The precog was still wearing his headset, and he had been conversing with the pilot. Now he put a hand over the mike and said, 'Xanadu, and the centrepiece there… why, that can only be Kubla Kahn's pleasure dome! Put on your headsets. The pilot knows some stuff
Jake and Lardis complied, heard the pilot tail off:
'… There were some private homes here, hence the road up the mountain. But after the fire some kind of tycoon bought up the land and built this place. He's a philanthropist, uses the money from this for other 'good works', allegedly. Huh! A typical tax gimmick, if you ask me. All of these fat-cat rich bastards are the same. Xanadu, yeah, that's what it's called. The dome's a casino, all three floors of it.'
'The fire?' said Goodly. 'You mean the Brisbane Fire?'
'Nah, not the Great Fire,' said the other. 'This was back in '97, an earlier El Nino. The place was a tinderbox, and the fire must have started in one of the weekend homes. They were simple timber cabins, holiday homes, you know? Went up like so much kindling.'
'Take her lower, can you?' The precog was plainly interested.
'So what's on your mind, boss?' With a chuckle, the pilot leaned his machine into a descending spiral. 'You want to wave at the girlies around those pools?'
'Er, something like that,' said Goodly.
And certainly the girlies were there, and sun-bronzed fellows, too. There were three pools situated equidistant from the central dome; they glittered like dazzling blue jewels in Mediterranean settings, and were surrounded by low windbreak walls and mosaic-paved sundecks. The sundecks were dotted with chairs and sunbeds. And sure enough, as the chopper circled lower, the girls were sitting up, tilting their mirror-shades at the furnace sky, waving lazy arms at their imagined aerial 'admirers'.
'That's low enough/ Lardis muttered, nervously. 'The next thing you know, I'll be swimming!'
And the Major said, 'Mightn't we attract a little too much attention?' He was on the headset and the pilot heard him.
'So what's the problem?' he inquired. 'Are you worried the people who run the place will complain? Nah! It's good free advertising, and we do this all the time. Tourists who can afford it sometimes take time out after they've seen it to come up for a few days' relaxation — though how anyone with red blood in his veins could relax up here is beyond me!'
Then the precog said, 'That… that's enough. We'd better get on our way now.' And there was a certain edge to his piping voice that had Jake looking at him across the aisle.
He saw that Goodly's face was suddenly drawn, and noticed how his hands gripped the armrests of his seat…
PART FOUR The Hell Of It
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT Here Be Vampires
That evening at the safe house, when Trask's people had eaten, he got them together in the Ops Room to debrief them and start them working on the correlation of their findings. For he knew by then that they had been partially successful — or at least that they'd detected something out of the ordinary — and that a lot might soon depend on their observations.
For instance, the military contingent: it was most likely that the siting of the SAS back-up teams would be based on the as yet unproven suspicions or 'hunches' of Trask's espers. And in just two days' time those men and vehicles would start arriving and moving into harbour areas whose locations were as yet undecided. Time was of the essence.
After Trask had settled his people down, David Chung described his temporary contact with something during the landing at Gladstone, and went on to talk about the system of triangulation that they had devised.
'Taking Gladstone as the centre of a clock face,' the locator said, 'the first reading would see the minute hand at some thirteen minutes past the hour, or a few degrees north of east. As for the second reading, over Sandy Cape, that would be about twelve and a half minutes before the hour, or north-west.'
Chung stood before an illuminated wall map of the area and used his index finger to point out the coordinates, then traced the directional lines to their junction some sixty miles out in the open sea. 'Which puts it — whatever it is — right there/ he said. But staring at the map, he could only offer a baffled shrug. 'The last place on Earth that we'd expect to find a vampire or vampires. Right in the middle of an ocean, with nothing but water and lots, I mean lots of sunlight, for miles around!'
'But you got readings,' said Trask. 'You got mindsmog. So, how do you explain it?'
The locator looked at him, frowned and said. 'Explain it? But if it wasn't for Liz here I'd probably simply ignore it! A glitch, something out of kilter in my head… a headache? The evidence of the map, the location, it's all against us. I mean, what would a vampire be doing out there? Also, we know that in the past we've puzzled over similar effects from other espers, from talents outside E-Branch giving off vibes they don't even know they've got! So but for Liz I'd probably settle for someone on a ship out there — maybe a cruise liner? — using precognition to place bets in the casino, or maybe telekinesis to drop the ball on his numbers at roulette. Someone who's extraordinarily 'lucky,' who doesn't even know he has a skill — who thinks he has a 'system' — but who's nevertheless been banned from half a dozen mainland casinos. That's what I'd be tempted to think, except…' He paused and looked at Liz. 'Liz doesn't think so. But there again, no matter what anyone thinks, nothing can change the fact that it's sixty miles out to sea.'
Trask said, 'But so were those Russian nuclear submarines, and you haven't been wrong about those. And I remember the time when a certain Jianni Lazarides had just such a ship, The Lazarus, out on the Mediterranean. Yes, but his real name was Janos Ferenczy! He was Wamphyri, too, one of the very worst. And remember: just because there's a lot of sunlight, it doesn't mean our man has to go out in it.'
He turned to Liz. 'David says it might be nothing. But he also says you don't think so. So what do you think?'
Liz looked anxiously from face to face, bit her lip, and said,
'Ben, are we right to place this much faith in my talent right now? I mean, at that kind of range, riding David's probe… I could easily be mistaken. I'm not really sure that—'
'No, no, no!' Trask cut in, waving his hand dismissively, impatiently. 'Just tell us what you got and let us try to figure it out. It isn't the first time we've done this, Liz. And it isn't as if we're vying with one another to see who will be first to find these damned things! But while no shame attaches to being in error, still we do have to find them. Which means anything is better then nothing. So whatever it was you sensed out there, let's have it.'
Liz, Trask and Chung were on their feet; the rest of the team were seated. And now Liz sat down, too, and thought about it for a moment. Casting her mind back, she asked herself exactly what it was that she had experienced when the locator took his second reading from the helicopter as it circled high over Sandy Cape.
Chung sjace — Us slightly damp skin gleaming a pale yellow, his nostrils pinched, eyes slanted more than usual in deep concentration — gazing out of his window, north-west at the distant curve of the world, the horizon, the sea's wide expanse.
Then his gaze becoming a vacant stare, and his eyes almost glazing over as his mind… as his mind went out!
No, not his mind but a probe. And Liz Merrick a part of it — riding it like a carrier wave — sharing telepathically in the emptiness of the locator's search, his far-flung probing of the psychic void… or what should be a void!
But there was something there — faint, so very faint, but definitely there — and she felt it like… like an emotion as opposed to a conversation. Like something spiritual, or lacking in spirit. For it was shivery cold, this
