Avengers

by Brian Lumley

  “You are very understanding,” said Turchin.

  “One last thing,” said Trask. “Go where you like in the HQ, except where you shouldn’t go. It’s not that I don’t trust you, but the place is full of alarms.”

  “I shall go nowhere that I am not invited,” said the other.

  As Trask and Garvey returned along the corridor towards the Duty Officer’s room, Garvey asked, “Do you really trust him?”

  “You’re the telepath,” Trask answered, “what did you sense? Me, I couldn’t detect a single untruth in anything he said. The man’s as happy as can be to be avoiding all that deep political shit back home.”

  “Actually, he was thinking how much he owes you,” said Garvey. “But he was also wondering how much he can trust you!”

  “In his shoes,” said Trask, “I’d be doing the same thing.”

  The elevator monitor showed an ascending cage; the rest of the team members had arrived. But suddenly Trask felt too tired for briefs, debriefs, or almost anything else. In the wee small hours of the morning, what good would it do anyway?

  “I’ll want an ‘O’ Group at eight A.M.,” he quickly said, as Garvey made to enter the Duty Office. “Make sure they all know, will you?” And then, on second thought: “Better make that nine. What’s an extra hour, anyway?”

  “You’ve got it,” said Garvey.

  And before the elevator could stop and its doors hiss open, Trask put on a little speed and made it to his own room. Inside, he was about to switch the light on when Millie said, “We don’t need it. Why don’t you take a shower, freshen up, and then come to bed while I’m still awake? But better hurry, because I can’t promise I’ll stay awake too long!” She was already in his bed.

  He showered, then called Paul Garvey and said, “If anything happens before morning…let it!”

  “You’ve got it,” said Garvey again.

  Indeed I have, thought Trask, getting into bed and Millie’s loving arms.

  She was still very much awake. And oddly enough, Trask discovered he wasn’t all that tired, either. Not yet…

  “Don’t you ever sleep?” Trask asked the Minister Responsible at 8:30.

  “This morning, for about an hour,” said the other, gruffly. “What are you complaining about? I’ve allowed you as much time as I could.”

  “Oh? In preparation for what?”

  “I’ll need you and your people ASAP.”

  “Specifically?”

  “A telepath, and a locator. And, trying to think ahead—”

  “The precog?” Trask was awake now, and making a poor job of getting dressed while cradling the phone between his cheek and his shoulder.

  “Well, it wouldn’t hurt to know what we’re in for.”

  “Wouldn’t hurt me, either!” said Trask. “So what’s happening?” (He believed he already knew, while hoping he didn’t.)

  “Some of our sleepers are starting to wake up,” the Minister answered. “They look more or less normal, a bit pale—and they still don’t much like daylight—but other than that…”

  “Garlic?” said Trask, as Millie came out of the shower and stood looking at and “listening” to him.

  “And silver,” said the Minister. “We’ve tried both, with no positive reaction as yet.”

  Trask breathed a sigh of relief. “So what you’re asking for is—what? Confirmation that these are just people and we were barking up the wrong malady? Or do you think we should start looking for mindsmog? Yes, I can see that. It would explain why you want a locator.”

  “And now that our specimens are waking up, it might also be a good thing to know what they’re thinking,” said the Minister. “And to know if they’re answering our questions truthfully.”

  Trask nodded. “Which involves me and my telepaths,” he said. “Okay, but I have an ‘O’ Group in twenty minutes.”

  “Fine,” said the Minister, “but I’d advise you to make it a quick one. There’ll be a chopper on your roof in an hour’s time with seats for five. I’d suggest your Mr. Goodly, Mr. Chung, yourself, and a telepath of your choice.”

  “Me!” Millie’s sweet mouth silently framed the single word, while she continued towelling her hair.

  “Where will we be going?” said Trask.

  “Bleakstone, in Surrey.”

  “What, a prison for madmen? Psychotic murderers, arsonists, rapists, and lots of other very irresponsible citizens? Is that where you’ve put the sleepers?”

  “Where better?” said the Minister. “I told you they were in isolation. They have a wing to themselves, where they’re in the care of a very specialized staff.”

  “See you on the roof,” said Trask, and put the phone down.

  “Me!” said Millie again, out loud now and determinedly.

  And Trask couldn’t see any reason to deny her. It wasn’t as if there’d be any real danger, not this time. Except: “There’ll be some pretty sick thoughts floating around in that place,” he warned her.

  “Oh, really?” Millie answered, as she began to get dressed. “Well, it’s very obvious you’re no telepath, Ben Trask. I mean, if you really want to know sick, why don’t you come with me on a walk through the city sometime.”

  “But I mean sick sick,” said Trask.

  “Yes,” said Millie, “and so do I. It’s not the ones on the inside that I’ve ever felt concerned about. Not until now, anyway…”

  Bleakstone was on the South Downs not far from Arundel. A relatively new institution, the medical authorities had weathered a storm of protest during its planning and building. But that had been nine years ago, and in the interim Bleakstone had earned a reputation as a second Alcatraz. Not one inmate had ever broken out.

  “We’re landing half a mile away, near the road into Petersfield,” said the Minister, as their helicopter passed high over the grim grey prison walls. “Closer than that, we might disturb the delicate equilibrium of the place. The last thing I want is to excite its regular inmates.”

  “There are some really twisted types in this place, right?” said Trask, looking down on the fortresslike complex with its towers, exercise yards, and frequently windowless cell blocks.

  “The worst,” said the Minister. “Down in the guts of Bleakstone, literally underground, that’s where they keep the truly menacing ones. They feed them, keep them as clean as possible, sedate them when they’re not behaving, and watch over them for the rest of their lives until they die naturally. That’s about all they can do. But frankly—having read some of their case files—if it was up to me I’d speed that latter process up a little.”

  “You’d take out the ‘dying naturally’ clause,” said Millie a little coldly, causing the Minister to glance at her. And:

  “I fully understand why you would find that objectionable,” he told her, “and ordinarily I would agree that it’s a drastic solution. Please don’t think I’m some kind of heartless brute, Miss Cleary, but consider yourself fortunate that you haven’t read those case files…”

  They were picked up on the road to Petersfield by a uniformed prison guard in a vehicle that looked like an ambulance on the outside and a reinforced cage on the inside, and driven a half-mile farther out into the countryside and down a private track to Bleakstone Prison. One hundred and fifty yards from its entrance they passed through tall electrified gates and a barrier operated from a security post, where on both sides of the road triple-coiled razor wire stretched off into the distance following the contours of the land. By which time the general mood was ominous in keeping with the gaunt aspect of the high walls that loomed ahead.

  “How about it?” Trask asked Chung, as massive steel doors opened inwards, allowing them access.

  But the locator could only shake his head. “There are too many distractions,” he said. “I mean, this place was frightening enough from the outside! And there’s lots of steel in here and a hell of a lot more concrete. I’m thinking about how grim it is instead of concentrating on what it might contain. Maybe when we a
ctually get to see our suspects…?”

  “And you?” Trask looked at Goodly as the vehicle came to a halt.

  The precog was as cadaverous, pale, and sunken-eyed as the stylized undertaker he always seemed to epitomize. “There is a very definite…atmosphere here,” he said. “But it’s as David says: it conjures up pictures of its own, so that I can’t even be sure my talent is involved. I see pain—a lot of it—but I’m not sure that the pain I feel isn’t mine.”

  “Yours?” said Trask, as the driver opened up the back door of the van to let them out. “You mean you’re hurting?”

  “It could be just the atmosphere,” said the precog. “I mean the ‘now’ atmosphere. Or it could be tomorrow’s pain or the day after that…or any future time. I can’t say if it’s significant.”

  “In this place,” said their driver, who could have no idea what Goodly was talking about, “everyone hurts sooner or later. And if you work here it’s sooner. You need eyes in the back of your head—which wreaks havoc with your bleedin’ nerves! But if you’ll accompany me, gentlemen, the doctors should be waiting for you.”

  He led the way from the exercise yard through an arched entrance with the legend “West Wing” carved into its keystone, down a long, clinically tiled and antiseptic-smelling corridor that reminded Trask of nothing so much as a recently disinfected toilet in London’s mainly defunct underground rail system, past several security doors to a junction of passageways lined with various offices, laboratories, surgeries, and storerooms. Here, at least, the place was starting to look more like a conventional hospital.

  Finally they were shown into a room under a sign that said simply PSY, and Millie murmured, “Now if that was PSI, I think I might feel a lot more at home.”

  Two men in casual clothing, presumably psychiatric specialists, were seated in swivel chairs before a reinforced observation window or one-way viewscreen. As their visitors filed into the room one of them quickly rose, put a finger to his lips, and cautioned them, “Be reasonably quiet, if you will. Despite that these rooms are soundproof, the patients sometimes sense vibrations.”

  “Vibrations?” Trask glanced at Millie, thinking, Perhaps it should be PSI after all!

  “Or someone can’t spell very well,” she answered, “and that sign should read PSYLENCE!”

  “Pardon?” said the man on his feet, looking from one to the other enquiringly.

  “I do apologize,” said Trask. “But…vibrations?”

  “Ah!” said the other. “I meant in the floor. When there are a number of people in this room, they sometimes feel vibrations in the floor. The patients, that is.” He indicated the screen.

  Then, while Trask’s team moved carefully toward the screen, the Minister Responsible produced a governmental ID card, which served as his introduction, and indicating Trask said, “My good friend and his team here are experts—or the closest thing we have to experts—in the recognition of this, er, malady.” And he quickly added, “Always assuming, that is, that your patients are indeed carriers.”

  Hearing what he had said, Trask was appreciative. He didn’t want his or his agents’ names bandied about in public. The anonymity of the Branch was everything, and if or when things broke (God forbid) he didn’t want to be quoted as any kind of source. So now he and his espers were simply “experts.”

  He turned to the doctor, who had introduced himself as Doctor Burton, offered his hand, and said, “I take it that you and your staff—that is, Bleakstone’s staff—in general—have been fully briefed in this matter? I don’t want to sound overbearing or come off like some kind of witch-finder, but if this is what we think it might be, then I honestly can’t put enough emphasis on the potential dangers you’re facing here.”

  Doctor Burton was tall, young, and good-looking, with a wide forehead and intelligent blue eyes. Now as he took Trask’s hand and shook it, his forehead wrinkled up and he said, “We’ve been briefed, yes. But I have to tell you, sir, that what we’ve been told sounds more like the mouthings of some of our inmates than the legitimate—”

  “I know!” Trask cut him short. “I know just exactly what you mean. And that is the greatest danger of all: that you find it too incredible. Has anyone given it a name?”

  “Not up front,” said the other. “But we aren’t simpletons. The alleged symptoms and method of transmission speak for themselves. You do understand that I’m a doctor of psychiatry? Yes, I see that you do. Well, this isn’t the first time I’ve met up with vampires—neither myself nor my colleague here—but on those occasions they came to us looking for help. They weren’t brought to our attention by…well, by ‘experts.’”

  “And of course they were only sick people,” said Trask.

  “Sick in their heads, yes.” Doctor Burton nodded.

  “And do I look sick in my head?” said Trask. “Do my people? Does the Minister here?”

  “No, of course not, not at all!”

  “Then please take my word for it,” Trask nodded, “and treat these patients of yours with extreme care—at least until we’ve found a way to clear them. Or not.”

  The second psychiatrist, small, thin, and fragile-looking, was on his feet now. Introducing himself as Jeoffrey Porter and offering his chair to Millie, he stood with his colleague at the back of the group while Trask sat beside Millie, with Chung and Goodly on their flanks. The Minister Responsible hovered to one side. Keeping silent, he left the rest of it to his “experts.”

  Now it was Millie’s turn, but Trask knew he didn’t need to say so. Like a waft of sweet air she was in his mind, something he would never have noticed except he had come to recognize the feel of her, but in the next moment the sensation passed as she left him to go probing elsewhere. And:

  “He’s not thinking anything very much,” she said. “But what thoughts there are seem a little frightened, also angry…and…concentrated? I believe it’s mainly anger and frustration.”

  But Trask wanted to know: “Concentrated as in ‘forced,’ as in ‘deliberate’? Frustrated as in ‘trapped’? What do you reckon?”

  She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. “You mean, is he trying to throw us off the track? But if he doesn’t know we’re here I don’t see how he can be. Anyway, doesn’t that presuppose a certain talent?” She meant telepathy.

  Trask frowned. “This early in his development…it seems unlikely.” He shook his head.

  The “he” they were talking about was a youth seated in one of two easy chairs in the room on the other side of the screen. The room wasn’t much larger than a cell and sparsely furnished. Between the chairs stood a small round table with an ashtray, a packet of Marlboro cigarettes and a box of matches, plus a cake stand decked with cheese biscuits and a small selection of hors d’oeuvres, mainly small sausages and cubes of cheese on miniature skewers. In one corner a door stood open, displaying a wash basin and toilet, while the actual door to the cell was closed and fitted with a small barred window. Despite that the furniture wasn’t screwed down or in any way secured, the windowless walls were padded.

  “The mirror must be a dead giveaway,” Trask murmured to no one in particular. And Doctor Burton—who was still trying to work out what Trask and Millie’s brief, very cryptic conversation had been about—answered:

  “It isn’t a mirror but a pastoral scene. Very tranquil. As for the furnishings: they rather depend upon whom we’re observing. And since there is no real evidence of aggression in these sleepers…” He let it taper off, then added: “Oh, and in order to comply with our briefing, the ashtray is of silver and those hors d’oeuvres contain plenty of garlic.”

  “Good,” said Trask. “But the lighting is artificial.”

  “True,” said the other, “but since the day is overcast…there was nothing we could do about that. And anyway, we think it likely that this photophobia is a natural part of the awakening. No one is partial to a bright light shining in his eyes the moment he wakes up. It could well be a symptom of the real disease—I mean,
in the event your suspicions are erroneous.”

  Trask said nothing but thought, They don’t believe.

  And Millie murmured, “Who can blame them?”

  The youth in the room was fidgeting a little, looking this way and that. His expression was trapped, bewildered, annoyed; angry, as Millie had said. Maybe eighteen years of age, he was dressed in casual, mismatched clothing and badly scuffed shoes. He was pimply and spike-haired, with an unevenly cropped beard that gave him a goatish look.

  “Where did we find him?” Trask wanted to know.

  “He was one of these so-called aggressive beggars on one of London’s mainline stations,” Doctor Burton answered. “We’ve had him for three days now, but he’s only recently awake. He’s been in this observation room for about half an hour…which probably explains his fidgeting.”

  “Has he eaten?” said Trask. Synchronicity, because even as he spoke the youth took up a skewer, clenched his uneven teeth on a sausage and piece of cheese, and commenced chewing.

  Now Trask’s agents leaned forward, intent on watching what would next occur…which was nothing. The youth finished off the skewer and took up another.

  And Doctor Burton sighed heavily, saying, “Ah, well. And so much for that theory!” It wasn’t hard to detect a heavy note of sarcasm in his voice.

  Hiding his annoyance on the one hand but sighing his relief on the other, Trask said, “How many sleepers do you have here?”

  “Sixteen in all,” said the doctor. “But so far only four of them have woken up.” And then, as the door with the barred window began to open: “Here comes another right now. We desired to see how they would interact, so we chose two entirely different types or classes. Perhaps this will be more interesting. And we know for sure that this one is a smoker. He’s also a lawyer, by the way, and he’s been threatening lawsuits since the moment he woke up!”

  10

  Messing with the Mechanisms