Psychomech (28 page)

It was as he had explained those several years ago: he, too, sought an extension, a going forward beyond man’s normal life expectancy. And where better to seek such immortality than in the presence of a man—
or of men
—he was sure would, somehow or other, breach that final and greatest barrier of all?

As for Garrison: his blindness was no longer any sort of real problem. Blind he was, yes, in that he could not see with his eyes, but his physical movements were the easy, flowing movements of a fully sighted person, so that all who encountered him for the first time were invariably sceptical of his disablement. This was due in part to certain expensive improvements in his sensor equipment, which were recent developments of the same German suppliers, in part to his own instinctive and natural independence, but mainly to the increased sensitivity—the quite
abnormal
expansion—of his four remaining senses.

Keeping pace with all of this, his interest in parapsychology had never waned, so that by now he could rightly reckon himself an expert. And it seemed only right to him that he should attribute the increased capacity of his perceptions to the gradual emergence of his ESP factors. For they
were
emerging, of that he was quite sure. It was a fact he could very easily (and regularly did) prove, often for no more reason than his own gratification or satisfaction. And their emergence was accelerating… except in one direction. Oddly enough that one blank area was prevision, the talent which had signalled—and disastrously so—his gift in the first place.

But since that day almost four years ago, when he had known he must go to Italy and find Terri, there had been no more prophetic dreams, no more glimpses of the future. It was as if, in that respect, the advent of Terri—his search for her, her subsequent discovery and rescue—had completely burned him out.

As for the rest of his talents: regular trips to Garrison’s Retreat allowed him the full facilities of the library and ESP test-centre. These, as stated, invariably proved increasing psychic capability except in the area of prevision, the talent to gauge the future. Much to Garrison’s disappointment, it appeared he was not and would never be a second Adam Schenk.

Garrison had not once taken Terri with him to the Harz; he knew well her dislike for Koenig, who must always accompany him, and her apprehension or rather uneasiness concerning his interest in metaphysics. But while both of these reasons had seemed satisfactory to her, neither one was wholly valid. The truth of the matter was that he could never go to Garrison’s Retreat without remembering Vicki Maler, whose name he had not once mentioned to his wife but feared he might if Terri were ever there with him in the Harz. He could not bring himself to picture the two women together in one setting, which he knew would be bound to happen. Perhaps (he told himself) having never actually seen either one of them, they might somehow superimpose themselves upon his mind and so become one single, faceless, contradictory identity—which would be quite unthinkable.

Vicki must always remain inviolate. Another’s knowledge of her would be a depletion of his own memory, like the tiny scratches on a record which come with too frequent usage, or the
hiss
that mars a tape-recording as a result of constant replaying. For this same reason, so as not to dim her spark, Garrison strictly controlled his own dwelling upon Vicki; except in the Harz, where this had proved to be an utter impossibility. For there he discovered her in every room and smelled the natural scent of her body in even the freshest sheets and pillows.

In short, Garrison—a man whose early life had taught him how to suppress even the most traumatic experiences, how to control and expel the nightmares which infest in one degree or another every last one of us—was now discovering new hangups; though as yet he was not wholly aware that they existed, or thought of them at worst as the normal process of his mind. They were for him, for the moment at least, mere sources of irritation.

Terri herself was one such source. It was not that Garrison did not love her; on the contrary, he believed that he loved her as fully as he might; it was more that he felt his love was wasted. Perhaps it had something to do with the termination implied by Schenk’s horoscope:

‘Girl “T”. Time-scale: to eight years.’

And, ‘Machine. Timescale: to eight years.’

And, ‘RG/TS…’ And of course, ‘Light!’ But after that, no more mention of Terri. But then again, no mention of anything.

Or perhaps his irritation sprang from the fact that she did not love him. She
made
love to him, yes, and was herself almost telepathic at sensing his needs in this respect, but… it was just a feeling he had.

The one other thing, the Big One, was a complete enigma. Garrison slept with Terri, lived with her, loved her (albeit with nagging reservations), but he could no more read her than his crimson eyes could read a book. And she was not any sort of book to be read
to
him. Even if she were, perhaps he would not like her story. And at those odd moments when he gave that question some thought, he knew that this was his greatest hangup. To know her—
to have known her even before he met her!
—and yet not to know her at all.

But that was the way of it. For some reason his newfound perceptions did not work with Terri. She was no sound he could define or categorize, no smell or touch on which to paint mental colours, no taste from which he might distil her essence. And perhaps that, too, was a hangup: it could be that he did not want to know what lay inside her. Perhaps he even feared to know…

One final thing pained Garrison: Terri’s hatred for Suzy. This had been apparent right from the start. For rationalize as she might (or as Garrison might insist she do) still the idea persisted in her mind that Suzy was a creature to be

feared. Even seeing the bitch’s love of Garrison—seeing her almost human thoughtfulness and constant awareness of a disability others might now tend to ignore—and knowing that no thief or any other unwanted intruder could ever enter her home while Suzy was there, still Tern persisted in remembering the dog of her dream, the black dog she had so feared. Unless—

—Unless her fear had after all been for the blind man himself and not his dog.

While Garrison knew of Terri’s detestation of Suzy, he was not aware of the dog’s hatred for her. Nor was Terri herself, though she occasionally suspected it. The servants at the house in Sussex knew it for a certainty, as did Willy Koenig; but he had warned them from the beginning that they must say nothing of it, neither to Terri nor even to the master of the house himself.

Terri might suspect that at times she would see a strange look in Suzy’s eyes, or read some unpleasant purpose into her stance, but she could never be sure. Always, at second glance, it was just Suzy, Garrison’s hated, ever-watchful guardian angel; Suzy, the living memory of a frightening dream whose other details were long forgotten. Except that there had also been a powerful blind man.

As for any tit bits of food she might toss Suzy’s way: the bitch would dutifully catch up whichever scrap and carry it away into some quiet, leafy corner of the gardens—and there bury it completely untouched! She wanted nothing of Terri, except perhaps… an end of her?

Koenig had pondered this, had worried over it. His loyalties—his very instincts—were divided on the problem. His own affection for Suzy had never faltered, nor the dog’s for him, though of course the only real centre and inspiration of her world was Garrison; but after all a dog is only a dog. If Suzy posed any sort of real threat to Terri, then she should be put down at once—which would be akin to killing off part of Garrison himself! Therefore if it was to be done at all, it must appear to be ‘accidental’. That Would be no problem for Koenig: Suzy would simply disappear. Except—

The bitch was no ordinary animal. What was it that she knew, sensed or suspected about Terri that no one else knew, sensed or suspected? What was the source of her hatred? She had been trained to love Garrison as a God, above all others, above
any
other love. To protect, guide—to worship him—without thanks, with beatings or starvation if he so desired, to death itself. So that the adoration was not only
in
her but
was
her. And in this lay the answer. Heinz Holzer, whatever his methods, had fine-tuned and trained much more than mere emotion and devotion into the Doberman. He had also developed her
instinct
for Garrison’s protection.

And it was Suzy’s
instinct
to distrust Terri. Yes, and in this way the bitch had read the future with an accuracy away, and beyond anything Adam Schenk had ever achieved. But of course Willy Koenig did not know that.

In the event he did nothing, and with time he became disinclined even to worry about it. Suzy must have her reasons for her behaviour; that was enough…

After her father’s death, Terri’s Italian mother had remarried and now lived in Turin. There had been some correspondence between mother and daughter, not a lot. Terri had not forgiven her, neither for her dissolute ways nor for the death she continued to believe those ways had inspired; this despite the fact that Terri herself had inherited something of her mother’s character. More than this, however, there was one other reason she could not forgive her mother, and that was for stealing from her the affections of the one man she had ever loved.

A man called Gareth Wyatt.

She had known Wyatt for six months before he met her mother, and she had been his lover for all but the first week of that time. Now Terri had had her affairs before Wyatt, and young as she was she had believed she knew something of the arts of love; but Wyatt had shown her so much more than the others that his expertise had found her utterly vulnerable. In a very short time she had become besotted with him.

As for Wyatt’s purpose in seducing Terri in the first ‘’place, that had been twofold. One, his fortunes were waning and he believed her father to be a rich man. In this he was mistaken for Miller’s financial affairs were already on the slide. Two, Miller’s firm dealt with micro-electronics; it had seemed possible that Wyatt might make some connection here of benefit to Hans Maas in his search for better components for Psychomech.

But then, when Miller’s collapse started to become self-evident, Wyatt had decided to move his attentions elsewhere. Until then he had been an occasional visitor at Jerri’s home on the outskirts of Winchester, but so far he had only met her father. Harry Miller, not so shrewd, perhaps, in business, could nevertheless spot an opportunist when he saw one. He had not liked Wyatt, had in any case considered him too old for Terri, had not encouraged their relationship.

Then, on what might otherwise have been Wyatt’s last visit to Tern’s home, he had met Maria, her mother. She had recently returned from a rather protracted stay in Italy, where (ostensibly) an obscure but loved elderly female relative had been seriously ill. Maria Miller, of course, had money in her own right, and she was no less a libertine than Wyatt himself. By now he was bored with Terri and her father’s rather bleak-looking prospects, and he knew there would be no remuneration for the time and money expended upon her. Her mother on the other hand was very beautiful, mature and monied. Wyatt did not know the extent of her fortune (in fact it was not great) but he saw in her at least an opportunity to recoup his losses.

And finally Terri caught them together. This was the single grain of truth in the story she had related to Garrison; he was not destined ever to know the rest of it. He would never suspect that he had caught Terri, as it were, on the rebound from a faithless lover. But then, those three years later, with Garrison so often away and his wife so often bored…

Garrison had not restricted or attempted to restrict Tern’s freedom. She was no bird to be kept in a cage. Since she had been groomed as something of a socialite, and since her husband’s circles were continually expanding, she had become and would continue to be a socialite, with many friends and not a few admirers. This was how, following the gala performance of a stage production at the Chichester Theatre and at the opening night party, she had come to meet up once more with Wyatt the sophisticate, who by now was almost penurious. He still put on a show, but always with the knowledge that his funds were very low. Having kept a constant finger on the pulse of local affairs, he was well aware that Terri was now the wife of a rich and successful man, and that once again she had become an irresistible target.

For Terri’s part, seeing him across the room amongst a crush of people and before he had spied her, her heart had given a single wild leap, and she had known at once what was missing from her life. And if anything this man—the only man she had ever truly loved, to whom she had given of herself in every possible way—had grown more attractive than ever. And at that moment Terri had known that it would take no great effort on Wyatt’s part to re-acquire her as his mistress.

No fool, she had not thought herself prepared to take that chance. She had made to leave… and that was when he found her. Leaving the house on the outskirts of Chichester and crossing the wide gravel drive to where her car was parked, she had heard the crunch of rapid footsteps behind her and his voice calling: ‘Terri! Terri, please wait!’

And turning… she had been trapped! As easily as that.

Which was why, when Garrison had proposed his most recent trip to the Harz, to take place during the first three weeks of February, Terri had put up no resistance whatever but had actually seemed to encourage the idea. There were friends she wanted to visit, she said, and it was time she shopped and got in early on the new spring fashions—and there were shows in London to see, which of course were of no interest to Garrison—and so on. And during his absence her affair had blossomed more wildly than ever, until she eventually became the very softest clay in Wyatt’s clever hands.

Not that she allowed it to be that easy. No, for there were certain reservations and resentments in Terri forming barriers which must First be broken down. And since he had in great part created them, he alone must remove them. Prime amongst these was what she continued to see as his part in her father’s decline and death, a problem Wyatt sweated over for some little time before he came up with the right answer.