Sepulchre (5 page)

Kline was still watching Halloran. 'All right. You take care of that, Cora - you know my movements better than I do. Give the details to Mather, he's the brains. I want to be alone with Halloran for a while. If he's going to be my constant companion we'd better get to know each other a little. What d'you say, Halloran? D'you have a first name?'

'Liam.'

'Yeah? I'll call you Halloran. It's okay for you to call me Felix.' He smiled then, and suddenly looked like an innocent. He turned to the chairman of Magma. 'Listen, Victor, I need to see you later about Bougainville.'

'Copper?' asked Sir Victor.

'Uh huh. Think so. A source we haven't tapped yet.'

'That's good news if you're sure.'

Kline was irritated. 'I can't be sure. You know I can't be

sure!'

'No, I'm sorry, of course not,' the chairman appeased. 'We'll discuss it later. When you're ready.'

'Okay, okay. Now leave me alone with Halloran. We've got things to discuss. You come back when you're through, Cora.'

They left, only the bodyguard lingering by the door. Kline snapped his fingers, then pointed, and the heavy-set man followed the others, closing the double-doors behind him.

'Mystified, Halloran?' said Kline, walking backwards, away from him, towards the low dais at the room's centre, his white sneakers squeaking against the shiny floor. 'Yeah, I bet you are. How come a little creep like me can tell a big wheel like Sir Victor what or what not to do?' He hopped onto the platform and stood with legs apart, thin arms folded across his chest.

'I'd be interested to find out,' said Halloran, remaining where he was. His voice sounded hollow in the empty space around them.

'Yeah, and I'd be interested to find out about you. You bother me, Halloran, and I don't like that.'

Halloran shrugged. 'You can always ask for someone else. There are plenty of good operatives at Shield who could take my place. But if I bother you, you might be more prepared to do as I say. It's your life I'll be protecting, remember.'

'Could I forget?' He dropped to the floor again and sat on the dais' edge, elbows on knees, his body hunched. 'You got questions you want to asks'

Halloran walked over and sat next to him. 'Tell me exactly what you do for Magma. That'll be useful for beginners.'

Kline laughed, a quick explosive sound. 'You mean the old boy hasn't told you? Probably wanted to lead you into it gently. Okay, Halloran, sit there and listen-you're about to be educated.'

He was on his feet again, skittishly pacing up and down before his one-man audience.

'I welcomed you to limbo, right? Well, that's what this room represents. Nothingness. A void. Nothing to distract, nothing at all to interest. Not unless I do this'

He darted towards the dais, reached for something behind Halloran. He held the rectangular object in one hand and Halloran saw it was a plain white remote control unit, even the buttons colourless and unmarked so that it had been almost invisible against its resting place. Kline aimed the sensor cells and thumbed a button.

The room was instantly plunged into total darkness.

Halloran moved instinctively, changing his position on the dais, going to his left. He heard a dry chuckle from somewhere in the inkiness, an eerie scratching sound that stiffened the muscles of his back.

'A different kind of void, isn't it?' came Kline's voice.

Halloran twisted his head, hopelessly trying to locate the source in the pitch black.

'It's full of things,' Kline said, and this time he sounded close. almost by Halloran's shoulder.

'Bad things,' Kline whispered in his ear.

Halloran rose, reached out. Touched nothing.

'And now we do this,' said the voice.

Halloran squeezed his eyes shut against the burst of light from one of the walls. He opened them cautiously, giving his pupils time to adjust. Some distance away an unmarked relief map of South America glowed.

Light reflected off Kline who stood six feet away to Halloran's right. His hand, holding the remote, was extended towards the brightly lit map. He shifted his aim.

'Now this,' he said. Click. Another map. North America by the side of South.

'This. This. This.' Kline used his arm as a pointer, turning slowly, maps of different countries appearing one after the other, lining the upper halves of the walls, all the way around. India, Africa, Spain, Australia, Indonesia, Alaska, many more, plus sections of land or islands he didn't immediately recognise. They illuminated the room, large, detailed murals in greens and browns, with seas unnaturally blue.

Kline was grinning at him, his face and body a kaleidoscope of soft colours.

'Satellite photographs.' Kline told him. 'We're looking down at Mother Earth from outer space. Now look at this.' He carelessly aimed the remote at one of the relief maps. A button clicked.

The map became an incredibly detailed flat study, exactly in ;talc to the one it overlaid, but with towns, villages, rivers, and mountains clearly marked. 'Something else, right. Halloran? I can tell you're impressed.'

Click.

The pictures around the wall disappeared, shut off together save for one. An island.

'Know this place, Halloran? New Guinea.' The relief zoomed LIP, the left side growing out of frame. The map froze again. Papua New Guinea, a steamy hell-hole. But rich in certain things.'

He watched Kline return to the dais, a shadowy, back-lit figure that somehow exuded electric energy. The small man squatted in the middle of the low rostrum, ankles crossed, crouching forward towards the screen.

'Copper, for one,' Kline said, his eyes intent on the bright picture. His voice became dulled as he concentrated. 'My deed for the day as far as Magma's concerned. It already has a copper mine down there, but it's running low. Did you know the demand for copper is up ten per cent after the long recession? No, guess you didn't. Why should you? Shit, I hardly care myself. But old Sir Vic does, him and his cronies. Big money to them, y'see. Well, looks like I found 'em a new source, quite a ways from the established mine. Did that this morning, Halloran, before you arrived.'

Halloran stared. 'You found them copper? I don't understand.'

Kline laughed gleefully, smacking the platform beneath him with his free hand. 'And who can blame you? You're like the rest: no concept of the mind's real power. Reason is mankind's disease, did you know that? A wasting away of senses. So what do you care? A dumb bodyguard is all you are.'

'So educate me a little more.'

Click.

Total darkness once again.

Halloran softly walked to a new position.

Kline's disembodied voice came to him. 'All this black worry you, Halloran?'

He didn't answer.

'Make you wonder what it's concealing? You know you're in an empty room, you saw that when the lights were on. But now you're not so sure. Because you can't see anything. So your own mind invents for you.'

A chuckle in the dark.

'You can hear me, so you know I'm here, right, Halloran? 'Bout six or seven feet away But if I touch you . . .'

A cold finger scraped Halloran's cheek .

. . . now that scares you. Because reason tells you it doesn't make sense.'

Halloran had instinctively gone into a crouch. He shifted position again, heard his own feet scuff the floor.

'Scares the shit out of you, right?'

A finger prodded his back.

Halloran moved again and kept moving, reaching out for a wall, something solid on which to get his bearings. His stretched fingers touched a face.

Then brilliant light forced his eyes shut.

'You were helpless. I had you cold.'

They were on the platform once more, Halloran steadily forcing his jarred nerves to settle, Kline sitting beside him, grinning, his oil-slick eyes watching. Halloran could smell the other man's sweat, could see the damp patches beneath his armpits.

'Sure, you had me cold,' he agreed. 'What was the point though?'

'A 'tiny lesson about the unreality of reality. You asked me to educate you some more.'

'That wasn't what I had in mind.'

Kline giggled. 'Fear was something I put into you. And you did feel fear.'

'Maybe.'

'Yet you knew it was only me and you in here. A little guy like me up against a trained heavy like you. Unreasonable, wouldn't you say? The darkness overcame your reason, don't you see? Made you vulnerable.'

'I admit I was disorientated.'

'Much more, I think.'

'It hasn't helped me understand anything. I don't see what it had to do with finding copper on a map.,

'Perhaps it was a demonstration and a test at the same time.' The coarseness had left Kline's voice and his manner had subtly changed, the banter all but gone to be replaced by a cool mocking. 'A silly game, yes, but I wanted to gauge your reaction to, as you put it yourself, disorientation. My life appears to be in your hands, after all.'

'Let's get on to that later. Talk to me about copper in New Guinea. How did you locate this new source?'

'Through my mind, of course. Intuition, second sight, sixth sense, extrasensory perception - call it what you will. I look at maps and I perceive hidden minerals and ores. Even stores of raw energy. I can tell where they can be found beneath the earth's crust. Oh, I don't mean to boast - I'm not always right. Seventyfive per cent of the time I am, though, and that's good enough for Magma. Oh yes, that's mare than good enough for Sir Victor Penlock and his board of directors.'

Halloran slowly shook his head. 'You find these . . . these deposits with your mind? Like a diviner locates underground springs?'

'Huh! Finding water beneath the soil is the easiest thing in the world. Even you could do that. No, it's a bit more involved. Let's say scientific geological studies and even carefully calculated estimations point me in the right direction. I'm given an area to look at - it could cover thousands upon thousands of square miles - and I totally shed irrelevant matters from my thoughts. This room helps me do that: its emptiness cleanses my mind.'

He waved a hand around at the room. By using the remote control a few moments before, Kline had dimmed the light considerably, rendering the walls and floor a pale, cheerless grey. Halloran could now see faint lines where the screens were imbedded. He also noticed tiny sensors strategically and discreetly positioned to pick up commands from the console held loosely in the other man's hand. The room was ingenious in structure and design.

'Can you understand why I'm so valuable to the Corporation?' asked Kline, gazing down at the floor and massaging his temples with stiffened fingers as though easing a headache. 'Have you any idea how fast the developed countries are using up our resources - fossil fuels, minerals, metals, timber, even soils? We're rapidly running them down. Worldwide we're searching and digging and consuming. We've got greedy. The big corporations don't believe in restraint: they've always done their utmost to supply the demand, with no cautions, no warnings, nothing to upset the flow of cash into their silk-lined pockets.'

He raised his head and there was something sly about his smile when he looked at Halloran.

'Now they're getting scared. The harder new sources of raw materials are to find, the more concerned they get; the more expensive it is to scour those materials from the earth, the more jitterish they become. That's what makes me Magma's biggest asset why I'm so precious to the Corporation. Even ’50 million would hardly compensate for my death,'

Halloran rose and walked away, his hands tucked into his trouser pockets, head bowed as though he were deep in thought. He turned, looked back at the small watching figure.

'That's some story you're asking me to swallow,' Halloran said.

Kline's cackled laughter shot across the room. 'You don't believe me! You don't believe I can do it! All I've shown you and you think this is some kind of game. Wonderful!' He pummelled his feet on the white floor with the joke of it.

Halloran spoke calmly. 'I said it's hard to believe.'

Kline became still. 'You think I give a shit what you believe? All you have to do is protect me, nothing more than that. So maybe it's time I found out how good you are.'

His thumb worked the remote control unit once more and a buzzer or a light must have alerted the man outside the doubledoor, because one side opened and the bodyguard stepped through.

'Halloran here doesn't think you're up to much, Monk,' said Kline. 'You want to give him a little workout, introduce yourself?'

Monk wasn't smiling when he approached.

Halloran still faced Kline. 'I don't do auditions,' he said.

'In that case Monk's liable to break your arms.'

Halloran sighed and turned to meet the other man who was ambling forward as if he intended to do nothing more than shake the operative's hand. But there was a certain, recognisable, gleam in Monk's eyes.

He took the last two yards in a crouching rush.

To find Halloran was suddenly behind him.

Monk felt Halloran's foot planted squarely against his rear end, a hard shove propelling him further forward, the action one fluid movement. All balance gone, the bodyguard skidded to his knees, reduced to a clumsy scrabbling figure. He came up in a crouching position.

'Bastard.' The curse was high-pitched, almost a squeal, as though his voice-box was squeezed somewhere too low in his throat.

'Jesus, it speaks,' said Halloran.

The bodyguard ran at him.

'Felix, call him off!'

It was Cora's voice, but Halloran didn't bother to look towards the doorway. He had no wish to hurt this lumbering apeman, but at the same time it was too early in the day to be playing silly games. He stepped aside from the charge again and brought his knee up into the bent man's lower ribs, using only enough force to bruise and upset his victim's breathing for a while.

Monk went down with a whoosh of escaping air and spittle from his open mouth. To give him credit, he immediately began to rise again, his face red and glowering. Resignedly, Halloran prepared to jab a pressure point in the man's neck to bring the contest to a swift and relatively harmless end.