The Last Aerie (43 page)

It’s all right. You’ll be safe now.

Perhaps Nathan heard her; Siggi would never know for sure. But feeling a furtive movement behind her—and noticing what she really ought to have noticed a moment ago, before she sent that final thought—the knowledge fell on her like a peal of thunder that someone else had most certainly heard it!

Tzonov’s hand closed over hers on the arm of her chair; his
eyes
, reflected in the flexon window, bored into hers; his twisted “smile” was as mad as any she ever saw, as he whispered in her ear, “And so he’ll be safe, will he? Well yes, I suppose
he
will. But what odds? For after all, we’ll get what we wanted from him. All you’ve told me so far, and all you’ve yet to tell me.”

“But Turkur …!” she turned to him.

“Ah, no!” He held up a hand, tut-tutted, turned his glistening, quivering, furiously grinning face away. “Say nothing, Siggi, not now. Save it for later. I just
know
you’re going to have so much more to say later.”

Almost convulsively, she reached inside her parka, but Yefros had come over from his side and was jabbing the muzzle of his gun in her ribs under her right breast. “Oh yes, please do,” he told her sibilantly. “It would give me a great deal of pleasure, I assure you.”

Even then, just for a moment, Siggi felt undecided. She knew that any pleasure “it” might give Yefros the sadist now, would probably be far easier to bear—and over and done with a lot more quickly—than what she might reasonably anticipate from him in Tzonov’s threatened “later”. But finally, releasing her breath in a long sigh, she slumped back and shrank down in her seat. Worse was coming, certainly, but where there’s life … well, maybe there could be a little hope even now.

Yefros’s unpleasantly slim hand was cold and threatening—and lingering—against her flesh, as he carefully reached inside her parka, searched, and took her tiny gun from its secret place between her breasts. And the touch of those fingers, however inarticulate, told far better than words how slim was the element of hope which was all Siggi had left…

From the moment he escaped from Perchorsk, Nathan had been a fugitive, but for the last thirty-six hours—ever since Zek Föener contacted him with her instructions—he’d never been more aware of it. For he, too, had sensed the other intelligences which homed-in on her probe; he’d guessed their source and had known they would come after him.

The snow had saved him. He’d seen snow before, albeit infrequently, on those rare occasions when the barrier mountains turned white and even Sunside was bitterly cold through its long, dangerous nights. Twice as a child he’d seen it, and once as a youth, when an avalanche had brought down ten thousand tons of the stuff to strip the mountain naked of trees in a wide swath and fill the gap behind Lardis’s knoll almost to its brim. But even that had been nothing compared to this.

The snows of this world seemed to go on forever! And its cold in these northern regions was far worse than that of Starside in the hours before sunup. Nathan was hardy, it was true, but without Vladi and his Travellers he would never have made it. For all that their ancestors had been Wamphyri supplicants (and for all that they themselves
would
be, given the chance), when the parting of the ways had come at last, he knew he was in their debt.

With the last flurry of snow—where densely-grown woods offered Nathan cover to the west, while the route of the Travellers would take them far south to the temperate regions they craved—he and the gnarled Szgany chief had hugged and stood off awhile, saying nothing. Then Nathan had felt ill at ease for what small deceptions he’d been obliged to work. But at the last when Vladi reminded him of his vow—to carry his message of welcome back to the vampire Lords in their own place—then there’d been nothing else for it but to lie again and say that he would.

Beneath the pines the ground was mainly clear. Avoiding the occasional drift, Nathan had headed west until the trees petered out and gave way to frozen marsh. By then the spindly derricks of the Izhma Projekt had been visible, and a strange dull thunder in the sky clearly audible. He had watched in awe and not a little fear as a flying machine came down through the clouds like some giant mosquito, settling towards the huddle of buildings. And because his attention was riveted to it, Nathan had recognized the aircraft as the source of yet another mental probe which, while it was not telepathic, nevertheless served to confirm his location.

Shortly, as he struggled through a deep drift out in the open, a snowcat had come skimming, and this time the source of the probe was riding pillion. David Chung had helped Nathan up behind him; the cat had turned in a circle, sending crisp snow flying; in something less than two minutes the fugitive found himself bundled aboard the jet-copter, which took off without delay.

That had been a little more than seventy-five minutes and seven hundred miles ago; now, crossing the Finnish border west of Lubosalma, Chung breathed easily for the first time in what felt like … oh, about three hours. Re-filling his lungs just as gladly, he let himself relax a little.

The passenger cabin was fairly spacious, and even more so in that only Nathan, Chung and the three-man crew were aboard. Trask was waiting in Helsinki where he’d been seeing to documentation and return travel arrangements to London. Now, as Nathan wolfed sandwiches and drank coffee, Chung thought it might be as well to get a relationship going. Lighting a cigarette, he said:

“Zek Föener says you won’t find it too hard to understand me. Languages come easy to you. I know you’ve already spoken to Ben Trask, but most of that was telepathic. Anyway, my name is David Chung.” He held out his right hand, and when Nathan went to clasp his forearm corrected him and showed him a handshake. “That’s how we do it here.”

Nathan at once showed him the Traveller way. “And that’s how we do it on Sunside. Not a lot of difference, is there?”

It stopped Chung dead in his tracks, and Nathan knew it. The most the locator had said to him so far had been when he spoke his name as he helped him aboard the snowcat. Grinning at Chung’s expression, he said, “Zek Föener is right, as you see. I learned a little from Trask, by matching his words to his mind-pictures; but right now in
your
mind there’s only a jumble of words. Most of them seem automatic—instinctive?—and pretty meaningless. They don’t much match up with anything. This is nothing new. They are curses!”

“Shit!” Chung said out loud, and then apologized.

“No, I am the one who should … apologize?” Nathan
was
still learning after all. “It’s unseemly to look into another man’s mind unbidden.”

“You’ll do okay in E-Branch,” Chung nodded, returning his grin. “In any case, you can look all you want. There’s nothing in there I’m ashamed of. And if it will help you to get it all together—I mean, to understand …”

“It will.”

“Then be my guest. Listen, you’ll be debriefed—that is, my people will ask
you
plenty of questions—in London; I mean back home, where we’re going. But until we pick up Trask en route, I’m at your command. Any way I can help, if there’s anything you want to know about us, about this world, you just fire away … I mean, by all means ask questions.” Despite Nathan’s talent and intelligence, obviously it wasn’t going to be plain sailing.

They had maybe forty minutes to Helsinki, and Nathan put all of them to good use …

They flew in a Sabena jet, executive-class, from Helsinki to Stockholm, and transferred to a British Airways jumbo for the flight into London. Nathan was agog at the size of both airplanes, especially the latter, and at their speed. In-flight, he was fascinated by the food, clothing, hand-luggage (wrist-watches, pens, books, cigarette lighters!) of the other passengers; also by the toilets, the motion picture, headphones, periodic announcements; the provision of drinks, hot food; the view from the windows, everything. Trask had found clothes for him in Helsinki, so that he didn’t look out of place. Still, his natural curiosity was that of a child, which
would
have been out of place but for Trask’s continuous cautioning. Finally, half-way to London from Stockholm, he settled down and asked Trask to tell him about his father.

As Head of E-Branch, Trask was well equipped for that. Keeping his voice low and starting at the very beginning, he detailed what he knew of Harry Keogh’s boyhood up until the time he joined forces with the Branch. Occasionally Nathan would ask a question, but when he stopped Trask glanced at him out of the corner of his eye, and smiled.

It said a great deal for Nathan’s new friends: that he felt he could sleep, and safely, in their company …

Trask shook him awake just before they landed at Heathrow. The lights had been on in Stockholm when they took off, but now it was full night. Nathan simply couldn’t believe the size of the city as seen from the air, and as for its illuminations …

“The hell-lands,” he murmured, half to himself.

Trask heard him, and asked: “Do you really think so?”

Nathan looked at him wide-eyed. “No,” he said after a moment’s pause. “Not with you people for denizens. Not quite hell, anyway.”

Suddenly Trask’s head was full of memories. “It might have been,” he said, “if not for your father.” Then, less seriously: “And maybe it still is. Save it till you’ve seen the traffic!”

The Minister Responsible was there to whisk them through customs; Nathan was taken to an E-Branch safe house in Slough, whose “caretakers” were Special Branch heavies and experts in close protection. From now on he would also be in the care of E-Branch agents who would live at the house when he was in residence, never straying more than a thought away. Except he shouldn’t expect to be spending too much time there; the safe house was a bolt-hole, nothing more.

During this first visit, Nathan took a bath, shaved, had his hair tidied up; he was equipped with a reasonable wardrobe, supplied with money and extra documentation. Then, to give him something of a background at least, pictures were taken of him laughing, with his arms round a girl he’d never met before and would never see again, and two small children at his feet. The photographs were placed in a leather wallet together with credit cards that wouldn’t work and other bits and pieces of false identification and “authentication”, and a wafer-slim calculator powered by light. (Later, en route to E-Branch HQ, David Chung explained the latter’s functions; it took Nathan only a moment or two to recognize Ethloi of the Thyre’s “tens system” and learn the values of the alien characters. From which time forward the calculator would be his pride and joy.)

At E-Branch HQ the hour was too late for introductions; Nathan was taken to a room of his own and almost fell into a bed where he could sleep long, soundly, safely. Under normal circumstances there would only be one Duty Officer. Tonight, and for however long it took, there would be four; and, in the hotel down below, a trio of Special Branch plain-clothes officers who now had something extra to think about in addition to discreetly tailing and minding Zek Föener.

But in E-Branch itself while Nathan slept, the four duty officers continued to work steadily through the night, preparing his program. For tomorrow Nathan would start school. He would learn, the Branch would learn; hopefully both would benefit. As Trask had already made plain, however, their aim wasn’t to extract information—not specifically—but to impart it. It was for Nathan, and also for the memory of his father, Harry Keogh. Only a handful of men had ever known him, and even fewer had known him as the Necroscope. But an entire world was in his debt, or even two worlds, and in many ways he’d had a raw deal in both of them. This would be reparation in part, at least…

In the small hours of the night, in Perchorsk under the Urals, Siggi Dam had likewise been called upon to make repayment. But in her case Turkur Tzonov was the one to whom account must be made, and Siggi was bankrupt. Moreover, this time the aim was most
definitely
to extract information—and permanently.

Siggi had been awakened in the quietest of all hours, at 2:30
A.M
., by the squeal of her door opening after a skeleton key had been turned in its lock. And still believing that this couldn’t possibly be happening—that she must be nightmaring—she had sat up in her bed and watched Tzonov, Staff-Sergeant Bruno Krasin, and Alexei Yefros quickly enter the room and move to her bedside. Numb and only half-awake, blinking her eyes in the sudden light, perhaps she’d had just enough time to cringe back from them, moisten her lips, and say, “What?” before Tzonov covered her mouth and Krasin held her motionless, while Yefros slid a needle into her arm.

That last had woken her up, certainly, when but for Tzonov’s hand clamping her mouth she would have screamed. But only for a moment, until the drug began to work. The effect of that had been to put her back to sleep; her body, at least. Following which … they’d been in such a hurry that they hadn’t even paused to close her eyes. And denied all physical command over her limbs, thrown across Krasin’s powerful shoulders, Siggi had seen, heard, or otherwise sensed the rest as if it were happening under water, through the liquid lens of some sickly churning submarine kaleidoscope:

Corridor walls flowing by like waves in the apparently slow-motion
jolt … jolt … jolt
of Krasin’s stride; curved steel wall panels reflecting the ghastly flicker of faulty or shorting neons; an inverted descent through the magmass levels to the core, where the usual knot of technicians and scientists was nowhere in evidence, for Tzonov had either dismissed them or sent them on some clever wild-goose chase. Another descent, down steel ladders in the curved wall of the core and under the white bulge of the sphere Gate itself, to a place where Tzonov opened the cover on a magmass worm-hole. He and Yefros sliding feet-first into an alien darkness; and Siggi with a rope round her ankles, hauled along behind and gliding in the smooth bore like some slow toboggan; Krasin bringing up the rear, pushing on her shoulders where he followed head-first.