by Brian Lumley
It took but a moment, but then Trask’s shoulders sagged as he slumped into a seat and said, “Damn it all to hell! The last thing I wanted. A bloody full moon!” And looking at the precog: “So maybe you can see the past and not just remember it, after all.”
“And maybe he can’t,” said Jake. It was the first time he had spoken, and now everyone looked at him. And after a while:
“Well, go on then,” said Trask.
“Shouldn’t we take the next step?” Jake said. “The same as we did with David Chung? I seem to have been hearing about synchronicity, coincidence, and what have you ever since I collided with this outfit. So couldn’t this be exactly the same thing? I mean, just because there was a full moon on the night in question back in ’97, that doesn’t mean the precog wasn’t seeing the future up there at Xanadu. Or aren’t there going to be any more full moons? Me, I’m wondering when the next one is due.”
Trask frowned, stared at Jake, then turned again to Jimmy Harvey. “Do it,” he said.
And in a very short time the answer was up on the screen.
“Three days’ time!” Trask husked then, open-mouthed, staring at the date and full-moon symbol. And Goodly cautioned:
“But does it mean what we’re thinking? Are we going to do it, or is it our old friend El Niño again? Will it result from us attacking the place and burning out a nest, or from a freak of nature, a terrible disaster? I still can’t see how it’s possible for our quarry to exist up there.”
And Jake said, “Neither could the locator see how a vampire could live out on the ocean. And maybe I’m stupid, or a lot less bright than you people, but I can’t see there being a fire up at Xanadu without our being the cause. Surely the first thing we do if Xanadu isn’t what we’re looking for is to warn whoever’s responsible about the fire. And we’ll be able to tell him when, so there’ll be no loss of life.”
The precog shook his head. “You’re not at all stupid, Jake. In the dark it’s always the blind who see best. But believe me, you don’t understand the future. I don’t understand the future! And I say again: it’s not knowing what will happen that counts, but how it’s going to happen. The only sure thing is, once it’s foreseen, it will happen. As for loss of life: I did hear that voice calling, ‘To me! To me!’”
“Rescuers?” said Liz.
“Or one of us, pulling the teams out,” said Trask. “Didn’t you recognize the voice?”
Goodly shook his head. “Not over the roaring of the flames, the shattering of glass.”
“Glass?” said Jake. “Did I miss something, or is that something you didn’t mention before?”
“I just this minute remembered it!” said the precog.
“There was plenty of glass in that topmost dome,” Jake said, “In the pleasure dome itself. Black glass, from the look of it, covering everything but the windows.”
“No,” said the precog. “Not black glass but solar panels—a sort of glass, I suppose. The upper dome was covered in them: a very startling effect. But the windows themselves, they were glass, certainly, and they circled all three lower floors.”
Trask was looking at the colour brochure. “You think that the casino’s going to burn?”
But Goodly could only shrug his defeat. “It’s all speculation. Don’t ask me what I think. I still don’t know for sure if the fire was in the past or the future. And I’m damned if I can see how any kind of vampire could live up there!”
“But I can,” said Jake, watching Harvey searching for Xanadu, and finally putting that area of the Macpherson Range onto the screen. And as before Jake was suddenly the centre of attention. “It was something Lardis said that got me thinking about it,” he explained.
“Me?” said Lardis, looking surprised.
“When you said, ‘Now wouldn’t this make a wonderful aerie, without all this sunlight, of course.”’
“That’s right,” said Lardis. “I said that.”
“Look at the map,” Jake told them. “That dog-leg fold and the false plateau sitting in the middle. The mountains are much higher, and steep-sided. The fold goes north to south, and then backtracks. Certainly Xanadu gets plenty of sunlight, from, say nine-thirty A.M. to four-thirty in the evening. But the rest of the time it’s in the shade, and during the night the darkness must be utter—except for electric lighting, of course.”
“Artificial lighting can’t harm them,” said Trask. “Szwart doesn’t like it but it can’t kill him. Only natural light, sunlight itself, can do that.”
“Not quite true,” Lardis barked. “The Dweller, Harry Hell-landers son, used artif—er, artificial light, yes, in the form of ultra, er, ultraviolet lamps, when he battled the Wamphyri in his garden in the mountains west of Starside.”
“But that’s sunlight, Lardis,” Trask told him. “Artificial, I’ll grant you, but sunlight nevertheless.” And to Jake: “Maybe you’re right. For sixteen or more hours a day, the sun isn’t in fact shining directly onto that place. When it is shining, however, it’s doing it very brightly.”
And Jake answered, “But don’t they sleep during the day?”
And again Lardis: “In Starside, when the sun’s rim came up over the Barrier Mountains, the Lords and Ladies usually ran to their northernmost apartments. There they slept—and even there with drapes at their windows! If they were caught out in the open Sunside of the mountains, as occasionally happened, then they must find caves or deep holes in the earth till nightfall.”
Jake nodded, and said to Trask, “So, do you think there are no ‘deep holes in the earth’ in Xanadu? But that brochure says it all. Fancy fountains, swimming pools, saunas, and gymnasiums. An aerial monorail and a casino. I mean, do you think that all of that stuff is above ground? No, a complex like that is like an iceberg: you only see its tip. All the cellars and conduits; the pipelines, tunnels, sewerage, and water systems; the reservoirs, pump-, boiler-, and storage-rooms; refrigerators—they’re all underground—or rather, they’re on the old bed of the plateau, while the resort has been built above them. That’s why the place looks so clean and uncluttered.”
Trask blinked, shook his head as if to clear it, and said, “Do you know, I believe you could be right? This creature we’re looking for could be right there in or under Xanadu!” He tossed the brochure onto the table. “A place like that, where we would least expect to find him!” Then once more he said, “Three days, and we have a lot to do … not least to prove our point, clear the way before we can take any real action.”
“Prove our point?” Liz looked at him.
“Make sure we’re on the right track,” Trask nodded. “So we can be certain when we go in that what we want is there. And as for clearing the way: well, the Gibson Desert job was one thing but Xanadu is quite another. All of those people; we’ll have to find a way to get them out of there before we go in—and without arousing anyone’s suspicion.” Then, offering another curt nod: “Right, so let’s get to it. This night is still young, but there may be only three of them left.”
Heading for a door leading to an outer room where the SAS commanders were poring over their maps, Trask’s heart was a little lighter; for now at least he had something to tell them. But before leaving, he turned and said, “Ian, David, Liz—and you, too, Jake—I’m very grateful. You’ve all worked well, despite initial doubts. But today was only your first time out and you’re not finished yet. I want you all back in those Skytours choppers again tomorrow. So, maybe we have struck it lucky this first time, but who knows what else could be hiding out there?” Then he looked at his technicians: the gnomish Harvey and the gangling Paul Arenson.
“But there are more skills than this freaky stuff that we espers use—or that uses us, whichever,” he said. “Our ghost-talents may serve us well, but without your gadgets for backup they wouldn’t be nearly as effective. So well done, all of you. And now get your thinking-caps on and try to look ahead. Jimmy: dig up some plans of Xanadu, its subsurface systems, et cetera. Ian: please draft a comprehensi
ve record of this meeting. Paul: it’s late now, but first thing tomorrow ensure I have access to Prime Minister Blackmore’s office so that I can organize a liaison with someone on this marine park thing.”
Turning away, he offered one of his rare smiles and said, “And that, I think, is that. Now I have to speak to our Australian friends. I’ll see you all in the morning … .”
The next day, a Saturday, they split the teams up. Lardis, Jake, and Liz were together on the northern routes (Trask didn’t want Liz anywhere near Xanadu); Goodly and Chung flew south, each of them hoping to complement the other’s strange talent.
The trips were mainly uneventful; the precog’s mind was a frustrating blank—at least where the future was concerned—and the locator dared not get too close to Xanadu in case someone, or thing, should locate him. But in any case and as per Trask’s orders, they were looking at different mountains this time out.
As for Trask himself: he had a very satisfying day, and when the teams returned to the safe house he was waiting to speak to them. This time he brought the SAS in on it—at least for the first stage of his briefing. For while it wasn’t his intention to explain his findings in their entirety (the way E-Branch had used its combined paranormal talents to discover their targets), still, he did have to display those targets, and advise these people as best possible on what they would be up against.
This was done with the aid of the wall screen; Trask supplied the narrative:
“This island in the Capricorn Group—its grid reference is shown alongside—is our secondary target. Now, I’ve called it an island, but in fact it’s little more than a rock or coral reef. It has a few trees, some other tough vegetation; nothing much to mention. It was a marine park conservation station some years ago, but that moved to Heron Island forty miles away. All that’s there now is the reef, a shallow lagoon, a private villa on the island, and, we presume, our enemies. But I have to emphasize that they are probably lesser enemies, which is to say we don’t think they’re of the order of unpleasantness that we were obliged to deal with in the Gibson Desert. However, and having said that, you should remember that they will be vampires.
“How many of them? No more than five or six, which is six too many. But with a chopper, a hired vessel, and half a dozen or so of your men—along with Jake Cutter here and Lardis Lidesci from our side—that should be sufficient. You, which is to say the military, will have command; but you’ll listen very carefully to Lardis, and you’ll take his advice in the … the handling of whatever you find on that island. Take my word for it, Lardis is the foremost authority in these matters.
“Very well, what can you expect to find in the villa? The master of the house for one, a man of some fifty-eight years of age. Easy? But he’ll be a vampire, and as strong as any four or five of your men! Then there’ll be his married daughter and her husband, also his son and possibly a woman friend. The worst of them will be a fourth man, not family, who we think will be acting in the role of their keeper. And he will be dangerous, much more so than the others.
“Now, the problem is this: some if not all of these people will look and act perfectly normal. A bit edgy, perhaps. But if you were to strand your boat on the beach there, they’d probably help out; they might even call the coastguard for assistance. That’s because they want to appear normal, because they daren’t be discovered for what they really are—not until their master decides they’re no longer of any use to him, or her. So, assuming it’s a ‘him’ for the time being, what use are they to him?
“Well, for one, the island is a bolthole: it’s a place for the Vampire Lord to hide in the event he gets driven out of his aerie. So in fact it’s much similar to the Old Mine gas station in the desert. You must plan to take it out accordingly and, if necessary, in exactly the same way. With an air strike, yes, if it comes down to that—though of course we’d vastly prefer the kind of hit at which you people so excel: seek and destroy, and as quickly and quietly as possible.
“And that’s about it, all you need to know about this secondary target for the time being. But I would like to take this opportunity to remind you: you won’t be taking any prisoners.
“Which leads me to your main target. Xanadu, the so-called ‘health and pleasure resort’ high in the Macphersons. And so it is a resort, but only as a front for the ugly Thing that’s runing the show.
“And here’s another problem: this time we don’t know—we have no idea—how many people he’s vampirized. The only thing we can say for sure is that when they know they’re being hit, then they’ll protect their master with all that’s left of their miserable lives.
“Oh yes, and one other thing. When the Wamphyri came into our world, they brought thralls or ‘lieutenants’ with them. Now an original lieutenant out of Starside is a very dangerous creature, much more so than our old friend Bruce Trennier, and you know what he was like. So I’m just reminding you, it’s possible that one of these things is up there, too.”
The map on the big wall screen had changed. Trask pointed to it again, said, “Here’s Xanadu; you know where it is, for of course you’ve all flown over it and seen it for yourselves. And anyway the bloody place is signposted! A resort, as we’ve seen. The perfect cover, yes. Which also makes it difficult for us to deal with the creature or creatures that we’ll find there. Why? Because this time the master vampire is hiding in a crowd!
“That’s my next job: finding a way to get the people—I mean the ordinary people—out of there before Monday night.
“And so, gentlemen, that’s it for now. Now you can go work out your harbour areas, decide where you’ll locate your men and vehicles as they start to come in. The one good thing about it: they won’t have much spare time on their hands, won’t lose their edge or get bored. They’ll no sooner be in situ than they’ll be in a firefight. And I think I can promise you that where Xanadu is concerned, that last is guaranteed. Take it as a foregone—or at least a foreseen—conclusion.”
The SAS commanders left the ops room, and Trask was alone with his own people.
“So as you can see,” he said. “The techs and I have had a busy day. But fruitful? Judge for yourselves.”
He gave Jimmy Harvey the nod, and the big wall screen displayed the group of islets again. And Trask continued:
“This island in the Capricorn Group—it’s such a rock it doesn’t even have a name—is the home of wealthy philanthropist, Jethro Manchester. Like many another rich do-gooder before him, he’s something of a recluse. Five years ago, in return for his patronage and a whole lot of money, the Barrier Reef’s Marine Park Commission gave him the island to live on. He owns it, or as good as. But that’s not all he owns … .”
Trask paused and glanced at Harvey, whose fingers tapped at his keyboard. And now the big wall screen was divided centrally between the islands and a map of the dog-leg fold in the Machpherson Range. Trask glanced at the screen and nodded his curt nod. “Hands up who knows what I’m talking about.”
And Liz said, “He owns Xanadu, too?”
Trask looked at her. “Used to,” he said. “But now he has a partner. Two years ago Manchester signed documents that transferred fifty percent of Xanadu to one Aristotle Milan, an alleged ‘shipping magnate’ of mixed Greek and Italian descent. We might perhaps assume—or rather, I believe we’re supposed to assume—that his surname derives from the city of his origins in the old Italian fashion. But I don’t think so. The coincidence is just too great, not to mention the rest of the story.
“First: there is no record of any Aristotle Milan as being the owner of any ships! Ergo: the man isn’t a tycoon—though I can easily understand how the idea of being one would appeal to such as him—and as for his name—”
“Not Milan but Malin,” Jake came in. “Instead of using ari as a suffix, to denote ‘son of,’ he’s using it as a prefix, denoting ‘first of.’ Meaning that on this world, he’s the first or highest of his kind. And so for Aristotle Milan, read Malin-ari. Malinari the Mind!”
/> “Exactly,” said Trask. “What’s in a name, eh? So, how did Malinari make his connection with Jethro Manchester? Ah, well, here’s another name for you: Martin Trennier. Bruce Trennier’s brother, a marine biologist employed by the Marine Park Commission until Manchester—our philanthropist, conservationist, recluse, and latter-day Jacques Cousteau—stole him away from them to be his very well-paid odd-jobs man, skin-diving companion, and general dog’s-body. This happened about the same time that Manchester and his family got away from it all and retired to the island. Bruce Trennier would have known all of this when Malinari vampirized him at the Romanian Refuge, the said knowledge going secondhand to The Mind himself. Which leaves us with the same question we’ve all worried about before: What else did Malinari learn on that … on that terrible night?”
Trask’s face was grey now, and all of his people knew why: that his concern wasn’t alone for Zek—who was gone now—but also for them. For Zek Föener had known as much as anyone about E-Branch and its workings.
And Malinari?
Ian Goodly determined to change the subject, take Trask’s mind away from it. “What if we’re wrong and it’s all coincidental, circumstantial? This pseudonymous names business, our various hunches and observations, and everything else we’ve come up with?”
“A hell of a lot of coincidences, I’d say!” Trask frowned at him.
“But what if?”
Trask shuffled notes he’d made earlier, and said, “Well, there is one more thing. In Xanadu, the pleasure dome or casino has a smaller, uppermost dome like a blister on top of the main structure. It sits on a spindle and revolves like certain fancy restaurants on their high towers. But in the nine months since Mr. Milan moved in half of its windows have been painted black, both inside and out. Oh, and incidentally, the dome’s rotation was originally designed to track the sun, letting in the light that the higher solar-panelled surfaces necessarily exclude. So it would appear that our Mr. Milan has an aversion to strong sunlight.” Pausing, Trask looked at Goodly.
