The Last Aerie (89 page)

Suddenly, Nathan’s blood was running cold. Sensing that something was wrong, he reached out a telepathic probe. There were other minds in the vicinity, but strange minds and furtive! Recently, Nathan had used telepathy in partial conjunction with deadspeak. Instinctively, he switched to the latter mode—

And the confused, astonished, utterly terrified minds of his minders were there! They were dead!

He stepped to the tree and round it. There, sitting in the sun with his shirt open, the chest of the man on the ground was drenched in blood; he sat in a pool of his own blood! His eyes and mouth were open in a frozen gasp, but a second mouth gaped scarlet under his chin and Adam’s apple. Nathan didn’t need to look at the one in the car …

Zek!
He aimed a probe towards the beach.

Nathan!
She was there at once, saw what was in his mind—the monstrous picture he painted—and added her own knowledge to it.
A man—no, two men—in the water. They must have got here in the caïque. They have spearguns, and their thoughts are murderous! They’re under orders … from Turkur Tzonov!

There are others here
, he told her
. In the trees.
I’m coming.
And he raced for the beach …

In the Greek Islands it was 1:45
P.M.
but at E-Branch HQ, London, it was two hours earlier and the cadaverous Ian Goodly had just stepped out of the elevator. As he did so, he reeled, gasped, and clutched at his temples.

David Chung was in the corridor. He grabbed Goodly’s arm, supported him, said: “Ian, what is it?”

“H-Harry’s room!” the other rasped.

“Yeah,” Chung nodded, licking suddenly dry lips. “Me too!”

They went there, and met the empath Geoff Smart coming the other way. Smart’s face was drawn, eyes startled, hands shaking as he hurried up to them. “I …” he began. But:

“We know,” they told him, almost in one voice.

In Harry’s room, Goodly told Chung, “I saw you plugging in the computer. You, me, Geoff, we were all here. And it’s now. I mean, you have to do it now!”

Chung said, “It’s Nathan’s earring.” He showed it to them. “You can’t see it, but it’s
vibrating
in the palm of my hand. I … I’ve never had signs so clear before. But I’m damned if I know what it means!”

“Plug in the machine,” Smart said, “and maybe we’ll find out.”

And as Chung made to do so, Goodly said: “I don’t think Nathan ever used the computer after that last time—the time it used itself! I don’t think he dared. He said something to me once about ‘saving what was left of it’. But I’m still not sure what he meant.”

The screen blazed into life and Chung fell away from the socket, sprawling on the floor. And on the screen, the numbers vortex blazed into life! Golden equations rotated, calculi careened, common numbers collided in a frenzy of motion! And all in brilliant yellow or glowing gold, against a jet-black background. But in the next moment the picture slowed, and froze! One massive, incredible calculation remained, but such a calculation that no one in the room could even conceive of the question, let alone the answer.

Then…

That answer revealed itself as the symbols flowed together and fused, forming a three-dimensional shape—a golden dart—which sped from the screen like a fish jumping from water. It was some kind of hologram, or a computer graphic brought to life: a mass of electrical motes hanging in mid-air, forming that translucent and patently insubstantial spike shape. But however faint and transient-seeming the thing might seem, still it was real!

For a brief moment the dart paused, hovered, then sped in a blur of motion out
through
the wall and was gone. And before a man of the three could move, the computer exploded! Blowing apart in a flash of fire and a shower of hot plastic and electrical sparks, it left the three espers staggered, mouths gaping, cringing back from the reeking, black-smoking mess of the console …

Something plucked at Nathan’s shirt-sleeve as he raced across the pebble beach, and a moment later he heard the
phut! phut!
exclamations of a silenced automatic. Zek was running towards him along the beach; behind her, one man was in the water and the other climbing up onto dry land. They were in silver wet-suits and carried spearguns.

There was only one avenue of escape: towards the northern end of the beach. Nathan angled his low-crouching lope to meet up with Zek where she headed that way. But as more bullets zipped overhead, he knew they weren’t going to make it. Both ends of the beach were closed off by rocky spurs that sloped gradually into the sea. The rocks were sharp and dangerous; climbing, the pair would be slowed down; they would make excellent targets against the black volcanic rock.

“Into the water!” Nathan shouted. He knew Zek could swim like a fish, and it seemed their only possible route. Hearing him and tearing off her dress, she launched herself across the tide-line and hit the water in a long low dive. And in another moment Nathan joined her. Back along the beach, the wetsuited man on the rocks slid back into the water.

“Hard as you can go,” Nathan gasped.

Get rid of your trousers
, she told him, cool as a breeze in his mind. Zek was no stranger to dangerous situations. Now that the emotional times were behind her, she could think like the old Zek again.
You can’t swim well in trousers
.

But Nathan was no stranger to danger either. “I already got rid of them.”

Then use telepathy. You can’t swim and
talk, but you can swim and think”

Bullets plucked small spouts of water up from the millpond surface close by. And:
Dive!
he told her.

It was no good and they both knew it. The men in wetsuits were already narrowing down the distance; they wore fins, which powered them through the water. And on the beach, two more men in grey suits were sighting along the barrels of squat, ugly, silenced automatics. They could hear the thoughts of all four, which were cold, emotionless, deadly. These were professionals of a high order, and so far the fugitives had been lucky.

Coming up for air, Nathan saw large silver shapes cutting white wakes on the glittering surface. And the men on the beach were shouting directions to their colleagues in the water. This wasn’t going to last much longer. There were more muffled gunshots, and something sliced a groove in the rounded muscle of Nathan’s shoulder. Blood splashed among the blue.

He felt no pain but gritted his teeth anyway, and asked:
Are you OK?

Yes.
But he knew she wasn’t, knew that she was very nearly exhausted.

Then dive again.

Surprise and shock had conspired to rob them of their natural energies. This would be the last time they went down, and they probably wouldn’t be coming up again. As Zek upended and headed for the bottom, she saw black flippers sliding under the surface only a short distance away …

On the beach, the two ex-KGB men saw their prey dive for the second time, glanced at each other and nodded a mutual affirmation. It was very nearly over. Then, as one of them put away his gun, the other sniffed sharply, wrinkled up his nose and said:

“Shit! I smell shit … or something. We must be close to a sewage outfall.”

The other shrugged. “So it won’t matter a hell of a lot if we add to it, right? Those two are done for.” He inclined his head towards the sea. “Weighted down, it won’t take very long for them to turn to slop out there.”

A hand fell on the speaker’s shoulder and he jumped six inches, then fell into a half-crouch as he turned and brought up his gun. But even as he had moved, he’d seen that hand—those shrivelled, dirt-ingrained, black-nailed fingers—and he’d
smelled
them!

Behind the killers, a handful of figures came stumbling down the beach from the graveyard. Their leader was Jazz Simmons, but a Jazz long gone into corruption, and one who had known what it meant when Nathan’s minders had come suddenly among the Great Majority.

And now through the trees, those minders, too, were on their feet and running for the beach. Running, yes, and full of purpose. For their muscles weren’t wasted like the others and they still had a job to do; and what they’d done in life they would continue to do in death. One of them with a pair of bloody holes through his jacket and heart, the other grinning ear to ear—but grinning hideously—with the mouth in his face and one other, larger mouth in his throat! But on the beach:

Phut!—phut!—phut!
Three bullets went through the rotten substance of Jazz at close range. And the man who fired them going:
“Urk! Yaaaghh! Akkk!”
as the grimy bones of one of Jazz’s skeletal hands tightened on his windpipe, forcing him to his knees. Then … Jazz took the gun from him and thrust its silenced barrel into his gaping mouth as far as it would go—and pulled the trigger.

And the other thug, splashed with his Comrade’s blood and brains, gibbering and flailing where he retreated into the sea, finally tripping and going under as a host of shroud-clad avengers fell on him, sat on him, held him down where his air came belching to the surface in a gush of frothing bubbles. They’d sit there, mute but determined, until the bubbles stopped and the figure on the bottom lay motionless.

And they did …

While out in the bay where the water was deep:

Nathan and Zek had got separated. He found himself diving into a weed-festooned crevice, while she hid between boulders on a pebbly bottom and looked back the way they’d come. Their pursuers were there, searching, unrelenting, cold. Nathan had disturbed a small school of golden bream, which scattered magically to avoid him. And he’d also disturbed a large grouper, whose sudden, startled motion filled the crevice with a mushrooming cloud of silt.

One of the men in wetsuits saw the eruption of muck from the crevice and came nosing, speargun held to the fore. Nathan needed air; he couldn’t stay in here any longer; he had to make a run for it. But run? He couldn’t even swim! He was done for. He drifted up out of the crevice and into full view of whoever might be waiting for him. He felt naked.

There had been times in the past when Nathan had used the numbers vortex to hide himself. Now, instinctively—despite that it wouldn’t work, because it wasn’t a physical device but of the mind—he brought it into being in his head; and as he did so saw a strange thing.

Hovering just above the gash in the rocks, the regrouped school of golden bream swung nervously this way and that. And one of them wasn’t a fish but … a dart? The thing tilted in the water, seemed to aim its point at Nathan, sprang towards him. It struck him in the forehead even as he jerked back his head, but he felt nothing! Until a moment later, when he felt …
something
.

He saw the numbers vortex in the eye of his mind; saw it freeze, form a wall of numbers; saw the numbers dissolve into a shape, an oblong, a door! He could see it, but he knew that no one else could. For even as it formed, water rushed into and through it, and several of the golden bream passed through and were gone. One of Harry’s doors, yes: a Mobius door!

The man with the speargun came speeding, trailing his gun to slipstream his body, then beginning to draw his gun arm up and forward. Caught in the rush of water, he shot forward into the door. At which precise moment, amazed by what was happening, Nathan relaxed his grip on the thing.

The door closed, disappeared … but the thug had passed only half-way through. And the water turned red as the lower half of his body gave a massive shudder and stopped dead in the water, then slowly began settling for the bottom. As the lower torso sank, trailing weird strings of guts and organs, so a ring of silver wetsuit vest detached itself and floated away. A severed hand was visible, too, drifting in the pink cloud, releasing the speargun and posing like a strange five-fingered fish in the water …

Nathan! It’s … over!
It was Zek, her thoughts filled with despair, terror, a sense of tragedy, the knowledge that soon she, too, would be able to speak to Jazz. And it pulled Nathan out of his shock.

The speargun was sinking. He grabbed it, turned in the water, saw a trail of bubbles descending into dark deeps. She was down there, drowning, dying, but she was also in his mind, her agony. And it didn’t have to be. He didn’t have to let it be.

With every last ounce of strength, Nathan kicked for the bottom. Two strokes of his free arm, three, and they came into view. The thug could have shot her, but he’d dropped his gun and was satisfied to hold her down and drown her. No, he was more than satisfied—he took pleasure in it.

Nathan was behind him, but there was no cowardice in it when he shot the man in his back. It was simply a matter of expedience, for Zek was drowning. Jerking spastically, forming a backwards-bending bow of agony, the thug released Zek’s limp body and spiraled feebly into the deeps, kicking up mud and weeds as he went.

Nathan was all in; he reached Zek, grabbed her, and conjured the numbers vortex … and froze it in a pattern which would soon become all too familiar. A door formed, sucked at the pressured water, and sucked Zek and Nathan in, too.

And at last he was there,
in
the Mobius Continuum!

Darkness!

Nothing!

Drowning!

Where to go?
How
to go?

Space without stars, without time …
without
space! And a gush of salt water emptying
out
of Nathan’s mouth … blobs of water, great spheres of it, colliding with him, wobbling like jelly in the absence of gravity. But in the distance—oh, far, far away—a point of golden light. Whether it was there physically or merely in his tortured mind, Nathan didn’t know, couldn’t say. But clutching Zek’s limp body to him, he struck out for it, fell towards it. It grew bigger, brighter. It was a shape. It was
this
shape: