To End All Wars

by David Tallerman

  Forbes didn’t answer immediately—and suddenly Forrester was certain that he was losing him.

  “I won’t ask if this would be dangerous,” Forbes said finally. “From what you’ve described, I know the Guest wouldn’t harm me, even inadvertently. Yet I can’t help thinking, lieutenant, that you have an agenda.”

  So that was it. How stupid to delude himself that he could out-bluff a man like Forbes, whose livelihood was one of lies and subterfuge. He had bungled his opportunity, and now that Forbes was tipped off, there would never be another.

  Except, if he was truly done for, what did he have left to lose? “Damn it,” Forrester exclaimed, “of course I have an agenda! I’ve played nicely with you these last few days; I’ve done my best with these experiments of yours. I won’t deny that I’ve even been interested by them, to a degree. But do you really suppose that I wouldn’t do anything to be out of here? I told you, I’d rather be shot at by Germans, be shelled and gassed and slop about in bloody thigh-deep mud, than be kept prisoner for another day!”

  He was trembling, actually shaking with anger. It shouldn’t have been possible, and as he noticed his fit of passion, it passed, superseded by that familiar, blanketing calm. He hardly dared look at Forbes.

  When he did, however, he found that Forbes was smiling. Nor was there any hostility in that smile. On the contrary, he appeared quite paternal. “There,” he said, “I do prefer you to be honest with me. All right, let’s give this a go.”

  Forrester almost had to bite his tongue to keep his relief from showing. “In that case, Forbes, I’ll warn you again, you mustn’t try to take the upper hand. The Guest has been doing this for centuries, and you’re not even a novice. You’ll only be in any jeopardy if you throw your weight around. Expose your mind without resistance. The Guest must be the one to make contact and the Guest must be the one to pull away. Can you manage that?”

  “I believe I can,” Forbes agreed.

  “Good. Then let’s get started. You know what to do, you taught me, after all. Relax and let the music lull you. Be aware of your mind and of your body. Take a memory, a distinct memory, and hold it. Think of it as an offering.”

  As Forrester spoke, he did the same, though he needed no offering of memory and had long since learned to shut out the music. Now that the Guest had recovered from its transient distress, making contact was like opening a door in his consciousness, a door with a visitor waiting impatiently on its far side.

  “Do you have a memory?” he asked Forbes. “Are you visualising it clearly?”

  “I am.” Forbes sounded distant, and faintly slurred.

  “Then let that memory fill your mind. Give yourself up to it, and be prepared to share it.”

  Forrester wondered what recollection Forbes might have chosen, what he would deem worthy. Perhaps his wedding to Abhaya, or the day of his accident in India, when a frightened animal had put paid forever to the career he’d so treasured?

  “I’m ready,” Forbes whispered.

  He was, Forrester decided, as ready as he would ever be. To the Guest he thought, This is the only way , and tried to put that conviction into images: he and Abhaya free, and it once more among the stars. He could feel its fear, wrapping his own emotions like a fog. It understood enough of Forbes to distrust him, and its kind relied so utterly on trust.

  This is the only way , Forrester insisted.

  Forbes made a small sobbing noise. Flecks of spittle dribbled from his lip. His eyes were open where they hadn’t been an instant ago, but he was staring at nothing, or else at a point so remote that it couldn’t possibly be within the room.

  Forrester spoke softly and for his own benefit rather than Forbes’s, though he doubted Forbes could have heard in any case. “It won’t hurt you. It can’t hurt you. It’s just trying to make you appreciate exactly what it’s been through ... what you put it through. But I imagine that’s a lot to take in, isn’t it? ”

  Forrester got up quietly, walked to Forbes, and, breath held, dipped a hand into the right pocket of his jacket. He felt what he was after straight away: the cold brush of metal. He drew his hand back as steadily as he could, each slight jangle making his heart pound against his ribs.

  Once Forbes moved his head, and Forrester almost let go. But Forbes’s eyes were following the passage of some object that he alone could see. At last, Forrester’s hand slid free, and he scarcely glanced at his prize—a bunch of keys nearly as large as his fist—before dropping it into his own pocket.

  Forrester walked swiftly to the door and opened it. And there was Campion. He was leaning against the opposite wall, chewing the nails of one hand. Campion looked up at the sound of the door, at first merely surprised but then catching sight of Forbes, his muscles rigid, his arms gripping the chair, his scrutiny fixed on an impossible horizon.

  Forrester, whose plan had been to claim Forbes had been taken ill and send the sergeant off to bring help, saw too late how transparent that lie would be. When Campion moved to block his path, Forrester said softly, “You can’t stop me. And Sergeant Campion, I dislike threats, but that ,” and he pointed toward where Forbes sat, “could as easily be you.”

  Campion’s whole body clenched. If his old temperament should reassert itself, Forrester suspected that he might have the sheer, belligerent strength of will to overcome the Guest’s influence.

  Instead, all the tension went out of him, and all of his vigour also. “Sod it,” Campion declared wearily. “It’s been an ugly business, this. Not what I signed up for.”

  He made a guarded sidestep, as though anxious that Forbes might somehow be watching. “You won’t get off the grounds. Maybe I can’t stop you, but someone else will.” His voice lowered. “I won’t sound the alarm until I’ve seen to Forbes. That gives you a couple of minutes. Best make the most of them.”

  Forrester couldn’t bring himself to thank him. This was a man who had beaten a woman because he was ordered to, and if his conscience had troubled him afterwards, that was absolutely as it should be, but it didn’t excuse the inexcusable. Settling for a nod of acknowledgement, Forrester hastened away before Campion could change his mind.

  He had his path memorised by now. To try a different route would perhaps have been safer, but he daren’t risk becoming lost. He managed a fast walk, relying heavily on his stick. In the corridor beyond the stairs, he slowed. With the pretence of being a hospital abandoned, the house seemed all but empty. However, he might yet run into someone, and if they should fail to recognise him, he had a chance at least of bluffing his way past.

  There was no evidence of an alarm, though Campion’s two minutes must be up. Forrester wasn’t even certain what to expect. Would they have rigged a siren? Could there be telephone lines to the men on the gates? Whatever the case, he was almost out of Sherston and still had heard nothing.

  This time, he had no difficulty retracing his steps to the side door he’d fled through on the night of his first escape. There must have been twenty keys on the ring he’d recovered from Forbes, seven of them large and elaborate and the rest smaller. Abhaya had told him of their existence some days earlier, but she hadn’t been able to say which would fit this particular lock. Fortunately, the keyhole was sizable enough to eliminate most candidates. He got the right one on the third attempt and pushed the door open.

  Doing so revealed the garage, and the young soldier who had been standing sentry and was presently in the process of turning at the door’s creak. He had a rifle slung over his shoulder, though he couldn’t have hoped to use the weapon this close to the house.

  “Quickly!” Forrester shouted. “You’re needed downstairs. Major Forbes has been taken ill.”

  The soldier eyed Forrester with frank mistrust. “Aren’t you—?”

  “Yes! I’m Lieutenant Forrester. Yes, I’m the prisoner you’re meant to be watching out for. But right now, I need your help. It’s something to do with that creature in the mines. I think it’s hurting him.”

  At that, the so
ldier’s face blanched. He’d encountered the Guest or had heard about it, but either way, he feared it.

  “Please,” Forrester insisted, and no effort was required to let a note of desperation enter his tone. “I need to make him comfortable. His breathing doesn’t sound at all good.”

  None of the suspicion was gone from the young soldier’s eyes. Nevertheless, he darted over and stepped through the door. “All right,” he said. “Only, keep your hands where I can—“

  But in a flash, Forrester had slipped past him and slammed the door shut. He devoted the entirety of his weight to keeping it that way while he jabbed the key into the lock and twisted. Immediately, the soldier set to hammering upon the far side, which Forrester was happy to ignore. Better that the man waste time in futile pounding than go hunting a window to climb out by, as he should have been.

  Forrester hurried to the nearer of the two lorries. He held the radiator crank as he’d been taught, hand cupped, all five fingers together—he’d once seen a private’s thumb broken when an engine backfired in starting—and put what strength he had left into the endeavour. The machine made a ghastly noise that subsided to a steady, disconsolate rumble. Forrester climbed up to the driver’s seat, listened long enough to confirm that the soldier was still absorbed with his useless hammering, and then released the brake.

  Forrester had driven on maybe half a dozen occasions and had never taken to the experience. Having no time to reacquaint himself with the practice, he determined to rely on memory and intuition. Neither served him well. The corner joining the garage to the front of the house was unexpectedly severe, and despite his hesitant pace, he barely got round it.

  By the turning onto the driveway proper, he’d brought the vehicle under tenuous control. Yet he was also picking up speed, as the gravelled road declined. Its slope was shallow at first, but soon began to drop off dramatically, until by the time the gates became visible, the way felt perilously steep. Forrester had no idea what a safe velocity was, but if he hadn’t surpassed it, then surely he soon must. Already the lumbering automobile seemed ready to shake apart at any moment.

  Forrester strived to concentrate on the gates, and to keep the protesting lorry in line with them. They were of wrought iron and looked indomitably sturdy. The chain that held them shut, however, as he’d noticed on the night of his escape, was more flimsy. The padlock was frailer still. A quote from a lecture on infantry tactics he’d sat through floated unbidden into his mind: Any defence is only as strong as its weakest link.

  Was that aphorism true? Probably he was staking his life on it.

  Among other topics, Forrester had spent the last week considering the limitations of the Guest’s influence. What exactly did it prohibit? Not violence, that was too abstract a notion. Anger certainly, and similarly dangerous extremes of emotion. But mostly, he’d realised, it was aggression: the desire to cause hurt.

  He had no desire to hurt the gates. He wanted solely to be free. He was no longer even steering, since in this final stretch the drive ran perfectly straight. He possessed no anger, intended no harm. The lorry was in motion, and he was in the lorry. The vehicle was about to smash itself upon those stubborn iron bars, and nothing he did would prevent that.

  Only at the last did his instinct for self-preservation rear up in a burst of lucidity and perfect horror. He didn’t try to steer, for his hands were off the wheel, and anyway, all he’d have accomplished would be to concertina the cab against the unyielding stone of a gate post. Instead, he braced, jamming his knees upward and one arm into the door frame.

  Perhaps that saved him. It didn’t mitigate the pain.

  Forrester felt as if he’d been wrenched in multiple opposing directions. His head swam sickeningly. Nearby, someone was shouting, but he couldn’t comprehend the words. Neither could he make sense of what he was seeing. Everything was moving, apparently every way at once.

  Then he understood that everything was moving. The shouting was what gave the fact away: the uproar was receding.

  He’d hoped the lorry would smash through the gates, without quite believing. Yet it had, and though the impact had stalled the engine, his momentum wasn’t altogether lost. If he hadn’t been travelling downhill, they’d have had him. As it was, not only was the vehicle rolling, it was beginning again to gather speed. He was alive, he was seemingly in one piece, and he was leaving Sherston House behind.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  T he lorry was still picking up speed.

  Too much so, in fact, and in the wrong direction. With a shock, Forrester saw that at any second he’d be into the ditch. He dragged the wheel, and the entire vehicle lurched.

  He could scarcely make out the road. Nothing looked right. The problem was his left eye; the lids were clotted half shut. For one appalling moment, he thought he’d gashed the orb itself, but he found that he could feel the cut, as though his awareness had roused the sensation. The laceration ran diagonally across his brow.

  No use in worrying about that now. Staying on the road was his one priority. The surface was worse than the gravelled drive had been, obviously never meant for a motor vehicle. Forrester felt as if his bones would be shaken from his body. Sure that he’d put a considerable distance between himself and the gates, he began to brake, and as soon as the road levelled fractionally, brought the lorry to a complete halt.

  He slid from the cab and almost fell into the dirt, as a wave of nausea and pain dashed over him. Flinging out a hand, Forrester caught the bonnet and managed to keep to his feet. He clung until the worst dizziness had passed. Then he reached to make a gingerly inspection of his forehead. The cut seemed shallow but bloody. With a sleeve, he cleaned the gore from his eye.

  When he could see again, Forrester stared back up the road. The gates were out of view, and no one, as yet, was pursuing on foot. Turning to examine the vehicle’s bumper and grille, he was startled by the damage he’d inflicted. The whole front was ripped open, the sort of devastation a shell blast might achieve. He was amazed the mechanism had held together at all, let alone kept functioning.

  A noise drew his attention: a familiar hoarse grumbling. That was precisely the sound the lorry’s engine had made before he’d stalled it. This echo, distant but approaching, could only be the second vehicle from the garage. He berated himself for not attempting some act of sabotage, though his knowledge was hardly up to the task. He rebuked himself for being foolish enough to stop.

  Forrester caught hold of the crank and gave it an experimental jerk, forgetting all technique in his haste. His lack of finesse made no difference: the crank barely rotated halfway, jammed with a decisive clack , and after that would go no farther. Probably the handle itself was bent.

  Once more, Forrester cursed himself for an idiot. Already the second engine was noticeably louder. There wasn’t time to think. He clambered back into the cab and released the brake. He was dreadfully certain the lorry wouldn’t even roll, but then he felt slight motion, which was soon heightened as the road dipped.

  The solution was temporary at best. If they didn’t catch him in the meantime, he’d be sunk at the first rise. Forrester wrestled frantically with the pedals and gearstick, and when that achieved no result, tried again with forced calm. The engine sputtered, complained. For a heart-stopping instant, the patter threatened to growl away to nothing. Then it roused, and this time held a discordant note. When he sped up, so did that grinding rhythm.

  The timing was propitious. Scant seconds had passed before the way levelled out and began climbing toward a low rise. For all the commotion around him—the battered engine’s protests, the scrabble of the wheels upon the atrocious road, the rush of the wind that clawed at the cab—he could hear the other vehicle. It must be close; the driver knew his business better than Forrester did. He was going as fast as he had the nerve to, and keeping to the road demanded all of his strength and absorption. In any case, he daren’t speed up for fear that he’d miss his turning.

  Even then, he almost failed
to see the junction. It didn’t help that he hadn’t a clue what to look for, having only felt the motion and the change of surface as a passenger travelling in the opposite direction. Worse, the side road came upon him abruptly, hidden until the last moment by a copse of trees. Forrester jarred the wheel in a panic, and the whole cabin skewed distinctly as two wheels lifted from the earth. Tearing at the wheel again, he heard the crunch of metal on metal from beneath him, and the lorry righted with a jolt.

  Though his arms were like putty and his head was ringing, Forrester fought to maintain his grip. This section of road was even worse than what had preceded it and ran in sweeping curves. The least lapse of concentration would carry him onto the heather-draped verge, and beyond that the hillside declined severely.

  He imagined, briefly and naively, that he might have escaped the second lorry. But its rumble was still there, just fainter. The other driver, knowing the road, had merely slowed to take the turn more carefully. And Forrester, too, had lost speed, which he had no hope of regaining.

  His one slender reassurance was the thought that there wasn’t much the other driver could do to interfere with him. The track was wide enough for one vehicle; his pursuer couldn’t possibly pull alongside. If they had a passenger, they might conceivably fire at him, but the rear of the lorry made for a more than adequate shield. Indeed, Forrester was so convinced that he slackened his speed to a pace that felt practically safe. He had his own reasons for urgency, but they all required that he arrive alive and in one piece.

  As he’d predicted, the other driver could do nothing; nothing, at any rate, except hang to Forrester’s tail. He could hear their engine clearly, similar to but separate from the choking of the injured machinery before him, like the clamour of an avalanche distorted by its reverberation between peaks.