The Kings of Eternity (36 page)

I saw the plane come in slowly from over the sea, bank and approach the runway. I thought of Tara, and the next few days on Crete. I put to the back of my mind the dire tidings Jasper had passed on earlier - beside the reality of the woman I loved, some alien assassin seemed an abstraction that had no place in my life.

I had seen the world through my eyes alone for too long now; I wanted to see the world as Tara saw it. I wanted to explore the island with her, and then beyond the island. There was no reason, with the funds I had amassed, why we could not explore the world for years to come.

At any rate, such were my fanciful thoughts as I watched the DC-10 taxi to a halt before the terminal building. Ground staff rolled out a flight of steps and a minute later the passengers began to disembark.

I looked for Tara’s diminutive figure, my heart pounding at the thought of her in my arms. Perhaps forty people descended from the plane, and then two hostesses, a flight engineer, and a steward. I waited, obscurely worried. I was sure that I had checked every passenger as they alighted, and Tara had not been among them. Had she taken ill, and was still aboard the plane?

A minute later the pilot and co-pilot walked down the steps, and then cleaning staff climbed into the plane.

I moved to where I could see the passengers as they emerged through customs, but Tara was not there. I was sweating by now, despite the fans turning in the ceiling. She had the phone number of the taverna in Mirthios, and I had given her instructions to call the taverna in case of an emergency.

I approached the British Airways desk and asked if a Tara Sayang had been aboard the flight from London. The woman consulted a clip-board, running a red biro down a list of names. She looked up. “According to our records, sir, she boarded the flight. Are you sure she hasn’t left the terminal?”

That, of course, was the obvious explanation. Hadn’t she told me that she wanted to make her own way south? I had obviously not seen her leave the plane and board a taxi.

I returned to the taxi rank and told Nikos to take me back to Mirthios.

“The lady is not coming, Mr Langham?”

“I think she’s already left,” I said.

We drove along the coast road, then turned inland and climbed, a cooling breeze flapping in through the open front window. Again I anticipated meeting Tara, introducing her to my friends - if she had not met them already. I was curious as to what she would make of them.

We emerged through a cutting in the hills, and before us was laid out the southern coastline and the breathtaking sight of the shimmering blue Mediterranean. We turned off the main road and approached Mirthios along the winding lane, and then took the track up the hillside to Charles’ villa.

Another taxi was drawing to a halt outside the building, and I assumed this to be Tara’s. However, as I watched, a short man in a white suit climbed out and regarded the villa.

I said to Nikos, “This is fine. I’ll get out here and walk.” I paid him off and jumped from the car.

The man was walking towards the villa, and up the steps, and as I approached I knew where I had seen him before. The white suit was distinctive - I had seen him climbing down the steps of the DC-10 from London.

But what of Tara?

My heart commenced a fearful hammering.

I thought the man some harbinger of bad news from Tara, a representative of some hospital or legal firm or... My mind, at that moment, was not rational.

The man in the white suit walked up the steps, crossed the patio and entered the villa.

I hurried after him, frantic for some explanation.

Seconds later I heard the cry, and at the exact instant saw the blinding white flash that illuminated the villa like a nuclear explosion.

I sprinted towards the building and up the steps. I drew my kree and ran into the lounge. Vaughan was lying on the floor beside the settee, a great chunk of his torso burned away.

Charles was barricaded behind the settee, his kree pointing towards the open window.

“He came in and shot Edward!” Charles cried. “I returned fire - I don’t think I hit him. He dived through the window. He might be anywhere by now.” He was shaking, his voice high with fear.

I fought against the impulse to vomit. I ran across to Vaughan and inspected the damage. He was dead, technically - but the Vark had caught him only a glancing blow.

“It’ll be back,” I said. “One of us should hide, ambush it. Is there anywhere-?”

Charles pointed to a recessed hatch in the ceiling directly above the settee. “The loft.”

“Get up there and wait,” I said. “On no condition come down. Even if the Vark gets me, don’t come down. It’ll be back to finish off Edward sooner or later.”

“And you?”

I saw movement through a window at the far end of the room: a flash of white suit behind an olive tree. I fell to the floor and crawled towards the patio. The Vark was circling the villa, attempting, I guessed, to enter via the patio again.

I stopped and hissed at Charles, “Into the loft!”

He obeyed, hauling down the retractable stairs, climbing up, and pulling the stairs after him.

I crawled out onto the patio, then into the kitchen. I stood, crouching, and ran towards the shuttered window. Through the crack between the shutters I sighted the gap between the olive trees where I judged the man in the white suit would emerge.

Seconds later I saw a flash of white suit. I pulled open the shutters and fired my kree. The glare almost blinded me, and the heat of the charge singed my day-old beard.

The beam of light lanced through the window and, more by great fortune than ballistic expertise, found its target. I heard a scream, and then the fire was returned. A blinding white javelin of light missed my head by inches and scorched the far wall: my lucky shot had only injured the Vark.

An injured assassin. Did that make it any more dangerous, like an injured bear? Very strange, the thoughts that pass through one’s mind when under stress.

I was face down on the rough floorboards, frantically wondering what to do next. The Vark knew where I was. There was only one way out of the kitchen, apart from the window. I was reluctant to jump through the window, in case the Vark had it covered, and likewise the door. I checked the floor for a trap-door, but that would have been too convenient a means of escape.

A period of profound and very disturbing silence reigned. The only sound was the pulse in my ears.

Then I heard the voice, and I knew the voice.

“Jonathon!” Tara called. “Are you there, Jonathon?”

I wept, then, because I knew; all the clues that my brain had registered, but my conscious mind had refused to take in, came together, and I knew the truth.

To confirm it, to make my nightmare complete, I reached into my pocket and gripped the mereth. It gave off a painful vibration, and I withdrew my hand as if scalded.

“Jonathon!” So sweet! The woman I loved. I almost cried aloud that I was in the kitchen, that she could come for me. I was ready, ready to be taken, ready for oblivion if I were to be denied her love.

I heard footsteps on the stairs to the patio.

The human instinct for survival is fundamental and indomitable. I could so easily have given up then, having had the reason to go on ripped out of my life, but instead I dived through the window and landed with a thud on the ground. I rolled, fetching up behind a pile of logs. I righted myself and peered around the timber at the villa.

The Vark, now in the guise of Tara - tiny, innocent, loving Tara, was crossing the patio towards the lounge... and I knew what I had to do.

I could not rely on Charles to realise what was happening. If Tara entered the lounge and found Vaughan still in one piece...

I ran towards the patio and crept up the steps. She was there, before me, framed in the doorway to the lounge.

I was six feet away. I knelt, raised my kree and took aim.

My finger found the firing stud, but I could not bring myself to fire.

Something stopped me, something innate - the spirit within me, which had lavished love and affection on the woman I had known as Tara, which had built futures based on present happiness, rashly extrapolated years of bliss from just scant weeks of intimacy... How the heart is fooled!

But despite knowing what I knew, despite attempting to press the stud, I could not make my hand respond.

She took a step into the lounge. I saw her raise her weapon, to apply the
coup de grace
to my friend, and still I could not move.

She took another step into the lounge.

“Fire!” I cried to Charles, and Tara turned, her pistol jerking up to sight me, and I stared into her eyes and at that second hoped more than anything that she would fire and put an end to my suffering.

A blinding white pulse of light made me cry out loud.

For a second, Tara stood consumed in actinic fire, her diminutive naked outline searing itself into my consciousness. And as I watched, she changed. The tiny woman in the flame became a tortured, writhing Vark, a scaled screaming reptile squirming as it was cremated in the fire of Charles’ kree. The dying assassin cycled through a dozen other personas, the man in the white suit, other alien beings, and then back to the image of Tara, and finally a Vark again, before it exploded and left only an afterimage of burning beauty on my retina, and ashes on the floor.

I slumped to the ground and wept, and for long minutes there was no movement at all, and only silence from within the villa.

Then I heard a sound, and Charles appeared in the doorway holding his kree, and stepped over the dark smear that was all that remained of Tara Sayang, or whatever she had called herself as a Vark.

“Edward...” Charles said.

He moved into the lounge. I followed, stepping over the ashes.

Vaughan lay on his back on the marble floor, a semi-circular burn wound extending from his lower ribs to hip. I knelt beside him. Already the wound was sealing; a diaphanous membrane, a slightly milky film, was coating the surface of his damaged flesh. His eyes were closed, his face expressionless in death. I reached out and felt for a pulse, but found none.

We lifted him onto the settee, and Charles fetched his medical bag. For the next couple of hours he attended to the wound, cleaning the surrounding flesh and cutting away dead tissue.

“I don’t think this will help the healing process one little bit,” Charles said, looking up at me briefly as he worked, “but it makes me feel useful.”

“He’ll survive?”

“I’m confident he’ll pull through, but it might take time. I was pretty badly mangled back in ‘43, and the serum worked its magic.”

Charles dressed the wound, and I returned to the patio. I found half a bottle of retsina and sat down with my feet lodged on the parapet and stared out at the silent, glimmering bay.

I could not erase from my memory all the small and trivial details of my time with Tara, the love I was sure we had shared. The reality of what she turned out to be in no way diminished the power of the emotions I had experienced then, or recollected now. I wondered at the enemy Jasper was fighting, the evil means they would use to gain what they thought was justice. I imagined a galaxy ruled by such creatures, and I was appalled by the prospect.

How might I be affected by the events of the evening? On a basic human level, disregarding the intellectual knowledge of what Tara turned out to be, I had experienced love for her, and that love could not be undone or denied. How could the experience not make me more cynical or suspicious in future?

I told myself that the circumstances in this instance were exceptional - that the betrayal of my emotion was not a human betrayal, but alien. For my sanity, for the sanctity of my humanity, I could not let it sour my relations with my fellow man. I smiled as I told myself this. It was all very well to be aware of this on some abstract intellectual level, but more difficult to determine how I might be affected psychologically.

A while later Charles called from the lounge. “Jonathon. In here.”

I stood carefully, swaying a little. I had finished the retsina, and then helped myself to a bottle of raki. I moved to the lounge, scuffing the ashes, and slumped cross-legged on the floor before the settee.

“He’s breathing,” Charles said. “I detected a faint pulse a couple of minutes ago.”

I reached out and took Vaughan’s big, square hand in mine. It was warm, invested with life again.

Minutes later he opened his eyes and looked from me to Charles. “What happened?” he asked, a mere breath.

“The Vark attacked,” Charles said. “It hit you. I fired before it could get in a second shot. Don’t worry. We killed it.”

“How did it find us?” Vaughan asked.

Charles looked at me. “It called your name,” he said.

I found the words to say, “It was Tara... She always said that she wanted to meet you.”

Vaughan’s grip tightened on my hand.

Charles said, “My God, I’m sorry.”

Vaughan said, “Jonathon, fetch the raki. I need a drink.”

I looked at Charles. He smiled. “I don’t think the recovery of this patient will be much retarded by alcohol.”

I returned with the raki and poured three glasses. I held a glass to Vaughan’s lips and raised my own. “To the Kings of Eternity,” I said quietly, and we drank.

Vaughan made slow but steady progress over the course of the next few days. When he was fit enough to stand and walk, Charles rented a house fifty miles along the coast and we moved there for a month while Vaughan regained his strength.

In October we returned to England. While Vaughan remained in London and set about furnishing us with new identities - false passports, birth certificates, identity papers - Charles and I returned to the Grange. It had stood unoccupied since the Second World War, its windows shuttered and furniture covered in dust-sheets. Charles was putting the Grange up for sale, as I was the cottage. We had decided that it was too dangerous to maintain our links with the area, as the Vark were no doubt aware that we could be traced from Cranley Grange and the village.

I left the Grange and walked through Hopton Wood for the very last time. I came to Lower Cranley and the sight of it, the row of quaint cottages, the pub and the nearby church, brought back a slew of bitter memories.