Out of Nowhere (11 page)

Becoming conscious again felt peculiar. It was very different from other such returns, like waking from sleep, say, or the slow, tingling passage into flesh in the first place. The body had been technically dead after all, animated only by my friend’s efforts.

I felt a tightness around my throat – bandages – and the warmth of two solid lumps in the bandages that I knew were the crystals – healing crystals now.

There was no confusion as such. I knew what must be
happening
. As to what had happened since I died, that was a different matter. I didn’t even know how much time had passed since then. My memory ended with the last thought I’d had as the hunter with the hatchet jumped from the ditch beside me. My body had been groggy from sleep; getting out of the car, I’d seen the hunter’s movement only as a blur. Even as I’d turned to unshade him that last thought had gone quite clearly through my mind – the thought that I’d been too slow.

I’d barely had time to deflect the pain, and none at all to deflect the blow itself. I’d known at once that the wound was fatal. I’d concentrated on clinging to the maimed body, hanging on inside until my friend came to help. After that I knew nothing of what took place outside. But I was here now, 
and the body obviously wasn’t dead anymore.

I opened my eyes. There was a peculiar feeling of lightness in the air. I was lying on a bed. My friend sat on a chair beside me. The Sug was sitting at a table, looking petulant and uncomfortable, which is to say he was looking Sug-like.

‘Well,’ said my friend, ‘here you are at last.’

I swallowed carefully. There was no pain. I could feel the crystals’ warmth bathing the damaged tissue. My voice, when I tried it, sounded fine – a little hoarse maybe, but under the circumstances that was nothing to complain about.

‘What happened?’ I asked.

‘Well, you remember the ambush don’t you?’

‘Yes.’ A narrow, hedge-lined road on a hill, a morning mist, and a tree felled or fallen across the track in the half-light before dawn. A thought that even mad hunting things surely wouldn’t be so very, very stupid.

‘There were five of them,’ my friend said. ‘I got two, and our friend here got the others. They attacked him as ferociously as us, which proves that at least part of his story is true, I suppose. Your head was almost severed. I had to take it off for a while, I’m afraid – it kept flopping all over the place as we drove.’

‘That’s all right,’ I said. Then I laughed as a thought struck me. ‘I wasn’t very attached to it anyway,’ I said.

My friend smiled.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Not at the time.’

Then he laughed too.

‘You should have seen the look on your face, though,’ he said.

‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘Why am I laughing? I feel …
giddy
. Is it the damage to the body?’

‘It’s the atmosphere here, I think. I feel the same.’

‘But where are we?’

My friend was smiling again.

‘We’re in the place our friend here talked about – the abbey. And he was right: there are people here, humans.’

‘Is that possible?’

My friend shrugged.

‘Maybe not,’ he said. ‘But they’re here.’

It made no sense at all. We’d cleared the area thoroughly and established a barrier no force known to humans could penetrate. Even now their scientists and soldiers sat baffled and furious outside it.

‘So the rest of his story may be true too,’ I said.

The Sug spoke for the first time.

‘I told you,’ he said with some bitterness. ‘I
swore
I was telling the truth.’

‘Tut tut!’ my friend said. ‘You can hardly blame us for doubting you.’

The Sug sighed.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I can’t.’

In itself that was a remarkable admission for a Sug. This one had been in a peculiar mood since we met. Moods, I should say, because he swung from one extreme to the other. I mean it was extreme even by Sug standards, which is really saying something. No amount of Sug pride could hide from him the calamity his people’s foolishness had almost caused, but at times he seemed almost annoyed by his own humility.
Anger and resentment and humility and fear would flash out of him unpredictably, and something else that in anyone but a Sug I’d have called guilt. A Sug with a conscience – now that would be one for the books.

‘So,’ I said to my friend, ‘a complication. Tell me, how are the humans taking all this?’

‘Guess.’

‘I imagine they’re petrified.’

‘I’d call that an understatement.’

‘What did they think when they saw me?’ I asked. ‘It must have … surprised them.’

A smile crossed my friend’s face at the memory.

‘You could certainly say that,’ he said. ‘One of them just ran away. The others wanted to. Really, it was almost like the good old days. You wouldn’t remember.’

I looked at the Sug, a big glowering lump at the table.

‘What about you?’ I asked him. ‘It can’t be much fun for you, stuck right in the middle of your favourite species.’

The Sug made a disgusted face.

‘I thought I’d remembered how foul they were,’ he said. ‘I was wrong. My stomach heaves just sitting here.’

I felt no sympathy for him. His people had caused this mess. He’d been a part of it.

‘The people here killed those hunters we saw yesterday,’ my friend said. ‘The ones in the town. All in all, we got eight more. According to what our friend the Sug tells us, that leaves only four. They’ll be on their way here now.’

He gestured about him.

‘Do you know where we are?’ he asked.

‘This … abbey. In the mountains you said.’

‘Yes, but do you know where this abbey
is
?’

‘No.’

My friend gave a dry little chuckle.

‘You do, you know,’ he said. ‘Think about it.’

I did. I thought about my giddiness, about the odd lightness in the atmosphere. I drew in my breath suddenly.

‘It can’t be the crystal works!’ I said.

‘It is, you know,’ my friend said. ‘This abbey is built on the royal mound. The birthing lake is right outside the walls.’

‘But the crystals are dead in the world!’

‘They were, but they don’t seem to be dead now. They’re not fully active, but they’re not dead either. Something is going on here, and it’s not of our doing.’

I looked suspiciously at the Sug.

‘Don’t look at
him
!’ my friend said. ‘The Sug always hated this place. It hurts him to be here at all!’

‘But how can this be?’

‘Don’t ask me. The world does what it wants to, as they say. But whatever is going on here, I think it’s what kept these humans free from our clearance.’

My mind raced with the implications of the news. I calmed it down. First things first: we had a job to do. If the crystal works were in any way active it would only increase our power. But the power we’d been sent with was plenty in any case. There were only the killings to be finished. The presence of humans, grotesque and bizarre though it was, was just a
complication
. We could deal with it if they just kept out of the way. I hated loose ends. My friend always calls me finicky.

‘The humans ran away,’ I said. ‘Do you think that means they’ll stay out of our way while we’re working?’

My friend gave a little shrug, holding both hands up in a gesture of ignorance.

‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ he said. ‘I didn’t say all of them ran, I said they wanted to. There’s one that struck me as a possible problem. He felt dangerous. Their leader, though, is quite civilised, at least by human standards. Of course that mightn’t work to our advantage when the killing starts. I don’t know, we may have to subdue them all. Certainly I expect some trouble.’

As if on cue there was the sound of a gun being fired somewhere outside. My friend turned towards the window.

‘Oh dear,’ he said wearily. ‘I think it’s arrived.’

Kirsten, Paul and Stephen crossed the courtyard and went towards the abbey’s main doors. But before they reached them the old monk, Brother Simon, came out. He was still holding his shotgun.

‘Paul!’ he called. ‘I was coming to look for you.’

He started speaking rapidly in French to the abbot. Beyond the odd word here and there, Stephen couldn’t understand a thing. But Kirsten listened with obvious understanding to the old man’s words and the abbot’s replies. After a while she joined in the conversation. Philip’s name was mentioned repeatedly. Whenever it came from the lips of the old monk, the name was said with undisguised distaste.

Finally the abbot turned to Stephen.

‘Trouble,’ he said simply.

‘Philip?’

The abbot indicated the old monk.

‘Simon is as good a judge of men as I’ve ever known,’ he said. ‘He thinks Philip is extremely dangerous right now. Thomas is too terrified to help, but he won’t make trouble. They’re both in the refectory, our diningroom. Philip is waving his gun around and mouthing nonsense about the devil and his works being invited into the monastery.’

The old monk, Simon, spoke directly to Stephen for the first time.

‘You figure prominently in Philip’s list of the devil’s works,’ he said. ‘I’d avoid him if I were you, for everyone’s sake.’

‘And me?’ Kirsten asked. ‘Has he said anything about me?’

The old monk cocked an eyebrow at her.

‘Oddly enough, Fräulein,’ he said, ‘he didn’t mention you, at least not while I was there. But I didn’t stay very long. The sight of peasant superstition spilling out of an unbalanced mind is a spectacle I find particularly unedifying.’

The dry irony of his voice was actually reassuring. There was a solidity about Brother Simon. Here, you felt, was a man who would react to what was in front of his eyes, no more and no less. And he’d certainly seemed stolid earlier, in the courtyard, refusing to give in to emotional weakness when the thing that was in front of his eyes had terrified everyone else who saw it.

‘One thing is certain,’ Paul said, looking at Stephen. ‘You must avoid Philip. If he’s so fixated on you we’ll never calm him down while you’re there.’

Stephen knew he was right, but he didn’t want to let Kirsten face the maddened monk either. Paul would try to defend her if it came to violence, but when all was said and done he was a monk, and Stephen didn’t believe he’d use physical means. He realised suddenly that he himself had decided to shoot Philip if he had to, if Philip tried to use his own gun on any of them. It seemed the situation might reach a point where there was no other option. Yesterday in the library he’d hesitated to use the pistol; today he’d no intention of making the same
mistake, especially if Kirsten was threatened. He felt a sudden fierce protectiveness towards her.

The abbot seemed to guess what he was thinking.

‘I won’t let Philip hurt Fräulein Herzenweg,’ he said. ‘You have my word on that.’

Stephen stood undecided.

‘There is much to be done,’ Simon said. ‘Whatever is
happening
, the sick people must be tended to. Why don’t you help me do that?’

Stephen was torn. But facing Philip might bring on the very crisis they all feared.

‘All right,’ he said to Simon.

‘Good,’ Simon said. ‘You can help me get the food ready. Come.’

Stephen took a last look at Kirsten.

‘Be very careful,’ he said.

‘I got on well with Philip until yesterday,’ she said. ‘I don’t believe he’ll hurt me. Anyway, Paul will protect me, won’t you, Paul?’

The abbot’s smile didn’t look very genuine, but his voice was sincere.

‘I will,’ he said.

Stephen followed Simon towards the kitchen wing. On the way Simon scanned the courtyard.

‘There should be a pistol here somewhere,’ he said.

‘I got it already. It’s in my pocket.’

Simon smiled for the first time since Stephen had met him. It was a grim little smile that suited what Stephen had seen of his personality.

‘You’re a sensible boy,’ Simon said.

When they reached the kitchens, Simon pointed out a great iron pot of cold broth on the big cooking range. ‘If you start heating the broth,’ he said, ‘I’ll go and check on the patients.’

‘Do you normally look after them?’

‘Normally,’ Simon said, ‘I look after the bell-ringing. It’s a foolish practise in my opinion, but it’s a standard thing with us. But now of course things are not normal. Since all this began I’ve been doing most of the feeding. Luckily even the most disturbed of our patients eats with no trouble. Thomas helps sometimes, but he’s young, and the patients are … well, at best they’re very
strange
. Mostly I have Thomas fix the food, and I dispense it.’

After Simon left to go upstairs, Stephen found matches in a drawer and lit the burner under the pot. Then he looked in cupboards till he found one full of bowls. He put four of them on a big tray and went looking for spoons. He was worried about Kirsten. He’d been foolish to let her face Philip without him. The thought of the broth reminded him that he hadn’t eaten since yesterday morning. He felt suddenly weak, almost nauseous. The weight of the morning’s events seemed to hit him all at once. He sat weakly on to a chair by the table. His head throbbed.

Then the shot sounded. It was muffled by the stone walls, but some part of Stephen’s mind had been listening for it all along.

He jumped up and ran. Behind him he heard the clatter of the chair hitting the stone floor. Somewhere ahead he heard Simon’s hurried steps descending the stairs. Stephen didn’t
wait for the old monk. He ran on, pulling the little pistol from his back pocket as he went.

The second shot rang out as Stephen crossed the courtyard. At the sound of it he ran faster. Behind him he heard Simon call out, but he didn’t look back. Then another voice hailed him. He couldn’t make out the words it said, but its effect on him was as immediate as it was bizarre – he stopped in mid-run, frozen, with one foot raised. He couldn’t make his body move at all.

Only his head could move freely. He turned to look for the owner of the second voice. He saw the man who’d been driving the car, the friendly stranger. He was walking unhurriedly towards Stephen, his hands in his coat pockets.

‘You can’t interfere,’ he called out. ‘It’s not allowed.’

Simon came up behind Stephen at a trot, carrying his shotgun. He passed him with a puzzled glance, but didn’t stop. As Simon disappeared through the doors of the bell-tower the driver reached Stephen and gently touched his arm. Stephen could move again. He glared at the driver, who stood looking calmly at him.

‘I’m sorry,’ the driver said. ‘But you mustn’t interfere in anything that happens between the monks.’

‘And what if it’s Kirsten who’s been shot?’ Stephen spat angrily.

‘Then it doesn’t really matter.’

The cold-bloodedness of the remark almost made Stephen gasp. But he was distracted by the sight of Kirsten herself coming into the courtyard. She was almost staggering, but there was no sign of a wound. She was crying as she came up to them, her face ugly with distress.

‘Paul’s been shot,’ she sobbed. ‘I think he’s dead.’

The driver clicked his tongue. ‘Oh my!’ he said. ‘More complications!’

Stephen turned on him like a dog.

‘
Complications
?’ he hissed. ‘That lunatic has shot the abbot, and you call it a
complication
?’

Kirsten caught his arm.

‘You don’t understand,’ she said. ‘It was you who started it.’

‘
Me
?’

‘Well, it was an
image
of you. I know you weren’t there, but … but you were. You just
appeared
, standing beside me, and Philip panicked. He tried to shoot you.’

Stephen was appalled.

‘No!’ he said. But it must be true. He remembered his weakness in the kitchen. So it had been more than simple shock or hunger.

‘The bullet seemed to hit the thing,’ Kirsten said. ‘But it had no effect. Paul hadn’t seen the image. He thought Philip was firing at me. He grabbed Philip and tried to wrestle the pistol away from him. The gun went off, and Paul was shot in the chest.’

‘And the image?’

‘It just disappeared. It stood there for a moment, looking at Paul as he fell. Then it just … it just
went out
, like a light.’

Simon came back out. His face was tight.

‘The abbot is alive,’ he said, ‘for now. But Philip is gone again.’

Stephen couldn’t accept that Paul lay dying a few metres away. He’d expected Philip to turn violent, but not against the abbot. It could only have been an accident.

‘Where did Philip go?’ he asked Simon.

‘When I got there he was kneeling over the abbot, sobbing. Telling him he was sorry, if you please. It’s a bit late for that, I told him. I took a look at Paul, and Philip ran off.’

‘And Thomas?’

Simon made a face.

‘I saw no sign of that foolish boy at all.’

‘And Paul’s alive?’ Kirsten said. She sounded like she didn’t believe it.

‘Not for long,’ Simon said. ‘It’s a serious chest wound, and he’s losing a lot of blood.’

‘Can’t you do anything for him?’

Simon shook his head.

‘We have first-aid equipment here, but nothing that would cope with wounds like this – you don’t get many gunshot wounds in a monastery, you know.’

The driver had listened to all of this in silence. Now Kirsten stood in front of him and looked harshly into his bland guarded eyes. Her face was still wet with tears, but the news that the abbot wasn’t actually dead seemed to have galvanised her. The driver looked back at her mildly.

‘You must do something,’ she said to him.

He shook his head.

‘That’s not possible,’ he said. ‘I cannot interfere.’

‘You’ve already interfered,’ she said. ‘That’s what started all this, isn’t it?’

He looked sharply at her. So did Stephen. Did she know something, or was she guessing?

‘If you can help the abbot,’ Simon said, ‘then you must do it.’

He too spoke mildly, but he hefted his gun meaningfully. The stranger ignored him, keeping his eyes on Kirsten’s. His eyes had lost their mask of blandness now.

Kirsten stared back at him with a look every bit as hard as his own.

‘Do it,’ she said – ordered, rather.

‘This is very bad,’ the driver said. ‘You don’t realise what you’re asking me to do.’

Without breaking eye contact, Kirsten pointed at Stephen.

‘The appearance of
his
image was directly responsible for Paul being shot,’ she said.

The driver turned and considered Stephen thoughtfully. It struck Stephen that the man was taking the whole matter of the double very calmly.

‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ the driver said. ‘This really is very bad. And just when everything seemed to be going so well too.’

‘The abbot is dying,’ Kirsten said insistently. ‘If you can sew a man’s head back on then you can help a man with a gunshot wound.’

‘It’s not the same thing at all, at all!’ the driver snapped. ‘Maybe I could help him, and maybe I couldn’t. It’s never been tried. We only need these bodies for short-term purposes. Presumably the abbot would require his for rather longer.’

Stephen felt his skin crawl at the words, but the others showed no reaction. Kirsten held the driver’s stare.

‘You have to try,’ she persisted.

The driver exhaled slowly through his teeth. For the first time since his arrival he seemed unsure of himself.

‘I’ll have to talk to my colleague,’ he said.

‘Do then,’ said Kirsten. ‘And hurry.’

The man gave a shrug. Then he turned and without another word went back across the courtyard.