Forrester did his best to fixate on his driving. He felt the wound in his head as a slow pulse verging into pain at its extremes, and his leg was cramping badly. None of the training he’d put himself through had prepared him for the challenge of journeying at breakneck speed upon an unsurfaced road.
He wiped fresh blood from his brow and braved a glance to his right. He could just make out one corner of Sherston; that dismissed any doubt that he might have taken a wrong turn. And sure enough, as he rattled over a hillock, he could discern the route of the road ahead. Its grey line continued straight for a while, drawing farther from the house, and then drifted in a lazy bend, the course of which was hidden by the contours of the land.
Soon he was descending again. When he looked toward the house, the expanse of the moors had snatched the place from sight. A minute went by, and he saw that the track had begun its long swing to the right. Here the surface was worse still, and he had no choice but to slow even further. Doing so brought back sharply the worry of the other lorry behind. Yet when a few seconds had gone by and the driver seemed content to follow in his wake, Forrester felt confident that they were no readier to take unnecessary risks than he was.
Likely they had orders to take him alive. He’d gambled in letting Forbes know that anyone could commune with the Guest, but surely he hadn’t altogether outlived his usefulness. However, that mightn’t be the only reason they’d left him alone. As far as he was aware, this ancient, crumbling highway led to a single location, and why should they jeopardise themselves needlessly when they’d have him cornered once he gained his destination?
He was half right. The entire truth was revealed not five minutes later. The road, having reached its farthest extreme, had run straight for a stretch and then curved to reascend the hillside. There it levelled, and in the distance, Forrester could see the shallow cliffs, the disintegrating buildings, the ancient highway petering out at the black maw of the mine entrance—and a dozen diminutive figures.
They were spaced across the road between him and the opening. Some were kneeling, most were standing, and all of them were armed. Principally they bore rifles, but to his astonishment, Forrester also identified a Vickers machine gun perched on its tripod. Just what were they anticipating? But then he spotted Forbes and understood. This was a show of strength.
It was a potentially hazardous one, too. Freed of the Guest’s influence, Forrester might simply have kept going. He doubted even the Vickers could damage the lorry sufficiently to stop him in time. Of course, Forbes knew Forrester enough by now to recognise that the Guest’s proximity wasn’t all that deterred him from violence. Nevertheless, there was a moment when he sorely wanted to press on: to watch them scatter, or perhaps to feel the machine gun’s raking fire shred the lorry and his own flesh. He was stunned to find himself still capable of so much senseless anger .
Instead, Forrester brought the lorry to a steady halt, well in advance of the line of men.
Not one of them took their gun off him. What had they been led to expect? But probably they’d been told nothing. He’d always been amazed by the army’s blindness to the fact that ignorance only made soldiers more afraid, and dangerous in all the wrong ways. Certainly these men were frightened, he could see that in their eyes. And little would be required on his part to spark their fear into aggression.
As the engine spluttered out its last life, Forrester raised his hands above his head and climbed down to the verge. As he did so, he noticed that the second driver had parked his own vehicle diagonally across the road behind, cutting off any retreat.
“Hello, Forbes,” Forrester said.
“Lieutenant Forrester,” Forbes acknowledged. There was something new in his expression, all the more shocking for being upon the face of a man who usually controlled himself so prodigiously. Yet there could have been no disguising such naked hatred, and Forbes was not attempting to.
How had Forrester provoked his odium? He wasn’t persuaded that it was by escaping. Hadn’t there been the tacit understanding between them that one was jailer, the other unwilling prisoner? Forbes’s encounter with the Guest, it could only be that. How humiliating to be so totally humbled, so defenceless, and then to discover that the experience had been a ruse and a distraction. Yes, there was the true motive: Forrester had wounded his ego, and that sin was unpardonable.
The mine entrance was some way off, fenced in by men and guns. All Forrester could think to do was play for time. He was furiously wracking his brains for anything he could say that might divert Forbes and perhaps defuse the simmering tension, when Forbes motioned to one of the soldiers, and, clearly reacting to a predetermined signal, the man took a step forward and dashed the butt of his rifle into Forrester’s stomach.
The pain was as vast as it was unexpected. Sliding to his knees, Forrester wrapped his arms tight around himself, as though the conflagration in his guts was a real fire in need of containment.
Yet even that interval of raging anguish was an opportunity. He tried to attain some clarity, some edge of focus, tried to reach out...
And failed. The pain was too overwhelming, or the range was too great, or else something had gone wrong, terribly wrong. He saw no end of possibilities, but no answers. All he knew was that, when he probed, he found nothing.
Forrester let out the gasp he’d been holding in. He was almost disappointed when what issued from his lips was a wheeze like air departing a balloon. Unsteadily, he got back to his feet. The soldier who’d hit him was staying close, watching Forbes, presumably anticipating a repeat of the command. The man’s impassive countenance gave no indication of how he felt about his duty, if indeed he had any opinion at all.
“A warning,” Forbes said. There was a grating quality to his voice, as if some broken part had twisted and snagged inside him. “To advise you of what to expect if you don’t mind your tongue.”
They won’t kill me , Forrester thought. They can’t damage me overly much. They need me in one piece. But it was empty comfort. He’d learned at the front the extraordinary amount of violence a human body could endure and continue to function.
Regardless of what was sensible, he knew he mustn’t back down now. “There’s no need to threaten me,” he said. “Didn’t I give you what you wanted?”
“What I wanted?” Forbes shuddered. “That thing ...” For a moment, his eyes clouded, and he was staring anew at some vision only he could see .
“You compared it with a horse, with a cow,” Forrester reminded him. “Do you stand by that, Forbes? The consciousness that touched yours, is that how you imagine a horse thinks?”
“Fine,” Forbes spat. “So it’s intelligent. Do you really suppose that makes it our equal? Does that justify you in betraying your own country, your own species , to protect it?”
“Yes,” Forrester said, “I believe so.”
“Then you’re a fool, a fool and a traitor. But henceforward you’ll do exactly what I tell you, and you’ll do so in shackles. Unless you have any more tricks up your sleeve? Maybe you were lying when you claimed you can’t influence the Guest to use its power?”
“No, I wasn’t lying. I can’t do it, and even if I could, I’m too far away. Your plan would never have worked; the link grows weaker the farther we are apart. The idea that I could have ordered that poor creature off on missions for you is quite absurd.”
“I’ll find a way,” Forbes said, and there was no doubt in his tone. “Don’t confuse your own lack of ingenuity with impossibility.”
“Oh I don’t. And anyway, the solution was under your nose all the while. You were just too blind and egotistical to see it.”
Forbes considered him with renewed hatred. “I don’t know what you mean. But I’ll find out. Everything you know I’ll find out. And I assure you, that process won’t be pleasant.”
Then Forbes motioned to the soldier, and the man hit Forrester again, once more in the stomach. The pain coursed through him in a shuddering spasm, and he cramped around it, barely keeping to his fee
t. A third blow, this time to his jaw, took even that from him. Forrester keeled sideways with a sob, to land joltingly. He needed an instant, only an instant—but if they kept beating him, he was done for.
No fourth blow came. The pain remained appalling, his stomach was a sack of splintered glass and his jaw felt spongy and raw. But his mind was not his body, and this pain belonged solely to the latter.
Forrester retreated into the depths behind his eyes. He could hear Forbes talking, perhaps to him. He shut that out as well, since nothing Forbes could say had meaning anymore. Forrester merely had to concentrate. That was all that mattered.
He couldn’t feel the Guest, except by its absence, a blankness where he’d become used to presence. But he could feel something—someone —else. There was a dim shadow at least, like a much-faded memory.
Abhaya?
Yes. He was certain. He could sense her there, at the absolute edge of his perception.
Now , he thought, do it now.
Rough hands caught his left arm, hauling him half to his feet, and then somebody clutched his other arm, so that the two were dragging him between them. Forrester’s heels scuffed helplessly in the dirt.
Still he refused to open his eyes. Still he pleaded within his mind. Abhaya, it has to be now.
They’d haul him into the second lorry. They would drive away, and in a minute or less this tenuous connection would be gone. He’d be separated from Abhaya and the Guest, maybe forever. The future would be arduous and possibly short for all three of them, because Forbes would never forgive this, and that would mean brutality without restraint.
Forrester wanted to resist, but they held him firmly. They carried him as easily as they might a child. He hadn’t the strength to fight them, nor even to slow them.
They had his body. Only his body. His mind was his own. And it had grown potent in these last days.
Abhaya.. .
He focused all of his will. There, again, he felt her—distant, and yet something in her mental attitude was subtly different, and he was convinced she was aware of him. Just as they’d practised night after night, he put his thoughts into words, his words into images, knowing such distinctions were meaningless. He called to her—
And this time, Abhaya answered.
Forrester dug his heels in. He tensed in the grip of his captors, buying him a moment, all he needed. He opened his eyes and was glad to see Forbes and that Forbes was looking at him.
Forrester spat in the dirt, tasting the salt tang of his own blood. He wasn’t sure until he tried that his damaged jaw was up to the business of speech. He was surprised by how firm his voice was as he said, “I didn’t lie to you. I’ve never been able to influence the Guest. But that doesn’t mean someone else can’t.”
The loathing in Forbes’s expression shifted, like a parting of storm clouds, as he laboured to make sense of what he’d been told. His mouth opened, perhaps with a question, or an order of more violence.
Then his eyes rolled up, and he slid to the ground, to lie, face aslant, in the dirt of the road.
Chapter Twenty-Two
F orrester waited until they were all unconscious. He found it interesting to observe the effect, for once, at first hand. Not everyone succumbed at the same rate, but by the time he’d counted to seven they were fast asleep to a man.
He reclaimed his walking stick from the cab of the lorry, sparing a glance for the gashed grille and the workings exposed through the ruptured metal. The vehicle would surely never move another inch, and he felt a surge of gratitude, as though it were some faithful steed that had given its last breath in his service.
He needed to hurry, but the pain in his stomach was throbbing in waves that threatened to tip him from his feet. He relied on the stick as much as he could, picking his way round the slumped bodies of Forbes’s soldiers and stepping over the prostrate form of Forbes himself. Many were snoring softly, and all of them looked at peace, even Forbes. The hate and rage had been cleansed from his features, so that again he resembled the man Forrester had met and liked on that first day.
The effect wouldn’t last, he reminded himself. This spot was on the very verge of the Guest’s influence. Forrester wasn’t certain whether that affected the duration of the enforced unconsciousness, though Forbes had hinted so. At any rate, they likely had little more than an hour.
Forrester pressed on, toward the mouth of the mine. Halfway there, he noticed something that made his heart skip. Light was issuing from within. No normal light this, either, and yet the vision was perfectly familiar, the greenish blue of sun-dappled seas deepening at its heart to the concentrated hues of sapphires and emeralds. The radiance lapped in waves across the rugged walls, as if the passage were filling with water lit from beneath by luminescent algae.
Before the light, Forrester realised, a figure was silhouetted. He almost called out, but some instinct held him back, a feeling like stepping into the cool of a cathedral on a hot day and being struck by the incorruptible silence.
He lingered a few feet from the mine entrance. Two more downed men lay at its threshold, both fast asleep. Assuming Abhaya had followed their plan, she would have talked her way past these sentries by telling largely the truth: that Forbes had suffered some sort of an episode, that the prisoner had escaped, that he might be coming here, and that on no account should they leave their post. She would have claimed, finally, to be checking on the Guest, and presumably they’d had no cause to disbelieve her.
As for removing its chains, Forrester imagined that, even with the Guest’s cooperation and the distinctive key she’d stolen from Forbes during the night, the task would have been onerous. He’d wished all along that he could take that responsibility upon himself, but it had had to be this way, for one reason: that which he’d given Forbes. Abhaya’s affinity with the Guest had always been greater than Forrester’s, and in the last days, that gap had widened beyond measure.
Everything he’d learned he had passed on to her, initially in snatched conversations, but as the days had worn by, physical proximity had grown increasingly redundant. Thereafter they’d talked in the depths of the night, mind to mind, when there was no one to disturb them.
A time had come when Forrester had nothing left to teach. He had an inkling that it might have been so from the beginning, and that Abhaya had been sparing his feelings. She and the Guest were sympathetic to a degree that he scarcely comprehended. She was the one who’d made it understand what they intended, she who’d awakened it to its own ability, and to how, with her support, that power could be used purposefully. As Abhaya’s rapport with the Guest had strengthened, so Forrester’s own had diminished. Though he’d recognised the loss, only now did he appreciate its full extent. The Guest could touch as many minds as it wanted, but it could not touch all equally.
The radiance was becoming brighter, remaking the uneven walls as shimmering stained glass. Still Forrester was unable to discern the Guest; it was an absence at the heart of its own illumination. Nor could he make out Abhaya, except as a blemish on the surface of the light. But he could feel them both: their presence was a pressure, tender yet irresistible.
Then they were free of the tunnel mouth. Abhaya approached Forrester, close enough for her smudged shape to resolve into one more identifiably human, and for features to congeal from the shadows and the brightness. She looked wide-eyed upon the scattered, sleeping forms of men, the two lorries, and at her husband where he lay in the road, his face more docile and benign than it could ever have been in wakefulness. Brief sorrow marred her expression. Was that emotion for Forbes? Forrester suspected that Abhaya had found some good in the man that he, and perhaps Forbes himself, had been blind to.
There were questions Forrester urgently wanted to ask her. They would have to wait. Heeding Abhaya was all but impossible with the Guest in front of him, like trying to focus on a sunspot rather than the sun itself. The Guest was hovering just past the mouth of the mineshaft—though that word, hovering , seemed not quite appr
opriate, as all human words failed ultimately to describe its nature. It didn’t hover, it was simply there, a concern such as gravity no less superfluous to its existence than language was.
Its glow was almost brighter outside than in the darkness of the cave, not mitigated even slightly by the daylight. The Guest was so ill-fitted to its surroundings that seeing it here was practically painful. Forrester could hardly believe he’d ever felt a kinship with this creature, in however small a way. Now it looked to him utterly and inscrutably alien.
Yet the Guest was still in his mind. Or rather, it was brushing the surface of his awareness, since it was no longer attempting to contact him directly and what remained was a mere residue. This near, it couldn’t help but connect with him, and with Abhaya too, so that all of Forrester’s self-discipline was needed to separate out which thoughts were his and which hers.
The Guest’s own consciousness, though, was clearly distinct—and overwhelming. It was afraid, every bit as much so as it had been that night on the battlefield, or when men had confined and transported it, or when it had first been chained amid the subterranean dark. Its new surroundings were no less strange. The moors, the ruined buildings, and the remote swells of hills that melted eventually into sky were no less disorientating. More so, in fact, because at least there it had been able to dream of spattered stars upon the endless black.
Forrester reached to calm the Guest, reached without moving. He could feel, already, Abhaya doing the same. He tried to recall the peace that a place such as this would once have instilled in him. Unbidden came the memory of a day in France, when he’d been in reserve and had taken off with a couple of the other junior officers to explore a region of countryside so far untouched by the war. They’d chatted and laughed, behaving as though the adventure meant nothing, and yet he’d known in his heart that each of them was as awed as he was, by the quiet and the tranquillity but more by the unfettered aliveness.
At the same time, Forrester was alert to unfamiliar memories jostling his own: walking among fields of cotton, watching the adults pick, marvelling at how each downy boll was a cloud in miniature; the sight of other hills, blue-tinged and mist-shrouded upon the horizon, like and unlike the ones he knew. This was India, Abhaya’s India, viewed through the distorted lens of her juvenile perception, and it was beautiful. Even as a boy, he had never loved his land as she’d loved hers.
To End All Wars Page 26