And indeed it seemed that Dragosani was melting. Smoke curled upward from his blackened shell; layers of skin peeled away, bursting into flame; the fats of his body ran like candle wax, and were consumed by the fire. The thing inside him felt the heat, reacted. Dragosani's trunk shuddered, vibrated, convulsed. His arms shot out straight, then fell to dangle over the sides of the blazing cabinet, where all the while they jerked and twitched. His clothing was completely burned away by now, and as Krakovitch and Gulharov watched and shuddered, so his crisped flesh burst open here and there, putting out frantic, whipping tendrils that melted and slopped down into the furnace.
In a very little while he fell back and was still, and the two men stood in the snow and watched the fire until it burned itself out. It took all of twenty minutes, but they stood there anyway…
3.00 P.M., 27 August 1977.
The big London hotel, within easy walking distance of Whitehall, contained rather more than its exterior might suggest. In fact the entire top floor was given over to a company of 'international financial entrepreneurs', which was the sum total of the hotel manager's knowledge about it. The company had its own elevator at the rear of the building, private stairs, even its own fire escape. Indeed the company owned the top floor, which was therefore entirely outside the hotel's sphere of control and operation.
In short, the top floor was the headquarters of the most secret of all British secret services: namely INTESP, the British equivalent of that Russian organisation housed just outside Moscow at the Chateau Bronnitsy. But the hotel was only the headquarters; there were also two 'factories', one in Dorset and the other in Norfolk, direct- linked to each other and to the HQ by telephone, radiotelephone and computer. Such links, though top-security screened, were open to sophisticated abuse, of course; a clever hacker might get in one day. Hopefully before that happened the branch would have developed its telepaths to such an extent that all of this technological junk would be unnecessary. Radio waves travel at a mere 186,000 miles per second, but human thought is instantaneous and carries a far more vivid and finished picture.
Such were Alec Kyle's own thoughts as he sat at his desk and formulated Security Standing Orders for the six Special Branch officers whose sole task in life was the personal security of an infant boy just one month old, a child called Harry Keogh. Harry Jnr — the future head of INTESP.
'Harry,' said Kyle out loud, to no one in particular, 'you can have the job right now, if you still want it.'
No, came the answer at once, startlingly clear in Kyle's mind. Not now, maybe not ever!
Kyle's mouth fell open and he started upright in his swivel chair. He knew what this was, had known something very much similar at a time some eight months ago.
It was telepathy, yes, but it was more than telepathy. It was the 'infant' he'd just been thinking about, the child whose mind housed all that was left of the greatest ESP talent in the world: Harry Keogh.
'Christ!' Kyle whispered. And now he knew what it had been about, 'it' being the dream or nightmare he'd had last night — when he'd been covered with leeches as big as kittens, whose mouths had fastened on him to drain his blood, while he had leaped and gibbered in a glade of stirless trees, until he'd been too weak to fight any longer. Then he'd fallen on the earth amidst the pine needles, and the leeches had clung to him, and he'd known that he was becoming a leech!
And that, mercifully, had scared him wide awake. As for the dream's meaning: Kyle had long since given up trying to read meanings into such precognitive glimpses. That was the trouble with them: they were usually cryptic, rarely self-elucidating. But certainly he'd known that the dream was one of those dreams, and now he guessed that this had something to do with it, too.
'Harry?' he breathed the query into the suddenly frigid atmosphere of the room. His breath actually plumed in the air; in the space of mere seconds the temperature had taken a plunge. Just like last time.
Something was forming in the middle of the room, in front of Kyle's desk. The smoke of his cigarette trembled there and the air seemed to waver. He got up, crossed quickly to the window and adjusted the blinds. The room grew dim, and the figure in front of his desk took on more form.
Kyle's intercom buzzed urgently and he jumped six inches. He leaped to his desk, hit the receive button, and a breathless voice said, 'Alec, there's something here!' It was Carl Quint, a top-rank psychic sensitive, a 'spotter'.
Kyle pressed the send button, held it down. 'I know.
It's with me now. But it's OK, I've been half-expecting it.' Now he pressed the command button, spoke to the entire HQ. 'Kyle here. I don't want to talk to anybody for — for as long as it takes. No messages, no incoming calls, and no questions. Listen in if you like, but don't try to interfere. I'll get back to you.' He pressed the secure button on his desk computer keyboard, and door and window locks audibly snapped shut. And now he and Harry Keogh were completely alone.
Kyle forced himself to relax, stared at the — ghost? — of Keogh where it confronted him across his desk. And he thought an old thought, one which had never been far away, not since the first day he'd come here to work for INTESP:
Funny bloody outfit. Robots and romantics. Super science and the supernatural. Telemetry and telepathy. Computerised probability patterns and precognition. Gadgets… and ghosts!
No ghost, Alec, Keogh answered with a wan, immaterial smile.
Kyle thought about pinching himself but didn't bother. He'd gone through all of that last time, too. 'Last time?' he spoke out loud, because that was easier for him. 'But that was eight months ago, Harry. I had started to think we'd never hear from you again.'
Maybe you wouldn't have, said the other, his lips moving not at all, for believe me I've plenty to keep me; occupied. But… something's come up.
Kyle's awe was ebbing, his pulse gradually slowing to its norm. He leaned forward in his chair, looked the other up and down. Oh, it was Keogh, all right. But not exactly the same as the last time. Last time Kyle's first thought had been that the — apparition — was supernatural. Not merely paranormal or ESP-engendered but actually supernatural, extra-mundane, not of this world. Just like
now, the office scanners had failed to detect it; it had come and told K'yle a fantastic true story, and gone without leaving a trace. No, not quite, for he'd written down all that had been said. Even thinking about that, his wrist ached. But you couldn't photograph the thing, couldn't record its voice, couldn't harm or interfere with it in any way. The entire HQ was now listening in on Kyle's conversation with this, this… with Harry Keogh — and yet they'd hear only Kyle's voice. But Keogh was here: at least the central heating's thermostat knew it. The heating had just come on, turning itself up several notches to compensate for the sudden drop in temperature. Yes, and Carl Quint knew it, too.
The figure seemed etched in pale blue light: insubstantial as a moonbeam, less than a puff of smoke. Incorporeal, yet there was a power in it. An unbelievable power.
Taking into account the fact that his neon-limned feet weren't quite touching the floor, Keogh must be about five-ten in height. If his flesh were real instead of luminous filament, he would weigh maybe nine and a half to ten stone. Everything about him was now vaguely fluorescent, as if shining with some faint inner light, so Kyle couldn't be sure about colouring. His hair, an untidy mop, might be sandy, his face slightly freckled. He would be twenty-one, twenty-two years old.
His eyes were interesting. They looked at Kyle and yet seemed to look right through him, as if he were the apparition and not the other way about. They were blue, those eyes — a startling, almost colourless blue neon — but more than this, there was that in those eyes which said they knew more than any twenty-two year old had any right to know. The wisdom of ages seemed locked in them, the knowledge of centuries lying just beneath the shimmer of blue haze which covered them.
Apart from that: his features would be fine, like blue porcelain and seemingly equally fragile; his hands slim, tapering; his shoulders drooped a little; his skin in general, apart from the freckles, pale and unblemished. But for those eyes, you probably wouldn't look twice at him on the street. He was just…a young man. Or had been.
And now? Now he was something more. Harry Keogh's body had no real, physical existence now, but his mind went on. And his mind was housed in a new — quite literally new — body. Kyle found himself starting to examine that part of the apparition, quickly checked himself. What was there to examine? In any case it could wait, wasn't important. All that mattered was that Keogh was here, and that he had something important to say.
'Something's come up?' Kyle repeated the Keogh projection's statement, made it a question. 'What sort of something, Harry?'
