'And she was crying in my dream, crying out to me, to her husband, who knew he was only nightmaring yet at the same time knew he wasn't, but in any case couldn't do a damn' thing about it. And despite what was happening to her, or about to happen, Zek was getting through to me in the only way left to her.
'It wasn't the first time. Once before she'd contacted me telepathically. That was in May 2006, when she was with Nathan in the Mediterranean, more specifically the Ionian. They'd gone to Zante — or Zakynthos, the island of Zek's birth, from which she'd taken her name — so that she could, well, pay her respects to Jazz Simmons who was buried there. Jazz had been Zek's first husband… he was dead of natural causes. But Turkur Tzonov's people were tracking Nathan to kill him. And since Zek was with him they'd kill her, too. It was while they were trying to kill her that she'd contacted me, and for a moment I had experienced all that she was feeling. I had known what it was like to die. But she hadn't died, because that's when Nathan discovered the Mobius Continuum and used it to bring her back to E-Branch.
'In my nightmare, it was the same again, Zek in her — God, her extreme of terror! — knowing it was over, yet trying to get through to me, to let me know what was happening. In one way it was a cry for help, which she must have known I couldn't possibly answer, and in another it was this
incredibly brave woman, passing on everything she knew about, about…
'It came thick and fast; telepathy is like that, conveying a lot more than mere words. What's that old saw about a picture being worth a thousand words? Well, it's true enough; I saw half of it in pictures and half in thoughts, mind to mind. All of it while I tossed and turned and — damn my dreams forever — while I slept on!
'One of the Refuge's maintenance men, a New Zealander called Bruce Trennier, was down in the sump — the subterranean river's exit or resurgence — examining the system of hydroelectric barriers and the turbine that powered the Refuge during the Romanian rainy season. His being down there was partly in connection with the fall-off in the outflow, and partly because his instrumentation indicated that something wasn't right down there. The system hadn't been entirely reliable since the time when CMI–Combined Military Intelligence, disbanded now, thank goodness — made their biggest-ever mistake and blew it up!
'Anyway, Trennier was in contact by landline with the Refuge's night staff, and he'd told them he was opening a dry inspection duct to go into the actual cave of the resurgence. He'd thought that perhaps something was clogging the works in there. And something was — a dead vampire lieutenant, his body rammed into the pipe that monitored the flow!
'Obviously Vavara, Szwart and Malinari had been trying to get someone's attention, and they'd succeeded. And Trennier had provided them with a way out.
'Well, the rest is sheer conjecture. I'm trying to remember all of this from a dream, after all, and it's a dream I've tried so hard to forget! And even at the time it was fragmentary, as dreams usually are; and Zek, my Zek… she wasn't at her best. But who would be in her… in her situation?'
Once again Trask fell silent, choking on his own emotions. In a little while, when Liz quietly inquired if she should make coffee, he simply nodded. Then for a time no one said anything, not even Jake…
CHAPTER FOURTEEN Zek's Passing
It was several minutes before Trask could continue, but eventually: 'Let me try to tell it the way I saw or received it/ he said. 'It was night at the Refuge, two hours ahead of our time in London. Zek had been awakened by her pager, a call from one of the two-man night-nursing staff. Bruce Trennier was already down in the sump; whatever the trouble was, he'd said it couldn't wait. The forecast said heavy rain, and the resurgence was prone to flash-flooding. If there was a blockage, the pressure could create all kinds of fresh problems down there.
'Which was why he had gone down at night, with a tool box, a powerful torch, and an ancient, battery-powered landline telephone that was probably on the blink, because contact was weak and intermittent. But even before Zek got to the duty room, she sensed that something was wrong. Not with Trennier, you understand — for she didn't even know about him — but just generally wrong. Zek was a very strong telepath, as I've said, and there was… what? A presence? A probing in the psychic aether? Some kind of interference? Whatever, something wasn't right with the "static" — the term used by telepaths to define the background hiss and babble of thoughts emitted by the people around them — and it was something she'd never experienced before.
'Now, in E-Branch we have rules: we don't use our talents on each other, never. Myself, I have an excuse: my thing's automatic,
as was Darcy Clarke's before me. Darcy wasn't in charge of what he did — in fact, he didn't do anything — his thing simply took care of him. He was a deflector, the opposite of accident-prone, as if some kind of guardian angel was constantly on duty looking after him. Darcy could have crossed a minefield in snowshoes without getting hurt, except his talent wouldn't have let him. But don't think it made him careless. On the contrary, he used to switch off the power before he'd even change a light bulb! Or maybe that was just another form of his talent in action.
'My thing is the same: if someone lies to me I can't help but know it. It's not that I want to, not every time, it's just something that happens. But a telepath has a choice: to tune in on the thoughts of others or simply to ignore them. And most telepaths can turn the static down or even switch it off. Which is just as well, or they'd never get any sleep.
'So in E-Branch we don't mess with each other. Let's face it, it has to be the easiest way to lose friends. If your partner is in a bad mood, you really don't want to know that you're pissing him off just by being in the same room!
'But Zek… she was the same with everyone. At work — in the foreign embassies, or working criminal cases — she was the best. Outside of work, she switched off; she wasn't interested in the many perverse little thoughts that are flying around out there. And it was the same at the Refuge. She had enough on her plate just working with those poor sick kids, let alone probing the minds of her colleagues. And incidentally, she was the only esper out there. It's quite some time since E-Branch maintained any real presence in Radujevac.
'I mention these things so you'll see why she didn't immediately switch on to the truth of what was going on. Zek didn't use her talent as a matter of course, only where it was needed. And as for Trennier being down in the sump: she didn't find out about that until she'd reached the duty room. And even then she wasn't much bothered. Not at first.
'For that wasn't the reason she'd been woken up; no, that was because, being E-Branch, she was the Senior Officer in situ at that time. And any problem with the kids, the Senior Officer had to be informed. That's what it was, the kids. And as far as Zek was concerned — half-awake and all — that's all it was. But they were really going to town. Or rather, they weren't. That's what was wrong with the static: not that its flow had been interrupted, but that it just wasn't there. It was as if… as if the kids had all come awake at the same time and were listening to something. But listening intently, to the exclusion of everything else. And whatever it was they could hear… they didn't much like it.