by Simon Clark
‘Thank you very much, Ulric. If you haven’t eaten, you’d best do so soon before they arrive.’
Ulric gave a respectful nod then turned to fix me with a look that meant business. ‘Mason, you better listen carefully to what Dr Saffrey has to say. She’s going to tell you the truth.’ Then he glanced at my sister. ‘Eve?’
‘Aren’t you staying?’ I asked, although I noticed her little glances at Ulric. She always had that look with new boyfriends.
A faint blush coloured her cheeks. ‘I’ll go with Ulric. I’ve already heard what Dr Saffrey has to say.’
I grunted. ‘I guess I was under for longer than I thought, huh?’
Madeline vented some anger. ‘They kept you under for twenty-four hours. I told them it wasn’t right. They might have killed you.’
‘I swore an oath to deliver Mason safely.’ Ulric became prim. ‘That’s what I achieved.’
‘Bastard.’ Madeline’s eyes flashed.
Dr Saffrey turned to appraise me. ‘Mason, you’ve a formidable ally there, haven’t you? She’s like a tigress protecting her young.’
The woman smiled. ‘I’ll talk to Mason, Ulric. Go enjoy your meal with Eve.’
My sister and her new flame withdrew from the room in a way that suggested Dr Saffrey had authority here.
‘Mason. Madeline. Please sit down.’ She was close enough to pat the seat of the nearest straight-backed chair.
‘I’m going to stand.’ Did I sound defiant or just plain grumpy? Dr Saffrey didn’t bat an eyelid.
‘Madeline, I have no prejudice against you. I don’t expect you will desert your master but feel free to sit if you wish.’
‘I’m not her master,’ I said.
‘No? Don’t you see the look of devotion in her eye, Mason? If you asked Madeline to throw herself in front of a truck she’d do just that. Happily, willingly, joyfully.’
‘Listen, I don’t know who you are—’
‘There.’ She tapped keys on the laptop. The thumbnail images assumed a rippling effect as they showed dozens of different views in the course of a matter of seconds. Somehow this woman, who was hardly in the first flush of youth, appeared to monitor every image at once, alert to any change.
‘It will be wasteful of both time and energy if we start our relationship with misapprehensions about one another.’ Her almond eyes flicked from my face to Madeline’s then back again. ‘You said you don’t know who I am. My name is Dr Saffrey. I’m a doctor of law, not medicine, so don’t come running to me with any embarrassing itches or stomach aches.’ She smiled, an attempt to put us at ease. ‘I won’t tell you where you are, other than we’re tucked away in the wilderness. It was a military site reserved for the testing of weapons, none of them radioactive or biological, as far as I know.’ Her keen eyes locked on mine. ‘On the other hand, I’ve learnt about you, Mason. Eve told me your personal and family history, and what happened when you were held captive at the school in Tanshelf. I’m sorry about your mother, by the way. Ulric has explained how he and his squad—’
‘Squad? That sounds military to me?’
The doctor continued without a blip, ‘—managed to acquire you … your subsequent adventures, the second attack near your home, and the regrettable incident with the woman you slept with. I also know about Madeline, of course. And I must say she is astonishingly similar to you in appearance. Which, in our experience, makes her unique.’
‘So what is all this?’ Anger crackled along my nerves. ‘Are you going to tell me you’re responsible for creating the Echomen? After all, you must work for the military don’t you?’
‘The answer to the first is: I wish we were responsible for the mechanism that turned Madeline into a copy of you. Then we could probably stop this mess getting any worse. Second question: yes, the army pays my pension. But to elaborate: if the government knew what we were doing here I’d either be jailed or …’ – she shrugged – ‘I’d meet with an unfortunate car accident.’
I frowned. ‘What exactly are you doing, then?’
‘Did you know that every nuclear power plant keeps a team of retired scientists and technicians on their payroll?’
‘How does that explain this?’
‘That team consists of men and women who are all over seventy years of age, most over eighty.’
‘They fix leaks.’ This came from Madeline.
Dr Saffrey nodded. ‘They’re so old a big dose of radioactivity won’t make much difference to the elderly one way or the other. If the leak of radiation is a bad one they’ll willingly serve as a suicide squad to block up any holes and mop up any radioactive spills. They do this because they are good people who don’t want to expose young men and women to mortal danger; what’s more, they know the end of their lives isn’t that far off anyway; they don’t have many years to lose if they should be contaminated with a lethal dose.’ Her eyes roved over the plasma screen again, checking those thumbnail images. ‘Not long now,’ she announced. ‘But long enough to share with you what I know. And why I mentioned those silver-haired nuclear technicians who are prepared to sacrifice their lives in order to save others.’
I shrugged. ‘OK, you’ve told us that nuclear power plants employ the elderly. Forgive my lack of amazement but I don’t see the point here.’
‘And why it’s relevant to us?’ Madeline added.
‘An eighty-year-old scientist plugging a radioactive leak accepts the risk of death.’ Dr Saffrey turned from the screen to look me in the eye. ‘I am eighty-four years old. By sitting in this room with you I am accepting the possibility that whatever’s inside you might turn me into what Madeline has become. Your female doppelganger.’
‘Why single me out? You know as well as I do that Paddy, Ruth, Ulric, Eve have been duplicated. This can affect any one of us.’
‘True. But you contaminate faster. You produce Echoes of yourself across a broader spectrum of ages. If you are close enough to a woman then she often becomes a version of you. Follow?’
‘So you’re saying this is Mason’s fault.’ Madeline’s eyes flashed with anger. ‘You’re accusing him of being some kind of plague carrier?’
The elderly woman shook her head. ‘This contamination of the human race is widespread. It’s not confined to Mason. Yet Mason is unique when we talk about rapidity of transformation, extent of transformation, and the ability to cross boundaries of sex, age and race.’
‘You’re going to dissect him.’ Again this came from Madeline. ‘I won’t let you. He’s a good man.’
‘Ah …’ Dr Saffrey smiled. ‘That’s where I can agree, only not for the reasons you think. Mason could very well be good for the human race. We just need to investigate his body, and his mind, more deeply.’ When Madeline took a step forward, Dr Saffrey smiled. ‘That doesn’t involve so much as parting a hair from his head. We will observe him, and you; that will be valuable enough.’
‘So,’ I said, ‘what are your plans for me?’
‘Initially, it must be quarantine, I’m afraid.’
‘Ah, the laboratory cage awaits?’
‘It’ll be far more congenial than that. Look at the screen.’ She tapped a key on the laptop. Instantly one of the thumbnail images expanded to fill the TV. ‘This is the Rose Garden. We need to house you there for a few days. You’ll be comfortable. More importantly for us you’ll be living apart from our staff.’
‘So I really am such a danger?’
‘I’m afraid so, Mason. One of our soldiers who helped carry you in when you were drugged is now, to put it bluntly, a replica of you. It’s the nature of Echomen, of course, that he has become hostile to the rest of humanity. From being a loyal fighting man he is now driven to kill us … if he gets the chance.’
With the words rolling smoothly from the woman’s tongue I watched the screen. There, a garden full of roses lay inside walls that stood a full fifteen feet high. In one corner appeared to be an old cottage beneath a red tiled roof. If anything, what caught my eye were two figures. S
trolling hand in hand, Eve and Ulric followed a path between a lake of pink flowers. The idyllic scene lay at odds with the machine-guns they carried over their shoulders. They paused to kiss.
Dr Saffrey smiled. ‘If only what the wise say is true. Love conquers all. Then young people like that will destroy evil.’ Her face hardened. ‘But it will take more than love. We must hate, too. Hate what the Echo creatures are doing to ruin the human race. Mason, make no mistake: we are fighting for the survival of our species.’ She’d no sooner uttered that when a red block began to flash in the centre of the screen. Eve and Ulric reacted to a sound by running toward a door in the garden wall. ‘Ah,’ Dr Saffrey murmured. ‘There goes the alarm. We have contact.’
chapter 34
The six by ten foot screen rippled. An image of Eve and Ulric running through the Rose Garden toward the door in the hall changed to dozens of thumbnails. Most of these revealed shots of open countryside: fields, meadows, trees, bushes. I glimpsed one thumbnail showing a front-of-face shot of Natsaf-Ty. The ancient mummy gazed at me through closed eyelids. As ever, the tip of a tongue that was dry as a raisin protruded between the lips. The picture of the red face ruined with cracks and holes couldn’t exist anywhere else but my mind, of course. Dr Saffrey didn’t see it as she studied the screen; maybe Madeline caught some suggestion of it as her mind lightly brushed against mine in that telepathic way gifted by whatever mechanism generated the doppelganger transformation. The way Natsaf-Ty regarded me with the head tilted to one side had a quizzical air. Once more I found myself asking: Why are you haunting me? What do you expect from me? Is there something I should be doing? Thumbnails melted to be replaced by a single six by ten image of a strip of grassland that ran between two areas of forest. A low sun illuminated this green highway.
Dr Saffrey murmured, ‘Here they come. Right on cue.’
Figures cast long shadows as they walked toward the camera.
‘Echomen?’ I asked.
‘Indeed they are.’
‘How far away are they from here?’
‘No more than a quarter of a mile.’
‘You’re not concerned?’
She gave a grim smile. ‘Everything is as it should be. Just you wait and see.’
Madeline examined the screen. ‘What are they carrying?’
‘We’ll find out soon enough.’
The figures were in long shot; both the angle of the camera set at about knee height and the setting sun created the impression of tall, spindly men and women with over-long legs and torsos that were topped by small skulls. These were shadowed so I couldn’t see the faces. I counted thirty of them. Each one carried a bundle over their heads. Because these, too, were in silhouette I couldn’t make out what they were. They were perhaps the size of sports bags, of no particular shape, nor heavy.
‘Weapons?’ I asked.
‘You’ll see,’ Dr Saffrey replied coldly.
Madeline said, ‘You were expecting them to come here?’
‘Expecting? More than that, we lured them here. The more Echomen we remove from society the safer the world becomes.’
The huge screen hanging from the wall showed the slow advance of the men and women who’d become those Echo creatures. They’d just been like you and me once. Now? Well, they could be you or me. They were duplicates of ordinary individuals, only now their minds had been reprogrammed to hate the human race.
Ulric appeared in the doorway. ‘Dr Saffrey?’
‘Go ahead, Ulric, there’s no need to acquire any for testing this time.’
He withdrew. The woman pressed a key on the laptop. Small thumbnail images formed a frame around the main central one. I saw a concrete wall. Behind it a dozen or more soldiers stood with machine-guns and rifles resting on top of the concrete blocks. More thumbnails revealed close-ups. Ruth, Dianna, Paddy and Eve were amongst the troops. They were armed with automatic rifles.
‘You lured the Echomen here,’ I said, ‘how?’
‘The internet reaches everywhere. We have our intelligence team creating blogs, message boards, short films, you name it, that purport to be from individuals who know about the Echomen. We create a fictional community of people on the web who are sharing information about the creatures. There are also references to a safe house for ordinary men and women who are fleeing from them to come to this location.’ She sighed. ‘Echomen believe they are cleverer than us. They think they’ve discovered vulnerable people they can destroy.’
‘But you lure them into a trap?’
‘See for yourself.’
As the elongated figures approached the camera, growing larger on screen, the armed figures behind the wall, one of whom must be my sister, fired their weapons. The doomed Echomen didn’t scream; there was no running, nobody panicked. When the figures approached the perimeter wall where the soldiers had positioned themselves, they simply sank to the ground as bullets struck them. I watched as a single, heavy calibre tracer moved in apparent slow motion through the evening air. Like a sluggish shooting star it closed in on a man dressed in a leather coat. When it struck him in the face, his head turned into a spray of dark droplets. Headless, he took another step before toppling. The bundle he carried struck the earth in front of him. Coolly professional, the soldiers chose a target, fired, destroyed their target, picked another target, and so on.
The Echomen didn’t charge the wall, neither did they run away as their numbers were depleted by the searing blast of gunfire. They simply walked forward. Maybe in some strange way they’d already decided this would be their destiny. I recalled the Echomen who had been nailed to the floors of my old classrooms back in Tanshelf. They’d accepted their fate in the same way. It didn’t occur to them to scream, or to flee. They all seemed to think, ‘So this is the way I die … that’s fine by me.’ And here they tumbled into the grass. Sometimes a sloppy shot would smash through a groin then a guy would go down still alive, with blood squirting from between his legs. Even he didn’t seem overly perturbed he’d just had his balls mashed by a dum-dum bullet. He just rolled on his back, with one knee raised and the other leg flat to the ground; calmly, he stared at the clear blue sky as he bled to death.
‘Those bundles,’ Madeline began, ‘they’re moving.’
I turned my attention to them. By now there were only eight of the creatures walking toward the wall. All of them raised bundles above their heads, like you or I would hold a sleeping bag above our heads if we were to wade through a river. Although they were in silhouette, making it impossible to identify them, I’m sure I saw one bundle change shape as if it could move by itself. One of the rifle rounds zipped above the Echoman’s head to smash into the package, or bag, or whatever the guy held high in his two hands. Liquid streamed from it.
Dr Saffrey gave an ‘uph’ sound. ‘You see, they bring gifts, or what they believe are gifts. In my book that’s powerful proof they have an intelligence that is alien to ours.’
‘What kind of gifts?’ The package held above the Echoman’s head still leaked. Now the figure was near enough to reveal that the liquid dripped into his hair. ‘Don’t tell me this is a bring a bottle kind of party.’
‘They’ve brought all kinds of things in the past,’ Dr Saffrey told me. ‘Food, drink, clothes. Once they even brought gifts of animals.’ Another hail of gunshots felled the last of the Echomen. A blonde-haired woman took a dozen rounds to her torso that disintegrated the entire upper half of her body. As what was left of her dropped in bits to the ground the bundle fell, too. It lay squirming there.
I watched the screen as the doctor operated the zoom, expanding the image of the blob-shape on the grass. My eyes widened and a cold, prickling sensation climbed my spine; it possessed all the revolting promise of a gigantic spider creeping across my skin as the camera zoomed in toward the ‘gift’ that the Echomen had gone to so much trouble to bring to us – and died trying.
‘Ah …’ Dr Saffrey breathed. ‘Have you seen what they brought us this time?’ She zoomed into a sma
ll face poking through the wrappings of cloth. ‘Babies. Tiny, little babies.’
Minutes after the final Echoman had been killed, the soldiers moved into the strip of grassland that ran between the trees. Any of the creatures found to be still alive had their tenacity for life rewarded with a pistol shot to the head. Then the troops started zipping the bloody remains into body bags. I didn’t see what they did to the babies wrapped in bundles of cloth. All this was revealed to us onscreen. A moment later Dr Saffrey switched off the image.
‘There you have it.’ She turned back to us. ‘What we do is unsanctioned by any elected president or prime minister. We’re a coalition of security services from around the world – CIA, KGB, Mossad, and half-a-dozen others – many of them former adversaries.’
‘But now you’re united against the Echomen.’
‘Absolutely.’
Madeline frowned. ‘Why don’t you inform the government?’
‘First we must build up a dossier of documentary proof. Our elected assemblies might decide we’re deluded and simply close us down. Secondly, we still don’t know how deeply Echomen have infiltrated national governments. So far the creatures are stupid. Once they are transformed from human to Echoman all they do is try and kill us. With the unique exception of Madeline here. Imagine, however, if they become more sophisticated and assume the form of senators, members of parliament, senior civil servants and judges? We’ve no evidence of these developments yet, but we have to be sure before we trust anyone outside our inner circle.’ She shook her head. ‘At the moment, we’re little more than janitors. We wait for one mess to occur, clean up the bodies, then wait for the Echomen to strike again, so we can be waiting with our metaphorical pail and broom. Before the Echo people came on the scene we had a similar protocol for terrorist activity. Failed terrorist attacks didn’t even make it into the news because we kept the story bottled. Ten years ago a cargo ship called the Oleander arrived in a major western port with a battlefield nuclear weapon in the hold. The timer failed, customs officers discovered the bomb, the army disarmed it, so the terrorists were disappointed not to see TV pictures of a mushroom cloud rising above a famous skyline. Due to a security error a report of the failed attack found its way into the internet. You only had to type Oleander into a search engine and you could read about a former Soviet nuclear bomb hidden beneath a cargo of roof slate. Certain security officers were given early retirement on health grounds for their Snafu and we swung into action, gave the worldwide web a spring clean to brush out references to an incident that could have killed a hundred thousand innocents. Today we’re still busy with our proverbial mop and pail, erasing any trace of damage when the Echomen attack.’