Brian Lumley - Necroscope - Invaders

'Probably,' she answered. 'There was something unpleasant, spidery about him.'

'Well, if you do see him let me know,' said Trask. 'Once is coincidence. Twice… this spider might need stepping on.' And the cars sped for the near-distant city…

Back at the parking lot, the long thin man got into his car and called a number on his portaphone. A disinterested female voice said, 'Xanadu, reception?'

'I want to speak to Milan,' the thin man told her.

There was a pause and she said, 'Your identification?' Now she was a little more animated.

'Mind your business/ the thin man replied, with the emphasis on 'mind', but with nothing of rebuke or unpleasantness in his voice. It was simply a code.

'Just a moment, sir,' said the girl. And the phone played some indifferent Musak.

While he waited, the thin man coughed to clear his throat, mopped sweat from his brow, got his thoughts in order. His employer — Mr Milan, to whom he was about to make report — had a liking for ordered minds; he much preferred to hear and understand things clearly and precisely the first time around. And in a little while:

'Milan speaking/ a deep, accented, seemingly cultured yet vaguely threatening male voice replaced the Musak. 'What do you want?'

And the thin man told his employer what he had seen of the jetcopter, gave him brief descriptions of the people he'd seen getting into limos outside the flying club's main building, and closed by saying: 'They drove off towards Brisbane.'

There was a brief pause before the other queried: 'And you didn't follow them?'

'It was the chauffeurs/ the thin man answered. 'They were too good to be true. No one looks as neat, tidy, and as cool as they looked — not in this weather — without they're trying real hard. They looked like government men. And if they were, they'd be on me like flies on shit as soon as they spotted me in their rearviews/

'I see/ said the foreign, Mediterranean-sounding voice of Mr Milan. And in a moment: 'Would you know these people again?'

'Sure.'

'Good. I think this may be what I've been waiting for. You can call your other observers off, Mr Santeson. Let them report to you in Xanadu. From now on I think you will find your duties more to your liking up here at the resort. Just be sure to come and see me as soon as you get in/

'I'm on it/ the thin man said. And under his breath, when the phone went dead: 'What are you — some kind of mind-reader? But anyway, you're right — that's just exactly what I wanted to hear after a day spent sweltering in all this heat, sweating my balls off, watching, waiting, and trying not to look suspicious. Shitty work, in weather like this. But up there at the Pleasure Dome.. p>

… Up at the Pleasure Dome, he thought, putting the car in first and turning out of the parking lot, life is sheer luxury! The pools, the broads in their bikinis, the good food and drink — even the casino, huh! — where I can spend my money almost as fast, or faster, than Mr fucking Milan pays me! And he grinned.

But on the other hand, no one could call Milan mean. Garth Santeson, a private investigator for twenty years and then some, had never had it so good. What? Milan, mean? No way! Shady, definitely — how else would you describe a guy who only ever comes out at night? But never mean — hell, no! The way Aristotle Milan throws money around, it's like… like tomorrow there'll be no use for it!

Never knowing just how close he had come to the truth, and in more respects than one, Santeson headed his battered vehicle for the ring road south around Brisbane. Then he would look for the signpost for the town of Beaudesert, which would put him on a heading for the Macpherson Range right on the border with New South Wales. Eighty miles of good road, and he'd be up into the mountains, yes. And finally Xanadu…

On the way into town, Jake said, 'Now I remember!'

'What you were dreaming about?' said Lardis Lidesci.

'Eh?' Jake looked at him.

'On the plane, you were dreaming about something. When Liz woke you up you couldn't remember.'

Jake shook his head. 'No, not that,' he said. 'I'm talking about Brisbane — I'm remembering about this place. Looking down on the city from the chopper, I thought it looked too neat, too new. Well, that's because it is new.'

Jake and Lardis were travelling in the first limo with the team's top technicians, a pair of young, whizz-kid computer and communications types who were fully-fledged members of E-Branch but not espers as such. One of these, Jimmy Harvey — a compact, prematurely bald man of perhaps twenty-six, with lush red sideburns and bushy eyebrows that together were trying hard to make up for his baldness, grey, watery eyes, and a genius for electronics — wanted to know: 'Jake, where have you been hiding out these last three or four years? I mean, on the Richter Scale of national disasters, Brisbane's Great Fire of 2007 ranks several notches higher than the sinking of the Titanic, and very nearly as

high as Krakatoa!' There was little or nothing of sarcasm in Harvey's comment, just surprise.

Jake sighed, shrugged apologetically, and said, 'Yes, that was what I remembered. As for where I've been: mainly I've been doing my own thing. My world has been — I don't know — kind of a small place, for a long time. I've only had room for personal problems, things that I need to get sorted out.'

'Aye,' Lardis grunted. 'Your vow! I can understand that.'

'My vow?' Jake frowned at him. As usual, he found the old boy full of indecipherable statements. But now:

'In Sunside,' Lardis deciphered, 'when a man has something to do — a wrong that needs righting — he makes a vow, usually in public. And he holds to it until it's done. I made just such a vow one time, and it still isn't done. But if I can't be killing the bloodsucking bastards there, at least I'm helping to kill them here.'

Jimmy Harvey, despite that he wasn't privy to Jake's past, believed he'd got the drift of it. 'So how about you, Jake?' he said. 'You mentioned things you "need" to get sorted out: present tense. So like Lardis, you're not finished yet, right?'

'Not quite, no,' Jake shook his head. 'But there's plenty of time yet.' And to change the subject: 'Why don't you tell me about Brisbane, fill in whatever it is I've missed?'

The other wasn't about to start prying; the one thing he'd learned in his time with the Branch was that these people hated to talk about their private lives almost as much as about their weird 'talents'. And as far as their powers were concerned: the majority didn't see them as bonuses at all, just extra baggage. Jake hadn't been around too long and was a new one on Harvey. Still, he was on the team and so must be an esper. Well, no one can be expert in everything. But… the Great Fire of Brisbane? Something like that had escaped his notice? Jake had to be pulling his leg. But he didn't look like he was. And so:

'It was about this time of year,' Harvey started out. 'And what do you know, 2007 was another El Nino year, just like this one — synchronicity, or something! Anyway, these freaky weather years have been coming around far too often. 1997—98, and again in 2002, and finally in 2007. And this current one, of course.

'In an El Nino the currents in the Pacific go all to hell. They circulate the wrong way, or something like that. The water gets warm where it should be cold, and vice versa. Since everything is connected to ocean temperatures — like, you know, the ecosystem? — the weather goes to hell in a bucket. Everywhere, everything, and everyone gets affected.

'Add to this the depletion of the rain forests, soil erosion, acid rains, holes in the ozone, the not-so-gradual melting of the ice caps, earthquakes, volcanoes blowing their tops left, right and centre… the whole thing seems symptomatic of planetary and climatic upheaval. Or maybe I should say "seemed", past tense, because these aren't just symptoms I'm talking about but the actual disease. In short, we're in it up to our necks! And finally people are beginning to sit up and pay attention to the ecologists and environmentalists, the guys who used to get tagged as sensationalists and doomsayers.