by David Nickle
He paused only a heartbeat—not enough time for Jason to answer, even were he inclined to. “I don’t mean that as a taunt. It is reasonable to be fearful, returning to such an awful circumstance. There is no shame in this room. But you are a man who has conquered fear. You did so when you flew those deadly contraptions in the war, high over the trenches where your brother . . . well not really your brother, you have no brother . . . but that young man you watched grow up . . . who was killed in those trenches. That was why you went to war, wasn’t it? To make sure that he didn’t perish. In order to protect him, you conquered fear.”
Jason didn’t have anything to say to that, because he had to admit that there was something to it. Tom Thorn was seventeen when he volunteered without a word to his parents. Jason probably wouldn’t have done so himself, but for the dismay he saw in the Thorn family: Lawrence pretended the tears were proud but Jason knew the old man well enough by then to tell they were more the grieving kind.
“Here is the situation,” said Bergstrom. “There are very few people who have been able to turn away from the organism. There is you, of course. There is Dr. Andrew Waggoner, and his wife, Anne. They, however, at present are living in France, in circumstances that would raise questions, should they disappear for a time. But no matter. More conveniently, there is one other—who by happenstance, is nearer, visiting a family who is well known to us.”
Jason felt an old vertigo, as though he were balanced on the edge of a deep canyon and beginning to slip.
“Ruth Harper,” said Plaut.
“We could have her here in a day,” said Bergstrom.
Four
Jason had hauled heavier packs on harder roads. This one was quite light by comparison: a powerful set of binoculars and a Kodak camera, loaded, with five extra rolls of film; a first-aid kit with additional tape and gauze; tinned rations; a canteen with water purifying tablets; a rough wool blanket and a tarpaulin with rope and four stakes; and a hatchet and a box of matches. So he didn’t get lost, there was a map folded into a leather folio, and a compass. Strapped on the outside was a long bayonet knife. That and the hatchet were it for weapons. They weren’t going to trust him with a gun.
Jason hoisted his pack on his shoulder and looked at Aguillard as he spoke with the men at the checkpoint. There wasn’t much there: just a little wooden shack, a dozen yards from the rutted roadway that was the only way to the pass. There were four of them that Jason could see, but of course there could be more. It looked like the shack had a couple of rooms to it, and there was an outdoor privy a fair distance off. So you could put more inside.
Didn’t matter. Jason wasn’t going to try anything; these Germans had rifles slung over their shoulders, and they stood in a way that put Jason to mind of certain things. Didn’t matter that Bergstrom and Aguillard had put all their money on Jason making it in and out of there alive. These fellows would shoot Jason, if he played it wrong.
And if they didn’t, then Aguillard’s two friends waiting with the truck would see to it Jason didn’t get far off the path.
Aguillard finished with them and came back to Jason. The men regarded them warily, and Jason felt it best not to look back.
“They will be expecting you back in no less than twenty-four hours,” said Aguillard. “Do you understand?”
Jason nodded. Aguillard and Bergstrom had gone through the plan with him the previous evening at the farmhouse. He was to enter the valley on foot, following the road to a point marked on the map, where it was advisable to take a footpath along the ridge. From there, he would proceed along this route until a point on the ridge, also marked on his map, that would afford him a view of the mansion that had until recently been the residence of Bergstrom and home to the troop of children. He was to mark down observations in the notebook they’d supplied him, reconnoitering to mark the movement of individuals over the course of a day. They had shown him several photographs from that vantage point, taken by the last group of stormtroopers who had returned from the valley, three months ago. There was a structure they had a question about: it looked like a teepee that the plains Indians might have made back in America, but taller—a steeple of tree trunks braced against one another at an apex that seemed to climb as high as the third-storey windows of the chateau. What was it that they had constructed? What was its purpose? What changes, from the last photograph?
What were the children who inhabited that place up to? What clues might there be to the fate of the previous expeditions?
What sign, if any, of the organism—the Juke?
“When you have finished those tasks,” Bergstrom had said, “return to the checkpoint. Dr. Aguillard will be there to interview you, and conduct an examination.”
If Jason either returned too soon, or did not return within two days, Aguillard explained to him what would happen next.
“Ruth Harper is currently visiting with the Dietrich family at their estate at Brandenberg. She has been there for several weeks now, we have been informed. Our associates there have contrived a plan to remove her similar in effect to the one we employed to obtain your services.”
“There will be no question about it,” said Plaut then.
At the foot of the pass, Aguillard asked Jason again if he had any questions. Jason shook his head.
“You know,” said Aguillard, “you are a remarkably incurious man, given what you are stepping into.”
“Curiosity isn’t what you’d call a survival trait,” said Jason. “I’ll take your photographs and some notes and bring them back, like you told me. Then I’ll go do the next thing you ask, because I don’t imagine you’ll let me get back on Desrosiers’ plane after just this one thing. Long as I don’t see Miss Harper here, we’re square on that. Far as the Juke’s concerned . . . you fools don’t know a thing about it more than I figured out as a boy. Less maybe.”
“Mr. Thistledown,” began Aguillard, but Jason stopped him.
“I will see you when I get back I guess,” said Jason, and started to turn. Aguillard stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.
“If you could bring back one more thing,” said Aguillard, and pressed an object into Jason’s hand. Jason looked down at what was there.
It was Aguillard’s lighter and cigarette case.
“The case is a favourite of mine. Please, return it when you’re done. You need not bring the cigarettes back. They are for you,” he said, and regarded Jason with an odd half-smile. It faded, as Jason pocketed the case and told him to go to hell.
Jason wasn’t about to show it to Aguillard, but he’d be a fool not to admit it to himself: he was terrified climbing the steepening slope to the pass. He did know more about the Juke than Bergstrom and his biologist friends did—at least in the ways that counted. As he got closer to where the thing nested, he’d start seeing things. Faeries and gnomes in the trees, terrible birds in the sky . . . Folks from his past that he hadn’t made right with or others he missed sorely enough to make a fool of him. Once, the Juke had made him see his old dad, Jack Thistledown, the gunfighter and reprobate, and the ghost of his ma too, and all that had nearly undone him. Whose ghost would he see now? He worried it might be Tom Thorn, his face torn half off by a German rifleman’s bullet, wondering why Jason hadn’t seen him safe in the trenches like he’d promised—why Jason had fled so swiftly, for the cockpit of his Nieuport and the skies over Tom’s head.
Or he might see Ruth Harper, still living. The Juke had shown him that once—Ruth’s pretty face on the head of a tiny Juke, mouth filled with teeth thin and sharp as a pike fish’s.
Terrifying enough. He was more terrified of how it would go for Ruth, if he didn’t do this job right, and they sent her hiking up this pass. He’d last seen her barely back on her feet, climbing into the back of Lawrence Thorn’s wagon along with Andrew Waggoner and Annie Rowe, on her way to the Canadian Pacific station in Cranbrook. The surgery had been successful—Andrew had managed to remove the parasite, and she had lived—but it surely hadn’t made her
well. All the blood she’d lost had left her ghost-white, her once-plump cheeks drawn, her much-thinned lips with an uncertain twitch. It had been a week before she’d been able to stand, and she’d still needed a cane to steady herself by the time she left. And though she spoke, her words came softly and her thoughts were still a-jumble.
And when her thoughts formed, the things she said . . .
Ruth must be better off now. But what would the Juke pull from the depths of her damaged soul?
It was just past ten when Jason left Aguillard and the others behind. The day was already shaping up to be hot: a low ripple of herringbone cloud to the east that would do nothing to cool the sun as it climbed, and the air was still. Tall evergreen trees lined the roadway from a distance and climbed the slopes, but near the edges was just low scrub, so no shade there either.
Jason didn’t care. He hauled uphill at a quick march, and when he looked back, the checkpoint was already out of sight. He took it a bit slower for a while; the slope was steepening and there was no rush. By the map, the hike was barely three miles.
It was a long haul all the same, or it felt long. It might have been a full hour before Jason found a path leading up the ridge—amid a tangle of bushes and low grass as the mountain slopes grew steeper—and he wasn’t sure it was the right path, but it led to a fall of colossal boulders, newly enough shattered that climbing them was possible with just hands and feet. Beyond that, Jason found himself on a broad ledge, in the shade of tall pine trees on a forest floor covered in layers of rust-coloured needles. Jason flung off his pack and sprawled on his back. He could feel his heart hammering in his chest and his breath was rasping in his throat.
He didn’t sleep, he was sure of it. But when he got up again, a cool breeze touched his cheek, and the air in the mountain pass seemed almost seasonally different. He squinted at the sky. The clouds had drawn nearer one another—as a net, pulling tighter. He opened his canteen and took a fast swig, screwed it shut and gathered his legs beneath him. Once he had his pack back on and the needles brushed from his trousers, he was off again.
The ridge climbed higher and the trees grew nearer one another. Between branches, Jason could see more tree and rock on the far side of the pass, as the slope there grew steeper and so also nearer. As the branches thickened, that view vanished for a time, Jason felt as though he were in a dark tunnel on the hillside—just trunks to either side, the barest sliver of sky peeking through overtop. Branches from the trees to either side of him encroached on the path such that he was bending and ducking, sometimes pulling one aside so that it whipped back as he moved through. The smell of pine sap grew thick.
The path, such as it was, grew steeper and also narrower, and Jason worried that he’d missed a branching, and somehow found himself on a secondary path that was creeping higher up toward the peak. He stopped at a point and pulled the map from his pack. It was little help: the path along the ridge was marked in grease-pencil, cutting a route that seemed too regular and straight, to the spot where he might observe the chateau. He could well have diverged, and he wouldn’t know.
Jason dithered for longer than he should have, then decided to retrace his steps and see if there mightn’t have been another route that didn’t seem to be climbing so high.
He made it some distance before the futility of this course struck him, and it occurred to him that the path might indeed climb quite high as the slopes steepened, only to descend again. He was about to turn and make his way back again up the slope when his breath caught in his throat, and he froze. The hairs on his forearms were rising, and his mouth was suddenly dry.
He felt certain he was being watched.
He half-unslung his pack and slid the bayonet from its strap, pulled the blade from its sheath, and re-shouldered the pack. He turned in a slow circle, letting his gaze touch every branch, every shadow. There was nothing to see, but the instinct remained, and Jason was willing to trust that instinct over his sight. In Eliada, the Jukes could keep themselves well-hidden if they wanted to. He’d seen one disguised as his pa; Jason could believe that one might just trick him into seeing it in the shape of a tree, or a rock, and Jason wouldn’t know until the thing was upon him.
Jason worked his tongue back and forth to get a spit going, then swallowed it. He dug into his pocket and pulled out the lighter, pulled a cigarette from the case and clamped it between his lips, and lit it. He drew deep, intending three more puffs before touching it to his neck for the familiar agony. He ended up finishing it, and grinding it under his boot.
A cigarette in the neck wasn’t going to work anymore. He’d known it in his gut before he figured it out. He’d learned through hard experience that he couldn’t rely on pain to which he’d become accustomed. In a month, or maybe even a couple of weeks, Jason could quiet himself with that trick again. If he were only facing German biplanes . . . He regarded the blade of the bayonet, and trembling a little, touched it to the palm of his hand. It was sharp, and it stung with the promise of liberating agony.
Jason peered around him, shivering now, as sweat evaporated from his brow, leaving him cold.
He might see what was around him, but with a sliced hand, he’d be no good for climbing. And whether higher up or back down, he would need to.
He couldn’t keep relying on pain. Not every time he flinched. Before long, he’d whittle himself down to nothing.
“All right,” he said aloud, and returned the bayonet to its sheath. More slowly this time, he started back up the path he’d already cut.
Behind Jason, nothing stirred.
It was good Jason spared his hand, because there was another climb before the ridge levelled out: this time, up narrow steps in the mountainside that were just a little too irregular to have been cut there by anyone. The trees spread farther up and down the slope at the ridge’s height, and when it levelled out finally, Jason sat exposed on a wide ledge of a cliff face.
The valley fell away below him and stretched to the limits of his sight. Most of what he saw was treetops, first conifers as he’d seen along the pass, and further, a row-planted wood that Jason took to be orchards. The bowl of the valley seemed miles distant and was made of deep green meadow for a time, before the land dipped into a dark fold that Jason guessed to be the stream that cut through its middle. And the land rose again beyond it, from meadow to forest to slopes of mountains that climbed higher. There was sign of tillage, but from where he stood, Jason could see no structures—not even those circles of fencing that, he reminded himself, were made to contain the Juke. He was not yet in position to see the chateau, and whatever structures had been built up around it since the last German expedition, months ago. What might they’ve built there in that time, Juke-inspired?
The ridgeway continued further, creeping back and around an outcrop of rock that fell off the mountainside like a splinter. It seemed to be leading back down, at least somewhat, toward the valley. He drew a breath of the sweet and perfect mountain air—then squeezed his wound until the scent soured.
It shouldn’t be far now.
The perch overlooking the chateau was well-hidden, but easy to spot from the path, by the remains of the Germans’ camp. There was a swath of canvas, half-buried in pine needles and dirt, and not far from there three packs like Jason’s, but emptied, contents strewn. Among the kit and the blankets, Jason spied a Luger automatic pistol. It was filthy, but had somehow avoided rust. Jason lifted it and confirmed that it was still loaded. He made certain the safety was set, and without another thought slipped it into his jacket pocket.
He rummaged a little more among the detritus, but found little else that he didn’t already have, clean and packed in the sack on his shoulder.
He set that sack down then, in the shade of a low shrub, opened it, and removed the binoculars and the Kodak and the notepad. He went to work.
TEEPEE GONE.
Jason didn’t think he’d forget to tell that when he returned, but he marked it down anyhow. There was no sign of the struc
ture that had aroused such curiosity in his captors. The plot of ground where it had sat was covered in long grass, with spaces in it that may have accounted for its footings, but Jason had no clear view from this distance and height, even with the binoculars, and the depressions didn’t seem to him to be properly placed to account for it. So he amended his note:
NO SIGN OF TEEPEE.
Jason set down the notepad and got the Kodak camera, and held it to his eye and took a picture. Then he set the camera down and picked up the binoculars. He scanned across the back of the chateau; over leaded-glass windows that reflected back the hillside behind them, up the single turret tower that was what made that mansion into a chateau, in some fellow’s mind; down a drainpipe from the eaves that emptied into a stone cistern at the far corner; past a stout wooden door at the top of a short stone stairway that Jason guessed might lead into a kitchen. He paused there for a moment and scanned back, wondering if he might not have seen movement of someone near the cistern, but if he had, the person was gone.
He pulled the binoculars away from his eyes and let them dangle over his knee, as he sat back on the ground, and considered the structure as a whole. It was a big house all right, three floors and an attic, formed of whitewashed panels and dark wooden beams, in what Jason supposed to be the Bavarian style. Two tall stone chimneys sat at either end of the building, without a hint of smoke emerging from either of them.
Jason described all this in his notes, as he thought he was supposed to do, and wound the film in the camera ahead one more frame—and sat perched on the ridgetop that way for a time, looking down the slope. How long would he do so? Until he saw some movement, perhaps? He didn’t think that Aguillard would be satisfied if he returned now, with a photograph of a quiet chateau and a cleared-up yard . . . particularly if he did so just a few hours after he’d set out.
Jason lined up another photograph through the viewfinder, this time focussing on the shingling of the villa’s steep roof. He clicked the shutter, and lowered the camera to wind the film another frame, and then frowned, and lifted it again, and looked again through the viewfinder, and swore to himself.