The Last Aerie

  “How observant!” Tzonov let his sarcasm drip; he’d seen through the precog’s ploy at once. “Yes, of course. Miniature cameras, trained on the area immediately behind the steel section. The metal is ten inches thick, armoured on the inside; what you see on the screen there is no more than four or five feet from where you’re standing; if you hammered on the panel you could give him a headache.”

  Despite that Goodly knew he’d been rumbled, he clung to his pretext. “How do you feed him?”

  Tzonov pointed. “You see that groove in the metal? Not merely a groove but a hatch, a door, hermetically sealed and magnetically locked. Down at the bottom there, that circular mark is an even smaller door, through which we pass food. Of course, we don’t do it while he’s awake but when he’s sleeping. And now that he’s satisfied to eat what we give him, we could just as easily poison him. Or we might pump lethal gas in there, or squirt acid at him. We might do so even now, if we can’t satisfy ourselves that he’s just a man …”

  During which conversation Trask had taken the opportunity to satisfy himself (albeit erroneously) that first impressions must be correct: this was Harry Keogh Junior, the son of the Necroscope, who as an infant had spirited his ailing mother away into an alien dimension. He looked maybe ten years younger than he should, but there again he’d come to manhood in a different world. Still, the discrepancy was such as to cause Trask to frown. He felt that he wasn’t seeing the whole picture. As for what he was seeing:

  The man in the viewscreen was seated cross-legged on what was barely discernible as a white floor. It seemed no different from the rest of his surroundings, except his thighs and backside flattened out when pressed against it. And the rest of his surroundings … were white. There was little more to say of that tunnel between worlds: it was a glaring white expanse joining up our universe to some other. It was the Gate.

  Again Trask examined the visitor, and discovered another anomaly, however small. Alec Kyle’s (or Harry Keogh’s?) hair had been brown and plentiful, naturally wavy. This one’s hair was blond and shining, like damp straw, with grey streaks to both sides which gave him a look of intelligence or erudition well in advance of his years. And his hair was long, falling to his shoulders, giving him something of the appearance of a Viking. Moreover his eyes were of a sapphire blue, where Kyle/ Keogh’s had been as brown as his hair. Trask was certain that genetically this was Alec Kyle’s son, but at the same time he seemed to have inherited his—what, spiritual?—father’s colours! As for the rest of his features: there could be no denying that this was the son of the Necroscope.

  As if the visitor had suddenly heard or sensed something, he thrust himself upright until his sandaled feet flattened to the white “floor” and looked directly into the eye of a scanner, all of which was performed in a dreary slow-motion which must have been an effect of the Gate. A technician adjusted the picture until the whole man was revealed, his eyes narrowed and brow furrowed where he stood with his gaze slightly elevated into the camera.

  Trask couldn’t gauge his height but suspected he’d be a six-footer. He had an athlete’s body: broad shoulders, narrow waist, powerful arms and legs. His eyes might be very slightly slanted, or it could simply be a result of his currently suspicious, frowning expression. His nose was straight and seemed small under a broad forehead flanked by high cheekbones. Over a square chin which jutted a little (though not aggressively, Trask thought), his mouth was full and tended to slant downwards a fraction to the left. In others this might suggest a certain cynicism, but not in him. Rather the opposite: there was an air of patience, inevitability, even of vulnerability about him beyond that of a creature trapped in an unknown, unknowable environment.

  Now that he relaxed a little—his expression changing, eyes opening wider and frown melting away—Trask saw something else which could only be revenant of Harry: a natural innocence and compassion, the soulfulness of the mind behind the face. So that without being Keogh’s spitting image, still the visitor felt like him. And as that fact dawned, Trask knew that it wasn’t so much what he’d seen when first he looked at this one, rather what he’d experienced inside that made him sure of his identity. Gut feelings on the one hand, supported by Trask’s weird talent on the other, which could not be confused or mistaken. This was the Necroscope’s son. So … why was it, he wondered, that something continued to bother him?

  As for the visitor’s clothes:

  He was clad in a fringed jacket with a high collar and wide lapels, and in trousers which were tight at the knee and flared at the calves to fit snug over soft leather boots. The outfit was almost “Wild West” in cut, yet flowing and Gypsyish at the same time, and its material was a finely patterned skin or leather like alligator hide. Soft, sand-coloured, flexible, it looked comfortable if a little worn and dusty.

  Then Trask noticed the earring in his left ear: a queer twist of yellow metal, only an inch long and presumably gold. But if Trask had been frowning before, now the lines deepened on his brow. He knew the significance of that odd shape, knew what it was: the Möbius strip, the metaphysical symbol which had been Harry Keogh’s passport to another world. It was the final piece in the puzzle, which validated all the others and caused them to click into place. Trask put it to the back of his mind at once, something else to be hidden in the hypnotic abyss behind his eyes.

  And that, in a nutshell, was the visitor. Overall, there was nothing in his clothing, manner, or appearance in general to suggest the haughty, aggressive arrogance, physical superiority, and awesome metamorphic arts of the Wamphyri. So that despite Trask’s other, perhaps ulterior political motives, he knew that his prime purpose in being here—the validation of the visitor as a man and only a man—had been justified.

  “Off!” Tzonov’s voice cut into his thoughts, causing Trask to start. As the screens blinked into a grey opacity, he turned to the Russian and answered his gaze … and was at once aware of its bite! Now the telepath would read his or Goodly’s mind, if he could. Like the colours of a chameleon, his eyes changed until their grey so diluted itself as to drain them of colour, while yet their pupils seemed to enlarge to magnifying lenses which on another occasion might look right into Trask’s mind. But not this time. For as the Russian’s gaze fastened on his eyes, so something deep in Trask’s brain snapped into action and channeled the other’s telepathy down an empty tunnel.

  Tzonov knew it in a moment without knowing how it was done: that Trask was impervious. Or perhaps not impervious: his mind was accessible but blank! And Goodly’s pale smile told him the same thing, that his mind too had been—secured? “Hypnotism!” the Russian finally grunted, his bottom jaw falling open. And seeing Trask’s expression, he knew that he’d guessed correctly. “You’ve been hypnotized! If I so much as look at you … your minds switch off!”

  He clapped a hand to his forehead and ground his teeth, then grew calm in a moment and actually forced a smile, until he became aware of the core’s scientists worriedly staring at him. “You … may get back to your work,” he told them, turning on his heel and starting unsteadily back along the gantry.

  Trask and Goodly looked at each other, then followed on behind. Tzonov paused and waited for them at the bottom of the ramp through the entrance tunnel. As they came up the steps he said, “All very clever, but it wasn’t part of our deal. I have held to my part.” He was in control again, but cold as a midwinter Siberian blizzard.

  Trask said, “And we’ll hold to ours. But it wasn’t part of the deal to have you in our minds. Did you ever consider simply asking?”

  Tzonov pursed his lips. “At times … at times I’m almost given to believe that my telepathy isn’t just a tool. Sometimes I feel that I am the tool, and my talent the master. And I have to admit: it’s hard to own or be owned by such a talent without using it. If I was presumptuous, then I’m sorry. It’s just that it seemed the easiest way, that’s all.” And Trask knew that he was telling the truth.

  The Russian saw it in his face, relaxed, nodded, and
said, “Very well, I’m asking. Is he what he seems to be, just a man, the son of Harry Keogh? Or is he an imitation—a spy, decoy, or invader from another world—and something we should destroy without delay?”

  “He’s a man,” Trask answered at once, but he was careful to leave Tzonov’s “just” out of his reply. “And I believe he’s Harry’s son, yes.”

  Tzonov sighed. “I read as much in your minds almost without trying,” he said. “Yet when I tried …”

  Goodly spoke up. “That was your mistake, Turkur. We can’t be forced. We can offer up the information voluntarily, or else be taken by surprise, tricked, eavesdropped. But face to face … the moment your eyes lock on, posthypnotic commands take over, we shut up shop, and our minds go blank.” Telling him didn’t hurt; Tzonov would work it out for himself quickly enough.

  “Ah!” he said, smiling his thin smile, which fell away at once. “But … it will be difficult to work together in circumstances such as these.” He began to turn away.

  But Trask said, “Under your rules it would be impossible! Our minds are our own, Turkur.”

  The Russian looked at him. “But you have the advantage,” he said, an edge of frustration in his voice. “If I lie—if what I say is not the precise truth—you’ll know it immediately!”

  “Then try not to lie,” Trask answered, starting up the tunnel towards the magmass levels. “It shouldn’t be too hard. After all, you’ve been doing all right so far …”

  On their way back to quarters, Trask said, “I think it’s time you answered a few questions, Turkur. For example: since you are able to look at your visitor anytime you want to—face to face, on screen—why haven’t you read his mind? Why did you need me to tell you about him, the truth of him?”

  Tzonov shrugged. “Perhaps you’ve answered your own question. Perhaps he, too, has been hypnotized! Believe me, I would love to read his mind, but can’t! It could be interference from the sphere’s ‘skin,’ its event horizon, which lies between the visitor and the wall of his steel cell. Maybe it’s related to the slow-motion effect which you observed when he stood up, I don’t know. But whichever, his mind is likewise a blank wall to me, just like your own. Perhaps when we bring him through to this side things will be different. We must wait and see.”

  “That was my next question,” Trask said. “When will you bring him through?”

  Tzonov knew he couldn’t lie, and so replied with an ambiguous: “Soon.” Then, as Trask and Goodly reached their door, he looked at them and said, “Siggi, of course, will find no great difficulty in reading your minds. Her talent does not rely on eye-to-eye contact.”

  “But only if we should relax our guard,” Goodly told him. “I mean, if she catches us with our pants down. Which wouldn’t be cricket, now would it?”

  Tzonov laughed. “Our Great Cultural Difference! Cricket! The rules of the game! The fact that you have them, and we do not!”

  “Also that we have ‘ladies,’” Goodly answered, “while you have only ‘comrades.’ And as Tzonov’s smile turned sour, the British espers passed through into their adjoining rooms and closed the door on him …

  Later: The four ate together in Perchorsk’s mess hall, where a so-called executive dining area had been screened off for the use of officers and scientists, to separate them from the common soldiers. As the hour was late, they were in any case alone. The heating of the hall was only just adequate, but Siggi Dam seemed perfectly comfortable despite that her dress was almost Mediterranean, a fact which Trask and Goodly couldn’t help but notice after Tzonov had helped her out of her coat. Following which they studiously avoided paying her too much attention.

  She wore a short, tight, figure-hugging skirt, in combination with a fashionable wide-shouldered bolero waistcoat held together by a single button, over a chiffon blouse open to the waist. Her cleavage was all too evident and the dark stains of her nipples were like patterns on the pale blue chiffon. If it was her intention to distract, it certainly worked; the espers tried not to be too gauche but found themselves making a point of talking face to face with Tzonov, which kept their hypnotic implants primed. And in a little while Trask sensed that Siggi was no longer trying to read them.

  But to be absolutely sure, he smiled at her and said, “In a place as unnaturally cold and unfriendly as this, I’m sure your presence must raise the temperature by several degrees at least!” While this was a genuine compliment, his very deliberate afterthought was anything but: God, what I wouldn’t give to fuck your face!

  Then, still smiling, he waited with numbed nerves for her slap—but instead she returned his smile, inclined her head, and said, “Why, thank you, Ben!”

  Other conversation was sparse during the meal, which like the accommodations wasn’t exactly the Ritz. For all that, Trask suspected that some poor Soviet Citizens’ Army cook had made a special effort here. You could cut the meat despite its cryptic origin, and instead of the dubiously debugged bottled “spring water” to be found in most Russian cities these days, the Coca Cola was fresh, cool, sparkling.

  “The quality of our food,” Tzonov commented, almost disinterestedly (perhaps apologetically?) “continues to improve with the ecology.”

  All thanks due to the West, Trask thought, but to himself. Pointless to further damage the Russian’s pride. The fact was, though, that without the help of Germany, France, Great Britain, and the USA, of course, the body of the USSR would be a vast and ugly mutant thing dying of its sores. As it was, the most dangerous of the reactors had been closed down and mothballed, the worst of the industrial pollution was now under control, Siberian forests and wildlife were flourishing once more, and even the so-called Aral Desert was regaining something of its old water table. Ask Anna Marie English and she’d gladly detail a thousand other small miracles.

  Trask finished off only a little of his fairly tasteless pudding and Goodly hardly touched his, a spoonful at best. The Russians didn’t even make that much effort. But finally Tzonov yawned and said, “I’m for bed. Tomorrow will be a busy day. We should all sleep as best we can. Myself, I find it claustrophobic down here. I like to picture myself out in the open, in an orchard counting the plums, and sleep comes easier. You might like to try it.”

  Goodly looked at him, ignored his advice, and concentrated on the one word: “Tomorrow?” Behind his grey, sunken features, the precog’s mind was likewise hollow. Perhaps even more than it should be. And his voice felt hollow, too, as he asked, “Is that when you’re letting him come through?”

  The head of Russian E-Branch yawned again, but just like the first one it was a lie. Trask shrugged inside and told himself it was simply Tzonov’s excuse to be alone with Siggi. Who could blame him, anyway? But then, as the cook came to take away their dishes, suddenly Trask was unaccustomedly sleepy. And he knew in a moment why he hadn’t wanted his pudding.

  After that … it was an effort to get himself and Goodly back to their rooms and onto their beds before the dark flooded in. And Goodly never did get an answer to his question concerning the visitor, about when they’d be letting him through the Gate into Perchorsk. It made no difference for he’d known the answer anyway, except he’d known it just ten seconds too late. And so had Trask.

  Now, falling headlong into the great black hole of sleep, they both knew it was going to be tonight, within the hour, as soon as they were out of the way.

  And then they were out of the way …

  Ben Trask wasn’t much of a dreamer. At least he didn’t often remember his dreams, for which he was grateful. The ones that stuck were usually nightmares, which came to him as a result of his job. On occasion, he still nightmared about Yulian Bodescu, corrupted in his mother’s womb and born into a life of necromancy and vampirism. Or he might dream that he was back in the Greek islands, up against Janos Ferenczy, last of an infamous bloodline. Or he might see the Necroscope again, as he’d seen him that time in the garden of Harry’s Edinburgh home, before he’d fled into Starside through the Perchorsk Gate. And so i
t can be seen why Trask wasn’t much of a one for dreaming.

  Once, the Branch had employed its own oneiromancer: a man who not only translated other people’s dreams but used his own to gauge his and others’ destinies. He had worked for E-Branch for three years, and then stopped dreaming—and a week later died of a brain tumour. Time and again, it had been shown how the future resisted the tampering of mere men. And by exactly the same degree, Ben Trask resisted dreaming.

  He would resist it just as stringently now, if he hadn’t been weakened by the drugged food. But as it was he found himself drawn into the dream and trapped there—by a voice. But a voice with a difference, with an aura. An aura that reminded Trask of his dreams of Harry Keogh.

  At first there was only the velvet darkness of deep sleep, crisscrossed by the flashes of instantly forgotten thoughts or half-formed visions, transient as meteor trails in a night sky. But there was nothing really visual about it. Then … the aura was there like cigarette smoke, curling in Trask’s mind, acrid with the touch—or the taint?—of the one who’d first drawn and then exhaled it. Or maybe acrid wasn’t the right word: redolent of him, perhaps …

  A curl of smoke, but intent, sentient, probing. And as the aura of the other sensed Trask and settled like a fog all about him, so he felt himself brushed by the eddies of a powerful rushing force, tugged and whirled in the mental currents of some weird cyclone of the mind. It was a whirlwind, a vortex, and as it drew Trask in, so he saw or sensed its composition: numbers!

  A numbers vortex! It was as if the continuous printout of some colossal computer had spiraled up into the air like a gigantic inverted flypaper, burning away until the numbers were left to spin on their own. Flying free, they too burned with an inner fire; they glowed like neon as esoteric equations sought to resolve themselves, evolving or mutating into metaphysical math. A nodding, cone-shaped tornado of writhing numbers snatched Trask up and hurled him aloft, just one more cipher in a rapidly rotating wall of agonized algebraic symbols and coruscating calculi.