The Graveyard Game (25 page)

If he were Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax, he’d have casually killed the two with a backhand chop five minutes ago and tossed them, guns and all, discreetly over the side into the Channel. He wasn’t Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax.

“Well, then,” Lewis said, as politely as he could. “What do you want?”

“To take you home,” said the one in the porkpie.

Lewis suppressed a smile. “Um—and what happens if I don’t want to go home with you?”

“We shoot you,” the other one informed him. “Then we take you anyhow.”

“Yes,” the one in the porkpie agreed.

“I’d rather you didn’t shoot me,” Lewis said, drumming his fingertips on the table.

“Yes. We know,” said the one in the ski hat.

Realizing in panic that he was looking at three and a half more hours of conversation like this, Lewis attempted to transmit to Xenophon. There was no response. He felt the proverbial sensation of ice water along his spine.

“Are you jamming my signal?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“So you know what I am?”

“Yes.” Both of them nodded their heads. “You’re a cyborg.”

“How do you know?”

“We have been looking for you,” said the one in the porkpie.

Lewis closed his eyes. Ireland. In that moment, years of denial ended abruptly. The nightmares had him. Grinning, they pulled off their masks, and he remembered the cave under Dun Govaun, the creatures who hadn’t been children after all but small men, weak and
stupid, yet masters of a weapon that could disable the cleverest cyborg, if he walked into their hiding place. And Lewis had. The erasure field had crippled him, but it hadn’t quite killed him. His captors didn’t mind, because they had him now, so they could take him apart and see how he was made and make the weapon stronger, better, more deadly . . .

“Well then,” he said in a light voice, opening his eyes again. “If you’ve been hunting me this long, you must know I don’t want to be caught.”

“Yes,” said the one in the ski hat, nodding again.

“I think it’s only fair to warn you, I’ll probably run as soon as we get off this boat,” Lewis said.

“That would be dumb,” said the one in the porkpie, disapproval in his voice. “Because we’d shoot you, and then you’d be broken.”

“Well, probably; but that’s all the more reason for me to do something desperate, you see?” Lewis spread out his hands as though presenting them with an irrefutable argument. “So, there it is. If you’re smart, you’ll keep those guns trained on me.”

“Oh, we’re smart,” the one in the ski hat said.

“We’re the smartest ones,” said the one in the porkpie.

“Yes, I can see that,” Lewis agreed. “Well. I can’t run anywhere until we land at Dieppe, so I think I’ll just go on with my writing.”

“It won’t help,” said the one in the ski hat.

“Then there’s no reason for you to stop me, is there?” said Lewis smoothly, drawing his Buke from its case again. His captors appeared to be thinking that over.

“No,” they said at last.

Lewis called up a Company line, and found to his frustration that although he was able to access the channel, he was unable to send any messages. Apparently whatever was jamming his personal transmission was able to block the Buke’s as well. After several efforts he entered in the last communication code he had on file for Joseph.

Joseph wasn’t home. His automatic response picked up the call, and Lewis beheld a brilliant yellow screen with bouncy red letters, giving the following cheery message in Castilian Spanish:

Hola! If you’re calling about the sofa and loveseat, they’re still for sale. I’m on vacation this week, but please leave your comm code and I’ll return your call as soon as I get back. If this is really important, you can reach me care of the Hotel Elissamburu, Irun, Eskual Herriraino, at HtEli546/C/882. I’ll be there until the 30th. Bye.

Lewis exhaled in annoyance. He attempted to leave a message, but was blocked once again. After staring at the screen in frustration, he logged off and reopened his story file again and typed:

applied it carefully to one of the filthy little creatures, and had the satisfaction of watching it shrivel and drop away.

Over the next three hours Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax and company got rid of the leeches, found their way through the mangrove swamp by a secret shortcut that was actually faster than sailing across the lagoon, descended on one of Delarosa’s notorious barracoons, and burned it to the ground after setting free all the slaves, one of whom was the captive daughter of King Bahou, and very grateful she was too. But just as she was about to express her thanks, who should emerge from the steaming, fever-ridden jungle but the treacherous Diego Luna, determined to make good his threat to kill the English commander . . .

Lewis, on the other hand, sat in an increasingly chilly upper deck lounge praying that somebody would come open the tea station and perhaps notice his unwelcome companions. Nobody did.

I
T WAS DARK BY THE TIME
the ferry landed at Dieppe. Lewis put away his Buke and groped for his suitcase. “Well, gentlemen, it’s time to disembark,” he told his captors.

“Not yet,” they said together, threatening with their pistols. “We’re supposed to wait until everybody goes.”

So they waited, as the passengers from the lower decks trailed up the gangway, departing in ones and twos for the customs building. When the last one had trundled his baggage ashore, the little men rose to their feet.

“We’re supposed to go now,” said the one in the porkpie. “You’re supposed to walk in front of us.”

“Okay,” Lewis said, hauling out his suitcase. “But I’m warning you, I’ll almost certainly try to run away.”

“Stupid cyborg,” said the one in the ski hat. Lewis shrugged and walked ahead of them, down to the main deck and up the gangway to the quay. They followed closely, keeping their pistols trained on him the whole time. As he approached the customs building, Lewis glanced over his shoulder at them.

“I’ll probably make my attempt in here,” he said, and walked quickly up the ramp into the lighted hall with the turnstile and customs officers at its far end. They followed him, keeping their guns
well up and pointed at his head. It was a long, long walk across the floor.

“Bonsoir, Monsieur,” yawned the guard at the nearest turnstile.

“Regardez-vous les disrupters, s’il vous plait,” Lewis said through his teeth, smiling. The guard’s gaze skimmed past Lewis at the two little men and their guns.

“Merde!” he cried. The two little men stopped in their tracks, startled.

“Merci. Bonsoir,” Lewis said pleasantly, largely unheard in the commotion of five large customs officers tackling his would-be captors. He walked over to Luggage Analysis, set his suitcase on the conveyor belt, and followed it through on the designated footpath without incident.

Before boarding the express to Paris he stopped at the snack bar and bought three Toblerones, and had finished one by the time he was seated in the deserted passenger car. The train left the station and picked up speed. Lewis was unwrapping the second Toblerone with trembling hands when two more strangers in white suits emerged from the car behind him and sat down, one to his left and one immediately in front of him.

They were quite similar to the first pair, though not so perfectly matched in size; one wore a beret, and the other a baseball cap. The one with the beret also had a tiny chin-tuft of beard.

“Don’t try that again,” he told Lewis menacingly. “We have weapons too.”

“How many of you people are there?” Lewis asked.

“All of us,” the one with the cap said.

“I’d really rather not go with you,” said Lewis. “Why do you think you can frighten me with your guns? I’m a cyborg, you know.”

“Because these can hurt you,” the one in the beret said, gesturing with the hand he was careful to keep firmly in his pocket. “We hurt you once before. We have these now. We can do it again.”

“Please don’t.” Lewis swallowed hard and leaned back into his seat.

Eogan, that had been the mortal’s name. Lewis was in Ireland securing illuminated manuscripts for the Company. He’d been working at the remote monastery with Eogan. A monk had been carried off in the night by persons unknown, presumably the fair folk. The abbess, aware that Lewis had some unusual abilities, sent him out with Eogan to search and rescue if possible. They ventured into a hollow hill where the fair folk were thought to live. Lewis didn’t believe in fairies, of course, the whole thing seemed like a lark; but when he found the concealed entrance under Dun Govaun, he was so intrigued . . .

So he and Eogan went down the passage under the hill, Lewis confidently assuring his companion there was nothing to fear, until they stepped across the metal plate set in the floor, and Lewis knew rending agony for the first time in his immortal life, and then red darkness.

A confusion of impressions after that, blurred perhaps by the intensity of his fear and pain: a quiet, venomous little voice telling a story about three brothers. Two were strong and clever, but the third was weak and small, stupid except insofar as he was able to devise wonders to hide him from his brothers. The strong brothers tried to steal the devised wonders, but the weak one fled and hid himself in a cave. So did his children who came after him, and the hunt continued over the ages as the weaklings were driven to invent greater and greater wonders to keep themselves hidden, a branch of humanity lost in shadows, forgotten except in legend.

The storyteller went on to say that always the weaklings managed to keep ahead of their pursuers, until from the other end of time the strong ones came up with a device of their own: immortal servants, full of machinery, who were cleverer and stronger even than their masters. These cyborgs succeeded in finding the weaklings’ caves and robbing them.

So then they had to work harder, poor little weaklings, they had to find a way to break the cyborgs. With all the moronic intensity of their peculiar genius, they devised a disrupter field to disable biomechanicals. And Lewis, their first experimental subject, lay paralyzed
in their warren, seriously damaged by the field, self-repair offline and organic components dying inside him.

But he didn’t die, not inside the hill. Eogan escaped with him, carried him out. He tried to make Eogan understand about the distress signal to Dr. Zeus, that the Company would come for him. The monk wept, tried to save Lewis by baptizing him so he’d have an immortal soul. A nice thought, but it didn’t help. His organic heart stopped. His organic parts began to die.

He looked now at the two little men. “Tell me something,” he said wearily. “Why me? It’s been two thousand years. You’re not immortals. You weren’t even born when your people caught me before. How did you know to look for me?”

“We all remember,” said the man in the cap.

“Everything,” said the man in the beret.

Lewis nodded slowly. “Hive memory? I see. And what are you going to do with me, now that you have me?”

“Take you back,” the man in the beret said. “You got away before we could learn about you.”

“Ah.” Lewis sighed. “That’s right. You were going to take me apart, weren’t you?” He felt something beading on his brow and realized it was the sweat of mortal fear. Then something occurred to him. “Wait a minute. You mean you’ve been hunting for me all these years simply because I happened to be the one you caught before?”

“Yes,” said the one in the cap.

“But you could have learned what you wanted to know from any Company operative. You mean you never tried to capture any of the
others?”
Lewis’s voice rose with incredulity, and he began to grin in spite of himself.

“Yes,” said the one in the cap, looking confused.

“Don’t laugh at us!” The one in the beret scowled. “You won’t laugh when we get you home, slave.”

Lewis sobered. Sweat was running down his face. He calmed himself and concentrated, trying to bring a greenish cast to his features. It wasn’t particularly difficult.

“Oh, dear, no, I’m frightened,” he assured his captors. “I’m so frightened, I think I’m going to be sick. It was Mr. Fancod, wasn’t it? You found me through him.”

“Yes,” the one in the cap said.

“But he’s stupid,” said the one in the beret with just a trace of pride. “He’s not like us.”

“No, he couldn’t be, could he? He lives with humans. Though I suppose you’re some form of humanity too—” Lewis made a choking sound and hastily pulled out a tissue. “I really am going to be sick.”

His captors backed away in alarm, but not far enough.

“Please let me go to the lavatory,” Lewis gasped, rising in his seat. “You don’t want vomit on your shoes, do you?”

“No,” said the one in the cap. They let him get up but pushed closely behind him as he stumbled in the direction of the door marked
HOMMES
. He went in, and they crowded into the tiny space after him, so tightly packed that they were unable to raise their arms from their sides.

That was when he winked out and slammed the door from the outside, twisting the handle until the metal bent, effectively jamming the lock. He heard a splash and a faint cry from within; perhaps one of the guns had fallen into the toilet. He tore apart the nearest seat and pulled out a tubular piece of steel, which he punched through the lavatory’s door jamb as an impromptu bolt.

Even as he was doing this, however, he felt a tingling sensation and numbness in the hand that had touched the door. He backed away, terrified. Turning and grabbing his suitcase with his left hand, he ran down the aisle between the seats to the opposite end of the car. There he crouched, staring back in dread as the train rattled on through the night, and the distant lights winked out across the black fields.

Lewis flexed his hand and felt sensation returning. A hasty self-diagnostic told him that there was some tissue damage, ruptured cells, biomechanicals compromised but resetting themselves. Drawing himself up, he shoved through the exit and stood for a moment
on the tiny swaying platform between the cars, expecting to see Rod Serling standing there on the point of going into a speech.