by Brian Lumley
Jake sensed that he must be close now. But so did Zek, who was anxious to divert him. And:
Jake, she cut in, you’ll have an explanation. All of this will be explained eventually—or you’ll work it out for yourself—but for now let it go, and let the teeming dead deliberate. The wisdom of the ages is down in the earth, Jake. I can’t see that they’ll make a mistake on your account. I know they’ll let you in … eventually.
“Huh!” he snorted. “In a way they’re just like Trask; even like you, Zek! Everyone seems to think I should want to be ‘in’—that I should consider it a privilege—but all of these E-Branch types will tell you their talents are a curse. So why is it different for me? Why should I accept a curse? And just what sort of a curse is it, anyway? I mean, that is what this is all about isn’t it? The stuff that Trask isn’t telling me? The bottom line? The downside?”
Then for a while there was silence in the psychic aether, until Zek said, I can’t ask you to trust me, can’t promise you anything, for the dangers are enormous. But one thing is certain: you can be the new Necroscope. You are the Necroscope, if only you’ll accept it.
“I would accept it,” he told her then. “I have accepted it in a way. For how can I deny what is? But if there’s a shortcut to my—well, to my being—then why can’t I take it now? And as for the drawbacks … surely it’s my right to know what they are? I mean, what’s the big mystery?”
Jake, Zek answered, Harry Keogh was born with his skills, or with some of them at least, but you’ve had them thrust upon you. What came naturally to Harry is coming unnaturally to you. But some things are so unnatural—and the very possibility of others is so frightening —as to make deadspeak and the Möbius Continuum seem mundane by comparison.
“Now, if that was intended to give me confidence—” Jake started to say, only to be cut off as Zek broke in:
Personally, you wouldn’t have been my choice. (He sensed the sad, reluctant shake of an incorporeal head.) But you were Harry Keogh’s choice, which has to be good enough, for he must have had good reasons. And now there are others I have to talk to, others to convince—on your behalf, yes—on the far side of the world. Before I go, however, it seems only fair to tell you: you’re not making it easy, Jake … .
“That seems to be one of my big problems—” he started to say, then realized that she was gone.
But I am here, Jake, always, said another voice, phlegmy, lustful and darkly sinister, close and even too close to hand. The voice of Korath Mindsthrall, fading to a distant, bubbling chuckle.
And in a little while, coming to Jake as if from far, far away, the whispering of the teeming dead started up again. But it was now more fearful than ever … .
Morning found Jake in an introspective mood. But before he was up and about Liz took the opportunity to have a word in private with Trask about her experience of the previous night.
They were out in the grounds, walking under the high wall, breathing easy while still the sun hung low in the east. It was early, and the dawn chorus of various parrot species clattered in the still air. Another hour or two and the air would be dry, “sub-tropical” Brisbane baking in furnace heat.
Trask heard Liz out, was silent a while, thinking it over. Then he asked her, “He was definitely using deadspeak?”
“I don’t think so … but does it matter? I mean, the way I understand it, as a Necroscope—or the Necroscope—his very thoughts are deadspeak. Unless he’s shielding his thoughts, the dead will hear him thinking. And they will always know where he is. It’s like an extra sense, their only sense. They can’t see, hear, feel, taste, or smell, but they’ll know when he’s near.”
Trask shook his head defeatedly. “I probably know as much about deadspeak as anyone else,” he sighed. “Indeed, more than anyone else. But I still don’t know about it. I talk about it, yes—I know it exists—but sometimes it’s hard to believe in it. So don’t ask me about it, because I don’t know. Hell, Liz! You’re the telepath!”
“It was deadspeak,” she said. “Or at least, he was listening to deadspeak. Listening to—my God!—to dead people, conversing in their graves. And they were talking about him. That was all I got: the fact that he could hear them and was trying to join in their conversation, but they wouldn’t let him.”
“Huh!” Trask grunted. “Who can blame them? Neither would I ‘let him in’ if I could help it. His bloody attitude …”
“But to mature, to be the Necroscope, he has to be able to talk to them, right?”
“That’s part of it, yes. Well, let’s just hope it comes to him, as everything else will have to come to him—the good and the bad. And meanwhile you keep an eye, or an ear, on him.”
“You’re still not sure of Jake, are you?” Liz said.
Trask shrugged. “I’m not sure he’s sure of us! And despite what he has said, I know he still has his own agenda. Anyway, I spoke to Premier Turchin about that, and I’m hoping he can come up with some answers. If we can just find a way to lay that one ghost—kill off the one thing that’s burning a hole in Jake’s brain, this revenge thing, this course he’s set on—maybe it will leave him with an open mind.”
“You mean with Castellano out of the way, Jake would more easily be able to concentrate on the job in hand?”
“Right. So Turchin will try to dig some dirt on this fellow, see if he can get something solid on him. If we could lock him away it would be a start. But Ian doesn’t think that would be enough, not for Jake. And the hell of it is: I understand. I know how Jake feels. Think yourself lucky, Liz, that you don’t know the kind of hatred we’re all capable of. What if I should tell you that I would gladly give my right arm at the shoulder just to see Nephran Malinari writhing, burning on a cross, and to revel in the stink of his smoke? Well, now I’m telling you. And I mean it.”
“And Jake’s no different,” she said with a small shiver.
“Neither was the Necroscope Harry Keogh,” Trask told her. “And neither am I. Few men are, when the crime and the pain it brings are nasty enough. An eye for an eye, Liz.”
“But in fact, Jake hardly knew that girl.”
“He knows that she was raped and tormented and died horrribly, because of him. He knows it was fixed so that he’d take the blame, and that Castellano tried to have him killed in the jail in Turin. That’s enough. It would be enough for me, too.”
“Yet you’re still hard on him. You think hard on him.”
But the other shook his head. “He’s hard on himself. Anyway, let it go now. And let’s hope Turchin comes up with something.”
Hearing footsteps on the gravel drive, they looked toward the house.
It was the precog, Ian Goodly. He came in his accustomed, long-legged lope—with a long face, too—for all the world a cadaverous mortician. “Fresh coffee’s on the go,” he said in his piping fashion. And: “Did I hear someone mention Turchin?”
“What about him?” said Trask.
“It was on the early news,” the precog answered. “He’ll be attending a couple of conference sessions this morning, but tonight or tomorrow he’s out of here and back to Moscow.”
“What?” Trask frowned. “Moscow is the last place he’d want to be right now. What happened?”
“A fistfight, apparently,” Goodly answered. “In Turchin’s hotel bar last night. An Australian delegate got drunk, accused the Premier point-blank of lying about Russia’s soft ecological policy, went on to call him a puppet mouthpiece for his industrial and military masters back home.”
“Which right now is true as far as it goes,” Trask nodded. “Mainly because he has no other choice. So what else?”
“Turchin got a drink thrown in his face before his minders stepped in and started throwing their weight around. The upshot is that he’ll speak today—state Russia’s case, protest about his treatment and what have you—and take the first plane out tomorrow. Tonight if he can get one.”
Turning it over in his mind, Trask stroked his chin. “That doesn�
��t sound like Gustav Turchin to me,” he said. “Long before he made Premier he was a diplomat, could talk his way through a minefield. Something like this happens … I just can’t see him letting it happen.” He shook his head. “Not unless he wanted it to happen. In which case … it has to be a ploy.”
“A ploy?” Goodly looked surprised.
“An excuse to get him out of here,” Trask said. “He has a couple of things to organize in Moscow. I made a deal with him, gave him one or two problems to solve on our behalf. It’s possible that the only place he could work on it is back in Russia. And isn’t there another Earth Year Conference starting in Oslo in just a few days’ time? Acid rain or some such? I’ll give you odds that’s his next stop. He’s something of a fox, Gustav Turchin. I’m betting he’ll go home, set a few wheels turning, then head for Oslo. And of course, with the rest of the world baying at his heels, it will make him something of a hero with his own people. A temporary thing, but it ought to distract his enemies awhile. Anyway, and whatever’s going on, wish him luck. Gustav has come through for us in the past and he probably will again. I’ll brief you on our conversation later.”
“Gustav?” said Goodly. “First name terms?”
“Right,” said Trask. “It’s called detente, my friend. And with the Opposition, as it happens. Well, it won’t be the first time.”
“Tell me more,” said Goodly, wide-eyed.
“Later,” Trask said again, as they headed back toward the house.
27
MINDSMOG !
In general, Trask’s briefing would be the very simplest thing. As yet he wasn’t speaking to a full team—and he wasn’t about to mention his private arrangement with Premier Gustav Turchin to any others but core members of E-Branch—but in the current lull he knew that he needed to keep his people sharp, keep them in the picture, and give them some sort of incentive. Thus, while he intended to stick to a loose broad-screen scenario or overview, still he would remind them of what they were dealing with here, emphasizing the extreme dangers of the job in hand.
His audience included everyone available, which left only the technician Jimmy Harvey doing duty officer in the ops room; but in fact Trask’s words were directed mainly at the Australian Military contingent. Dressed in casual, lightweight summer “civvies,” and while for the moment they didn’t much look like soldiers, in fact these young special-forces officers were the best that their vast country had to offer. Which is to say (in their own down-to-earth terms, and as members of an elite Australian regiment) they were “bloody useful in a scrap, mate.”
“I know we’ve been over some of this before,” Trask began, “but I just want to make it plain what we’re dealing with. That job we did in the Gibson desert—Bruce Trennier and his creatures—it wasn’t big stuff. Trennier was a lieutenant, a right-hand man, but he wasn’t the boss by any means. Just what he and those others were doing out there in the middle of nowhere, we still aren’t sure. Maybe that entire setup was just a bolthole, somewhere that the big chief could run to if things went wrong. But as for the boss himself—who incidentally could as easily be herself—he or she is here, not far away from us even as I speak. At least, that’s our belief. It’s what our experts are telling us.
“Now, that night when we camped out in the Gibson desert. After the fireworks were over, one of you—no names, no pack drill—asked me a question. Normally it would be a perfectly reasonable question: why couldn’t we take a lesser creature, a thrall, captive in order to talk to him, study him, and try to see what makes him tick? Which as I’ve said would seem reasonable . . if we were dealing with an entirely human enemy. But circumstances being what they are, and our enemy being what he is, your question told me that you were either poorly informed, or you hadn’t understood your original briefing, or you really didn’t appreciate what you’d been dealing with that night. And for all I know, it mightn’t be just one man I’m speaking about here, but all of you could have the same problem.
“So, despite that I’ve had experience of these things in the past—or maybe because I have—and you people are newcomers to the game, I tried to put myself in your shoes. Maybe it had seemed too easy. Unpleasant, yes, but not really difficult. And I began to see what the problem was. You’ve probably seen yourselves as men with a nasty job to do … but someone has to do it, right? I mean, maybe it seemed to you that these people you were killing were like, what—escapees from an isolation ward somewhere?—and you were putting them down simply to ensure they didn’t pass on the infection. A pretty effective preventative measure, certainly, but perhaps a bit drastic to your way of thinking.
“So, let’s go back to that perfectly reasonable question: why don’t we just immobilize these things, lock them away, and study them? And wouldn’t that be a far less drastic solution?
“Well, let me tell you again—let me remind you—about vampires:
“Oh, they can be downed. Shoot at them with bullets, especially silver bullets, and you can knock them down … even if they don’t always stay down. Burn them—burn them entirely—and they die. Lock them up in silver cages, and keep their systems topped up with garlic so that they can’t work up a head of steam, and you might even manage to confine them—for a little while. But as for studying them …
“Only make a mistake—your first mistake, just one—and you become the prisoner. And you don’t get a second chance.
“Think of it this way. Men have devised chemical and biological weapons, toxins and living viruses, that could wipe us all out—destroy humankind itself—if they were to get loose. We keep these things in secure laboratories where we study and even develop them. Well, when I say‘we,’ I mean humans: ‘scientists,’ in outlawed lands mainly, dabbling in a mainly outlawed science. For happily a majority of governments have long since banned all such agents; they deem them simply too terrible for study or development, and they’re right.
“But the unpleasant fact is that because some people continue to experiment with this stuff, our people are obliged to follow suit in order to find vaccines and antidotes. They don’t want us to be caught with our immune systems down, as it were. So yes, these terrible poisons still exist in just about every country that’s capable of handling them. But by God, you’d better believe they take damn good care not to spill this stuff!
“So then, why am I bothering to tell you what you probably already know, and what does it have to do with vampires and the Wamphyri? Well, it’s this simple:
“If you think of the Wamphyri and their works in just such terms of reference you won’t go far wrong. That is, you have to think of them as something that must be destroyed. But whatever you do, don’t think of them on the same scale of danger! I mean, we all know that the Richter scale is a yardstick for the power of earthquakes. But if it was a scale for all potential disasters, then to cover man-made biological weapons it would have to stretch from the current nine to ninety, and to cover the Wamphyri it would need to carry on from ninety to infinity! That’s by my personal scale of reckoning, and I am not wrong.
“And remember: our man-made toxins and viruses aren’t bent on escaping; they can’t think! But only imprison a vampire, and from that moment on he’s thinking of ways to get free. He wants to be free, like you, and wants you to be a prisoner, like him. The prisoner of something growing inside you, that will gradually make you someone—something—else. Something other.
“So then, now maybe you can see why we can’t suffer a vampire to live. The point being, we really won’t suffer a vampire to live. Be sure of this: if you get infected, there’s no cure. Which means we’ll kill you. Oh, it’ll be clean, but it will happen.
“So remember, a moment or so after one of us—I include myself—shows up positive, he also shows up dead.
“And on that point, enough said.
“Now let’s move on:
“We think it’s likely that our quarry has a hideout somewhere in the mountains. Where they come from, the Wamphyri are very fond of their ae
ries—the places where they live—and the higher the better. Unfortunately that doesn’t tell us very much, doesn’t narrow down his or her location. For as you know as well or better than I do, there are mountains galore around here. But there’s also a paradox in that the Wamphyri don’t go much on sunlight. And right now we’ve rather a surfeit of that, too! Weird, wouldn’t you say, that our alien friend has chosen to set up shop here? Well, maybe not.
“You see, he’s not dumb. He knows that we know his habits, and that we’ve known about his ‘invasion’ from square one. That means he also knows that normally this would be one of the last places we’d expect to find him. So where better to hide himself away and do his thing, whatever that thing is? The only problem is, he might also know that we found and dealt with Bruce Trennier, and by now he could well be expecting us to come looking for him here.
“Indeed, he could already know that we’ve arrived. And if so he’ll be doubly dangerous, because there’ll be little or no element of surprise.
“Okay, we have a couple of days before our backup squads and the big ops vehicle are in situ. And that has to be one of our first priorities: to find suitable and preferably unobtrusive sites, with access to principal mountain approach roads, where we can harbour these men and vehicles as they arrive. So as of noon today we’ll be air-mobile again, but not in the jet-copters that you’ve grown used to. They may have been great in the desert, but to Brisbane’s civilian population—not to mention our quarry—aircraft that look like they do are bound to attract attention. So for the time being they’ll be on standby in hangars at the airfield where we came in.
