The Touch of Death

by John Creasey

  “Hallo, Banister,” said the other man.

  These were the two whom he had seen walking towards him along that shady street within the shadow of the university.

  “We didn’t think you’d be round yet – sorry.”

  They spoke good, fluent English; colloquial, too. He did not doubt that they were English. Neither was particularly good-looking, neither was in the slightest degree vicious-looking, either. They looked like men who lived an open-air life.

  “Like a drink? We could manage tea and biscuits, if you feel like that.”

  “It’s a good idea,” Banister said, calmly enough. “You might untie my arms.”

  “Don’t get violent this time,” the nearer man warned. “You go and get the tea, Ted.”

  “All right, Jim.” The other went off.

  “Violent?” echoed Banister.

  “When you first came out of the barbiturate we pumped into you, you were ready to fight the world,” said the man named Jim. “You look calmer now.” He unfastened the cords which bound Banister’s arms to his sides. “Cigarette?”

  “I’ll have the tea first.”

  “Good thought.”

  The man glanced out of the window, and Banister found himself doing the same, while wondering why the man named Ted and the man named Jim were exerting themselves to be so pleasant. Did the answer matter, yet? He saw clouds drifting by, revealing patches of clear blue sky, the kind of picture he was likely to see on any fine day when in the air. Then he looked down and saw they were above the cloud bank; not far below it was ten-tenths cloud.

  “We’ll soon be landing,” Ted said.

  “Oh!” Banister found it possible to smile. “I suppose I shouldn’t ask where we are.”

  “You can ask!”

  The man turned as the other came along the narrow passage carrying a tray with tea, biscuits and bread and butter. They were the only passengers in the aircraft, which could carry twenty or more. Banister began to count the seats, then gave up.

  The tea was hot, fresh, welcome.

  The bread and butter was fresh; the biscuits crisp.

  Afternoon tea at ten thousand feet or so, flying – where?

  “We won’t be long,” said Ted.

  Then they broke through the cloud.

  Banister felt his heart turn over; felt that stab of fear which set him quivering. For as the cloud parted, a great snow-capped peak thrust its grandeur through the gap. The peak could not be far away. All Banister could see was the snow, broken here and there by the black darkness of rocks.

  The aircraft swayed.

  Ted and Jim did not speak. Banister glanced round, and saw that they were staring out of the window; they had almost forgotten him, seemed to be touched by fear.

  Banister looked out of the window.

  Below was a scene of bewildering grandeur. The snow lay thick and virgin white and smooth save where the jagged rocks pierced its breast, as if to threaten with impaling any who dared fly within its reach. Great ravines were like ugly, gaping mouths, filled with snow and yet with room for more and yet more – mouths that would swallow the aircraft and not notice that it was there. The snow looked so thick and white and still – it could cover the aircraft and forever keep its secret. More than all else, the snow seemed to draw Banister and the other men downwards with an irresistible attraction.

  They flew farther along a valley, with great peaks rising on either side; and there was less snow here. Banister could see the green of grass or some mountain growth, and the blackness of the rocks – even stunted trees, a long way down. Then he saw something else, which stabbed through him like the final harbinger of disaster.

  There lay a wrecked aircraft.

  He saw the broken wings and the crumpled fuselage and the lost or buried nose. One engine lay some distance from the heart of the wreckage; black, burned.

  They flew over it.

  Banister watched until it was out of sight.

  There was snow, desolation, the harshness of rocks, a great silence rising out of the valleys below them.

  Then, quite suddenly, they flew within the shadow of a range of peaks, and below them the ground, although rocky and split with crevices filled with snow, did not look so hostile. Soon Banister saw what seemed to be a long stretch of flat table-land. Two aircraft stood against the snow; there were hangars; black dots that might be people.

  They were people.

  “Better put some warm clothes on, Banister,” said the man named Ted.

  He was holding out a fur-lined coat.

  Banister waded unevenly through the snow. He wore heavy fur-lined boots, and they made him stagger from side to side, but he needed them, for the snow was nearly a foot deep. It was all about him on the mountain-side, just here an unsullied field of snow. Ravines and gullies slit the mountain-side above his head, but not here.

  He had no idea where he was.

  In the south island of New Zealand? In one of the great mountain ranges of the Antarctic? He kept thinking of that, but not very deeply. It was all he could do to breathe and keep moving. Soon he had to concentrate on those two things.

  They neared the mountain-side, and climbed steeply for thirty or forty yards; then the man in front of Ted disappeared into the side of the rocks.

  Banister stopped.

  His mind flashed back to the moment when Pam Smith had hurried away from him and walked through a wall. In exactly the same way the man in front had walked through snow-covered rock.

  The man behind bumped into him.

  “Go on, get a move on,” he said, “let’s get inside.”

  The second man in front of Banister disappeared. Banister made himself go on, then saw that there was a hole, like a doorway, in the rock. The hole led into a tunnel; at the end there was actually a door. The man behind Banister said: “Just push – where the handle is.”

  Banister pushed.

  Warm air swept out and about him, and he stepped inside a brightly lighted street.

  That was the odd thing; it was as if he had come out of doors, into the street of some city built of pale stone, in graceful lines. Here were houses; buildings; shops; and the light was like the light of day.

  “Straight on,” the man said. “You can take your hat off and loosen your coat, now.”

  Banister obeyed, and just walked on, dazed, bemused, but beginning to understand what had happened. There was a kind of city inside the mountains. City – town – village, what did it matter?

  Hallucination?

  Ted, still leading, turned a corner and entered a tunnel. Ahead was a door in a wall of rock; and beyond it steps, hewn out of the solid rock; and at the top of the stairs another door, which opened into a square room which might have been found in any large house.

  The man who had taken Rita away was there.

  So was Rita.

  “Hallo, Neil,” she said, “I’m glad you’ve come.”

  Her voice was quiet, and the words were simple. She smiled as she spoke, and took Banister’s hand. It was cold from the bleak air of the mountain outside, and hers were warm.

  “Let me help you off with your coat,” she said. “Then we’ll have something to eat. Would you like a drink?”

  “Er—please.”

  “Mix him a whisky-and-soda, Klim, will you?”

  Rita spoke to the man who had taken her away from Rotorua. He was talking to Ted; the other men hadn’t come in here.

  “All right, my dear.”

  Klim moved towards a cabinet at the side of the room. Ted followed him, talking, reporting what had happened, going into detail.

  “No, we weren’t followed . . .”

  Was he sure of that? He seemed sure; and if he were right, then Palfrey had failed. Was that surprising, Banister wo
ndered dully.

  Rita helped Banister off with his coat, and folded it over a chair. He sat down heavily. She would have gone down on her knees to pull the fur-lined boots off, if he had let her. He didn’t. He pulled them off himself, and she picked them up, took them to the door and put them just outside. When she came back, the man named Klim was handing Banister a whisky-and-soda, and saying: “One for you, Ted?”

  “Do you mind if I skip it?” Ted said. “I haven’t seen Lorna for a week!”

  “Off you go,” said Klim. “We’ll leave together, I want to have a look at the lower-level laboratory.” He glanced at Rita and Banister, smiled faintly, and added: “I’ll be about twenty minutes, Rita – don’t let him run away!”

  He chuckled, Rita smiled, Ted grinned.

  The two men went out; the door closed. Banister saw it swinging to and fro, before it settled and stood still. He finished his whisky-and-soda.

  He was wearing the clothes he had worn in Auckland’s summer, and they were warm enough. Rita wore a linen dress of wine red, trimmed with white. Her eyes had the brown beauty that meant so much to him, and her hair was a mass of rippling black. The dress clung to her figure.

  “Like another?” she asked.

  “No—thanks.”

  She took cigarettes from a small table, and lit one for him, then put it between his lips; there was a mark of the red of her lipstick on it. He looked round the room. It had a low ceiling, in spite of the warmth the air was very clear. The furniture was light – light-coloured pine or larch or birch, he thought, rather like Dutch or Swiss furniture; as mountain chalets might be furnished. The floor was of some kind of composition, made to look like parquet flooring; but he could tell that it was imitation. There were a few skin rugs, the largest of a huge black bear, its back towards Banister.

  Rita drew up a chair.

  “The surprise will wear off,” she said.

  “Where are we?”

  “You can’t really expect me to tell you that, yet! I think Klim will, as soon as he feels sure that you won’t want to go back and join Palfrey and his well-meaning helpers. But don’t think about Palfrey or the outside world yet. You must be tired.”

  “I’ve been worse.”

  “You’ll be much better! I don’t know why it is,” Rita said, shaking her hair back from her face, “but up here we always feel much less tense. Nothing is so desperate as it seems down at sea-level. I suppose it’s something in the air. And the height gives a sense of—” her eyes danced—”supremacy.”

  “I see,” Banister said.

  “On some days, when we can go out, it’s magnificent,” Rita told him. “Until you’ve lived here, you’ve never known what winter sports are really like. You’ll find out, before long, I think the weather’s soon going to break.”

  Banister didn’t speak.

  “I’m not going to worry you with too much argument for a start,” went on Rita, “but I have to say this again, Neil – I hope you will decide to join us. I’m sure that we’re right. Klim will tell you more about what we’re doing, later on. I’d like to tell you about this place, High Peak.”

  “High Peak,” Banister echoed, because she seemed to expect it of him.

  “Yes, that’s what we call it. There are seven thousand people here, men and women and children. It’s a perfect city. We have no sickness, no ill-health, no social problems. Food is grown in artificial soil, without difficulty. Black, white and yellow people live here in perfect amity. Everyone has enough to eat and drink, has sufficient comfort. There are films – from the world outside, of course, with all its incredible folly – and we have our own amateur dramatics, our own Literary Societies, everything. I really mean that. Everything.”

  Banister looked his scepticism.

  She smiled.

  “All right, wait a minute.” She leaned forward to a television set, and pressed a button; it began to hum, but no light appeared. “Everything is a long way ahead of yours, up here,” she said. “What you think might come in the future, we have as a commonplace today.” The screen began to glow, then a face appeared; a face of a Chinese girl. “Oh, Yun Lin,” said Rita, “ask Klim if I can take Neil round the community, will you?”

  The Chinese girl smiled.

  “Yes, Miss Rita, one moment.”

  Her face disappeared; the screen still glowed. Banister looked at it, as if he could not believe his eyes; and he could not. He saw Rita’s smile – and the beauty of it, the lovely lines of her lips, meant nothing for the moment. He couldn’t think beyond a kind of awed wonder.

  The Chinese girl came back.

  “Yes, that will be all right, but Klim says please be back by five o’clock.”

  “I will—thanks, Yun Lin.” Rita switched off, tossed back her hair again, and said: “That gives us an hour. Or would you rather have a rest?”

  He stood up, slowly.

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “I thought you would,” she said.

  She slid her arm through his, and they walked out together, pushing the door, which swung to behind them.

  During the next hour, Banister found that no doors locked; not even in the houses, between room and room. Somehow, that registered in his mind as remarkable, even among this city of fantastic wonder.

  Rita led him, always with a hand on his arm, down the steps and into the streets; and they were streets. It was as if some giant system of caves had been turned into a modern city in the mountains. Rita told him a little – of the engineers who had perfected the system of ventilation; who had created artificial light so that it was like daylight all the time – it would fade with the day outside, she said, and the city would be lit by different lamps. Air-conditioning was adjustable, too; it was cooler at night than during the day.

  Banister listened, marvelling.

  There were shops where most things one would buy in the “outside” world were on show; windows were attractively dressed, too. He saw people, young and middle-aged, go in and come out, carrying whatever they wanted.

  He could not really believe all this.

  He saw two children probably about ten, go into a sweetshop, and caught a glimpse of them helping themselves. They came out, without paying.

  He said in a dry voice: “So you have done away with thieving.”

  Rita laughed.

  “You can’t steal your own goods! This really is community life, Neil. We have no money, no currency or coinage. What there is, all can have. No one has too much, because it wouldn’t be fair. Now and again individuals have tried to get more than their share, but they didn’t try for long.”

  “So you’ve a prison.”

  He wanted to hurt her, wanted to spoil the picture that she was drawing for him, but she seemed impervious to sarcasm; if in fact she noticed it.

  “We haven’t, as a matter of fact. A man did start taking too much, a month ago. We just had a meeting of his district or commune, the facts were stated, he was told not to do it again. He didn’t! Somehow, one doesn’t. I know it takes an awful lot to believe, but we’re creating a perfect society. The kind of society the Christians and some humanists have believed in but practical men like Palfrey have always thought impossible. He does think that, you know.”

  Banister said stiffly: “Does he?”

  “He may not say he does, but he can’t really believe in perfection, like this. I didn’t, until I experienced it. Yet I’m sorry that we clashed with him,” Rita went on. “I like Palfrey, and he has quite a personality. We could use him here.”

  Banister said dryly: “I’ve no doubt you could,” and suddenly found that he felt better.

  “We may get him, yet,” Rita said. “That’s up to you.”

  She walked on . . .

  People with white faces, black faces and yellow faces moved a
bout the streets, went in and out of the shops, to three cinemas, the schools, the lecture halls, the workshops, factories and the private houses. They were all dressed very simply, the men with shirts and shorts, khaki, cream or white, and the women in simple dresses but of no uniform colour. Red, yellow and green were most popular. The common factor which Banister saw himself, and which Rita carefully avoided mentioning, was the glow of health which shone in the eyes and on the faces of all the people. They walked with a great confidence; like members of a master race. Even the children.

  There were crèches . . .

  “One crèche for every fifty families,” Rita explained. “We find that the family is the best unit, after all, although we have very simple divorce laws. Oddly enough, they’re seldom exercised, people who are happy and content don’t want to leave their partners. That’s if they have something to do to keep them busy! We’ve none of the usual stresses of daily life. The children are put into the nurseries and later in nursery school, the parents have them home when they want them. Every adult has to work at least six hours a day.”

  She went on and on . . .

  Banister found himself reeling under the impact of the things he saw; felt a new kind of horror.

  This could not be real, but some dreadful nightmare, an awful illusion, a mirage which would surely fade. Here was a picture of perfection, a mockery of perfection, made by people who could kill without compunction.

  Forget that!

  When he remembered their readiness to kill, it clothed them and this dream-world in reality. It couldn’t be real. They must have doped him. The voluptuous illusions of hashish, marihuana or opium must be conjuring up these mind pictures. Black, white and yellow didn’t live together in perfect amity anywhere in the world. Black, white and yellow children, olive-skinned children . . .

  “And of course, mixed marriages are common,” Rita said. “They’re more common than marriages between people of the same colour here. The result is a kind of coffee-coloured race. Klim says that the future—”

  A child came running out of a shop.

  “Oh, Miss Rita!”

  “Yes, Rose?”

  “Klim wants you,” said the child, “he’s just asked for you on the video screen.”