E-Branch - Invaders Part 20

'Okay, fine,' Jake placated him. 'But you did tell me you'd seen some of my future, right? You did say that I'd be with you, with E-Branch, for quite some time to come.'

'That's true, yes,' Goodly answered.

'In what capacity?'

'I don't know.'

'Okay, then is it going to be that way simply because Trask won't let me go off and do my own thing, or ... ?'

'Possibly because he won't let you go,' the precog answered.

'He has to see how you work out, which could take a while.

That could be - it obviously is - part of the reason why I've foreseen your continuing presence, yes. But what is this, Jake?

Are you still uncertain? I thought you'd decided to stay?'

'... Or, is it mainly because he thinks I'm going to be useful to you?' Jake ignored Goodly's last.

'Well, that too, we hope. But Jake, you're talking in circles.

And I don't see-'

'-I'm getting to it!' Jake growled, his att.i.tude intense now.

And after a moment's thought: 'So tell me, is it me, Jake Cutter, who'll be useful to you, or is it this Harry?'

'Er, that was my meaning, yes,' said the precog, 'that the Necroscope would definitely be useful to us. But if you want me to pick and choose, I can't do it. I would have to answer, both of you - you'll both be extremely useful to us. I thought that had been made plain, too.'

'He's ... what, contacting me, this Harry? Getting into my head to guide me, is that it?' Jake was pus.h.i.+ng it now. 'Or is he simply using me?'

'Using you? Personally, I would say he's keeping you safe.

Wouldn't you?' 'But in my head, like telepathy? A kind of telepathic control?'

Jake scowled.

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'Telepathy?' Goodly seemed uncertain. 'Something like telepathy, yes. But Harry had a different name for it.'

'"Had"? Why is it that when we talk about this Harry everything has to be past tense?' Then Jake gave a snort. 'Huh!

Dumb question - because he's dead, of course! - which I can't see at all. For if he's dead, how can he do whatever it is he's doing to me? See, I don't believe in ghosts. They're a concept I just can't seem to wrap my head around. And as for Harry Keogh: he's something I don't want to wrap my head around, even though it's apparent he's already seen to that! But, since he's obviously a disembodied voice out of the past , then it must be equally obvious that his talent wa s similar to yours. I mean, Harry didn't so much read the future as reach into it... is how it seems to me? But okay, fine, let's keep it going: so if what he's doing to me isn't telepathy, then what did he call it?'

'It wouldn't help you to know, not at this stage.' Goodly shook his head. 'In fact it could easily become an obstruction, a deterrent to your acceptance of... of everything.'

Jake's frustration was mounting again. 'A deterrent to my acceptance?' he snapped. 'Don't you think there are enough deterrents already? It's nuts, all of it! I mean, what am I, some kind of psychic medium? If there was a reason, just one logical reason, why I should suddenly become this dead bloke's target, his focus, his genius loci, then I might be willing to believe at least some of this ... this whatever. See, I know that what I've actually seen and experienced so far is real, but I don't know that a lot of what I've been told is real. I trust my own five senses, or used to, but I don't understand how or why I'm involved. I'd even like to believe what I've heard, if only as an alternative to considering myself some kind of psycho, some kind of schizoid nutcase. But ... but... but Harry is f.u.c.king dead!'

'Well, in a way he's dead,' said the precog, just as serious as ever, as if their conversation was utterly mundane. 'But you see, Harry didn't view existence, life and de ath, as we do. There was a time when he really was two people. It was after he suffered ... well, an accident, that his mind temporarily manifested itself in the ident.i.ty of his own infant son. And later, he underwent another singular change. Best to think of it as a kind of metempsychosis, or-'

'Metempsychosis?' Jake cut him short. For despite that he was sure he'd never heard the word before, still he understood it; likewise another word that meant much the same thing. 'You mean transmigration? Of souls? Like he was ... what, some kind of body-s.n.a.t.c.her?' And now suspicion was written plain on the younger man's face.

'It wasn't like that at all!' the precog protested.

'What?' Jake's voice was brittle now, cracking like gla.s.s splintering under the heel of a boot. 'I don't give a twopenny toss what it was like! s.h.i.+t, look at it from my point of view! This bloke's dead but he's trying to control my mind? And then what, my body? And if he ever got it, do you really think he'd want to give it back? And what about me, Mr lan b.l.o.o.d.y Goodly, precog? What the f.u.c.k about me? Is that why you can't tell me my future? Because the real me doesn't have one!?'

'Calm down, for goodness sake!' Goodly looked alarmed. 'My word, but you've a very short memory, Jake Cutter!' 'Eh?' That had served to slow Jake down a little. 'A short memory? How so?'

'But didn't Harry get you out of jail? Hasn't he saved your life twice already, and Liz's, too?'

Jake considered it, relaxed a very little, said: 'But what does he hope to do with me, this ... this ghost?'

'Well, perhaps that's one I can answe r,' Goodly told him. 'You see, the Necroscope's princ.i.p.al tenet was that whatever a man does in life he will continue to do after death. He proved it, too: used it to discover the Mobius Continuum. You'll just have to take my word for that, for the time being, anyway. But Harry's greatest claim to fame, or one of them, lay in finding and destroying vampires. Oh yes, the Earth was infested before this latest invasion.

And believe me, Jake, without the Necroscope on 224.

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our side, our world would have become an unimaginable h.e.l.l-hole of a place a long time ago. So ...'

'... So, you think he intends to keep on doing what h e did before/ Jake nodded his understanding, all the while fighting hard to suppress his disbelief. 'This Harry... he's trying to come back because he somehow knows they have come back, and he wants to go on killing vampires.

He's the avenging ghost and I... I'm his gadget?'

The precog shrugged and answered, 'And there you have it.'

Jake shook his head, looked bewildered, said: 'Come again? Didn't you get something backwards just then? Surely you meant there it has me!'

But Goodly was weary of this now. 'As you will,' he answered.

And, pursing his thin lips, he turned away. Jake saw his mistake, didn't want to alienate someone who obviously gave a d.a.m.n, and quickly said, 'Listen, I appreciate everything you've told me. I'm not trying to mess you about - none of you - but looking for a little firm ground, somewhere I can safely plant my feet. The way I'm feeling, every step is like quicksand. And what you just said doesn't help any. What, I'm supposed to be happy with the notion of this Harry wo rking his will through me, if not actually on me? Well, that's probably fine by you E-Branch people, all nice and safe in your own talented little skulls, but-'

'But ... there's no safe place in E-Branch, Jake,' the precog cut him short, glancing back over his shoulder. 'However, I did say you would be around for quite some time. Which with the Necroscope - or something of him - on your side, seems a very fair forecast to me.'

'But a ghos t?'

'There are ghosts and ghosts/ the other answered, walking away.

'But he's dead, for Christ's sake!' Made meaningless now, through repet.i.tion, still Jake's exclamation exploded from his dry lips. 'And not just a ghost - not just any old spook - but one who has access to my mind!'

'In E-Branch/ Goodly told him, without looking back, we do believe in ghosts, especially in the ghost of Harry Keogh. We have every good reason to. But that's something you don't have to take my word for, Jake. You see, I'm sure that before very long you 11 believe in them, too. I, Mr lan b.l.o.o.d.y Goodly, precog, am very sure of it, yes .. / 227.

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CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

A Meeting Of Minds Jake was in Chopper one with Trask, Liz, Goodly, Lardis, and a pair of technicians, Jimmy Harvey and Paul Arenson. Their next stop was Alice Springs (a 'mere' eight hundred miles east) for refuelling. Chopper two needed an hour's maintenance and would follow on behind. As for the vehicular contingent: 'They're heading south for Kalgoorlie,' Paul Arenson, a gangling, blue-eyed blond of maybe thirty-three years was telling his younger colleague. 'From there they'll go piggyback on a freight train to Broken Hill, then back on the road again to Brisbane. All except the big artic. It has to be the Great Aussie Bight coast road for the big feller. I calculate something like two thousand three hundred miles all told. We'll be home and dry in less than five hours; that's taking it easy, including a stop to stretch our legs at Alice. But as for the lads in the big truck ... just be glad you're not one of them. Five hours for us, and three or four days for them!'

The conversation buzzed in Jake's head, singing with the vibration of the jet-copter. The airplane was safe and stable, but with its paramilitary design it hadn't been built for comfort.

Jake sat on the floor in the narrow stowage area towards the tail, where there were no seats. Half-reclining, his large, angular frame was cus.h.i.+oned by holdalls, sausage-bags, and various packs of personal belongings, some hard and some soft; it wasn't his 228.

idea of luxury. But tired, and even hoping to get a little sleep, he rep osit ioned himself as best he could and let the aircraft's singing soak into him.

The 'tune' was much too regular for a lullaby, and s.n.a.t.c.hes of muted conversation kept drifting back to him, monotone lyrics that didn't fit the music but clung like cobwebs to his thoroughly weary mind. Coc.o.o.ned in this odd mix of white noise and blurred babble, gradually Jake felt himself nodding off.

Liz Merrick was loosely belted into the rearmost of the seats, a gunner's swivelling bucket-seat between wide sliding doors on both sides. Her l ong legs were up, flopping over the gunner's arm rests; the gun itself slumped nose-down, strapped in position. Glinting a dull blue-grey, and despite its proximity to Liz's lovely body, the weapon looked sullenly impotent. But the picture Jake kept in his mind as he drifted into sleep was that of a naked Liz with the gun between her legs ...

... But then he was asleep, and he was the gun between her legs! And - d.a.m.n it to h.e.l.l! - he wasn't f.u.c.king Liz but was facing xwsy from her out of the door. And she wasn't trying to ride him but was firing him ... her arms round his waist, with one hand ma.s.saging his b.a.l.l.s while the other, working his rampant d.i.c.k, shot burst after burst of silvery, smoking s.e.m.e.n at nightmarish vampire shapes that flapped in the chopper's slipstream, snarling their bloodl.u.s.t as they fought to get inside the plane, to get at Li z, Trask, Goodly and the others!

Barely asleep, Jake jerked awake. Liz was staring at him, her cheeks flaming, mouth half-open, eyes wide. And Jake didn't need a degree in psychiatry - or in parapsychology - to understand what had happened here. Whether as a deliberate voyeur or an innocent observer, Liz had been in his mind.

She'd seen that last scene. And as for what it meant: that was his fe ar surfacing, his ongoing suspicion that Ben Trask was simply using him, now complicated by the notion that Trask was also using her as some kind of bait - like a carrot for a donkey? - to keep him happy as he plodded on. He could be right at that, or he could be wrong. But if Liz were the carrot, then what 229.

did Tras k have in m ind for the stick? Everything remained to be seen.

'I... I...' Liz mouthed words at him - mouthed them, but nothing came out - as she quickly, self-consciously, ashamedly slid her jean-clad legs from the gunner's arm rests and sat up straighter in the bucket-seat. And: Serves you f.u.c.king right! Jake snapped back, but silently, in his head. And he knew he'd reached her from the way her head jerked. And now keep the f.u.c.k out!

Following which, as his anger cooled, it took some time to get back to sleep ...

s.n.a.t.c.hes of conversation drifting back to him. But in his ears or in his had?

Perhaps he was still on Liz's mind, and unsuspected even by the girl herself where she sat in her bucket-seat midway between Jake in stowage and the others in their seats up front, she had become some kind of mental relay station. For in the few days she had known him Liz had established something of a rapport with Jake; it was possible that the sending technique she had used to taunt Bruce Trennier had 'fixed' itself and was now developing more rapidly in her special mind. Maybe this was simply her way of making amends: by letting Jake in on the conversation. The conversation about him. Or was it something, or some one, else entirely?

Trask's hushed voice, asking: 'But why him?'

Lardis Lidesci: 'Does the why of it really ma tter? If Jake has been chosen, he's been chosen.'

And lan Goodly: 'There are certain similarities. Maybe we shouldn't overlook them. I'm sure mental characteristics - how Jake thinks - are more important than the purely physical way he looks. When we look at him we don'

t see Harr y, that's true, but the Necroscope was a hard act to follow.

Perhaps we should give more thought as to how Harry sees him. And there are similarities.' Trask: 'Go on.'

Goodly: 'For one thing, they both lost loved ones. Both of them drowned, murdered, too.'

Trask: 'Granted, but that's where it ends. And as for losing a loved one, murdered, you could say the same about me. But where is Harry's humility? Where's his compa.s.sion, his warmth? This Jake ... he's abrasive, a roughneck, spoiled and wild.'

Goodly: 'A roughneck? But in the right circ.u.mstances that would be - and it already has been - a positive bonus. A rough diam ond, maybe. Surely the Necroscope would know better than to choose a weakling for a job like this?'

Trask: 'But a hard man? A killer, even if he does have his reasons?'

Lardis: 'Me, I say they were good reasons. I like him! And I say it again, if he's Harry h.e.l.l-Lander's choice, that's good enough for me.'

Trask: 'And me ... well, within limits. So don't misunderstand me - I'm not arguing the Necroscope's choice - it's just that I don't understand it. I have this feeling that Jake's not only fighting us but fighting Harry, too.'

Goodly: 'Oh, he is, be sure of it! But aside from his manners and tendency to aggression, there are similarities.'

Trask, dubiously: 'More similarities?'

Goodly: 'Indeed. For Harry believed in revenge, too. Don't you remember? An eye for an eye? He was just a boy when he went after Boris Dragosani. If like attracts like - mentally speaking, that is - then I can well see how Harry would be drawn to this one. And that's something else you might give some thought to: if you want Jake firmly on the team, and his mind exclusively on the job in hand, you could do a lot worse than find this man, this Luigi Castellano.'

Trask 'And then what? Let Jake go after him?'

Goodly: 'This Castellano is rubbish and should be disposed of - we're all agreed on that. I think Jake will chase him down no matter what, which makes Castellano a distraction. But if he were to be taken out .... no more distraction. And we would have Jake's grat.i.tude.'

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Trash, mildly surprised: 'Well now! And just listen to the cold- blooded one! But you're right, and we're checking into it.

Interpol and other friends abroad. If we could just bring Castellano to justice, that might suffice.'

Goodly: 'No, it wouldn't.' (A sensed shake of the precog's head). 'When he is dead, that will suffice. You know as well as I do how Jake dealt with the other members of that gang. Do you really think he'll be satisfied to see their boss nice and comfortable, all warm and well fed behind bars?'

Lardis: 'Anyway, in case I haven't already said it loud or often enough, I like Jake Cutter. And so does Liz.'

Liz, heatedly: 'I do not! Well, not especially.'

Lardis, chuckling throatily: 'See?'

Then silence for a while, the darkness deepening, and Jake finally adrift in dreams. And a strange cold current taking him in tow, steering him to an unknown yet oddly familiar destination ...

A river bank, and below its gra.s.sy, root-tangled rim, the water swirling in the eddies of a small bight. A boy, sitting on the edge and leaning forward at what seemed an unsafe angle, dangling his feet close to the slowly swirling surface. His elbows were on his knees, his hands propping his chin, and he appeared to be talking to someone. Perhaps to himself.

Jake's shadow fell on him, and the boy turned his head to look up at him. He didn't seem at all surprised by Jake's presence (but then, neither did Jake). On the contrary, he smiled a pale, painful, yet appreciative greeting. 'h.e.l.lo, there! So you came. Why don't you sit down a while and talk to me?'

'I, er, didn't like to cut in on you!' Jake answered, not knowing what else to say. And then, because he wasn't sure what else to do, either - and wondering if he knew the other - he finally f ollowed hi s suggestion, sat down, and asked him: 'Er, do you think it's possible we've met somewhere before?'

Beginning to feel the strangeness of it all, he looked the boy over more closely, perhaps even warily.

Apart from the obvious fact that the other had recently been fighting, there didn't seem to be anything especially odd about him. He could be any scruffy boy, though for some reason Jake found himself doubting that. Maybe eleven or twelve years old, sandy-haired, freckled; he wasn't skinny yet barely filled out his ill-fitting, threadbare, second-hand school jacket. The top b.u.t.ton was absent from a once-white s.h.i.+rt that hung halfway out of his grey flannel trousers, and a frayed, tightly knotted tie with a faded school motto hung askew from his crumpled collar. His lumpish nose supported plain prescription spectacles, small, circular windows through which dreaming blue eyes gazed out in a str ange mixture of wonder and weird expectation.

Then, suddenly aware of Jake's inspection, the boy looked down at himself, wrinkled his nose in disgust, said: 'This will be the school bully, big Stanley Green's work. He's got it coming, has our Stanley. In about a year from now, or maybe two.' And his lips were thinner, tighter, more determined.

There was dried blood on those lips, a gash in the corner of his mouth, but little or nothing of fear in his dreamy eyes, which were now other than dreamy and contained a certain glint.

Indeed, they looked older than the rest of him, those eyes, and Jake thought there was probably a pretty mature mind in there, somewhere behind that half-haunted face. But he could never in a million years have guessed how mature - or how wise in otherworldly ways.

And because the boy hadn't as yet answered his first question (as to whether or not they knew each ot her), Jake now felt the urge to remind and prompt him. 'Er, son?'