by Brian Lumley
As to who “they” were: international entrepreneurs, or so the hotel manager had been given to understand; nor was he alone in his ignorance. For from the outside looking in, very few would suspect that the building in toto was anything other than it purported to be: an hotel. Which was exactly the guise or aspect, or lack of such, which “they” wished to convey. And so, except to its members and to a select core of Very Important Persons in the Corridors of Power, who could be numbered on the fingers of one hand—only one of which, the Minister Responsible, knew the actual location of E-Branch HQ—the Branch simply did not exist.
Yet paradoxically E-Branch’s existence and indeed its location were known of elsewhere in the world, to one organizations at least and probably more than one. The Soviet equivalent knew of it, certainly, and possibly China’s mindspy organization, too. They knew about E-Branch HQ but made no great show of it—not yet. Let it suffice that the hotel had been earmarked and was a target; in the unlikely event of global conflict it would be an early casualty, simply because it gave the West too much of an edge.
This was of small concern: since the end of World War Two inner London itself had been a target, as were all centres of government, finance, and commerce worldwide, not to mention a thousand military establishments. And for that matter, so were the Russian and Chinese ESP agencies targets, including Soviet HQ on Protze Prospekt in Moscow, next door to the State Biological Research Laboratories. Also the Soviet “listening” cell in Mogocha near the Chinese border, where a team of telepaths kept an eye (or an ear) on the Yellow Peril; and likewise the Chinese outfit itself on Kwijiang Avenue, Chungking. The commencement of World War Three would be a hot time for espers, which was as good a reason as any why such agencies should work for its prevention. And so to all intents and purposes, perestroika and glasnost were still very much the order of the day.
Which was why it came as no surprise to Trask when Chung told him, “Our ‘friends’ on Protze Prospekt have confirmed it: something has come through the Perchorsk Gate. They’ve got it trapped there and want our help with it—urgently.” He used the term “friends” loosely; the British and Soviet E-Branches had never been more than wary adversaries. In fact the Necroscope in his time had twice pared “the Opposition” down to the bone. But ever since the Chernobyl disaster, the Russians had been far less reluctant to ask for outside help. They’d asked for it not only with that horror but also with the decommissioning and mothballing of a dozen more outdated, outmoded, and positively lethal nuclear reactors, and for ten years now the West had been helping them dispose of the rest of their seemingly endless toxic-waste junkyards. For Earth’s sake, if for no other good reason.
As the elevator doors hissed open, letting them out into the main corridor, Trask said, “I think you’d better start at the beginning. Let me see the whole picture. Also, let’s have every available hand in on it. The duty officer, espers doing paperwork, administration: the whole shoot.”
But Chung had anticipated him. “They’re waiting for us in the ops room. But only Millie Cleary knows what it’s about. She was duty officer last night and took the call from Moscow just an hour ago. As for myself, I couldn’t sleep and came in early. Then, passing Harry’s room, I … I sort of felt it. By which time the head of Soviet E-Branch had been on the blower asking to speak to you.”
“Harry’s room?” Trask frowned.
They were heading down the corridor towards the ops room. Chung took Trask’s elbow and brought him to a halt, looked over the other’s shoulder at a door behind him, and nodded. “Harry’s room, yes,” he said. The expression on his face was curious, questioning.
Then Trask remembered. When Harry Keogh stayed here after the Bodescu affair, they’d given him a room of his own. Indeed, the Necroscope had literally lived here, however briefly, until his wife’s problem had become apparent. That had been … what? A quarter-century ago? And eight years after that he had been debriefed here, after his return from Starside. God, the passage of time: it made Trask feel old! Who was he kidding? Well past fifty, he was getting old, and too fast!
He turned and looked at the door, which had its own faded plastic nameplate:
Harry’s Room
Trask frowned again, and said, “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever been in there? Well, not since Harry’s time, anyway.” He looked at Chung and saw that he was suddenly pale; his mouth was tight and his slanted eyes were blinking rapidly. “David?”
The other shook his head. “It’s nothing. Just this room, I think. You’ve never been in there? Well, you’re not alone. The Necroscope used it for a while, since when …” He shrugged. “The room housed a computer terminal for eight years, until we refitted. In fact, the old machine is still in there, gathering dust. Then the room fell into disuse, and no one seems to have had any use for it at all! But now … I find myself wondering if it doesn’t go deeper than that? I mean, it’s always cold in that room, Ben. All of the espers feel it: it has an aura. The room itself doesn’t seem to want anyone; it doesn’t want to be messed with.” Chung stared hard at Trask. “Haven’t you felt it, too?”
Trask looked blank. “I don’t think I’ve even noticed the room,” he said. “I mean, I have noticed it—the nameplate and what all—but it hasn’t made any impression. It’s just a place I’ve lived with every day of my life all these years, without really seeing it.”
“That’s exactly what I mean,” Chung answered. “And all of the others say the same thing. Someone stuck that plate on the door God knows how long ago, since when it’s been Harry’s room and that’s all. But ever since he returned to Starside … we might have forgotten Harry, or tried to, but it’s like this room hasn’t.”
A phrase the Necroscope had used came back to Trask: “His last vestige on Earth?”
Chung shrugged. “Something like that.”
Trask nodded and said: “We’ll look into it later. First I have to know what’s been happening in Perchorsk.”
Waiting for Trask and Chung in the large operations room, one half of which was an auditorium, a small group of espers occupied seats in the lower tier facing the stage and podium. As the head of Branch entered, the low murmur of their voices reached out to him for a moment. Then the noise fell away, and showing their respect, they stood up. Trask waved them back into their seats, climbed steps up onto the stage with Chung following behind. To one side of the podium, a table and chairs faced the audience. The two men seated themselves and Trask went straight into it:
“Being who and what you are, you probably know as much as I do about what’s going on. Briefly: something has come through into Perchorsk from Starside. Now, we’re each and every one au fait with the problem at Perchorsk, so it’s no wonder our ‘colleagues’ over there seem to have a flap on. Anything that comes through the Gate has to be highly suspect. Except this is more so, because David here tells me it’s Harry Keogh …”
“ … Something of the Necroscope,” Chung cut into their gasps and whispers. “Something with powerful connections. We know Harry was—well, changing—but he would have to be changed completely to come back through the Gate. Grey holes don’t do return tickets. Once through, that’s it: there’s no way back. Except maybe through the other Gate, into an underground river which rises again into the Danube. But this thing has come through into Perchorsk. Also, Harry Keogh is dead; we all saw him die that time sixteen years ago! Or was he simply undead? No, for he was already that before he went through the Gate. So while my talent tells me it’s Harry, my reasoning tells me it can’t be. Which means it has to be something like him, something of him.”
Trask took it up again: “In a minute or two I’ll be talking to Turkur Tzonov, the Opposition’s top man. We know what his talent is: face to face, he reads minds—but very accurately! He’ll want to speak to me on-screen, so I can only tell him the truth. That squares things up, because Turkur knows my talent and that he can’t lie to me either! It’s why the handful of conversations we’ve had in the past h
ave always seemed tentative, lumbering, awkward things. And in all probability, this one, too. Right now: it looks like the Opposition will be asking for our help. Before that I want your ideas, want to know what we’ll be dealing with if we offer our assistance. Lately, we haven’t had too much on our plate. Nothing special, anyway. Well, with the exception of the Nightmare Zone. So maybe we’re all just a wee bit rusty where the really important stuff is concerned. This could be just the opportunity we need to get our various talents out of neutral.”
He looked at their faces looking back at him:
Millicent Cleary, who had taken the call from Moscow. Of all E-Branch’s agents, Trask probably related most to Millie; he sympathised with her. Telepathy was her talent, and it was also her curse. She’d stayed single, as had most of the espers; but in any case they were already married—to the Branch. The job was one reason she was still single, anyway, and the other was her mind reading.
For as Millie’s telepathy had matured along with her body, so all thoughts of young love, marriage, children had flown out the window. What, be a telepath and know your lover’s every thought? Even the bad thoughts, which we all have from time to time? And if kids should come along, perhaps pass the “talent” on to them? No way, for just exactly like Trask himself, Millie had learned that for every basically pure mind out there, there were also the tainted ones, and for far too many of those there were totally corrupt minds, and that at the very limits of the human spectrum there were others so filled with acid that they ate inwards into themselves and outwards into the world in general. She knew what was out there, for it was her job to look into such minds. Sometimes even the worst of them.
Although she was a woman of thirty-eight now, Trask still thought of her as his kid sister. There’d been a sort of girl-next-door freshness about her which galvanized his protective urges: a shyness and all-too-rare innocence which at the same time permitted her to flash her green eyes, wrinkle her pretty nose, toss her head of copper hair, and get really mad if the case warranted it. Occasionally it had, and she’d never failed to stand up for her principles. All of these qualities Millie had retained. And somehow, despite the job, she’d managed to hold on to something of her innocence, too.
“Millie,” Trask said, “did you pick up anything from your conversation with Tzonov?”
She shook her head. “He sounded cool, superior, almost disdainful. He wasn’t on-screen, just a voice on the line. If I had been able to see him, maybe—and maybe not. There was a lot of static. I mean, mental static.”
Trask said, “There would be.” He rubbed his chin and scanned the other faces:
Anna Marie English. At twenty-four she had looked fifty. And amazingly, now that she was forty she still looked fifty! It said a lot for Mother Earth. Ecologically aware, English’s “disease” had been held in abeyance by the planet’s partial recovery. She would be as good a place as any to start. Trask nodded his intention, a nod which she returned, however imperceptibly, before answering:
“Can we step through into ops? Maybe use the screens and charts?”
Trask and Chung came back down off the dais, followed the other espers into the ops section, where they switched on table screens and illuminated walls. As shutters whirred into position covering the windows, so the room lit up; suddenly it took on a sort of cold, technological life of its own. On one large wall screen the Earth was shown in flat, stereographic projection, with colours which were lifelike as seen from space.
Anna Marie English went to the screen, paused, and looked at the other espers, especially Trask. Her unlovely face was tinged blue in the glare of the projection, and her eyes were invisible behind the reflective sheen of her spectacles. The ecopath’s voice was a rasp as she asked of no one in particular, “Is our world under threat?” She shrugged and turned to the screen. “I can only offer my opinion.”
The next step was one which everyone present understood well enough: sympathetic perception. She reached up and placed a trembling right hand over a mountainous region of the Soviet Union, the Urals some four hundred miles north of Sverdlovsk. Closing her eyes, she held her breath and leaned her physical and metaphysical weight on that one sensitive extension of herself. Several long seconds ticked by, and as many quiet heartbeats, before she straightened up, withdrew her hand, and faced her colleagues again.
“Well?” Trask gave voice to all of their anxieties.
She took a deep breath and said, “Perchorsk reads to me just exactly the way it did the last time I scanned it: menacing! The place itself is … well, a dire threat, obviously. But I detected nothing of any additional hazard. I did sense something new, however. Something … warm? In my opinion: if something, someone, has come through to our side, he, she, or it is harmless to our world, maybe even benevolent.”
Trask sighed. Like everyone else, he’d been holding his breath. He looked around. Whom else could he use? David Chung was standing close to him, but he shook his head. “I can only tell you what I’ve already told you: it feels like the Necroscope to me. Like him, but that’s all.”
The precog Guy Teale had taken over as duty officer from Millicent Cleary. As the group of espers had entered the ops area, Teale had been summoned to duty by his pager, which was locked into Branch communications. Now he returned and said, “It’s the Opposition, Turkur Tzonov again. Still wanting to speak to you, sir.” He looked at Trask. “I patched him through to the screen in here. When you’re ready?”
“He can wait a minute more,” Trask growled. But he knew that if Tzonov was that impatient, this was at least as important as he suspected it to be. He looked at the others gathered round him. Ian Goodly seemed on the point of saying something. Knowing how reluctant “hunchmen” usually are to air their talents, Trask prompted him: “Ian?”
“I was waiting until Guy got back,” the gangling, cadaverous esper answered. “Being like-minded, so to speak—both of us being precogs, prognosticators—I’m interested to get a second opinion.”
“Your own opinion will do for starters,” Trask told him.
Goodly shuffled uncomfortably, then shrugged. “We’re going to be involved,” he finally said. Trask turned towards Teale.
“Likewise,” said the other. “Who or whatever it is that’s come through—” He frowned and paused. “No, whoever it is, he needs our help.”
“He?”
“That’s my guess,” Teale answered. “Educated, as always.”
“And that’s it?”
“Heavily involved,” Goodly nodded. “I see … interesting times ahead.” He held up a hand. “But don’t ask me to look any deeper than that, Ben. Not yet. It’s never safe, and right now it isn’t necessary.”
Again Trask’s sigh, this time of frustration. “Right,” he said. “No more guesswork, however informed. It’s time we knew for sure. I’m going to speak to Tzonov. I would prefer all of you off-screen, however, so if you don’t mind … ?”
As they moved out of range, Trask made himself comfortable in a black, padded swivel chair before a large flat screen on a central console. But as Teale made to switch on the televiewer:
“Wait!” Trask stopped him. “I want you to cover me, all of you. Let’s play the Opposition at their own game and have some mental static around here. Tzonov’s a damn fine, an extraordinary, mentalist. If I’m not covered he’ll be able to read things in my head that even I don’t know are there!”
And as they shielded him with the combined energy of their minds, Teale switched on.
The signal from Moscow unscrambled itself onto the opaque screen; a fuzzy high-tech background blinked into being, while in the foreground sharp features under a high-domed, totally bald head faced Trask and held him with penetrating eyes. Trask stared back as the picture gained stability and clear, almost better-than-life contrast. On-screen the Russian’s face was certainly larger than life: in order to make himself that much more impressive, he’d given his screen extra amplification. Which was scarcely necessary. The looks of
the man were … startling.
But Ben Trask was a hard man to intimidate. It’s not easy to impress a human lie detector, a man who will instantly recognize even the most remote distortion or elaboration. It was the reason Trask had always liked and been impressed by Harry Keogh, not so much by the Necroscope’s awesome powers but by his humility, and his truth.
“Truth, Mr. Trask?” Tzonov raised his right eyebrow. “But there you have the advantage. As long as your agents keep you covered, you can lie to your heart’s content and remain hidden in their static. As for myself, I have no such safeguard. Nor do I need one, not on this occasion. If I wanted to play games … well, I’m sure you know I have sufficient clever chessmen, without my own personal involvement. So there we have it: I am here to ask a favor of you, not to lie to you or spy on you.” Tzonov’s voice—well modulated and without accent, and to all intents and purposes lacking in emotion—nevertheless contained the merest suggestion of a sneer.
Trask smiled back, however tightly. “For someone who protests my advantage over his own ‘innocence,’ you picked that out of my mind easily enough, Tzonov. Naturally I’m concerned about the truth; I always have been and always will be; it happens to be my talent.” While he answered, he studied the other’s face.
Turkur Tzonov was part Turk, part Mongol, all man. Without question he was an “Alpha” male, a leader, an outstanding mind housed in an athlete’s body. His grey eyes were the sort that could look at and into a man, or through him if the mind behind them considered him of little or no importance. It was a measure of Trask’s stature that Tzonov’s eyes looked at him, and not without respect.
The Russian’s eyebrows were slim as lines penciled on paper; upwards slanting, they were silver-blond against the tanned, sharp-etched ridges of his brows. From the eyebrows up he was completely hairless, which was so in keeping with his other features as to make it appear that hair was never intended. Certainly his baldness wasn’t a sign of ill health or premature aging; the broad bronze dome of his head glowed with vitality to match the flesh of his face, where the only anomaly lay in the orbits of Tzonov’s eyes. Deep-sunken and dark, their hollows seemed bruised from long hours of study or implacable concentration. Trask knew it was a symptom of the man’s telepathy.
