"Brian Lumley - E-Branch 1 - Defilers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

intend on making it easy for us. And hardest of all for Liz, for I think she's got something of a
crush on him."
"A crush?" (Again Goodly's raised eyebrow, lifting higher yet.) "Now you're really showing your
age! 'Fancies him,' would be more in tune with the times, I think. Or perhaps, 'she'd like to get
into his pants?' Good grief!"
"Whatever," said Trask, shrugging.
"But he is going to stay with us," Goodly declared with a quiet certainty that Trask knew of old.
"You've seen that?"
"I see lots of Jake, in the future. No great detail, nothing definite, but he's there."
"With us, or getting in our way?"
"I can't say. Maybe both."
"Hub:" Trask grunted, and took a deep breath before going on: "Anyway, and as I was saying, you
are the top men and it's up to you to motivate, activate, and galvanize the others while
continuing to do your own things to the best of your abilities in the current circumstances.
Meaning, I know it's not easy for you to work under duress. Your skills aren't like that. They're
more or less free agents in their own right."
"Exactly," said Chung. "And where Jake Cutter's concerned, my talent has never been freer.
Anything that once belonged to Harry Keogh-such as that old hairbrush-it just comes alive when
Jake's in the vicinity. So he can kid us all he wants that he's 'lost it' or it's 'gone away,' but
I know better. Whatever it is that he got from Harry, he's got it in spades!"
Trask looked at Chung-a Chinese "Cockney" in his late forties, slight in figure but awesome in his
abilities as a scryer and locator-and nodded. "We're agreed on that... we saw it in action out in
Australia . . . we'd all have been dead without it! But having something, and being willing to
explore it or put it to good use-to our use, the world's use-are entirely different things. . .
"Anyway, enough of Jake for the moment. When we're through here I'll speak to him and Liz both,
see if I can find out what he's playing at." Trask went behind his desk, sat down, and continued:
"Meanwhile, how are things going with you two? We've been home more than a week now, gentlemen,
and I haven't heard a peep out of you. David, what about the Wamphyri battle gauntlet that our
Australian major found in underground Xanadu? It could only have belonged to Malinari, or maybe to
the lieutenant Jake says he used as fertilizer. Anything on that? Anything at all?"
Chung shook his head. "Right now, nothing," he said. "Malinari seems to have gone to earth.
Nothing strange in that. For three years he hid himself away and we didn't get a sniff. He's so in
control he never shows a trace of mindsmog. And remember, it wasn't him who gave the show away in
the first

NECROSCOPE: DEF1LERS 43
place,- it was Trennier's nest in the Gibson Desert that let him down. Even in Xanadu, I had to be
that close before I located him! If it wasn't for Jethro Manchester and those others out in the
Capricorn Group, we still might not have found him. So it's my guess that if or when we get our
break it will be his thralls that let him down, not Nephran Malinari himself. And the same thing
goes for the others, too."
Trask tightened his lips, growled, "Well stay on it. We'll set up a separate maps room away from
Ops, give you more space, lots of privacy. You can sleep in there if you have to, you and that
gauntlet! But we have to get results . . ."
He turned to the precog. "lan, how's the future looking?"
Goodly's expression was, as usual, mournful as he answered, "My problems are the same as always.
The future is a hell of a devious thing. And the more I force it, the less it works. You know that
old saying: more haste, less speed? Well, that's what it's like. Like when you're given a Chinese
wood puzzle, a jumble of geometric shapes, which in the correct positions all fit perfectly into a
square box. If you're allowed to work at it in your own time you can do it. But the moment there's