The Last Aerie (42 page)

Since the arrival of the espers, Tzonov had kept himself closeted with them in his makeshift operations suite just off the control room. Siggi had not been privy to their conversations, but she did know that Tzonov had spoken at some length to Premier Turchin (or to his presidential adviser, at least), and that he’d been given what amounted to a free hand in the matter of Nathan’s pursuit and recapture—with one important exception. Tzonov had wanted authority to bring the fugitive back dead or alive (preferably dead, as Siggi was well aware), but Turchin had insisted that Nathan be taken alive. It was the human rights issue, of course. Gustav Turchin was still cleaning the political mud of a very messy century off Russia’s boots, so that the last thing he wanted now was the blood of an innocent on his hands!

The night after Nathan’s escape, Siggi had found sleep impossible. Tossing and turning in her bed for long hours at a stretch, only half-sleeping at best, finally she had given it up for a bad job. Rising well before dawn and dressing in her warmest clothing, she’d ventured out into the grey-misted ravine. There, relieved of Perchorsk’s claustrophobia and satisfied that Tzonov and the others were asleep, she’d extended a tentative telepathic probe across the mountains and beyond Kozhva, deep into the woodlands where the Gypsy caravans had been.

The faint, ethereal dreams of loggers, trappers, and villagers, all were there, but she had searched for something else. And she had found it! Like a spiral of mental static from some weird computer mind, briefly (but
very
briefly), she believed that she had touched upon Nathan’s sleeping thoughts—only to discover that someone else was touching them, too! A telepathic mind: feminine, wary, clever, and benevolent. But who? British E-Branch? To Siggi’s knowledge there was only one female telepath in British ESPionage: a spinster called Millicent Cleary. But she was sure that this wasn’t her. No, for this one was a woman entire, experienced in every sense of the word.

All of this from a mere touch; it said a lot for Siggi’s talent, and even more for the talent of the other. For in the selfsame moment that Siggi had become aware of the stranger, so that one had sensed Siggi … and not
only
Siggi!

Then, made suddenly aware of other talented minds awake and watchful in the night—afraid that they might recognize hers—Siggi had withdrawn her thoughts and returned quickly to her room. And lying there in the dark, with the weight of the mountain once more pressing down on her (but not nearly as heavily as the weight of her fears), she’d wondered:

But
if Turkur is using these people out of Moscow in this way, why isn’t he using me?
Was it her punishment for defying him: temporary exclusion from his schemes? Or would it be more permanent, because he no longer trusted her?

Finally she had slept, but her dreams had been strange, furtive things in which she was pursued across the ridgy grey landscape of a throbbing, gigantic brain by black-winged inquisitorial thoughts with the piercing eyes, talons, and beaks of carrion crows …

And the echoes of their cries (their questions?) were still ringing afar when she started awake. So that with Tzonov and his espers so close, she had wondered: was it perhaps more than just a dream? The invasion of sleeping minds would be common enough practice among espers such as these. And there had been times in Siggi’s past when her own duties were such that … that she no longer had the right to complain.

That morning, yesterday, Tzonov had been up and about at first light, and his first act had been to cancel the search-parties scheduled for duty in the regions to the east of the pass. But even as he’d ordered the jet-copter made ready for a mission to the west of the mountains, and sought Siggi out to take her with him, so it had started to snow. And heavily.

The flight had been cancelled, (even a routine ascent out of the pass could be hazardous enough without this!) which had served to determine Tzonov’s mood for the rest of the day. As for Siggi: she had never been happier to see bad weather. And the snow had stayed, and stayed. Not a blizzard but a continuous fall that blanketed the sky, turned the entire pass white, and forbade absolutely any kind of aerial search or reconnaissance which Tzonov might otherwise contemplate.

As the day had progressed, so Siggi’s worries about her standing with the Head of Russia’s E-Branch had receded somewhat. With every hour that passed, Nathan was getting farther away, and discovery of her own involvement less likely.

Also, and despite Premier Turchin’s orders to the contrary, she knew that if Tzonov did track the fugitivedown his men would be just as likely to shoot him as take him prisoner. Later, they would write corroborative reports to show how he had “resisted arrest” and they had been obliged to use force. On the other hand Tzonov might decide it was best if Nathan disappeared altogether, presumed “fled to the West”; in which event his riddled body could be dumped into a deep ravine somewhere, and no chance of any blame ever attaching to Turkur Tzonov. Anything, in order to stop Nathan falling into the “wrong” hands, to prevent his (in any case doubtful) return to Sunside/Starside, or to exact a measure of vengeance in repayment for a bruised ego and a few days of intense embarrassment. But a man’s life? It seemed a lot of repayment to Siggi.

She’d tried arguing with herself, tried telling herself that she too would benefit from Nathan’s death (for dead men can’t, after all, tell tales). But damn it to hell, she’d
known
him however briefly, and been
changed
by knowing him! She would never be able to erase him—the innocence of Nathan’s mind—from her memory now. She wouldn’t
want
to erase it.

So yesterday had dragged itself relentlessly by; the sky had unloaded its burden, and Siggi’s depression had returned to deepen like the snow in the pass …

Tzonov had arranged that she have dinner with him and his cronies. Siggi ate very little, kept her thoughts guarded from start to finish, sensed their hostility generally and suffered Alexei Yefros’s seething, deviantly carnal glances especially. She could sense the locator’s rabid weasel mind loathsomely at work behind his glittering black eyes where they stripped away her clothing, and she shuddered not so much because he wanted her, but for the ways in which he would like to use her.

Finally, the meal had been over and Siggi could flee back to her room. The day’s events had exhausted her, and though she was half afraid of sleep still she had no choice. Mercifully the previous night’s dreams (or visitations?) were not recurrent … at least, not until this morning. That was when she’d discovered that even wide awake, still one may nightmare.

The nightmare was this: that the bad weather was clearing and Tzonov anticipated that by 3:00
P.M
. the jet-copter would be cleared for take-off. He and Yefros had a lead on the fugitive and would search for him west of Kozhva, and Siggi would accompany them. Yefros would attempt to locate him (there was this weird aura about him, something numerical, with which he shielded his mind), and Siggi would home in on Yefros’s probe for a more positive identification. This shouldn’t prove too difficult for her, for as Tzonov delighted in reminding her, she’d already made Nathan’s “acquaintance”…

Now it was 4:00
P.M.
and Kozhva lay to the east more than fifty miles behind them; Tzonov was crammed up front with the pilot and co-pilot, and Siggi shared the passenger cabin with Alexei Yefros. His were the thoughts she studiously avoided, and his the probe she could sense sweeping out from him like ripples on a pool, or some personal psychic asdic, searching for Nathan’s fugitive identity.

Yefros was good. Over Kozhva, suddenly he had come alive and pointed out of a window in a direction a little south of west. “That way! He’s there! He throws off equations like a smokescreen, which only serve to give him away!”

But on Sunside
(Siggi had thought),
and especially in Starside, in that largely innumerate world
of vampires, such numbers would have cloaked him admirably. The Wamphyri home in on fear, sweat, and blood. Nathan’s numbers would appear as a screen of mental static to them.
A guess, still it fell only a little short of the mark. But here in this world:

Here it’s a traitor
(she continued to theorize),
a scent
for the hounds, spoor for the hunter.

Tzonov had been studying his small-scale map, complaining bitterly about its inaccuracies. But in a moment his eyes had narrowed. Fumbling his way back into the passenger cabin, he repeated Yefros: “West and a little south?” And stabbing a finger at the map. “You mean the Luza River, Izhma and Sizyabsko? And after that a lot of frozen marshland? Are you sure? But is he just running wild? There’s nothing there!”

Yefros had glanced at the map, then stared at it, and his weasel eyes had opened wide. “Izhma!” he’d gasped then. “
Izhma!
The new oil field!”

“Eh?”

“British and American engineers, Russian workers,” Yefros had continued. “They’re opening the place up. Big news a year or two ago, it promised riches galore. Another fine example of East-West cooperation; like the French hydroelectric scheme on the Volga. Hah! Foreign brains and Russian muscle. It makes me sick! But once a goal is achieved, people forget. The day is coming when we’ll kick all of these bastards out, and then it will all be ours.”

“British and Amer …” Tzonov’s mouth had fallen open. “And they’re still there?”

“About all that is there!” Yefros had told him.

Then Tzonov’s eyes had bulged as he dug a scrap of paper from his pocket, balled it in his fist and tossed it aside, and Siggi had supposed it was Trask’s Mobius Strip sketch. Confirming her suspicion: “Ahhh—
Trask!”
Tzonov had snarled. “Damn the smart bastard! A sprat to catch a mackerel!”

Or a “red” herring?
Siggi had kept the thought to herself.

“Damn him to hell!” Tzonov had been furious. “He threw me off the track, at least until you and the others got here. But do you see? The alien isn’t heading for Leipzig or the Romanian Gate. No, he’s heading for London, England … via Izhma! Or at least, he
thinks
he is.”

Then he’d gone up front to speak to the pilot, and Siggi had been left alone with Yefros. But the locator’s mind was on his job; as the jet-copter forged west, he probed ahead; Siggi was able to relax a little and not worry what he was thinking about when his eyes met hers. For a while at least…

Fifteen minutes later, Tzonov’s shout had reached back from the cockpit: “We have another aircraft on our screens; on the radio, too. Swedish, and the pilot has just requested permission to land at the Izhma Projekt. He’s landing there, right now!”

Siggi had felt things coming to a head. Tzonov was busy; Yefros, too, doing his own thing. She grasped the opportunity of the moment and sent her thoughts speeding ahead. For after all, that was what she was here for, what she was supposed to be doing. But now she felt that she must confirm or deny Tzonov’s suspicions, if only to relieve her own tension. Except there was no relief for he was right: Nathan was dead ahead. And not only Nathan but also …

“A locator,” Yefros had shouted. “Chung! I’d know that probe of his anywhere. They’re converging, the alien and this British esper dog. Turkur, you’re right. That chopper is here to lift our quarry out!”

In the cockpit, Tzonov had cursed and snapped a command at the pilot; vanes tilting forward, the jet-copter had raced west. But too late.

The frontier town of Izhma had blurred by below, and a series of wooden bridges crossing a frozen river. Then marsh and forest; and down in the woods, Siggi had spied Gypsy caravans trundling south. But up ahead … only two more miles to the Izhma Projekt, its skeletal derricks already clearly visible on the grey horizon. And rising up from a smoky huddle of cabins and construction shacks where the black scar of a pipeline sprawled like a dark metal snake in the woods, a powerful jet-copter with Swedish ID, rapidly gaining altitude.

It had been on the ground for no more than ten to fifteen minutes: scarcely time to unload anything, but more than enough to take on a passenger. Modern and built for speed, the Swede would have no trouble outdistancing its dated Russian counterpart. But in any case, what good would it do to chase it?

Finally the recent past caught up with the present. To Siggi … it felt so unreal! Things had happened so fast, it came as a genuine shock to realize that she was here—right here and now, with Tzonov and Yefros—holding her breath as Nathan escaped for the second time. She couldn’t be mistaken; she
knew
he was aboard the Swedish aircraft. His numbers vortex felt so close it was almost visible in the eye of her mind, swirling like the foreign jet-copter’s exhaust as its blades retracted into their housing and its thrusters rotated from the vertical to the horizontal. Then:

“Are we armed?” That was Tzonov, screaming at the pilot. And the pilot looking at him as though he were mad. Of course they weren’t armed. This was a military machine, true, but it belonged to E-Branch, not to the Army or Airforce. Its weapon systems had been stripped on handover. Tzonov must know that, surely? He did, but on this occasion he’d actually
wanted
to be wrong!

And if they had been armed? What then?

Siggi felt sick. Tzonov wasn’t just a radical but radically insane, she was sure of that now. She looked out through her flexon window and watched the Swedish machine picking up speed, racing west into a lowering sky. And on impulse, opening her mind, she sent after it:

Good luck, Nathan.
If the Szgany have a god, I’m sure he will be with you.

All she got back was a whirling confusion of thoughts. No numbers vortex now, for Nathan had other things to think about. In his own world a majority of flying things were creatures to fear, and in this one? For the moment at least, he was no less afraid of the jet-copter. She tried again, and fired one last deep-penetrating thought: