The Spy Who Haunted Me sh-3

by Simon R. Green

  Heavy hands slammed against the closed laboratory door. It shook in its frame, the wood bulging unnaturally under the force of the blows. Dreadful voices from outside, crying, Let us in! Let us in! I armoured up, but it didn’t help. Even that couldn’t protect me from the unleashed power of my own nightmares. I grabbed the nearest piece of heavy equipment and hauled it over to the door to make a barricade, but the solid metal turned soft and putrid and fell apart in my armoured hands. I couldn’t depend on anything anymore.

  That’s the real horror of nightmares.

  Lethal Harmony of Kathmandu and the Blue Fairy walked through the closed door as though it wasn’t there. I backed away. They looked at me accusingly, heads lolling limply on their broken necks. Honey saw them too. She opened fire with her shimmering crystal weapon. The energy blast shot right through the figures and blew up the door behind them. And then the weapon wilted and twisted in Honey’s hands, curling and coiling slowly and deliberately like a snake. Honey threw it away from her in horror.

  Katt and Blue turned into my mother and my father and advanced slowly on me. They didn’t look like zombies, or the living dead, or two people who’d been in their graves for most of my life. They looked just the way they always did, when I thought of them: the way they looked in the last photograph taken, before they went off on the mission that killed them. Except they weren’t smiling now. I backed away, and they came after me. They didn’t say anything. They didn’t have to. They looked accusing, disappointed, damning.

  “No!” I yelled so loudly it hurt my throat. “My parents wouldn’t think that of me! They know better! They wouldn’t do this! You’re not them! ”

  And in the face of my certainty, they faded softly and silently away.

  Honey grabbed my golden arm with a shaking hand. “How did you do that?” she said shrilly.

  “I have worse things than that on my conscience,” I said.

  “Then do something!” shouted Walker. “Before the worse things show up!”

  Peter was spinning around and around now, convinced there was something sneaking up on him from behind, no matter which way he looked. Walker began to shrink, in sudden jerks and shudders, until he was just a child again, swamped in a man’s suit. He tried to say something but couldn’t get the words out, and he began to cry helplessly. Honey dropped down abruptly, sinking into a floor that had taken on the consistency of quicksand, sucking her down in slow, purposeful gulps. I grabbed her arm and tried to haul her out, but the drag of the quicksand was too great. I pulled harder, and Honey screamed in agony.

  “Let go, Eddie! You’ll pull my shoulder out of my socket before it’ll let me go! You have to risk waking your sleeping god! Nothing could be worse than this. At least he’s real!”

  And so I let her go. Turned my back on them all, drew on the power of my torc and my armour, and made contact with Grendel Rex, the Unforgiven God. The devil in his cold dark Hel, deep and deep under the permafrost.

  Finding him was easier than I expected. My mind shot across the miles separating us in a moment, my Sight drawn like a magnet by the bond we shared. Of family. My vision sank down into the frozen earth, and immediately I was hit by the impact of his ancient presence, huge and forbidding and still impossibly powerful. I felt like a scuba diver, swimming through the cold night of the ocean and coming unexpectedly upon a blue whale or a giant squid. I felt so small, overwhelmed by the sheer size and scale of him. Just a mote in his eye.

  I carefully reached out and touched his power. It was like sticking a drinking straw into an ocean or dipping a bucket into a bottomless well. The power surged into me, rich and raging, all I needed and more. And one great eye slowly opened in the dark and looked at me.

  Well, now. Who disturbs me at this time?

  I stopped where I was, absolutely frozen by fear. “I’m Edwin Drood,” I said finally. “Just . . . doing my job. Trying to save humanity from destruction.”

  So the sheep still have their shepherds. Why come to me, the old pariah, for help?

  “Because what I’m doing is important and necessary. Because I’ve nowhere else to go. And because . . . I’m family.”

  Ah, yes. Of course. Anything for the family. What is this threat you fear so much that you’re prepared to make a deal with the devil?

  I started to explain, but he pushed effortlessly past my defences and took what he needed from my mind.

  Yes. I see. Very well, little Drood. Take what you need.

  I should have just taken the energy and left, but I had to know. “What did Grigor see in the depths of our DNA? What could he have seen to terrify him so completely? Do you know?”

  Perhaps. Here is the truth, for those that have the strength to hear it.

  We can all be gods, or devils. We can all shine like the stars. We were never meant to stay human. We’re just the chrysalis from which something greater can emerge. I think perhaps your Grigor caught a glimpse of what we really are, and could be, and he couldn’t cope. There is so much more to reality than man and woman, gods and devils. So much more.

  The great eye slowly closed, like an eclipse moving across the face of the sun. I’m tired. It’s not time to wake up yet. Tell the family . . . I’ll be seeing them.

  I ran, holding myself together through sheer force of will. The power I’d taken burned inside me, demanding release. Already it was consuming me from within. If I didn’t let it loose soon, it would consume me. I left the permafrost behind, my mind streaking over the frozen forest, and the city loomed up before me like a bug on a windshield. The streets were full of unspeakable things. Buildings rose and fell or melted into each other. A tidal wave of screaming faces swept down a street like so many possessed and terrified masks.

  The sun was a giant face, screaming with rage. Grigor’s face.

  I called up all the power I’d taken and bent it to my will. I held it in one hand, spitting and fizzing like a million lightning bolts, and then I threw it at the city. A great cry went up from the milling streets of rage and defiance and soul-deep horror, but I was riding the lightning with my mind. I slammed it down into the dark heart of X37 and drove the nightmares out; up and out, into the sun with Grigor’s face. For a moment I held all the writhing horror of X37 in one place, every last bit of Grigor’s revenge . . . and then I sent it away. Threw it in the one direction it could never return from.

  Into the past.

  I watched with godlike eyes as the compressed psychic energy shot back through time, screaming and howling all the way, until finally it couldn’t hold itself together any longer and it exploded into nothingness over the empty plain of Tunguska, on 7:17 a.m., June 30, 1908.

  I woke up back inside my own head, lying on the laboratory floor. The power was gone, and I didn’t feel like a god anymore. I was exhausted, I hurt all over, and my eyes felt like they’d been sand-papered. I sat up slowly, wincing all the way. I wasn’t wearing my armour anymore. I looked around me. The floor was hard and certain beneath me, the walls were just walls, and the building and the street outside were silent again. X37 was no longer haunted by the ghosts of its own atrocities.

  The floor had spat Honey out. She was sitting on a chair, shaken and trembling, but already bringing herself back under control. Walker was himself again, calm and collected and giving all his attention to adjusting his cuffs. Peter was trying very hard to look as though nothing had happened. I rose slowly to my feet, and they all turned to look at me.

  I told them what had happened and what I’d done. I didn’t tell them what Grendel Rex had said concerning human DNA. He was a devil, and devils always lie. Except when the truth can hurt you more.

  “So, you’re the cause of what happened in 1908?” said Peter. “You’re responsible for the Tunguska Event?”

  “A Drood did it,” said Honey. “I should have known.”

  “Proving it to my grandfather is going to be a tad difficult, though,” said Peter.

  “Are you kidding?” I said. “You can’t hide somethi
ng like this! Psychics and telepaths across the world will have been deafened by what I just did. You won’t be able to stop them talking about it, though my family will undoubtedly try. Luckily only the four of us know the details, and I think it’s better we keep it that way.”

  “Or the Droods will come and make us forget, like they did over Grendel Rex?” said Honey.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Just another reason why we don’t let you people operate in the Nightside,” murmured Walker. “Only I am allowed to be that arbitrary.”

  “Can we please go out and find a food store now?” said Peter. “There must be some canned goods here somewhere. If I was any hungrier, my stomach would leap up my throat and eat my head.”

  “You know, I think I’d pay good money to see that,” said Honey.

  We left the laboratory and the building and set off through the deserted streets. I hung back a bit, considering the others thoughtfully while they were still relatively open and vulnerable. Peter interested me the most. I’d never seen him really scared before. In fact, for all his youth and inexperience with the greater world, he’d taken the Loch Ness monster and the Hyde pretty much in his stride. He was interested, even impressed, but when the time came for action he didn’t hesitate, just got stuck in with the rest of us. Rather more than you’d expect from a man whose only experience of spycraft was in industrial espionage.

  So; he was Alexander King’s grandson, after all.

  But it was useful to know he had his limits. The nightmares had shattered his self-control, reduced him to hysterics. Perhaps because they were so clearly outside of his control. In fact . . . when it came to fighting the Loch Ness monster and the Hyde, he’d taken the first opportunity to fall back and let the rest of us do the hard work while he filmed it all with his precious camera phone.

  Whatever happened, I had to get my hands on that phone.

  Walker fell back to walk with me, and we talked quietly together. He deliberately slowed our pace, allowing some distance to develop between us and Honey and Peter.

  “While you were gone,” he said, quietly and entirely matter-of-fact, “someone tried to kill me. Even in the midst of all that was happening. With so much madness running loose it’s hard to be sure, but someone quite definitely tried to remove my head from my shoulders from behind. Would have succeeded with anyone else, but fortunately my years in the Nightside have made me very hard to kill.”

  “Even with the Authorities gone?” I said.

  “Especially now they’re gone. I’m protected in ways you can’t imagine. But the point is, we now know who killed Lethal Harmony and the Blue Fairy. It has to be either Honey or Peter.”

  “Always assuming,” I said, “that you’re telling the truth.”

  “Ah,” said Walker. “There is that, yes.”

  “None of us can be trusted,” I said. “We’re all agents.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  All at Sea

  There was sun and light and warmth, and after the bitter cold There of Tunguska and X37 it felt like very heaven itself. All four of us cried out in relief as the teleport bracelets delivered us to our new destination in the sun. And the first thing we all did was tear off our heavy fur coats and drop them in a pile on the ground before us. Hats and gloves and everything else that reminded us of X37 followed as fast as we could rip them off, and when the pile was complete we all gave it a good kicking, just on general principles. And only then did we take the time to look around and see where we were.

  We’d been dropped off in a neat little side street looking out over the docks of some major city. Ships everywhere: mostly navy, but some commercial, some tourist, and some fishing boats. American navy: big, impressive ships, longer than some roads, equipped with the very latest technology and the very biggest guns. Crew members swarmed over the huge decks like ants serving their queen. Not, therefore, a good place to be four strangers strolling around asking questions . . . I moved down to the end of the side street and looked out over blue-green waters without a trace of a swell under a pale blue sky with not a cloud to be seen. The sun was high in the sky, fat and friendly and deliciously warm. Seagulls rode the thermals, their distant voices raucous and mocking.

  “I’m back in contact with Langley,” Honey announced, one hand pressed to the side of her head. Though how that helped with a brain implant, I wouldn’t know. She frowned, almost wincing. “There’s a lot of shouting going on. Apparently they took it pretty damned personally when I fell off the edge of the planet and they couldn’t locate me anymore. They’ve had three different spy satellites tasked to do nothing but look for me ever since. They were concerned. Which I’d think was very sweet of them, if they’d just stop shouting at me . . . Ah; it seems we are currently in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.”

  “How long have we been off their radar?” I said.

  “Three days, seven hours,” said Honey. “I’m being asked a lot of questions.”

  “Who cares,” said Peter. “I smell food!”

  “What kind?” said Walker.

  “I don’t care; I’m going to eat it.” Peter glared about him, sniffing the air like a bloodhound on a trail. He plunged forward into the main street, following his nose, and all we could do was hurry after him.

  “I will admit to feeling a bit peckish myself,” said Walker, striding along with a military gait. “Are there any noted restaurants in Philadelphia?”

  “Oh, bound to be,” I said cheerfully. “Sailors like their food. And booze, and tattoo parlours and—”

  “Langley is demanding to know exactly where we were and what we’ve been doing,” said Honey, striding along beside me like a tall dark goddess in her blazing white jumpsuit. “They were under the impression there wasn’t anywhere they couldn’t follow me with their brand-new toys, the poor babies.”

  “Don’t tell them anything,” Walker said immediately. “Not . . . just yet. There might come a time when we need confidential information to bargain with.”

  “Why would I wish to bargain with my own superiors?” said Honey just a bit coldly.

  “I meant bargain with Alexander King,” Walker said patiently. “It’s well known the Independent Agent has contacts everywhere, in every organisation. Except possibly the Droods. Either way, I think we need to hold our secrets close to our chest until the game’s over.”

  “He’s right,” I said. “Secrets only have power and value as long as they remain secrets.”

  “So what do I tell Langley?” said Honey. “I’ve got to tell them something, if only so they’ll stop shouting inside my head.”

  “Tell them about X37,” I said. “But not what we did there. They’ll be so excited about the confirmed location of an old Soviet science city, they won’t care about us and what we did.”

  “What you did,” said Walker. “I’m still a trifle uneasy over that.”

  “That’s a good way to feel about Droods,” I said. “Helps keep you properly respectful.”

  “Blow it out your ear,” said Walker.

  Honey’s face went vague as she presumably filled in her CIA handlers with information about X37, hopefully being just a bit discreet about the whole Tunguska Event thing. Of course, she could have been telling them absolutely anything. Or everything. I had no way of knowing. It was important to remember that she was an experienced field agent, and I couldn’t afford to trust her. Or Walker. Or Peter.

  Katt was dead. And the Blue Fairy. And . . . I never saw a thing. I couldn’t help feeling that if I’d been just a bit more on the ball, a bit more observant, I might have seen something. Done something. Katt was a rival, and I hardly knew her. And after what Blue did to me and my family, we were enemies to the death. But even so, I liked Katt. And Blue was my friend.

  This is why I prefer to work alone in the field. There’s nothing like people to complicate a mission.

  Peter took us straight to the eatery he’d sniffed out. By that time we’d all got the scent and were practically treading on his
heels. I hadn’t realised how hungry I was. A little beaver doesn’t satisfy you for long. Peter barged right through the front door without even glancing at the bright shiny posters on the windows, but Walker took one look and balked.

  “But . . . this is a burger bar!” he said plaintively. “I wanted food. Real food!”

  “Don’t be such a snob,” said Honey. “This is America, home of the brave and incredibly fast food.”

  Walker sniffed loudly. “And even faster indigestion. Any country that has to advertise laxatives on television at prime time is in serious trouble.”

  “Oh, shut up and get in there,” I said. “I can smell dead animals burning, and my taste buds are kicking the crap out of each other.”

  “If anyone even attempts to serve me something in a bucket, there will be trouble,” Walker said ominously.

  Honey and I pushed him through the front door and joined Peter at the table he’d commandeered. He’d already attracted the attention of a pretty young waitress in a seriously ugly pink uniform and was giving her his order. He was only halfway down the card, and already she’d filled up half her pad. As burger bars went, this was perhaps a little better than most. Clean enough, not too crowded, and the piped Muzak had been selected by someone who’d at least heard of tunes. There were big glossy posters everywhere, with marvellous illustrations of all the wonderful things you could order. Presumably there so that if you couldn’t read the menu, you could still point at things. I have a soft spot for the big happy posters, even though what they’re showing you usually bears only a passing resemblance to what you actually end up with. I keep hoping that one day I’ll actually get what I order; a triumph of optimism over experience.

  “What do you fancy, Eddie?” said Honey, running her eyes down the laminated menu.