Diamond Mask (Galactic Milieu Trilogy) (60 page)

The wind from within the cave was steady and it bore a peculiar musty scent quite unlike bird droppings. Dee progressed to a point where the fading daylight did not penetrate. Her farsight seemed to show that the cave ended another thirty meters or so further in, but when she reached the back of the chamber she noticed that the airflow had become stronger and had changed direction. It was now blowing from somewhere above her head. When she “looked” up she saw a ledge about six meters high interrupting the sloping, rough-surfaced wall. Above it was a crevice that seemed wide enough to admit a human body. A nonoperant person exploring the cave with artificial light when the cave-wind was not blowing would likely have missed the crack entirely because of the way it was shadowed.

There was a way up. Using her stick and her PK, she negotiated the climb, then pushed her way through the tight crevice. Its sides were unpleasantly wet from dripping groundwater. After she had penetrated ten meters or so the passage opened into another large chamber. Dee straightened and stepped inside, scanning upward with her farsight to see how high the ceiling was.

And stepped on something brittle that crunched beneath her boot.

She did not scream when her mind’s eye discovered the bones. The only sound she made was a low moan of sorrow.

So many bones! Skulls and rib cages, the long bones of legs and arms, perforated pelvic basins, disarticulated small bones that had been the framework of hands, feet, and vertebral columns. The skeletal remains were white and clean, and all of them were human. Dee counted the skulls. There were thirty-three, some adult and some belonging to children.

Inspector Chaimbeul had told her that the presumed victims of the “Kilnave Fiend” still unaccounted for numbered twenty-nine. Dee wondered who the other four had been. Lonely day-trippers from the mainland with no one to report them missing on Islay? Boaters who had come unsuspecting to shore for a picnic and instead found death lurking on the pretty beach of Falcon Cave?

The underground wind still blew, this time from another opening at ground level that was less than a meter in diameter; but Dee was too distraught now to do anything but retreat. She turned and re-entered the cramped slot leading to the main cavern.

A light was shining at the other end.

With a sharp intake of breath Dee stopped to focus her farsight in the darkness.

Not one light, but six! Small brilliant pinpricks like three pairs of stars … or glowing eyes.

Two women and a man were standing shoulder to shoulder on the ledge just beyond the tunnel’s end. The Hydras—Madeleine, Celine, and Parnell Remillard—dressed in ordinary outdoor clothing, were waiting for her to come out.

“Oh, dear Jesus!” she whispered, nearly paralyzed with dread.

Whatever confidence she possessed had evaporated at the sight of those pathetic bones. She was no longer a brilliant, highly educated young woman, a grandmasterclass metapsychic nominated to the Galactic Concilium, but only a panic-stricken fifteen-year-old girl who had grossly overestimated her own bravery. Pressing back the way she had come, she staggered into the bone-room heedless of the relics crackling underfoot. The old sense of dire warning thundered in her brain, urging her to flee for her life.

They came after her then. One at a time and slowly, because they were larger than she and the passage very narrow.

The wind still blew.

Dee ran to the entrance of the next tunnel, threw off her backpack, dropped her stick, and crawled into the opening on her hands and knees. Where did the passage lead? Desperately, she probed ahead with her ultrasenses, not expecting to learn much. Seeing through expanses of solid rock was formidably difficult even for a Grand Master Farseer—and yet she accomplished the task now with an ease that astounded her. The tunnel she was in slanted steeply upward and entered another underground chamber having two other exits. The larger passageway, which was
the source of the wind, angled off, twisting and turning, for nearly half a kilometer until it abruptly plunged into unknown depths. The smaller tunnel, up near the ceiling, was only three or four meters in length. It terminated at the surface.

Dee wriggled madly up the incline, dislodging loose chunks of rock that rolled and rattled behind her. Why weren’t the Hydras combining in metaconcert, trying to stop her with their mind-devouring ploy? Working together, they might be able to kill her with psychokinesis or some bizarre manifestation of creativity. Instead, they seemed determined to apprehend her physically.

One of the Hydra-women, Celine, was more slender and agile than the others. She came eeling up the passage after Dee with incredible rapidity, uttering monotonous telepathic obscenities.

Dee reached the third cave-chamber and began to scramble up the steep wall. She struggled onto a rocky shelf eight meters above the floor and tried to gather her shaken wits to decide what to do next. The exit shaft was another four meters up and there were no more footholds.

Celine Remillard appeared, screaming vulgar insults out loud. For a moment she paused, irresolute, staring up at Dee. The Hydra was fair-haired and sweetly pretty and the mind that looked out through her turquoise eyes was mad. Giving a final maniacal cry, she changed into a soot-black monstrosity with glowing eyes, a serpentine neck, and multiple arms—a smaller version of the metaconcerted Hydra. A split second later the thing conjured up a hissing ball of energy and flung it at Dee.

Without thinking, the girl spun a psychocreative shield. The lightning-ball hit the barrier and disintegrated into a shower of embers that rained onto the cavern floor. Roaring, the Hydra lifted a broken piece of rock the size of a small desk and hurled it without effort. Dee’s shield held and the deflected missile fell with a great crash, cracking apart into sharp-edged fragments. The Hydra shrieked in frustration. An inhuman leap carried it across the rubble-strewn floor to the base of the wall. It began to climb like a huge spider, slowly and carefully.

At that moment the head of Parnell Remillard appeared in the opening of the lower tunnel. Crawling awkwardly into the chamber, he shouted, “Get her quick, Cele! That’s the way out!”

By now the creature was nearly halfway to Dee’s precarious perch. It seemed unable to climb as fast as a human. As Dee cowered behind her mental shield her farsight perceived the third Hydra-unit, the woman she had first known as Magdala
MacKendal, enter the chamber and speak urgently to her male companion.

Abruptly, Dee’s protective barrier evaporated. The three units had not combined in true metaconcert, but Dee knew instinctively that the other two had lent the black monster sufficient creativity to neutralize her mental shield. The thing slowly raised one limb and pointed it at her in a purposeful manner.

Dee tensed, shifting all her mindpower into the psychokinetic mode. Levitation was all that could save her now—a maneuver that operant preceptors considered ostentatious and déclassé, one that was never taught to PK-adept students. Most powerfully operant children learned it anyway. But before Dee could carry out the levitation sequence the Hydra pitched another lightning-ball at her with blinding speed. This time the mass of raw energy struck Dee’s right thigh, burning through the denim of her jeans and searing the leg almost to the bone.

She screamed in agony and nearly fell, but peripheral PK steadied her feet and the redactive metafaculty that automatically responded to injury cut off input to her sensory nerves. What her redaction could not do immediately was restore the ruined sartorius and rectus femoris muscles of her upper leg. And with the greater portion of her mental potential diverted willy-nilly to self-redaction, Dee found she was unable to levitate.

Huddled on the ledge with tears of pain streaming from her eyes, she watched the Hydra continue to creep upward toward her. Viewed by farsight, it was shadowless.

Kill me if you can!
the insane creature said, almost gaily.

No. I won’t deliberately try to kill you Celine. Not now.

Then you are a fool
, said the Hydra.

Confident that it would now be able to penetrate whatever mental protection Dee could erect, the monster had not bothered to put up a psychocreative screen of its own. It seemed to think its quarry had surrendered. With a wild giggle, it produced another globe of deadly energy and held it up for the girl to see.

Instead of cringing, Dee picked up a fist-sized stone and propelled it with all her remaining physical strength, striking the Hydra squarely between its blazing, demented eyes. The lightning-ball winked out in the onslaught of unexpected hurt and the monster faltered, black limbs scratching frantically for purchase. But before it could recover Dee threw another stone, again striking the misshapen head. Wailing, the Hydra lost its grip and fell, landing heavily on the jagged rocks below.

“Cele!” the other two cried. Unaccountably, they did not rush
to the aid of their fallen companion. Instead they remained standing side by side, motionless.

The Hydra stirred. Its body flickered and for an instant Dee farsaw the human form of Celine Remillard staggering upright, her face twisted with pain. Then the woman straightened and gave a triumphant cry, apparently reinvigorated by some unconcerted mental ploy of Parnell and Madeleine. She underwent her terrible metamorphosis, and Hydra reappeared. It immediately began to climb the wall again, and this time it wore a mental shield of its own.

The terror and confusion that had afflicted Dee earlier had passed away, leaving her in control of what faculties she could still muster. Even if she managed to divert mental energy from the redaction, there would still be only enough vitality remaining to fully activate a single higher mindpower.

Very well. Then let it be creativity, the strongest of all.

The agony from her ghastly burn returned as her redaction withdrew, and so did the traumatic shock. She was seized with a sudden attack of dizziness and a profound weakness. At first her body refused to obey when she ordered it to move, but a roar from the advancing monster, intended to intimidate her, had the opposite effect. Still crouching on the ledge, Dee stretched out her right arm and thrust her fingers into the nearly featureless rock face.

Her creativity softened the stone like putty. She gouged out a foothold at knee height, then a second somewhat higher, then a third and a fourth. Once her hand withdrew, the rock rehardened instantly, leaving a useful hole. Dee began to swarm up the wall, letting her injured leg hang free and supporting most of her weight with her arms.

The Hydra reached the rock shelf, extinguished its shield, and extended its upper limbs, ready to seize her. Dee clawed out a final hold and heaved herself up into the tiny passageway, gasping from pain and exertion. The tunnel was barely wide enough for her shoulders. The cave-wind hissed past her, seeming to push her gently toward freedom, and she began to worm her way upward. Ahead lay a dim gray area of light that had to be the evening sky.

Then something took hold of her right ankle and pulled at her hideously burned leg.

In hindsight, she knew she should have switched to the coercive mode and forced the Hydra to release her. But the abrupt blaze of new pain canceled all rationality. Her creativity was
available and so she used it, accelerating the exhalation of the cave-wind to hurricane force. Her small body was propelled through the passageway like a human cannonball. The Hydra’s grip tore loose from her ankle. She flew out of the tunnel mouth on a roaring blast into the foggy night, tumbling head over heels through the air like a discarded doll.

There was a stunning splash. She had landed in a shallow bog. Before the pain could render her unconscious, she called on her redaction. Crawling on her elbows and one knee through the yielding muck, she was able to reach the bog’s edge and haul herself onto dry ground.

She had emerged in a region of nearly level moorland all swathed in mist. Her farsight, used gingerly, revealed that less than 30 meters away the land abruptly terminated in a precipice above the sea. The north shore trail skirted the cliff’s edge. Behind her was the bog, to the left a dale with a tiny burn that flowed down into Falcon Cave cove, and to the right lay a jumble of rocks surrounding the subterranean shaft. Gnarled old heather bushes grew in rank profusion over much of the area. If she had fallen in them she would very likely have broken every bone in her body.

The roaring wind had stopped. Dee heard her own pounding heart, the trickling of the stream, and the distant sigh of the sea. Another noise, a very faint splashing, seemed to come from the other end of the bog. After a few moments it stopped.

Dee’s wrist-communicator was smashed and inoperative, but she would not have chosen to use it even if it worked, nor did she intend to send out a farspoken cry for help. She stripped off her muddy parka, her sweater, which was hardly wet at all, and her cotton flannel shirt. Dipping part of the shirt in the stream’s clear water, she bound it carefully about her wounded leg and tied it in place. She put the sweater back on and hung the parka over her shoulders. In its capacious pockets were a bandanna handkerchief, a damp Hershey’s chocolate bar, her wallet, her hotel room key, and the encoded plass strip that would unlock and activate her rented groundcar.

She tied the bandanna on her head and ate the chocolate. A swift, circumscribing beam of seekersense assured her that there were no Hydra-units in the vicinity. It was no use searching for them underground. Deep beneath the rocks of Islay, their auras would be imperceptible to her. It didn’t matter. If they were hiding in the tunnel network they were no danger to her.

Dee’s injured leg was as useless as a length of wood, but her
mental strength was returning and she knew she would be able to hobble to the car park where her rented vehicle waited. The village of Bowmore was only 20 kilometers away. She would first make a report to Inspector Chaimbeul, then drive to the little hospital and check in.

The authorities could deal with the Hydra. Dee didn’t give a damn about it anymore. Strangely, the inhibitory barriers deep in her mind seemed to have crumbled, perhaps as a result of the moral insight she had experienced earlier. She felt no special increase in her powers, but in her present traumatized state that was to be expected. She’d let Catherine Remillard investigate her expanded metapsychic complexus when she had recovered.