Prisoner of Fire by Edmund Cooper Read Free Book Online

she was at Random Hill, but we cannot produce her. She went over the wall.”
    “Christ Jesus!” the Prime Minister exploded. “If she does exist, and we can’t produce her to say that all is lovely, my Bill falls flat on its tiny. What answer have you drafted?”
    Dick Haynes brought another piece of paper from his pocket. “His Majesty’s Government has no knowledge of the person referred to as Vanessa Smith. However, enquiries are being pursued, and information will be given to the House as soon as it is obtained. His Majesty’s Government assumes that the question has been asked in good faith and that the person named is not an invention of political imagination.”
    Sir Joseph thought for a moment or two. “That is either very weak or very strong. Events will decide which. Find this Vanessa Smith very soon, and have her say the right things. If she won’t say the right things, arrange an accident. If you can’t find her, expunge the records. She never existed. Is that clear?”
    “Perfectly, sir.”
    “I smell Raeder in this business,” said Sir Joseph irritably. “It is the sort of thing he would feed to Tom Green. Yes, I smell Raeder… Get security moving, Dick. And if they take out this Vanessa Smith as well, I shall not complain. The dead are usually less embarrassing than the living.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Roses,” said Sir Joseph, sniffing at a Marilyn Monroe, “are a great consolation.”

8
    V ANESSA WOKE UP screaming. Shesat upright—not knowing where she was—with sweat dripping from her forehead and tears rolling down her cheeks, and screamed uncontrollably in the semi-darkness, remembering the nightmares, phantoms, and cacophony of insistent voices that seemed to have transformed her mind into a psychic waste land.
    Suddenly the room was flooded with soft light, and the man with the disfigured face was sitting on the bed; and Vanessa found herself leaning against his chest, found her hair being stroked with slow, soothing motions, as she sobbed uncontrollably.
    “Child, child,” said Roland Badel gently, “calm down. Take it easy. I haven’t sent for the fuzz. No one knows you are here. Relax.”
    “I’m not a child,” sniffed Vanessa inconsequentially. “I’m practically a woman.”
    He laughed. “So you are. I have reason to know.”
    Then she realised that she was in a bed, between soft clean sheets, and wearing nothing but a man’s shirt that was far too big for her.
    She shivered, then felt her face burning with embarrassment.
    “Should I have left you in wet clothes? Should I have done nothing about the cuts and scratches on yourbody?” He held her hand. “Listen to me, Vanessa. Forgive me for drinking myself stupid, for being brutal… You were quite a shock, you see. You reminded me of… Well, that’s a long story. Some other time… I’m sober, now. Sober enough to realise that, in the state you were in, I must have seemed like something out of a peculiarly horrible nightmare. Forgive me. I have tried to atone by attending to the needs of the child. I did not touch the woman. Believe that… Probe my mind, if you can, if you want to.”
    Vanessa shot a quick probe. His mind was open, waiting. What he had said was true. But she discovered more than that, much more.
    “You confused me with Susan Stride,” she said unsteadily. “The girl who tried to kill you. Now, you want to help me because you think of both of us as refugees. Also,” she faltered, blushing again. “Also, you feel a kind of love.”
    “So now you must realise why people like me are afraid of people like you,” he said. “You unnerve us. You make us naked.” Again he laughed. “Which is more shocking—me undressing your body, or you undressing my mind?”
    “I’m sorry,” said Vanessa contritely. “It was by invitation. I won’t do it again, unless you allow me, or unless…”
    “Unless you think I will betray you?”
    She nodded. “Is that unreasonable?”
    “No.” He smiled.