"Lumley, Brian - E-Branch 3 - Avengers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

face, and his sunken cheeks were pitted almost as if by small meteorites. The woman's condition . . . was harder to describe, similar yet different. She was burned, too, blackened in places - as if by real fire as distinct from strong sunlight - and yet that strange glow obscured most of her facial ravages. She had thrown off some of her upper wrappings, revealing her face, and now breathed so much easier in the electric light of the ship's bowels. But although she was close enough to lean on Galliard, still he couldn't make out her features.

And riding the elevator up through four decks to the fifth, the bridge deck, Purser Bill frowned and shook his head. He continued to support the woman (also to wonder why, like her companion, she felt so cold) but was aware now of something weirder by far. Despite that he somehow 'knew' she was beautiful, she felt decidely unlovely. Her waist where his arm circled it, and also her body where he supported it - they were hard, angular, bony!

But now, breaking into his thoughts as Galliard shrank back a little from these far from ordinary people:

'Take us to the Captain, Purser Galliard,' the man growled, his voice firmer now and commanding. 'And don't let the details concern you. All will become clear - shortly.'

'You . . . you know my name?'

'But of course I do, just as you told it to me,' the other answered (despite that Galliard was sure he'd told him no such thing). And through all his burns, somehow the enigmatic stranger managed to smile a leering smile.

They left the elevator and headed for the bridge, at which the purser's weird sensation of suspended reality - of all of this not really happening - eased off a little. Then, releasing the woman and drawing farther apart from her, he turned to the stewards, saying, 'Lads, there's something not quite right, in fact totally wrong . . . here?'

And far more so than Galliard had suspected, or so it appeared. For the stewards - all three of them - seemed dazed, in a world of their own. Having taken the woman's weight, now they were wholly intent upon her, unable to take their eyes off her. And they weren't listening to Galliard at all!

Just beyond a sign saying OFFICERS AND CREW MEMBERS ONLY, Purser Galliard came to a stiff-legged halt and turned to face the man he had so recently rescued. 'What-?' he started to say. And stopped. For the tall stranger had moved so quickly, taking Galliard's face between his cold, burned hands, that the purser hadn't been able to avoid the contact. Following which it was too late anyway. And:

Your knowledge of the vessel. The words flowed like a river of ice in


16


Galliard's trembling mind, freezing him solid. Of its Captain and other officers. Of anything that might be dangerous to me and my . . . companion. I need to understand your communication capability with the outside world and other ships - ahhh! your radio room, yesss! - and the location of any weapons that you are carrying. Do not think to deny me, Purser Galliard, for the pain I can cause you will not be denied! Give me everything I want and suffer no further, or suffer all that I can bring to bear in the knowledge that I shall still get what I want!

Galliard fought - or rather, he fought to move, to cry out, to break free - but it was useless. The icy power of this creature, the alien nightmare of his sucking hands, feeding on the purser's knowledge, held him rooted to the spot. But he sensed what was happening to him, felt the flow of his thoughts - in fact, his memories - going out of him, and knew that the chill they left behind them was the emptiness of a mental vacuum, as cold as the spaces between the stars.

You are correct, the Thing (surely not a man) told him. My mind is a great storehouse of memories, only a small number of which are mine. But knowledge is power, Bill Galliard, without which I'm at the mercy of a strange environment. So don't bold back now, but let me have it all, everything. Then, as I 'remember,' so you shall forget - even bow to experience hurt. For as Nepbran Malinari reads a book, so be tears out its pages!

'You men,' Galliard gasped, swivelling his bulging eyes to stare at the three stewards, at the same time trying to shrink down into himself away from his tormentor, but held up - held fast - by the monster's hands. 'You men . . . you have to . . . to do something! You have to fight it! Fight them!'

One of the stewards had heard him. His eyes focused as he staggered back away from the woman and looked at the purser in the hands of the demoniac stranger. 'Purser Bill?' he mumbled, blinking rapidly. 'I mean, what the hell . . . ?'

The woman at once went after him, seemed to flow upon him, her slender hands reaching out like long, raking claws. And as Galliard saw her actual face for the first time . . . so his jaw fell open. Beautiful? But she was the worst possible nightmare hag! Her eyes were green as jewels, but they burned crimson in their cores, as if lit by internal fires. And her jaws . . . her teeth!

Her face closed with the steward's shoulder where it joined his neck, and Galliard heard her lustful snarl as she bit him there. Then he knew what they were -monsters out of myths and legends, but real for all that - and fought harder still. A mistake, for he left the man-creature no choice. And:

You have a saying, said that one in Galliard's mind, which has it that the eyes are the windows of the soul. It may be so; I who am without a soul cannot say


17


for sure - but they are most certainly a means of entry to the brain! And likewise the ears: routes of access to the inner mind, these organs. The ears that hear - his index fingers extended themselves, projecting deep into the purser's ears, their knifelike nails slicing a way in through flesh and cartilage - and the eyes that see. (Now his thumbs turned purple, vibrating as they elongated and dislodged Galliard's eyeballs, penetrating the soft tissue behind them to sink into the purser's brain.) I want to know what you've heard and all that you've seen. Painful, aye - but didn't I warn you not to resist me?

Galliard's screams were thin, high-pitched wailing things - more like the whining of a small child than the agonized denial of a tortured man - as his mind was drained and he 'forgot' all that he'd ever known about the Evening Star. And with his face hideously altered, he crumpled to the floor as Lord Malinari of the Wamphyri finally withdrew his brain-slimed fingers.