by Brian Lumley
“But just how much did he know? How much had he sapped from Zek’s mind, her memory, her knowledge in general and especially of the Branch? We had no way of knowing. But it must have been sufficient that he and the others felt the need to lie low and control their alien mental emissions. Or perhaps we were wrong and they were simple being cautious, biding their time.
“Nathan stayed with us for five days, just long enough to look up a few old … well, acquaintances. But he was needed in Sunside and daren’t delay any longer. And remember, his problem was as great if not greater than ours: a small army of aspiring Lords, lieutenants, thralls, and warrior creatures, left behind by our trio of Wamphyri invaders; an army which now inhabited the toppled ruins of Starside’s ancient aeries, from which they raided on the Szgany as before. No, we had no claim on Nathan; indeed, our long-term debt to him could never be repaid. And so we had to let him go, with our best wishes—and as many weapons as he could take with him—back along the Möbius Route to rejoin the battle for his vampire world.
“And through all of that time, that terrible, frantic week, the only one of us who wasn’t busy was Ben Trask. He had simply withdrawn from a world that would never be the same again, and I admit that I thought E-Branch had seen the last of him. Fortunately I was wrong, and when he returned he was stronger than ever—well, in some ways—but in his resolve, for sure.
“And now I’ll tell you something that even he doesn’t know. I was duty officer that night at E-Branch HQ—that night when Nathan brought Lardis through from Sunside, and Ben nightmared about Zek—and the moment that Ben came in and I saw the state he was in, I … I knew about Zek. I mean, I knew.
“Oh, I couldn’t tell him, but where he was uncertain and dared not allow himself to be sure, I knew and hated myself for knowing. Just seeing him like that, Ben’s future was immediately apparent to me. In one way it was the clearest picture of anyone’s future that I’d ever seen, yet in another it was the vaguest—which was how I knew.
“For all I saw was how cold and lonely that future would be … .”
Goodly’s delivery, the way he had told the story of the events of that night at E-Branch HQ from his own personal viewpoint—the obvious passion and compassion in this apparently reserved, indeed phlegmatic man—had brought him into far greater definition in Jake’s perception; or rather, it had brought him into focus as a three-dimensional character in his own right. Previously a shadow or a soft-voiced cipher, he had somehow filled out. And Jake understood now that the precog had been a major part of this scene for a very long time.
Now, too, and also for the first time, Goodly’s physical person had impressed itself upon the Branch’s most recent however hesitant recruit. Ian Goodly: all of six-feet-four-inches tall, skeletally thin and gangly, grey-haired and mainly gaunt-featured. His expression was usually grave; he rarely smiled; only his eyes—warm, brown, and totally disarming—belied what invariably constituted an unfortunate first-impression appearance, that of a cadaverous mortician. Except, and as Jake was suddenly aware, you can’t always tell a book from its cover. He would have done better to take more notice of Goodly’s eyes than his outline.
Outside the ops truck, he cornered the precog and drew him away from the others into the shade of a tree.
“What is it?” Goodly asked, though he believed he already knew well enough. For just like Trask and Lardis Lidesci before him, he’d left several blank pages in his telling of the story. Jake was still fishing for the bits that would bring the whole thing into focus.
“Just you and me,” Jake answered. “Just the two of us, and no one else to confuse the issue. Would you mind if I ask you a few questions? I mean, right from square one I’ve had this feeling that you’re on my side, that you think I should be told the whole thing. The others are holding stuff back, but you’re reluctant to do so. Am I right?”
Goodly smiled a wry smile, sighed, and said, “I’ll tell you what I can. But even though you’re right about my being on your side—or rather, about my talent being on your side—still I won’t be able to answer all of your questions. The Branch comes first, and Ben Trask is the Branch. What Ben says goes.”
“Some of my questions, then,” Jake pressed. And he quickly went on: “So you’re a precog, right? And this talent of yours, this precognition, it lets you see into the future?”
“That’s the general idea,” Goodly sighed again. “But only a very rough idea, for it’s not nearly as simple as that. Haven’t I made that plain?” And now he was frowning.
“Okay, fine,” Jake placated him. “But you did tell me you’d seen some of my future, right? You did say that I’d be with you, with E-Branch, for quite some time to come.”
“That’s true, yes,” Goodly answered.
“In what capacity?”
“I don’t know.”
“Okay, then is it going to be that way simply because Trask won’t let me go off and do my own thing, or … ?”
“Possibly because he won’t let you go,” the precog answered. “He has to see how you work out, which could take a while. That could be—it obviously is—part of the reason why I’ve foreseen your continuing presence, yes. But what is this, Jake? Are you still uncertain? I thought you’d decided to stay?”
“ … Or, is it mainly because he thinks I’m going to be useful to you?” Jake ignored Goodly’s last.
“Well that, too, we hope. But Jake, you’re talking in circles. And I don’t see—”
“I’m getting to it!” Jake growled, his attitude intense now. And after a moment’s thought: “So tell me, is it me, Jake Cutter, who’ll be useful to you, or is it this Harry?”
“Er, that was my meaning, yes,” said the precog, “that the Necroscope would definitely be useful to us. But if you want me to pick and choose, I can’t do it. I would have to answer, both of you—you’ll both be extremely useful to us. I thought that he had been made plain, too.”
“He’s … what, contacting me, this Harry? Getting into my head to guide me, is that it?” Jake was pushing it now. “Or is he simply using me?”
“Using you? Personally, I would say he’s keeping you safe. Wouldn’t you?”
“But in my head, like telepathy? A kind of telepathic control?” Jake scowled.
“Telepathy?” Goodly seemed uncertain. “Something like telepathy, yes. But Harry had a different name for it.”
“Had? Why is it that when we talk about this Harry everything has to be past tense?” Then Jake gave a snort. “Huh! Dumb question—because he’s dead, of course!—which I can’t see at all. For if he’s dead, how can he do whatever it is he’s doing to me? See, I don’t believe in ghosts. They’re a concept I just can’t seem to wrap my head around. And as for Harry Keogh: he’s something I don’t want to wrap my head around, even though it’s apparent he’s already seen to that! But since he’s obviously a disembodied voice out of the past, then it must be equally obvious that his talent was similar to yours. I mean, Harry didn’t so much read the future as reach into it … is how it seems to me. But okay, fine, let’s keep it going: So if what he’s doing to me isn’t telepathy, then what did he call it?”
“It wouldn’t help you to know, not at this stage.” Goodly shook his head. “In fact it could easily become an obstruction, a deterrent to your acceptance of … of everything.”
Jake’s frustration was mounting again. “A deterrent to my acceptance?” he snapped. “Don’t you think there are enough deterrents already? It’s nuts, all of it! I mean, what am I, some kind of psychic medium? If there was a reason, just one logical reason, why I should suddenly become this dead bloke’s target, his focus, his genius loci, then I might be willing to believe at least some of this … this whatever. See, I know that what I’ve actually seen and experienced so far is real, but I don’t know that a lot of what I’ve been told is real. I trust my own five senses, or used to, but I don’t understand how or why I’m involved. I’d even like to believe what I’ve heard, if only as an alternative to
considering myself some kind of psycho, some kind of schizoid nutcase. But . . but … but Harry is fucking dead!”
“Well, in a way he’s dead,” said the precog, just as serious as ever, as if their conversation was utterly mundane. “But you see, Harry didn’t view existence, life and death, as we do. There was a time when be really was two people. It was after he suffered … well, an accident, that his mind temporarily manifested itself in the identity of his own infant son. And later, he underwent another singular change. Best to think of it as a kind of metempsychosis, or—”
“Metempsychosis?” Jake cut him short. For despite being sure he’d never heard the word before, still he understood it; likewise another word that meant much the same thing. “You mean transmigration? Of souls? Like he was … what, some kind of body-snatcher?” And now suspicion was written plain on the younger man’s face.
“It wasn’t like that at all!” the precog protested.
“What?” Jake’s voice was brittle now, cracking like glass splintering under the heel of a boot. “I don’t give a twopenny toss what it was like! Shit, look at it from my point of view! This bloke’s dead but he’s trying to control my mind? And then what, my body? And if he ever got it, do you really think he’d want to give it back? And what about me, Mr. Ian bloody Goodly, precog? What the fuck about me? Is that why you can’t tell me my future? Because the real me doesn’t have one?”
“Calm down, for goodness’ sake!” Goodly looked alarmed. “My word, but you’ve a very short memory, Jake Cutter!”
“Eh?” That had served to slow Jake down a little. “A short memory? How so?”
“Didn’t Harry get you out of jail? Hasn’t he saved your life twice already, and Liz’s, too?”
Jake considered it, relaxed a very little, said: “But what does he hope to do with me, this … this ghost?”
“Well, perhaps that’s one I can answer,” Goodly told him. “You see, the Necroscope’s principal tenet was that whatever a man does in life he will continue to do after death. He proved it, too: used it to discover the Möbius Continuum. You’ll just have to take my word for that, for the time being, anyway. But Harry’s greatest claim to fame, or one of them, lay in finding and destroying vampires. Oh yes, the Earth was infested before this latest invasion. And believe me, Jake, without the Necroscope on our side, our world would have become an unimaginable hell-hole of a place a long time ago. So …”
“ … So, you think he intends to keep on doing what he did before,” Jake nodded his understanding, all the while fighting hard to suppress his disbelief. “This Harry … he’s trying to come back because he somehow knows they have come back, and he wants to go on killing vampires. He’s the avenging ghost and I … I’m his gadget?”
The precog shrugged and answered, “And there you have it.”
Jake shook his head, looked bewildered, said: “Come again? Didn’t you get something backwards just then? Surely you meant there it has me!”
But Goodly was weary of this now. “As you will,” he answered. And pursing his thin lips, he turned away.
Jake saw his mistake, didn’t want to alienate someone who obviously gave a damn, and quickly said, “Listen, I appreciate everything you’ve told me. I’m not trying to mess you about—none of you—but looking for a little firm ground, somewhere I can safely plant my feet. The way I’m feeling, every step is like quicksand. And what you just said doesn’t help any. What, I’m supposed to be happy with the notion of this Harry working his will through me, if not actually on me? Well, that’s probably fine by you E-Branch people, all nice and safe in your own talented little skulls, but—”
“But there’s no safe place in E-Branch, Jake,” the precog cut him short, glancing back over his shoulder. “However, I did say you would be around for quite some time. Which, with the Necroscope—or something of him—on your side, seems a very fair forecast to me.”
“But a ghost?”
“There are ghosts and ghosts,” the other answered, walking away.
“But he’s dead, for Christ’s sake!” Made meaningless now, through repetition, still Jake’s exclamation exploded from his dry lips. “And not just a ghost—not just any old spook—but one who has access to my mind!”
“In E-Branch,” Goodly told him, without looking back, “we do believe in ghosts, especially in Harry Keogh. We have every good reason to. But that’s something you don’t have to take my word for, Jake. You see, I’m sure that before very long you’ll believe in them, too. I, Mr. Ian bloody Goodly, precog, am very sure of it, yes … .”
16
A MEETING OF MINDS
Jake was in Chopper one with Trask, Liz, Goodly, Lardis, and a pair of technicians, Jimmy Harvey and Paul Arenson. Their next stop was Alice Springs (a “mere” eight hundred miles east) for refuelling. Chopper Two needed an hour’s maintenance and would follow on behind. As for the vehicular contingent:
“They’re heading south for Kalgoorlie,” Paul Arenson, a gangling, blueeyed blond of maybe thirty-three years was telling his younger colleague. “From there they’ll go piggyback on a freight train to Broken Hill, then back on the road again to Brisbane. All except the big artic. It has to be the Great Aussie Bight coast road for the big feller. I calculate something like two thousand, three hundred miles all told. We’ll be home and dry in less than five hours; that’s taking it easy, including a stop to stretch our legs at Alice. But as for the lads in the big truck … just be glad you’re not one of them. Five hours for us, and three or four days for them!”
The conversation buzzed in Jake’s head, singing with the vibration of the jet-copter. The airplane was safe and stable, but with its paramilitary design it hadn’t been built for comfort. Jake sat on the floor in the narrow stowage area towards the tail, where there were no seats. Half-reclining, his large, angular frame was cushioned by holdalls, sausage-bags, and various packs of personal belongings, some hard and some soft; it wasn’t his idea of luxury. But tired, and even hoping to get a little sleep, he repositioned himself as best he could and let the aircraft’s singing soak into him.
The “tune” was much too regular for a lullaby, and snatches of muted conversation kept drifting back to him, monotone lyrics that didn’t fit the music but clung like cobwebs to his thoroughly weary mind. Cocooned in this odd mix of white noise and blurred babble, gradually Jake felt himself nodding off.
Liz Merrick was loosely belted into the rearmost of the seats, a gunner’s swivelling bucket seat between wide sliding doors on both sides. Her long legs were up, flopping over the gunner’s arm rests; the gun itself slumped nose-down, strapped in position. Glinting a dull blue-grey, and despite its proximity to Liz’s lovely body, the weapon looked sullenly impotent. But the picture Jake kept in his mind as he drifted into sleep was that of a naked Liz with the gun between her legs … .
… But then he was asleep, and he was the gun between her legs! And—damn it to hell!—he wasn’t fucking Liz but was facing away from her out of the door. And she wasn’t trying to ride him but was firing him … her arms round his waist, with one band massaging his balls while the other, working his rampant dick, shot burst after burst of silvery, smoking semen at nightmarish vampire shapes that flapped in the chopper’s slipstream, snarling their bloodlust as they fought to get inside the plane, to get at Liz, Trask, Goodly and the others!
Barely asleep, Jake jerked awake. Liz was staring at him, her cheeks flaming, mouth half-open, eyes wide. And Jake didn’t need a degree in psychiatry—or in parapsychology—to understand what had happened here. Whether as a deliberate voyeur or an innocent observer, Liz had been in his mind. She’d seen that last scene. And as for what it meant: that was his fear surfacing, his ongoing suspicion that Ben Trask was simply using him, now complicated by the notion that Trask was also using her as some kind of bait—iike a carrot for a donkey?—to keep him happy as he plodded on. He could be right at that, or he could be wrong. But if Liz were the carrot, then what did Trask have in mind for the stick? Everyt
hing remained to be seen.
“I … I …” Liz mouthed words at him—mouthed them, but nothing came out—as she quickly, self-consciously, ashamedly slid her jean-clad legs from the gunner’s arm rests and sat up straighter in the bucket seat.
Serves you fucking right! Jake snapped back, but silently, in his head. And he knew he’d reached her from the way her head jerked. And now keep the fuck out!
Following which, as his anger cooled, it took some time to get back to sleep … .
Snatches of conversation drifting back to him. But in his ears or in his head? Perhaps be was still on Liz’s mind, and unsuspected even by the girl herself where she sat in her bucket seat midway between Jake in stowage and the others in their seats up front, she had become some kind of mental relay station. For in the few days she had known him Liz had established something of a rapport with Jake; it was possible that the sending technique she had used to taunt Bruce Trennier had “fixed” itself and was now developing more rapidly in her special mind. Maybe this was simply her way of making amends: by letting Jake in on the conversation. The conversation about him. Or was it something, or some one else entirely?
Trask’s hushed voice, asking: “But why him?”
Lardis Lidesci: “Does the why of it really matter? If Jake has been chosen, he’s been chosen.”
And Ian Goodly: “There are certain similarities. Maybe we shouldn’t overlook them. I’m sure mental characteristics—how Jake thinks—are more important than the purely physical way he looks. When we look at him we don’t see Harry, that’s true, but the Necroscope was a hard act to follow. Perhaps we should give more thought as to how Harry sees him. And there are similarities.”
Trask: “Go on.”
Goodly: “For one thing, they both lost loved ones. Both of them drowned, murdered, too.”
Trask: “Granted, but that’s where it ends. And as for losing a loved one, murdered, you could say the same about me. But where is Harry’s humility? Where’s his compassion, his warmth? This Jake … he’s abrasive, a roughneck, spoiled and wild.”
