The Last Aerie (32 page)

Siggi dressed slowly and thoughtfully, and was careful to avoid any sort of uniformed or military appearance. She didn’t want to seem aloof, or in any sense official, ascetic, clinical. She was the scented glove—or as the British might have it, the “soft sell”—as opposed to the clenched fist, and must appear more girl than woman, more nurse than inquisitor. He wasn’t an innocent, this man from the Gate; she had known that much from the first time she saw him on the viewscreens. But he was far too young, wild—and primitive, yes, as the place he’d come from—to be too well-versed in the ways and wiles of women. Especially the sophisticated women of Earth.

So thought Sigrid Dam, who could make mistakes just like any other woman. And of any other world …

When she had finished dressing, she examined the result in her room’s less than adequate mirror. Her choice of earth colours, despite that she knew they didn’t compliment her own, had been deliberate; she didn’t want to seem too bright or—alien?—to the visitor. According to what little the Soviet E-Branch knew of Sunside/Starside, it was a dull world, dark, dreary; which the pale browns and yellows of Nathan’s clothes might seem to corroborate. A Gypsy world, peopled by nomadic tribes on one side of barrier mountains, and Wamphyri on the other.

All such knowledge, what little there was of it, had been supplied by the British in that brief period of esper glasnost following Harry Keogh’s vampiric metamorphism and his escape to Starside, and Siggi well understood Tzonov’s eagerness to learn more about the world beyond the Gate and its inhabitants. Not only to go one up on what the British already knew, but more as an important equation in his preparations. Of course, for this was the world he intended to conquer, to make it a new satellite of Mother Russia—unless it conquered first. And in that respect, she understood something of Tzonov’s fears, too. For he had shown her the Perchorsk archive tapes of previous … visitors.

She shuddered, put those pictures firmly from her mind, and examined herself one last time:

Statuesque, she could well have stepped off the cover of one of the West’s glossy magazines, but
not
out of the fashion section. Not unless Gypsies were back in fashion! Well, that was a contrivance and she mustn’t complain. This wasn’t going to be a night out in Paris, or an evening of Californian Chardonnay, sexual innuendo, and telepathic surveillance at the American embassy in Moscow, after all.

But Romany, yes: the clothes at least, if not her looks. An ill-matched combination? Maybe. But on the other hand, the visitor didn’t look much like a Gypsy either. He could even be Danish, a fellow countryman! Well, once upon a time. Only his clothes looked Romany. And perhaps his single golden earring. But even that didn’t signify a great deal. They were back in fashion for men here in this world, too.

She wore a tasselled jacket of light-brown suede over a leaf-green blouse fastened with a jade clasp, and a flared cotton skirt patterned with autumn leaves. If she were a little less tall, brown-skinned, with black hair and eyes … perhaps she could be a woman like the ones he had known. And Siggi wondered how many he’d known, and how well. But in any case he was little more than a boy, and she must become his sister, a sympathetic contact in this strange new world.

Stepping into the corridor, Siggi found her escort waiting for her. The young, tired-looking soldier snapped erect, saluted, and shouldered his rifle. It was well past midnight and she could appreciate his weariness. Apart from essential duties, the Perchorsk complex was now as quiet and suffocating as a tomb. Like a vast mausoleum, yes. And for a moment, Siggi could even feel the mountain pressing down on her.

On their way to Nathan’s cell, she asked her escort: “Do you have orders?”

“Only to escort you, Madame, and let you into the prisoner’s room. And to wait outside, of course, until you have finished and call for me.”

“That could be most of the night.”

He shrugged and made no answer.

She thought about Nathan. She’d been there when they fed him drugged food and brought him through the Gate. The son—or
a
son—of a man they’d known as the Necroscope. Siggi had read the Keogh files and found their story … what, fantastic? No, much more than that. The story of a man who could move himself bodily, instantaneously, to any spot on Earth? A teleport, yes, and the first of his kind. Also, he’d talked to the dead, and even had the power to call them up from their graves! And at the end he’d been a vampire, indeed Wamphyri! That was the last time anyone saw him, when he’d disappeared into the Gate riding an American motorcycle.

But it wasn’t the first time Keogh had been to Star-side. Four years earlier, British E-Branch had sent him there on a mission: to find an agent who’d been lost while spying on Perchorsk. That had been … oh, twenty or so years ago? And now this Nathan had come through the Gate, just twenty or so years old. Keogh’s son? It seemed reasonable. But it
didn’t
seem to be a case of like father, like son. For if he’d inherited his father’s powers, there’d be no holding him here. Or anywhere else, for that matter!

Turkur Tzonov considered his arrival coincidental to his plans. But obviously he had to be sure. That in a nutshell was Siggi’s mission: find out why he’d come. Was it of his own volition or someone else’s? If the latter, what was the nature of his masters, how many of them were there, and when would they be following on behind? Finally, if his answers were satisfactory—if there was no immediate danger or any requirement for extraordinary action—then it would be time to drain him of his knowledge concerning Sunside/Starside preparatory to Tzonov’s invasion …

They had reached the door to Nathan’s room, more properly his cell. In the old days, doors in Perchorsk had all been equipped with locking devices. Following a number of catastrophic accidents and incidents, when too many lives were lost behind locked doors, most of them had been replaced by easier mechanisms. This cell was one of the few remaining rooms with a door that locked. It was also fitted with a small metal panel, like a window, with a catch on the outside.

The soldier had a key to let Siggi in, but as he produced it she said, “Here, let me.” He held his rifle at the ready as she turned the key in the lock and opened the door. Inside the room, Nathan half-reclined on his bed, clothed and fully awake. He saw Siggi and the soldier, and his eyes narrowed to stare at the gun in the letter’s capable hands. But Siggi only smiled at him, shook her head and closed the door behind her, leaving the soldier outside. He at once turned the key in the lock, rapped on the hatch and opened it. “Madame, will you be all right?”

She looked at his concerned face framed in a small metal square, and said, “I’m sure that with you out there, all will be well. Now then, close the hatch and please don’t bother us again.” However reluctantly, he obeyed her, and as the observation window closed she turned to face Nathan. He was on his feet, nervous as a cat and blinking his startling blue eyes.

She kept smiling, motioned him to sit down, then gave the cell a cursory inspection. A bed, chair, washbasin and chamber pot—so much for accommodation. It might as well be Lubianka in the time of Khrushchev! Then she looked at Nathan.

He was a six-footer, athletic if a little awkward in his movements, shy-looking and yet… not innocent. It was what she’d noticed in him before, when she’d seen him on the viewscreens. His eyes, despite being soulful, were also knowing. She crossed to the chair, took it to where he sat on his bed, and sat facing him only a few feet away.

“I’m Siggi,” she said, low-voiced.

He frowned. “Siggi?”

She nodded and touched her breast. “Siggi, yes.”

He sighed, as if to say,
What, that again?
Then answered drily, sourly: “Nathan. Nathan Kiklu.”

“All right,” she said, smiling tightly now, “I shall try not to be so boring.” And then, without warning, she turned up her full telepathic power and said:
Nathan, I know your mind is shielded. Turkur Tzonov couldn’t get through to you, and so your shield must be very strong. Well, my mind is similar, but with me it’s deliberate. Now, whether your talent is natural or a contrivance is not my concern at this point, but if you’re not willing to help me I won’t be able to help you.

At the first unspoken word he had started where he sat, a small jerk of his shoulders and a tic in the corner of his eye. That was all; followed immediately by a vain attempt to hide his surprise behind a blank expression. But while Siggi had not been expecting his reaction, still she’d seen it and knew what it must mean. Why, his mind was like a wall of bulletproof glass made slippery with a film of oil! Spinning to create its own centrifugal force and deflect the thoughts of others, nothing could penetrate or even stick to it. But it didn’t stop Nathan from looking out through it. So much for innocence!

Just why Siggi had tried it she didn’t know—a hunch, that’s all—but it had worked. Now, sighing her wonder and sitting back a little from Nathan, she was suddenly aware of what she was dealing with here: the fact that he was from an alien world, and the son of Harry Keogh,
and
capable of telepathic reception, all in one. But then … what other powers did he have? And was he as human as Tzonov thought he was?

You’re an alien!
She couldn’t help the thought.
Why, you could even be Wamphyri!
He could be, yes, hiding behind this shy, seemingly innocuous facade. He just
could
be!

Suddenly Siggi was very cold and trembling. She felt the short hairs stiffening at the back of her neck; gooseflesh, not only on her arms, legs and spine but creeping in her mind, too! This man—this thing?—could be Wamphyri!

She remembered archive film of a Wamphyri soldier who had come through the Gate. Perchorsk’s defenders, Russian soldiers on our side of the portal, had blistered him with their flamethrower and pulped his legs with their automatic rifles, until he’d been brought to his knees … but only figuratively. For even when he was down, still they hadn’t quelled his spirit.

The film rolled again on the screen of Siggi’s mind:

He’d kneeled there mewling on the gantry in front of the glaring white hell of the Gate, a crippled man for all to see, grey as a corpse and splashed with blood, his own and that of those he’d slaughtered. Yet even as it had dawned on him that this must be the end, so the thing inside him had denied it!

He had looked like a man, but now …

His mouth yawned open—it opened, opened, opened—oh,
impossibly
wide! A forked tongue, scarlet, lashed in the cave of his throat. His jaws elongated visibly, making a sound like tearing sailcloth; fleshy lips rolled back in a froth of saliva until they split and spurted blood, revealing crimson gums and jagged, dripping teeth. The entire mouth resembled nothing so much as the pulped, rabidly yawning muzzle of a wolf. But the rest of the face had been as bad if not worse!

The squat nose had broadened out more yet, developing convoluted ridges like the snout of a bat, with moist, quivering nostrils in dark, wrinkled leather. The ears, previously flat to the head, had sprouted coarse hair, growing upward and outward to form red-veined, nervously mobile shapes like fleshy conches. And in this respect, too, the effect was batlike. Or maybe demoniac.

For hell was written in those features and limned in the nightmare expression of that face: a visage which was part bat, part wolf, and all horror! And still it wasn’t over.

Before, the eyes had been small, piggish and deep-sunken. Now they were grown to gorged leeches, bulging crimson in their sockets. And the teeth … they gave new meaning to nightmare. For growing and curving up through the lacerated ribbons of the creature’s gums, those bone knives had so torn his mouth that it filled with his own blood.

As for the rest of his body, that had remained mercifully manlike; but through all
of his metamorphosis his ravaged trunk and legs had taken on a dull leaden gleam, and his entire form had vibrated with an incredible palsy.

Then they’d burned him up, hosed him down with chemical fire, melted him to smoke, steam and stench. It had been over. It was all over, dissolving like a shadow in sunlight from the screen
of Siggi’s mind …
except for the one thing which she remembered above all others: that at first, he’d looked just like a man!

Frozen to her chair. She couldn’t move, think, speak. And Nathan was standing up, reaching for her. He touched her, held her shoulder, squeezed—but gently! And now she saw what his whirling shield was composed of: numbers. Nathan’s secret mind was hidden behind an enormous mutating equation! Maths, astonishing maths … in a man from a largely innumerate world? All of this was too much; she didn’t know enough about him, didn’t know anything! She should call out for the soldier in the corridor, but there was a lump in her throat.

His oh-so-gentle touch … she made to shrink back from it, but her back was against the back of the steel chair. And in any case, a moment after he touched her the numbers vortex had disintegrated into a thousand shattered fractions, revealing Nathan’s thoughts.

I’m NOT Wamphyri
, he said, emphatically.
“The Wamphyri are my enemies. I’m here because
of them, not as their agent. This is some kind of unjust punishment, I think, for a crime I never committed and don’t even understand. Do you think I want to be here, in the hell-lands beyond the Starside Gate? I want to be back on Sunside with my young wife …

These were the jumbled thoughts he aimed at Siggi, while behind them she sensed his pain, frustration, and bewilderment. And most of all his loneliness. Suddenly Nathan’s hand on her shoulder was warm and very human; she
felt
his humanity coming right through her clothing, and she wasn’t cold any more.

She breathed deeply, controlled herself, and said:
I’ve come here to question you. You come from a terrible place. There’s a man who wants to be sure of you. He wants to know your purpose here. He thinks—