Psychomech (21 page)

And again those forecasts proved accurate, not once but repeatedly; so that with his advent into Garrison’s life those seeds first sown by Thomas Schroeder took root and grew in the blind man, until his own interest in esoteric matters became all-consuming. From that time onward, during his not infrequent trips to the Retreat, Garrison would spend much of his time in the library and observatory, and especially in the ESP-test building, ever broadening his knowledge and experimenting with the powers he now believed lay within himself; until, within two short years of Schroeder’s death, he had become something of an expert in his own right in the so-called ‘fringe-sciences’ of parapsychology.

In this respect, too, there had developed a special link between himself and Suzy; for example:

He no longer had to call Suzy to him; the merest thought would bring her padding silently to his side, the slightest glance would be transformed into a command. Even out of sight, Suzy would respond to Garrison’s mental instructions. She had been taught the basic commands, of course (indeed Heinz Holzer had taught Suzy much more than that; for as a blind dog she was totally alone in a class of her own, un-classifiable by common terms of reference), such as ‘down’, ‘sit’, ‘stay’, ‘come’, ‘watch’, ‘heel’ and even ‘attack!’—but it was remarkable to see her performing her repertoire in one corner of the garden while Garrison sat in another fifty yards away, his eyes closed, directing Suzy with his mind alone! Only Willy Koenig was aware of their rapport, however, and though he never once voiced his opinion aloud, Garrison guessed that the German believed this to be another sure sign of Thomas Schroeder’s disembodied encroachment, his drawing closer to the soul and being of the man he had chosen as his host to be.

As for Koenig himself: rapidly approaching fifty years of age, he looked no more than forty and kept himself—and Garrison—in perfect trim with regular workouts in the small gymnasium which now occupied a ground-floor room of the Sussex house. Firmer friends than ever, he and his employer enjoyed a relationship beyond that of mere friendship; and only Suzy’s love of Garrison was greater than that of the former SS Feldwebel Ps. They were like brothers; for Koenig, like Garrison himself, was a man in every sense of the word.

Infrequently, when Garrison did not need him, Koenig would take himself off to London where several ladies enjoyed his attentions, and twice yearly he would spend a week in Hamburg (his home-town in the old days) in pursuits that Garrison could well imagine but about which he enquired not at all. And for all that Garrison insisted Koenig should have these breaks from his duties, still he was invariably pleased and relieved to have his friend home again when such
R&R
excursions, as he termed them, were at an end.

One incident taken at random from several of a like nature may best serve to illustrate the way the rapport between Garrison and Koenig had expanded:

They were driving in London one day in the summer of
1975
, with Koenig at the wheel of the Mercedes proper and Garrison relaxed and comfortable in the front passenger seat. Garrison himself had
‘driven’
for a little while—on the motorway and along the better roads, where traffic was no great problem—but now he sat back and enjoyed a cigarette, letting Willy get on with the job.

As they approached a level crossing in the suburbs of the city, suddenly Garrison became aware of a cold tingling at the nape of his neck. The short hairs there were reacting to something as yet unseen, and his palms had gone clammy in an instant. Into his mind there flashed a vivid premonition of disaster. He ‘saw’ an accident!

‘Willy—hit the brakes?’ he yelled.

Cursing in his mother tongue, Koenig reacted with incredible speed—almost as if he had heard Garrison’s command in the instant before it was given. At the same time Garrison snatched himself upright in his seat and grasped his own wheel, wrenching it savagely to the right—and Koenig, still braking, offered no resistance to the other’s play. Instead he instinctively released the main steering wheel, letting Garrison skid the car sideways-on to where it rocked shudderingly to a halt and stalled in the middle of the road. From somewhere close behind came the shriek of hastily applied brakes and the angry honking of horns.

In that same moment several things happened together. An oncoming car screeched to a halt at the far side of the crossing; the crossing’s warning system began to clang; and most important and frightening by far, the vast bulk of an inter-city train blasted by in a rush and a roar, its many carriages a blur that seemed to flicker in time to the clatter of its wheels. If Garrison had put his arm out of the window he could have touched the charging metal giant, whose nearness was such that the Mercedes rocked to the blast and suction of its passing.

All of this was as clear as sight itself in the eye of Garrison’s mind; but he could not see what Koenig now saw: the white-faced figure in the window of the crossing’s elevated control room, his hands to his head and his eyes and mouth straining wide in horror. And the red and white barriers jerking and twitching fitfully but refusing to come down, locked in their raised position by some mechanical failure. But in another moment the train had rushed off into the distance and the track was clear once more. And—miraculously!—no harm done…

Starting the car’s stalled engine, Koenig straightened her up and drove slowly across the tracks, his eyes staring to left and right as he went, peering along those still vibrant but now vacant parallels of bright metal. Safely on the other side he picked up a little speed and turned to Garrison.

‘A failure in the barriers,’ he said. ‘We were lucky.’ His voice had a nervous edge to it.’

‘Lucky?’ Garrison repeated, his own voice revealing how shaken he was. He shook his head. ‘No, not lucky. And the way we worked together… that was sort of fantastic.’

Koenig forced a chuckle. ‘Yes, you do very well for a blind man, Richard.’

‘I was thinking something similar of you,’ Garrison came back. ‘Namely, that you do pretty well for someone who has no ESP talent! That’s what you once told me, remember? The test room? How Thomas tested you, and how poor your results were?’

Koenig nodded. ‘Oh, I remember all right. And it’s true enough, my ESP ability is a big zero.’

‘Balls!’ Garrison snorted. ‘You snatched my thoughts right out of my head back there. Your foot hit the brake in the same moment—even before!—I started shouting.’

Koenig chuckled again, but drily. ‘It was often the same with the Colonel,’ he reflected. ‘But I still insist that I have no talent. It was your talent, Richard, yours. Can’t you see that? Even a weak receiver will pick up a strong signal. And your signal was loud and clear that time, believe me! And what of the precognition which set the whole thing in motion? You
knew
there was danger ahead. No, the power is yours, Richard, not mine. I deserve no credit. It is a wonderful power, without which we’d both be dead.’

Garrison nodded, then said: ‘It wasn’t all my work. I was warned.’

‘Warned?’

‘By Schenk. We spoke this morning, about today’s business. During our conversation he had a premonition, asked how we were travelling into London. I said by car. He told me that should be all right, but whatever I did I should not go by train. “Beware of trains today, Richard,” he told me. “Steer clear of them.” Those were his very words: “steer clear of trains”…’

One year later—the closing week of May 1976.

It was the beginning of what was to be one of England’s hottest, longest summers in living memory. Three years since Garrison’s first visit to the Harz, and he was now rich beyond his wildest dreams. Not yet twenty-five, he owned homes and properties in England and Germany, controlled large amounts of money in various banks and businesses (chiefly in Zurich), and lived a life which was the envy of his few contemporaries. He had his women—elegant ladies all, but none of them given any serious consideration—a few friends, though of these only Koenig was really close to him, and complete freedom to be and do exactly as he wished. And yet…

There were streaks of premature grey in the hair over Garrison’s temples which, while they served to enhance his good looks, were still a sure sign that he was not an easy man. Not easy in his mind. For the one thing which escaped him, escaped him utterly, was happiness. This was due in part, of course, to his blindness; though amongst those who thought they knew him were some who suspected he merely affected the guise of a blind man, for only sight itself could be better than the pseudo-vision he had now learned to control self marvellously.

As for those few souls who were closest to him:

Willy Koenig had changed little, indeed seemed almost un-changeable, though Garrison had-recently noted a sort of increased wariness or watchfulness in the man, who was no longer quite so willing to spend more than three or four days away from him at any one time. Suzy was now four years and four months old, big, black and beautiful, and her unwavering love for her master burned as fierce as ever. The staff and servants of both the house in Sussex and Garrison’s Retreat in the Harz remained unchanged, and not a man or woman of them would exchange their master for any other employer. And yet for all this there remained a large gap, one which could never be filled. Adam Schenk was no longer there to guide Garrison’s feet along those paths of the future which only he had read so well.

It had happened with shocking suddenness, and Garrison had been stunned. He had not known of Schenk’s problem. The astrologer had been dead these past three months, and still Garrison brooded over it. It was becoming harder for him to kill things off in his mind. With most of life’s hardships removed, the need to maintain his defences had decreased. Things hurt him more now. And Schenk’s death had certainly done that. The man had burned himself out by his increasing use of those drugs which helped him penetrate the mysterious veil of future times and events; and the one event he had not been able—or perhaps had been unwilling—to forecast, had been his own end. Garrison missed him, and being a realist missed his predictions. The astrologer had been invaluable to him.

But he still had those horoscopes Schenk had drawn up three years earlier, though they had lain long forgotten in an envelope, locked in his desk in the study of his Sussex home. And it was there, at the desk, that Willy Koenig found him one warm May morning, rummaging through the drawers. Garrison’s cursing and banging about had brought Koenig starting awake, and donning his dressing gown he had hurried to the study.

‘Willy,’ Garrison’s voice was tense, ‘come and help me find Adam’s horoscopes. They’re here somewhere, in an envelope.’

Garrison’s ability to know instinctively who was there no longer astonished Koenig. Very little about Garrison surprised him any more. He stepped to the desk, stopped the other’s hands from their useless and unaccustomed fluttering and immediately found the manila envelope pressed flat to one side of the drawer, trapped there by a fat bundle of old documents. ‘Here it is,’ he said. ‘But what is your hurry? Has something happened?’

‘Hurry?’ Garrison took the envelope, glanced up, smiled nervously. ‘Yes, I am in a rush, I suppose. But… I dreamed again.’

Koenig knew from the almost unnoticeable emphasis on the word dreamed that this must have been one of Garrison’s rarer dreams, one of premonition or clairvoyance. ‘About Adam?’ he said.

‘No, about a girl. Terri…’

‘Terri?’ Koenig repeated him—then inhaled sharply. He understood. Terri: the ‘T’ on Garrison’s horoscope.

Now Garrison had the envelope open, shook out the strips of card on to the desk. ‘My card,’ he said tersely, his voice shaky. ‘Find it and read it.’ Normally he would have added ‘please’, but right now he had no time for niceties. ‘Read it from the entry “WK and Black Dog”,’ he ordered.

Koenig nodded, picked up Garrison’s horoscope and stared at it, licked his dry lips. He found himself caught up in the other’s strange excitement, felt his nerves tightening. ‘WK and Black Dog, “S”?’ he began. ‘Time-scale: to three years.*

‘Stop!’ Garrison held up a hand. ‘And it’s now three years since he wrote that. And you and Suzy have been with me most of that time.’ As he spoke Suzy herself appeared at the door, tongue lolling, padding across the floor to flop at Garrison’s feet. ‘What’s the next line?’

‘Girl “T’,’ Koenig dutifully continued. ‘Time-scale: to eight years.’

‘That’s far enough,’ Garrison stopped him again. He frowned. ‘Girl “T”—Terri!’

‘Terri,’ Koenig repeated the word, musing. ‘She was in your dream? But who is she?’

Garrison looked full into the other’s face—and once again, as so often before, the German wondered exactly what the blind man saw. It was almost as if those lenses looked right into a man’s soul. ‘I don’t know who she is,’ Garrison finally answered. ‘But I do know where she is. At least, I can describe the place. And one thing is certain: I’ve never been there.’

‘Describe it, then,’ Koenig invited.

‘Let me think, get it out while it’s still clear in my mind.’

Koenig waited, and eventually Garrison continued. ‘There was a bay. Blue ocean, with hills climbing away behind a town—no, a village. With boats in the harbour. Orange houses, some white, and some with flat roofs. And flowering trees. Some palms. Oh, and trellises with grapes—and masses of purple climbing flowers. And at night, fireflies like tiny aeroplanes, their lights winking as they—’

‘Italy!’ Koenig exclaimed with certainty. ‘I have been there, and your description says it all. But let’s make absolutely certain, if we can. Is there more to go on?’

‘Small bars with tables on the pavements, gazing out to sea,’ Garrison quickly went on, as if afraid of losing the vision. ‘And open-air restaurants with waiters serving—’ He paused, gasped, gripped Koenig’s arm where it rested on the top of the desk. ‘For a moment there it came back to me, vivid in my mind. Dark-haired people at wooden-topped tables, eating with forks which they twined!’

‘Pasta!’ Koenig nodded. ‘I was right, it is Italy.’

‘But green pasta?’ Garrison’s frown deepened more yet.