The Touch Page 23

  Beneficial, yes; even as the creature which now descended upon him in his bed, entering him through his breathing. Scott experienced it—felt the thing permeating his being, his mind—in its oh-so-gentle search . . . for what? For his memories!

  He was downstairs in his study, five or six months ago. He stood there in the centre of the floor, looking at the room and knowing it as an old friend. He turned in a slow circle, taking everything in. The pictures and photographs on the walls, books and bric-a-brac on their shelves, varnished wooden trays, word processor and memo pad on his desk . . . and a unique paperweight that Kelly had given him as a Christmas present: a tight spiral of polished, pre-decimal British coins encased in a clear plastic hemisphere two and a half inches in diameter!

  His old-money paperweight, yes: there one minute, gone the next! That was what was missing! And something in his head made him promise to remember it when he was awake.

  Then the creature in Scott’s mind detached itself; it made a silent, painless exit, leaving him to drift back to the present—

  —Where as so often before in his dreams, Kelly was in bed with him. He felt her warmth, turned on his side, draped an arm across her lower back, fingers extended across her left buttock. She was very still; still as a marble statue. Then she stirred, turned on her back, and his hand slid across her belly. Her arm slipped gently under his head until she cradled him against her breast. Her shape, the way she fitted against him . . . this could only be Kelly, definitely. And warm, pliant, soft to his touch, she smelled wonderful—

  —Too wonderful . . . ?

  And she didn’t smell like Kelly!

  Scott jerked awake, quickly drew apart from Shania who was also awake—wide awake!—looked across the weft of her dusky hair at the alarm clock’s luminous figures, and saw that it was 3:33.

  But of course it was . . .

  Downstairs in their dressing gowns (Shania wore one of Kelly’s), they sipped coffee, and after a while she tentatively inquired, “Do you feel refreshed?”

  Scott had said nothing so far. But while preparing their drinks the fog of sleep had cleared from his mind, allowing him to come more properly awake and aware, and he’d thought through his peculiar dreams. Now he said, “Yes. I’ve had something over four hours sleep, which is about as good as I’ve been averaging lately. But let’s not worry about that; instead I want to know what happened up there.” He lifted his chin to indicate the upstairs rooms, and more especially his bedroom.

  “Something happened?” Trying to sound innocent, she failed miserably.

  “You know very well it did,” he answered. “In fact, several things happened and another thing might have. It’s possible I’m sorry it didn’t, but if it had . . . well, I’m sure that would have confused things even further. But I’m not talking about that. I want to know about my dreams, because I don’t think one of them was a dream! I’m talking about something that got into me, something that knew my thoughts and unlocked my memories. Something you sent to me. But was it just you, your telepathy—or was it something else?”

  Shania sighed, looked away for a moment, and said, “Scott, do you remember I told you there would be things you’d believe, and others that you might not, which perhaps you wouldn’t want to believe?”

  “You said something like that, yes,” he said.

  “Well, you are right: I did send you a dream. Or rather, I thought it and you dreamed it. A dream about—”

  “About Shing and its people,” Scott cut in. “Your people?”

  “Yes,” she said. “It was easier, and quicker, to show than to tell.”

  “And their shapes—those shapes I saw—are your shape?”

  “Their shapes are many shapes, almost any shape, as determined by the circumstances, the situation.” Suddenly she looked anxious. “Did you find them unpleasant?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “I found them . . . very appealing, in their way. Their eyes and their graceful movements: somehow they reminded me of dolphins. A certain warmth, a friendliness, and an incredible intelligence. But it’s very obvious that when you travelled to other worlds you disguised yourselves in imitation of the actual inhabitants. In short, the Shing’t are shape-shifters who daren’t show themselves in their true form. Either that or they are spies manipulating worlds to their own design; perhaps sleepers, preparing alien worlds for conquest.”

  Shania shook her head in denial. “Unthinkable!” she said. “Well, except to someone who lives on a world where such a monstrous scenario is all too thinkable!”

  Scott ignored the implications of that one and said, “But it is one possible scenario: an acceptable conclusion from the point of view of someone who surely has a right to feel uncertain about Shing’t motives—such as myself.”

  “A very narrow-minded conclusion,” she replied, “from the point of view of someone who is only here to help you, such as myself! But let me put you straight and explain that as well as one of the highest life-forms we were also one of the basest—biologically speaking, that is. To ‘disguise’ ourselves, as you put it, is one of our simplest skills. In the earliest of times we were like your chameleons; no, not as lizards, but having the same camouflaging abilities. In the threatening silence of primitive, predatory forests, we conversed by gestures, by sympathetic motions and empathic feelings, often over great distances; all of which evolved into the telepathic abilities I use today. All of my kind had these skills . . . when I had all of my kind.”

  Scott nodded thoughtfully. “The first time you came here, came into my bedroom and woke me up, I thought you were Kelly. Because you looked like Kelly. And the same last night while I was sleeping. But you were wide awake.”

  Again Shania sighed, then bit her lip as any woman might. “In Kelly’s study,” she said, “there sits a glass with Kelly’s lipstick on its rim. Hairs from Kelly’s head are trapped in the curtains. A piece of broken fingernail rests in a groove in the casing of her typewriter. Only stir the clothes in her closet, Kelly’s breath floats in the air. Her DNA is everywhere. I can be Kelly—but I would not go so far. Only far enough that you would accept me. As for last night . . . well, we are both lonely creatures.”

  Scott softened, drew her down onto his sofa, sat with his arm around her while she snuggled close. But then he frowned and said, “Yes, but there is something else. There was some kind of ceremony—a weird sort of, I don’t know, baptism?—where a Shing’t child was given what seemed to be a blessing before being introduced to a semisolid parasite thing.”

  Shania stiffened, narrowed her eyes. “A parasite? Are you talking about the Khiff? The Khiff is no parasite but an entity from a primitive gravity layer. There they are as nothing: mere plankton in the gravitic oceans, moving with the currents, with nowhere to settle. There they have no sentience—no intelligent substance at all in that unthinkable environment—only the most basic instinct for survival. In your world a tuft of grass knows more of being than the Khiff in theirs.”

  Scott’s frown deepened. “Oh, really? But the thing that was in my head knew things. It knew how to dig into my past, how to show me things I might otherwise have forgotten; things such as the paperweight that’s missing from my study. Also, I’m willing to bet that it was real and that it was yours: your Khiff. Tell me, do all of your people get these creatures as young ones?”

  “They used to, yes,” Shania answered, and her eyes were as sad as can be, beginning to film over with welling tears. “When my people were, then they had the Khiff.”

  But Scott was relentless. “And last night, that thing that entered me was yours?”

  “Of course. Didn’t I tell you we could solve the riddle of what was missing from your study later?”

  “By using your Khiff?”

  “Yes,” she answered, dabbing away a tear. “At least let me explain—”

  But Scott was already asking, “So why didn’t you just show me?”

  Shania sat up straighter, tossed her head, and flashed her eyes. “Because
you had made it perfectly clear that you already thought of me as . . . as an alien! Well then, should I exacerbate your xenophobia by showing you that which would seem to make me more alien yet? Tell me, Scott: have I harmed you in any way? I have not. Nor would I, ever. I only came to save you—to save your entire human race—and I deserve better treatment! As for my Khiff: she is not some kind of freak I would put on display. She has been my lifelong companion, adviser, friend, the keeper of my thoughts, my memories. You will never see her, for she is also my guide, my conscience and innermost self.”

  Through all of this Shania’s mind was open—she had laid it bare, as if it were her soul—and everything she’d said was the solid truth. Scott took her in his arms, which for a moment she resisted, until he thought: God, you are so very beautiful! And I’m sorry I’m being such an awkward bastard to deal with.

  And still you don’t know everything, she answered him. “In fact you know so little. And there are many things that I don’t know—and that you don’t know—not even about you!”

  It was almost 4:30 and Scott said, “Too late to go back to bed. I have to be at the airport by 8:30. I’ll take a taxi. But meanwhile we have a couple of hours spare. So if you’re willing to talk, or think, I’m willing to listen. Why not tell me about the Mordri Three? For I think I should know as much as there is to know about someone I hope to kill!”

  She nodded. “That is my duty, too—to terminate three ultimately deviant shing’t lives—but it’s the only way.” She gave a small shudder. “The Mordri Three must die, yes. Too late to save four other worlds, but at least I must try to save this one.”

  This one, meaning Scott’s world: Earth.

  And the way she said it—so matter-of-factly so coldly, and yet so earnestly—he felt an involuntary shiver run up and down his spine. And:

  “Well then,” he said, more urgently now, “let’s get to it. I’m listening . . .”

  “Understand,” said Shania, “that each Shing’t Three had its own area of endeavour; from the study of microorganisms and insects to astrophysics and gravity wells. Some went out to alien planets in the search for strange life-forms; others were satisfied to remain on the home world, piecing together our broken histories; even the Meaning of Colours and the Evolution of Time were subjects for intensive study. Only let a person so much as allude to an unknown or esoteric area of learning and a Three Unit would emerge into being prepared to give its all in striving to understand it. There were in existence so many Three Units that every facet of all known and accepted—and one or two imagined—sciences came under scrutiny. So with the Khiff to assist us, is it any wonder that our technologies advanced at such a rate; our scientific achievements following one upon the other, until we truly believed that almost all was known? Except, of course, that just as the universe is as infinite as the ebb and flow of its gravity waves, so is it impossible to know everything.

  “As for the Khiff: it is reckoned that the first of their kind came to us from the gravitic flux at the time of the first space war. As I’ve mentioned, several physicist Three Units got together to devise a gravity weapon. Upon penetrating a certain unstable sublevel or layer, they freed a large number of Khiff onto Shing.

  “They were vacant, empty envelopes, but as Nature abhors a vacuum so these creatures from gravitic chaos appeared to abhor their own dullness, emptiness, and ignorance. Like iron filings they were drawn to the magnet minds of the Shing’t. They inhabited my people! At first the Shing’t were horrified, but eventually they saw the astonishing benefits of the Khiff, who took their name from the principal scientist of the Three Unit which discovered them—rather, who uncovered them—its One, whose given name was Khiff.

  “Incidentally, I was the second member of my Shania Unit, which is what made me Shania Two. My born name doesn’t matter; in your tongue it is barely pronounceable. What is more, I now accept that I’m St. John Two, but I know you prefer Shania . . .

  “Where was I? Ah, yes:

  “You are thinking, what has all this to do with the Mordri Three? Well, now we get to it.

  “The Mordris, after Gelka Mordri, or Mordri One—now Frau Gerda Lessing—were a specialized Three Unit studying twinned subjects. Physicists on the one hand, they also explored religions. And they had noted an obvious fact: that right across the Shing’t galaxy, and on every world that swore to a god or gods, in every case these gods were different! No two were alike. And they concluded that the only real ‘god’ was science itself. And, Scott, I know there are similar groups on your world who follow the same precept; also naturalists, who believe that Nature is the god, or goddess; and so on.

  “Now, I know I said ‘twinned’ subjects . . . but surely the physical universe could not be farther removed from the notion of some metaphysical Supreme Being? Oh, really? But couldn’t we also argue that with all of its diverse dimensions, its marvels and monstrosities, the utter impossibility of The All bursting into existence, from nothing, without that divine all-powerful hand, or tentacle, or mind? Thus, in the same way as a bar magnet’s poles are opposed yet joined, so the Mordri Three Unit’s studies encompassed both concepts, finally eschewing the one in favour of the other.

  “And of course their proposed Science-as-God doctrine was disavowed by every other Three Unit engaged in similar studies. What is more, the Mordri Three were challenged to prove their religious—or possibly irreligious?—theory.

  “They set about to do so—to search for a god—first by extracting from previously unplumbed gravity wells, such as the one which had produced the Khiff. They could not venture there, no one can; as well attempt to enter and survive the event horizon of a great black hole! But with their machines they could dip into such places and extract matter, antimatter, and other essences that your science has not as yet recognized. And they had conjectured that if indeed there was a God, then surely He must be one such essence. For He was nowhere discovered in all the worlds and dimensions they knew.

  “Believing they were safe from such extractions, that they could contain and study them at their will in their laboratory, the Mordri experimentations ventured into the very deepest gravitic levels, and eventually conjured into being that which was uncontrollable, which defied the restraints of their machinery. They were poisoned by nightmarish concepts, maddened by confusing thoughts, infected with delusions. In short, they were made to lose their minds, driven insane. And not only them but also their familiar creatures, who dwelled with and within them!

  “Placed in care, they escaped. But even mad they clung to their theories and were determined to prove that the notion of God was a fallacy, and only science was the True Supremacy. And how would they do that? In the most terrifying way imaginable. For if God was good, then evil was surely His enemy. Wherefore they would create universal evil, challenging God to oppose it, and by His failure proving His nonexistence!

  “And what could be more evil than the destruction of God’s worlds and entire races of sentient beings? Scott, my world was the first; Shing is no more. And three more planets since then, gone into atoms or shrivelled to dust. And Earth? Your Earth is next, unless you and I, and Wolf—our Three Unit, yes—can do something about it, something to stop it!

  “That is why I’m here. And that is our mission . . .”

  21

  In a cramped seat, on a package-holiday flight to Zante in the Ionian, Scott St. John found himself wondering what the hell he was doing here. In the midst of a cabin full of excited holiday-makers already decked out in brightly coloured garb—aware of their chatter, and grimacing at the occasional nerve-shattering shrieks of a discomforted babe-in-arms with his young, worn-out parents in nearby seats—Scott had suddenly been confronted by the “real world” and made to consider yet again the possibility that this weird, daunting new reality in which he’d somehow got himself involved was in fact some kind of interminable dream.

  But then, as if to corroborate this extraordinary reality, during a comparatively quiet period when Scott ac
tually managed to nod off for a few minutes, there was Wolf yet again, asking: Are you coming? Are you at last on your way? I hope so—and I believe so—for I think I sense you that much closer to me.

  Startled awake, Scott unthinkingly answered out loud, “Yes, I’m coming. Just hang on in there!”

  “Wazzat, mate?” said a man seated next to him, whose great fat belly was partly overflowing the narrow arm and margin that separated them.

  “Nothing,” Scott answered. “Talking to myself, that’s all. I do it all the time.”

  “Really?” said the fat man. “Well I should watch it, mate. That’s what they call the first sign! Har har har!”

  Fuck you, too! Scott thought, then returned to considering his reality. But no, for in fact he knew it was real. It had to be; it was why he was here. But why him? He had asked a similar question of Shania in the early hours of the morning:

  “Why me? Why can’t you go and rescue Wolf? I mean, the way you come and go . . . surely you’re better equipped?”

  “First,” she had answered, “you are his One. Next: only so much power remains in this device I use, which was damaged when first I arrived in your world.” She showed him her right wrist, and a metal strap holding what looked like a watch that was anything but. “That is one more reason why I have visited you less frequently than I might otherwise have done. I need to conserve its energy, make sure it doesn’t burn out, expire. And last: as I believe I’ve already explained, I don’t know where Wolf is. I don’t have his spacial coordinates.”