For Heaven's Eyes Only (21 page)

One particular lab assistant, naked but for a lab coat unfortunately not buttoned up at the front, was sitting inside a chalk-drawn mandala on the bare floor, playing an electric bass with all kinds of weird tech plugged into it. I knew him of old. Eric was convinced he could make his bass guitar generate a chord so powerful it would make everyone who heard it crap themselves simultaneously. Psychologically effective and physically distressing at the same time. He hadn’t had much success so far. The best he’d been able to produce was a chord that acted as a mild but effective laxative. So every morning Eric went to the family hospital wards to play a short recital. Which, I understand, was always very well received by the patients.

A rather fierce young lady in a blood-spattered lab coat was walking up and down before a row of large, warty toads wired securely in place along a wooden plank. She was holding what looked like a souped-up soup ladle with many wires hanging off it, and every time she pointed the thing at a toad, the toad exploded. Messily. None of the other toads reacted. In fact, they all seemed quite resigned about it. Drugs will do that to you. Just say no. Especially to lab assistants with a funny look in their eyes.

“Ah!” the Armourer said happily. “I was wondering when Charlotte was finally going to get the kinks out of her protein exploder. Very efficient . . . The toads are all clones, of course, to avoid running out of test subjects.”

“Why toads?” I said.

The Armourer shrugged. “Nobody likes toads. If it were kittens . . .”

“Don’t go there,” said Molly. “Just don’t.”

“Of course, it’s all pretty basic for the moment,” said the Armourer. “Simply point and die. But once Charlotte gets the fine-tuning right, she’ll be able to blast the warts right off their backsides!”

“And when exactly would that come in handy?” I said.

“Early days yet, Eddie, early days . . .”

A rather upset-looking young man was being led away by the hand by a rather resigned-looking young woman. He’d somehow ended up with both eyeballs in one socket, and he was not being a brave bunny about it. I got the impression from the look on the young woman’s face that this wasn’t the first time she’d had to do something like this.

Molly picked up a small brass box covered in pretty flashing lights, from the top of a computer console. The Armourer almost jumped out of his skin.

“Don’t touch that!”

“Why, what is it?” said Molly, hanging onto the box even more firmly.

The Armourer snatched the box away from her, looked at it and then shook it fiercely. Nothing happened, so he put it back on the console.

“Odd,” he said. “It should have reversed your polarity. I’ll have to work on it.”

“You hit him,” Molly said to me. “You’re closer.”

“I wouldn’t dare,” I said.

“I’ve got something for you, Molly,” the Armourer said quickly. “Come and take a look at this little beauty.”

He scrabbled among the assorted tech and junk cluttering up his worktable, tossed aside a pistol with five barrels and a fluffy gonk with an evil stare, and finally held up a golden crown: a simple circle of gold, with an intricate golden lattice containing dozens of brightly shimmering crystals. He offered the crown to Molly, and she looked it over while being very careful not to touch it. The Armourer preened proudly.

“Very nice,” Molly said finally. “Expensive, but vulgar, vaguely Celtic in design, but aesthetically pleasing from every angle. What am I supposed to do with it?”

“You put it on your head!” said the Armourer. “It’ll protect you from every known form of psychic attack, and make damn sure Ammonia Vom Acht can’t prise any useful secrets out of your pretty little head.”

Molly looked at him coldly. “I am supposed to put something you made on my head, and trust that my brains won’t start leaking out of my ears?”

“That was a long time ago!” said the Armourer. “I wish people would stop going on about it. . . . Look, put the bloody thing on so I can fine-tune the settings to your personal aura. It has been very thoroughly tested, you know. What do you want, a guarantee in writing?”

Molly stuck her lower lip out and looked at me. “Why doesn’t he have to wear one?”

“Because I have a torc,” I said patiently. “And psychic protection comes standard. Please put the crown on, Molly, or I’ll have to go without you. You go up against Ammonia Vom Acht with an unprotected mind and she’ll rip your thoughts open and gut them like a fish, with one look.”

Molly sniffed loudly, snatched the crown out of the Armourer’s hands and lowered it gingerly onto her head. The Armourer ran his fingertips lightly over the various crystals, humming something he fondly imagined had a tune, until he had them all blinking and flickering at the same rate. He then grunted in a satisfied sort of way and stepped back. Molly immediately demanded a mirror to see how she looked. I held the Merlin Glass up before her so she could study her new look in the reflection.

“This really isn’t me, Eddie. I do not do the fairy-princess look. People will snigger at me.”

“No one would dare,” I assured her.

“Ammonia won’t think I’m . . . scared of her, will she, wearing protective headgear in her presence?”

“It won’t even occur to her that you wouldn’t be scared,” said the Armourer. “Anyone with half a working brain in her head would have enough sense to be scared shitless of Ammonia Vom Acht. The most powerful telepathic mind in the world today . . . Well, human mind, anyway. If you were to enter her presence unprotected, even for a moment, she could read every thought you ever had, or make you think you were someone else and always had been, or plant secret hidden commands for future behaviour so deep in your subconscious even other telepaths wouldn’t know they were there. Until it was far too late. Or, even worse . . . she might think of something funny to do to you. Ammonia’s sense of humour isn’t what you’d call normal.”

Molly scowled unhappily, but left the crown where it was. I thought it did make her look a bit like a fairy princess. I liked it. I looked expectantly at the Armourer.

“Well, Uncle Jack? Don’t I get any new toys before I set out on this extremely dangerous mission?”

“None of my guns or gadgets would do you any good against Ammonia Vom Acht,” said the Armourer. “In fact, they’d only give you a false sense of security. Trust to your torc to protect you, and try not to antagonise her. You will anyway, but she might appreciate the effort.”

“That’s all the advice you’ve got for me?”

“Please don’t kill her. She might be annoying, but she’s very useful. We might need her help again someday.”

I frowned. “Why would I want to kill her?”

“You haven’t met her yet.”

I waited, but he had nothing else to say. So I nodded good-bye, and he nodded vaguely and hurried off to show his lab assistants what they were doing wrong. I hefted the Merlin Glass in my hand, thinking hard. Molly looked at me.

“Ready to go, Eddie?”

“I don’t know if
ready
is quite the right word,” I said. “But I can’t seem to come up with a good enough reason to put it off, so . . .”

“Aren’t you going to armour up first?” said Molly. “You don’t want Ammonia seeing your face; or would she be able to read your identity anyway?”

“No, the torc will protect me at all levels,” I said, trying hard to sound calm and confident. “But it doesn’t matter if she sees my face, or yours. She won’t know me as Shaman Bond, because he doesn’t move in her kind of circles. Ammonia . . . doesn’t get out much. People come to her.”

“She might not know you,” said Molly. “But you know her; don’t you?”

“I know of her; everyone in the secret-agent business does. And she’ll probably know you by reputation.”

Molly smiled smugly. “Lot of people know my reputation.”

“And you say that like it’s a good thing. . . .”

“You want a slap?”

I activated the Merlin Glass, and we watched our reflections disappear from the hand mirror as the Glass sought out Ammonia Vom Acht’s location. The image flickered uncertainly for some time, struggling past her various protections, until finally an image appeared in the Glass: a rather distant image of an isolated cottage somewhere down in Cornwall. I tried to get the Glass to zoom in for a closer look, but this was as close as it could get. I sort of got the feeling that the Glass was afraid to get any closer. Which was . . . interesting. The cottage didn’t look particularly threatening.

“The Glass is detecting really heavy-duty protections,” I said. “We’ll have to go through as is, and walk the rest of the way. And hope we don’t set off any psychic land mines. Doesn’t look too far. Weather looks nice. My torc and your crown should protect us.”

“And if they don’t?” said Molly.

“Then we improvise. Suddenly and violently and all over the place. That’s what field agents do!”

“Don’t you raise your voice to me, Edwin Drood!” said Molly. “Just because we’re off to visit the witch in her gingerbread cottage. I have a really bad feeling about this. . . .”

“Situation entirely normal,” I said.

 

It turned out that the greatest and most dangerous telepath of our time had chosen to live in a pretty little cottage down on the Cornish coast, on top of a hill looking out over the sea. Miles from anywhere, with acres of desolate-looking landscape between her and the nearest town or village. Molly and I stepped through the Merlin Glass and emerged onto the very edge of the cliff top. Two more steps and we’d have both been grabbing handfuls of fresh air as we plummeted towards the crashing sea. I couldn’t really see that as a coincidence.

I have tried forming glider wings out of my armour, and I don’t want to talk about the results.

Molly and I carefully moved back a few paces, and I put the Glass away. It had already shrunk down to its original size without being ordered to, as though it were afraid of being noticed. I put it away in its pocket dimension, so called because I keep the separate dimension in my pocket, and looked down. Hundreds of feet below, the heavy swelling sea smashed against dark and ragged rocks, foam flying on the air.

A cold wind was blowing out of the north, and gulls hung in the air above us, keening mournfully. There is an old legend that says the gulls are crying for the sins of the world, and that when we finally get our act together, the gulls will stop crying. It was easy to believe such a story in a desolate place like this.

The cottage looked to be a good half a mile away, as the crow flew: across a bare stone and scrub plain. Molly and I looked at each other and started walking. There wasn’t a single living creature to be seen anywhere, and even the steady sounds of our footsteps on the stony ground seemed strangely muted. As we drew closer, I could see the cottage was fronted by a carefully laid-out garden. A low stone wall marked the boundaries, hand-built in the old style, and there were hedges and flowers and topiary trees. A splash of vivid colours in such a grey setting. We stopped before the wrought-iron gate that was the only entrance to the garden. Beyond the gate, a narrow gravel path led straight to the cottage’s front door. A simple sign beside the gate said, TRESPASSERS WILL BE VIOLATED
.
Molly and I stood before the gate, carefully not touching anything, peering between the bars. The garden looked lovely.

“I can feel industrial-strength protections and defences hanging in the air, waiting to be triggered,” said Molly. “They feel . . . strange. No magic, no tech, only the power of one person’s mind. I get the feeling we’ll be safe as long as we stick to the path. She knows we’re here, Eddie.”

“I’d be disappointed if she didn’t,” I said. “Stay put for the moment. Let her get a good look at us and our protections.”

“She’s been watching us from the moment we arrived,” said Molly, shuffling uncomfortably from foot to foot. Molly’s never been one for standing around. Not when there’s dashing in where angels fear to tread to be done. “I can feel her attention, like a great weight pressing down, or like staring into a blinding searchlight. The sheer power I’m sensing is downright scary. And I don’t usually do scary. Ah!”

“What?” I said, looking quickly around.

“It’s gone. She’s not watching us anymore.”

The wrought-iron gate swung slowly open before us, the hinges making soft protesting noises. I knew Ammonia could have oiled those hinges, but chose not to, as a simple extra warning system. It was what I would have done. I strode forward, doing my best to exude confidence, and Molly stuck close beside me, head erect, eyes glaring in all directions. The gate swung noisily shut behind us, but I wouldn’t give it the satisfaction of looking back. Our feet crunched on the gravel path as we headed for the cottage. The garden really was delightful: open and attractive, with all kinds of flowers, neat hedgerows, and trees trimmed into perfect geometric shapes. Someone had put a lot of work into this garden.

“A peaceful setting,” I said. “For such a famously unpleasant woman.”

“So all the stories I’ve heard are true?” said Molly, still scowling arond her.

“If they’re distressing, awful and appalling stories, almost certainly yes,” I said. “This is a woman who once called the current Anti-Pope a big-nosed idiot. To his face.”

“An accurate description,” said Molly.

“Well, yes, but you don’t say something like that to a cult leader with a private army of fanatical followers. Not to his face.”

“I do,” said Molly.

“Well, yes again, but you’re weird.”

“You say the nicest things, Eddie.”

“I do my best,” I said.

The cottage loomed up before us like a dentist’s waiting room; it might look pleasant enough, but you know there’s trouble ahead. Actually, the cottage, in its delightful setting, looked as though it should be a photo on the lid of a jigsaw box. Say about a thousand pieces, nothing too difficult, you know the sort. A charming, old-fashioned cottage with a brick chimney poking up through the neatly thatched roof, roses curling round the front door, long vines sprawled across the creamy white stone of the facing wall. Two large bay windows on either side of the front door, which, as I drew closer, I could see had no bell or knocker. Ammonia Vom Acht always knew when visitors were coming.