“Good. Then I shall not tell you. You must know as little as possible. What is my name?”
“Oliver Anderson.”
“What am I?”
“A painter. You were injured in a hovercar crash.”
“You had better believe it,” he said intensely. “Because if you don’t, I shall beat you. What is my name?”
“Oliver Anderson.” Tears trickled down her face.
“I’m so hungry. Please may I have some food?”
“Say: please, Oliver, may I have something to eat?”
“Please, Oliver, may I have something to eat?”
“That’s better. Now lie back and rest for a minute or two.”
Presently he brought soup and milk and bread and cold meat. She ate greedily until he forced her to eat slowly.
9
DENZIL INGRAM WAS a solid extrovert, a pragmatist, a professional hunter. He was also highly intelligent and, as head of the Snatch Group in the Department of Internal Security, politically powerful. He had a P2 rating, which gave him—if he needed it—direct access to Sir Joseph Humboldt.
Because of a certain question asked in the House of Commons, he had taken personal control of the team assigned to tracing Vanessa Smith. He was now in the process of causing Dr. Lindemann to sweat profusely.
“You were personally responsible for the training, welfare and security of the girl?”
“Yes, sir.” There was no way Lindemann could wriggle out of that responsibility. It was all on paper.
“You clever boys make me sick,” observed Ingram coldly. “Here you are, running a classified factory farm for child paras, and all the security precautions you can develop are electrified fences, guards and dogs.”
“Security is not my responsibility.”
“But Vanessa Smith is. You should have known, Lindemann. Even allowing for your Ph.D., you should have known when the girl was going to run. An ordinary prison guard would have known. There’s a remoteness in the eyes, an air of evasiveness, a sense of detachment. It always adds up to escape.”
“I am not a prison guard,” retorted Dr. Lindemann. “I am a scientist.”
“Before this little jape is over,” said Ingram, “you may well be a reconditioned lavatory cleaner…Well, let us see how we stand now. You have now destroyed all records of the girl’s existence?”
“Yes.”
“You are sure?”
“Of course I’m sure—sir.”
“Good. Because, Lindemann, if there is anything on paper, micro-film or in computer storage that proves she existed, I, personally, will stamp on your balls. At the moment, we are on a no-win basis. Therefore we must play for a draw. If we could find her within the next twenty-four hours, and if she would say the right things, there is a clear win. But my nose tells me that we won’t get her in twenty-four hours and, even if we did, there would not be enough time to brainwash her for public display. Therefore we are left with negatives. We must ensure that the Opposition doesn’t find her before we do. And when we find her, we must quietly take her out.”
“Why has she become so important?” asked Lindemann. “She is highly gifted, but there are other highly gifted children. She is not irreplaceable.”
Ingram sighed. “Wrong again, college boy. She is not just Vanessa Smith. She is now a Parliamentary Question. Sir Joseph Humboldt does not like Parliamentary Questions where he cannot score… Now, let us quietly review progress. A farmer saw her stealing eggs. A chopper reported her heading south. What is your contribution?”
Dr. Lindemann pressed an intercom switch. “Send in Dugal, please.”
The door opened and Dugal Nemo came into the office. He looked very small. His face was pale, his eyes bloodshot.
Dr. Lindemann brought a chocolate bar out of a drawer in his desk. Denzil Ingram saw the look on the boy’s face and rolled his eyes upwards. “Put the chocolate away, Lindemann. It will make the boy vomit. Can’t you see he’s not one of your Pavlovian dogs?” He turned to Dugal.
“Now, laddie, what is your name?”
“Dugal Nemo, sir.”
“Do you like this place?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do they treat you well?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you like Vanessa?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Would you like her to come back? Would you like things to be as they were before she ran away?”
“Yes, sir. Very much. I love Vanessa and she loves me.”
“Well, laddie, then we can help each other. I want Vanessa back, too. I don’t love her like you do, you understand. But I think I might like her—when I get to know her. I want to meet her, you see. I want to understand what made her run away. If I can, I’ll put it right. That’s a promise. Now, what do you know?”
“Not very much, sir. Dr. Lindemann has asked me to do a lot of probing recently. It has made me very tired. I can’t seem to get the patterns right. Perhaps I will do better if I can have a good rest.”
Ingram shot a despairing glance at Lindemann then turned to Dugal once more. “I’m sorry about that, Dugal. Dr. Lindemann is going to let you have a good rest after we have talked. Now, what do you know?”
Dugal hesitated. “Please, sir, will Vanessa get into trouble?”
Ingram patted his head. “No, laddie. We won’t do anything to make her unhappy. We want to make sure she is safe and well, that’s all. You see, she is important to us as well as to you. So we are all on the same side.”
Dugal brightened. “I’m glad. Vanessa will be glad, too. I’ll send as soon as I can.”
“You know where she is, boy?”
“No, sir. But I know how she is. She is very hungry and very tired. I think she’s been ill. She doesn’t want to come back.”
“How do you know?”
“She told me.”
Dr. Lindemann opened his mouth and looked as if he were about to explode. Ingram withered him with a glance.
“She told you?”
“Yes, sir. It was very weak, but she did send. Since then I have only heard music blocks… But I tried once when she must have been sleeping. There was frightening shapes in her mind. Somebody else was there, too. I felt him. Very cold… I got scared and came out.”
Ingram, who understood little of telepathic processes, made the best of it he could. “You are sure there was someone else?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Can you describe him, tell us about him?”
Dugal smiled. “You can’t describe a probe, sir. It’s warm or it’s cold, that’s all. This one was cold. Too cold.”
“Too cold for what?”
“Too cold to be good,” said Dugal innocently. “That is the way it was.”
Ingram tried again. “The music. Can you tell us anything about that?”
“The first time, it was very loud and with lots of bangs. They sounded like guns. I think I have heard it before, but I don’t know where.”
“And the second time?”
Dugal wrinkled his nose. “Oldies. Classic Pop. Country and Western. Folk. Even the Beatles. Terrible stuff. All out of the ark.”
“Is that all you can tell us?”
Dugal scratched his head. “I don’t know, sir. I’m not sure.”
“What are you not sure about?”
“I keep thinking about a man who has something wrong with his face.”
“Is he connected with Vanessa? Does she know him?”
“I don’t know, sir. Maybe it is just something I made up—you know, like a nightmare. I’ve been trying to reach Vanessa an awful long time…” A tear trickled down his face. “She doesn’t want to talk to me. Can I go, now? I’m very tired.”
“Yes, son. Go and get some rest. Dr. Lindemann won’t need you at least until tomorrow.”
Jenny Pargetter had just listened to the 1812 Overture for the third time. She didn’t know why, because it was not a piece of music she liked. It was too flashy, too naive. But when she heard it—part
icularly when the cannon started booming away—she derived a strange feeling of security. It was as if she needed the noise in order to be able to think freely. Which was plainly ridiculous. Thinking was best done without distraction. But, while she waited for Simon to come home, she indulged herself idiotically by filling the room with sound.
For once, he came home early. He kissed her, glanced at the stereo box, raised an eyebrow, and turned the volume down.
“Love, how can you stand it?”
Jenny looked at him, puzzled. “I don’t know, Simon. I don’t even like it. But it makes me feel good.”
“May I turn it off?”
She got up from the settee. “Yes. I don’t need it now that you are here.”
“Why did you need it?”
She seemed almost surprised by the question. “So that I could think. It provides a good background for thinking… Strange. I’d never thought of the 1812 before as an aid to thinking.”
Simon poured himself a large drink, a lot of whisky and a little water. “Would you like one, Jenny? I think maybe you are going to need it.”
“You have bad news?”
“I don’t know whether it is good or bad.” Simon swallowed half his drink. Then he topped up his own glass and poured a neat whisky for Jenny. “There was a Parliamentary Question this afternoon. Tom Green asked the P.M. if he could assure the House that Vanessa Smith was not being restrained against her will at Random Hill Residential School.”
Jenny swallowed her whisky in one. “What did Black Joe say?”
“He denied that she existed. It was a stalling action.”
“I see. Give me another whisky. It seems your Mr. Draco was right.” Jenny began to laugh. “Marvellous, isn’t it? My child is now a matter of national importance. She has gone over the wall to the embarrassment of H.M. Government.” Jenny’s laughter dissolved in tears. “I wish I’d known her. I wish I’d kept her. Oh, God, I wish I’d looked after her!”
Simon held her close. “Steady, love. We cannot change the past. I am as much to blame as you… But we must face facts as they now are. Wherever Vanessa is now, she is in great danger.
“Because,” went on Simon, holding her tight enough to hurt, “Humboldt will need to prove his statement. Otherwise, his Security of the State Bill might get hammered. So, somehow, we must find Vanessa first.”
Professor Marius Raeder fed Turkish delight to the child he called Quasimodo. Quasimodo’s real name was Hubert Fisher. He was twelve years old; but his body was misshapen and his personality warped. He looked like a wizened dwarf. Professor Raeder, sensing that the boy had been treated as an object of compassion for too long, treated him as an object of ridicule. He responded well. Since his escape from Coniston Residential School, his paranormal talents had increased prodigiously.
After the third chunk of Turkish delight, Professor Raeder sensed that the time was ripe for the experiment. A brown rat was happily nibbling at a pile of oatmeal in a small cage on the far side of the room.
“Kill,” said Professor Raeder.
Quasimodo, his lips sticky, and with a dribble of half-melted Turkish delight on his chin, looked at the Professor uncomprehendingly.
“Kill the rat,” said Raeder. “If you can kill it, you get more of this dreadful stuff. Do you understand, Quasimodo?”
The boy nodded. He closed his eyes and concentrated. The rat fell on its side. But after a few seconds, it picked itself up and started to eat the oatmeal once more.”
“Not good enough!” shouted Professor Raeder. “You are not good enough, Quasimodo. You can’t kill a rat!”
Quasimodo ground his teeth in anger. Then he gave a great sigh, looked longingly at the box of Turkish delight that the Professor was holding, and closed his eyes once more. This time, the rat fell dead.
“Ha!” said Quasimodo triumphantly. “More now. You promised.”
Professor Marius Raeder and his grotesque little companion were in a small room that had been converted into the Professor’s study in a nineteenth-century house. It stood in a clearing in a deer forest in the North West Highlands of Scotland. From the air, the house was barely visible. Its roof and walls had been skilfully camouflaged; and a chopper pilot would have to be very observant and know what he was looking for in order to spot it.
Which suited Professor Raeder perfectly. And just in case the hypothetical chopper pilot became too curious and attempted to use his radio or investigate further, an automatic jammer would neutralise his transmission; and, if necessary, coned laser beams would burn him out of the sky.
Until two years before, Professor Raeder had occupied the chair of paranormal psychology at the University of Cambridge. He had been regarded as the foremost authority on this subject in Europe. He was on the point of being awarded the Nobel Prize for parapsychology for his research into the material effects of telergetic influences. Then Sir Joseph Humboldt came to political power. Professor Raeder was dismissed from his post ignominiously after a series of photographs showing him participating in a sex orgy had been released to the news media. The Nobel Prize was given to an American scientist for his researches into precognition; and Professor Raeder rapidly became—if only for a time—the most unwanted man in the United Kingdom.
The photographs had been faked. They had been faked by Sir Joseph Humboldt’s agents. Professor Raeder was neither homosexual nor heterosexual. He just was not sexual—a fact which too many people found too hard to believe.
The photographs had been faked because Sir Joseph had a long memory, and was something of a connoisseur in the art of paying off old scores. He and Raeder had been at university together. In youth, each of them had been idealistic in his own fashion. The scholarly Marius Raeder had been a prominent member of a group of rather intellectual anarchists whose chief activity consisted of talking a great deal. Joseph Humboldt, ambitious and ruthless, was the leader of a neofascist student organisation whose aim was to dominate the Students’ Union and, ultimately, the university itself. Humboldt and his companions were not averse to violence and had already terrorised two left-wing student groups into disintegration. Marius Raeder realised it would not be long before the small group of anarchists received the attention of Humboldt and his rugger-playing zombies. He was ready for them.
The meetings of the anarchists, well publicised, took place regularly in the crypt of a disused church. When Joe Humboldt and his strong-arm boys arrived to break up a meeting and terrorise those present, Marius Raeder hastily retreated from the ensuing mêlée. He had work to do—with a camera. He took shots of the fracas. He recorded Humboldt’s hearties beating up a short-sighted anarchist whose glasses had been deliberately stamped upon. He took a shot of a terrified girl student being forced to kiss Joe Humboldt’s boots. He even captured the look of ecstasy on Humboldt’s face when he realised that his attempt at demoralisation had totally succeeded.
Next day, prints of the photographs were on the Vice-Chancellor’s desk. By the end of the week, Joseph Humboldt and those of his followers who could be identified were rusticated.
So, the Prime Minister had settled his score, and Professor Raeder had sought refuge in the Scottish Highlands. But the contest was not yet over. Professor Raeder had one great weapon to pit against the political might of the Prime Minister. And that weapon was paranormal psychology.
The deformed boy, Quasimodo, was one unit in a small team of outstanding paranormals with which Professor Raeder, now an embittered and vengeful old man, hoped not only to deal with Sir Joseph Humboldt once and for all but also to topple a government which had become a thinly disguised autocracy.
At Cambridge, in the course of his researches, Professor Raeder had access to the files of the most gifted young paranormals discovered by the Department of Human Resources. Several of the children whose case histories he had studied now lived and trained and, with Raeder’s skilled assistance, extended their powers in this house that was discreetly hidden and well-defended in the Scottish Highlands. Some had es
caped from the special schools with Raeder’s encouragement or help. Some had run away on their own initiative and had then been traced and recruited. Slowly and systematically they were all programmed to develop and combine techniques of psychological destruction.
There remained one person—or, more properly, one type of person—necessary to unite the talents of these gifted and perverted children so that they would become an effective death squad. That person—that type of person—must have the ability to receive simultaneously and handle simultaneously several different telesends. That person would be an extremely sensitive telepath, passive rather than aggressive. That person would have to be able to accept a total invasion of the mind.
Such a person was Vanessa. For some time, Professor Raeder’s best pupils had been monitoring her uncontrolled transmissions. They knew when and how she had left Random Hill. They had been able to tap some of her experiences thereafter.
Professor Raeder pointed to another rat in a cage by the side of that containing the dead one.
“Kill,” he commanded Quasimodo. This time there was no hesitation. Quasimodo was contented briefly with his intake of Turkish delight. He closed his eyes and concentrated, and the rat fell dead.
“Very good,” said Professor Raeder. “Very good indeed. All we need now is the burning glass.”
Quasimodo opened his eyes, and nodded vigorously. “Vanessa,” he said with a knowing look. “Vanessa Smith. May I have some more Turkish delight?”
10
VANESSA RECOVERED RAPIDLY. She was young and resilient. All she needed was rest, warmth and food. She got it. The man who had conditioned her to call him and think of him as Oliver saw to that. He could not do much to protect her against the frequency with which pleading, insistent, or malign voices entered her mind. She would have to look to her own psychic protection. But he could and did give her physical security. It was enough. She was grateful.
She was grateful even for the monotonous rigours of the conditioning process, the wearing sessions of question and answer. With painstaking attention to detail, he constructed an entirely new past for himself. The conditioning had to be faultless. He, too, had to be convinced of the credibility of his new persona.
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