Avengers

by Brian Lumley

  “I think I can see that,” said Liz. “On an island of mutant three-legged people, the biped who gets shipwrecked will be the freak. It’s a weird, morbid thought: that the longer we survive the more likely it is we’ll become freaks, monsters. From their point of view, I mean.”

  “Too morbid,” said Trask. “Not to mention unworkable. Where the Wamphyri are concerned there’ll never be a last human, just as there can never be a last cow or chicken for us. And anyway, I was asking for ideas, advice…not for a bloody death-knell on the human race!”

  “Advice I can’t give you,” said Millie. “An opinion, well, perhaps.”

  “Go ahead,” said Trask.

  “You were right. Malinari and the others, they’re deliberately leaving a trail for us to follow. Maybe that’s the idea, to pick us off one by one while they still have the chance and before the whole world finds out about them. For after all, we are the greatest threat they’ve had to face, the only ones who know all about them, the ones who know how to deal with them.”

  “No one knows all about them,” said Lardis. “Not even me.” He wasn’t boasting or putting Millie down, just stating a fact. “I’ve fought them all my days and I still don’t know all about them. But I do understand what you’re saying. If they get rid of E-Branch, that’s half their battle won.”

  “Personally,” said Liz, “I think it’s high time our Minister Responsible became responsible and told the Powers-That-Be—his superiors—exactly what we’re up against. And that then his superiors should tell the entire world, shout it loud from every radio and television screen. Because if Ian is right and it is a no-win situation, then the sooner everyone knows about it the better. Myself, I’d rather have gangs of wandering vigilante peasants armed with flaring torches, bunches of garlic, sharpened stakes, and silver bullets—even with all the mistakes they would make, all the Dark Ages witch hunts—than see these monsters gradually, secretly, insidiously gaining ground in our world.”

  “I hear what you’re saying,” said Trask, “and I won’t deny you your opinion. But you’ve hit the nail right on the head. A new Dark Ages, yes: that’s where we could end up—and quickly—if we did start shouting it to the rooftops. But okay, we’ll accept that we’re being lured and that they’re beckoning us on into some kind of trap. Next question: what are we going to do about it?”

  “Call Jake in on it,” said Liz at once. “It’s too much for us alone, but with the Necroscope on the case—”

  “—With Jake on the case,” Trask broke in on her, “they’d have the advantage of knowing where we were, certainly of knowing where he was, almost all the time. Jake’s psychic signature has to be the most powerful source of metaphysical radiation in the whole world. Surely you’ve heard how David Chung describes Jake? Like standing beside a psychic dynamo?”

  “But Jake also has those incredible shields,” Liz answered.

  “That’s not good enough,” said Trask, “for we know how that works, too: if we can’t find mindsmog, we look for its absence. In Vavara’s case, we target the place that seems to be the most serene. When Jake puts the brakes on his aura, I’m betting Nephran Malinari can smell his tyres burning on the far side of the moon! But—” he went on, before Liz could continue arguing her point, “—that’s not to say I disagree. Simply that I’ve tried to keep him out of it until the very last moment.”

  “But not until our very last moment, surely?” said Ian Goodly. “I’m concerned that the few warnings I’ve had in the recent past—the few forecasts I’ve been able to make, including last night’s—have been too short-term. In Australia, when we were on that monorail, I got the warning with seconds to spare. Last night, it was the same story: I saw Bernie Fletcher’s funeral pyre even as they were setting it. It’s like I’m catching up on the future! And the next time…what if I’m too late? What if it is already happening, and happening to us?”

  Trask nodded and said, “Very well, I’ll accept the majority vote. As of now—at the first sign of trouble—Liz will call Jake in on it.” He looked back at her. “In fact, it’s probably a good idea if you can contact him the next time we take a break. We still have to weapon up, and I have this feeling that things will start happening sooner rather than later. So while I won’t ask him to join us just yet, we can let him deliver our weapons, alert him to the situation, and request that he maintain regular contact with you—say, on an hourly basis?”

  The relief Liz felt was clearly audible in her voice as she answered, “Okay, as soon as we take a break I’ll try to contact him.”

  Then, when the team fell silent for a while, there was only the throaty throb of the minibus’s engine, and the muted, electronic beep, beep, beep of Paul Garvey’s fingers on the keys of the decoder. And finally, when they reached a decent stretch of road where the minibus stopped swaying and bumping, both sounds settled into a more regular pattern, and the miles and the code commenced a rapid unwinding.

  And the local time in Bulgaria was 11:45 A.M.—

  —But the local time in England was two hours earlier when Jake Cutter came starting awake from horrific nightmares!

  Now what the hell…? he wondered, his heart hammering, and sweat sticking the bedsheets to his body. Where am I? Who am I? What the fuck am I?

  Then, gradually, reality took over and he settled back down onto his pillows, his dreams receding, his breathing regulating itself. But those dreams!

  Jake jerked back up into a sitting position, and aware that there were things he should remember, he tried desperately hard to focus on what he’d seen, felt, experienced while sleeping.

  But no use, for most of it was gone, erased from memory in that part of his mind where dreams are born and die, and where they’re ground down again and become grist for future dreaming. And the only things he remembered were the fearful whispers of the Great Majority, and a conversation with a faint, ever more distant and indistinct Harry Keogh…out of which the single fragment that stuck in his mind was this:

  I never stopped fighting it. It was my stubborn attitude, I suppose. But in my time the threat was scarcely of these proportions…I thought that I had done all there was to do, only to discover that the fight would continue in another world. As for my world, your Earth—it seemed to me a clean and decent place when I left it, unlike now. So your fight will be twofold. Remember this, Jake: it takes a thief to catch a thief. And if you can’t fight them on your terms, then…fight…them…on…

  But that was all.

  As for the source of the horror in the dream, its night marish aspect: that had lain in the morbid whispers of the teeming dead, in what they’d been more than hinting. But while Jake had known what inspired his horror as he was dreaming it (if it was a dream), that knowledge, too, had now passed into limbo.

  Mere seconds had passed since Jake sprang awake. Now once again, the tentative knock came at his door (no, at the door of Harry’s Room) reminding him of what had awakened him. Obviously, he should answer it, but instead he wished whoever it was would go away; he or they were interfering with his train of thought, and his vague and fleeting memories of the dream were fleeting that much faster…and were gone.

  A nightmare, that’s all it had been.

  “Come in,” Jake called out, only to discover that his mouth and throat were as dry as dust, which caused him to croak inaudibly. Clearing his throat he tried again, at the same time casting his mind back to last night:

  Returning via the Möbius Continuum from Paris, he had found the bed in Harry’s Room made up for sleeping, probably by Jimmy Harvey, the tech standing in for John Grieve. And propping himself up on the pillows, Jake had carried on reading through the remaining handful of Keogh files. That, at least, had been his intention. But his meal had made him drowsy; indeed, in combination with his reading, it seemed to have made him inordinately weary, and the last thing he remembered was checking his wristwatch and noting that the time was just after eight.

  So what was the time now?

  An
d as Gustav Turchin and John Grieve entered the room, he checked his watch again…then gave it a shake!

  “It’s nine-thirty A.M.,” Grieve corroborated the time shown on Jake’s watch. “When I looked in earlier you were dead to the world, but since there was nothing that couldn’t wait I let you sleep. Now, however, it’s time you were up and mobile. A bit of bumf has come in during the night which you should see, and the Premier here has asked to speak to you.”

  “Bumf?” Jake mumbled, trying to get it together. “Premier?”

  “Gustav Turchin,” said that one, holding out a hand as Jake threw the bedclothes aside and stood up a little unsteadily. “I much prefer informal meetings, but if you’re not yet awake—”

  “Coffee,” Jake groaned, taking Turchin’s hand and giving it a feeble shake. “I’m low on caffeine, that’s all. I never could get it together until the coffee’s done its work.”

  “They may still be serving late breakfast downstairs,” said Grieve. “I can tell them you’re on your way down, give you time to tidy up and throw some water in your face.”

  “Please do,” said Jake, excusing himself and going into the bathroom.

  When he came out Grieve was on his own. “Turchin went down to the hotel restaurant,” he said. “He’s waiting for you.”

  “Okay,” said Jake. “I’ll see him there. And thanks for getting me up. I must have really knocked myself out! All of that reading, I suppose.”

  Frowning, Grieve looked at him more closely. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Caffeine deficiency,” Jake tried to grin. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Very well,” said Grieve. “But just be careful what you say to Turchin. He’s been nosing around quite a bit—I’ve already caught him in one or two places where he shouldn’t have been—and he hasn’t held on to his job in Moscow all these years without knowing one or two tricks.”

  “So why should I talk to him at all?” said Jake.

  “Simple courtesy,” Grieve answered. “Ben Trask’s the only one around here who really knows him, so while Ben’s away Turchin is more or less on his own. Also, I know that Turchin and Ben are working on something together, so I suppose we have to trust him that far at least.”

  “And the bumf you mentioned?”

  “It can wait till you’ve had breakfast. Nothing you can do about it anyway.”

  “It’s nothing important, then?”

  “I didn’t say that,” said Grieve. “But at least it doesn’t change anything. Not right now, anyway.”

  And Jake said, “Okay, I’ll come see you after breakfast.”

  “I ordered for you,” Turchin told Jake a few minutes later, as he sat down opposite the Russian in an alcove exclusive to the Branch.

  “What did you order?”

  “Ham, eggs, and hash browns. Oh, and a pot of coffee, naturally.”

  “Nothing natural about it,” said Jake, smiling despite his sudden headache. “It’s an addiction!”

  “We all have them,” Turchin shrugged. “With me it’s politics. Ever since I was a boy.”

  “Here in the West,” said Jake, “we sort of look on Russian politics as something of a bloodbath.”

  “Communism’s aftermath,” said Turchin. “A defunct ideology, thank God! And a pointless one, because it’s obvious there will always be those who want to be more equal. But…it still has its adherents. And that’s one of the reasons why I’m here.”

  “Here at this table?” Jake didn’t think so.

  “Here in England. Here with E-Branch.”

  “You have a problem with some less than democratic politicians back home, right?”

  “You’re quick to catch on,” the Premier nodded. “Except it isn’t just me but the world.”

  “Which sounds pretty similar to our problem,” said Jake.

  “I know about your problem,” said Turchin, leaning forward a little. “And yours and mine—disparate though they may seem—pretty soon they’re going to come together…” Then, as their food arrived, he fell silent. But between mouthfuls:

  “Why are you telling me…whatever it is that you’re telling me?” said Jake.

  “Because you’re the Necroscope,” said Turchin at once. “And because you’ll be helping me—us, E-Branch, the world, if you insist, which you should and rightly so—to put things back in order.”

  Jake swallowed what was in his mouth, pulled a face, gulped some coffee down, and sat back. “Necroscope?”

  “Oh, come, come!” said Turchin. “What am I, a child? I have met and talked with Nathan Kiklu, who Trask calls Keogh, son of the original Necroscope. And every time that I’ve passed you in the corridor, or seen you in the distance, I’ve felt that I was seeing him again. No, you’re not him—not anything like him—but the feeling persists. With Liz Merrick, Millicent Cleary, or John Grieve, I know I’m in the company of telepaths. The bloom under their eyes gives them away. And you—”

  “—What gives me away?” said Jake.

  “You do,” Turchin told him. “You have that quality. Not the bloom under your eyes, no, for that’s lack of sleep, or perhaps too much? But it’s in your eyes, certainly. You’ve seen strange things, Jake Cutter. And the things you can do…are stranger still.”

  Jake shook his head. “I’m not buying that. I look at myself and I see a man, just a man. Surely I can’t look all that different to you?”

  “But you haven’t denied it,” said Turchin. And: “Very well, let me tell you. Last night I went to your room to talk to you. You were out but the door was open.”

  Jake nodded. “I forgot to lock it.”

  “I understand,” said Turchin. “Doors are something you must forget about quite often—considering you don’t need them. But let me go on. I knocked, entered, saw the files. Don’t worry, I didn’t read them. But I did see what they were, and I also know that E-Branch has a fledgling Necroscope. So, I left your room, occupied my time with this and that, and waited on your return. When you didn’t come back I thought to reenter your room—er, perhaps to glance, but just a glance, you understand—at those files. Ah! But there you were on the bed, fully clothed just as I see you now, and fast asleep. Well, I did not want to disturb you. But I am not without powers of reason, Jake, and since you had left Harry’s Room and returned to it without using the door…two and two made four. You had to be Ben Trask’s new Necroscope.”

  Jake nodded and said, “He calls you an old fox.”

  Turchin shrugged and offered a half-smile. “But any fox who has even managed to grow old would have to be a very wise creature, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “I suppose so,” Jake answered. “He would have had to kill a whole lot of chickens along the way, too.”

  Again Turchin’s shrug, as he finished his food. “Well, such is politics. But…are you done eating?”

  Jake pushed his plate away. “It’s tasteless,” he said, with a grimace. “Maybe I ate too well last night—in Paris.”

  “In Paris?” For a moment Turchin didn’t get it, but then he did and his jaw fell open. “In Paris! Ah! Then I am right!”

  “Steak tartare,” said Jake. “Damn, it was good!”

  “Jake, please listen,” said Turchin urgently, as the Necroscope refilled his coffee cup. “We must talk, and seriously.”

  “I’m listening,” said Jake. And Turchin repeated his story, the one he’d told Trask only two days ago. “So the problem is,” he finished off, “that while I now have the means to close down the Perchorsk Gate forever under millions of tons of rock, I do not have a means of delivering the weapon. Trask knows all of this—he knows the time restriction, too—and I am sure that by now he would have requested your help in this matter if his mind was not concentrated on the evil that already exists. But he’s reluctant to tie my problems in with his own and fails to see the benefit of killing two birds with one stone, er, as it were. He would prefer to seal Perchorsk in his own time, which is all very well but it still leaves me on the hook.”

&
nbsp; “Two birds with one stone?” said Jake. “But I thought there were three of these enemies of yours—three political, or ex-military types—who are standing in your way?”

  Turchin shook his head in anxious frustration. “But they’re only in my way in the sense that they’ll put Russia back thirty years, and likewise détente. And in your way in that the Perchorsk Gate will remain open, and others will find out about it.”

  “I still don’t see it,” said Jake. “If they go through that Gate that’s them gone—there’s no way back. They’ll no longer be of any concern, no longer a threat to you.”

  “That’s only if they all go through together,” Turchin answered. “And what if they take that entire criminal element that is now controlling Perchorsk through with them? And all of them armed to the teeth? What then for Nathan Kiklu’s people and his vampire world? Yes, these people would have to stay there—and they’d probably rule there, too!”

  “I need to think it over,” said Jake. “And in any case I’ll need Trask’s go-ahead.”

  “Which could take forever!” The Premier threw up his hands. “And time is short, and we need to prepare—I mean, you need to prepare—and I have to prepare you!”

  “Prepare me?” Jake’s eyes had narrowed.

  Turchin nodded. “You need to know where the weapon is. And you need to know how to prime it. Do you know the layout of the Perchorsk complex? No? Then you need to know that, too, so that you can position the weapon to best effect. Myself, I see these things clearly, but Ben Trask…he sees only the need to revenge himself for what these invader creatures did to his wife!”

  Jake scowled and said, “Sophistry.”

  “Eh?” said Turchin, who didn’t know the word.

  Jake, on the other hand, knew it only too well, in connection with Korath-once-Mindsthrall. A word game. Fallacious reasoning. A plausible but deceptive fallacy. And a perfect example of: “The pot calling the kettle grimy-arse,” he said.

  “I don’t follow.” Turchin looked baffled.