The Last Aerie

by Brian Lumley

  “Thanks.” Trask smiled. “This is a big place. We got lost.”

  The other shrugged and blinked again. “Is no problem.”

  They went their own ways, but as soon as they were out of earshot Goodly whispered, “See what I mean? There don’t appear to be any guards in the place, and very little of suspicion in respect of our being here. Earlier, down at the core, the scientists were more opposed to Tzonov’s presence than to ours. I think they see him as the intruder! They don’t want the military or people of Tzonov’s dubious, cloak-and-dagger character down here at all! They’d like to study the visitor their way, as scientists. Not his way, whatever that will prove to be.” It was the way he said it that caused Trask to glance at him.

  “You said you were picked up at the core,” Trask said. “Did you see anything down there?”

  “Enough,” Goodly answered, but darkly.

  “Enough?”

  “Enough to make me suspect that our man isn’t going to have an easy time of it. I saw them bring him through. His food must have been drugged, too. When they opened the door his arm flopped out. He was unconscious. They dragged him through and put him in a cage.”

  “What? A cage?”

  “Like a big birdcage, yes.”

  The two turned down the indicated passage on the right, followed it for fifteen or so paces, then turned right again and found themselves outside another steel door. But this time it was guarded. A young soldier leaned against the wall with a rifle over his shoulder. When the espers came into view he stood up and adopted a sloppy position of attention, but as Trask approached the door he stepped in his way. “No go,” he said.

  “We were invited,” Trask told him, face to face. “We have to see Turkur Tzonov.”

  The soldier frowned, scratched his chin, and said, “No,” but without malice. Goodly had stepped to one side of the uniformed man and now made to pass around him. But as the soldier moved to intercept him, the door opened. Tzonov stepped into view, and the orbits of his eyes were that much deeper, darker. No need to inquire what he had been doing, or trying to do. He saw them at once, but his face showed little or no evidence of surprise.

  “Ah! Ben, Ian,” he said. “I was going to send for you, but it seems you’ve beaten me to it.”

  “I hope you have some answers, Turkur,” Trask told him coldly, as the Russian stepped aside and ushered them past him into the laboratory beyond the steel door. “And I hope they’re good ones. Because if they’re not …” His voice tailed off as he gazed all about, until his eyes found what he was looking for.

  In one corner of the large, well-lighted room, a tiled, sunken area like a small swimming pool had been cut from the living rock. Beyond it the walls of the man-made cave rose sheer out of the basin to a high, roughly hewn ceiling. The cage Goodly had mentioned stood central in the tiled depression itself, and there were steps leading down to it. Set in the walls of the sunken area, nozzles pointed inwards towards the cage. As soon as Trask had absorbed this last detail, he recognized its function. This was not and had never been intended as a swimming pool. This was an acid bath.

  There were two scientists in the room, both of them young, inexperienced, definitely cowed—by Tzonov’s presence, Trask correctly assumed. They sat on chairs at the rim of the sunken area with clipboards, notepaper, and pens. As yet they didn’t seem to be doing too much writing, which Trask understood readily enough. Tzonov himself had pinpointed the difficulty here: these people were scientists and he was a metaphysician. They didn’t even believe what he had been trying to do. They were a token force of the small scientific community here, representatives of their fraternity against the parapsychological or “supernatural” nature of Tzonov’s.

  Crossing the floor to the sunken area, Trask told Tzonov, “What you did to us constitutes a serious assault. You’ve introduced harmful foreign agencies, drugs, into our bodies. Your lot have always been good at that sort of thing, ever since the Bulgarians showed you how. It was a mistake, however, for we’ll bring charges.”

  The Russian tut-tutted. “Come, now! Harmful? On the contrary: they were totally harmless! Do you feel any ill effects? Of course not. Moreover, by now your bodies are already voiding the drug, and so you could never prove it. Here and now, face to face, I accept what you say, of course. For there’s no way I can lie to you. But how would that stand up in an international court of law? Ordinary people don’t believe in our talents, Ben! So your threat is meaningless. And in any case, it was done for your own safety.”

  The three paused at the rim of the sunken area, where the two Englishmen looked their host scornfully in the face, especially Trask. The sharp edge of his talent was never keener. He looked, saw, knew that Tzonov had told a half-truth. Something of it had been for his and Goodly’s safety, but mainly it had been to keep them out of the way. Tzonov wasn’t lying, but he wasn’t telling the whole truth either.

  “We don’t have to prove it to take action on it,” Goodly spoke up, his face and voice animated for once. “If courts of law are out, there are always other ways. You aren’t the only one with a powerful organization behind you. There are things which we, too, can do that could never be handled by a court of law. If you doubt me, better go and do a little homework on British E-Branch.”

  There had been a half-smile on Tzonov’s face. Now it fell away. “I’ll do what I have to do,” he said, “to protect myself and my country from any threat. Whether it comes from an alien world or an alien ideology. And I won’t let anyone stand in my way. But on this occasion, I had you two put out of the way in order to protect you. This thing”—he jerked his head to indicate the cage—“is the unknown! In the past, other things which seemed harmless have come through into Perchorsk, and brought death and madness with them. Not only a threat to my country but to yours, too. Indeed, a threat to the entire world.”

  “We’re not complaining about your patriotism, Turkur,” Trask told him. “Only about your zeal.” He started down the steps into the sunken area. “And what would Premier Turchin say, I wonder, if he knew you were up to stuff like that? As for what you said about alien ideologies: tsk tsk! Is democracy so alien to you, then? And would Turchin fall into line with your thoughts on that, too, I wonder?”

  Goodly and Tzonov followed him down, the latter cautioning: “Be careful! I know you believe he’s just a man—Harry Keogh’s son, but without his father’s powers—and it seems I have to agree with you. But we still can’t be sure. If he’s Wamphyri … it could well be the very last thing you discover about him!” There was malice in his voice, almost a wish, perhaps a death wish: for Trask and Goodly. In mentioning Premier Turchin, advocate general of Russia’s New Democracy, Trask had obviously touched a raw nerve.

  A chair stood opposite the cage, with its backrest facing the steel bars. Tzonov’s chair, but Trask sat down and crossed his arms on the backrest, and rested his chin on his arms. And sighing, he peered at the man from the other side of the Gate. Trask was no telepath; there was no way he could know for sure what the other was thinking, but he guessed anyway. Something of it, at least. It was written in the visitor’s slumped posture: the way he sat cross-legged dead centre of the cage, arms by his sides, hands curled beside his feet, head down in utter dejection.

  Tzonov came and stood on Trask’s right, looking sideways and down on him. Trask avoided his glance, but in any case his hypnotic guard was up and Tzonov couldn’t read him. As long as Trask was careful, he could think what he liked and know that his thoughts were inviolate. Until Siggi Dam came back on the scene, anyway. Then … she and Tzonov might conceivably work something out between them. As for right now: Trask could hazard a guess at the reason for her absence. Tzonov didn’t want her mind-smog interfering with what he’d been doing here.

  “So,” Trask said, “you’ve had him … how long? An hour and a half? And after you woke him up, what then? Did you sit here looking at him, trying to get inside his head, talking to him? In how many languages, and with what res
ult? What, nothing? And is that why you decided to send for us?”

  Tzonov said, “We’ve x-rayed him, and taken blood, urine, tissue, and other samples. A comprehensive range of tests. So far he’s come through all of them. He looks normal, human. But I repeat, this is not conclusive proof. He came from the world beyond the Gate and could be anything but human. Now, the fact is you know far more about that other world than we do. Your beloved Harry told you all about it; well, a great deal about it. That is one of the reasons you are here: because you might see and recognize something in him that we would miss.

  “As for my telepathy: useless, on this one. Eye to eye, I meet a whirl, a swirl, a vortex which spins so rapidly that it shines! His mind is impenetrable. I had thought it might be an effect of his being on the other side of the event horizon, but I was wrong. Now that he’s on our side, it’s just the same. It seems he’s one of those rare individuals who can’t be read.”

  “Not so rare among Sunside’s Travellers,” Trask answered. “Many of them are skilled in physical and mental camouflage. Hunted by vampires, it’s been a matter of survival, evolution, for them. In our world the Eskimos have an extra layer of fat, to combat the cold. So the Travellers are resistant to telepathic probes, to combat the Wamphyri.” He didn’t mention that Harry was the same in the end, after he’d become a vampire.

  In any case, what he had said was news to Tzonov. “Ah!” the Russian sighed—before his tone hardened. “But couldn’t you have mentioned this before? It’s hardly a classic example of cooperation!”

  “True,” Trask answered, “but then, over the course of the last few hours the pebbles in our ‘wall of trust’ have suffered no small amount of subsidence. Indeed, you could even say that the wall is teetering!”

  Tzonov ignored the jibe, began to pace to and fro behind Trask where he continued to stare at the visitor in his cage. “So,” the Russian mused, “this ability of his—this talent?—to deflect my telepathy, is a natural thing. In which case, he will have to learn our language.”

  And Goodly added, “Or we can learn his. That shouldn’t be too hard: Romanian with a smattering of Slavonic, Germanic, and true Romany. A good linguist, preferably an empath, could pick it up in a week. We have just such a man in London.”

  “Oh?” Tzonov paused in his pacing and met Goodly face to face. “And are we gullible as well as incompetent? Perhaps we should simply give our visitor to you, to take back to London with you! And perhaps with your help he could also develop his father’s powers, eh? No, Mr. Goodly, I think I can choose just such an empath from the members of my own branch.”

  Goodly smiled wryly. “So much for first-name terms,” he said.

  It was exactly the sort of diversion Trask had been looking for. He wasn’t a telepath, but someone had spoken to him in his dreams. Now, concentrating his mind, he thought at the visitor: Who are you? What’s your name? Do you know that you’re in danger, that the people in this place—especially this man—will either find a way to use you, or keep you imprisoned, or even kill you?

  He wasn’t hoping for any kind of answer, but:

  The man in the cage didn’t move his body an inch, but his head lifted a fraction and his deep blue eyes looked straight into Trask’s. And:

  Don’t! the answer came back, causing Trask to start in his chair. I understand all of this, but say nothing, do nothing! Tzonov’s talent is huge!

  “What?” The Russian esper spun on his heel, away from Goodly, grasped Trask’s shoulder, and stared at the visitor, whose head was back on his chest. And again he hissed: “What was that?” In his effort of concentration, his forehead had creased into a hundred wrinkles.

  “Eh?” Trask looked up at him, his hypnotic shield firmly back in place. “What was what?”

  Tzonov released his shoulder, took two paces to the bars, and grasped them. “You!” he spat at the visitor. “Did you speak?” He shook the bars until the man in the cage looked up. “On your feet!” Tzonov shouted. “Speak to me!”

  The visitor sat there, looked sad, puzzled.

  Trask stood up and went to Tzonov. “If he can’t understand you, where’s the sense in shouting at him?”

  Tzonov looked at him, frustration etched in every line of his face. “You didn’t hear him speak?”

  Trask shook his head. “Not a word.”

  “In your mind?”

  Trask took a pace to the rear and frowned, he hoped convincingly. “Are you mad? You’re the telepath, Turkur, not me!”

  The Russian breathed deeply, regained control of himself. “Then why do I feel that you’re getting more out of this than I am? Perhaps it was a mistake to bring you here. I think I’ll have to talk to a higher authority.”

  “As you wish.” Trask shrugged. “But before that, why don’t you let me try to get through to him? I mean here and now—in front of you—all aboveboard and out in the open, as they say?” The last thing he wanted right now was to be ordered out of the laboratory, even out of Perchorsk, leaving the visitor to Tzonov’s tender mercies and methods.

  Tzonov considered it, calmed down more yet, finally said: “It can do no harm. He is after all my prisoner, and whatever he tells you he tells me.”

  Trask sighed, “My, how the wall crumbles!” and turned back to the visitor. Except this time he didn’t dare play with telepathy; he must simply hope that the man in the cage was tuned in to all of this. “Can you hear me?” he inquired in the warmest, calmest voice he could muster. “Listen, we’re your friends. We only want to find out about you. But how can we if you won’t respond?”

  Nothing. The visitor sat there as before.

  “Perhaps I was mistaken,” Tzonov quietly commented, after a moment’s silence. “But when you were sitting there looking … at … him … !”

  Stiffening his back and neck, the visitor had straightened up a little. He was looking at Trask, and there was something of interest in his eyes and expression in general. “People are like animals,” Trask said in that same reassuring tone, without taking his eyes from the other’s face. “They know when they’re up against a friend, an enemy, someone kind or someone … not so kind. Sunside’s Travellers are probably highly sensitive in this respect. It’s in the expression, the voice and eyes. Your eyes can be especially frightening, Turkur. They look under a man’s skin, into his mind, his soul.”

  He smiled and signaled that the caged man should stand up, and the other slowly got to his feet. “There now,” Trask said, “and maybe we can take it a step further, play Jane and Tarzan with him.” Placing his right palm flat on his chest, he said, “Trask. Ben Trask.” Then, pointing at the other, he let his expression frame a question mark. And:

  “Nathan,” said the other, hand on chest. “Nathan Kiklu.”

  “More than I got out of him in an hour!” Tzonov rasped.

  “Then be quiet,” Trask told him, but in the same reasoned tone of voice, “and give me a chance to do a little better.”

  He stuck a hand through the bars, and heard the Russian’s sharp hiss of apprehension and warning. The visitor also heard it, and his eyes narrowed as his expression became suspicious. Trask turned his hand palm up, thrust it hard between the bars, offered it more forcefully. And the other relaxed, reached out and grasped Trask’s wrist as Trask in turn grasped the visitor’s. It was the Szgany handshake, as Trask remembered it from Harry Keogh’s description of Sunside’s nomads.

  The contact did a lot for both men. It told Nathan Kiklu that Trask was his friend, also that he might indeed have been his father’s. Where else could he have learned this greeting, if not from a Traveller or someone who knew the customs of Sunside? And to Trask it confirmed what he would quite happily—what he might already—have bet his life on: that the visitor was human. Entirely human. It was in the warmth of his touch, the conviction of his friendship, the irrefutable evidence of Trask’s talent: that this was the real thing.

  Finally they released each other, stepped back a little. And Trask softly said, “Natha
n, can you understand me? Do you understand anything of what I’m saying?” It was nothing short of a subterfuge, a red herring, a ploy to gain a little time. Trask already knew that the other understood a great deal, not only of his situation but also of the political intrigue going on around him. Or if not that, at least he recognized the principal players and had determined which side to come down on.

  The other played up to it: he shrugged, tapped himself on the chest again, and said, “Nathan?” His face was a picture of innocence.

  Trask pointed into the palm of his left hand, and said, “Hand.”

  Nathan nodded. “Hanta!”

  “German!” Goodly said. “Or as good as.”

  Trask crouched down a little and touched his own foot. “Fusse?”

  Nathan looked blank. “Bindera?”

  Goodly said, “In German, legs are die Beine.”

  Trask reached inside his pocket, brought out something like the kernel of a large nut. He held it out to the man in the cage, but Tzonov stepped forward to grab his arm. “What’s this?”

  “The best proof of his humanity that you’re ever likely to see,” Trask told him. “It’s a clove of garlic!”

  Nathan was interested. He reached through the bars and took the clove, held it to his nose and sniffed as if it were some exotic flower. And indeed it might seem to hold some rare fragrance for him, such was his expression. Then … it was as if memories of old times had misted up his eyes as the previous soulful look returned.

  Goodly said, “Garlic: Knoblauch.”

  And Nathan said, “Kneblasch.”

  Trask turned to Tzonov. “So much for your concern about his humanity, Turkur. This one’s no vampire. I’m wearing a silver ring, but he clasped forearms with me. And he treats garlic as if it were his national flower or emblem. That’s a measure of his respect, which I for one understand readily enough.”

  “Maybe you understand more than you’re saying,” the other answered darkly. “But … I’m grateful to you. You have made a start, at least. One which I can, what—capitalize?—upon. And now I must ask you to leave.”