Necropath (41 page)

You are immoral!

What is immoral? We merely follow the demands of our biology, of our thirsting need for knowledge. Over the millennia we have absorbed the knowledge of thousands of races more advanced than yourselves.

Vaughan thought:
And they let you? Not one of them protested and put an end to your games?

Vaughan-Lepage... You fail to understand. For their knowledge, the physical knowledge they possessed of their world and sciences and cultures, we traded the ultimate knowledge, the knowledge of the truth that underlies this physical reality, the knowledge of what awaits us when we pass from the physical to the non-physical. We are an ancient race. For billions of your years we have meditated upon the secrets of the universe, both the physical and the spiritual. We have come to understand the nature of what underlies the physical world, we have come to commune with God, and at the same time find the physical world a constant source of wonder and marvel...

Vaughan responded:
I do not believe in your ultimate truth. I have seen what happens when we die. I have experienced the oblivion that awaits...

Vaughan-Lepage
,
the Vaith thought with something like great pity,
what you experienced with your minuscule, paltry human psi-ability was no more than the mechanical dysfunction of the human brain as the machine of the body closed down and died... What you could not experience with your ability is the human soul as it takes wing and departs to the One.

Vaughan experienced at once rage and a terrible doubt:
No! No, I cannot believe that!

Over the millennia, many races—the more enlightened at any rate—were willing to believe, and to trade with us—others, more materialistic or primitive, rebelled and destroyed members of our species, just as you intend to do...

Intend?
Vaughan could not keep the angry humour from his thoughts.
Intend? I
will
kill you—

But you cannot. Oh, you might kill the creature with which you now communicate, but I am but one of a greater unit—

Vaughan thought:
I will kill you, and then we will find the Vaith in America and Europe and on the colony planets and we will eradicate them also. It might take time, but we will defeat you!

Have you been listening to nothing I have told you, Vaughan-Lepage?
The Vaith replied with patient sadness:
We are part of a much greater whole. We number in our thousands, flung far and wide across the galaxy, on planets yet to be discovered by humankind. The knowledge taken in by myself and my brethren on Earth becomes shared knowledge among all of us, just as their knowledge of alien ways and means becomes mine. You might destroy me, you might destroy the Vaith on Earth and on your colonies, but by then our work will be complete, we will have knowledge of you... and in return we would dearly like to grant you the truth, but it seems that as a race you are too young and ignorant...

And the Vaith seemed to open its mind, then, to flood Vaughan with some intimation of the rapture that awaited him, the soul-opening unity into which, if the alien was to be believed, all creatures conjoined...

Vaughan gasped in awe and wonder, at once wanting to believe and yet not allowing himself the luxury. He fell to his knees, reaching for his augmentation-pin, his movements impossibly slow and prolonged.

Then he saw, staring down at him, the martyred face of the Chosen One, and in his mind she became Holly, and he was taken back down the years to Ottawa, and this time in the seconds before her death she spoke to him, “Believe the Vaith, for it is true; I am alive and One...”

He tried to raise his hand to his head, but it was as if it were being held. He felt himself drawn forward on his knees, dragged towards the lair of the Vaith. As he watched, its near surface folded upwards to reveal the content of the case, and suddenly he could see the Vaith, calling him...

It was a writhing mass of pink torsos, each one a young dark girl, each one with the perfect features and big brown eyes of Holly, and they were beckoning him, gesturing with alluring smiles and gestures for him to join them.

Do not torture yourself for what happened all those years ago, Vaughan-Lepage. The past is over and dead. Only the truth remains, the One of which we are part. Absolve yourself and join us in the One...

And a part of him—that part of him which had hated himself for so many years, which had used the guilt like a sword on which to throw himself—now that part of him could not accede to the demands of the hydra-Holly.

He knew, then, that to kill himself in atonement for his guilt would be too easy; he knew that he had to suffer.

Come to me, Vaughan-Lepage. Come, join the One...

With incredible effort he plunged the primer on the grenade in his hand, and did the same with a second and third. Then he pressed the red button on the first grenade and tossed it into the writhing mass of the illusion. He threw the second and the third grenades and dived for cover behind the nearest pew.

The explosion deafened him, rocked the chamber, and swept the pews across the church like so much matchwood. Vaughan tumbled with the wave of the blast as if caught in a typhoon of heat. He came to rest and looked up, and the copper container was an empty, shattered shell, and all around the chamber were the remains— the bloody strips of tegument, shards of claw and chitin—of the god the church had been built to worship.

As he lay in the tumble of broken pews, battered and bloody, Vaughan wondered if he would have gone ahead and destroyed the Vaith if he had not known that out there, scattered across the galaxy, were yet more of the mighty creatures.

* * * *

A CLEANSING PAIN

Vaughan lay very still in the silent aftermath of the explosion, afraid to move in case he increased the pain that wracked his body. At last, the weight of the pew that crushed his legs becoming too much, he reached out carefully and pushed it away. The noise of the falling wreckage crashed like a blasphemy in the silence of the church. He flexed his leg; it appeared undamaged. He took stock of his injuries—flesh wounds and a lot of blood, but nothing broken. He sat up, climbed to his feet.

Only then did he see the tall figure standing just inside the entrance of the church.

Osborne wore his long black coat, the same one he had worn all those years ago, with the collar turned up in a manner both cool and Mephistophelean. He was smiling his lazy smile at Vaughan’s shock.

As he stared, Osborne reached into his coat and pulled something from around his neck. He tugged, and the chain snapped. He held the golden oval in his hand, smiling at Vaughan.

“Osborne?” Vaughan began.

“It’s my shield,” he said, smiling. “I want you to read my pain, Vaughan!”

He tossed the shield away from him, and Vaughan could not help but scan the man’s tortured mind. He saw images of Holly, read Osborne’s grief.

Almost shouting out in pain, Vaughan pulled the pin from his skull and dropped it, and instantly the assassin’s feverish mind-noise became bearable.

Osborne moved from the entrance and stepped into the chamber. “It’s been a long time, Lepage— or should that be... Vaughan?”

“How did you find me?”

“I always find my quarry, Vaughan. You should know that. I haven’t failed yet. And do you know something else? I rather think that you wanted me to find you.”

The sight of Osborne took him back to that last mission, when Vaughan had been seconded to Osborne’s unit. He was in the Air America office, the building deserted but for Osborne and himself. They were posing as customers, awaiting the arrival of the terrorists they knew had planned to hold up the office and take hostages. Vaughan had not been augmented that day; Osborne, in command, wore the pin and gave the orders. For the first time in years, detail returned to him: the thick crimson carpet, the smell of pine disinfectant in the air, the snow falling outside on the crisp winter’s day.

A file of schoolchildren had paraded past the building...

Vaughan stared across the ruined church at Osborne, into the killer’s black eyes.

Osborne said, “Why did you kill my daughter? Why did you kill Holly?”

Vaughan tried to shut out the memory, but it played nevertheless in his mind, would not be stopped.

They had been tense, nervous on that final mission all those years ago. The terrorist cell had killed before, ruthlessly and without mercy. Osborne’s team was under instructions to kill first and ask questions later, which suited Osborne fine. His team had often joked, behind his back, that the man was a psichopath.

Vaughan recalled the feel of the pulse-gun in his hand.

Someone had burst in through the plate glass door, running across the crimson carpet, shouting... Only later, a
second
too late, did he hear the cry, “Daddy! Daddy!”

Vaughan had swung round at the sound of the door crashing open, was firing before he could stop himself.

The pulse caught the little girl on the side of the head, ripping away half of her face and igniting her jet hair in a brief, incandescent halo.

“Why did you kill my daughter?” Osborne repeated. “Why did you kill Holly?”

Vaughan reached out, almost pleading. “It was a terrible mistake, Osborne. You know that. Don’t you think I’ve suffered?”

“You
suffered? You don’t know the meaning of the word. I have suffered hell over the years. Hell...”

“The official report stated it was an accident. Don’t you think I regretted what I did?”

“Don’t talk to me about regret!”

He had been close to Osborne and his Vietnamese wife, then, and close to Osborne’s daughter, Holly, too. The purity of her young mind had countered the cynicism and hatred he read every day in the minds of his fellow men. He had sought salvation in the innocence of the girl.

One month after the shooting, unable to go on, Vaughan had staged his disappearance, dropped out, knowing that Osborne would soon be on his trail; knowing that, sooner or later, Osborne would find him.

And years later Vaughan had found Tiger, whose purity of mind had matched that of Holly’s.

Osborne stepped forward. “I want to read you,” he said. “I want to read your regret, your suffering. I want to know that you too went through hell.”

“That’s impossible,” Vaughan said, his voice almost cracking. Soon after fleeing Canada, Vaughan had hired a backstreet neurosurgeon to implant a shield in his skull console.

Osborne smiled a terrible smile. “Is it?” he said. “I traced you around the world, Vaughan. I found the surgeon and learned what he’d done.”

“No.” Vaughan shook his head, disbelieving. “No, you can’t!”

The assassin laughed. “Oh, but I can. I’m going to rip out your console and read you, Vaughan. And if that doesn’t kill you...” Osborne smiled, “then when I’ve read you I’ll take great delight in executing you. Turn around!”