The choppers landed on the shelf itself, one to the north and the other to the south. In half an hour their combat-suited, gas-masked, heavily-armed special forces crews were moving forward into the scorched zone. Meanwhile Jake and Liz had joined up with Ben Trask, in charge of operations, also with lan Goodly, his 2I/C, and a 'civilian/ Peter Miller, of Australia's Rudall River National Park Administration — or 'Mister' Miller, as he insisted on being called.
Obviously Miller hadn't been told too much, which was perfectly understandable; it was all on a need-to-know basis, and when E-Branch went out into the world it was standard procedure to avoid unnecessary rumour-mongering and the panic that might ensue. Miller was small, round and bouncy as a rubber ball; he was very excitable and utterly confused. And like many another small, insignificant man in a position of assumed 'authority/ he made a lot of noise. Right now he raved on at the tall, unflappable beanpole that was lan Goodly, who kept steering him away from Ben Trask so that Trask could talk to Liz and Jake. But still Miller's yappy, little-dog voice could be heard over just about everything else that was going on. Right now he was flapping his arms, yelping about:
'… This uttermost devastation? Damn it all, Mr Goodly, I know that this is a wasteland, a useless desert region that you can't damage any worse than Nature herself has. But… there were men in that blaze! I saw men burning in those hellfires! What was that stuff, napalm? But in any case, what does it matter? What happened here tonight was sheer murder! There is no other word for it. I… I still can't believe what I witnessed here… cold-blooded murder, Goodly! And someone will be called to answer for it. In fact, I demand an answer right here and now!'
'Who is he?' Liz asked.
And Trask frowned. 'He's supposed to be our local liaison officer for the Western Deserts Region. A handful of top men in the Aussie Government know what we're doing, just how important our work is. Even so, they couldn't simply let us loose, give us carte blanche to get on with things. We were obliged to accept an observer. But that doesn't make him one of us, and I've managed to keep him out of it… well, until tonight. Even now I don't intend to waste time with him on long explanations. What we're doing is impossible to explain, anyway — not if we expect to be believed. But whether we want Miller or not we've got him, and maybe the best way to keep him quiet will be to let him see for himself something of what's going on.'
'Well, he's seen it,' Jake growled. 'But he isn't quiet.' 'He hasn't seen everything.' Trask's face was grim. And to Liz, 'What do you reckon?'
Knowing what he meant, she opened her mind, gazed intently through the smoke of the remaining fires at the burning shacks where they slumped in the lee of the knoll. And as lines of concentration formed on her brow, she said, 'The worst of them — the "old man," Bruce Trennier? — is still alive. Alive, afraid, and angry. He's still very dangerous, very clever, too. Despite that he tries to hide his thoughts, maybe because of it, I know he's there. His — what, mindsmog? — is as thick as the mist on a swamp, and it stinks a lot worse/ He's the boss, but he isn't alone. Back where the fire couldn't reach, in the depths of the old mine, there's a handful of others. They're waiting for us.'
Trask nodded. 'Well, let's not keep them,' he said, his lips twisting in a cold, cruel grimace, and his eyes lighting with a vengeful fire of their own. And: 'Mr Miller,' he called for the small and small-minded official. 'If you will please accompany me? I hope to be able to answer some of your questions…'
CHAPTER THREE Firestorm
Looking at Ben Trask, Jake Cutter found himself wondering what it was about the man. He knew some of it — that Trask was the head of a British Secret Service organization called E-Branch, based in London but with many other branches, affiliations and powerful friends throughout the world — but not everything by any means. One thing seemed certain, however: Ben Trask was a driven man. Moreover, Jake thought it likely that whatever was driving him was the same thing that caused him to look so much older than his years.
Not that Trask was young; in fact, he could be anything between fifty-five and sixty years old. But while his mousey hair was streaked with white, his skin pale and his aspect in general aged and maybe even fragile, still the man inside, the mind, soul, and personality — the id itself — was diamond-hard. Jake sensed this, and felt a certain empathy for Trask, felt that he knew him, despite that the man had only recently become a factor in his life. But one hell of a factor!
For his height of about five-ten, Trask was maybe a couple of pounds overweight. His broad shoulders slumped just a little, his arms tended to dangle, and his expression was usually, well, lugubrious? Or maybe that, too, was as a result of… of what? His loss? For that was the impression you got if you caught him unawares: the feeling that something had gone out of him, leaving him downcast, empty; his green eyes strangely vacant or far away, his face drawn, and his mouth turned down at the corners. As if he'd suffered a loss too great to bear. And Jake thought he knew something of how that felt.
On the other hand, if what little Jake had been told about Trask were true, then he might well be misjudging him; Trask's pain could have its origin in something else entirely. For in a world where the simple truth was becoming increasingly hard to find, it would be no easy thing to possess a mind that couldn't accept a lie. And that, allegedly, was what Trask was; a human lie-detector.
E-Branch; E for ESP. Telepaths, empaths, locators, precogs… psychos? That's how Jake had thought of them just five days ago: as raving lunatics. No, as very quiet lunatics. For nary a one of them had actually raved. But that was five days ago, and in between he'd seen some stuff. And anyway who was he to talk? What, Jake Cutter, who went on instantaneous, hundred-mile-long sleep-walking tours in broad daylight, and suspected that someone was hiding in his head?
All of these thoughts passing through Jake's mind as he and Liz followed Trask, Goodly, and Miller — who in turn followed a team of four, armed-to-the-teeth special agents — between the stinking fires and towards the slumping, blazing ruin that had been the main shack. The lone pump had disappeared; now a column of shimmering blue fire roared its fury at the sky as fuel from the subterranean storage tank burned off. And as Trask's party advanced on the shack, so Miller went prattling on:
'Do you think there can ever really be an answer to this, Mr Trask? Good Lord, man.' But who gave you the authority to do such as this? I mean— Look!' And his hand flew to his mouth. 'A b-b-body!'he stammered. 'For God's sake! A cindered body.''
In the lee of a clump of hip-high boulders where the blackened, smoking skeletons of cactuses and other once-hardy plants oozed bubbling sap, the clean-up squad had missed something. It was an arm and a hand, protruding from the molten mess of vegetation like a root among all the other exposed roots.
Obviously someone had tried to escape the fire by diving for cover in the foliage… any port in a firestorm.
Or rather it lad been an arm and a hand. Now it was a smoking black twig-thing with four lesser twiglets and the remains of an opposing thumb. Yet even now it was twitching, vibrating, showing signs of impossible life, and the vile soup within the nest of rocks was heaving and bubbling.
'You there — you missed something/ Trask called out. And one of the specialists came back with his flamethrower, playing its bright yellow lance on the shuddering mess until it seethed into a black liquid slop.
In the meantime, Miller had been sick. Trask looked unemotionally at the little fat man where he stood trembling, holding a handkerchief to his mouth, and said, 'Best if you stay here.' And to Liz and Jake, 'You two keep Mr Miller company. But make sure he gets a good look at it if… if anything happens.' He turned away, moved off with lan Goodly. Both of them were equipped with vicious-looking machine-pistols.