The Touch Page 9

  Yes, he had asked the usual questions initially: could it be cancer? Leukemia? Even AIDS? (For there were more ways than one of catching that horror!) But . . . were there no references to this thing in the medical books? And if not, why not? Christ Almighty, we were into the 1990s, the new computer age (that’s if you needed and could afford one, which Kelly had argued they didn’t and couldn’t: that nationwide “computer virus” thing in the USA in ’88 had turned her right off the idea), so what had happened to the advancement of medical science in this wonderful enlightened era?

  These people who appeared to have given up on her, they were bloody doctors, so-called specialists, weren’t they? They were supposed to be the best. So why weren’t they bloody doing something? But they had been; they’d been doing all that they possibly could.

  And then, as quickly as that, she was dead, and Scott had died, too. He’d been dead inside. Or at least it had felt like that . . . until now.

  But now—now if there was even a remote possibility that Kelly hadn’t died an entirely natural death—now he wanted to know about it; especially since one of those spooks who interrogated him had tried to insinuate that Scott himself might have killed her! And anyway, what did they have to do with all this, if anything? Them and their utterly ridiculous questions, their insistence that Scott was . . . what, psychic? Or could it be that every one of these weird occurrences was totally unconnected to the rest, like a series of almost simultaneous coincidences?

  There was a word for it, yes: synchronicity.

  Scott laughed harshly, perhaps even a little hysterically; laughed aloud as he drove through the outskirts of North London along green lanes leading to open country. The very idea—that he might in some way be psychic—was a hoot! But on the other hand some very strange things had seemed to be happening to him during that weird little chat session. And following hot on its heels, then there had been that dream that kept coming back to mind, in fact to haunt him. A drugged dream, true, and probably inspired by those . . . those what? Mind-spies? Them and the mystery woman, anyway. But a damnably insistent dream nonetheless. His dream of One, himself; Two, the woman; and Three . . . a dog.

  A dog? Ridiculous! Madness! But equally strange, there had also been a golden dart, or a spear of bright light: a sentient something that entered into his mind and . . . and empowered him. Oh, he remembered that. But what sort of power?

  I’m losing it! Scott thought—and almost missed turning into the culde-sac where he lived. Braking heavily, he swerved around the corner and just managed to avoid a police car coming the other way, causing it to swerve, too. Which really focussed his mind! In the lane—as the police car’s siren began to sing its demanding de-dah, de-dah challenge—Scott pulled over onto the grass verge and stopped.

  And sitting there, gripping the steering wheel and cursing his luck, he didn’t need to be remotely psychic to know that he was in big trouble . . .

  They breathalysed him (he was way over the limit), took his car keys, and conveyed him to the local police station. There he was required to provide a urine sample—and did so, albeit reluctantly—before being put into an almost bare interrogation cell with a small bolted-down table and one bolted-down chair, where he would have to wait until they decided what to do with him.

  The room did have a large mirror . . . well, a mirror on his side, at least, but Scott couldn’t help wondering if in fact it was a view-screen, a means of watching him unobtrusively, without him knowing. It probably wasn’t, and he’d been watching too many American crime shows on TV; but he pulled a face at it anyway, then sprawled in the chair and gradually accepted that he was indeed in trouble.

  “Drunk in Charge of a Motor Vehicle.” So on top of everything else, he was about to acquire a criminal record.

  And so he sat on his own and waited . . . and now and then glanced at the mirror. Could he hear people whispering on the other side? Probably not. Why would the police whisper? He was just another Drunk in Charge after all; no big deal. Why would they even want to watch him? But someone was talking about him, he felt sure. And anyway, the mirror got on his nerves . . .

  And he waited, and waited . . .

  Standing up, Scott began prowling four paces one way and four the other, pausing in front of the mirror every so often. The last time he did this he thought: What was it she told me? If there’s something strange, avoid it and only study it from a distance? Something like that, anyway. I can go out on a clear night and stare at the stars a million light-years away, yet I can’t see somebody a few inches away on the other side of this mirror, which might just as well be the far side of the moon. And what if someone is studying me from a distance, even this very small distance? And if so, how? And why?

  At which her voice came to him again, but much stronger now: Scott, don’t concern yourself with them. There’s no harm in them. The harm lies elsewhere. But still they must be told. I shall try to tell them, through you: that if they must seek after knowledge of you, or of me, or of he who is Three, then they must do so from a distance so as not to compromise us . . .

  The voice tapered off into silence, leaving an echoing, aching void in his head.

  “What? Who’s there?” Scott whispered the query to himself, then blew his nose to clear his head. And again: “Who’s there?” But his whispers went unanswered. There was no one and nothing there.

  I’m losing it, he thought then. I’m definitely losing it! And he stared at the mirror, then glared at it, before turning away, disgusted with himself and his situation both . . .

  Scott sat some more until, after perhaps an hour and a half on his own, he went to the door, tried it, and found it locked. At which he lifted his fist to pound on it, only to back away as a key grated and the door was opened.

  A young policeman entered with a telephone that he plugged into a wall socket. And placing the phone on the table he told Scott, “When it rings, it’s for you.”

  Bemused and frowning, Scott waited for the phone to ring, then picked it up and said, “Scott St. John.”

  “Ah, Mr. St. John!” came a high-pitched voice that Scott at once recognized. “What it is to have friends in high places, eh?”

  “Xavier!” Scott exclaimed, knowing he was right.

  “The same,” said the other. “Or you can call me Mr. Immaterial, if you’re so inclined. Anyway, we’re still hoping that sooner or later you’ll begin to see things our way and give us a little cooperation. And so—since no one wins if you’ve got problems with the law and your life only gets more complicated—we’re going to bail you out. There won’t be any charges and we hope you’ll think about that and appreciate what we’ve done for you. So now, if you’ll just give the telephone back to the gentleman in blue, I shall speak to him again and in a little while you’ll be driven home.”

  “Now wait a minute,” Scott began. “Listen, I—” But:

  “No,” said the other, patiently but firmly. “You listen. If you want to get home anytime in the not too distant future, please give the telephone back to the officer!”

  Scott said, “God damn!” but did as he was told. The young policeman pressed a button for the operator, had the call transferred to the reports room, took the phone with him, and left Scott on his own again. This time, though, after only a minute or two, he returned to tell him: “We’re sorry for the mistake, sir, and we hope it hasn’t inconvenienced you too much. Still, better safe than sorry, eh?”

  Scott couldn’t believe his own ears. They had him dead to rights but considered that he, Scott himself, had been somehow inconvenienced? There had been a mistake but “better safe than sorry”? As for having friends in high places: “friends”? those Secret Service types? And utterly baffled, Scott wondered: Now what the hell is going on? But in any case he was relieved.

  He was still wondering, and still baffled, when they dropped him off at his house and drove away. It wasn’t until later that he began to ask himself what the police had been doing so close to home in this leafy, out-
of-the-way sort of lane where he lived in the first place?

  To which, just like everything else, there didn’t seem to be an answer . . .

  Scott’s hangover was fast fading. Now it was merely a headache; but little wonder, with everything that was going on in there.

  At noon he nuked himself a pizza and drank a beer to wash it down. Just one beer, a so-called hair of the dog, but not really. It would have to be brandy to be the dog that bit him, and right now he couldn’t bear the thought of brandy. He remembered a joke someone had once told him:

  “Sex? Before you have it you could eat it, and afterward you wish you had!” Well, maybe it didn’t quite fit the current brandy situation, but what the hell—he knew what he meant . . .

  He took two more aspirins, then settled into an easy chair with his newspaper. Not that he was particularly interested in the news, but at least it might help in diverting his thoughts from all this . . . this other rubbish! If it was rubbish. Damn!

  And what was wrong with the house? Scott sensed that something was different here, but what? Well, to hell with it! And determined to shrug it off—whatever “it” might be—he again tried to read his newspaper. But it wouldn’t go away, and anxious now he went to the window and looked out over his overgrown garden. Was there something out there? Something watching him? Something listening? Or was he still being paranoid, like with that police station mirror? Anyway and whatever, there’d be no more brandy binges for Scott St. John!

  He made himself a pot of coffee—black, one sugar—and finally got started on the paper.

  Some trouble in Central Africa: the tyrant Wilson Gundawei found butchered in his palace HQ. Gundawei’s son, too, though he had already been as good as dead: a victim of AIDS, apparently. And “General” Gundawei’s tiny Zuganda Province invaded, annexed overnight by two thousand troops of neighbouring Kasabi in what appeared to have been a walkover, an almost bloodless coup. No big deal on the international front; Zuganda had once been part of Kasabi, annexed by Gundawei! As to how that had come about:

  Several years ago, when the then Colonel Gundawei had been strong in gold from a supposedly rich mine in his tribal heartland, he’d deposed the weak king, taken over the country in the role of Military Commander, rearranged his borders, and advanced into a narrow strip of land previously belonging to Kasabi. And the two countries had been cold-war enemies from then on.

  In recent years, however, the stream of gold had gradually become a trickle, the mine had collapsed and flooded, and with his large army to maintain General Gundawei had been living on borrowed time—until now it seemed time had run out . . .

  Scott turned pages to a story about this odd faith-healer chap, the reclusive Simon Salcombe. Whenever Scott had seen him surprised by some TV cameraman, or on this occasion his picture in the tabloids—rare events both, because the man generally avoided publicity like the plague—he had always, and perhaps unkindly, likened him to a stick insect or praying mantis: tall and thin, jerky in his movements, gaunt-faced and oddly repellent. Yet Kelly, herself an investigative freelance journalist, had found him fascinating, despite that (or maybe because) she considered him a fraud. She had even collected a file of newspaper articles on Salcombe and would definitely have kept this one, which read:

  LORD ZITTERMENSCH SERIOUSLY ILL:

  SEES PSYCHIC HEALER

  Recently diagnosed with inoperable stomach cancer, self-proclaimed “Lord” Ernst (Ernie) Zittermensch, the UK’s eighth richest man, has undergone treatment from faith-healer Simon Salcombe. The seldom-seen anchorite Salcombe—who has described himself as a religious person and “a seeker after God”—has in fact been seen on several occasions in the last fortnight entering or leaving Lord Ernie’s Mayfair apartments.

  High finance wizard Ernst Zittermensch came to England in 1948, a German orphan with a 50-deutschmark mini-bar of gold on a chain around his neck—the only legacy of his war-dead parents. Such small bars may be bought over the counter in most German banks. Currently worth a half-billion pounds sterling, he made his fortune as a property tycoon. His large collection of solid gold statuettes and other precious artifacts make up the bulk of his wealth.

  Simon Salcombe, believed to be a Swiss “mystic” or “layer-on-of-hands”—a mysterious figure of no fixed address—is said to offer his services only in cases where there is no known cure, and only to the very rich.

  His alleged cures are, however, very expensive. Seven years ago Gina Giapardo, aging screen goddess of the forties, is rumoured to have paid Salcombe four million dollars for “an unspecified treatment.” Contemporary reports state the money was paid in gold.

  “Miss” Giapardo is still alive . . .

  Kelly’s cuttings: Scott remembered something about Kelly’s cuttings. Once when she tried to take a picture of Salcombe, a BBC newshound she worked with had got a shot of her attempting to talk to him. It had been just before her decline, when she’d looked especially beautiful. He must look at it again sometime, fix her memory in his mind, because he daren’t let himself forget how she’d looked. He panicked every time he couldn’t bring her face back into focus! It could be that he’d mend emotionally—well, eventually—from having known and loved his wife, but he must never let himself forget her . . .

  Scott frowned, laid the paper aside, and stood up. What was wrong with the house? It felt wrong somehow . . . or was it simply the emptiness of her not being here? And what about his study? Something different in there? Something gone missing? His eyes were drawn to the telephone. Did he want to call someone?

  He called directory inquiries, asked for Xavier’s number, waited impatiently until he was put through. At first he got a woman’s voice and was asked to hold the line. Then—

  “Mr. St. John,” came a male voice, deep and resonant. “Is there something?”

  Just like that: so very casual. He, the owner of this new voice, was casual, but not Scott. Scott felt like he was losing it again. “You’re not Xavier,” he said. “Xavier is tall, gaunt, slope-shouldered, and looks like he spends a lot of time around coffins. He’s not as mantis-like as Simon Salcombe, and he has this squeaky—no, not squeaky, just high-pitched—voice. I don’t want to speak to you. I need to speak to Xavier.”

  “Mr. St. John, we’re all Xavier,” said the other, sounding slightly concerned. “It’s a code, that’s all. Are you alright?”

  “Yes, I’m fine,” Scott lied. And: “So then, you’d know all about your people drugging me because they think I’m psychic?”

  “Yes, I know all about that. I’ve read the notes.”

  Scott thought: Notes? They have a file—on me! What did I ever do that people would want a file on me?

  And the voice said, “Mr. St. John? Are you there? What was it you wanted?”

  Scott pulled himself together, cleared his dry throat, and said: “Maybe you can tell me what kind of ESP you people think I have?”

  And after a short pause: “Well, no, not really. Actually, we were hoping you would tell us.”

  Scott considered that for a moment—two moments—then lost what little patience he had left, let frustration come to the fore, snarled, “Fuck you, too!” and put the phone down . . .

  8

  An hour later in Ben Trask’s office at E-Branch HQ, the precog Ian Goodly looked uneasy as he reported a failure of sorts.

  “What do you mean, ‘of sorts’?” Trask asked him. And looking at him, the Head of E-Branch wondered, So then, what is it that’s bothering me about you now, my fortune-telling beanpole of a friend? What are you still keeping back from me, eh?

  “I mean I don’t think close-quarter surveillance is going to work,” said the other. “I’ve learned . . . something, and I’m sure it’s important, but it’s very vague. Extracting information from someone who doesn’t know he has it is no easy thing.”

  Or from someone who doesn’t want to talk about it, like a certain precog! Trask thought. “But he does have something?”

  “I believe St. Joh
n could be telepathic,” said Goodly. “At least partly. Or perhaps he’s an empath . . . in fact, he could be any one or even several of an entire range of things! But whatever he has it’s either dormant or not yet fully developed, or it might have atrophied through disuse; which means he’ll lose it without knowing he ever had it . . . but I don’t think so.”

  “But which we know could happen,” said Trask. “After all, we’ve seen it before.”

  “Yes.” The precog nodded. “Some years ago we had Jim Weir. We picked him up in a London casino. He believed he was just a very lucky player, but in fact it was telekinesis. That little ball on the roulette wheel? Three times out of seven Jim could put it right where he wanted it. We got hold of him, and after a week of training he was levitating small items. Then, suddenly, nothing . . . he burned out. It’s analogous to more physical things. If we put our muscles to tasks which are too heavy for them they’ll sometimes tear. On the other hand, if we don’t use them at all they’ll shrivel and become useless. Weir overtaxed himself, that’s all. Since then, well, we’ve looked at him from time to time—to see if maybe he would get it back—but no, he’s broke and a loser now. Our fault? Perhaps, perhaps not. He could have been due to lose it anyway.”

  Trask put aside his most recent batch of paperwork, sighed, and said, “Have you eaten yet today?”

  Goodly shrugged. “No, but it’s not—”

  “And Anna Marie? Has she been with you on this since first thing this morning?” Trask stood up, came from behind his desk.

  “We were working together, yes,” said Goodly.

  “As for myself,” said Trask, shrugging into his jacket, “I somehow forgot to have breakfast . . . too much on my mind. And I still haven’t eaten. So go and find Anna Marie, and the pair of you can put me fully in the picture over a late lunch.”