Necroscope: Invaders

CHAPTER ONE See The Creechur

It was hot as hell, and flies the size of Jake Cutter's little fingernails had been committing suicide on the vehicle's windscreen for more than a hundred and fifty miles now, ever since they'd left Wiluna and 'civilization' behind.

'Phew!' Jake said, sluicing sweat from his brow and out of the open window of their specially adapted Land Rover. The top was back and the windows wound down, yet the hot wind of passage that pushed their wide-brimmed Aussie hats back from their foreheads, tightened their chinstraps around their throats and ruffled their shirts still made it feel like they were driving headlong into a bonfire. And the 'road' ahead — which in fact was scarcely better than a track — wavered like a smoke-ghost in the heat haze of what appeared to be an empty, ever-expanding distance.

Behind the vehicle, a mile-long plume of dust and blue-grey exhaust fumes drifted low over the scrub and the wilderness.

'That's your fifth "phew",' Liz Merrick told him. 'Feeling talkative today?'

'So what am I supposed to say?' He didn't even glance at her, though most men wouldn't have been able to resist it. 'Oh dear, isn't it hot? Christ, it must be ninety! "Phew" is about all I'm up to, because if I do more than open my mouth a crack — ugh!' And he spat out yet another wet fly.

Liz squirmed and grimaced. 'What the hell do they live on, I wonder? Way out here, I mean?' She swatted and missed as something small, black and nasty went zipping by.

'Things die out here/ Jake answered grimly. 'Maybe that's what they live on.' And just when she thought that was it, that he was all done for now: 'Anyway, the sun's going down over the hills there. Another half-hour or so, it'll be cooler. It won't get cold — not in this freaky weather — but at least you'll be able to breathe without frying your lungs.' Then he was done.

She turned her head to look at him more fully: his angular face in profile, his hard hands on the wheel, his lean outline. But if Jake noticed her frowning, curiously intent glance, well, it scarcely registered. That was how he was: hands off. And she thought: We make a damned odd couple!

She was right, they did. Jake hard yet supple, like whip-cord, and Liz soft and curvy. Him with his dark background and current… condition, and Liz with her—

— Which was when they hit a pothole, which simultaneously brought Liz's mind back to earth while lifting her backside eight inches off her seat. 'Jake, take it easy!' she gasped.

He nodded, in no way apologetically, almost absent-mindedly. He had turned his head to look at her — no, Liz corrected herself — to look beyond her, westward where the rounded domes of gaunt, yellow-and red-ochre hills marched parallel with the road. They were pitted, those hills, pockmarked even from here. The same could be said of the desert all around, including the so-called road. 'These old mine workings,' Jake growled. 'Gold mines. That was subsidence back there, where the road is sinking into some old mine. I didn't see it because of this bloody heat haze.'

'Gold?' Squirming down into her seat, Liz tried to get comfortable again. Hah! she thought. As if I'd been comfortable in the first place!

'They found a few nuggets here/ he told her. 'There was a bit of a gold rush that didn't pan out. There may be gold here — there

probably is — but first you have to survive to bring it up out of the ground. It just wasn't worth it…'

'Because even without this awful El Nino weather, this was one hell of an inhospitable place to survive in/ she nodded.

'Right/ Finally Jake glanced at her — at her this time. And while he was still looking she grinned nervously and said:

'What a place to spend your honeymoon! I should never have let you talk me into it/ A witticism, of course.

'Huh!' was his reply. Shielding his eyes, he switched his attention back to the rounded hills with the sun's rim sitting on them like a golden, pus-filled blister on the slumping hip of some gigantic, reclining, decomposing woman.

'Fuel gauge is low/ Liz tapped on the gauge with a fingernail. 'Are we sure there's a gas station out here?' In fact she knew there was; it was right there on the map. It was just the awful heat, the condition of the road, evening setting in, and a perfectly normal case of nerves. Liz's tended to fray a little from time to time. As for Jake's… well, she wasn't entirely sure about his, didn't even know if he had any.

'Gas station?' He glanced at her again. 'Sure there is. To service the local "community". Heck, around these parts there's point nine persons per hundred square miles!' While Jake's sarcasm dripped, it wasn't directed entirely at Liz but rather at their situation. Moreover, she thought she detected an unfamiliar edge to his voice. So perhaps he did have nerves after all. But still his completely humourless attitude irritated her.

'That many people? Really?' For a moment she'd felt goaded into playing this insufferable man at his own game… but only for a moment. Then, shrugging, she let it go. 'So what's it doing here? The gas station, I mean/

'It's a relic of the gold rush/ he answered. 'The Australian Government keeps such places going with subsidies, or they simply couldn't exist. They're watering holes in the middle of nowhere, way stations for the occasional wanderer. Don't expect too much, though. Maybe a bottle of warm beer — make sure you knock the cap off yourself… yes, I know you know that — no food, and if you need the loo you'd better do it before we get there.' Good advice, around these parts.

The road vanished about a mile ahead: an optical illusion, just like the heat haze. As the hills got higher, so the road began to climb, making everything seem on a level, horizontal. Only the throb of the motor told the truth: that the Land Rover was in fact labouring, however slightly. And in another minute they crested the rise.

Then Jake brought the vehicle to a halt and they both went off into the scrub fifty yards in different directions. He got back first, was leaning on his open door, peering through binoculars and checking the way ahead when Liz returned.

'See anything?' she asked, secretly admiring Jake where he stood unselfconsciously posed, with one booted foot on the door sill, his jeans outlining a small backside and narrow hips. But the rest of him wasn't small. He was tall, maybe six-two, leggy and with long arms to match. His hair was a deep brown like his eyes, and his face was lean, hollow-cheeked. He looked as if a good meal wouldn't hurt… but, on the other hand, extra weight would certainly slow him down. His lips were thin, even cruel. And when he smiled you could never be sure there was any humour in it. Jake's hair was long as a lion's; he kept it swept back, braided into a pigtail. His jaw was angular, thinly scarred on the left side, and his nose had been broken high on the bridge so that it hung like a sheer cliff (like a native American Indian's nose, Liz thought) instead of projecting. But despite his leanness, Jake's shoulders were broad, and the sun-bronzed flesh of his upper arms was corded with muscle. His thighs, too, she imagined…

'The gas station,' he answered. 'Sign at the roadside says "Old Mine Gas". There's a track off to the right from the road to the pumps… or rather the pump. What a dump.' Another sign this side of the shack says… what?' He frowned.

'Well, what?' Liz asked.

'Says "See the Creature!'" Jake told her. 'But it's spelled C-r-e-e-c-h-u-r. Huh! Creechur…' He shook his head.

'Not much schooling around here,' she said. Then, putting a hand to the left side of her face to shut out the last spears of sunlight from the west, 'That's some kind of eyesight you've got. Even with binoculars the letters on those signs have to be tiny.'

'First requirement of a sniper,' he grunted. 'That his eyesight is one hundred per cent.'

'But you're not a sniper, or indeed any kind of killer, any longer,' she told him — then caught her breath as she realized how wrong she might be. Except it was different now, surely.

Jake passed the binoculars, looked at her but made no comment. Peering through the glasses, she focused them to her own vision, picked up the gas station's single forlorn pump and the shack standing — or leaning — behind it, apparently built right into the rocky base of a knoll, which itself bulged at the foot of a massive outcrop or butte. The road wound around the ridgy, shelved base of the outcrop and disappeared north.

And while she looked at the place, Jake looked at her. That was okay because she didn't know he was looking.

She was a girl — no, a woman — and a sight for sore eyes. But Jake Cutter couldn't look at her that way. There had \>em a woman, and after her there couldn't be anything else. Not ever. But if there could have been… maybe it would have been someone like Liz Merrick. She was maybe five-seven, willow-waisted, and fully curved where it would matter to someone who mattered. And to whom she mattered. Well, and she did, but not like that. Her hair, black as night, cut in a boyish bob, wasn't Natasha's hair, and her long legs weren't Natasha's legs. But Liz's smile… he had to admit there was something in her smile. Something like a ray of bright light, but one that Jake wished he'd never known — because he knew now how quickly a light can be switched off. Like Natasha's light…

'Not very appetizing,' Liz commented, breathing with difficulty through her mouth.

'Eh?' He came back to earth.

'The dump, as you called it.'

'The name says it all.' Jake was equally adenoidal. 'Probably the entrance to an old mine. Hence "Old Mine Gas".'

A great talent for the obvious, she wanted to tell him but didn't. Sarcasm again, covering for something else.

'So what do you think?' she finally said, as they got back into the 'Rover.

'Good time not to think/ he answered, and Liz could only agree. At least he'd remembered what little he'd been told. So they tried not to think, and continued not thinking as he started up the vehicle and let her coast the downhill quarter-mile to the Old Mine Gas station…

Lights of a sort came on as they turned off the road to climb a hard-packed ramp to the elevated shelf that fronted the shack. The illuminated sign flickered and buzzed, finally lit up in a desultory, half-hearted neon glare; grimy windows in the shack itself burned a dusty, uncertain electrical yellow. In an ancient river valley like this, dry since prehistory, it got dark very quickly, even suddenly, when the sun went down.

It also got cooler; not cold by any means — not in this freakish El Nino weather — but cooler. After they pulled up at the lone pump, Jake helped Liz shrug herself into a thin safari jacket, took his own from the back of the 'Rover and put it on. In the west, one shallow trough in the crest of the domed hills still held a golden glow. But the light was rapidly fading, and the amethyst draining from the sky, squeezed out by the descending sepia of space. To the east, the first stars were already winking into being over blackly silhouetted mountains.

Maybe twenty-five paces to the right of the main shack a lesser structure burrowed into the side of the steep knoll. The 'See the Creechur' sign pointed in that direction. Liz wondered out loud, 'What sort of creature, do you reckon?'

But now there was a figure standing in the shadow of the shack's suddenly open screen door. And it was that figure that answered her. 'Well, it's a bloody/wnnjy one, I guarantee that much, miss!' And then a chuckle as the owner of the deep, gravelly voice stepped out into full view. 'It's a bit late in the day, though, so if ver want ter see 'im, best take a torch with yer. Bloomin' bulb's blown again… or maybe 'e did it 'imself. Don't much care for the light, that creechur feller. Now then, what can I do fer you folks? Gas, is it?'

Jake nodded and tilted his hat back. 'Gas. Fill her up.'

'Ah!' The other's gasp seemed genuine enough. 'Eh? What's this, then? Brits, are yer? A pair of whingein' pommies way out 'ere? Now I asks yer, what next!?' He grinned, shook his head. 'Just kiddin'. Don't yer be takin' no note o' me, folks.'

To all appearances he was just a friendly old lad and entirely unaccustomed to company. His rheumy little pinprick eyes, long since abandoned to the wrinkles of a weathered face, gazed at his customers over a bristly beard like that of some garrulous stagecoach driver in an ancient Western. As he took the cap off the Land Rover's tank, his wobbly spindle legs seemed about ready to collapse under him. And as if to make doubly sure he'd said nothing out of turn: 'Er, no offence meant,' he continued to mumble his apologies.

'No offence taken,' Liz gave a little laugh. And Jake had to admire her: her steady, give-away-nothing voice. She quickly went on, 'Can we get a drink or something, while you're filling her up? It's been a long and thirsty road, and a way to go yet. Maybe a beer? You do have beer, right?'

'Did yer ever meet up with an Australian' (but in fact he said Orstrylian) 'who didn't have a beer close ter hand?' The old man grinned again, started the pump and handed the nozzle to Jake, then hobbled back and 'elp open the inner door to the shack for Liz. 'Just you help yerself, miss. They're all lined up on the shelves back o' the bar there. Not a lot ter choose from, though — Fosters every one! It's my favourite. And since I'm the one who drinks most of it, it's my choice too.'

'Well, good/ said Liz. 'It's my favourite, too.' Jake watched them go inside, frowned at the nozzle in his hand. Just like that, he'd accepted the bloody thing. Damn!

After that… but it seemed it was going to take forever to satisfy the 'Rover's greedy guzzling. So Jake quit when the tank was only three-quarters full, slammed the nozzle into the pump's housing, tried not to look too concerned as he followed Liz and the old boy into the shack. But he'd hated to lose contact with her, lose sight of her like that, even for a few seconds. And she'd looked back at him just before she passed from view, her green eyes a fraction too narrow, too anxious.

Inside, however, it wasn't as bad as he'd thought it would be. Or as it might have been.

It was the grime, the blown dust of the desert, clinging to the outside of the windows, that had shut the light in and made the place seem so dim from outside. But within — this might be typical of any outback filling station a million miles from nowhere. That was Jake's first impression. The bar was a plank on two barrels, with a bead curtain hanging from the plank to the floor in front, and smaller barrels for seats. Liz was perched on one of them, and the old man had passed her a beer that she held unopened in her hand.

She must have asked him if he was all alone out here, and he was in the process of answering: 'Alone? Me? Naw, not much. And anyway I enjoys bein' on me ownsome. Oh, I got a couple o' boys to 'elp out. They ain't 'ere right now, is all. It ain't so bad, actu'ly. 'Ad a truck through just a day or so ago.'

'A truck?' Liz said, all innocence and light. 'Out here?' And the old man nodded. 'Gawd knows where they'd be goin'! But for that matter, where be you goin', eh? What're yer doin' out 'ere anyway?'

Having taken in much of the single room at a glance, Jake strode to the bar and asked for a beer. Without waiting for an answer from Liz, the old man reached for a bottle and turned to Jake. 'Well now, you was a mite quick!' he said. 'Yer just topped 'er up, am I right? I mean, yer'd never fill a big tank as quick as that/

'Right/ said Jake, accepting the beer. He gave the bottle a quick shake, forced the top off with a practised thumb. Then, changing the subject as the warm beer foamed, 'No cans?' he inquired. He passed the bottle to Liz, took hers and repeated his trick, with the same result. The beer wasn't flat; these bottles were old stock, but they hadn't been opened previously.

And meanwhile: 'Cans? I don't hold with 'em/ the oldster told him. 'All this newfangled shite! But yer can trust a bottle/ And turning to Liz again, 'You were sayin'?'

'No/ she answered, 'you were saying. You asked what we're doing out here/

'Well then?' he pressed.

She smiled. 'Can you keep a secret?'

He shrugged his hunched shoulders, sat down on a barrel on his side of the plank and chuckled. 'And who do yer reckon I'd be tellin'?'

Liz nodded. 'We were visiting kin in Wiluna, decided to get married sort of quick. So here we are, run off where no one can find us/

'Eh? Honeymooners, yer say? Run off on yer ownsome and left no forwardin' address? All out o' touch, secret an' private in the Gibson Desert? Huh! Hell o' a place fer a honeymoon.. p>

'I told him the very same thing/ Liz nodded her agreement, shaking an I-told-you-so finger at Jake.

And Jake said, 'Anyway, we're headed north. We thought we'd take a look at the lakes, and—'

'Lakes?' the old fellow cut in, frowning. 'Yer visitin' the lakes?' Then, with a knowing nod of his head, he muttered, 'Big disappointment, that/

'Oh?' Jake lifted an eyebrow.

But the oldster only laughed out loud and slapped his thigh. 'Lake Disappointment!' he guffawed. 'Way up north o' here. Damn me, they falls fer it every time!' He sobered up, said, 'Lakes, eh? Somethin' ter see, is it? Huh! Plenty o' mud and salt, but that's about all IQ

'And wildlife!' Liz protested.

'Oh, aye, that too,' he said. 'Anyway, what would I know or care? I 'ave me own wildlife, after all.'

'The creature?' Jake swigged on his beer.

"Im's the one,' the old boy nodded. 'Yer wanna see 'im?'

Jake had done with studying the oldster. But he would certainly like to take a closer look at this shack — or what lay behind it or maybe beneath it. Liz could feel his curiosity, no matter how hard he tried to keep it from the old boy. Moreover, she knew that between them they must check this place out, and so decided to do her bit, create a diversion as best she could. And anyway (she told herself), the old man didn't seem much of a threat.

I'd like to see him,' she said. 'I mean, what's the mystery? What kind of creature is it, anyway? Or is it just a con — some mangy, diseased dingo crawled in out of the desert — to pull in a few more travellers?' And to her partner, though she knew he wouldn't take her up on it: 'What about you, Jake? You want to come and see this thing?'

Jake shook his head, took another pull at his bottle. 'Not me, Liz. I've a thirst to slake. But if you want to have a look at some mangy dog, well, go right ahead.' Almost choking on the words, he got them out somehow. Damn it to hell — the idea was supposed to be that they didn't get split up.' He hoped she knew what she was doing. There again, she'd been in this game longer than he had. And that pissed Jake more than a little, too: the fact that Liz was in effect the boss here.

'Torch,' said the old boy, taking a heavy rubber-jacketed flashlight from the shelf and handing it to Liz. 'Yer'11 need it. I keeps 'im in out o' the sun, which would surely fry 'is eyes. But it's dark in the back o' the shack there. And this time o' evenin' even darker in 'is cage.' When she looked uncertain, didn't move, he cocked his head on one side and said, 'Er, yer just follers the signs, is all.'

Liz looked at him, hefted the torch, said, 'You want me to go alone?'

'Can't very well get lost!' he said. But then, grumblingly, he hobbled out from behind the makeshift bar. 'It's these old pins o' mine,' he said. 'See, they don't much like ter go. But yer right — can't let a little lady go wanderin' about in the dark on 'er own. So just you foller me, miss. Just you foller old Bruce.' And then they were gone.

Jake took a small pager out of his pocket and switched it on. Now if Liz got in trouble she only had to press the button on her own beeper and he would know it… and vice versa. For in this game it was just as likely that he would be the one to make a wrong move.

Those were his thoughts as he stepped silently behind the bar, and passed through a second bead curtain hanging from the timbered ceiling to the floor. And as easily and as quickly as that he was into a horizontal mineshaft, and almost as quickly into something far less mundane…

Liz had followed the old man (Bruce? Hell of a lot of Australians called Bruce, she thought. There had to \>e at least as many as there were Johns in London) along the foot of the knoll to the lesser shack that leaned into an almost sheer cliff face.

It was quite dark now, and the torch he'd given her wasn't nearly working on full charge. The batteries must be just about dead. Of course, knowing the place as he did, that wouldn't much concern the old boy, but it concerned Liz. And despite that she followed slowly and carefully in old Bruce's footsteps — mainly to give Jake the time he needed to look the place over — still she stumbled once or twice over large rocks or into this, that, or the other pothole. But, in truth, much of her stumbling was a ploy, too, so that it was perhaps a good thing after all that the torch was almost spent. She thought so at the outset, anyway.

Until eventually: 'Here we are,' the old man said, turning a key in a squealing lock and opening an exterior screen door. Beyond that a second door stood ajar; and as old Bruce, if that really was his name, reached out an incredibly long arm to one side of Liz to push it fully open — at the same time managing to bundle her inside — so she recognized the smell of a lair.

It was a primal thing, something that lies deep in the ancestral memories of every human being: to be able to recognize the habitat of a dangerous animal or animals. The musty, feral smell of a cavern where something dwells — or perhaps an attic where bats have hibernated for untold years — or maybe the reptile house in a zoo.

But there are smells and smells, and this wasn't like anything Liz had ever come across before; or perhaps it was simply the tainted, composite smell of all of them. Until suddenly she realized that it wasn't just a smell — wasn't simply a smell — but her talent coming into play, and that the stench wasn't in her nostrils alone but also in her mind.'

And then she had to wonder about its origin, the focus or point of emanation of this alien taint. Was it the shack — or the steel-barred, wall-to-wall cell it contained — or perhaps the night-black tunnel beyond the bars, with its as yet unseen, unknown 'creechur'… or could it possibly be old 'Brace' himself?

There came a sound from the darker depths of the horizontal mine shaft. And just as there are smells and smells, so are there sounds and sounds. Liz gasped, aimed her torch-beam into the darkness back there, and saw movement. A flowing, gathering, approaching darkness in the lesser dark around; an inkblot of a figure, taking on shape as it came, bobbing, wafting on a draft of poisonous air from wherever and whatever lay beyond. And it had luminous yellow eyes — slanted as a beast's, and yet intelligent, not-quite-feral — that held her fixed like a rabbit in a headlight's beam!

But only for a moment. Then—

'You.'' Liz transferred the torch to her left hand, dipped her right hand into a pocket and came out with a modified Baby Browning, used her thumb to release the safety and aimed it at the old man… or at the empty space where he had been. While from outside in the night, she heard the grating of his booted feet,

his now obscene chuckle, and the squeal of a key turning in the exterior screen door's lock as he shut her in.

Hell! But this could quite literally be hell! Along with her talent — held back far too long by her desire not to alert anyone or anything to her real purpose here — Liz's worst fears were now fully mobilized, realized. She knew what the creechur in the mineshaft was, knew what it could do. But even now she wasn't entirely helpless.

Tucking the torch under her arm, she found her beeper and pressed its alarm button… at the precise moment that it commenced transmitting Jake's own cry for help!

The shock of hearing that rapid beep! beep! beeping from her pocket almost made Liz drop the torch; she somehow managed to hold on to it, held her hands together, pointed the gun and the torch both through the inch-thick bars of the cage. But as the weak beam swept the bars, it picked out something that she hadn't previously noticed; there had been little enough time to notice anything. The cage had a door fastened with a chain and stout padlock — but the padlock hung on the inside, the other side, where it dangled from the hoop of its loose shackle!

She knew what she must do: reach through the bars, drive home the shackle to close the padlock. A two-handed job. Again she put the torch under her arm, fumbled the gun back into her pocket. Then, in the crawling, tingling, living semi-darkness, Liz thrust her trembling hands between the bars… and all of the time she was aware of the thing advancing towards her, its slanted, sulphurous eyes alive on her… and the beeper issuing its urgent, staccato mayday like a small, terrified animal… and on top of all this the sudden, nightmarish notion: But what if this thing has the key to the padlock!?

At that moment it was Liz Merrick who felt like some small, terrified, trapped animal — but a human animal. While the thing striding silently, ever closer to her along the shaft was anything but human, though it might have been not so long ago.

It was almost upon her; she smelled the hot stench of its breath!

CHAPTER TWO Dark Denizens

Liz had squeezed her eyes shut in a desperate effort to locate the padlock. Now she opened them…

… And it was there, it was there! Its face, caught in the upward-slanting beam of yellow light from the torch in her arm-pit, looked down on her! And:

'Ahhh!' It — or he, the 'creechur' — sighed. 'A girl. No, a woooman. And a fresh one. How very good to meet you here.' How very… provident. AM!' And as simply as that his cold, cold hands took the padlock from hers, freed it from the chains, and let it fall with a clank to the dirt floor…

24

Meanwhile, Jake Cutter had proceeded maybe a hundred yards down the gradually sloping shaft, deep into the earth. The shaft was quite obviously the entrance to an old mine; the walls and roof were timbered, and there were sleepers and rusty, narrow-gauge rails in the fairly uneven floor. In places there was some evidence of past cave-ins, where holes in the ceiling and boulders on the floor told their own story. Since the surviving supports seemed stout enough, Jake wasn't worried for his safety in that respect.

But in one other respect, he was. And he kept finding himself wishing that right now he wasn't somewhere but rather someone else — despite that he would usually prefer not to be! All very confusing and paradoxical, but it was something which had only ever' happened twice, and then in the most extreme of circumstances. And for the time being Jake was only Jake Cutter.

Such were his thoughts when the narrow but adequate beam of his pencil-slim pocket torch picked out the first of several side tunnels, shafts that radiated off from the main, the original mineshaft.

Until now the floor had borne a thick coating of dust and sand, much of which had settled against the walls. Towards the centre, however, and between the rails, most of this had been

scuffed away, presumably by the recent passage of several or many persons. But persons going where? Of course, the old proprietor might be using this place as a warehouse or stock room; indeed, back where the shaft opened into the shack that fronted the mine Jake had passed a jumble of old crates and cardboard boxes, and labels on the latter had declared their contents as wiper blades, fuses, various grades of motor oil, spark plugs, and spare parts and vehicle accessories in general. Naturally, he would have expected as much that close to the entrance.

But all these signs of recent disturbance — or of occupation? — all this way back here? Why would anyone want to come back here, except perhaps on exploratory forays; maybe someone who was curious about old mine shafts? But recently? And how many someones? It was beginning to look like this might be the place. In which case he and Liz should never have split up and gone their own ways. Oh, he knew why she'd done it, all right, but now…

… Now what was that? Jake froze.

The side shafts weren't recent diggings; they were probably old exploratory digs from the days when prospectors sought an ultimately elusive 'mother lode.' Certainly quartz was present in the walls where the subsidiary tunnels had been hewn or blasted from the rock. It was here, too, that the scuff marks on the floor

— in places actual footprints — were most in evidence, and it was from the first of these lesser branching diggings that the sound had issued. A sound like a sigh or a yawn, like someone waking up.

Jake knew that by now it would be night in the valley in the Gibson Desert, dark in the outside world. But not nearly as dark as it was in here. And Liz was back there somewhere, alone with the old man. Or maybe not alone. And hadn't his 'Orstrylian' accent been a little too thick, and hadn't there been something

— maybe just a trace — of the Gypsy about him?

Jesus! Jake was now aware of fumbling movements from the side tunnels — from more than one of them — and was

immediately galvanized to action. But at a time and in a place such as this there was only one action he could take: flight!

Behind him, the main tunnel curved, however slightly, back towards the entrance. Setting off at a loping run, Jake played his torch beam on the ceiling in order to avoid the jagged ends of dangling timbers in a number of places where pressured beams had popped. And as he went he felt for his pager, making ready to send out his distress call. Not that he felt panicked or in immediate danger himself, but Liz might well be. If she wasn't already aware of the danger, the beeper would give her advance warning. He wouldn't use it just yet, though, because to do so would be to alert whoever she was with that he was on his way, perhaps precipitating some undesired activity.

In a matter of twenty seconds or so, when he was in sight of the bead-curtained rear entrance to the shack, Jake skidded to a halt. A figure, momentarily silhouetted by the light from the shack, had appeared on the other side of the curtain; Jake recognized it as that of the old proprietor. Switching off his torch, he flattened himself to the wall behind a support beam, took out his 9mm Browning and soundlessly armed it. And none too soon.

Grumbling to himself in his fashion, the old man came on through the curtains and made straight for Jake; there was no other way he could go. But as he blotted out some of the light from the shack, so Jake noticed that his movements weren't any longer those of an old man! He came on at a sprightly, almost youthful lope, and his previously dim eyes were no longer hidden in wrinkled folds. Instead they were a glowing, feral yellow, and in their cores burned red as fire!

Jake needed no further warning or convincing. He now knew for a certainty what this place was, if not exactly what he was up against. Going into a professional shooting stance, he took careful aim and squeezed the trigger.

But the other had seen or sensed Jake in the moment that he fired; seeming to flow to one side, he moved closer to the wall. Jake knew he'd missed and got off a second shot; the bullet whined where it ricochetted from the shaft's wall, hurling sparks and splinters of rock at the 'old' man's face and neck.

He jerked at the impact of the stony fragments, then stood up straighter and stepped out into full view. And putting up a hand to his neck under the ear, he glanced at it almost curiously and said, 'Blood?' That was all, 'blood? But his voice was no longer old, and his furnace eyes had turned uniformly crimson.

Knowing he couldn't afford to miss a third time, Jake moved forward. Behind him there was real activity now: voices calling out wailing questions, and the sounds of stumbling feet. And:

'Lead, is it?' said that low, growling, dangerous voice as the distance narrowed between them. 'Oh, ha! Ha! Ha! Then come on, son, fire away. For as you'll discover, I've something of an appetite for lead.'

'How about silver?' Jake said, squeezing the trigger again. His words were pure bravado for he was by no means sure of himself, but it was a nice line.

And perhaps in that last second the vampire sensed that his opponent had the advantage. Whichever, he once more caused himself to relocate, used that weird flowing motion to move to one side. But not quickly and not far enough. The silver bullet hit him in the right shoulder, spun him around and slammed his back against the wall. With a gurgling cry of (Ah! Ah!' he clawed at his shoulder and fell to his right knee, and Jake leaped around him to carry on headlong through the bead curtains, taking them with him in a jangling tangle.

Maybe he should have stayed to finish the job. Certainly he would have if he had been that someone else — or half of someone else — but despite the danger Jake was still only Jake Cutter; he hadn't yet reached that point of uttermost desperation.

Free of the curtains he crashed through the makeshift bar and sent the plank flying from its barrel supports, and without pause he rushed out into the night, wheeling left to go sprinting towards the second shack. That was where the alleged 'creechur' was, and Jake could scarcely doubt but that was where he would find Liz, too… where the lying, scheming, undead proprietor of this terrible place had left her. As he went, so he reached into his pocket to activate his pager…

The thing's cold hands on Liz's hands… the beeper continuing to issue its endlessly repeating mayday (or its cry of warning, she couldn't say which, but in any case the latter was far too late now)… and this thing from her worst nightmares, smiling at her through the stout iron bars. But bars that might as well be of paper, because the door in the cage stood ajar.

The creature freed her right hand, pushed at the door. Liz stood frozen; she let him get that far — but in the next moment was shaken from her paralysis on hearing Jake's shout of, 'Liz! Liz! Where in hell are you?' He was dead right: that was exactly where she was! But she guessed he already knew that.

All was total darkness now, all bar the glow of her monstrous adversary's eyes. Off-balance as the door swung squealingly open on her, carrying her with it, still Liz managed to snatch the Baby Browning from her pocket. Ramming it between the bars, she gritted her teeth and fired.

'Gah!?' said that shuddersome voice, sounding mildly surprised. And as the thing released his hold on her, she slammed the door shut again on its rusty hinges, and on him, turned and groped fumblingly towards the inner door to the shack. She came across it, found the doorknob and yanked it open. But the creature was behind her; she could feel its hot, fetid breath on her neck, its oppressive strength gathering in the darkness. Then:

'Liz?' came Jake's voice again. He'd heard her shot, came to a halt beyond the locked screen door. She heard him cursing, rattling the lock, until: 'Stand back!' he called out.

She should stand back? When right behind her something was rumbling, 'Urgh — ah! — argh!' even now? And:

'Christ!' Liz said, quickly turning and firing again, and then a third time. Until the grotesque black shadow of the creature was lifted from its feet and hurled bodily away, flailing its arms and spitting blood, back into the shack's more natural shadows — where it collided with yet more shadows that Liz hadn't been aware of until now/

Her shot had come simultaneously with Jake's as he blew the lock off the outer door. And a moment later she was out of the place, stumbling into his arms.

He steadied her, breathlessly told her, 'This place. This is it! It's what we were looking for.'

'Do you think I don't rucking know that?' she gasped.

And then they were running, both of them, heading for the 'Rover, for safety, and for sanity. But as yet safety, and especially sanity, seemed a long way off. Behind them, the smaller shack was spewing stumbling, dazed-seeming, zombie-like figures into the night. A handful of them, four or five at least. While ahead of them…

'God almighty/' Jake breathed with difficulty.

The moon was up, a waxing moon that gave good light. Likewise the stars, very bright in a sky that was now black as jet and banded with varying degrees of purple on the hills. And so by moon and starlight the pair saw what waited for them close to their vehicle.

'We're in it up to here,' Liz panted, choked. And: 'God, I can't breathe/'

'Me neither,' Jake told her. 'But don't panic and keep the plugs in. This isn't over yet. Our beepers will have been heard by the others. They'll be on their way.'

'We… we can't run forever/ she answered, veering away with him towards the track back to the road. 'How'11 we get to the 'Rover with those damned things waiting for us?'

'Split up,' Jake answered. 'You head for the road… keep running like hell, north… I'll try to lead the bulk of these bloody monsters on a wild goose chase.'

Behind them the vampires were taking it easy. They weren't running; they ambled, arms hanging loose, some with their hands in their pockets, eyes aglow, kicking pebbles aside as they followed their intended prey. There was no great hurry — nowhere out here to hide that couldn't be sniffed out. The girl would be easier to handle when she was tired; they wouldn't have to damage her in order to have her one by one — or maybe two or three at a time — before they had her blood.

As for the man: his blood would be good, strong. But he'd caused Bruce Trennier no small amount of pain, and Bruce would be wanting him first. Oh, this one would be missing an arm or leg or both, before Bruce gave him up to the rest of them. And the would-be 'Lord' Trennier would wax fat on meat and marrow, while the hole in his shoulder slowly but surely healed. But:

Silver! came Trennier's voice in their minds, where they tracked the humans across the false plateau at the foot of the knoll. These people are more than they appear to be. Their Indicts are silver, which could mean danger for some of us in the short term, and for all of us in the long. Which in turn means I have to talk to them, question them. So be sure to take them alive, and do it quickly! There was pain in his mental voice, quite a lot of it.

But… silver bullets? That took something of the arrogance out of the pursuit, while the rest of Trennier's sending served to speed it up.

Liz had almost reached the top of the ramp. Cut from the side of the plateau, the ramp would take her down to the road. But one of her pursuers had somehow managed to flank her, was drawing ahead. He would get there first, and the way was simply too narrow to avoid him. She cut right, heading for where she'd last seen Jake.

Meanwhile someone — or something — back at the shack had started up the Land Rover. Its lights came on, cutting a bright swath through the darkness as it bumped over the rough terrain. Whoever was at the wheel, Liz guessed he'd be looking for Jake. Since hiding or disguising her talent was no longer of benefit, finally she opened her mind to seek her partner's thoughts and perhaps discover his whereabouts.

Liz couldn't send, could only receive, but she knew that other minds — and especially enhanced vampire minds — might be able to detect her presence if not read her thoughts: this was a result of the germ of telepathy that was present in a majority of them. Thus vampires were frequently 'spotters.' Indeed, the best (or worst) of them could smell out an entirely human being in much the same way as could a great hound. But what the hell… they already knew she was here.

Jake's mind was immediately accessible: Fuck! he was thinking. Oh, Jesus, they've got the vehicle! They're after me! And yet even now there was very little of any real panic in him. He'd been in too many tight spots before.

But: Do it! Liz tried to send, to will him into action. Do it now, for Cod's sake! (Or if not for His sake, for Liz's, most definitely.') He couldn't hear her, of course not, but surely the other Jake, that other facet, would have to emerge now? Well, apparently not. And behind Liz her pursuer's footfalls sounded loud and clear, as did the clatter of pebbles squirting out from under his pounding feet.

She put on speed (one final burst, for her strength was on the wane now), took in great gulping draughts of air through her mouth, headed in the rough direction of Jake's thoughts, where they had led her to believe he was…

Jake, too, was feeling stressed, but obviously insufficiently as yet. The nose plugs were killing him, but he'd been warned about the dangers of removing them. All well and good, but his throat was raw from drinking in dry, dust-laden air, and since he'd probably been splashed with blood it seemed likely he was already contaminated. God, how he could use a beer now, even a warm one — except he probably wouldn't have time to drink it!

The 'Rover was on his tail, right behind him, when Jake saw a flat-topped boulder. He spun to one side and the vehicle skidded and threw up a cloud of dust as its driver hauled the wheel over. Jake knew that if he had failed to get out of the way the 'Rover would have hit him. Not hard enough to kill him, maybe, but hard enough to put him out of business, certainly. This big boulder was his only chance.

Leaping onto the rim of the rock, he scrambled to its flat surface as the Land Rover came to a halt. There were two men in the vehicle; he could think of them as men, anyway. One seemed a little dazed: he must be a recent convert, recruit or thrall. But the other, the driver… that one wore a grin like Satan himself. A lieutenant? Jake couldn't even even hazard a guess. This was Jake's first time. In at the fucking deep end!

The driver was out of the vehicle in a flash, ducking and disappearing beneath the rim of the boulder before Jake could get a bead on him. The other was slower and Jake's first shot hit him in the head. Well, who or whatever he was he wouldn't be getting back up on his feet again. As for Jake:

Even with his record, still he felt sick knowing that he'd killed another man. Except this one hadn't been a man, not any longer. But the sight of the vampire's head exploding like that — the red wet spray, and whatever other colours there had been — just so much black slop in the moonlight…

… And then Jake asked himself, what moonlight? A cloud, just one damn cloud in an otherwise clear night sky, had drifted across the moon's three-quarters grimace. Just as quickly as that, the night was black as pitch, and the 'Rover's headlight beams were pointing the wrong way. Darkness favours the vampire, and Jake knew he must make his move now.

There was room for just two short paces along the flat surface of the boulder. Jake took them, lifted his feet and hurled himself up and outwards towards the 'Rover, his arms stretched forward for balance. But even as he cleared the boulder's rim a powerful arm and hand shot up, grabbed his left foot. Jake's impetus carried him forward, his balled-up body turning like a pendulum at the end of that oh-so-strong arm. And when he hit all the wind was knocked out of him. He felt his nose plugs eject, trailing streamers of gritty snot, as his Browning flew from momentarily nerveless fingers.

Then that nightmare figure was standing over him, leering down at him, going to one knee and reaching for his throat with long, mantrap hands. 'That's it/ the thing that had been a man said. 'The fun and games are over, friend. Well, yours are, for sure/ With which he drew Jake effortlessly to his feet.

'But yours first/' said a small but resolute female voice. The moonlight came back, and Jake saw the vampire's yellow eyes go wide. As Liz stepped closer, the monster snarled and turned his awful head towards her. The muzzle of Liz's tiny weapon was almost in his astonished, gaping mouth when she pulled the trigger. In that same moment Jake turned his face away, but in any case the debris went the other way.

'The.'Rover!' Liz was pale as a ghost, stumbling in the moonlight that picked out her softly feminine curves. She managed to run a few paces, but Jake caught up with her at the vehicle and almost threw her into the passenger seat. He had seen a handful of silent, flame-eyed figures approaching from the direction of the shack. They were the most immediate problem, obviously, but as yet Jake wasn't aware of the lone pursuer tracking Liz. She knew she hadn't lost him, however, and continued to urge Jake: 'Let's go.' Let's g0/',

'Seat belts/ he snapped. 'It's going to be bumpy.'' Then the engine was roaring, the gears grinding, the Land Rover kicking up dirt as it wheeled for the service road. Which was when Liz's lone pursuer came aboard.'

He came from the side, came vaulting into the rear seats in the moment before Jake picked up speed. And, off balance, he staggered there, his eyes like hot coals in the night. Jake and Liz had seen him; Liz twisted her body, tried to fire her Baby Browning point-blank, and heard the click as the firing-pin fell on a dud.' The vampire grinned and reached for her, and Jake cursed, changed down and floored the accelerator. In the back,

the vampire was taken by surprise and thrown off balance again, if only for a moment.

Then, falling to his knees on the back seat, he leaned forward, put his head between theirs, grinned first at Liz, then at Jake — before taking the backs of their necks one in each hand. Which was exactly what Jake had hoped he would do. And:

'Hang on!' Jake yelled, and literally stood on the brakes.

Mercifully Liz had seen it coming; she leaned to the right even as Jake leaned left. And the loathsome thing gurgled, 'Eh? What?' But the explanation was already forthcoming.

As he flew between them, he released their necks, tried to bring his hands forward to protect his face, didn't even nearly make it. With his arms forming a 'V behind him, he hurtled forward and smashed face first through the windshield.

'Godawful — damn — thing!' Jake choked, slamming the 'Rover into first and crunching forward over something that was trying to stand up. They heard its body grinding and thumping, mangled between the 'Rover's underside and the stony rubble of the terrain. Then:

'My God!' Liz gasped. 'I think we might actually make it!'

'Never doubted it/ her partner told her, lying for all he was worth.

Just as they turned onto the service track and headed for the ramp, a light commenced flashing on the dash. 'Radio/ Liz said, reaching under the dash to grab a hidden mike. Thumbing the transmit button, she said, 'Hunter One for Zero. What kept you?'

'This is Zero One/ a gravelly voice answered in a stutter of static to match the sudden throb of a chopper's rotors. 'Is that you mobile down there?' And a searchlight beam swept down from above.

Jake leaned over and spat into the speaker, 'Only fucking just! Zero — Trask, is that you? — we could use some help.'

'Do you have a target?'

'If it's behind us and it's moving, it's a target/ Jake said, I straightening up in time to avoid a pothole. And as the adrenalin began to recede and his skin stopped prickling, he eased up a little so as not to send the Land Rover nosediving off the rim of the ramp.

Then Liz said, 'Stop!' 'Stop?'

'Stop the vehicle. I want to see.'

'Feeling bloodthirsty?' Jake looked at her, frowning as he cautiously applied the brakes.

'Not me.' She shook her head, shuddered her relief as she thumbed her nostrils one after the other to blow out her plugs. Then she half-turned her head, inclined it to indicate the dark shelf of rock that they'd left behind. 'And not them, not after this.' And now her voice was a sigh.

They looked up and back. First at a sleek, black dragonfly shape under the gleaming blur of its fan, a shape that blotted the stars in its passing and turned the night to a whirling dervish dust-devil with its downdraught as it sped overhead, then at the torpedo-shapes that tumbled lazily, — end over end, down from its belly like so many elongated eggs.

'Jesus!' Jake's sigh matched Liz's. And: 'Let there be light!' she said.

And there was light. The napalm hit a little way back from the top of the ramp. It lit up a widening path all the way back to the knoll, roared with the thunder of its all-consuming passion, washed the wall of the outcrop like a tsunami of fire. In the space of a few short seconds the scene might well have been that in the caldera of an active volcano: a small mountain burned in the night, with man-made lava flowing down its flanks.

For long moments there were running, leaping, screaming figures in the roiling smoke, blackly silhouetted against terrible balls of fire that seemed to roll across the shelf of the rocky outcrop with lives of their own. The spidery figures were there… and they were gone, cindered, rolled under…

The unit was made up of two choppers, a giant support truck and various smaller vehicles, mainly 'Rovers. The truck and lesser vehicles wouldn't get here for some time yet. They had miles of rough road to cover.

The choppers landed on the shelf itself, one to the north and the other to the south. In half an hour their combat-suited, gas-masked, heavily-armed special forces crews were moving forward into the scorched zone. Meanwhile Jake and Liz had joined up with Ben Trask, in charge of operations, also with lan Goodly, his 2I/C, and a 'civilian/ Peter Miller, of Australia's Rudall River National Park Administration — or 'Mister' Miller, as he insisted on being called.

Obviously Miller hadn't been told too much, which was perfectly understandable; it was all on a need-to-know basis, and when E-Branch went out into the world it was standard procedure to avoid unnecessary rumour-mongering and the panic that might ensue. Miller was small, round and bouncy as a rubber ball; he was very excitable and utterly confused. And like many another small, insignificant man in a position of assumed 'authority/ he made a lot of noise. Right now he raved on at the tall, unflappable beanpole that was lan Goodly, who kept steering him away from Ben Trask so that Trask could talk to Liz and Jake. But still Miller's yappy, little-dog voice could be heard over just about everything else that was going on. Right now he was flapping his arms, yelping about:

'… This uttermost devastation? Damn it all, Mr Goodly, I know that this is a wasteland, a useless desert region that you can't damage any worse than Nature herself has. But… there were men in that blaze! I saw men burning in those hellfires! What was that stuff, napalm? But in any case, what does it matter? What happened here tonight was sheer murder! There is no other word for it. I… I still can't believe what I witnessed here… cold-blooded murder, Goodly! And someone will be called to answer for it. In fact, I demand an answer right here and now!'

'Who is he?' Liz asked.

And Trask frowned. 'He's supposed to be our local liaison officer for the Western Deserts Region. A handful of top men in the Aussie Government know what we're doing, just how important our work is. Even so, they couldn't simply let us loose, give us carte blanche to get on with things. We were obliged to accept an observer. But that doesn't make him one of us, and I've managed to keep him out of it… well, until tonight. Even now I don't intend to waste time with him on long explanations. What we're doing is impossible to explain, anyway — not if we expect to be believed. But whether we want Miller or not we've got him, and maybe the best way to keep him quiet will be to let him see for himself something of what's going on.'

'Well, he's seen it,' Jake growled. 'But he isn't quiet.' 'He hasn't seen everything.' Trask's face was grim. And to Liz, 'What do you reckon?'

Knowing what he meant, she opened her mind, gazed intently through the smoke of the remaining fires at the burning shacks where they slumped in the lee of the knoll. And as lines of concentration formed on her brow, she said, 'The worst of them — the "old man," Bruce Trennier? — is still alive. Alive, afraid, and angry. He's still very dangerous, very clever, too. Despite that he tries to hide his thoughts, maybe because of it, I know he's there. His — what, mindsmog? — is as thick as the mist on a swamp, and it stinks a lot worse/ He's the boss, but he isn't alone. Back where the fire couldn't reach, in the depths of the old mine, there's a handful of others. They're waiting for us.'

Trask nodded. 'Well, let's not keep them,' he said, his lips twisting in a cold, cruel grimace, and his eyes lighting with a vengeful fire of their own. And: 'Mr Miller,' he called for the small and small-minded official. 'If you will please accompany me? I hope to be able to answer some of your questions…'

CHAPTER THREE Firestorm

Looking at Ben Trask, Jake Cutter found himself wondering what it was about the man. He knew some of it — that Trask was the head of a British Secret Service organization called E-Branch, based in London but with many other branches, affiliations and powerful friends throughout the world — but not everything by any means. One thing seemed certain, however: Ben Trask was a driven man. Moreover, Jake thought it likely that whatever was driving him was the same thing that caused him to look so much older than his years.

Not that Trask was young; in fact, he could be anything between fifty-five and sixty years old. But while his mousey hair was streaked with white, his skin pale and his aspect in general aged and maybe even fragile, still the man inside, the mind, soul, and personality — the id itself — was diamond-hard. Jake sensed this, and felt a certain empathy for Trask, felt that he knew him, despite that the man had only recently become a factor in his life. But one hell of a factor!

For his height of about five-ten, Trask was maybe a couple of pounds overweight. His broad shoulders slumped just a little, his arms tended to dangle, and his expression was usually, well, lugubrious? Or maybe that, too, was as a result of… of what? His loss? For that was the impression you got if you caught him unawares: the feeling that something had gone out of him, leaving him downcast, empty; his green eyes strangely vacant or far away, his face drawn, and his mouth turned down at the corners. As if he'd suffered a loss too great to bear. And Jake thought he knew something of how that felt.

On the other hand, if what little Jake had been told about Trask were true, then he might well be misjudging him; Trask's pain could have its origin in something else entirely. For in a world where the simple truth was becoming increasingly hard to find, it would be no easy thing to possess a mind that couldn't accept a lie. And that, allegedly, was what Trask was; a human lie-detector.

E-Branch; E for ESP. Telepaths, empaths, locators, precogs… psychos? That's how Jake had thought of them just five days ago: as raving lunatics. No, as very quiet lunatics. For nary a one of them had actually raved. But that was five days ago, and in between he'd seen some stuff. And anyway who was he to talk? What, Jake Cutter, who went on instantaneous, hundred-mile-long sleep-walking tours in broad daylight, and suspected that someone was hiding in his head?

All of these thoughts passing through Jake's mind as he and Liz followed Trask, Goodly, and Miller — who in turn followed a team of four, armed-to-the-teeth special agents — between the stinking fires and towards the slumping, blazing ruin that had been the main shack. The lone pump had disappeared; now a column of shimmering blue fire roared its fury at the sky as fuel from the subterranean storage tank burned off. And as Trask's party advanced on the shack, so Miller went prattling on:

'Do you think there can ever really be an answer to this, Mr Trask? Good Lord, man.' But who gave you the authority to do such as this? I mean— Look!' And his hand flew to his mouth. 'A b-b-body!'he stammered. 'For God's sake! A cindered body.''

In the lee of a clump of hip-high boulders where the blackened, smoking skeletons of cactuses and other once-hardy plants oozed bubbling sap, the clean-up squad had missed something. It was an arm and a hand, protruding from the molten mess of vegetation like a root among all the other exposed roots.

Obviously someone had tried to escape the fire by diving for cover in the foliage… any port in a firestorm.

Or rather it lad been an arm and a hand. Now it was a smoking black twig-thing with four lesser twiglets and the remains of an opposing thumb. Yet even now it was twitching, vibrating, showing signs of impossible life, and the vile soup within the nest of rocks was heaving and bubbling.

'You there — you missed something/ Trask called out. And one of the specialists came back with his flamethrower, playing its bright yellow lance on the shuddering mess until it seethed into a black liquid slop.

In the meantime, Miller had been sick. Trask looked unemotionally at the little fat man where he stood trembling, holding a handkerchief to his mouth, and said, 'Best if you stay here.' And to Liz and Jake, 'You two keep Mr Miller company. But make sure he gets a good look at it if… if anything happens.' He turned away, moved off with lan Goodly. Both of them were equipped with vicious-looking machine-pistols.

'Oh my God!' Miller moaned, hanging half-suspended between Jake and Liz, swaying from side to side. 'Oh my good God! Doesn't the man have a heart? I mean, doesn't he feel anything for these poor p-p-people?'

'Ben Trask is all heart,' Liz told him. 'And yes, he feels a great deal for people, for every man, woman and child of us. For our entire — and entirely human — race. That's why we're here. Because these creatures aren't human, not any longer…'

But Miller was bending over, being sick again, and Jake had got behind him, was holding on to make sure he didn't fall face down in it.

The fires were burning lower now, and the night was creeping in again. Long shadows danced like demons, turning the barren rock ledge into a scene from Dante's Inferno. Near the main shack the column of flame from the underground tank shrank down into itself, issued a final muffled blast, and then became a fireball that rolled like a living thing up the face of the cliff.

Along the foot of the knoll, a second half-team of agents had killed the fire at the shack with the cage and gone inside to explore the secondary mine shaft. While fifty feet away from the main shack — which continued to burn, sending a column of smoke and the occasional lick of red and orange fire into the night sky — Trask brought his team to a halt.

'How about it?' He shouted at Goodly over the crackle of burning brush and scorched timbers. 'What do you think? Do we burn him out?'

Not him, them! Liz wanted to yell, but Goodly was already doing it for her. 'There's more than just him, Ben,' the precog's piping voice, carried on gusts of hot smoke.

'But we can handle them?' Trask seemed undeterred. Goodly shrugged and said, 'I'm not forecasting any casualties, if that's what you mean. But it won't be very pretty.'

'It never is,' Trask told him. He came to a decision, nodded, turned and called for Liz. 'Tell them we're going to bring the whole damn' place down around their ears… and tell him he isn't getting out alive. I want you to taunt the bastard/'

'But… do you think that he'll hear me?' Liz seemed dubious, unsure of herself. 'I mean, I'm only half a telepath. I can receive but not send, and—'

'We can't be sure about that,' Trask cut her off. 'That's one of the things we're here to find out. But we know your talent isn't fully developed yet, and just because you can't send to a human telepath doesn't mean Trennier won't hear you. He's in there, a vampire, and these things have skills of their own. Maybe this will give us some indication of what to expect from you when your talent is fully developed.'

Liz gave an answering nod, moved forward. And Miller stood up a little straighter and asked Jake: 'Who… who is he talking about? And how can that girl talk to someone in there?'

'Just take it for granted she can,' Jake answered, despite that he wasn't too sure himself.

And now Liz was concentrating, concentrating, sending her thoughts into the main shaft, its entrance a smoking black hole glimpsed beyond the skeletal facade of the shack. There were no true telepaths on the team this time out, no one to 'hear' her or even suspect that she was at work. But her thoughts — which weren't intended for the minds of common men — went out anyway:

We're coming for you, Eruce Trennier, she sent. And if you think that what you've seen so far is hot stuff, wait till you see how hot it can really oet! We have grenades that will bring the roof down on you and your thralls, burying you forever like fossils in the earth, and thermite bombs to melt the rocks into permanent cocoons for your molten bones. You're trapped, and no way out. So stay right where you are, hiding your face from the sun, and do your best to enjoy what little you have left of the rotten, parasitic half-life you call existence…

It was, of course, a taunt, a challenge, and coming from a woman would be seen as even more of an insult. If Trennier answered, Liz didn't hear him. What she did hear, or more properly feel, was a sudden silence. A mental silence, a psychic serenity. Or was it more properly a sullen silence, the calm before the storm? lan Goodly confirmed that last with his piped warning: 'They're coming.'

'How many?' As the combat-suited men fanned out a little, Trask swung his ugly-looking weapon up into the ready position and cocked it. Goodly followed suit, narrowing his eyes as his mind read the future's secrets.

He saw men staggering, crumpling to their knees, bursting into flames! Three of them. And he saw one other— more than a man, an animal, a Thing— leaping headlong to the attack! And:

'Three of them,' he yelped. 'On their way to hell. And one other who looks like he was born there! That'll be Bruce Trennier. And Ben, they're coming now!'

'Are they armed?' Trask snapped.

'No,' Goodly piped. 'But… do they need to be?'

The first three came like moon-shadows: dark and fleeting, seeming to flow with the wreathing smoke, out of the shack and into the open, so that Trask and Goodly could scarcely be sure what they were firing at — but they fired anyway. And in a matter of moments the scene became chaotic.

The nightmarish figures firmed into being as lethal silver bullets found their targets. They had been loping, flowing forwards with their arms and hands reaching, but now were brought up short in the stutter of gunfire, snapped upright and hurled backwards. The feral yellow eyes of the central figure turned red as blood — overflowed with blood — in the instant that the back of his head exploded in a crimson spray. He slumped, went to his knees and burst into flames as the agent with the flamethrower found the range and licked him with a tongue of cleansing fire. There on his knees, with his head half blown away, the vampire burned like a giant candle.

But astonishingly the other thralls recovered and came on. And driving them with the sheer force of his presence, flowing like a vast inkblot immediately behind them, came the last and the worst of them. Their master.

The two in front were Trennier's shields… he cared nothing for them or their undead existence… his leech was intent on only one thing: its own survival. And for the leech to survive its host must survive, too. But Ben Trask had other ideas.

'lan, their legs!' he was shouting. 'You men, aim at their legs — smash their bones — cut the bastards down!' He kept firing, his machine-pistol a stammering, jerking mad thing in his hands; Goodly's too, as he followed his leader's example. Likewise from the flanks: a stream of gunfire that turned the night to an uproar as the weapons of the squad spat silver death.

Yet still the three came on. They seemed to float, drifting forwards in that dreadful, dreamlike, kaleidoscopic or strobing stop-motion manner of the vampire. It was hypnotic; it appeared to be slow-motion, but in fact was lightning fasti And now they were only thirty to forty feet away. At which Trask gave a nod to one of his men on the right flank. And:

'Down!' he shouted, as the man armed and lobbed a grenade. Jake was young and fast, and his military training came in handy; Liz had already thrown herself flat when he took Miller off his feet, covering him with his own body. Then the brilliant flash, and a bang that echoed back from the valley walls.

The entire squad was on the deck; cordite stench came drifting, and with it the mewling of something utterly alien. Take looked up, saw Trask getting to his feet and offering his hand to Goodly. But in front of the wrecked, smouldering shack: the scene was unbelievable.

One crumpled figure, a hump of broken flesh, shuddered and steamed in the flickering firelight. Another was sitting there, just a trunk with no arms. Smoke curled from his hair; his yellow eyes were dim, rolling vacantly in their orbits. But Trennier was still on his feet. And Jake thought:

• This is the 'old man/ Bruce. A pitiful wreck of a man was what we saw, but this was the reality!

With his clothing in rags, blood-spattered, his awful face sliced open to the bone, still Trennier stumbled forward. Crying out his agony he came on, hands like claws reaching, blood spurting from his gums as his jaws cracked open, and open, and open! His eyes were scarlet… his great ears curved and scalloped like the wings of a bat… and those teeth, scything up through his riven gums!

The man with the flamethrower was on the ground. His weapon lay where he'd let it fall. Trask grabbed it up. And still Trennier came on, weaving towards Liz, reaching for her where she'd managed to get to her knees. 'You,' the thing rumbled, spitting blood. He seemed dazed; his flickering forked tongue licked tattered lips; finally his eyes focussed and he smiled a monstrous smile. 'You, woman… thought-caster? You thought to fool me — you even taunted me. Very well, and so you'll die with me!'

Jake was up on his feet now, and Miller was on his fat backside, scrabbling away from the horror for all he was worth. But Trennier was concentrating on Liz! He was almost upon her, his oh-so-long hands dripping blood as they reached for her!

Jake caught her round the waist and ran with her, made only two or three paces before tripping and falling. But they didn't hit the ground. No, for it was as if they fell in slow motion, and in Jake's mind a voice saying: Now! The numbers — the formula! Read it! Use it! Rut his own voice, or some other's?

Numbers rolled on the screen of Jake's mind… an endless mathematical progression displaying itself on his brain's computer. Numbers, yes, and he knew them — or someone did! Still holding on to Liz, still falling, Jake (or the unseen, unknown someone) stopped the numbers at a certain combination, an impossible formula that at once formed into a door.

They tumbled through it, into a place of negative gravity, a place of nothing at all, and in another moment — or perhaps no time at all — through a second door, and only then hit the ground. And rolling in the dust full fifty feet away from where they had been, so Jake heard Peter Miller babbling his terror, Trask's cry of triumph or vengeance or both, and the unmistakable roar of the flamethrower.

Even at that distance, still Jake and Liz felt something of the heat and drew back from it, and a moment later spied Miller where he came crying like a child, dragging his fat body along the scorched earth. Then they looked back.

Trennier danced there: the hideous, agonized dance of the true death. Vampire that he was, he beat his arms and screamed his wrath. Or was the awful sound something else? Like the hissing and popping of air-or gas-filled body-cavities when live lobsters are dropped in the pot? Maybe it was the nerve-rending fire-screech of the flamethrower, or perhaps a mixture of both? Jake wasn't sure, couldn't rightly say. He didn't see how Trennier could scream — not in the airless inferno that surrounded his melting body.

His stumbling dance went on for many a long second, there in the heart of that blue-white blast of superheated chemicals, until finally he succumbed. But the Thing inside him fought on — or at any rate caused Trennier to fight on — for a while longer yet. And that was the proof, the undeniable proof, of just how long he had been a vampire.

For as his body began to melt and his legs gave way, letting him collapse onto his backside, so at last his metamorphic flesh answered the call of his vampire nature. It was one last, desperate attempt by Trennier's leech to escape the fire — by using his altered flesh and liquids to damp down the flames.

His scraps of clothing had drifted free of his blackened body to waft aloft on the vile updraught. Now his fingers elongated into writhing worms, and his stomach bulged and burst into a nest of lashing purple tentacles. And all of these appendages were like penises that pissed into the fire, but uselessly. For this was a fire they couldn't put out. Only Ben Trask could do that, and he wouldn't until there was nothing left to burn. Or nothing left that could be considered injurious, anyway. Or at least until his weapon ran out of fuel.

But now the members of the other half-team were back from the ruins of the lesser shack. One of them had a flamethrower; turning his liquid fire on the vampire and his fallen thralls, he finished what Trask had started…

Eventually it was over, and Trask wanted to know:

'Were there no weapons? Why didn't they have weapons?' Now that it was done he seemed half-mazed, drained, as if there had been fires in him also, and they, too, were now extinguished. 'Weapons?' The second team's leader answered him. 'There's a small armoury in the mine shaft behind the lesser shack! Maybe they didn't think they'd need guns, against just two humans. Anyway, we've set charges well back inside the mine shaft. Thermite, too. When that blows, the whole place will go with it. If there's anything still in there, it won't be getting out.'

'Good!' Trask gave himself a shake and took a deep breath. And to the leader of the first team: 'Let's get to work on this end, too. I want the main shaft rigged good and deep. Okay, gentlemen, let's move it. The night's not over yet…' But it soon would be. By then, too, Trask would be his old self again, hard and businesslike. At least on the surface…

Within the hour the charges were triggered. The ground trembled underfoot, and the deep rumble of man-made thunder sounded from the mouths of the mine shafts. And even though the team's members were standing safely back from the face of the knoll, still they felt the flurry of hot air that rushed out of those night-dark pits, and smelled stenches other than those of chemicals.

Then there were clouds of dust, erupting as from blowholes, as the shafts gave way to countless tons of solid rock and lesser debris that came avalanching from on high. But even then it wasn't quite over, for now the effect of the thermite was seen: white gases escaping in high-pressure jets, and smoking liquid that filled even the smallest crevices, running over the rocks to seal them.

Finally someone said, 'In there, right now, it will be much like a blast furnace — the entire mine, cooking itself. I would sooner take my chances in a cellar in World War Two Dresden than in there!'

To which no one gave argument, or even made reply…

The back-up vehicles started to arrive and secondary clean-up could now commence. An old man, apparently plagued by rheumatism, hobbled here and there, examining the ashes of fires that were already cooling. Like Trask and Goodly, he wasn't especially protected; he wasn't wearing a gas mask, seemed to breathe freely (which indicated the absence of nose-plugs), and didn't appear too concerned with contamination. His only weapons were a wicked-looking machete, hanging in its sheath under his left arm, and an antiquated hand-fashioned crossbow. While this final phase of the operation got under way, Jake and Liz waited for Trask's instructions. By no means fully recovered from the night's events — lost in private and personal thoughts — they leaned against the side of the Land Rover where Jake had driven it back up onto the elevated shelf to clear the way for the articulated ops vehicle. And they were mainly silent.

But finally Jake shook off his mood of introspection — a worrying, morbid train of thought where he questioned his sanity and pondered the seeming unreality of certain things that had happened and were continuing to happen to him — and fixed his attention on the hobbling old man, who apparently had more than a little authority here. Limping between the flamethrower teams, he appeared to be pointing out areas they had missed in their 'scorched earth' mission.

'Burn here,' Jake heard him growling over the hiss and roar of searing lances of fire. 'And over there, too. Oh, it's charred, I'll grant you that, but charred isn't enough. It must be burned right through. Then, when it's smoke and ashes drifting on the wind… then it's done with. Not before.'

His accent was strange, hard to place: European Mediterranean area, though, definitely. Italy, Sicily, Romania? There was something of a Romance language in it, anyway. But in fact Jake couldn't have been more wrong. Or rather, his conclusion was too 'mundane' in the literary sense of the word.

'Who is he?' he asked Liz. 'The old boy there? Look at him. He reminds me of nothing so much as a bloodhound… the way he stops every now and then to sniff the night air! The only thing can smell is smoke and fire… and death. And what about his clothing? Just what does he think he is: some kind of frontiersman out of the Wild West?'

And for a fact the old man might well have been a frontiersman — and was, of sorts — but from a wilder west than any Jake might have imagined.

'You know,' Jake went on, 'I got the impression that there was something of the Romany, something Gypsyish about the vampire, Bruce Trennier? Well, now I have the same kind of feeling about this fellow. Hell, he even jingles when he moves!'

But the oldster had spotted them even as Jake spoke, and he came hobbling in their direction. Ben Trask came, too; probably to make introductions, Jake thought. And meanwhile Liz was answering at least one of his queries:

'You said he reminded you of a bloodhound,' she said. 'And you're just about right. A human bloodhound is exactly what he is. What you've seen tonight, he's seen so many times he can't count them. So I've gathered, anyway. His name is Lardis, sometimes called the Old Lidesci

'Liz,' the old fellow nodded his greeting and smiled a gaptoothed smile… but in the next moment he was frowning, stepping closer, turning his head on one side to look up into Liz's face. Then: 'Huhl'he grunted, spitting in the dirt. 'No plugs.' What, and are you imp— imper— er, imperv…' 'Impervious?' she helped him out.

'Yes!' he snapped, pointing an accusing finger at her. 'And you, too!' He turned to Jake. 'Cutter, is it? Jake Cutter?'

'We were wearing plugs,' Jake answered. 'Then we got involved in a lot of activity. My plugs were knocked out of me, but Liz had hers to the end. And anyway, who the hell—?'

'Decon…I' the other abruptly cut him short. 'Er, decontam— contain…'

'—Decontamination,' Liz said.

'Right!'the old man snapped, jerking his thumb in the direction of the command truck. 'Both of you. Now!'

'Who on earth—?' Jake started again. But by then Ben Trask was there to stop him.

'Jake Cutter,' Trask said, 'this is Lardis Lidesci. I heard you asking who on earth? Well, nobody on Earth, actually. Originally he's from… oh, a different place entirely.' Trask had almost let something drop, stopped himself at the last moment. 'Lardis was in the Greek Islands with another team/ he changed the subject, 'When they didn't find what they were looking for, I asked that he be sent here. He came in this afternoon by chopper from Perth.'

And turning to the Old Lidesci, he said 'Well? How about it?'

Obviously there was something between the two of them that Jake and Liz weren't privy to.

'Him?' Lardis looked at Jake, frowned, gave a shrug. 'Can't say. Could be, I suppose. Fit and young… and stubborn! Won't listen to good advice, and doesn't respect his elders too much, either! Makes him a funny choice if you ask me. But if it's so it's so, and who are we to fathom the ways of the Necroscope?'

'Nothing certain, then?' Trask seemed disappointed.

Lardis shrugged again, and said, 'Well, the proof could be right here in the slime and the stink where these bastards burned… that's if you really want to test your theory?'

Trask knew what Lardis meant even if Jake didn't. He shook his head, said: 'No, he's not ready for that yet. And probably not for quite some time to come.'

Jake had been studying Lardis. The Old Lidesci was short, barrel-bodied, almost apelike in the great length of his arms. His lank black hair, beginning to grey now, framed a leathery, weather-beaten face with a flattened nose that sat uncomfortably over a mouth that was missing too many teeth. As for the ones that remained: they were uneven and stained as old ivory. But under shaggy eyebrows, Lardis's dark brown eyes glittered his mind's agility, denying the encroaching infirmities of his body. Jake guessed he'd been a leader, and rightly so.

If Jake examined Lardis Lidesci, it was certainly no less of an inspection that the old man was giving him. And suddenly, feeling uncomfortable, Jake went on the defensive. Frowning, he said, 'I wish you'd talk to me, you two, instead of about me! I mean, you were talking about me, weren't you?'

'About you and about someone else,' Trask told him. 'We're talking about the fellow that you think — and that we think — might be in your head. Talking about a man called Harry Keogh.'

'I never heard of him,' said Jake, but wondered if in fact he had. The name did seem somehow familiar… and felt familiar, too, in a weird sort of way. Which only served to confuse him and make him angry. 'Anyway, what has he to do with me?'

Trask rubbed his chin, said, 'There's something he used to do that… well, that you seem to do, too. When Liz was under threat,

you… you moved her away from Trennier. And I know I don't need to remind you that that's how you first came to our attention. It's how you brought yourself to our attention: by moving in on us.' Jake shook his head. 'That wasn't deliberate/ he said. 'I mean, I didn't have anything to do with it. It wasn't me.' 'Exactly,' Trask told him.

Jake frowned again. 'I don't see the connection.' 'Neither do we,' Trask said. 'Not just yet. But if there is one, we're going to find out about it.' His eyes were speculative, bright with some strange emotion — hope, perhaps? — where they studied Jake's face… But then he shrugged it off and said, 'Meanwhile Lardis is right. Decontamination time for you two. And I do mean right now.'

And Liz and Jake both knew enough — they had seen enough now — not to argue; and so headed for the command vehicle…

When they had left:

'I missed it/ the Old Lidesci spoke to Trask. 'But he did actually do it, then, this Jake? He used the Mobius Continuum?'

Trask nodded. 'And that makes three times now that we know of.'

'Then we must accept that he is what he is/ Lardis shrugged. 'It seems obvious to me.'

'And I wish it seemed as obvious to me/ said Trask. 'It's just that I don't like the coincidence — that at a time such as this he turns up.'

'But what better time?' Lardis asked him.

'Or what worse?' Trask countered. 'The point is, we know what he might be, but we don't know what he is. The only thing I know for sure, it isn't an act. He really doesn't know what's going on/

'And you haven't told him?'

'What do you want me to tell him, Lardis? That part of him has been occupied by someone who talks to dead people? Someone who can even call the dead up out of the earth, to walk again?

Someone who, at the end of "life as we know it," was himself a vampire — and not only him but two of his sons, too? Should I tell him that in Starside, in your world, one of Harry Keogh's sons was a Lord of the Wamphyri, while another was The Dweller, a werewolf? And if Jake didn't think I was a madman, if he actually believed me, what then?'

Again Lardis's shrug. But then, perhaps grudgingly: 'I see what you mean/ he growled. 'If it was me, I'd run like all the devils of hell were after me!'

'And so might he/ Trask nodded. 'And in the Mobius Continuum, he can run a very long way. We can't afford that, can't afford to lose him. Which is why we'll just let this thing develop for a while, and see what happens…'

And some little distance away:

As Jake and Liz passed a patch of blackened, tarry ground, and a slumped mound that still gave off the stench of roasting flesh:

'What?' Jake paused, and his face was very pale. 'What? Do you hear that, those screams? Jesus, what the hell is that?' He turned in a circle, looked all about, but no one was there.

For a moment Liz said nothing. She had heard nothing and couldn't imagine what he was talking about — or maybe she could but didn't want to. But it was plain to see that Jake was badly shaken. 'Screams?' she said. 'The hiss and sputter of sap, perhaps, boiling out of a scorched branch?'

'Well, maybe/ Jake shuddered. 'Maybe/

But he really didn't think so. What he knew he'd heard had sounded much more like the screaming soul of a sinner, roasting in his own private hell. Or perhaps someone shrieking his final denial from a. world beyond the flames, a world beyond life.

And the bubbling patch of scorched earth continued to give off steam and smoke…

CHAPTER FOUR Gadgets And Ghosts

The decontamination booths reminded Jake of those antique telephone kiosks so treasured by collectors. They weren't red and didn't have those small glass panes for windows, but they were much the same size and even smelled bad. Not of urine, no, but garlic; Jake couldn't make up his mind which was more nauseous.

Situated in the back of the rearmost articulated trailer section, and fitted with doors as small as the toilet doors on an airplane, there were three booths on each side. Inside each booth was a disposal unit for soiled clothing; discarded items were sucked away, irradiated and microwaved, spat from an exterior chute and burned. The procedure covered all clothing. Which meant you were left buck-naked in the waterproof and airtight booth, where the rest of the process was entirely automatic. And that was when you discovered why these claustrophobic little shower-units — for that's what they were — smelled so foul. At first it was just hot water, stinging like BB shot where it blasted down on you from overhead jets, but in a few seconds it was something else: a mixture of something chemical and antiseptic, and something vegetable and oily. The chemical saturated and then evaporated, but the oil stayed. And — damn it to hell! — you were supposed to rub it into your pores. But if there was one thing Jake especially hated, it was garlic!

There was an intercom system; you could talk to people in the ops section, or to other agents undergoing decontamination in the booths, whichever. Also, the uppermost sections of the booths were glass-panelled on the sides from the neck up, and from there down stainless steel. This last was simply a matter of common decency; there were female as well as male agents.

Jake had chosen a central booth and Liz had taken the one to his left. Switching on her booth intercom, she said, 'I see you picked the middle one. You could have taken the one on the end, so there'd at least be a booth between us!' Looking sexy as hell (for all that Jake could only see her face, her long slender neck and shoulders), she pulled an impish face at him through the glass.

But he only grinned — a rare occurrence in itself where Jake Cutter was concerned — and answered, 'Oh, really? And why didn't you choose one on the other side of the vehicle, so you wouldn't have to be near me at all?' Then on the spur of the moment he leaned forward, flattened his hawk nose to the glass panel, and made as if to look down inside her booth. There was no way; the glass was misted at the edges and it was all gleam, steam, and cream down there. 'Oblige me and stand on your toes, will you?' he grunted — and was so astonished at himself that he bit his tongue — and was equally amazed at Liz when, for a single instant of time, she actually seemed to consider doing it!

It was the look on her face: a not-quite innocence, a curiosity, a magnetism that worked both ways. She looked beautiful like that: hair plastered down, make-up all washed away, and her skin shiny with oil — yet still beautiful. Jake was drawn by it — and repulsed. There was something he'd vowed to himself, and he would stick by it to the end, until it was done. And anyway, Liz didn't stand on her toes but simply blushed. Or maybe that was as a result of the steam. In which case it would be hiding his colour, too… thank the Lord!

'Anyway, what are you doing here?' she said. And maybe it was his imagination, but her voice sounded just a little husky.

Must be the intercom. 'I mean, you've made it amply clear that you don't want to be with us. So why are you?'

Jake glanced at the intercom panel. Liz's button was the only one that was lit up. No one else was listening, so their conversation would be completely private. That was assuming he wanted to talk, of course. And suddenly he did. 'I didn't have any choice,' he said. 'I could be here or I could be locked up. Well, I've been in jail, and here is better. But after tonight, I can tell you it's not much better…' There he stopped short, reconsidered. Why bother? Why try to get close to anyone? He'd been close to someone before, and she'd paid for it. Once was enough.

'They… they jailed you for murder?' Liz said, and her face was very serious now. 'That's what I've heard, anyway.'

'I killed some people,' Jake nodded. 'And if I get half a chance there are still two more who I want to kill.' He admitted it oh so matter-of-factly, and for a moment his brown eyes were very nearly black; they were bleak, too, almost vacant in their intensity. Liz felt that Jake's eyes looked at something a thousand miles away, perhaps a scene from memory, his as yet undisclosed past. Or maybe it was just an effect of the misted glass.

But then he smiled, however wanly, and was animate again. 'So, there you go. That's me, Mr Bad Man. So what's your story, Liz? What's a nice girl like you doing in a freaky outfit like this?'

She felt cheated, because she knew he hadn't told it all. Not nearly. 'Tell me just one more thing,' she said, shivering because the spray was cooler now, and also because of the look she'd seen in his eyes. 'About you, or about those men you say you killed. Did they deserve it?'

He looked at her, then answered her with a question of his own. 'What about those creatures tonight: did they deserve it?'

'But they were vampires, monsters!'

He simply nodded, left it for her to figure out…

By which time the spray had become shampoo, and they knew it was nearly over, this part of it, anyway. As he soaped himself down Jake reminded her, 'I'm waiting.' Despite his doubts, his resolve, still his interest couldn't be denied.

'Hmm?' she said. Then: 'Oh! Why am I here? That's easy. I was doing some work for a psychic-research group. Looking back, I suspect it was an E-Branch recruiting ploy. They haven't said as much, not yet, but I gather they're pretty hush-hush until a person is well-established with them. Anyway, the job was easy, the money was good and I needed the work. My office was in central London; I interviewed people, allegedly for Mind Magazine, and if they responded positively to a certain set of questions, then I was supposed to work with them and carry out a series of tests.' She shrugged, and through the misted glass Jake saw her shoulders give a little twitch, the suggestive movement of her underarm flesh as the weight of her ample breasts settled.

'Anyway,' she went on, 'I used an old German Prismaton-70 in the tests, and—'

'A what?' Jake cut her off.

'It's a machine that chooses psi symbols at random.'

'Psi symbols?'

Liz sighed. 'Five designs: a star, a circle, a square, a plus sign, and wavy lines.'

'I'm with you now,' Jake said. 'The machine picks the symbol, and the test subject has to guess which one it is.'

'Except it's not supposed to be a guess,' Liz told him. 'I mean, they're supposed to concentrate and try to know what symbol it is! That's what ESP is all about.'

'Go on.'

'Well, at first I would get a few lucky guessers… they might come up with two or three correct symbols in a row and I would get all excited. But in the long run it never worked out to anything, and I'd be disappointed because, you know, I wanted to earn my money. But for me to be successful, obviously my test subjects had to be successful, too. And so I found myself willing them to get it right. Someone would say, "Square!" And I would be telling myself, "No, no, no! That's wrong! It's the wavy lines!"

Until I reached the stage when I was saying, "No, that's wrong," or, if someone got lucky, "Yes, that's right," before they named their choice, before they even spoke!'

'Let me guess,' said Jake. 'You didn't know what was going on. You thought that either you were mistaken, or the machine — the, er, Prismaton-70? — was playing tricks with you, or—'

'But it couldn't be the machine,' Liz cut him short, 'because it's only a machine/

'—Or that you yourself/ Jake went on, 'must somehow be "in tune" with your subjects. Mental telepathy, right?'

She nodded. 'It was me. It wasn't that my subjects, an incredibly high percentage of them, were good at sending — which is E-Branch parlance for telepathic transmissions — but that was good at receiving. I was a receiver, a mind-reader. I could "tune in" to other people's thoughts, yes. Not all the time and not without a lot of effort and concentration, but sometimes

'Which was something you'd never noticed before?' Despite the events of the night — the fact that he'd observed for himself her obvious effect on Trennier — still Jake was a little sceptical. 'I mean, that you knew what people were thinking?'

She grinned. 'Well, I frequently knew what men were thinking….'' Slowly her grin disappeared. 'No, seriously, I hadn't the foggiest idea. But as soon as I did know, then it was like Topsy/ 'It just growed and growed.. Jake thought it over. 'And then there's you Liz said pointedly. But he wasn't having any and simply looked away.

The pungent soap had stopped and it was plain water now, and cold. Just as they might have started complaining, the system closed itself down and a light began flashing on the intercom. It was Trask, wanting to know, 'Are you people done? Good.' So get out of there and make room for someone else/ The rest of the team, all of them, would go through a less intensive cycle. But Jake and Liz weren't finished yet.

Dry towelling robes dispensed themselves from compartments in the rear of the booths, with plastic-bag 'bootees' for their feet. Then the doors concertinaed of their own accord, and outside in the corridor other agents were coming aboard and making ready. But Jake and Liz stayed apart from them and went on into the body of the ops vehicle and the next stage, where Trask himself administered hypodermic injections while the old man, Lardis Lidesci, stood watching. Until finally they were obliged to drink something vile.

'God!' Jake gasped, clutching his throat. And again: 'God, but if I'm not going to be sick as a dog…!'

'If you are,'said the Old Lidesci, Til take it as a very bad sign/ And Trask grinned, however coldly, as Lardis fondled the grip of his machete.

'He won't be sick/ Trask said then. 'And even if he is it won't mean anything. I remember I was sick myself, desperately, the first time I tasted that stuff/

'Garlic?' Still Jake felt like gagging.

'Derived from/ Trask shrugged. 'Anyway, it's good for you… or so I'm told/ Turning, he led the way down the corridor, past doors to a half-dozen cramped bunks, and through a telescopic conduit and hatch into the vehicle's forward trailer section. Then at last they were there: in the ops room itself, the mobile nerve-centre…

lan Goodly was in the hollow oval that formed the central desk. He swung round the oval on a tracked chair, studying the various illuminated wall-charts and monitor screens. The place was hi-tec heaven, well in advance even of anything else that AD 2011 had to offer. In complete contrast to the articulated shell of truck and trailers — indeed, utterly contradicting that outer facade, with its mundane and easily identifiable 'Castlemaine' and 'XXXX' legends — this interior was something out of speculative fiction. And never a can of beer in sight.

Goodly was wearing what looked like a virtual reality headset that was constantly tuning itself to whatever event or location he was observing. But as he swung into a new position and Trask and company came between the precog and the ever-changing screens, so Goodly brought his chair to a halt and took off the headset.

The Old Lidesci shook his grizzled head in astonishment and grunted, 'After two years of working with you people, I'm still not used to it.' Not used to… to this.'

Trask nodded his understanding. 7 know what you mean/ he said, 'but you won't get too much sympathy from me. Hell, it's been more than thirty years for me — and I still feel the same about it/ What was it Alec Kyle used to say? How did he put it? Or was it Darcy Clarke?' He shrugged. 'But what difference does it make, eh? It could have been any one of us. "Robots and romantics. Super-science and the supernatural. Telemetry and telepathy. Computerized probability patterns and precognition. Huh! Gadgets and ghosts.'" Well, that's it. That's E-Branch/

But Jake wanted to know: 'Just what is E-Branch? What's it all about? Don't you think it's time we saw the whole picture?' He glanced at Liz. 'Well, me at least… especially after what you threw me into tonight?'

'Threw us into,' said Liz. 'I'm not as much in the dark as you, Jake, but it's still pretty murky around here.' She looked at Trask, perhaps accusingly. 'And after all, while tonight was one of the first things we've done, it might also have been the last.'

But lan Goodly shook his head. 'No/ he said. 'You have a way to go yet, you two/

'Precog/ Jake said, sourly. 'That's how I've heard people refer to you. But how can you possibly know for sure?'

And Trask said, 'Because he hasn't let us down yet/

'And what if tonight had been the first time?' Jake wasn't convinced.

But Trask only raised a white eyebrow. 'So what's your big problem, Jake? Are you trying to kid us you haven't been doing your best to get yourself killed these last three years?'

'Maybe,' Jake snapped. 'But on my terms!'

'Well now it's on my terms/ Trask growled. 'Or E-Branch's terms/ Then he relaxed a little, looked less severe, and said, 'Okay, I'll tell you. It was a test. Oh, it served its purpose, too, but it was nevertheless a test. And you both passed it. We saw enough tonight — enough happened — to convince us we were right/

'About me?' Jake said.

'About both of you/ Trask replied. 'Liz did her thing, and we all saw Trennier's reply. She sent and he received — and he reacted!'

'Did he ever!' said Liz with a shudder. 'But you're the one who told me to taunt him/

Trask nodded and said, 'And you made a damn good job of it, too, and satisfied our best expectations. So, if you still want in, welcome to the club. You're one of us. And having seen what you've seen — even with what little we've allowed you to learn — we've no doubt but that you'll join us. So that's that. And in any case you have time to think about it/

'And do I have time to think about it, too?' Jake said testily. 'If so you can have my answer right now. It's no, I'm out/

Trask frowned, narrowed his eyes, and said, 'Well, that's a damn shame because you don't have a choice. And that's because you, too, did your thing tonight. Something I haven't seen the likes of in, oh, five years. And when I did last see it… it was in another world, a vampire world, Lardis's world/

Jake looked at the three men in turn — Trask, Goodly, Lardis Lidesci, the way they looked back at him: sincere, serious, speculative? — and shook his head in mock despair. 'I've been telling myself that it's all a dream, one from which I'll soon be waking up/ he said. Then his voice hardened. 'But it isn't and I won't — not from any dream of mine, anyway. This is your dream, your fucking nightmare, and I've had it up to here!'

'Oh no, this is everyone's nightmare/ Trask told him, and then pressed on: 'But which part do you think is a dream, Jake? The strange work we do, or the fantastic thing that you do?'

'I don't do anything!' Jake turned on him, and for a moment looked like he might hit him. 'It just… it just happens.' He clenched his fists, unclenched them, stood lost for words.

Trask shook his head. 'But things don't "just happen", Jake,' he said. 'They happen for reasons. And we've got to figure out why they're happening to you.' He turned to lan Goodly. 'Do we have his file?'

The precog nodded, swung his chair to a filing cabinet set in a section of the oval desk, took out a slim folder and handed it over.

There were chairs that folded into the walls. Trask let one down, sat in it, and invited the others to do the same. Then he opened the file. And:

'Jake Cutter…' he began. But Jake's voice was harsh as he interrupted:

'Do you intend to to read it all? Even the nasty bits? With a woman present?' The others had taken chairs, but he was still standing.

'Brief details,' Trask said, staring up at him. 'Why do you ask? Is there something you're ashamed of?'

'What has that got to do with it?' Jake blurted. 'That's my life you're holding in your hands. It's private — or it used to be.'

'The newspapers didn't think so.' Trask didn't even blink.

'Hell, no, they didn't!' Jake said. 'They held me one hundred per cent responsible for my "crimes!" And do you intend to detail those, too? Is this how you're going to keep me in line, working for you, for E-Branch: by holding a bloody axe over my head every time I voice an opinion or refuse to cooperate?'

Trask shook his head. 'That has nothing to do with it. The object of the exercise is to get to the root of your talent. As for your so-called "crimes"… it's the opinion of this Branch that you don't have too much to be ashamed of.'

For a moment Jake was taken aback, but then he said, 'What if I don't much care about the opinion of this Branch?'

'But you do,' said Trask. 'You believe in justice, and you couldn't get any. So you provided your own rough justice, which was just a little too rough for our modern society. In E-Branch, Jake, we understand rough justice. It's sometimes the only kind that will fit. And we were taught by an expert, someone who believed in an eye for an eye almost as much as you do. Well, now we wonder if that's all you have in common with him, or if this talent of yours is something else. And what's more, there might even be other talents. We want to explore that possibility, too — indeed, every possibility — and you can help us or hinder us. In which case… eventually we'd be obliged to give up on you. And there's still an empty cell waiting for you, remember?'

Jake's hard-frozen shell was coming apart now. Not his resolve but the icy sheath that covered it, without which he wouldn't have been able to face his own atrocities. For that was how he secretly viewed some of his past deeds, as atrocities. Everyone else had seemed to think so, anyway. Yet in his heart, still Jake believed that what Ben Trask had said was right: sometimes an eye for an eye was the only way. And suddenly Jake found himself believing everything else that Trask was telling him, that E-Branch really did care and was on his side. It was just that it had been such a long time since anyone was on his side.

And now Trask was saying, 'So can we get on?'

Jake drew a chair out from the wall, sat down heavily and said, 'Why do I get this feeling this isn't a con? You're what they call a human lie-detector, right? Well, Mr Trask, if you ask me, I'd say your talent works both ways! I get the impression that you really do want to help me, even if it's only so I can help you…'

Trask actually smiled then, and said, 'Jake, you're exactly right. I hate all lies and liars, and I instinctively know when something isn't true, isn't right. Don't ask me how, I just do.

But it's equally hard for me to tell a lie as to listen to one. I just thought you might like to know that.'

Jake nodded and, feeling a little more in control now, said, 'Okay, so if you think there's… something wrong with me and you can maybe fix it, I suppose I'd be a fool to object.'

Trask sat back and issued an audible sigh. 'Very well. But you have to understand. It's not that we think there's anything wrong with you, but that something may be right. From our point of view, anyway.'

And then he returned to the file…

'Your father was a USAF pilot,' Trask began. 'As a rookie, Joe Cutter served at an American airbase in southern England. That was where he met your mother, an English girl from a well-to-do family. Janet Carson's folks objected; they got married anyway; for a while Janet was a camp follower, living wherever Joe was based. Then you came along, doing your bit to stabilize a frequently stormy relationship… well, for a little while, anyway.

But the marriage didn't last. Your father was too often away, and your mother… took lovers.' Trask lifted his gaze from the file, looked at Jake. 'If this is too personal I can skip forward…?'

'You're doing okay/ Jake shrugged. 'Since my parents left me nothing in the way of great memories, what does it matter?'

And so Trask continued. 'Your mother had friends in what's called "high society." Eventually she married a French businessman, with whom she lived in St Tropez, until… well, until she died five years ago.'

Again Jake's shrug, though not as careless as he might have tried to make it seem. 'It's nice in Nice,' he said.

'So as a baby you went to your British grandparents,' Trask went on, 'who were maybe a little on the wrong side of fifty to take on your upringing. As for your father: Joe Cutter died on aerial manoeuvres in Germany in 1995, piloting a way beyond its sell-by-date airplane known "affectionately" to its pilots as a "Flying Coffin." Joe was coming to the end of his service when it happened, and you were just fifteen years old…

'You were an unruly kid, Jake. Too much money, courtesy of your then aging and indeed doting grandparents, too many opportunities to smoke "funny" cigarettes, and probably to try other "controlled" pharmaceuticals? Too much time on your hands, and nothing much to look forward to, not to your way of thinking at least. So you dropped out of school, spent some time with your mother in France; but she had quite a few bad habits of her own and wasn't a very good influence. And anyway, you didn't get on with her. You said you might join the Army and your grandfather was delighted. He said, "Excellent! The Brigade of Guards! The old school tie and all that, wot? Wot?" So you joined the Parachute Regiment because you wanted to jump out of airplanes! And in just two years you transferred to the SAS. Well, so much for parental guidance.

'When they kicked you out of the SAS your final report said you were incapable of taking orders. Also, and this is a damned strange thing for the SAS, the report said you were too much of a loner! This from an outfit that prides itself on self-dependence, or total independence! So there you were, five years ago: back to the good life, a life of luxury in the South of France, where you lived off your Ma's money.'

Jake shrugged, but he looked more than a little uncomfortable. 'Her second husband left her a packet,' he said. 'And her third was even richer. So why should I break my back working?'

'I'm not criticizing you, Jake,' Trask told him. Tm just pointing out what you were then, in order to find a comparison with what you later became in the eyes of society. Which is to say a criminal. More than that, a brutal murderer.'

'Now just you wait a minute!' Jake started to say, 'Didn't you tell me that you—' until Trask cut him off with:

'In the eyes of society, anyway. But society has been known to make the odd mistake here and there. And E-Branch… well, we're sometimes called in to clean up the mess; though as often as not we just jump in feet first regardless. Very well, now we can get away from your story for a minute or so…' And after a brief pause fie went on:

'For the last fifteen to twenty years — or even longer than that, indeed ever since the fall of Communism — Europe has been in one hell of a mess. Recessions, revolutions, coups one after the other; nuclear black spots where Russian power-stations and weapons dumps are left rotting down to so much atomic rubble; little wars, and not so little wars left, right, and centre as nations take their revenge, engage in racial vendettas that should have been settled, probably would have been settled, a hundred years ago if Soviet expansionism and Communism hadn't called a temporary halt to them. Power struggles in political systems that are still sorting themselves out, in Rome and Moscow and elsewhere; ethnic cleansing in and around the Slavic and Baltic countries, and regular revolutions in Turkey, Bulgaria, and Romania. Italian, French, and German governments coming and going as regular as the ticking of a clock, and lasting about the same length of time, never long enough to do anyone any good. And as for the Near and Middle East, Africa, the Orient.. Trask sighed and shook his head. 'Have I painted a sufficiently gloomy picture?' And without waiting for an answer: p>

'Well, thank God we're an island — England, I mean — and also that we've maintained and strengthened our ties with America and Australia. Because the rest of the world seems like no-man's-land. In a word, it's chaos.

'It seems an ideal scenario for the end of life as we know it, right? Even as I speak the depletion of the ozone layer continues, we're into yet another El Nifio — the fourth in fifteen years — and there's a rip-roaring plague spreading west out of an ideologically and financially exhausted China. But there are worse plagues than a new strain of the bubonic variety, believe me…'

Again a brief pause, until: 'And so back to you,' Trask continued, staring at Jake.

'Your mother died of an overdose, left you some money—'

'The money was about the only decent thing she ever did for me,' Jake nodded, his husky tone betraying his true emotions.

'—But you and money together spelled more trouble.' Trask chose to ignore the interruption. 'So maybe you didn't have too much going for you, you and your Ma — still her death affected you badly. You went on a long drinking spree in all the Mediterranean resorts from Genoa to Marseille, wrecked your car on the Italian Riviera; the paparazzi took your photograph during several fist-fights in Cannes. Also it's not at all unlikely that you returned to your drug-taking habits.'

'I never had much of a habit,' Jake told him. 'Oh, I tried just about every brand, that's true, but they only made me ill. Those "funny" cigarettes were about as bad as it ever got, and where I've spent the last three months even they were far too expensive. I'm used to my asshole the shape and size I've always known it!' He looked at Liz and said, 'Sorry, but if you insist on being here…'

She shook her head, answered, 'I'm not a child, Jake. After tonight I thought you'd know that much, at least.'

And Trask went on just as if no one else had spoken: 'Then you met a girl. There'd been women in your life — quite a few — but this one was something else. She was special.'

'This is the bit you can skip,' Jake told him gruffly. But:

'Unfortunately not,' Trask answered. 'If Liz is to be your partner, and the rest of E-Branch is to work with you, they'll need to know that you aren't quite the savage that the world — and probably you, too, Jake — thinks you are. They'll need to know you had your reasons.'

And Jake sat silently now, his head lowered…

CHAPTER FIVE Jake's Story

'Her name was Natasha,' Trask went on. 'And she was working for the Moscow Mafia. She was a courier for the Mob in the guise of a fashions artist, but in fact the only designs that interested her were the designer micro-drugs in her sports car's roll-bars. Natasha was also the Mob's collection agent and ferried lots of high-denomination francs and lire back to a vastly depleted Russian economy… or rather, to the thugs who were in large part responsible for that depletion.'

Trask shook his head in disgust. 'God.' Hoods of the world, unite.' We thought it was over and done with when the Mafia took a couple of bad falls back in 1984 to '87. In America, the families really suffered. When Gotti went down everyone thought it was the end of that kind of corruption, at least in the USA. In Sicily, '87, nearly four hundred of these lizards were convicted of murder, extortion, graft, racketeering, prostitution, you name it. Surely that was the end of it? Oh, really?

'But the Russian Mafia were just starting out, and with the collapse of the European immigration laws ten years ago and the removal of border controls on the continent… well, as I said, thank the Lord that the UK's an island. We kept our border controls, our immigration laws, and for once we got it dead right. Even so, the illicit drugs trade is hard to beat and we're suffering our fair share, though not nearly as badly as the rest of the world.

And, of course, hard-core survivors of police activity and "old" Mafia-style gang wars in Italy, Sicily and the States have formed liaisons with the ever more powerful Russian gangs, which means that, in common with the world's terrorist organizations, they're now pretty much integrated.

'Marseille has always had a big drug problem. The Riviera, with its jet-setters and high-roller socialites, has been drug-dealer heaven for a long, long time. Natasha Slepak's mobility — the routes she used — were several, but mainly she would fly from Moscow to Budapest and then drive down into Italy or over into France. Or she might use another route into France, driving into Genoa, then taking a yacht to the French Riviera. The Mob have contacts, keep boats, in most Italian sea ports.

'Jake met Natasha in Marseille. According to a statement he made later — much later — to the Italian police, she wanted out of the drugs business. She was being pestered for sex by one of the Italian Mob's top men, one Luigi Castellano, a young Sicilian who ran the French side of the action from a sprawling villa on the outskirts of Marseille. Castellano was Natasha's top contact in France, and he was also the man she most feared and hated…'

As Trask paused, Jake — who had been looking more and more agitated — burst out, 'If it has to be told, let me do the telling from here on in.' Trask pursed his lips, then nodded.

'We met in a bar,' Jake began. 'What you've just heard is true: Natasha wanted out. But there was nowhere she could run, not on the Continent, anyway. No border controls; the Mob would find her wherever she went. Maybe that's why she went for me — because I had British nationality — but that's only a maybe. I prefer to think… well, otherwise. Anyway, we got on famously. For a couple of days I wined and dined her; she was a very good reason for staying sober, staying clean. We roomed at different hotels… so I thought. But in fact she was staying at Castellano's villa, and all the time fending the bastard off! And she wouldn't come anywhere near my place. In short, she wasn't any kind of pushover. And I knew she was worried about something.

'Eventually she told me just about everything. And all the time — all through our "romance," if you want to call it that — I was aware that she was being watched; even when I'd first met her, this tall guy had been watching from the shadows. I didn't tell her about it, but I knew I wasn't mistaken. Finally she told me why we couldn't be together. It was for my sake: she didn't want me to get into trouble.

'The time came when she said she'd have to be moving on. I knew I loved her, even though we'd known each other less than a week. Maybe I needed someone to love. My mother was recently dead, and I guessed that at the rate I was burning myself up it wouldn't be too long before I'd be joining her. And now there was Natasha to fill a void I had never thought would exist, and I just couldn't see anything to stop us being together. But she could: the Mob. So I asked her why shouldn't we go and tell her story to the local police, the Surete? She said they were in Castellano's pocket. So I said she should think about something: next time she'd be in Marseille, let me know beforehand and I would be there to take her out of it; to England where she'd be safe. Or comparatively safe, anyway. And she said okay.

'So on our last night together I was in a pretty frustrated mood. And wouldn't you know it? Her tail was there as always. I would know him anywhere: this tall man with his thin white face and dark eyes. But we had made our plans and the next time Natasha was in town would be the last time. She would come with me into England on a tourist visa, we'd get married, and she would stay on as my wife. It seemed more than likely she'd be lost to the Mob for good. So maybe she thought we should seal our pact. Or perhaps it was more than that; maybe she simply wanted to be with me on what would be our last night for some time to come.

'Anyway, she said yes, she would come back to my hotel with me. But there was no way I intended to have the tall fellow for company!

'We took a taxi to a bar a stone's throw from my hotel, and when Natasha went to the ladies' I waited just inside the door.

Sure enough, a car pulled up and the tail got out. And that finally did it for me; I'd had it up to here. So, stepping outside, I didn't bother to introduce myself but simply lashed out and knocked him down. Some of the stuff the SAS had taught me was finally coming in useful. And before he was even nearly ready to get up again, I took Natasha off to my hotel.

'Looking back on it now — oh, I was some kind of clown! To actually believe I could get away with it. Worse, I hadn't considered the repercussions where Natasha was concerned. Though I certainly did the next morning…

'After breakfast, when I took her down to catch a taxi, the heavies were there. And this time I didn't see them, didn't see it coming — didn't even feel it until I woke up at Castellano's villa. Not that I knew where I was at the time; my location was something I found out later. Anyway:

'… I was tied to a chair in one of the bedrooms. And Natasha was tied to a bed. We were both in our underwear. I seem to remember windows with thick drapes, so that not even a chink of sunlight came through. But it felt like day. Midday, quiet, too hot outside to even think of movement. That was what it was: no movement. A humid, drowsy day. And the room was dimly lit; wall lights turned low, and a shaded bedside lamp. But I'm way ahead of myself. At first I didn't see a damn thing, I only felt the pain in the back of my skull.

'Then, as I gradually came to, I heard voices speaking in Italian. I knew the language well enough to know they were talking about me… and Natasha. "After the girl," one voice said, "then you can have him. But first, I want him to see and understand — the spoiled English brat! I would have had her myself, a long time ago, except that might have been problematic. Even so, I was tempted. And if she'd been a little more willing… but I won't force any woman, it's too demeaning — to myself, I mean. Anyway, our colleagues in Moscow think highly, much too highly, of this bitch. And now this brat has spoiled her. Well for me, at least. I don't take anyone's leavings, Jean Daniel, so this is your lucky day; you get to do it for me. Let's face it, you've watched her often enough, and I'm sure you've fancied her just as frequently, eh? So, what better way to pay him back for what he did to you?"

' "Fancied her?" the other voice said. "Hey, I'm only human, Luigi.' And this is… this is a lot… a lot of woman

Jake's own voice as he told or relived his story had sunk very low, become guttural, until at this point he was choking on his words, having difficulty getting them out. Trask saw this and said, 'Jake, we can leave it there if you like?'

But the other shook his head. 'No,' he said grimly. 'No, I think I'd like to finish it Maybe it's good for me to remember what went down. Because then I'll be sure I was right in what I did. Yes, and it also serves to remind me of what remains to be done…' And after a moment:

'These-voices,' he went on, 'were very distinctive. The one belonged to Castellano, as I was about to find out. It was very deep and powerful; like a rumble, a purring sound, even when he was speaking quietly. And the other, this Jean Daniel's voice, it had an obvious French accent in keeping with his name. But it also had something of a lisp, which explained itself as soon as I saw him.

'Anyway, I must have twitched, moved my head or something. Maybe I groaned, but suddenly they knew I was awake. Then shadows moved in that dim room.

'They came from behind me, one pausing to stand beside my chair, the other moving towards the bed, positioning itself in an easy chair on the other side of the lamp. They were men, of course, but to my blurred vision they were more like shadows. But as my eyes adjusted and my head stopped swimming, finally I saw Natasha, spreadeagled there on the four-poster. And because she'd lifted her head she could see me, too. Maybe that — that look on her face, expressing her relief that I'd finally come to — was how they knew I'd regained consciousness. But in any case, it was an expression that didn't last much longer.

'The one beside the bed spoke, and his deep purring voice told me that this was Luigi Castellano. "Ah, Natasha, Natasha.'"

he rumbled, as she turned her pale, frightened face to look at him. "First the injury and then the insult," he said. "To have spurned my friendship, my warmest offerings of affection, for this… this Englishman's. Perhaps you didn't understand that in the game we play it's always business first — no such thing as mixing business with pleasure, Natasha. And if there was we might reasonably expect you to take your pleasures with one of us, not with some stupid outsider. Perhaps it's my fault; I allowed you too much leeway? But no, for I hate to blame myself."

'I tried to look at the speaker but he was still a shadow, a dark silhouette hunched behind the cone of faint yellow radiance from the bedside lamp. And he went on speaking:

' "But then again, what if this foreign playmate of yours wasn't so stupid after all but a member of one of those agencies we haven't yet got to, eh? You took too many chances, Natasha — took too much pleasure, I fancy — and now you must pay. Ah, but what price? Well, since you don't seem to care too much for the company of a business partner, I was obliged to find a punishment to fit your… your what, your crime? Ah, but no — too harsh by far — your error of judgement, then. A punishment to fit both participants, that is. Tit for tat, if you like. Or, better far, tits for tat?" Castellano's tone was much harsher, harder now. "Yes, and the rest of your more than ample charms into the bargain…"

'He looked up and beckoned to Jean Daniel. My chair was a swivel. The man beside me spun it, and I went turning, turning, feeling sick as a dog as the room revolved around me. At least it gave me a chance to identify my tormentor, his cold, smiling face passing before me as the chair slowed down. It was Natasha's tail, of course, and Castellano's tall pale-faced watchdog^

'Finally he spoke to me in broken English through a broken mouth, which accounted for his lisp. I hadn't realized how hard I'd hit him. "Bastard!" he said. "Stupid, English, pig bastard! When I finish with her, then is your turn. We see who hit hardest, eh?" He made to move towards the bed.

'"If you hit her," I mumbled, "if you strike her just once, I swear I'll—" But he turned, cut me off, said:

'"Hit her? With fist?" For a moment he frowned, looked puzzled. But then, grinning as best he could through split lips, he said, "No, stupid, I not hit. I fuck her!"

'And he did…' Jake's voice was a growl now, a sob, a low moan. 'With that dog Castellano watching, and laughing. And me: I couldn't look away. I had to look.' He ripped her underclothes right off her. The skinny bastard — he didn't pause to get undressed — he just… he just… And Natasha, she didn't even speak, didn't cry out. But she did cry. I heard her sobbing…'

Trask cut in, Til take it from here, Jake, okay?' And before the other could protest:

'You were found in an alley badly beaten. Four broken ribs, and your nose much as we see it now. The rest of your face was a mass of bruises. You'd been kicked, too — someone had really worked on you — so badly that for a day or two the French doctors couldn't be sure they'd be able to save… everything. But you still had your plastic, and paper money in your pockets, so it looked like the motive wasn't theft. In fact they never discovered what the motive had been; even when you could talk you weren't telling anyone, said you didn't know. Now why was that, Jake?'

'I was going to handle it my own way,' Jake answered, dispassionately now. 'And I did, eventually.'

'Yes, you did,' Trask nodded. 'But that came later. Do you want to pick the story up again?'

The other's face was white, drawn, but he nodded…

'I was three weeks in hospital,' Jake eventually continued. 'No word from Natasha; I didn't know what had happened to her, but I prayed it wasn't physical. Or rather, nothing more than she'd already suffered. As for what had suffered… I think it was as much mental as physical, worrying about Natasha, I mean. But at last they turned me loose. By which time there'd been plenty of time to think things out. Now it was up to her. If she still wanted out — if she still daredp>

— I was her man. HuhlThat old motto of mine: "Who Dares Wins." Well, I dared for sure, because I loved her. See, I still hadn't learned my lesson. Then again, do fools in love ever learn?' He managed a wry grin. 'How about that: Jake Cutter, philosopher!

'About Jean Daniel, which was the only name I ever knew him under: my initial intentions towards that bastard had been very bloody. At first… well, I admit that I'd equipped myself. And I had gone looking for them, too — the Mob, I mean — but carefully. And as I healed, so I quit abusing my system with booze and maybe some other stuff. The army had trained us hard: "body maintenance," my Section Commander had used to call it. But now I found it really difficult to get back into the routine. Oh, I was still young, but as you've pointed out, Mr Trask, that Jean Daniel had done a hell of a good job on me. Such a good job, it took me four long months to put the damage right.

'I completed my recuperation in England, went back to Marseille. But time was passing and I still hadn't heard from Natasha, I had given her both my English and French telephone numbers; if she couldn't speak to me, she should certainly be able to speak to friends of mine. Still I hadn't heard from her, and time seemed against me, seemed to be flying. But where Natasha was concerned: it was like some kind of paradox, the months passing like so many years! I couldn't forget her

— I still wanted her — and the debt that the Mob owed us was slowly slipping out of memory and into the past

'Earlier, however, not long after leaving the hospital, I had found Castellano's villa. I did it the easy way, by tailing the tail. I'd grown a designer beard, tinted my sideboards grey and changed my mode of dress, even developed a limp. Or rather, I had deliberately held onto the limp I'd been left with, legacy of Jean Daniel. In all I looked quite a lot older. And I was staying out of bars, places where people might have been warned to look out for me. But one lonely night — I don't know, maybe I was hoping against hope that Natasha would be there — I went back to the bar where I'd first met her.

'I suppose I was lucky I'd developed my disguise, for Jean Daniel was there. He was on his own, didn't notice me. But when he left I was waiting in my car, followed him to the villa. And having found the place, I sat back out of sight and watched it, watched its clientele… hard men, all of them! Then, for some few weeks, I followed them, too. Well and good — now I knew the places to avoid if ever Natasha came back to Marseille; I mean, I knew which routes not to take getting her out of there. And I knew to get her out fast.

'For despite all my earlier intentions, finally I was getting some sense. These people played rough, played for keeps. So maybe I'd be wise to forget the revenge thing, simply take Natasha and run for home. If she ever came back. 'And eventually she did.

'It was less than three years ago, in early November. I got a message from a friend, who gave me a Moscow telephone number. And when I called… I knew it could only be Natasha. She was scared. Castellano had done a job on her, ruined her reputation with the Moscow Mob. For a long time they'd left her alone, let her go to the dogs. She'd been unable to find work, and finally she'd become desperate. Then she'd begged a Mob boss to let her run drugs again. And now she was coming to Marseille. But Castellano knew she was coming and she was more afraid of him than ever.

'I asked her if she remembered our previous plans. She did, and was ready to do whatever I'd worked out for us. But her own idea was a lot more daring: to dump her drug consignment cheaply on a rival French gang, and then to run with the money! Even cheaply it would still be worth a quarter million sterling!

'At first I backed away from it. But the more I thought it over the more I liked it. Wouldn't it be as good, even better, than the somewhat more physical revenge that I'd once planned? And it would hit them all, not just Jean Daniel, who obviously had been my principal target.

'Natasha had already contacted her buyer; she was supposed to come by yacht but instead would fly into Marseille. That way she'd have time to dispose of her load and get out of France — with me, of course — before Castellano and his people even knew she was missing. My part of it would be simple: drive like hell for Lyon, Dijon, and Paris, finally the Tunnel. I'd studied the routes, couldn't find any fault with the plan. We'd be on board a train and passing beneath the English Channel before the Marseille Mob even thought to backtrack Natasha's movements. So we reckoned, anyway.

'Maybe it would have been easier to fly. But that way would have meant leaving my car behind. I had a beauty, an almost new Peugeot. Also, if we'd flown the Mob would find it a lot easier to track us. Idiot that I must have been, I still hadn't fully appreciated just what kind of people I was fooling with…'

Jake paused to look at Trask. 'You compared the modern Mob to terrorist organizations. Well, I thought I had learned something about terrorism in the SAS. Maybe I had, but plainly not enough. And anyway, that was just classroom stuff. Whatever, I thought of the Mob a lot differently from you: as just a bunch of hoods, I suppose. But you were right and I was wrong.

'They were probably watching her all the way down the line. They'd probably always watched her… maybe they have watchers for all their couriers and dupes. Take Jean Daniel, for example. That spindly bastard was just another watchdog. Not so hard to understand when you consider the street value of the merchandise…

'Natasha was wearing dark glasses, a wig and all when I met her off the plane. But I knew her immediately. And so did they. Then… it was like a repetitive nightmare, almost a repeat of last time. Except this time there were five of them at the villa, and the way they went at it…

'… Oh God! Oh God! — I knew they wouldn't be taking prisoners this time.'

Jake's face was ashen now. Earlier tonight he'd known more or less what to expect; even if he had only half-believed in it, still he had been doing a job. But at the time of his collision with the Mob, Castellano's people — that kind of monster — he had been… what, naive? Well, no longer.

Ben Trask knew it was time to step in, but more forcefully now. 'That's enough, Jake/' he said. 'You don't need to go into any further details. Why upset yourself) We've all heard enough and we're on your side. As for "justice" — the justice you received? — I might know a lot more about that than you do. So for now, let's skip that night at the villa.' But:

'That long, long night,' Jake husked, sweating and shivering at the same time, his skin almost visibly crawling. 'All of them, and that bastard Castellano watching it from the shadows. God, I still don't know what he looks like! But afterwards, oh, I remembered the rest of them in minute detail, would never let myself forget them. And their laughter, like jackals. And their jokes. The way they went at her, leaving no marks, no signs…'

'Skip it, Jake!' Trask's grating voice, shaking him out of it… Jake sat back and gulped at the air, gradually quit shuddering. Eventually a little colour returned to his face, and finally he was able to continue:

'I came to in the water. Underwater! My car's windows were half open and we were sinking like a brick. At first I was disorientated, didn't know what the hell was happening. I think I woke up because I couldn't breathe. Like when I was a kid: I'd come screaming awake thinking I was drowning, only to discover that my head was under the covers. But this time it was river water. And I was stupidly trying to push back the covers… I mean I felt stupid, drugged — which of course I was! But then, as I remembered what had gone down, I looked for Natasha in the passenger seat. She wasn't there, and I thanked God—

'—Thanked Him, as I somehow managed to wind my window down and drifted out and up and free. But as the car went down and I floated up, buoyed up in an eruption of big bubbles, I saw Natasha in the back of the car! Her face… her hair floating… her eyes wide open… her mouth gaping. And her spread fingers flattened and white, the hands of a corpse — I hoped! — against the curved back window.

'But dead? I didn't know, I still don't know to this day if she was dead or alive. But I've got to keep telling myself that she was

dead, because that's the only way I can bear it. And in any case, I couldn't have done a thing about it. Weak as a kitten, I felt half dead myself! My lungs were bursting — my ears, too — we were that deep. And I drifted up oh so slow, while the car went down, disappearing into the deeps. And this girl I had loved, still loved, Natasha disappearing with it…'

This time it was a while before Jake could go on. He was like a man apart from reality; he started and sat up straighter in his chair when the Old Lidesci coughed, and looked around for a moment as if wondering where he was. Then:

'Are you okay, Jake?' Liz asked him.

A nod was his only answer, until he was able to continue.

'Don't ask me how I got back to Marseille,' he finally went on. 'I can't for the life of me remember. But I did, and I laid low with a trusted friend. By then my earlier plans for revenge were firmly back in place. Before that, however, I actually considered going to the police. Then I remembered what Natasha had told me about the police being in Castellano's pocket and decided against it. I would wait it out, see what happened.

'I didn't have long to wait. It was in the newspapers, home and abroad. My car had been found in the Verdon River where it comes down from the Alps of Provence near Riez. Locals had been alerted by a hole in the wall of a stone bridge over a torrential gorge. Natasha was still in the car, also a quantity of illicit micro-drugs and other evidence that she'd been a bad lot. As for me: well with my past record I would have been a wanted man — her partner, obviously — except they assumed I was dead

'But I wasn't dead And now I had absolutely nothing left to lose. Also, I knew a few things about Castellano's people, where they hung out and who with, and I wasn't about to waste any more time…

'There was one thing I had been really good at during my couple of years with the SAS: sabotage. Sabotage, booby-traps, and demolition. And I still remember — and I cherish the memory — of the night I found Jean Daniel drinking alone in that discreet little bar that I knew so well. I was there, watching the place, when he arrived, and I was there when he left.

'It was a rainy night. As he got in his car in the alley, I stepped out of the shadows maybe twenty-five yards in front. I stood there with my legs spread like an inviting target, and I waved at him. And I started oh so slowly to walk towards him. He saw me; I saw him flinch, knew that he'd recognized me. Then he turned the key in the ignition, and I knew exactly what the bastard was thinking: that he would run me down.

'By then I'd turned my back and hit the deck just in case. But no, there wasn't much of a blast; what little there was of flying glass went over my head. So I got up, walked to his car and looked in through the shattered window. I knew pretty much what I'd see, for I'd been determined to make the best kind of job of it. And I had.

'I had taken a small hacksaw and cut halfway through the four spokes of his steering wheel close to the column. And I'd fitted a trembler to the high-explosive charge that I'd placed under the plastic casing where the column was jointed for adjustment. It was a hellishly sensitive mechanism, far too sensitive to ignore the vibrations of a revving engine.

'The blast had driven the steel core of the steering column through Jean Daniel's middle, stripping its plastic casing as it went. The core had broken his lower ribs and torn through his stomach, and done a lot more damage along the way. Yet somehow it had missed severing his spine. He sat there — alive but barely — pinned to his seat with this fat cylindrical rod right through him; sat blinking at me, the steering wheel still gripped in his spastic hands.

'"This is a different kind of rape, Jean Daniel," I told him, watching as blood filled his mouth, and his eyes began to dim, and his twitching gradually stilled. "My own special version." And then, just before the bastard died. "So now you know who hits the hardest

CHAPTER SIX More Of Jake's Story

Ben Trask, lan Goodly, and the old Lidesci were first away from the gutted, smouldering remains of the vampire enclave; Liz and Jake followed on behind Trask's commandeered transport in their own vehicle. They would be taking it easy, so it shouldn't be a problem that they'd lost the windshield. If they kept well back from Trask, the dust thrown up by his Land Rover wouldn't bother them. And the cool night air would be a definite bonus.

Just as they rolled onto the ramp cut in the steep face of the bluff, Jake slowed almost to a halt and looked back.

Apart from the smoke there was very little to show for the earlier activity. Several members of the team, dressed in fresh combat clothing but no longer armed or gas-masked, were hammering sharp signposts into the stony earth. One such post carried a legend only just visible in moon-and starlight:

HEALTH HAZARD! TOXIC WASTE! KEEP OUT!

E-Branch took no chances.

'What next?' Jake jerked his head to indicate the scene of recent devastation. 'For this place, I mean?'

Liz shrugged. 'The mine's sealed, there are no life signs.

Tomorrow the sun will come up and scorch the bluff clean.

Maybe they'll bulldoze the surface and dynamite the ramp, eventually. But there's no real hurry now. The main man was Bruce Trennier, as yet only a lieutenant but a would-be Lord.

If he had got away…' Again her shrug. 'Tomorrow they'd be back to tracking him down again. As it is, the operation was a complete success.'

'And this was the first time you've seen this kind of action?'

Jake slipped the 'Rover into third, let gravity draw them down the dusty ramp. 'How come you know so much more about this stuff than I do?'

Liz tossed her hair back. 'I've had a little time to study what they do — the Branch, I mean — and I'm "aware" of my own talent, which makes their talents so much more acceptable.

Once you begin to realize that all the weird stuff is real, it's not so difficult to believe the weirdest stuff of all.'

But Jake only wondered, And that's a good, thing— to actually believe in all ofthisPEut still it was hard to deny his own five senses. Assuming they were his own, of course.

Down on the level, he turned onto the old road. A quarter-mile ahead, Trask's tail lights glowed red. 'I still can't accept that we were simply thrown in at the deep end,' Jake said.

'It was a test, as Trask told you,' Liz answered. 'I guess he knew that once we'd actually experienced it, gone up against the plague itself… well, that we really would accept it.' 'So why don't I?' Jake wanted to know. For a while she was silent, letting the wind blow her hair back, breathing the night air. Then she said, 'Jake, about your story tonight, in the Ops Room. There are terrible experiences, and there are terrible experiences. There are monsters and monsters, and I don't know which ones are the worst. But your life has been one of extremes. Maybe if mine had been messed with as much as yours, I'd start to wonder what was real, too. But this talent of yours, that's really something else. I mean, what you did tonight was—'

'—Wasn't me!' he said sharply, cutting her off. And with a shake of his head: 'I can't explain it any better than that.'

'Try,' she said. 'If we are to be partners, surely you can try? Look, this isn't something I suggest lightly — the Branch has its own internal code of conduct for espers, telepaths, empaths and such — but if you'll just let your thoughts flow free, I'll…'

'You'll what?' he looked at her. 'Read my mind? See if I'm as messed up as you suspect? Well, I probably am. Probably have been ever since… since Natasha died. The way she died.' Then he sighed and relaxed a little. 'On the other hand you could be right. My life las been a mess, and fate seems bent on screwing me around more than my fair share. So is it any wonder I have a problem sorting out what's real from what's fantasy? And as for E-Branch,' Jake shook his head wonderingly. 'Gadgets and ghosts — yeah!'

'And they want you for one of their gadgets/ she said.

'Huh!' he answered. 'Maybe one of their ghosts, if things had gone wrong tonight!'

'You've changed the subject,' Liz accused. 'Look, back in the Ops Room you started to tell your story. A good start, but you didn't nearly tell it all. Now me, I'm a hell of a listener. And right now, right here, there's just the two of us.'

'Oh really?' he said. 'A good listener — and bloodthirsty with it? Like one of those things we destroyed tonight?'

'That's not fair,' Liz answered. 'And that's not the part that interests me.' She gave a little shudder. 'I mean, I know you killed all of those men—'

'No, not all of them,' Jake said, coldly. 'Castellano and one other, they've still got it coming.'

'—And that your methods were… extreme, but that's not what I'm talking about. I've heard Ben Trask going on about the way you use what he calls the Mobius Route. That's your talent, right, Jake? It's how you moved us to safety back at the lair.'

He nodded, growled, 'And that's what I keep trying to tell you. It's not mine! It's like — I don't know — somebody else?

Someone who gets into my head, anyway. Someone who's living in there like a bloody squatter. Trask keeps mentioning this Harry Keogh. Well who is this Keogh? Some kind of telepath? And if so why is he so damned keen to mess with my mind? Why not pick on someone else, someone more receptive. No, I can't see it. Maybe it's a part of me that this me — I mean the real me — doesn't recognize. Like I'm a… a split personality or something? God, maybe I really am crazy!' He banged on the steering wheel with the flats of his hands, stamped his feet and set the Landrover to swerving.

Liz gave him time to cool down, then said, 'Jake, how can I get through to you? This isn't just for me, nor even for Ben Trask or his people; it's mainly for you. I wish you'd tell me about it: how you escaped from jail and all, and ended up with E-Branch. I know it happened, but not how it happened. So what do you say? Will you tell me?'

And he knew she wouldn't let it go until he did…

'I got sloppy,' Jake began. 'When I killed the third and last but one of Castellano's men — of the men who had been present at the villa that night — it was a sloppy job. A case of familiarity breeding contempt?' Glancing at Liz, he shook his head. 'I would really hate to think so; hate to admit that I was getting used to it. But who can say? Maybe I was at that.

'Anyway, he was an Italian and I killed him in Italy. And I got caught there, too. Maybe they were waiting for me. After all, I had been working down a list, like a serial killer, you know? Of course, Castellano must by then have made the connection — must have figured out that this wasn't just another gang war — and it's possible he had tipped off the authorities, the police. When I thought it out, it was even possible he'd sent that last victim out of France to put distance between himself and me! If so, then I'd actually managed to get to the bastard — I'd worried him considerably — which felt very good. But in any case:

'I was tried and convicted in Italy, and there was no hope of extradition. Having dual nationality — English and French — only made the legal side of it even more tangled, complicated, hopeless. And to put the cap on it, current European law made it imperative that I was tried "in the country where the crime was committed for any serious offence against nationals of the said country". Well, you can't get any more serious than murder, which was their term for what I'd done, even if I called it an act of justice! And finally, if found guilty — which of course I was — I would have to serve out my time in that same country.

'That's why I think it was Castellano who set the trap for me, and baited it with his own man. Castellano's a Sicilian, or an Italian if you like. And it's like Trask says: the gangs are highly organized now — computerized, integrated and all — and as always they have their fingers in every pie.

'So, why do you reckon this bastard thug would want me in an Italian jail? Obviously, it was one of those pies in which he had a finger! Jake Cutter was a dead man. If not immediately, then soon.

'But to me the hell of it was I'd never been able to get a sniff of Castellano himself. The villa in Marseille was always guarded to the hilt, and if he'd ever left it… well, I certainly didn't know about it. How could I? I still didn't — still don't — even know what he looks like. This is one secretive son of a bitch! But I will find him one day, and when I do…'

'But not while you're working for E-Branch,' Liz broke in. 'The one thing you mustn't do is compromise the Branch. They're your protection, Jake. And you've got to remember: Trask is the only thing standing between you and a return visit to that cell in… where?'

'In Torino,' Jake answered. 'Turin, where they're alleged to have found The Shroud, and where I was being fitted for one! I tell you, Liz, there were some hard men in that jail. It took me maybe — oh, twenty-four hours? — to figure out that I wasn't getting out in one piece. The looks, the nudges, the winks. But what I said earlier about the size of my… er, you know what, that wasn't true; could have been but wasn't. No one came sidling up to me offering their protection for a little buggery on the side; I guess because the word had gone out that I couldn't be protected, and that anyone who tried it might well need some protection himself.

'And there were a couple of narrow squeaks. Knife fights I wasn't involved in to start with, that I somehow got involved in. And once in the prison hospital — I was in for abdominal bruising and a suspected fractured rib… yes, another one — when someone tried to inject me with a hypodermic full of human shit…

'Anyway, I'd been in there for eleven weeks when this guy — just a guy, no one sinister, I thought, but someone who probably pitied me — got me on my own and told me that it was coming. And when it was coming. I had a week to live, he said. And no good going to the prison staff; they were in on it, and the governor was a man who knew which side his bread was buttered.

'Then a funny thing. This same little fellow said he was working in the machine shop. He gave me a rough key — just a strip of metal, really — showed me how to make an impression of the lock on my cell. This was an old, old prison, Liz. Not like the home from home you'll find in a lot of modern English jails. Anyway: "You take the impression," he said, "and I make finish the key."

'So what was in it for him? He already had his own key, he said, and a plan. But he couldn't do it on his own. And he figured I might be just desperate enough to go along with him. Oh, he supposed I had seen those old prison movies — of the double double-cross kind? — but hey, it was his life, too, wasn't it? Did I think he was suicidal or something? So maybe he was, but he'd got one thing right at least: I was desperate enough.

'Okay, my reasons for wanting to escape were plain enough: I wanted Castellano dead, and couldn't do it from inside where my own life seemed destined to be a pretty short one. But what about my new-found friend's reasons?

'Apparently it was for a woman. "A dear old friend of mine, he fucking my Maria," he told me, grinning emotionlessly. "The last man who did that, he dead… is why I in here. This time I going fuck loth of them, Maria, too. After that I not care.'

'Funny thing is, I understood him well enough. Just didn't realize how far he'd go to clear this little matter up, that's all.

'Came the night. We got out into the exercise yard way too easy and I felt it was all wrong, all fixed. But it was far too late to go back and lock myself in… and what if I was simply being paranoid? I mean, this was my one last chance. It was his one chance, too, this bald, scrawny little Italian murderer who made the keys.

'His plan was simple: he had a length of chain he'd welded hooks to. Between us and freedom there was a twelve-foot wall, barbed-wired at the top. He was a little guy; he would get on my back, use his chain like a grapnel to grab at the barbed wire. He'd tried it in the workshops and it worked. By God, it also worked out there in the exercise yard!

'So Paolo scrambled from my shoulders up the chain, took a prison blanket from around his neck and tossed it over the barbed wire, which his weight had pulled flat. He balanced himself up there with a leg over the wall, stretched out a hand for me. But when I was on the chain and as I was reaching for his hand… he withdrew it! And I saw his eyes, looking beyond me into the night. I glanced over my shoulder, saw them:

'Prison guards, armed and taking aim! I looked up at Paolo, his face staring down at me. "I sorry, Jake," he shrugged. "But they promise me…" And then, cutting him short, the crack! of a rifle shot…'

Jake paused, swerving to avoid a pothole, and Liz took the opportunity to ask:

'Is that when it happened? When you… moved?'

He shook his head. 'Not quite. But Liz, you know how they say you don't hear the one that kills you? Well, it's true. I know because I heard the bark of that first shot, but I didn't feel a thing. Paolo, on the other hand… his blood splashed me as his right eye turned black. Then he was falling, and taking me with him.

It was only a few feet, but with him on top of me I hit the ground like a ton of bricks. Just as well because there was more shooting, shouting, the flash of bullets sparking where they spanged off the wall.

'That's when it happened. But exactly what happened… I don't know to this day. And something very weird: if you don't hear the one that kills you, how about seeing it? I mean, did you ever hear of anyone actually seeing a bullet in flight? Of course not; and please, no cracks about phoney stage magicians who catch them in their teeth!

'Yet I saw… something. A flash of fire from a ricochet? It could be. But it didn't look like fire. It was tiny, bright, and it came came right at me — at my head — and couldn't have missed me. If it had been a bullet, then I was dead…

'… But it wasn't, couldn't have been, and I only thought I was dead.'

Liz nodded, her mouth suddenly dry. Because for a moment, as Jake had finished speaking, she had received a vivid impression of something alien to all science and knowledge, something from outside. She'd 'seen' his meeting — his confrontation? — with what he'd described. A transitory thing, it came and went, like a bright flash of fire reflecting from the surface of his mind… or still burning in his mind?

'That was when you did it/ she said hoarsely, and cleared her throat. 'That was when you moved, took the Mobius Route.'

'There was an indescribable darkness,' Jake told her. 'More than darkness, a nothingness. It was death; I mean I thought it was death, for what else could it be? But I was drawn into and through it, towards a point of light.'

'A typical out-of-body experience,' Liz said. 'A near-death experience, as certain survivors are supposed to have known it. The Light, which you refused to enter.'

But Jake shook his head. 'Refused nothing; I had no choice; I was dragged right in! But suddenly there was gravity, weight, and I'd been struggling with the darkness — whatever it was — and the wrong way up. I emerged upside down, fell, smacked my head against something… a desk, as it turned out. So you see, the second bout of darkness wasn't nearly so drastic. I was merely unconscious. Or about to be.

'Anyway, even as I passed out I remember there were alarms going off, someone hammering at a door, a voice shouting. Then nothing more.'

'Not until you came to at E-Branch HQ in London,' Liz said. 'That's where your talent had taken you: to Harry's Room… sanctuary.'

He shook his head in denial. 'Not my talent. Oh, someone's, as it appears. Harry's, maybe? But not mine, Liz, not mine…'

The radio crackled into life, Trask's voice saying: 'All call-signs, but especially Hunter One, this is Zero One. Maybe five miles up the road from here, the chuck wagon. Base camp, where we eat, drink and debrief. Those with beds in the ops vehicle, use 'em. Tentage for the rest. Or should you prefer to stretch your legs you can put up your own tents and bivouacs. And Hunter One, I'll be wanting to speak to you. All acknowledge.'

'Hunter One, roger,' Liz answered into her handset. And in strict numerical order, coming through the hiss and crackle of static:

'Hunter Two, roger.'

'Hunter Three, roger,' and so on.

Jake shifted his position in the driver's seat, craned his neck, and glanced back along the dark, winding road through the ancient river valley. Back there, stretched well out, a handful of headlights made a lantern string in the night. And from dragonfly shapes on high came the steady, near-distant whup! whup! whup! of powerful blades slicing the air, the occasional flickering beam of a searchlight.

'Five miles,' Liz said. 'Maybe seven or eight minutes. Will you tell me the rest of it while we still have time?'

'The rest of it?' Jake was reluctant again. 'You still need convincing I'm crazy?'

'You're not crazy/ she said. 'Just troubled. Come on, Jake You ran away, escaped again, this time from E-Branch. What happened? How did that come about? Was it any different?'

He sighed and said, 'Once you stick your claws in you just don't let go, do you?'

'Or could it be that I'm simply fascinated?' she answered. And quickly added, 'Er, with your story, I mean.'

(Huh!']ake snorted, but he also angled his face a little, turned it away from her. Liz could have sworn that he was grinning and didn't want her to see. But that was a good thing.

'Okay,' she said. 'I'm fascinated, period. So now will you tell me the rest?'

'So you can report it to Trask, right? Well, I've got news for you: your boss — our boss — has already had this from me, oh, at least a dozen times. Don't you get it? I can't tell you what isn't there.'

'Then tell me what is,' she said.

Again Jake's sigh, before he succumbed to the inevitable. But then: 'Okay, this is how it was…'

'When — or rather, where — I woke up, everyone was speaking English. I don't know what I thought. Oh, several things. A jangle of things, rattling around in my skull. Maybe, following injuries sustained in the failed jailbreak, I'd been extradited back to England after all. But what injuries? While it's true I was flat on my back with a sheet and blanket thrown over me, I didn't feel in any way injured. Also, I was in no way conscious of the passage of any real time; it felt like snap!… I had been in Turin and now was here. So logically, while this wasn't the prison, it had to be a place somewhere in or near Turin.

As for the people, Trask and Co — they weren't jailers or even physicians. So if this place was a hospital, well, it wasn't like any I'd ever heard of! And they kept asking me a lot of nonsense questions, the silliest with regard to my identity. "Who are you?" they all wanted to know. Huh! Who were they kidding? If they didn't know who I was, who would? Who was P But the question I kept asking myself was who the hell were they?

'Then a real doctor arrived who checked me over, giving me a thorough physical before I was allowed up on my feet. I supposed I was lucky that I hadn't at first been able to talk even if I'd wanted to. The whole experience had struck me dumb. But then it dawned on me that they really didn't have any idea who I was. So why should I tell them?

'I kept quiet, told them nothing, didn't even speak.

'But Trask… he knew I wasn't on the level. Right from square one I could see that he was more than curious, positively suspicious about me. I suppose he had every right to be; I know now that the place I — er, emerged into? "Harry's Room?" — is highly significant to the Branch. More than that, though, Trask knew I was lying. Even without me saying a word, he knew I wasn't telling the truth, knew I was hiding something.

'Well, of course I was! Wherever I'd "escaped" to, anywhere had to be better than the vermin-infested slaughterhouse in Turin that I'd escaped from! And yes, I had already made up my mind that as soon as this weird crowd gave me room to breathe, I'd likewise be escaping from here — wherever "here" was!

'Finally, instead of asking me stuff and getting no satisfactory answers, no answers at all, Trask said, "You're in the headquarters of a branch of government, a very off-limits establishment, Mr… whoever you are. You shouldn't be here, and the penalty for trespass is a high one. But I'm really interested in you, in how you arrived — especially where you arrived — and I'd very much like you to start explaining. If you don't, I'll have to assume you're a common criminal and deal with you on that basis…"

'But then he got a certain look in his eye, like he'd suddenly stumbled across the truth — maybe a truth even I didn't know — and quickly went on, "Or maybe an uncommon criminal? In which case we might just be getting somewhere."

'Some of Trask's people had guns and there didn't seem too much point in trying to break out of there, not at present. So I just had to keep playing along.

'Finally, I was escorted to the HQ Ops Room.' Jake glanced at Liz. 'Do you know the place? I take it you've been there.'

He waited for her nod, the one word that summed up her own feelings the first time she'd seen the Ops Room. 'Awesome…'

'Yes, awesome,' he agreed. 'I don't know about ghosts, but E-Branch certainly has the gadgets! Anyway, as soon as we entered — before anyone could stop me — I stepped to a window and yanked the blinds. It was night but there were plenty of street lights. There could be no mistaking where I was; the very sight of it set me reeling. That skyline, that city. Impossible, but it was Westminster! London! The centre of bloody London!

'And grabbing me, looking at me with those all-seeing eyes of his, Trask said, "Surprise, surprise! So where did you think you were, Mr Nobody?"

'By then a lot of other people had arrived. They'd got the place up and running. It was the middle of the night after all, and my being there was just as big — maybe a bigger — shock to them as it was to me. But they must have a good emergency call-in; the place was fully operative in no time at all. And every man-jack and woman of them wide-eyed, whispering, curious… maybe even awestruck? But why? What was so special about me? 'Anyway, things were happening at a rapid pace. ' "Prison clothing," Trask said. "At a guess, continental. Very well, get fingerprints, mug shots — do it now. Then get a link to Interpol, see if we can get a match. But let's not get carried away, not yet. Let's not think the unthinkable, or the incredible? Check the security system and see if it recorded a physical breakin. And let's have a check on all doors and windows, and the elevator. Then get me the Duty Officer. Didn't I hear him saying something about not being able to get into Harry's Room because the door was locked? Now why would Mr Nobody here first break in, then lock himself in? And how

could he do it anyway without a key… assuming he broke in at all?"

'Trask said all of these things, if not in the same words. And he probably said a lot more that I can't remember before he finished up with: "Answers, people, I want all the answers. And I do mean tonight…"

'I had been fingerprinted and photographed by the time two new agents entered the Ops Room. Trask greeted them with, "Current Affairs, and Tomorrow's Affairs. And not before time, you two."'

Liz nodded, said, 'Millicent Cleary and lan Goodly. Millicent is a telepath, but she's also an expert in current affairs. She has that kind of memory. You want to know what's gone down in the last ten years, ask Millicent. And lan Goodly—'

'—A precog,' Jake said. 'Yes, I know that now. But then — I couldn't make head nor tail of their conversation. Trask wanted to know why Goodly hadn't "seen" anything, and he asked the woman if she was "getting" anything. That was the way he talked to everyone around him. It all seemed pretty esoteric to me!'

'Espers have an almost different tongue,' Liz answered. 'It takes some getting used to.'

'Anyway, lan Goodly was at a loss to explain his lapse. And the woman, Millicent Cleary? She stared hard at me, frowned and said there was a lot of confusion. Damn, right there was!'

'The confusion was in you,' Liz told him.

'Looking back on it, you're dead right,' he said. And after a moment:

'By then all the wall screens were up and working — people processing my pictures and feeding them into machines, computer keyboards tap, tap, tapping away — but I was a little less the centre of attention. I saw my chance, snatched a gun from a man who was momentarily distracted, grabbed hold of Goodly. I had the gun to his neck, his arm up behind his back.

'For a moment I thought Trask and the others might rush me.

But then Goodly said, "It's okay, Ben. Everything will be fine. Just let us go, and be sure we'll be back."

'I told him, "Do you want to bet?" But now… I'm glad he didn't! I'll cut a long story short. I got Goodly out of there and into the elevator. He used his card without argument. Then we were out in the street. Which was when he turned the tables on me. How? Well, I suppose he saw the future, knew I wouldn't shoot him. Or maybe he saw that I couldn't?

'Anyway, he just twisted round to face me, grabbed the gun and started wrestling me for it. I was so surprised… I just let go of the thing! And the fact was I couldn't have shot him anyway, not an innocent man. But I couldn't say the same thing for him, now could I? And there he was, crouching down, aiming the gun at me!'

The vehicle was nosing down a slight decline. As they came round a shallow bend, Jake saw campfires and started to brake. Then a man stepped out onto the crumbling tarmac and made signals, directing them into a makeshift roadside parking area. As they slowed to a standstill, Liz sat still, said, 'Finish it.' And Jake thought, Why not? Except there's nothing left to tell! Or if there was he couldn't possibly explain it. But he could at least try. 'It's already finished/ he said. 'When I thought Goodly was going to shoot me, I made a dive for cover. I mean, I knew I was diving to safety… but that wasn't possible. How could there be any cover, any safety, out there in the middle of the street?' 'There couldn't be,' she said.

'No,' Jake answered huskily, pale in the flickering firelight. 'There couldn't be. Not out theje in the street. But it wasn't me who reacted to the perceived danger, Liz. Not me but someone in my head. Someone or something that reckoned I would be safer… that I'd be safer—'

But Liz, reading it clearly in his mind, came to his aid and finished it for him:'—That you'd be much safer back in Harry's Room, yes/ she sighed.

He shook his head, frowned and said, 'But safe from what? From Goodly, who didn't intend to harm me in the first place?'

She made no answer but thought: No, just safe — period. Maybe lan Goodly's gun hadn't triggered the thing at all; maybe it simply hadn't wanted Jake out there on his own, on the streets. For whatever it was, this thing had been new to him at that time. Still very strong in him — and having only recently found him — it hadn't been about to let him escape. Not without first exploring him, and not until Jake had explored its possibilities, its potential.

Such were Liz's thoughts. But bringing them back to earth: 'We're there/ said Jake. 'So are we going to sit here all night? Me, I'd like a mug of coffee and a bite to eat…'

CHAPTER SEVEN More Gadgets And Ghosts

As Liz and Jake got out of their vehicle, Trask came over and checked it for damage: a few scratches to the paintwork, some small dents in the hood, and the missing windscreen, of course. 'Did you have this attended to?'

Liz knew what he was concerned about: not the damage itself but rather its origin, and any possible contamination that might have been left behind. She nodded. 'Back at the Old Mine gas station. A squad sprayed her down, cleaned up the mess.'

'I worry, that's all,' Trask explained. 'But having seen some of the measures the Travellers take on Sunside, I suppose that's only natural.' He shrugged. 'I don't know… maybe I'm too cautious.' His reference to Sunside flew over Jake's head, but he was getting used to that kind of thing.

'I didn't see you taking too much care of yourself,' Jake told him. 'Back there, I mean. You and the old man, Lardis? It was as if you didn't give a damn between you.' No nose-plugs or combat gear. No gas masks. No precautions.'

Trask looked at him. 'A paradox? Is that what you're saying? Do as I say, not as I do? Not really. Maybe one day I'll tell you my story. But couldn't it simply be that some of us have less to lose?' And before he could be asked to elaborate:

'As for Lardis Lidesci, he's been doing his own thing all his life. Perhaps there's a partial immunity among the Szgany, I can't say. But even so I watch him, just as he keeps his eye on everyone else. And the day he gets rid of his silver bells, or starts shrinking from the sun…' Trask let it go at that.

'Maybe I haven't been listening very much,' Jake said. 'In fact I'm sure I haven't. There's been too much happening — not only to me but all around me — for my tiny brain to accept it all at once. But what if I start listening as of now? Am I asking too much that we sit down some time so you can fill me in, put me fully in the picture about E-Branch? I mean, if I'm to work for you, isn't it only right I should know something of what's going on?'

'So you've finally decided you'll work for us?'

Jake pulled a wry face. 'Actually, I thought you had!' And the three of them walked together towards one of the campfires.

The rest of the vehicles were arriving and lining up on the road before being allocated parking areas. Making himself heard over the revving motors, Trask shouted a few instructions, then answered Jake. 'Oh, I think there's work for you. But there are still a few things I need to clear up. If I'm to control you, I need to know what I'm controlling.' He looked at the other, his gaze seeming to pierce the younger man through and through, and with a wry smile continued, Tve got to be sure you won't just cut and run — like maybe in a crisis, when you're most needed. After all, you do still have your own agenda.'

'Don't you ever trust anybody?' Jake growled, knowing that indeed Trask had seen right through him.

But, enigmatic as ever, Trask wasn't buying it. 'In my time with the Branch,' he said, 'I've seen what trust can do… and what it's done to some of my favourite people.'

They sat by the fire with one or two other agents, most of them keeping to themselves, lost in their own thoughts now that the night's work was done. It was a night they'd been building up to for some time. The Old Lidesci dished out food — steaks, and steaming stew from a container on a military shallow-trench back-burner, and man-sized chunks of bread fresh from the burner's oven — but with the exception of Lardis himself no one was much interested in eating. Maybe it was the back-burner's roar, the way it sounded so much like a flamethrower…

By the time the three had done eating, and washed the food down with mugs of coffee, the big articulated truck was in situ and lan Goodly had gone to check on incoming messages. By then, too, the rest of the agents had sat down to eat, and the atmosphere wasn't quite so heavy.

Liz had been yawning for some time, and though she swore she would never sleep, still she'd gone off to seek out a bivouac for herself. Watching her go, Jake put down his empty mug and said to Trask, 'Me, I'm not tired either. In fact my mind is going every which way. So, all misgivings aside, I'm asking you to tell me what I've got myself involved with, how it all began, and how you think I can fit in.'

Trask stood up and for a moment looked as if he might say something. But just then lan Goodly came striding from the direction of the Ops vehicle. On top of the first trailer, in fact the mobile Ops Room, a cluster of antennae and radio dishes had poked up, locked into position, and aimed themselves at the sky… also at several communication satellites.

'Ben/ Goodly called in his piping voice. 'David Chung is on the wire from London. You can get him on-screen if you want. He got your message, and he appears to be rather excited.' But as Trask headed for the Ops truck, Goodly had second thoughts; at least he made it seem that way. 'Oh, and Ben! Er, maybe you should take Jake with you? Introduce him to David…?'

The two of them looked at each other in passing, and Jake could swear some sort of silent exchange took place. Then Trask called back to him, 'Jake, if you'd still like to know how you might fit in, perhaps you should come along with me.'

In the Ops Room, the Duty Officer and one other were on listening duty within the oval desk. The D.O. got out of the way when Trask lifted a flap in the desk, walked through and parked himself in the command chair. Jake followed and stood close behind him. Trask looked at the D.O. and said, 'Chung?'

'London HQ, waiting,' the other nodded. 'Do you want him on-screen?'

'Put him up there/ Trask said, indicating a screen on the wall. And the D.O. hit a switch.

As the other lights dimmed a little, the wall screen flickered into life and its picture quickly firmed up. This was the first time Jake had seen E-Branch's chief locator, David Chung. He was small, middle-aged, Oriental as they come, and very serious-looking. And he was quite obviously highly intelligent. It was in his eyes just as it was in Trask's; a light behind them, shining out. But it was also in the high dome of his head. Jake didn't need advising of the extraordinary brain that was housed within. Chung's raven-black hair was thinning; there might even be a few strands of grey here and there. But his skin was clear and unwrinkled and his posture was ramrod-straight. He was sprightly, alert… and excited, yes. That, too, showed in his eyes.

'Hi, David/ Trask greeted him with a smile — but in a moment got down to business. 'How did it go?' he said.

'Ben/ the other nodded, then immediately fixed his attention on Jake. And Jake could see that his curiosity was intense. But Trask had seen it, too. And:

'Save it/ he told the locator, his tone of voice carrying something of a warning. 'I suggest we deal with the other matter first.' And turning to the D.O.: 'Are we scrambled?'

'Yes/ the D.O. nodded.

And Chung said, 'All bad news, I'm afraid. It's as Greenpeace and the others suspected. In fact, it's worse then anyone suspected. The Russians are still doing it, but now it's where they're doing it. You know, if we'd had Anna-Marie English in on this we could have cracked it without even leaving the HQ?'

'I know/ Trask answered, his shoulders slumping a little. 'But we don't have her, and anyway she's happier where she is — God help us all! But is it really as bad as you make out? What, yet another treaty gone up in smoke — or nuclear pollution? I suppose you'd better put me in the picture, but not on-screen. Let me have a printout.'

Chung spoke to someone off-screen, turned again to Trask. 'It'll take a few minutes. And later, when I've done a little checking, I'll also be sending you, er, a weather report? Some unexpected smog? But I'd like to check it out first and see if it's still hanging around, you know? Meanwhile, what about the other business?' His gaze switched however momentarily to Jake, then back to Trask.

Understanding Chung's 'coded' message, Trask gave a cursory nod and said, 'Do you remember what happened at E-Branch HQ when Nathan arrived in Perchorsk? I mean you personally? Do you remember how you proved his identity, or his connection?'

Chung grinned, his excitement plainly in evidence. 'Do I remember? How could I ever forget? I'm way ahead of you, Ben.' And he held up a hairbrush, showing it to Trask and Jake.

'I wasn't sure you still had it.' Trask sighed his relief. 'It wasn't in Harry's Room; I had it searched immediately after Jake… came visiting. But I knew that if you had it, it would be secure with your special items at the HQ. That's why I asked you to go and dig it out as soon as you got finished with what you were doing.'

Now the locator looked at Jake again and said, 'I suppose this is Jake Cutter?' He nodded a greeting. 'So why is he looking so — what, lost?'

Before Trask could answer, Jake leaned over him and said, 'I look so "what, lost," as you put it — though personally I'd prefer "stunned" — because no one has bothered to tell me what the fuck is going on! It's okay for E-Branch to put my life in jeopardy, set me in conflict with… I don't know — vampires? Mutated things? Alien invaders that live on the blood of human beings? — but totally out of the question to tell me what it's all in aid of. The human race, perhaps? Well, great! But since I'm a member, don't have any rucking say in the matter?'p>

'Right first time,' said Trask. 'And on both counts. It's in aid of the human race, and no, you don't have any say in the matter.'

Chung saw now why the head of E-Branch was so cautious: as yet Jake Cutter knew very little. But Chung was already certain that Jake would have to know it all eventually. And so he said, 'That's fine for now, Ben. But if you're asking for my opinion, he'll have plenty of say in the not too distant future.'

Trask quickly held up his hand. 'We understand each other, and that's for the future — maybe. But don't say any more right now. Instead you can tell me about the brush.'

'Oh, it's active,' Chung said. 'Very definitely. Why, it's like a live thing in my hand even now!' He looked at the man's hairbrush — just a well-used wooden oval tufted with pig bristles, some of them coming loose — and smiled. But alive? From what Jake could make out the brush was about as dead as… as a piece of wood sprouting pig bristles!

'So,' said Trask, speaking to Chung. 'Can I take it you're thinking that just like once before maybe something of — well, let's for now call him a on«-friend of ours — has come back to us? But if so, come back from where? And in what form?'

'Absolutely,' Chung answered — then stopped smiling as the meaning of Trask's words sank in and he began to understand the other's caution. And: 'I think I see,' he said. 'So now we must ask ourselves whether or not it's beneficial. Is it here under the aegis of a friend, to help us, or is it here—?'

'—For something else,' Trask cut the locator short. And after staring at him for a long moment, he said, 'That's it for now, David. Stay there at the HQ. The chair's yours until we're all sorted out at this end. Okay?'

'Whatever you say,' Chung answered, his face once more inscrutable. And the D.O. blanked the screen…

'What was all that about?' Jake queried the Head of E-Branch on the way to his tent. Trask had a 'room' in the Ops vehicle but preferred a little more space. In keeping with his status, his tent was somewhat bigger than a bivouac.

'When we have a little light, I'll show you/ Trask said. 'Some of it, anyway. From which time on you'll need to be aware that you've signed the Official Secrets Act.'

'But I haven't.'' Jake said.

'But if you ever give me reason, I'll say you have,' Trask grinned his cold grin. 'And you'll have to anyway, eventually.'

Jake snorted, said, 'Could this mean you're actually going to let me in on some secret or other?'

'Sarcasm will get you nowhere,' Trask said. 'Except maybe in a whole lot of trouble.'

The camp wasn't far from the edge of a watering hole. Several large Australian night insects were fluttering, occasionally buzzing, through the smoky, flickering firelight. There were clusters of knobbly, fat-boled trees of a type Jake didn't recognize; Trask's tent stood shaded by one of these, in comparative darkness.

Trask squeezed a rubber button on a cable hanging outside the tent, and as a light glowed within he drew aside the canvas flap and a fine-mesh gauze fly screen to invite Jake in. Inside, a folding table supported Trask's briefcase, a bottle of liquor, and two glasses. There were folding chairs and a camp bed, and in a screened-off corner a portable toilet. Comfortwise it was better than a bivouac, certainly, but scarcely luxurious.

Trask sat Jake down, opened up his crammed briefcase, fumbled out a flat machine the size of a box of typing paper, and flipped a switch. The device whirred softly, and a slot opened in one end. Feeding Chung's printout into the slot, Trask said, 'It's enciphered, and this is a decoder.' 'Gadgets and ghosts,' said Jake.

'Yes,' Trask answered, 'I have to agree. This is certainly a gadget, and Chung's message is about ghosts — of a sort.'

'Are you kidding me?' Jake couldn't any longer be sure of anything.

'I suppose I am,' Trask suddenly looked tired, 'though not

necessarily. Don't you believe in ghosts, Jake?' And before the other could answer: 'Well, these ghosts are submarines. They're dead Russian subs, yes — except they're still very much alive. Another paradox? Not really. Just wait a minute and you'll see what you'll see. Meanwhile, why don't you pour us a drink? And consider yourself lucky. It's Wild Turkey.'

Jake poured; the machine whirred; eventually two sheets of paper slid from the slot, pushed out and followed by the original. One of the decoded sheets was a-large-scale map of Europe and the seas around, with numbered, circled pinpoints of reference. The other was a list of grid references, numbered to correspond with those on the map. All of the grid references were oceanic: two pinpoints in the Black Sea off Varna in Bulgaria, another off Podisma in Turkey; two more in the Tyrrhenian midway between Naples and Sardinia; one in the Atlantic off Portugal's Algarve; and three more between Iceland and Norway, south of the Arctic Circle. And there were others marked out by tiny question marks instead of dots. Looking at these little black marks on the map, and matching them with the grid references, Trask's expression was very bleak.

'Look there,' he indicated the question marks. 'As close to home as that: the Barents Sea, off Norway. Crazy!'

'Close to home?' Jake echoed him.

'Close to the former Soviet Union,' Trask answered. 'Odd, because the Russians are usually more careful than that. Chernobyl taught them that much of a lesson at least — taught them to look after their own, anyway. So maybe those two were accidental? Maybe they didn't intend for them to go down just there. Jesus, but whatever they intended, still it's a mess!'

I'm not with you,' said Jake, shaking his head.

'Then let me explain. Each of those pinpoints represents a hulk resting on the bottom. But what kind of hulk? The answer's almost unbelievable, but since I've already told you…'

'Submarines?'

Trask nodded. 'Those innocuous little black dots? Each one of them is a disaster just waiting to happen or already happening. They're allegedly "decommissioned" nuclear subs we thought had been cleaned up, made safe, taken apart and stored with ten thousand tons of other radioactive rubbish years ago. Relics of Russia's penniless, outmoded, unwanted Cold War navy, yes. But the Russian military was lying to us — which is nothing new — and this is the truth.'

'And it's a bad thing?' Jake still didn't see it. 'I mean that these things have been sent to the bottom, miles deep, out of harm's way?'

'Out of harm's way? God, what an infant!' Trask shook his head. And before Jake could get upset again:

'Look, most of these subs have twin atomic engines. There are two possible meltdowns in each hulk. Barely possible, mind you, but possible. We don't know if they've been shut down properly, or even if they could be. But the very means of disposal tells us they're less than safe! Why else would the Russian military dump them on someone else's doorstep? What's more — since they're capable of this — how do we know they didn't load them to the gills with other high-level waste before scuttling them? What? They might have even left their leaking missile payloads aboard. These were ships of war, Jake! And sooner or later the bastard things will start spilling their guts!'

'What, in ten, twenty, fifty years? And a mile or so deep?' Jake still wasn't too impressed. 'And anyway, what has this to do with you and E-Branch?'

Trask scowled at him, actually clenched a fist and thumped the table. 'If Anna-Marie English were here right now… she'd knock you arse over breakfast!'

Astonished, Jake drew back. 'Anna-Marie English? Isn't she someone who Chung mentioned?'

'She worked for us,' Trask snapped. 'An ecopath, she gave warning of Earth's decline — I mean personally. She was "ecologically aware," or as she herself would put it, she was "as one with the Earth". It was her talent — or her curse. Funny, isn't it,

Jake? But there are very few in E-Branch who are happy with their talents. They would much prefer to be ordinary. But since they can't be, they're E-Branch.'

Jake wasn't.sure of Trask's meaning. 'So how did this help you? Her talent, I mean? How did it work?'

Trask shook his head. 'None of us can tell you how our talents work, only that they do. In Anna-Marie's case:

'As water tables declined and deserts expanded, so her skin dried out, became desiccated. When acid rains burned the Scandinavian forests, her dandruff fell like snow. In her dreams she heard whale species singing of their decline and inevitable extinction, and she knew from her aching bones when the Japanese were slaughtering the dolphins. She was like a human lodestone; she tracked illicit nuclear waste, monitored pollution, shrank from holes in the ozone layer. Anna-Marie was an ecopath, Jake: she felt for the Earth and suffered all its sicknesses, because she knew that she was dying from them, too…'

Trask was eloquent, Jake would grant him that much. 'You're saying she's dead, then?'

'No,' Trask answered. 'I'm saying she's somewhere else. But by now… she might well have started to suffer again, yes…' He sighed and sat up straighter, seemed on the brink of coming to a decision, finally continued:

'Me, I believe in ghosts, Jake. I really do, for I've seen a few in my time. And they weren't always of the moaning, chain-rattling and mainly harmless variety. But I also believe in listening to my colleagues. Now it seems a ghost has come among us, possibly a beneficial one. Well, according to Chung and Goodly, anyway. Unfortunately it's come at a very bad time. The coincidence is just too great — that this should happen now, just as we find ourselves in conflict with the Wamphyri and the plague they've brought with them out of Starside — for me to take any chances. That's what holds me back from telling you everything: the thought that perhaps you are an agent, albeit an unwitting agent, of the Wamphyri!'

'Me?' Jake's surprise couldn't have been more genuine. And Trask, a human lie detector, knew it more certainly than any other man ever could. Ah, but Trask remembered other times, when Harry Keogh had fooled him, too! And Jake went on, 'How in hell could I be anyone's agent? And I'm certainly no ghost!' 'No,' Trask agreed, 'but what's in you might be.' 'What's in me?'

'Don't play the fool, Jake!' Trask snapped. 'We're talking about what's in your head. This talent you've suddenly come by, which brought you to E-Branch and then returned you there when you tried to run off. But is it the ghost of Harry Keogh — or is it something that merely tastes like him? Should I take you into my confidence, or shoot you dead right here and now?'

Jake started to his feet and upset the table. His face was a snarl, his hands reaching for Trask. 'I've had it up to here with your threats and your bullying. You're an old man, Trask, and as far as I'm concerned you're an old fraud… too!?'

But by then he'd seen the gun that Trask had been holding under the table; it was aimed right at him. And he understood the other's apparent fumbling when he'd taken the decoder from his briefcase. But what he didn't understand was the way Trask stared at him, the urgent, burning question in his penetrating gaze.

'What would you have done?' Trask snapped. 'What would you have done to me?'

'Done?' Jake looked at the gun, then at Trask. 'Nothing. I… I might have shaken you, or tried to shake some sense into you. Or maybe I'd have tried shaking a little out of you! God, can't you see you've got me going in circles?'

And Trask actually smiled as he slowly lowered his gun and put it away. 'Yes, I can see that,' he nodded. With which Jake got the idea.

'What? Another bloody test?'

'To push you hard,' Trask told him, 'and see what answered. You… or something else.'

'Well, if I were you,' Jake said, 'I would have supposed it was something else!'

'But you're not me,' Trask told him. 'And you passed. That leaves just one more test to go.'

'Then let's get it over with.'

'Not now, no.'

'When, then?'

'Tomorrow morning. I'm having a man flown in from Carnarvon on the coast. An expatriate Brit, and the best in his field.'

'What, yet another great "talent?"' Jake was still angry.

'Not the way you mean,' Trask shook his head. 'But he has talent enough, yes. Oh, and by the way: that's some temper you have, Jake. You said you might have shaken me? Well, you shook me all right. I thought you might actually attack me!'

Jake relaxed a little, grinned. 'I scared you?'

'I was scared I might have to shoot you, yes.'

But before that could start Jake off again, a voice called from outside the tent. 'Mr Trask? Phillips here. We have a bit of a problem.' A male figure stood silhouetted behind the gauze fly screen. Trask let him in, said:

'Shouldn't you be on your way to Carnarvon?'

'Would be/ said the other, 'if not for this problem. Its name is Peter Miller, and it won't get its ugly arse out of my chopper!' The speaker was small and young, and looked very hot, sticky, and agitated in his flyer's gear.

'Miller's in your machine?' Trask raised an eyebrow, then nodded decisively. 'So he wants out of here. And once away, he intends to take his story to the authorities or, worse, to some newspaper or other. Well, it can't be allowed. Yes, I want rid of him. No, I don't want the trouble he'll bring. Only a handful of people in the very highest places know what we're doing, and if we're compromised it will make them look bad. As for the man in the street… well, it's simply out of the question. The world's insecure enough as it is.'

He turned to Jake. 'Go and find Lardis Lidesci, will you? Bring him to the chopper park in the clearing on the far side of the road.' And speaking again to Phillips, 'You and me… let's go and have a word with Mr Miller.'

'Just what is that fat jerk doing here, anyway?' Jake wanted to know.

'He was supposed to give us some legitimacy,' Trask answered. 'He's liaison, a go-between, that's all. But he took his job too seriously, discovered the location of our original base camp near Lake Disappointment, which is after all his province, and since then he's insisted on staying aboard. Well, with us is one thing, but against us is another. Now, after seeing far too much of what we're about, he's all too eager to leave. I can't very well stop him, but I really should warn him against doing anything stupid. Now go and get Lardis, will you?'

And Trask and Phillips went off through the night…

The Old Lidesci was in a foldaway chair, dozing by the guttering campfire. But as Jake approached he gave a start and looked up. 'Eh, what is it?'

'Trask wants you,' Jake told him. 'At the helicopter park. Some trouble with Mrs Miller.'

'Mrs? Eh?' Lardis frowned at first, then burst out laughing. 'Oh! Ha~ha~ha!Rut you know, the truth is I've been thinking much the same thing: how that poor excuse for a man reminds me of a chattering old woman? A week on Sunside would sort that one out, I fancy. But no, no… the poor bastard wouldn't last but a day.'

Jake assisted him to his feet and the Old Lidesci stamped his left foot a little. 'Cramp,' he said. 'I'm getting past it. We call it The Crippler, where I'm from. But it's rheum— er, rheuma— er…'

'Rheumatism?' Jake said.

'Damn, right!' said Lardis. 'It's rheumatism here. Ah, but it's a sod in any world.'

And with the old man leaning a little on Jake's arm, they made for the road and the helicopter park…

CHAPTER EIGHT Miller, And The Trouble With Dreams

In the helicopter park, voices were raised in anger. One was a rasp: Ben Trask's. And the other was high-pitched, shrill, and threatening. In short, blustering; but the mind behind it held threatening knowledge, certainly.

'Try to see sense, man!' Trask was growling, as Jake and Lardis approached the well-lit area where a handful of Branch agents and chopper ground staff stood in a clearing and watched the show.

'Sense? Sense?' Miller was in one of the two helicopters, belted into a passenger seat near the section of aluminium frame that formed both cabin wall-panelling and steps. At present the steps were 'down' and Miller was seated opposite the open door, from where he looked down on Trask outside the aircraft. 'What? Are you telling me my attitude is nonsensical? But I know what I saw tonight, and it wasn't of this Earth. It was intelligent, and alien… oh, and it was ugly, yes. But I also saw the devastating force that your thugs used against it, which was even more inhuman! So who the hell are you, Mr Trask? Some kind of monster yourself? You and your people: you're not the military, not even Australian. It's obvious to me that you've duped somebody somewhere. As for those poor aliens: whoever they are and wherever they're from, they deserved a lot better welcome than you gave them. This is Earth Year — dedicated to the ecological survival of the planet — and you might well have condemned our world to interplanetary isolation. Worse, we may even find ourselves at war.''

The precog lan Goodly stepped out of the shadows and spoke to Jake and Lardis. 'This idiot obviously has some kind of bee in his bonnet. "The flying saucers have landed," and all that rot. He seems to think we've been murdering aliens — visitors from another world, that is — out of hand!'

'Haven't we?' Jake looked at him.

'No/ Goodly answered. 'We killed invaders. Visitors don't arrive uninvited, stay, and kill off or enslave the occupiers. But invaders frequently do… and the Wamphyri always do! Not knowing everything, Miller sees our action tonight as an unprovoked assault, a pre-emptive strike, against "beings" whose intentions hadn't been fully determined. We, on the other hand — knowing the entire story, having been here, or there, before — see it differently. We see tonight's action for what it really was: the only cure for a nightmarish plague that submits to no other antidote.' And meanwhile:

'Miller, come down out of there/ Trask was insistent. 'The airplane you're sitting in has been serviced and fuelled for an important mission. You're cutting into a tight schedule/

'That's Mr Miller to you!' the other snapped. 'And I'm delighted to be disrupting your vile schedule! What, am I preventing another massacre like the one you organized tonight? Good! My God! How many of these poor people have landed, then?'

'You see?' Goodly muttered. 'They're "poor people" now. I mean… is Miller unbalanced or what? He had a ringside seat for tonight's show, yet he's still not convinced!'

Lardis had seen and heard more than enough. Freeing himself from Jake's helping hand, he moved up alongside Trask and, in a lowered tone, said, 'Why don't you just drag his arse out of there?'

'I was trying to be diplomatic/ Trask answered under his breath.

'It didn't work/ said Lardis.

Trask nodded and said, 'That's why I sent for you.' Then, turning away, he said, 'Get him out of there. And bring him to the big Ops truck. Maybe his own authorities can convince him, for I certainly can't. Jake, help Lardis after he's got Miller down from there.'

'Why don't I just do it for him?' Jake was surprised. 'The old boy, well… he's old.'

Trask agreed. 'He's full of old ways, too. So don't worry, he'll manage okay, and probably scare Miller half to death into the bargain. Serve the bastard right!' And without another word he went on his way, and lan Goodly went with him.

Meanwhile Lardis had climbed the steps, leaned inside the chopper's open door, and was showing Miller his machete. 'Sharp as a razor/ he said. 'You could shave with this — except you'd get tired holding it up to your face. See these notches in the grip? Twenty-seven of 'em. Twenty-seven exec— er, excecu— er, killings, yes. And all of them were these "people" you seem so fond of. D'you know why I killed 'em?'

'Bloodthirsty old lunatic!' Miller hissed. 'Well, I don't know where you come from — what reservation? — but where I'm from we're educated and civilized. Don't try to threaten me. I don't give a.fuck for your big knife!' Which was more bluster, for anyone in his right mind would certainly give a fuck about Lardis's machete. And Miller's language was slipping, too.

In any case it was as if Lardis hadn't even heard him. 'I killed 'em 'cause they eat fat little girls like you/ he said. "Cause they're a contain— er, a contamin— er.. p>

'Contamination/ said Jake from the foot of the steps.

'Damn right!' Lardis nodded. He put the point of his machete up to Miller's neck inside the nylon seat belt, and continued, 'Now Ben Trask wants you to come down out of there. He was asking you nicely, because he believes in being diplomatic. But me, I don't.'

Miller tried to cringe away from the glittering blade, but his no in seat belt trapped him in position. 'Are you… do you dare to threaten me?' he gasped.

'Dare to threaten you?' said Lardis, his dark eyes narrowing to slits. 'Hell, no, "Mr" Miller! This isn't a threat but a promise. If you don't move your arse out of there, I'm going to cut your fucking ears off!' And he made a sudden slicing motion with his machete.

Miller screamed aloud, and for a moment Jake thought that Lardis really had cut him. But no, he'd sliced upwards and outwards, and his fine-honed blade had passed with scarcely a hiss through Miller's seat belt above the shoulder. Miller had been straining away from the Old Lidesci; freed from the safety harness, he jerked from his seat in that direction and fell to his hands and knees on the helicopter's floor. Lardis stepped over him, and while the little fat man was still off-balance grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and the seat of his pants to send him bouncing down the steps. It didn't take too much effort.

Miller's blubber saved him from any real hurt, but still he yelped as he hit the dirt; yelped yet again as Jake hoisted him to his feet — only to put him in an arm lock. 'Mr Trask is waiting for you/ Jake told the babbling fat man, as he frogmarched him in the direction of the Operations truck…

In Ops, Trask stood inside the oval control desk, speaking earnestly into a telephone. 'Yes, I appreciate the lateness of the hour… I understand perfectly, sir, and I agree entirely. But in this case I'm sure that only the highest authority will suffice… You may believe me when I tell you that this really is as important as your Minister for Internal Security has reported, a matter of the gravest security. I certainly wouldn't have had you brought from your bed for anything less… He's called Peter Miller, sir — that's "Mr" Miller — our so-called "local liaison". Not very helpful, sir, no. Indeed, completely hysterical, as I've said… That's what I would suggest, yes, absolutely… Until we're finished here, yes. That is, of course, if you're in agreement…? Confinement. I'm afraid so, yes. Oh, we have the means. But Miller — Mr Miller — is an Australian citizen, sir, and we're not. Which is why I need your…?'

Trask looked up, saw Miller's face throbbing with rage and 'righteous' indignation where Jake's hand was clamped over his mouth. The sight of the man, in no way pacified, seemed to convince Trask of the course he must take. And:

'Perhaps you'd like to have a word with him in person?' he continued into the phone. 'See for yourself, as it were?' With a nod and a grimace he passed the phone to Miller, at the same time indicating that Jake should release him.

Miller shook himself, reeled, and said, 'Eh? What?' Intent on freeing himself from Jake's grasp, he'd taken in very little of Trask's conversation with the unknown other.

But now Trask said, It's for you… someone who wants to know how you're keeping?'

'Bloody crazy Pommy bastards!' Miller raved. 'And who the hell is this, the Prime-bloody-Minister?' He snatched the telephone from Trask's hand, yelled, 'Whoever you are, the man you were speaking to is not a reasonable human being. He's fucking British, a fucking murderer, and I'm a God-fearing, completely innocent fucking Australian! This is my goddamned country, for Christ's sake, and I demand to speak to the police, to the military, to someone in authority, to…'

'… To the Prime-bloody-Minister, perhaps?' said Ben Trask, coolly examining his fingernails. And under his breath, to the others in the trailer: 'Lance Blackmore, whose platform slogan, if I remember correctly, was "Sanity, sobriety, and common decency in speech and spirit." Oh, and something else: he's decidedly pro-British!'

Miller's round face was suddenly wobbling, its colour visibly changing, paling. 'Eh?' he gulped. 'Do I what? Your voice? Do I recognize it?' Well, maybe he did… and maybe not. With his pig-eyes narrowing, he stared suspiciously at the phone — then at Trask — and spat, 'Some lousy fucking Pommy con man you are! And this is supposed to be Lance bloody Blackmore, right? Oh really? What, at two o'clock in the morning? After what I've seen and been through tonight, you expect me to believe that my own Prime Minister, the Australian Prime-bloody-Minister, would condone…?'

But the telephone was making loud noises in Miller's ear, and suddenly his face was floppily mobile again. For this time the owner of the now angry voice was fully awake and the voice itself unmistakable. As Miller's flabby mouth fell open, Trask took back the telephone and spoke into it. 'There you have it, Prime Minister. Now you know what we're up against.' And a moment later: 'Yes, certainly, I shall see to it myself. Physical restraint — house arrest, shall we say? — until we're through here? Thank you. And there will be a copy of my report on this phase of the operations on your desk by noon, yes. So far it's — looking good. My pleasure, sir. Thank you once again. And goodnight.' He put the 'phone down.

'It was him.'' Miller gasped, his mouth opening and closing like a stranded fish. 'It really was Lance Blackmoref Clenching his pudgy fists, he glowered at Trask: 'You duped him.' You even duped the Prime Minister.' Who the fuck are you people?'

Trask shook his head in disgust. 'Once your mind's made up it really is made up, isn't it, Miller?' 'That's Mr Miller—'

'Oh, shut the fuck up!' Trask was mad now. He reached over the desk, grabbed the fat man by the front of his sweaty shirt, bunched a fist and drew it back… then thought better of it. Instead he gave him a shove, sent him reeling back into Jake's arms. And before Miller could start up again:

'You're under arrest. If you protest too loudly I'll have you gagged. If you come on all physical I'll have you bound. If you attempt any interference with the work going on around you, I'll put you under constant surveillance by Lardis Lidesci. And if you're stupid enough to make another run for it, then you'd better be aware I'll deal with you… far more severely. Have I made myself clear?'

'Why, you… you!' Miller mouthed, his furious expression speaking volumes more than all of his frothing bluster. And so:

'When I turn you over to your Internal Security people in Perth tomorrow,' Trask went on, 'they'll read you the riot act, demand that you sign an Oath of Silence, give you to understand how very much in error you are, and generally threaten you with all sorts of dire things if you so much as mention anything you witnessed as our regional liaison person during this operation. And believe me, Miller, even if they can't make it stick I can. Don't for a moment think I'm going to forget the trouble you've put me to. And something else you should remember: in this modern world of ours distance isn't a problem. I'll be back in the UK shortly — I hope — but I have the longest arms in the world. And if I ever suspect that you're out there somewhere flapping those soft self-righteous lips of yours—'

Trask paused for breath, and Lardis Lidesci said, '—Then he'll send me to stop you flapping them — perhaps permanently!' The Old Lidesci stood in the narrow doorway, holding his machete to his chest, thumbing its blade and turning it in his hand to make it reflect the Ops Room's lights into the fat man's eyes. 'Twenty-seven notches, remember, Miller? But in your case, I'd just love to make it twenty-eight.'

Miller flinched a little but his expression didn't change. And again he blurted, 'You… you… you!'

'Obviously I haven't made myself clear,' Trask sighed. And to Jake: 'See if there's a spare bunk room back there, will you? And lock this fuckhead safely inside it!'

And that was that, for the moment.

Finally, they could all get some sleep. To some, a jplessing…

But Jake Cutter didn't much care for sleep. For some time now, in fact since his weird escape almost a week ago, sleeping had been a problem. Oh, he could do it, and he could do with it — indeed, his eyes felt heavy from the lack of it — but he didn't want to do it. Because when he went to sleep, that was when the Other woke up. That bloody Other, that one who was there in the back of his mind. And when Jake slept… why, then he couldn't be sure that his dreams were his at all.

He hadn't told Ben Trask about it, mainly because he suspected that Trask would be interested. It was the relationship that was developing between them: just as the Head of E-Branch continued to hold things back, so did Jake Cutter. In his book trust was something that could only work if it was mutual.

And so he was left to face it on his own, and sleep was a necessity he avoided as best he could while yet recognizing, of course, that it was a necessity. It wouldn't be so bad — or so he told himself— if only he could remember what these troubled dreams of his were about afterwards, when he was awake; or, then again, maybe it would. And maybe that was why he couldn't remember them: because he didn't want to…

Lardis Lidesci sat with Jake a while, heaped a little wood on the dying fire, opened a can of sausages and beans in tomato sauce and ate them cold. The Old Lidesci smacked his lips appreciatively. 'Some of the things in this world…' he said, then started again, '—hell no, most of 'em.' — I could do without. But a can-opener and a can of beans…' he grinned, smacked his lips again, and shook his head. 'Well, these beans and the meat in these sausage things, they're a sight easier on these gnarly old tusks of mine than roasted shad, I can tell you!' 'Shad's a fish,' Jake said, tiredly.

'In this world, sure,' Lardis nodded. 'But the first time I see a fish pull a caravan… I'll quit drinking plum brandy, and that's a vow/' He held the empty can in one hand, the can-opener in the other, looked at each in turn admiringly, burped and uttered a sigh. 'But since my people don't have cans, what good's a can-opener?' 'You and Trask could drive a man mad,' Jake told him without looking up. 'You come up with this weird stuff right out of the blue, as if I'm supposed to know what the hell you're talking about! I mean, I've seen enough now to know this isn't some gigantic leg-pull, so what the hell is it?'

'Hell's just about right,' Lardis grunted, creaking to his feet. He laid a hand on Jake's shoulder. 'But, son, take my word for it: Ben's not trying to drive you mad, and neither am I. It could be we say these things hoping you'll recognize something, hoping you'll perhaps remember.'

There was something in Lardis's gruff old voice that caused Jake finally to look at him. 'But remember what?' he said.

And it was as if they stared deep into each other's souls. So that for a moment — just for a moment — it seemed that they had known each other, oh, for quite some time. Then Lardis nodded, and as though he had read Jake's mind said:

'Other times, maybe? Other places?'

'Times and places?' Though Jake tried hard to understand, still it was beyond him. 'Make sense, can't you?' There was no anger now, just a need to know.

'A time on Starside, perhaps,' Lardis said, still staring hard at Jake, 'when a man and his changeling son laid waste to the aeries of the Wamphyri? Or a time when the same man lay in the arms of a wonderful woman, whose name was Nana Kiklu. Or a time when we met — met for the last time, that man and I — in the ruins of The Dweller's garden, when it was already far too late for him…'

Lardis's words conjured pictures that came and went. They meant something — Jake knew that much at least — but they were monochrome things; they flickered like the frames of some ancient silent movie… jerky scenes and twitching puppet figures. And despite that Jake thought he recognized some of them, still it was as if he saw them through someone else's eyes:

He looked down on a plain of boulders, lit silver-grey beneath a tumbling moon, where distant spires climbed to a sky of ice-chip stars. And that alien sky was alive with flying beasts whose weird shapes…! God, those shapes! Designs not of Nature but of Nightmare!

As quickly as it had come the scene was gone, disappeared, and another took its place.

A garden — The garden? — where a younger Lardis stood by a wall and gazed upon a scene of desolation. A windmill's crumpled vanes slumped all lopsided atop a skeletal, tottering timber tower; some of the roofs of low stone dwellings hadfalien in; the trout pools were green with algae., and the greenhouses were tangles of shattered frames, leaning or fallen flat, with clumps of bolted vegetation sprouting through their torn plastic sheeting.

The pictures continued to flicker and blur, and the oddly young Lardis turned jerkily to stare at Jake… or at the one gazing back at him through Jake's eyes. But in this not-so-Old Lidesci's eyes there was fear, and in his hands a shotgun that came swinging,frame byjlickeringframe — click, clickety-click — in Jake's direction. And the look in Lardis's eyes was no longer fear, or not entirely, but fear combined with deadly intent! Abruptly, the scene changed:

To the straining face of a handsome woman. Handsome, yes, but by no means beautiful — yet beautiful, too, in her way. Her body was beautiful, certainly. And hands (Jake's handsP) on her breasts where they lolled in his face. And her breath.like Jire in his (or some other's?) flared, nostrils, and. the sweat of her passion as slippery and hot on his hands as the wet core of her womanhood where it sheathed his jerking flesh. Nana?

'Nana!' Jake exclaimed, as the scene slipped from memory — but his memory? — and he found himself seated by the campfire, his hands before his face, perhaps to fondle (whose? What was her name?) the handsome woman's breasts, anyway, or perhaps to ward off Lardis Lidesci's shotgun. Well, there was the old man, sure enough, but now more surely the 'Old' Lidesci as Jake knew him; and he had no shotgun but a strange satisfied look on his face.

'And it's Nana, is it?' Lardis said, with a knowing nod, as Jake's mind swam back into focus and he slowly lowered his trembling hands. 'Took you back a ways, didn't I, my young friend?'

'What… what did you do to me?' Jake whispered, the words sighing out of him.

'I have an ancestor's seer's blood in me,' Lardis answered. 'It smells things out. And I think that it has smelled you out, too, Jake Cutter. For just as this art of my forebears has been passed down to me, so something has been passed to you. It's in you, man.'

Not in your blood, as it was in Nestor's and Nathan's blood, but buried in your mind and your soul for sure!' And now the look on the Gypsy's face was one of awe as much as anything else.

'It's in me, yes,' Jake agreed, knowing it was so. And then, coming very close to desperation, 'But what is it, Lardis? What is it?'

The other shook his head. 'No, no. Ben wouldn't want me to say any more. Indeed, he'd nag that I've already said too much! It will have to take its own good time, that's all. But what's in will out, of that you can be sure. And now, goodnight to you, Jake Cutter.' With which he backed off, and like the wild thing he was faded into the night…

Maybe Jake had been too tired to dream, or perhaps he had managed to fight it off this time. Whichever, he had slept deeply, soundly and dreamlessly, and remembered coming awake only once, when he'd thought he'd heard a vehicle's engine starting up. Then he'd eased his cramped body off the chair, zipped himself into a sleeping bag, and curled up right at the edge of the fire's cooling embers—

— And now came starting awake as the toe of a boot nudged him and Trask's voice rasped, 'Jake, get up. Have you seen anything of Miller? Obviously not. Well, the fat bastard's run out on us, and in your bloody vehicle! Damn, I thought for a moment you'd gone with him!'

Throwing back the mosquito net from his face, Jake unzipped the bag and struggled out of it. Now he remembered the engine starting up, dipped headlamps swinging faint beams out onto the road, and the cautious crunch of tyres on dirt and pebbles. He had thought at the time that someone was being very careful not to awaken the camp… and he'd been only too right!

'My vehicle?' he mumbled, but Trask had already moved on.

The entire camp was coming awake, and overhead the shrill, pulsing whistle of a jetcopter cutting its thrusters; the whup— whup — whup of its vanes lowering it down from a sky in which the stars were only just beginning to fade. And the first faint nimbus of dawn silhouetting the treetops and shining on rising, writhing wisps of mist.

'Hell's teeth.'' Lardis Lidesci groaned where he came stumbling from the direction of the big articulated Ops vehicle. As he came, his trembling right hand gingerly explored a blackened patch of bloodied, matted hair on the left side of his head. It looked ugly, and was made to look worse by a flow of blood that had run down and congealed around his ear. 'Damn the bloody man to hell.'' he said.

Meeting him halfway, Trask grunted: 'Miller?' 'Wouldn't you just know it?' Lardis nodded, then groaned and held his head again. 'I bedded down under the steps at the back of Ops. And I heard something in the dead of night, something breaking. But these damned short nights of yours… my system's all out of kilter with them… I'm used to sleeping, not these forty winks that you people take.''

'You didn't wake up till too late,' Trask grunted. I'm not a damned watchdog!' Lardis snapped. Trask shook his head. Tm not blaming you, Lardis. Hell, I didn't think the crazy bastard had enough guts to make a run for it! So if it's anyone's fault it's mine. I should have posted a guard on him.'

lan Goodly came loping, looking more than a little angry with himself. 'The camp's awake,' he said, sourly.

Trask looked at him and growled, 'You too? It seems we're each and every one of us blaming himself.'

'But I'm the precog,' Goodly chewed on his top lip.

'Right,' Trask agreed, 'but one man can't foresee it all. And let's face it, if you could anticipate everything that was coming…'

'… Then I would probably have killed myself a long time ago, yes,' Goodly nodded. 'But damn it, I did see this one!'

'You what?' Jake was wide awake now. 'So why didn't you do something?'

'I saw it in my sleep,' the precog answered. 'Saw it as a dream. Hub! When is a dream not a dream? When it's a glimpse of the future! But even if I'd known what it was, how would I have woken myself up? When you're asleep you're asleep. And the future guards its secrets well.'

'And I thought I was the only one who was having problems with his dreams!' Jake said. At which Trask looked at him very curiously… but only for a moment. There was too much to do.

'Okay,' Trask said, let's forget it. I'm to blame, Lardis is to blame, lan is to blame, and so is Jake—'

'Me?' Jake raised an eyebrow.

'For leaving the keys in your 'Rover,' Trask nodded. 'Anyway, no one is really to blame. The problem is we've grown too used to dealing with the weird, the abnormal, the monstrous. I mean, if it's mundane we tend to let it slide. And you couldn't ask for anything more mundane than Mr bloody Miller!'

'I beg to differ,' said Goodly.

'Eh?' Trask looked at him.

'Can I put you fully in the picture now?' the precog said. And when Trask nodded: 'Miller's a strange one,' Goodly continued. 'When finally I woke up I was worried about my dream. So I went to see if everything was okay. I missed Lardis where Miller must have pushed him back out of sight behind the trailer's steps, but I found the Duty Officer. He's going to be okay, but he, too, had been bashed on the head. He was lying in the corridor outside Miller's bunk with the door on top of him. They're pretty flimsy, those doors. The hinges had been worked loose.

'I wasn't sure how long the D.O.'d lain there, so I checked that he was okay then went to see if the Ops Room was safe. The place was working as normal… incoming, that is. Several messages, waiting for answers, and situation reports coiling up on the floor. There was some Cosmic Secret stuff that the D.O. must have been processing when Miller attracted his attention. Quite a bit of it had been decoded. Then I remembered how you'd asked for background information on Miller. That was there, too, coming out of the printer even as I got there. But there was stuff that should have been there and wasn't… like a lot of Cosmic Secret stuff from HQ? The printouts had been ripped through and some of the serials were missing. We'll need to get them duplicated, find out what was on them.

'Anyway, I grabbed the stuff on Miller, then began to wake people up. Now they're all awake, though I don't see what they can do to help. Oh yes, and here's all the background information on Miller…' He thrust some sheets of printout at Trask.

But before Trask could even begin reading, Goodly went on: 'Miller isn't as mundane as you think, Ben. But he is an obsessive nut, and the black sheep of the family. His uncle was big in Western Australian politics, got him work as a minor official in a job where he didn't have a lot to do but could indulge his thirst for power — in however small a way. Why else do you suppose he's the guardian of a million square miles of nothing? To keep him out of the way, that's why. Good grief, and we had to get lumbered with him.' Come to think of it, it's likely that that, too, came about as a result of his uncle's influence.

'Okay, his obsessions. Anything…! I mean it: this fellow can get hooked on literally anything! An obsessive personality, it's as simple — or not as simple — as that. But guess what? Back in the late 1970s, early '80s, he saw Close Encounters and E.T. — well, who didn't? But this is Peter Miller we're talking about.' He joined a whacky UFO group, of which he's still a member, and wrote two "Friendly Aliens Are Here" books that didn't get published. Need I say more? No way you could have convinced this bloke that we were in the right last night, Ben. No way at all…'

'I see,' said Trask. And, after he had given it a moment's thought, 'Do we have any idea how long he's been gone?'

'Judging by the D.O.'s signatures in the message log, maybe three, three and a half hours,' Goodly answered.

Trask nodded. 'Then he could be anywhere by now. Two hundred and more miles away, for all we know.' So no good our trying to chase him. Very well, here are the priorities. I want Lardis and the D.O. taken care of as best possible. And I want a man — you, lan — in the Ops chair sending out wanted notices to all the police authorities in a two hundred miles radius… better make it three hundred miles… or better still, all of Western Australia!' But on second thought: 'No, wait, send out just one, to the Internal Security people in Perth. He's their man, after all, so let them go after him. Oh, and check that they have his profile, too, which ought to scotch any "wild stories" that Miller may be circulating. And finally, I want to know what was on those missing printouts…'

Trask paused, shrugged, and eventually continued, 'Anyway, there's one good thing come out of all this: I won't be wasting half a. day handing Miller over to the IS people in Perth. And as for right now… I'm hungry.' He headed for the trench with the back-burner, which someone had fired up. Tm going to have breakfast.'

By which time an agent was tending to Lardis, and all over the camp sleepy-looking people were on the move. The jetcopter had landed, and Phillips the pilot was leading a tall, grizzled stranger — strange to Jake, anyway — through the grey predawn light between the trees into the camp's clearing. Trask spotted them as they came striding through thinning ground mist; waving to attract their attention, he diverted his steps in their direction. Jake followed on behind him.

'Grahame,' Trask smiled a greeting. 'If it's no the laird himself. It's been quite a few years now.' But while Jake might wonder at Trask's assumed accent, the stranger's seemed perfectly in keeping and went well with the swing of his kilt:

'Aye, that it has,' he rumbled through the full grey beard that gave him his grizzled aspect, grinning to display a bar of strong square teeth. 'What, twelve years? How goes it with you, Benjamin? You and yere bleddy gadgets!'

They shook hands… but in the next moment the stranger's searching eyes, those oh so dark eyes of his, transferred their gaze to Jake. 'And this'll be the subject, is it no?'