by Brian Lumley
Trask looked at him. “Oh?”
The precog nodded. “Ben, I don’t know what’s coming—let’s face it, I rarely know what’s coming, not precisely—but whatever it is, it has to come soon. I can feel it in my bones just like that time on Sunside/Starside.”
“The Big One?”
“Just like that, yes,” said Goodly. “And as for Liz’s frustration, I can feel that, too—my own, that is—and everyone else’s. There’s trouble brewing at home, and yet we’re out here on Krassos doing nothing. At least, that’s how it feels.”
“We’ve covered the island,” Trask answered. “Okay, so it’s been frustrating. Do you think I don’t know that? Well, I know it as well as the next man—or woman.” He glanced at Liz. “But we have narrowed it down. We’re fairly sure now that what we’re looking for is closer to home.” Again he looked at Liz. “Closer to Skala Astris, I mean. That is what you were doing, right?”
“You know it is,” she answered, lowering her head a little.
“Without even a by-your-leave?”
“I’m feeling what Ian is feeling,” she said. “Time slipping by, and the future coming down on us. I might actually be picking it up from him, or from you, from Manolis, from Lardis. And since we had no luck this morning—I don’t know—I just felt the need to speed things up, that’s all.”
Trask looked at Goodly. “How about it?”
“I can’t see that it can do any harm,” the precog answered. “Broad daylight, and the sun like a blob of molten gold high in the sky. Wherever they are, they have to be down and sleeping.”
“In which case, what’s the point?” Trask licked his suddenly dry lips. “I mean, how can Liz hope to pick them up?” But:
“No,” Liz shook her head. “You can’t back away from it like that. Lies—even half-lies and white lies—don’t come easy to you, Ben. This worked well enough down under, didn’t it? And how about Jake? You had me monitoring him when he was sleeping, didn’t you?”
“If any harm should come your way,” Trask’s voice was husky now, “I’d never be able to forgive myself.” Then his gaunt face hardened up again, and he said, “However, since it was bound to come to this sooner or later, and if you’re set on doing it … let’s get to it.”
On impulse, Liz stepped closer and kissed his cheek. “Don’t worry about me,” she said. “I’ll be careful, I promise you.”
“Very well,” he answered. “But you’d better let us hear it. Tell us what you’re seeing, and for God’s sake be on your guard for anything … for whatever you might find.”
Meanwhile the telescope’s internal mechanism had whirred to a standstill, and Manolis fed a new coin into its slot while Liz again prepared herself. Then, brushing back her hair, applying her eyes to the binocular viewers, she began her commentary.
“Actually, the coast looks to be only a few miles away. Not even that. The beaches are beautiful … gold merging into turquoise where the sand meets the sea, then into blue, and deeper blue. I’m following the coast road from east to west. That must be Limari, close to where that woman’s body was found washed up … then the road moves away from us, travelling south. I can’t trace it all the way because of embankments, cliffs, and places where it’s been cut through spurs. Now, I can just make out … make out the towers of a place just off the road, a place like a fortress or castle, built right at the rim of the sea cliffs. It has these high square towers …”
“That’s the monastery,” said Trask, his voice hushed so as not to disturb Liz’s concentration. “We passed it this morning, on our way out here.”
“I remember,” said Goodly, keeping his normally high-pitched voice as low as possible. “It had a sort of portcullis gate and picket door in the front. The gate was closed, the picket door, too. There were notice boards on the hard standing that fronted the place; we passed so quickly I didn’t get the chance to read them. I don’t recall seeing any monks, though, but this being a Sunday they’d probably be at their devotions.”
“Monks?” said Manolis. “Nor should you expect to see monks. That one is more properly thee convent, or nunnery. It has thee nuns of a special order, yes, but no monks, only thee women …”
The precog gave a small start. “Women,” he said, and swayed just a little, which no one noticed. “Nuns …”
Liz had paused. Intent on her viewing—and her telepathy—she seemed to have stopped breathing while gazing at the monastery. But now she moved on: “The road has gone, disappeared now behind mountain spurs where they fall to the sea—”
“Where I was pushed from thee road,” said Manolis.
“—And now I’m approaching the outskirts of Skala Astris. I can see the seafront and a thin white horizontal line that must be the sea wall. But …” She paused again, and edged the telescope back just a fraction, towards the east.
“What is it?” said Trask.
“Something I nearly missed,” she answered. “There’s a knoll in the way that partly obscures it.”
“Obscures what?” Trask was insistent.
“A building,” she said. “East of Skala Astris, some kind of building on a promontory. I can see its cupola—or maybe that should be cupolas—where they’re lined up in my line of sight. But the place must be quite large. It can only be an hotel, yet I don’t recall seeing it on …”
“Yes?” said Trask.
And now her voice was a whisper as she continued “ … on any map.”
“Liz?” said Trask, frowning as he moved closer.
“There’s something … something there,” she continued, so softly that the words were difficult to make out, no more than a sigh. “Ben, I think … I think there’s something there!”
“That’s enough!” He took her round the waist, almost lifted her away from the telescope, which obligingly turned itself off.
Liz seemed a little unsteady on her feet; the shadows under her eyes were purple blooms now, and despite her suntan she had a drawn, wan look. Trask held her up and asked, “Are you okay?”
“A bit dizzy,” she answered. “But that’s okay. I’ve had the same thing happen when I’ve used ordinary binoculars. It’s when the perspective changes: something to do with knowing that what I’m looking at is a great deal farther away than it appears.”
“But you did read something?”
And now Liz’s eyes went big and round, and for a moment she clung to him for support. So that when she said, “Oh, yes!” her small shudder transferred to him. “Yes, I’m sure I did.”
“In that hotel place close to Skala Astris?”
“In both places,” she answered. “In the hotel—if that’s what it is—and in the monastery.”
“The monastery?” Trask’s jaw fell open. “For God’s sake—the monastery? But, that’s the last place I would have thought to … I would have thought to—”
“To look?” Goodly finished it for him, as the significance of what Trask had said struck both of them simultaneously. And then, turning to Manolis, the precog queried:”These nuns you mentioned—the women of this order—how is it they live in a monastery? I thought monasteries were for monks, and that nuns dwell in abbeys? And there’s one other, perhaps more important thing: What do they wear, these women? Do they have their own special attire? I mean habits or cassocks?”
“Here in Greece,” Manolis answered, “a monastery is just a place inhabited by thee holy peoples, thee worshipful peoples, which may be men or women—but not thee two together. And it is thee same with abbeys. Have you never heard of an abbot?”
“Of course I have!” said Goodly, annoyed with himself that he’d made such a simple if understandable mistake. “And their robes?”
“With thee hoods, yes,” Manolis answered. “They hide their faces with thee hooded robes, to avoid making thee temptations. I saw several of them when I was here with poor Eleni. Come to think of it, there were two of them in thee alley outside thee police post in Limari where Eleni and I … where she examined thee body of th
at woman … that woman with thee leech!”
Trask had gone cold. In the blazing midafternoon sunlight, he’d gone as cold as death itself. And he could feel the short hairs at the back of his neck prickling as if electrified. “Is it possible?” he husked. “I mean, is it even thinkable?”
And Lardis said, “Oh, yes. It’s thinkable. To defile these holy women—but what a splendid jest—to such as Vavara! For to the Wamphyri there’s no such thing as a higher power. Might is the only right. And so to find a people who believe in such a power, and to such an extent that they worship as these nuns do … she would delight in defiling them, proving them wrong.”
“But I could be wrong,” Liz said, which caused everyone to look at her. Apart from the shadows under her eyes, which were fading moment by moment, she seemed to be herself again.
“How do you mean?” said Trask. “What exactly did you feel, or sense, or whatever?”
“At the monastery, very little,” she answered.
“But enough that you paused there,” said Goodly.
“I felt—I don’t know—a shiver,” she said. “As my view passed over that place, a chill. Similar to the sensation I get when I look at someone who knows what I can do and doesn’t want me reading him or her … like Millie Cleary, for instance, when her shields go up. Then it’s just a coolness, a mental warning sign saying ‘keep off.’ But this time …” She shook her head.
“Go on,” said Trask.
“This time, it was like a single drop of ice-cold water on my spine,” she told him. “It landed on the back of my neck, and ran all the way down. A shiver, like I said.”
“And that was why you paused there?” Trask pressed her.
“Yes,” she answered. “But the more I concentrated, the less I got. If someone was there—if someone or ones were sleeping there, in those towers—they must have thought they were very safe. And when they felt my probe …”
“Then their shields went up,” said Trask. “They sensed your intrusion.”
“Perhaps,” Liz answered. “But only on a subconscious level. I mean, I was shut out, yes, but I wasn’t investigated. That’s one way of looking at it. But on the other hand—I don’t know, maybe we’re putting too much emphasis on this. What if I wasn’t shut out at all? What if there’s nothing there and I was simply trying too hard? I shivered, yes, and felt strange, but what if I wanted so hard to find something—” she shrugged undecidedly, “—that I found it anyway? Maybe I was mistaken. I’m hardly an expert at this sort of thing, and—”
But Trask shook his head. “What?” he said. “And you’re the one who was questioning me about my faith in your talent? Liz, you sensed something all right. When I was holding you, I felt you shuddering. It went right through me. You might be able to fool yourself that way but you can’t fool me. I know the truth when I see it, and I saw it in you.” He nodded curtly. “So now tell me about the other place on the outskirts of Skala Astris. You said it might be an hotel. What about that?”
“That was different again,” Liz said, grateful now for his support. “It was faint, so very faint. And it was … misty? I mean, it was like looking through a fog. I felt something, saw something, but it was so vague that I can’t describe it.”
“Try,” said Trask. “For as I recall, you couldn’t describe it out in Australia either, not at first.”
“That’s right,” she said. “When I first probed Jethro Manchester’s island, I had this same kind of problem and couldn’t translate my feelings. It was the weird aura of the place.”
“You have to remember,” said Trask, “that we aren’t talking about human beings. In your day-to-day work, you’re coming into contact with human minds. The thoughts you read—the pictures you receive—are from human beings. But the Wamphyri have gone beyond that. They aren’t human, not any longer. Perhaps we need to translate their thoughts differently.”
“May I speak?” said Lardis.
Trask glanced at him—at the Old Lidesci, with an entire lifetime’s worth of experience—and said, “Of course you can. What is it?”
“It’s something you were saying just a moment ago,” Lardis answered. “And it’s what you did this morning.”
“What we did?”
“What you, Ian Goodly, and Andreas did—all three of you, aye.” Lardis nodded. “For it seems you drove right past both of those places without so much as a glance at them. Well, perhaps you glanced at them, but that’s all …”
By now the young men of the house had brought food, drinks, and pitchers of water up onto the roof, and they were also busy arranging parasols to throw shade on a nest of chairs and small tables. Seeing them beckoning, Liz said, “Let’s get out of this sunlight.”
As they sat down under the parasols and Andreas poured iced drinks, Trask turned again to Lardis. “You were telling us what we did,” he said.
“Or more properly what you didn’t do,” said Lardis.
“We were remiss, is that what you mean?” Trask frowned. “We should have been more alert, should have looked closer?”
“Should have,” said Lardis, “and if it were anyone else you were looking for, you would have, aye!”
Trask shook his head. “I’m not with you.”
“No, and you weren’t with it this morning, either!” Lardis growled. “But don’t you see—this is Vavara and Lord Malinari we’re dealing with! Vavaaara, who is all things to all men, and to most women. And Nephran Malinari—also called Malinari the Mind!”
The precog began to see what he was getting at. “Not quite your average Lord and Lady,” he said.
“Anything but!” snapped Lardis. “Vavara, she isn’t what you see. She’s what she wants you to see! And when she’s asleep—d’you really think she would leave herself unguarded? When you drove past that monastery, you saw what she wanted you to see: a monastery! But it isn’t, no. Nor has it been, not for two or maybe three years by my reckoning. Not as long as that vampire bitch has been in residence there!”
“What?” The idea struck Trask like a hammer blow, he found it that hard to believe. “Are you telling me they can actually do that?”
“Just as surely as the Szgany of Sunside are able to hide from the Wamphyri,” Lardis answered, “closing down their minds so that the vampires can’t sniff them out, so the Wamphyri can hide from us. Don’t your telepaths have their shields, so that others can’t read their minds? Can’t your locator, David Chung, control his scanning so that others can’t locate him?”
“But … why haven’t you mentioned this before?” Trask was almost lost for words.
“Because I thought you knew!” Lardis answered. “Because it has to be obvious. For after all, most of these Great Vampires were once Szgany, and just as we have some of their skills, so they have ours. But Vavara and Malinari together … of course they could do it. And Liz: why, she was lucky to read anything at all! Or maybe she’s not just lucky, maybe she’s good! And I mean very good!”
“Lardis is right,” said the precog. “We really should have been expecting something like this. We E-Branch people, anyway. And you especially, Ben.”
“Me?” said Trask.
“Yes,” said Goodly. “We’ve all of us read the Keogh files, but reading about something and experiencing it are completely different things. You were there, that time down in Devon, the Yulian Bodescu affair.”
“What about it?” Trask was completely at a loss.
“When you flushed out the Bodescu household, didn’t Harvey Newton see something that he thought was a dog—or at least a loping shape—running for cover? But it wasn’t a dog. It was Bodescu himself.”
“But they’re shape-changers, for Christ’s sake!” Trask protested. “We all know that much.”
“And mind-changers,” said Liz. “I would have bet my life on it that it was you, Ben, who was speaking to me in the Pleasure Dome in Xanadu. I did bet my life on it, and almost lost.”
“Something else we should remember,” said Goodly. “When
we tracked Malinari down in Australia, it wasn’t him who gave the show away. Trennier led us to Manchester, who in turn led us to Malinari. It was his thralls who gave Malinari away. So perhaps the same thing is happening here. Maybe Liz has found … maybe she has found what Vavara has made here, what she’s made of the people who were here …”
“Your hooded figures?” said Trask. “Your burning women, all dressed in their black, hooded robes?”
“That’s what it’s beginning to look like,” said the precog.
And Lardis put in: “And don’t forget those sweet Sisters of Mercy that Vladi Ferengi told us about.
“Or thee nuns outside the police post,” said Manolis.
“It’s all fitting together,” said Trask.
“It wasn’t fear,” Liz murmured, almost to herself.
“What’s that?” Again Trask turned to face her.
“In Australia,” she answered, “when I sensed the thoughts, or more properly the feelings, of those people on Manchester’s island, that was fear. They were afraid of the future, of what it would bring. They were scared to death of Malinari and what he’d done to them through Bruce Trennier. In other words, it was just like you said, Ben.” She met Trask’s gaze, looked straight into his eyes. “They were human thoughts, human emotions … or at least they were at that time, when they’d only recently been vampirized. But what I got from the building near Skala Astris, that wasn’t fear. It was like looking into a very young baby’s mind. I’m not talking about innocence, but rather emptiness. A kind of wandering, wondering vacancy.”
“You’re describing idiocy,” said Trask. “Childishness without innocence.”
“You’re right,” Liz nodded, and once more shivered, despite that she wasn’t cold. “For now and then, I’ve looked into their little minds—babies, that is. What telepath could resist it? Haven’t we all wondered what’s going on in there? Well, I found that they’re constantly searching—for knowledge of the world, I suppose. But the feeling I got when I probed that place near Skala Astris, it was …” She paused and gave a small twitch of her shoulders, a baffled shrug.