” Trask nodded. “And in the Möbius Continuum, he can run a very long way. We can’t afford that, can’t afford to lose him. Which is why we’ll just let this thing develop for a while, and see what happens … .”
Some little distance away, as Jake and Liz passed a patch of blackened, tarry ground and a slumped mound that still gave off the stench of roasting flesh:
“What?” Jake paused, his face very pale. “What? Do you hear that, those screams? Jesus, what the hell is that?” He turned in a circle, looked all about, but no one was there.
For a moment Liz said nothing. She had heard nothing and couldn’t imagine what he was talking about—or maybe she could but didn’t want to. But it was plain to see that Jake was badly shaken. “Screams?” she said. “The hiss and sputter of sap, perhaps, boiling out of a scorched branch?”
“Well, maybe,” Jake shuddered. “Maybe.”
But he really didn’t think so. What he knew he’d heard had sounded much more like the screaming soul of a sinner, roasting in his own private hell. Or perhaps someone shrieking his final denial from a world beyond the flames, a world beyond life.
And the bubbling patch of scorched earth continued to give off steam and smoke … .
4
GADGETS AND GHOSTS
The decontamination booths reminded Jake of those antique telephone kiosks so treasured by collectors. They weren’t red and didn’t have those small glass panes for windows, but they were much the same size and even smelled bad. Not of urine, no, but of garlic; Jake couldn’t make up his mind which was more nauseous.
Situated in the back of the rearmost articulated trailer section, and fitted with doors as small as the toilet doors on an airplane, there were three booths on each side. Inside each booth was a disposal unit for soiled clothing; discarded items were sucked away, irradiated and microwaved, spat from an exterior chute and burned. The procedure covered all clothing.
Which meant you were left buck-naked in the waterproof and airtight booth, where the rest of the process was entirely automatic. And that was when you discovered why these claustrophobic little shower-units—for that’s what they were—smelled so foul. At first it was just hot water, stinging like BB shot where it blasted down on you from overhead jets, but in a few seconds it was something else: a mixture of something chemical and antiseptic, and something vegetable and oily. The chemical saturated and then evaporated, but the oil stayed. And—damn it to hell!—you were supposed to rub it into your pores. But if there was one thing Jake especially hated, it was garlic!
There was an intercom system; you could talk to people in the ops section, or to other agents undergoing decontamination in the booths. The uppermost sections of the booths were glass-panelled on the sides from the neck up, and from there down stainless steel. This last was simply a matter of common decency; there were female as well as male agents.
Jake had chosen a central booth and Liz had taken the one to his le
ft. Switching on her booth intercom, she said, “I see you picked the middle one. You could have taken the one on the end, so there’d at least be a booth between us!” Looking sexy as hell (for all that Jake could only see her face, her long slender neck and shoulders), she pulled an impish face at him through the glass.
But he only grinned—a rare occurrence in itself where Jake Cutter was concerned—and answered, “Oh, really? And why didn’t you choose one on the other side of the vehicle, so you wouldn’t have to be near me at all?” Then on the spur of the moment he leaned forward, flattened his hawk nose to the glass panel, and made as if to look down inside her booth. There was no way; the glass was misted at the edges and it was all gleam, steam, and cream down there. “Oblige me and stand on your toes, will you?” he grunted—and was so astonished at himself that he bit his tongue—and was equally amazed at Liz when, for a single instant of time, she actually seemed to consider doing it.
It was the look on her face: a not-quite innocence, a curiosity, a magnetism that worked both ways. She looked beautiful like that: hair plastered down, makeup all washed away, and her skin shiny with oil yet still beautiful. Jake was drawn by it—and repulsed. There was something he’d vowed to himself, and he would stick by it to the end, until it was done. And anyway, Liz didn’t stand on her toes but simply blushed. Or maybe that was as a result of the steam. In which case it would be hiding his colour, too … thank the Lord!
“Anyway, what are you doing here?” she said. And maybe it was his imagination, but her voice sounded just a little husky. Must be the intercom. “I mean, you’ve made it amply clear that you don’t want to be with us. So why are you?”
Jake glanced at the intercom panel. Liz’s button was the only that was lit up. No one else was listening, so their conversation would be completely private. That was assuming he wanted to talk, of course. And suddenly he did. “I didn’t have any choice,” he said. “I could be here or I could be locked up. Well, I’ve been in jail, and here is better. But after tonight, I can tell you it’s not much better.” There he stopped short, reconsidered. Why bother? Why try to get close to anyone? He’d been close to someone before, and she’d paid for it. Once was enough.
“They … they jailed you for murder?” Liz said, and her face was very serious now. “That’s what I’ve heard, anyway.”
“I killed some people,” Jake nodded. “And if I get half a chance there are still two more who I want to kill.” He admitted it oh so matter-of-factly, and for a moment his brown eyes were very nearly black; they were bleak, too, almost vacant in their intensity. Liz felt that Jake’s eyes looked at something a thousand miles away, perhaps a scene from memory, his as yet undisclosed past. Or maybe it was just an effect of the misted glass.
But then he smiled, however wanly, and was animate again. “So, there you go. That’s me, Mr. Bad Man. So what’s your story, Liz? What’s a nice girl like you doing in a freaky outfit like this?”
She felt cheated, because she knew he hadn’t told it all. Not nearly. “Tell me just one more thing,” she said, shivering because the spray was cooler now, and also because of the look she’d seen in his eyes. “About you, or about those men you say you killed. Did they deserve it?”
He looked at her, then answered her with a question of his own. “What about those creatures tonight: did they deserve it?”
“But they were vampires, monsters!”
He simply nodded, left it for her to figure out … .
By which time the spray had become shampoo, and they knew it was nearly over, this part of it, anyway. As he soaped himself down Jake reminded her, “I’m waiting.” Despite his doubts, his resolve, still his interest couldn’t be denied.
“Hmm?” she said. Then, “Oh! Why am I here? That’s easy. I was doing some work for a psychic research group. Looking back, I suspect it was an E-Branch recruiting ploy. They haven’t said as much, not yet, but I gather they’re pretty hush-hush until a person is well established with them. Anyway, the job was easy, the money was good and I needed the work. My office was in central London; I interviewed people, allegedly for Mind Magazine, and if they responded positively to a certain set of questions, then I was supposed to work with them and carry out a series of tests.” She shrugged, and through the misted glass Jake saw her shoulders give a little twitch, the suggestive movement of her underarm flesh as the weight of her ample breasts settled.
“Anyway,” she went on, “I used an old German Prismaton 70 in the tests, and—”
“A what?” Jake cut her off.
“It’s a machine that chooses psi symbols at random.”
“Psi symbols?”
Liz sighed. “Five designs: a star, a circle, a square, a plus sign, and wavy lines.”
“I’m with you now,” Jake said. “The machine picks the symbol, and the test subject has to guess which one it is.”
“Except it’s not supposed to be a guess,” Liz told him. “I mean, they’re supposed to concentrate and try to know what symbol it is! That’s what ESP is all about.”
“Go on.”
“Well, at first I would get a few lucky guessers … they might come up with two or three correct symbols in a row and I would get all excited. But in the long run it never worked out to anything, and I’d be disappointed because, you know, I wanted to earn my money. But for me to be successful, obviously my test subjects had to be successful, too. And so I found myself willing them to get it right. Someone would say, “Square!” And I would be telling myself,”No, no, no! That’s wrong! It’s the wavy lines!” Until I reached the stage when I was saying, “No, that’s wrong,” or, if someone got lucky, “yes, that’s right,” before they named their choice, before they even spoke!”
“Let me guess,” said Jake. “You didn’t know what was going on. You thought that either you were mistaken, or the machine—the, er, Prismaton 70?—was playing tricks with you, or—”
“But it couldn’t be the machine,” Liz cut him short, “because it’s only a machine.”
“—Or that you yourself,” Jake went on, “must somehow be ‘in tune’ with your subjects. Mental telepathy, right?”
She nodded. “It was me. It wasn’t that my subjects, an incredibly high percentage of them, were good at sending—which is E-Branch parlance for telepathic transmissions—but that I was good at receiving. I was a receiver, a mind-reader. I could ‘tune in’ to other people’s thoughts, yes. Not all the time and not without a lot of effort and concentration, but sometimes.”
“Which was something you’d never noticed before?” Despite the events of the night—the fact that he’d observed for himself her obvious effect on Trennier—still Jake was a little skeptical. “I mean, that you knew what people were thinking?”
She grinned. “Well, I frequently knew what men were thinking!” Slowly her grin disappeared. “No, seriously, I hadn’t the foggiest idea. But as soon as I did know, then it was like Topsy.”
“It just growed and growed … .” Jake thought it over.
“And then there’s you,” Liz said pointedly. But he wasn’t having any and simply looked away.
The soap had stopped and it was plain water now, and cold. Just as they might have started complaining, the system closed itself down and a light began flashing on the intercom. It was Trask, wanting to know, “Are you people done? Good! So get out of there and make room for someone else.” The rest of the team, all of them, would go through a less intensive cycle. But Jake and Liz weren’t finished yet.
Dry towelling robes dispensed themselves from compartments in the rear of the booths, with plastic bag “booties” for their feet. Then the doors concertinaed of their own accord, and outside in the corridor other agents were coming aboard and making ready. But Jake and Liz stayed apart from them and went on into the body of the ops vehicle and the next stage, where Trask himself administered hypodermic injections while the old man, Lardis Lidesci, stood watching. Until finally they were obliged to drink something vile.
“Go
d!” Jake gasped, clutching his throat. And again: “God, but if I’m not going to be sick as a dog … !”
“If you are,” said the Old Lidesci, “I’ll take it as a very bad sign.” And Trask grinned, however coldly, as Lardis fondled the grip of his machete.
“He won’t be sick,” Trask said then. “And even if he is it won’t mean anything. I remember I was sick myself, desperately, the first time I tasted that stuff.”
“Garlic?” Still Jake felt like gagging.
“Derived from,” Trask shrugged. “Anyway, it’s good for you … or so I’m told.” Turning, he led the way down the corridor, past doors to a half-dozen cramped bunks, and through a telescopic conduit and hatch into the vehicle’s forward trailer section. Then at last they were there: in the ops room itself, the mobile nerve-centre … .
Ian Goodly was in the hollow oval that formed the central desk. He swung round the oval on a tracked chair, studying the various illuminated wall-charts and monitor screens. The place was hi-tech heaven, well in advance even of anything else that AD 2011 had to offer. In complete contrast to the articulated shell of truck and trailers—indeed, utterly contradicting that outer facade, with its mundane and easily identifiable “Castlemaine” and “XXXX” legends—this interior was something out of speculative fiction. And never a can of beer in sight.
Goodly was wearing what looked like a virtual reality headset that was constantly tuning itself to whatever event or location he was observing. But as he swung into a new position and Trask and company came between the precog and the ever-changing screens, so Goodly brought his chair to a halt and took off the headset.
The Old Lidesci shook his grizzled head in astonishment and grunted, “After all this time working with you people, I’m still not used to it Not used to … to this.”
Trask nodded his understanding. “I know what you mean,” he said, “but you won’t get too much sympathy from me. Hell, it’s been more than thirty years for me—and I still feel the same about it! What was it Alec Kyle used to say? How did he put it? Or was it Darcy Clarke?” He shrugged. “But what difference does it make, eh? It could have been any one of us. ‘Robots and romantics. Super science and the supernatural. Telemetry and telepathy. Computerized probability patterns and precognition. Huh! Gadgets and ghosts!’ Well, that’s it. That’s E-Branch.”
