Psychomech (16 page)

His rapidly growing affection for the dog might be most easily explained by an incident which occurred on his fifth night at Garrison’s Retreat. It was this:

Towards morning he dreamed his dream of the Machine again, that dream which had forewarned of the bomb blast that blinded him; but this time the thing was far more real and vivid than any dream or nightmare he ever knew before.

Once more he rode the Machine across a weird world, a dreamworld of lizard-rocks and primal oceans, of strange valleys and mountains and hideous vegetation. Suzy sat behind him on the Machine, one great paw upon his shoulder. She whined and nuzzled his neck, pressing her black, sinuous body against his back.

He rode the Machine towards crags where the figure of Willy Koenig stood at the open door of a silver Mercedes, perched impossibly atop a spike of rock high over a mountain pass. Koenig beckoned him on, pointing the way to the black lake. Garrison could see that the German frowned, that his face was full of worry, concern for the Machine’s rider.

Then he was through the pass and Koenig and the Mercedes faded into distance behind him as the Machine raced on. In another moment he passed over the forest of skeletal trees and down to the black lake where it lapped greasily upon its shore of pitch. And there in the lake the black rock, with its black castle glittering like some awful crown of shattered coal.

Garrison knew what must happen next: how he would have to fight the Power from the castle, hurling himself against that invisible force again and again, to no avail. He knew too that the man-God Schroeder would come to him in the shape of a face in the sky, demanding that he let him in, that he accept him. And then of course there would be the bomb.

These things were fixed certainties in his mind, utterly inescapable, except—

—It was not to be, for here the dream was different. Something had changed it.

Garrison had actually commenced the old sequence—had begun to hurl himself and the Machine time and again against the wall of Power from the castle—before the changes in the dream made themselves apparent. They were these:

One: that Koenig, driving the Mercedes, came crashing through the bleached forest, splintering a path through its trees and ploughing to a halt in the sticky pitch of the shore. Koenig leapt from the car and shouted: ‘Richard, that’s not the way. Don’t ride the Machine, Richard. Get off it—get off the Machine’

Two: that Suzy suddenly sank her teeth into his sleeve and tried to drag him from the back of the Machine. He hung on desperately and at last the dog’s weight tore his sleeve so that she fell to the tarry shore where the oily lake lapped.

Only then did the man-God Shroeder appear, that great face in the sky crying, ‘ACCEPT ME, RICHARD! ACCEPT ME AND WIN. LET ME IN…’

‘Accept him, Richard!” Koenig cried from where he dragged his feet in tar. ‘Remember your pact—’

‘No!’ Garrison screamed, and he turned the Machine until it once more faced the invisible wall of energy, the Power from the castle. He must make one final assault on that barrier, must break through and cross the lake and enter the castle and find the Black Room. That was where the Horror lurked, in the Black Room, and he must banish the Horror forever.

‘Richard! Richard!’Koenig cried, his voice full of distress. Garrison, suffering agonies as he heard that cry, turned his head and looked back. The silver Mercedes was sinking into the tar, going down fast, its bonnet already disappearing as black bubbles rose all about, bursting into sticky tatters.

As yet Koenig came on, his feet sinking in the black ooze but still moving fast enough to keep its hideous suction at bay; like a man running on ice which crumbles beneath his feet, so that he must keep running or sink.

‘BELIEVE ME, RICHARD,’ boomed the man-God, ‘YOU DON‘T WANT TO DIE. YOU MUST BELIEVE ME. AFTER ALL, I KNOW WHAT ITS LIKE HERE!’

And then the bomb, the burning, brown-paper cube, spinning out of the sky and hovering over Willy Koenig where he struggled in tar up to his knees. ‘Willy, look out!’ Garrison cried. He turned the Machine towards the spinning bomb and rammed it where it flared and sputtered over Koenig’s head. Even knowing the thing must soon blow him to hell, he rammed it again, knocking it away from Koenig and placing himself and the Machine between bomb and mired man.

‘ACCEPT ME, RICHARD!’ the man-God Schroeder thundered again. ‘ACCEPT ME NOW!’

And a moment before the bomb exploded Suzy made an improbable leap and slammed into Garrison where he gritted his teeth and clung like a leech to the bucking Machine. Angry with him that he should deliberately endanger his own life, the Doberman snarled in his face as her weight unseated him.

Then, caught in the bomb-blast, they fell… fell…

Fell.

—And Suzy was licking his face, whining where she crouched over him.

He lay in a tangle of sheets beside his bed, Suzy pawing at him, whining and licking his face. For a moment still dreaming, he cried out: ‘Willy!—Willy, the bomb! I’m blind again! Willy, are you all right?’

‘Richard, Richard,’ came Koenig’s calming voice. ‘Of course I’m all right. We are all fine. It was a nightmare, Richard, only a bad dream.’

‘But the bomb… and Thomas. The Machine—’

‘A dream, Richard.’

Garrison allowed himself to be helped up. He sat shakily upon his bed. Fully awake now, he shook his head.

A dream, yes. But why was Suzy here? And Koenig? So quick off the mark. Garrison found his voice. ‘Was I shouting or something?’ He put on his headset and bracelets.

‘No,’ Koenig slowly answered, ‘you didn’t yell until just now.’ His voice told Garrison that he was frowning. ‘It was strange, really. I was up early and went out with Suzy. She was nervous and irritable this morning, didn’t seem to want to stray too far from the house. Then—well, she began tugging at her lead, trying to drag me back here. I shouted at her to behave herself, and—she turned on me.’

‘Suzy turned on you? But next to me, you’re the one she trusts!’

‘Well, she did not exactly turn on me. She—threatened me. She bared her teeth at me. Then—she was sorry. She whined and licked my hand, but she kept right on tugging at her lead. Obviously she wanted to be free. I argued no further but loosened her lead—and she sped straight back to the house.’

‘But she has rules,’ Garrison protested. ‘She knows she’s not allowed in the bedrooms.’

He sensed Koenig’s shrug. ‘This time she broke the rules. She came straight to your room, was pawing at the door in a frenzy when I got here. By then I had an idea you were in trouble. I had also been on edge, you see? That’s why I was up and about so early in the day. And when I saw Suzy at your door I knew why. That was when you started calling my name, and something about the bomb…’

Garrison waited for him to continue.

‘Anyway, I opened the door and Suzy sprang in and jumped at you. Actually she cushioned your fall, for you were on the point of tumbling out of bed. And—’ Koenig shrugged again, ‘the rest you know.’

Garrison nodded. ‘So Suzy knew I was in trouble—even though my trouble was only a nightmare.’

‘So it would appear.’

‘And you too.’

Again the puzzled shrug. ‘It would seem so. But Suzy’s instincts were surer—and much swifter—than mine.’

Garrison got up and began to dress himself. He was once more in control. ‘It would also seem,’ he quietly said, ‘that I can’t ever afford to be parted from you two.’

He sensed Koenig’s grin, the half-amusement in the other’s voice. ‘But it was only a dream, Richard. Do you remember what it was about?’

‘Yes,’ Garrison nodded. He tucked his shirt into his trousers and turned to face the German. ‘I remember it clearly. I’ll tell you about it later. But right now I’ll tell you this much: it was much more than just another dream…’

January was Australia; it was a country Garrison had always wanted to visit. Australia had not been one of Schroeder’s favourite places, however, and so was strange to Koenig; but both of them enjoyed it to the full.

In Sydney Garrison purchased a large Mercedes and then, because he had not been able to find a silver model, had it sprayed. Willy Koenig was delighted. Mid-February they sold the car and returned to England. They stayed for a week, each day visiting Suzy in the quarantine kennels at Midhurst not far from Garrison’s new Sussex home.

By the end of February, over and above Koenig’s obvious duties, the blind Englishman and his German aide had become inseparable. They were now, in all respects, friends; but despite all Garrison’s protests he was still ‘sir’ to Koenig whenever the German thought ‘the occasion warranted it. Their three weeks’ cruise in the South Pacific was just such an occasion, when Koenig’s complete subservience towards his master left no one in any doubt but that Garrison was a man of great substance indeed. So much so that he became a permanent guest at the Captain’s table.

The cruise was especially good for Garrison’s ego in that (and quite apart from the dawning in his mind of knowledge of his own importance) he soon became firmly committed to a shipboard romance, which was a fantasy he had often entertained as a Corporal in the Royal Military Police. They were heady days, romantic evenings and—not to stress too heavily a point—lustful nights.

And such was Garrison’s expertise—his ever-growing skill in the use of his ‘seeing’ devices—that it took him several days to convince his lady of his total blindness. When the cruise ended the romance also came to a close, by which time both he and the girl knew it must be that way. They parted the best of friends with the usual promises that they would ‘look each other up’, both perfectly well aware that they never would. By mid-March he could not even remember her second name.

By then, too, they were back in England; Garrison had developed a keen interest in the financial side of his affairs and soon would show an acumen away and beyond any expectations Schroeder might have had for him; and of course there was Suzy’s welfare to be borne in mind, though on that score Garrison need not have worried. The love of the great black bitch seemed to grow apace with his absence from her, and, strangely, his for her was similarly enhanced.

About this time a novel idea occurred to Garrison. What prompted it he could never say with any certainty, except that perhaps the thing he chiefly missed in his blindness was the sheer pleasure of driving. Or perhaps it was the fact that Koenig, driving one day along the North Circular behind a large, articulated lorry, was surprised by his master’s observation that if he dropped a gear he should now have little difficulty in overtaking despite the heavy traffic. Garrison’s road-sense—his sense of speed, direction and timing—had grown out of all proportion to compensate for his blindness; so that Koenig was prompted to remark:

‘You know, Richard, I honestly believe that if there was a second steering wheel on your side, you would be quite capable of taking over and driving the car yourself!’

April found the pair in Paris (whose atmosphere particularly appealed to Garrison, seeming to him full of fragrant poignancy), and the Mercedes in a specialist London garage being fitted with a second steering wheel. The job was still not complete when they returned for four days in mid-May, but it was not inconvenient. They had only come home, of course, to see Suzy.

Then, in Crete at the end of the month, another strange event.

They had hired a small car in which to explore the island. Koenig knew Crete well for he had been there several times with Thomas Schroeder. To Garrison’s mind the atmosphere was much the same as Cyprus, and he liked nothing better than to sit of an evening outside some seafront cafe and eat kebabs in unleavened bread envelopes, washing the food down with sips of mediocre brandy-sour.

They were staying in Kastellion and on their first day had visited the Knossos palace. That had been quite sufficient of tourism for Garrison. He insisted that he was
not
here as a tourist and could not bear the droning guides and crowds of shuffling people. Also, though he had never been here in his life, he somewhere at some time or other must have read extensively of the place, for there seemed very little that was new or strange to him. Perhaps this was an effect of his years spent in Cyprus, perhaps something else entirely. Whichever, he felt that it would be better by far simply to drive, avoiding all places of public interest and visit instead those out-of-the-way towns and villages which the majority of tourists seldom found.

In the afternoon of the third day, eating dark olives and drinking ouzo at a tiny restaurant under the northern foothills of Idhi, Koenig suddenly said: ‘Thomas had a very good friend here. But that must have been, oh, ten years ago. Strange, it does not seem ten years since I was last here.’ He shrugged. ‘He is probably dead now. He was old even then.’

Garrison looked up and seemed to stare at him through those reflective, often enigmatic lenses of his, and said: ‘Oh, no, I shouldn’t think so. Why don’t we simply go to Rethimnon and find out?’

He could not, of course, see the expression of Koenig’s face when he spoke these words, but he did detect something of the wonder in the other’s voice:

‘Rethimnon, yes. In the Bay of Armiros. But Richard—how could you know that?’

Garrison frowned. ‘No mystery,’ he answered after a moment’s hesitation. ‘Thomas must have mentioned it to me…’

‘I really fail to see that, Richard,’ said Koenig slowly.

‘But I’m certain of it!’ Garrison replied too nastily. ‘Gerhard Keltner. Yes, certainly.’

Koenig took his elbow and gripped it hard. His voice was cold and very low when he said: ‘Be careful, Richard! Yes, you are correct, Keltner was his name—and it is a name which, rightly or wrongly, may be found high on the wanted lists of all the world’s Nazi hunters! If we are to see him it must be as another man entirely.’

Garrison stroked his forehead, aware of a sudden headache. Puzzled lines furrowed his brow. ‘Yes, of…of course,’ he stammered. ‘Nichos Charalambou…’ And as the pain in his head increased, so he sensed the other’s growing astonishment.

‘Richard,’ Koenig whispered, ‘there is no possible way that Thomas would have mentioned
both
of this man’s names—not in the same breath. I—’