FirestormLooking 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 flame-thrower, 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 her42thoughts 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 flame-thrower 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 in44handy; 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 flame-thrower 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 flame-thrower.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 flame-thrower, 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 flame-thrower; 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 flame-thrower 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 ...
