Forces from Beyond (27 page)

JC desperately wanted to ask what the hell that was supposed to mean but somehow just knew it wouldn’t get him anywhere. So he stuck to the questions he most wanted answered.

“Why did you choose me?”

“You were there,” said the Voice.

“Really? That’s it?”

“You were there, doing the right thing at the right time, for the right reasons. Do you have any idea how rare that is?”

“I just happened to be there!”

“A long chain of events brought you to that place, to that time,” said the Voice. “Do you think they all happened by blind chance?”

“You’ve been running my life all this time?” JC said angrily.

“All the choices you made were yours. We simply provided a context.”

“What if I choose not to serve you?”

“What if your world ends?”

“So I don’t have any choice.”

“Do any of us?” said the Voice. “We all do what we feel we must.”

“If the Flesh Undying escaped from you to come here,” said JC, “why is it so ready to destroy this world in order to leave it?”

“Because it’s crazy,” said the Voice. “And because it didn’t realise how very limited your world, your reality, would make it. What it would have to be, just to survive your harsh local conditions. Bound in Flesh, tied to cause and effect, trapped in linear Time.”

“How do we stop it?” said JC.

“Destroy the Flesh,” said the Voice. “That’s all that holds it in your world.”

“You don’t mind us destroying it?” said JC.

“Put it out of its misery, and ours,” said the Voice. “With our blessing.”

“All right,” said JC. “Tell me. How do we destroy its Flesh? What kind of weapon do we need?”

“You don’t need anything,” said the Voice. “You are the weapon. Our weapon. We made you over into what we needed you to be.”

“But what am I supposed to do?” said JC, not even trying to hide his desperation.

“You’ll know,” said the Voice. “When the time comes.”

“I hate answers like that,” said JC.

“I know,” said the Voice.

“Am I ever going to get a straight answer out of you?”

The Voice actually considered the question for a moment. “I tell you what you are capable of understanding. Anything else would be cruel.”

“Could you be any more condescending?” said JC.

“If you like.”

“Give me this much, at least,” said JC. “Did I die, down in the London Underground? Did you bring me back to life, to serve your will?”

“Life and death,” said the Voice. “Such small concepts.”

And that was all it had to say. The other reality disappeared gone in a moment. JC and Kim were left staring at a perfectly ordinary cabin wall. JC felt even more tired than he had before, as though he’d just fought a duel, or run a marathon. He put his sunglasses back on and wasn’t surprised to find that his hands were shaking. The only thing worse than demanding answers from Above is getting them answered.

“What was that place?” he said slowly. “Was it the after-life?”

“No,” said Kim.

JC looked at her. “You sounded very certain, there. You’re keeping things from me again.”

“Only to protect you,” said Kim. “I’d tell you if I could. You must believe that, JC.”

He nodded. “Why didn’t you ask the Voice any questions?”

“I didn’t know what to say,” said Kim. “Why didn’t you ask the Voice for help? For favours; for you and me?”

“I didn’t think of that,” said JC.

“You didn’t think . . .”

“I’ve got a lot on my mind! All right?”

Kim looked at him and started to fade away.

“No!” said JC. “Please! Don’t go! I didn’t mean . . .”

Kim snapped back into focus and smiled at him. “You’re so easy to tease. I was only thinking, you could have asked the Voice to improve the bathysphere. Make it safe.”

“You heard the Voice,” said JC. “They don’t intervene directly. What do you suppose it was, really?”

“I don’t know. I don’t believe we can know. It’s just . . . something from Outside.”

“I’m not sure I trust it,” said JC.

Kim grinned. “Just because something is from a higher dimension doesn’t mean it can’t also be a manipulative, supercilious little prick.”

“Well said,” said JC.

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In Happy and Melody’s cabin, it was all very quiet, if not particularly peaceful. Happy lay curled up on his narrow bed, hugging himself tightly to keep from flying apart. Shaking and shuddering, soaked with sweat, he’d run out of strength and stamina, energy and certainty. He’d been running on spiritual fumes for far too long, and the tank had run dry. He collapsed pretty much the moment his cabin door closed, and he didn’t have to pretend to be strong any longer. Melody had to use all her strength to haul him across the cabin to the bed and lay him down on it.

He’d shut down most of his mental abilities, to keep the world outside his head. His eyes were wild, fey, frightened. He didn’t even react when Melody tried to talk to him. As though he couldn’t see or hear her. He’d withdrawn all the way inside, hiding from the world that was killing him by inches. Melody sat on a chair beside the bed, sorting carefully through the contents of his pill box, trying to work out the best combination to help him. She kept telling herself it was just chemicals, just science; nothing more than cause and effect. It didn’t help. It was like looking at little coloured pieces of death. She finally settled on some medium-strength pills, poured out a glass of water, and persuaded Happy to swallow the first two. After a worryingly long moment, they brought him some of the way back.

His eyes focused on Melody, and he smiled wearily. His face was unnaturally pale and horribly drawn as she mopped sweat from it with a handkerchief. He had the look of someone who was on his last legs and knew it, and didn’t have enough strength left to care. Melody knew he was dying but stubbornly refused to accept it. She needed to believe there was still something she could do. She showed Happy the other pills she’d selected, and he sighed and nodded resignedly. He got them down though it took most of the glass of water to help him do it. And then he sat up.

“How are you feeling?” said Melody.

“Hard to tell,” said Happy. “Everything feels . . . loose, unconnected. My thoughts are all drifting . . . I can’t be sure whether I’m speaking to you now, or if I’m just remembering a conversation I had earlier. I feel so tired, Mel . . . Used up and worn-out.”

“Tired of me?” said Melody.

“Tired of living,” said Happy, almost casually. “I don’t know what day it is, or what time of day . . . Whether I’ve eaten or slept recently . . . I can’t always remember why I’m here. What I’m supposed to be doing. Sometimes I look at you and wonder who you are. And it worries me that it doesn’t worry me more . . . I’m scared, Mel. I’m scared all the time, now. And that’s no way to live.”

He stopped because Melody was crying. She didn’t make a sound, but tears rolled jerkily down her cheeks, and she couldn’t seem to get her breath. “I don’t know what to do,” she said finally, forcing the words out. “Tell me what I need to do to help you, Happy!”

“If you love them, let them go.”

“No! I can’t do that! I won’t do that!”

“Sooner or later, we all come to the point where we don’t have any choice in the matter,” said Happy. “Give me my pills, Mel.”

“You’ve just had some,” said Melody.

“I mean the really heavy-duty ones,” said Happy. “You know the ones I mean. The baseline bombers. The kamikaze chemicals.”

“Are you sure?” said Melody.

“It’s time,” said Happy. “One last battle against the forces of evil, so let’s go out on a high. A real high.”

She looked at the pill box in her hand but couldn’t bring herself to make the decision. So she handed the box to Happy, and watched numbly as he chose half a dozen of the largest, prettiest pills. She winced with every selection he made but wouldn’t let herself say anything. Happy rolled the pills around on the palm of his hand.

“Time to be the best a man can be,” he said lightly. “One last time.”

He had to struggle to get the pills down, even with another glass of water, then sat looking at nothing for a long moment. Melody took the pill box back from him, and he didn’t even notice. And then he jumped up off the bed and stretched widely, like a cat in the sun. Suddenly full of energy, if not life. His face was flushed, his pupils were huge, and when he grinned broadly at Melody, she had to look away. The smile was a death’s-head grin.

“Do you want to try a little something?” said Happy. “A little taste of Heaven and Hell, to put a smile on your face?”

“All I have is my mind,” Melody said steadily. “I won’t put it at risk.”

“You always were the practical one,” said Happy. “When I’m gone, throw it all away. Flush the pills down the toilet. Though I hate to think what they’ll do to the sewer rats . . . Mel? What is it?”

“What will I do?” she said. “What will I do, when you’re gone?”

“Be happy for me,” said Happy.

Melody put her arms around him and hugged him close. Because she’d promised to hold him while he was dying.

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Natasha Chang sat alone in her cabin, in full lotus position on her narrow bed. Her face was calm, her thoughts untroubled. She wasn’t thinking about the bathysphere, or the descent in the morning, or any of the problems on board ship. She’d always believed in dealing with things as they happened. And she’d already had a good look around the cabin, to assure herself there was no trace of a surviving personality anywhere. Nothing to nibble on. When faced with complicated situations and problems beyond her immediate control, Chang always fell back on her favourite pastime. Plotting how best to kill all the people who’d annoyed her. There were never any shortage of qualified candidates.

As soon as the Flesh Undying had been dealt with, and its threat neutralised, (and Chang never doubted for a moment that it would be,) then Catherine Latimer and her precious Ghost Finders would become irrelevant. And fair game. Chang smiled sweetly, working out the best order in which to finish them off, in the most appalling ways. It never failed to calm her. Something with knives. You can’t go far wrong with knives. She’d leave JC till last, of course. Because he would suffer so, watching all his friends die before him. And by then she’d have worked out something really nasty to do to him. She had no doubt his tortured soul would be the tastiest of all.

There was a knock at her cabin door, and it swung open before she could tell her unwanted visitor to get lost. Catherine Latimer entered the cabin as though she had a written invitation and nodded brusquely to Chang, who just looked back at her. Latimer closed the door. Chang was sure she’d locked it.

“How did you . . . ?”

“I’m Catherine Latimer.”

“Of course you are, darling. Pull up a chair and park your ego.”

Latimer looked at Chang and the snappy little gold-plated pistol Chang was pointing at her.

“I am never unarmed,” said Natasha Chang.

Latimer raised both hands, to show they were empty. “I come as a friend.”

“Really?” said Chang.

“Well,” said Latimer. “As an ally.”

Chang shrugged and made the gun disappear. She unfolded gracefully out of her full lotus and sat on the edge of the bed, her long legs elegantly crossed. Latimer pulled up a chair and sat down facing her. Both women gave every appearance of being totally relaxed and at ease; and neither of them fooled the other for a moment.

“Did you have a nice time, chatting with the science nerds?” said Chang. “Learn anything useful?”

“No; and no,” said Latimer. “Except . . . there’s something wrong with the scientists.”

“All of them?”

“Perhaps. They’ve spent all this time studying the Flesh Undying, but I couldn’t get a single straight answer out of any of them.”

Chang shrugged. “Scientists . . . I could go down and crack the whip over them, but I sort of get the feeling they’d enjoy it.”

“I wouldn’t be at all surprised,” said Latimer.

“So! What can I do for you, oh hated Boss of a rival organisation?” said Chang.

“I thought it was high time we had a nice little chat,” said Latimer. “We have so much in common, after all.”

Chang raised an elegant eyebrow. “We do? Gosh . . . News to me.”

“We have the same enemies,” said Latimer. “If we can just keep from killing each other long enough, I think we could achieve great things together.”

Chang considered the point. “What did you have in mind, exactly?”

“Destroying the Flesh Undying, obviously,” said Latimer. “And then dismantling the current regime at the Carnacki Institute. Yes, I thought you’d like that. Afterwards, I thought we might overturn the current regime at the Crowley Project.”

“The only way to retire a Project Head is in a coffin,” said Chang. “Are you really ready to approve your grand-daughter’s death?”

“She’s been dead to me for years,” said Latimer. “Ever since she murdered her mother.”

Chang made a soft, pleased sound. “I never knew that!”

“Not many do,” said Latimer. “And please, don’t act like you care.”

“Oh, I don’t,” said Chang. “But it is . . . interesting. You know. You’re not part of the Carnacki Institute any longer. They threw you out, set you free. You don’t owe them anything. So why not come and join us at the Project? You’d be made very welcome, with your extensive experience . . . You might even end up running things. I understand there could be a vacancy soon.”

“I don’t think so,” said Latimer.

“Think of all the good you could do, with the power and resources of the Project at your command.”

“Get thee behind me, Chang.”

Chang shrugged easily. “Can’t blame a girl for trying. What is it you want from me; exactly?”

“Backup,” said Latimer. “If necessary. The situation on this ship is . . . complicated.”

“But what do you want me to do?” Chang said patiently. “Eat the Flesh Undying? I hate to admit it, but even my appetite has its limits, darling.”

“You will be up here on the ship, with me, while my people go down in the bathysphere,” said Latimer. “I wouldn’t want anything to interfere with their safety; and I can’t be everywhere at once.”