Simon Green - The Spy Who Haunted Me

I’d found them.

I headed straight for the source of the alien signal, and people grew increasingly scarce the closer I got. In fact, the few people still on the streets seemed to be actually hurrying away. I stopped a few and asked them why, and wasn’t that surprised to find they couldn’t tell me. They didn’t know. They just knew . . . they weren’t supposed to be there.

The source itself turned out to be something very like a giant termite mound, thirty feet tall and almost as wide, pushing up from the broken earth of a deserted back lot. There were no people here at all, the surrounding streets silent and empty. I studied the alien mound from the shadows of a side alley, my augmented Sight feeding me almost more information than I could handle. The mound itself was a strange mixture of technology and organic materials. Grown as much as made, its vast sides undulated slowly, slick and sweating, as though troubled by passing dreams . . . There were shadowy entrance holes all over it, set to no discernible pattern. The cracked and broken earth around the mound’s base suggested it had thrust up from below and that there might be a hell of a lot more of it deep below the back lot. What I was Seeing could be just the tip of the alien pyramid. I watched for a long time, but nothing came out, and nothing went in.

Apart from the jamming signal, the mound was also broadcasting a powerful avoidance field. More than just the usual Don’t look at me, nothing to see here, move along suggestions; this was mind manipulation, a field strong enough that people couldn’t even think about the alien mound or anything connected with it. No wonder everyone in Roswell had seemed so unnaturally calm and languid; the alien signal was all but lobotomising them to be sure they’d stay in place for the great experiment. Presumably the signal would be dropped once the bloodletting began so the aliens could observe the full spectrum of human reactions to what was being done to them.

My Sight punched right through the avoidance field, but I knew I couldn’t risk that for long for fear of being detected. There had to be all kinds of surveillance going on within the mound. So I grabbed as much useful information as I could in quick looks and glances, ready to shut down my Sight at a moment’s notice that I’d been spotted. I couldn’t See any alarms or proximity fields or booby traps . . . Just the mound, sitting there, sick and smug and serene, like an abscess on the world. So sure of its own strength and superiority over mere humanity that it didn’t even feel the need for protection. Fools.

I checked the time. Four and three quarter hours, and counting.

I began to get the feeling I was being watched. At first I thought it was the mound, that some alien device had finally reacted to the presence of my torc and locked onto me. But it felt more like someone, rather than something, was watching me from behind. That someone had sneaked up on me while I was concentrating on the mound. Walker had been convinced someone was following us through the streets of Roswell . . . and we never did find out what that was all about. Could there be some unknown third party at work here in Roswell? Someone with their own agenda? Whoever it was, it felt like they were really close now. I let my hand drift casually onto the butt of my holstered Colt Repeater, took a slow steady breath, and then spun around sharply with the gun in my hand.

And there was Walker standing a discreet distance away, leaning casually on his furled umbrella. He smiled easily at me.

“Hello again, Eddie. I’ve been standing here for some time, waiting for you to notice me.”

“I was busy,” I said. “Concentrating on the alien mound.”

“Of course you were. I didn’t know you carried a gun.”

“Lot of things you don’t know about me,” I said, putting the Colt Repeater away. “Even a Drood likes to have an ace or two up his sleeve. And I like aces that go bang. How did you find this place?”

Walker smiled vaguely. “I have my methods.”

“You’ve been following me, haven’t you? And I was so taken up following the alien signals I never even noticed you.”

“Actually, no.” Walker came forward to stand beside me, curling his lip at the alien mound. “Ugly-looking thing . . . No, I just have a sense for these things . . . and it led me here. Like a bad smell. I did have a sort of feeling that I might have been followed . . .” Walker looked back sharply over his shoulder. I looked too, but the streets were as silent and empty as ever. Walker sniffed. “I haven’t even been able to catch a glimpse of whoever it is, and I’m really very hard to hide things from.”

“That suggests another agent,” I said. “Someone of our calibre, with an interest of their own in what’s happening here.”

“Let them watch,” said Walker. “We have work to do.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You’ve come around to my way of thinking, then? What about your duty to win Alexander King’s prize so the rest of us can’t have it?”

He met my gaze steadily. “I’ve seen too many good people die on my watch. I can’t just look away and let it happen again. You were right, Eddie; we can always take the prize away from Honey and her small-minded masters later on and share whatever it turns out to be. We are professionals, after all.”

We shared a brief smile. On an impulse I stuck out my hand, and he shook it solemnly.

“Good to know I’ve got someone to watch my back while I’m in the mound,” I said.

“Hell with that,” Walker said easily. “You can watch my back . . . Are those sunglasses what I think they are? I didn’t know you could do things like that with your armour.”

“You see?” I said. “Being around me is an education.”

“It’s certainly taught me a lesson,” Walker agreed. “Can your Sight find us the best way in? We are on the clock here.”

I looked back at the mound. “There don’t seem to be any obvious defences; no force shields, proximity mines, energy weapons . . . No chemical or biological agents. Nothing to stop us walking right in. They do have a really strong avoidance field, so maybe they’re depending on that.” I looked at Walker. “Why isn’t the field affecting you? You shouldn’t even be able to tell the mound is here.”

“There are lots of things about me you don’t know,” said Walker.

I had to smile. “None of the openings seem any more used or significant than any of the others. So we might as well choose one at random at ground level and stroll right in. And hope my Sight can lead us to where we need to be.”

“You’re not a great one for forward planning, are you?” said Walker. “Let’s do it.”

“Yes,” I said. “Let us descend into the underworld, and show these alien bastards what Hell on Earth is really like.”

The moment I marched through the semicircular entrance and into the mound itself, things stopped making sense. The entrance became a tunnel, suddenly large enough to hold a tube train and full of a shimmering light. The tunnel descended sharply, falling away before me. The walls were slick, moist, the surface slowly sliding towards the floor, which absorbed it. Strange protrusions rose and fell within the walls, indefinable things that might have been machines or organs or something humanity had no name for. The air was thick and foul but still breathable.

I set off down the tunnel with Walker right there at my side. I was glad to have him there, someone I could depend on. As a Drood field agent I’ve seen more than my fair share of weird shit, but this place was seriously creeping me out. There were new gaps or openings in the tunnel every few feet or so, and it rapidly became clear we were in some kind of labyrinth or honeycomb. I kept heading down, following my Sight, towards the dark beating heart of the mound. I could feel its presence far below, like the monster that waits for heroes at the heart of every maze.