To Rescue Tanelorn (23 page)

The music echoed over the water. Although he was careful not to show any lights, Jerry could be heard half a mile away; but when he saw the faint outline of the coast ahead, he switched off the radio.

After a while his father’s fake Le Corbusier château came in sight, a large six-storey building with that quaint, dated appearance that all the “futuristic” buildings of the twenties and thirties had. This château had a dash of German expressionism in its architecture to boot.

To Jerry the house symbolized the very spirit of transience, and he enjoyed the feeling he got from looking at its silhouette, much as he sometimes enjoyed listening to last year’s hits. The house stood, in its corny old way, on the very edge of a cliff that curved steeply above the nearest village, some four miles distant. A searchlight was trained on the house, making it look rather like some grotesque war memorial. Jerry knew the house was staffed by a small private army of German mercenaries, men who were as much part of the past as the house and yet intratemporally reflected something of the spirit of the 1970s.

It was November 196–, however, as Jerry cut the engine and drifted on the current he knew would carry him towards the cliff beneath the house.

The cliff was worse than sheer. It sloped outward about a hundred feet up and was loaded with alarm devices. Not even Wolfe could have taken it. The nature of the cliff was to Jerry Cornelius an advantage, for it hid his boat from the TV scanners in the house. The radar did not sweep low enough to find his launch, but the TV cameras were trained on any likely place where someone might attempt a landing. But Jerry’s brother Frank didn’t know of the secret entrance.

He moored the boat to the cliff by means of the powerful suction cups he’d brought for the purpose. The cups had metal rings in them, and Jerry tied his mooring lines to the rings. He would be away again before the tide went out.

Part of the cliff was made of plastic. Cornelius tapped lightly on it, waiting a couple of moments as it inched inward and a gaunt, anxious face peered out at him. It was the face of a lugubrious Scot, Jerry’s old servant and mentor, John Gnatbeelson.

“Ah, sir!”

The face retreated, leaving the entrance clear.

“Is she all right, John?” Jerry asked as he eased himself into the metal-walled cubicle behind the plastic door. John Gnatbeelson stepped backward and then forward to close the door. He was about six feet four, a gangling man with almost non-existent cheekbones and a wisp of chin whiskers. He wore an old Norfolk jacket and corduroy trousers. His bones seemed barely joined together, and he moved loosely like a badly controlled puppet.

“She’s not dead, sir, I think,” Gnatbeelson assured Jerry. “It’s fine to see you, sir. I hope you’ve returned for good this time, sir, to kick that brother of yours out of our house.” He glared into the middle distance. “He has…had…” The old man’s eyes filled with tears.

“Cheer up, John. What’s he been doing now?”

“That’s what I don’t know, sir. I just haven’t been allowed to see Miss Catherine for the past week.
He
says she’s sleeping. Sleeping. What kind of sleep lasts for a week, sir?”

“Could be a number of kinds.” Jerry spoke calmly enough. “Drugs, I expect.”

“God knows he uses enough of them himself, sir. He lives on them. All he ever eats is bars of chocolate.”

“Catherine wouldn’t use sleepers voluntarily, I shouldn’t think.”

“She never would, sir.”

“Is she still in her old rooms?”

“Yes, sir. But there’s a guard on the door.”

“Have you prepared for that?”

“I have, but I am worried.”

“Of course you are. And you’ve switched off the master control for this entrance?”

“It seemed unnecessary, sir, but I have done it.”

“Better safe than sorry, John.”

“I suppose so, aye. But there again, it would only be a matter of time before…”

“It’s all a matter of time, John. Let’s get going. If the control’s dead, we won’t be able to use the lift.”

“No, sir. We must climb.”

“Off we go, then.”

They left the metal chamber and entered a similar, slightly larger one. John lit the way with his torch. A lift cage became visible, the shaft rising above it. Paralleling the cables and running up one side into the darkness was a metal ladder. John tucked the torch into the waistband of his trousers and stepped back. Jerry reached the ladder and began to climb.

They went up in silence for more than fifty feet until they stood at the top of the shaft. Ahead of them were five entrances to corridors. They took the central entrance. The corridor twisted and turned for a long time. It formed part of a complicated maze and, even though the two men were familiar with it, they sometimes hesitated at various turnings and forks.

Eventually, and with some relief, they entered a white, neon-lighted room, which housed a small control console. The Scotsman went to the panel and clicked a switch. A red light above the panel went off and a green one went on. Dials quivered, and several monitor screens focused on various parts of the route they had just taken. Views of the room at the bottom of the shaft, the shaft itself, the corridors in the maze—now brilliantly lit—came and went on the screens. The equipment operated in silence.

On the door leading out of the room was a fairly large ovoid of a milky greenish colour. John pressed his palm against it. Responding to the palm print, which it recognized, the door slid open. They entered a short tunnel, which led them to an identical door. This John opened in the same way.

Now they stood in a dark library. Through a transparent wall to their right they could see the sea, like black marble streaked with veins of grey and white.

Most of the other three walls were covered with shelves of pink fibreglass. They were filled mainly with paperbacks. The half-dozen or so books bound in leather and titled in gold stood out incongruously. John shone his light on them and smiled at Jerry, who was embarrassed.

“They’re still there, sir. He doesn’t often come here; otherwise he might have got rid of them. Not that it would matter that much, for I have another set.”

Jerry winced and looked at the books. One of the titles was
Time-Search Through the Declining West
by Jeremiah Cornelius, MAHS; another was called
Toward the Ultimate Paradox,
and beside it was
The Ethical Simulation.
Jerry felt he was right to be embarrassed.

Part of the library wall, naturally enough, was false. It swung back to show a white metal door and a button. Jerry pressed the button and the door opened.

Another lift cage.

John stooped and picked up a small case before they got in and went up. It was one of the few lifts in the house that, as far as they knew, did not register on one of the many control panels located in the château.

On the sixth floor the lift stopped, and John opened the door and looked cautiously out. The landing was empty. They both left the lift, and the door (a wall-length painting reminiscent of Picasso at his latest and tritest) slid back into place.

The room they wanted was in a passage off the main landing. They walked silently to the corner, glanced round, and ducked back again.

They had seen the guard. He had an automatic rifle crooked in his arm. He was a big, fat German with the appearance of a eunuch. He had looked very wakeful—hoping, perhaps, for an opportunity to use his Belgian gun.

Now John opened the case he’d been carrying. He took out a small steel crossbow, very modern and beautifully made, and handed it to Jerry Cornelius. Jerry held it in one hand, waiting for the moment when the guard would look completely away from him. Shortly, the man’s attention shifted towards the window at the end of the passage.

Jerry stepped out, aimed the crossbow, and pulled the trigger. But the guard had heard him and jumped. The bolt grazed his neck. There was only one bolt.

As the guard began to bring up his gun, Jerry ran towards him and grabbed the fingers of his right hand, hauling them off the gun. One finger snapped. The guard gurgled and his mouth gaped, showing that he was tongueless. He kicked at Jerry as John came in with a knife, missed his neck, and stabbed him through the left eye. The blade went in for almost its entire six inches, driving downward and coming out just below the left ear. As the German’s CNS packed it in, his body was momentarily paralyzed.

It softened as Jerry lowered it to the floor; he reached down and slid the knife out of the German’s face, handing it to John, who was as limp as the corpse.

“Get away from here, John,” Jerry muttered. “If I make it, I’ll see you in the cliff room.”

As John Gnatbeelson rolled off, Jerry turned the handle of the door. It was of the conventional kind, and the key was in the lock. He turned the key when the door resisted. The door opened. Jerry took the key out of the lock. Inside the room he closed the door quietly and locked it again.

He stood in a woman’s bedroom.

The heavy curtains were drawn across the big windows. The place smelled of stale air and misery. He crossed the familiar room and found the bedside lamp, switching it on.

Red light filled the place. A beautiful girl lay in a pale dress on the bed. Her features were delicate and resembled his own. Her black hair was tangled. Her small breasts rose and fell jerkily, and her breathing was shallow. She was not sleeping at all naturally. Jerry looked for hypodermic marks and found them in her upper right arm. Plainly she hadn’t used a needle on herself. Frank had done that.

Jerry stroked her bared shoulder. “Catherine.” He bent down and kissed her cold, soft lips, caressing her. Anger, self-pity, despair, passion were all there then, flooding up to the surface, and for once he didn’t stop them. “Catherine.”

She didn’t move. Jerry was crying now. His body trembled. He tried to control the trembling and failed. He gripped her hand, and it was like holding hands with a corpse. He tightened his grip, as if hoping pain would wake her. Then he dropped it and stood up.

“The shit!”

He pulled the curtains back from the windows and opened them. The night air blew away the odour in the room.

On her dressing-table there were no cosmetics, only bottles of drugs and several hypodermics.

The labels on the bottles were in Frank’s tiny printing. Frank had been experimenting.

Outside, someone shouted and began to bang on the metal door. He stared at it uncomprehendingly for a moment, then crossed to it and shot bolts at top and bottom.

A sharper, colder voice interrupted the yelling.

“What’s the trouble? Has someone been boorish enough to enter Miss Catherine’s room without her permission?”

It was Frank’s voice, and Frank doubtless guessed that his brother Jerry was in the room.

There were confused shouts from the guards, and Frank had to raise his voice. “Whoever you are, you’ll suffer for invading my sister’s privacy. You can’t get out. If she’s harmed or disturbed in any way, you won’t die for a long time, I promise. But you’ll wish you could.”

“As corny as ever, Frank!” Jerry shouted back. “I know you know it’s me—and I know you’re shit-scared. I’ve more right here than you. I own this house!”

“Then you should have stayed and not turned it over to me and Catherine. I meant what I said, Jerry!”

“Send your Krauts off and come in and talk it over. All I want is Catherine.”

“I’m not that naïve. You’ll never know what I fed her, Jerry. Only I can wake her up. It’s like magic, isn’t it? She’s well turned on. If I turned her off now, you wouldn’t be so keen on hopping into bed with her after ten minutes.” Frank laughed. “You’d need a dose of what I’ve got out here before you’d feel up to it—and then you wouldn’t want it any more. You can’t have your fix and make it, Jerry!”

Frank was in high spirits. Jerry wondered what he’d found to pep him up. Frank was always after a new synthesis and, as a good chemist, usually came up with a nice new habit every so often. Was it the same stuff as Catherine had in her veins right now? Probably not.

“Throw in your needle and come in with your veins clear, Frank,” Jerry shouted back, joining in the spirit of the thing. He took something out of his pocket and waited, but Frank didn’t seem willing to rise to this. Bullets began to rattle on the door. They’d soon stop as the ricochets got too much for Frank. They stopped.

Jerry went to the bed and heaved his sister off it. Then he put her down again. It was no good. He wouldn’t have a chance of getting out with her. He’d have to leave her and hope that Frank’s mind didn’t turn to thoughts of murder. It was unlikely. Slow death was the only good kind in Frank’s book.

From the inside pocket of his coat Jerry brought out a flat box like a snuff box. He opened it. There were two small filters there. He packed one into each nostril and clamped his mouth shut, sealing it with some surgical tape from another pocket.

Then he unbolted the door and slowly turned the key. He opened the door slightly. Frank stood some distance away, talking to four of his stormtroopers. Frank’s skin was grey, drawn over his near-fleshless skeleton like a lifeless film of plastic. They hadn’t yet noticed that the door was open.

Jerry tossed the neurade into the passage. They saw it fall. Only Frank recognized the nerve grenade for what it was, and he dashed off down the passage without stopping to give the guards the benefit of his knowledge.

Jerry stepped swiftly out of the room and closed the door tight behind him. The guards tried to aim at him, but the gas was already working. As they jerked like epileptics and fell down to bounce about spasmodically on the floor, Jerry gave them an amused, appreciative glance.

Jerry Cornelius went after Frank Cornelius and saw Frank pushing the button of the lift that went down to the library. When Frank saw Jerry, he swore and ran towards the end of the passage and the stairs. Jerry decided that he didn’t want Frank alive any more, and he drew out his needle pistol. The air pistol could hold a magazine of a hundred sliver bullets and was just as effective at short range as any small-calibre pistol—and far more accurate. Neither was it messy. Its only drawback was that it had to be repressured after every volley.