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Apart from the jamming signal, the mound was also broadcasting a powerful avoidance field. More than just the usual Don’t look at me, nothing to see here, move along suggestions; this was mind manipulation, a field strong enough that people couldn’t even think about the alien mound or anything co
My Sight punched right through the avoidance field, but I knew I couldn’t risk that for long for fear of being detected. There had to be all kinds of surveillance going on within the mound. So I grabbed as much useful information as I could in quick looks and glances, ready to shut down my Sight at a moment’s notice that I’d been spotted. I couldn’t See any alarms or proximity fields or booby traps . . . Just the mound, sitting there, sick and smug and serene, like an abscess on the world. So sure of its own strength and superiority over mere humanity that it didn’t even feel the need for protection. Fools.
I checked the time. Four and three quarter hours, and counting.
I began to get the feeling I was being watched. At first I thought it was the mound, that some alien device had finally reacted to the presence of my torc and locked onto me. But it felt more like someone, rather than something, was watching me from behind. That someone had sneaked up on me while I was concentrating on the mound. Walker had been convinced someone was following us through the streets of Roswell . . . and we never did find out what that was all about. Could there be some unknown third party at work here in Roswell? Someone with their own agenda? Whoever it was, it felt like they were really close now. I let my hand drift casually onto the butt of my holstered Colt Repeater, took a slow steady breath, and then spun around sharply with the gun in my hand.
And there was Walker standing a discreet distance away, leaning casually on his furled umbrella. He smiled easily at me.
“Hello again, Eddie. I’ve been standing here for some time, waiting for you to notice me.”
“I was busy,” I said. “Concentrating on the alien mound.”
“Of course you were. I didn’t know you carried a gun.”
“Lot of things you don’t know about me,” I said, putting the Colt Repeater away. “Even a Drood likes to have an ace or two up his sleeve. And I like aces that go bang. How did you find this place?”
Walker smiled vaguely. “I have my methods.”
“You’ve been following me, haven’t you? And I was so taken up following the alien signals I never even noticed you.”
“Actually, no.” Walker came forward to stand beside me, curling his lip at the alien mound. “Ugly-looking thing . . . No, I just have a sense for these things . . . and it led me here. Like a bad smell. I did have a sort of feeling that I might have been followed . . .” Walker looked back sharply over his shoulder. I looked too, but the streets were as silent and empty as ever. Walker sniffed. “I haven’t even been able to catch a glimpse of whoever it is, and I’m really very hard to hide things from.”
“That suggests another agent,” I said. “Someone of our calibre, with an interest of their own in what’s happening here.”
“Let them watch,” said Walker. “We have work to do.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You’ve come around to my way of thinking, then? What about your duty to win Alexander King’s prize so the rest of us can’t have it?”
He met my gaze steadily. “I’ve seen too many good people die on my watch. I can’t just look away and let it happen again. You were right, Eddie; we can always take the prize away from Honey and her small-minded masters later on and share whatever it turns out to be. We are professionals, after all.”
We shared a brief smile. On an impulse I stuck out my hand, and he shook it solemnly.
“Good to know I’ve got someone to watch my back while I’m in the mound,” I said.
“Hell with that,” Walker said easily. “You can watch my back . . . Are those sunglasses what I think they are? I didn’t know you could do things like that with your armour.”
“You see?” I said. “Being around me is an education.”
“It’s certainly taught me a lesson,” Walker agreed. “Can your Sight find us the best way in? We are on the clock here.”
I looked back at the mound. “There don’t seem to be any obvious defences; no force shields, proximity mines, energy weapons . . . No chemical or biological agents. Nothing to stop us walking right in. They do have a really strong avoidance field, so maybe they’re depending on that.” I looked at Walker. “Why isn’t the field affecting you? You shouldn’t even be able to tell the mound is here.”
“There are lots of things about me you don’t know,” said Walker.
I had to smile. “None of the openings seem any more used or significant than any of the others. So we might as well choose one at random at ground level and stroll right in. And hope my Sight can lead us to where we need to be.”
“You’re not a great one for forward pla
“Yes,” I said. “Let us descend into the underworld, and show these alien bastards what Hell on Earth is really like.”
The moment I marched through the semicircular entrance and into the mound itself, things stopped making sense. The entrance became a tu
I set off down the tu
The monster that wins more often than the tales like to tell.
This much was familiar, but as Walker and I continued to descend things grew increasingly strange and odd and subtly disturbing. It was hard to judge distances anymore; things seemed to move suddenly forward and then recede, to stretch endlessly away and then suddenly be gone or behind you. There were things in the curved ceiling that looked down on me and turned slowly to watch me pass. The aliens knew we were there, but I still didn’t see one anywhere. The tu
There were objects in the caverns I couldn’t look at directly, shapes without significance, forms with no function. Shadows flowed across the floor, slowly changing shape like oil on water, and that didn’t react at all as I strode through them. Gravity fluctuated so that sometimes I bobbed along like a balloon on a string . . . and other times it was all I could do to trudge along, as though I was carrying Old Man of the Sea on my back. My sense of direction snapped back and forth, and I would have been hopelessly lost in minutes without my Sight and my torc to guide me. I didn’t always know where I was going, but I always knew which turn or opening to take next. The floors sloped continually down, leading me on into the subterranean heart of the mound. To the place where all bad things were decided. I knew that much, even if I didn’t always recognise the man walking beside me.