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                      SEX, LIES, AND NECROMANCY

                                  by

                    Daniel Parsons and Brandi Weed

              There is nothing so powerful as the truth,
                     and often nothing so strange.
                           -- Daniel Webster

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Janie and Angel came back downstairs.  Ardrin was still lying in the
front room, five dead, green-robed people spread on the floor between
him and the door.  They recognized MacIntree, and the president of the
Inverness Shriners from his picture; the rest they didn't know.
     "Is Merryweather dead?" Angel asked.
     Ardrin slowly nodded. "Yep.  Finally."
     Janie breathed a huge sigh of relief. "Good."
     "That's putting it mildly, Janie." Angel dropped her gun and
collapsed into a chair, holding her arm. "Good Lord, what an unholy
mess.  We'd better call the mainland, but the phone lines are probably
down."
     "There's probably a radio.  I'll go look.  If you see anything
green, kill it."
     Janie found the radio in the basement.  It was next to a diesel
generator wired to a sealed plexiglas room, inside of which a tall,
smooth, cylindrical machine hummed softly.  Janie stared at it for a
while, blinking slowly, before turning on the radio.
     "Hello?  Hello, does anyone hear me?"
     A female voice crackled over the headphones. "Hello, this is
Kirkwall.  We read you.  Over."
     "This is agent Janie Calder, I'm an MI5 agent in a place called
Keckhaver.  I want you to call the MI5 office in Inverness and tell
them to get out here."
     There was a long pause. "And... what else?  Over."
     "How about the police, and some helicopters, and an ambulance.
Or whatever they use to get wounded people off islands.  Tell them we
found the computer and Merryweather and everybody's dead, all right?"
     There was another long pause.  Janie gritted her teeth.  Finally,
the voice crackled back, "Look, this is an emergency channel, young
man.  I want to talk to your mother."
     "Now you look.  I am agent Jane Calder, a woman, badge number
45812.  If you do not connect me to Inverness, I am going to have you
arrested for obstructing justice, then I will find you and strangle
you with your own intestines, and then I will get nasty.  Do you hear
me?"
     Shortly later, Janie was talking with a night desk clerk at the
Inverness MI5 branch.  "Jane Calder... yes, the badge number matches."
     "No shit.  Now I want helicopters, I want an ambulance, and a
division of the army if you can spare it.  This is an emergency."
     "First, I need to talk to your superior."
     "HE... IS... DEAD!!  And another agent is dying as we FUCKING
speak, so GET YOUR ARSE IN GEAR and get the fuck up here!!  Tell
Hartree that we found his precious Cray, and if you need to know
anything else, khob dir im bod!"
     "Come here in be?"
     "Do you want me to translate?  I don't think I can translate it
into baby talk!  Now if you don't get moving, I'm going to pull some
strings and have you put on field duty in Belfast!"
     "Someone in a position of authority has to authorize the..."
     The shrieking could be clearly heard upstairs, and the parts that
were in English were almost worthy of Grayson.  Ardrin blinked slowly
and grinned. "Sounds like she found the radio."
     "I suspect so.  Did she just say, 'I keep a pet pterodactyl and
feed it dipshits'?"
     "Among other things."
     "I'm surprised you're not taking notes, Ardrin."
     "Nah.  Too wordy."
     Angel sighed. "I thought it was rather clever, actually.  She
relies on very few of the simpler terms you favor.  Oh, deliberately
starved wolverines.  Not a bad image."
     Eventually, the noise subsided, and Janie came back upstairs. "I
do not believe this.  The whole organization is full of IDIOTS!"
     "Taken you this long to realize that?"
     "Ardrin.  Janie, are they on their way?"
     "Yes, finally.  Stupid clerk wouldn't send ANYBODY out without
authorization."
     "Well, that's really not the clerk's job.  But something else has
occurred to me."
     "What?"
     "What are we going to tell them when they get here?"
     "It was the drugs talking. I wasn't myself."
     "No, no.  I looked outside while you were talking.  Go and look."
     Janie walked to the front door and looked out, over the town.
The rain was still beating down, and it was difficult to see, but it
looked like all the dead creatures were breaking up in the driving
rain, and washing out to the ocean.
     "That's disgusting.  It would also explain why no one knew about
them."
     "I suspect that by the time MI5 gets here, they'll all be gone.
Which leaves us the question, what are we going to tell them happened
here?"
     Janie stood in front of the door, muttering to herself. "Oh, god.
They'll think we're bloody crackers."
     Ardrin let out a low, grim laugh. "I'll give you three guesses
how quickly we find ourselves in desk jobs the rest of our lives."
     "If we're lucky."
     "No, I don't think we'll have to."  Angel looked very unhappy,
but her expression was set. "I think Janie just gave us the answer."
     "What answer?"
     "It was the drugs talking." She looked around at them all. "All
the monsters were hallucinations.  Everything happened just the way it
did, but there were no monsters, no lightning, and no ankh that we
ripped off the mummy.  Ardrin, where is Merryweather's body?"
     Ardrin pointed at the pile of green cloth in the doorway. "The
body disappeared.  I don't think there's even any slime or anything
left."
     Janie picked up the robe, and tossed it in the fireplace without
a second thought.  "He drowned coming in from the other island.  And
he came in a boat, not walking over the water.  It'll be a long time
before they can dredge out there, and we know the current's strong."
     "Very good.  Very, very good.  And we are not going to tell
anyone.  Not Mr. Samuels, not anyone.  All right?"
     Ardrin and Janie both nodded. "Fine.  Maybe it's even true."
     Angel smiled very weakly. "Oh, of course.  It's the most rational
explanation.  We file our reports, stick to the facts as far as we
dare, and hope our next assignment goes more smoothly."
     "No, Angel, there's one thing we need to do before that."  Janie
held up the ankh. "Excuse me."
     She walked to the fireplace, and got a polished marble statuette
off the mantelpiece.  It didn't take her long to beat the soft gold
into an unrecognizable lump and commit it to the fireplace as well.

                             *     *     *

     The promised helicopters did arrive, and boats, and soon the
island was crawling with police.  Most of the inhabitants were hiding
indoors, but there were dead bodies everywhere, all shot and mangled.
The agents were all flown back to the mainland, and then loaded into
another helicopter and taken to London and interviewed, separately,
for most of the morning, and then left to sleep and recuperate for the
rest of the day.
     When morning came, they were all brought to a conference room.
Mr. Hartree was at the head of the table, his expression as blank and
unapproachable as ever, with three files spread out in front of him.
At his right hand there was a youngish blonde man in a gray suit whom
they did not recognize.  But on his left, staring dreamily into space,
was their old supervisor Mr. Samuels.
     "Hey, Bob!" Janie exclaimed.  "Great to see you!"
     "Mr. Samuels, I had no idea you'd been released." Angel smiled as
they wheeled her up to the table. "I hope you're doing as well as you
look."
     Samuels slowly blinked, and smiled.
     "Yes," Hartree mumbled around his pipe. "Very good, then.  Shall
we begin?"
     A nervous look crept over Janie's face. "Begin what, sir?"
     "I wish to go over your reports with you.  Mr. Samuels was just
given a clean bill of health yesterday, so I had you brought down so
we could go over it all together."
     "Certainly, sir." Angel swallowed a bit, but covered for the
gesture by reaching for some water. "Is there anything wrong with our
statements?"
     "There appear to be a few discrepancies, quite possibly of a very
serious nature."  Hartree took one last puff, then set his pipe down
and opened Ardrin's file. "Now then, Mr. Castamir.  According to what
I have here, you arrived in Keckhaver just before 6 o'clock."
     Ardrin nodded. "To the best of my recollection, that is when we
arrived, sir."
     "Yes.  You went to a dining house for supper, and after you had
eaten you went to a boarding house."
     "Yeah.  We didn't want to try going anywhere in the rain."
     "And it was there that you believe the effects of your meal began
to make themselves known."
     "Yes, sir" Angel said. "I'm afraid that from that point onward,
things became rather muddled.  I did occur to me, even then, that I
would not be able to make any sort of coherent report, as I wasn't
sure what was happening even as it happened."
     Ardrin looked sidewise at Angel. "Uh, yeah.  We were kind of
stoned, sir."
     The blonde man on Hartree's right, who had previously remained
silent, finally spoke. "I should think so.  Your blood tests turned up
enough psilocybin to render a horse flight-worthy.  I'm surprised you
didn't taste it."  He had a noticeable American accent.
     Angel looked down her nose at the man. "I am not at all familiar
with the taste of psilocybin, and would be unable to recognize it even
if it were strong enough to taste. Mr. Hartree, may I ask a question?"
     "You may."
     "Who is this man?"
     "This," Hartree gestured to the blonde man, "is Mr. Harrison, who
is here representing NATO."
     The three of them all blinked. "NATO?"
     "Yes," Mr. Harrison said. "It stands for the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization."
     "Oh bother, we knew that," Angel said irritatedly. "But what does
NATO have to do with this case?"
     Harrison glanced at Hartree, who had picked up his pipe again.
"Mr. Hartree, I had presumed your agents had been briefed."
     "Certainly they had." Hartree puffed for a moment, gazing raptly
into space. "The Cray, of course, was to be part of the National
Defense Network, tied in to those parts of the NATO defenses located
on the British isles."
     "But..." Janie frowned in confusion, "we were told it was the
property of the University of Glasgow, for some kind of physics
experiments.  Professor Samuels was to be in charge of it.  He had
always talked about it like it was his."
     "Professor Samuels, perhaps, presumed a bit too much.  He was to
be in charge of maintaining the Cray's hardware, and administering to
its on-site functions, which were to be kept minimal.  The University
would have access to its functions on a limited basis, but it was to
be used by NATO."
     "What for?"
     "I'm sorry, but that is both classified and irrelevant." Hartree
put his pipe down. "At the moment, we are more concerned about what
happened in the Orkneys, specifically when you were at Merryweather's
residence, and afterwards."
     "Certainly, sir." Angel was beginning to feel more and more
irritated now. "We will answer, to the best of our knowledge."
     "All of your reports agree on one thing: you arrived at the house
together."
     "Yes, sir," Janie said.  "We kind of had to sort of carry each
other at that point."
     "Yes.  Now, according to our ballistics reports --"
     "Fast work," Ardrin said.
     "According to our ballistics reports, all five bodies in the
house were killed by bullets from the same gun, a 9mm handgun."
     "Yeah.  I shot them."
     "Which leaves the whereabouts of agents Braithe and Calder
unaccounted for.  There were not even any expended shells from their
weapons in the room.  You arrived together, but only one of you seems
to have been present when your pursuers arrived."
     Angel opened her mouth, and closed it again. "Yes... we, ah..."
     "Agent Braithe and I went to look through the rest of the house
and make sure there was nobody else there.  Ardrin stayed in the front
room to make sure they didn't sneak up behind us."
     "Alone, and seemingly unable to even walk."
     "I didn't need to walk, sir."
     "Apparently not," Harrison said. "Nice shooting, by the way."
     "Thanks."
     Hartree quietly cleared his throat. "Did you find anyone or
anything else in the house while you were looking about?"
     "No, sir, we did not," Angel said confidently.
     "Only thing I saw was a human skin, mounted on one wall."
     "Hmm." Hartree looked through the files, his smooth pink brow
faintly furrowed. "A human skin?"
     "Yes.  It had a face on it, sir."
     "I see.  But you took nothing from the house?"
     "No, sir.  Nothing there I'd want."
     "And if we did," Angel said, "it would be among our possessions."
     "Do you have reason to believe that there was something missing
from the house?" Ardrin asked.
     "Yes, we do have reason to believe so.  Our operatives have been
searching the house and the grounds, and there appear to be a few gaps
in the collection, as it were.  But for now, there are no more
questions for you, and I believe you should return to your much needed
recuperation.  That is all."



Daniel Parsons                                             Brandi Weed
                          Questions or comments to dparsons@netcom.com
        Available for ftp from ftp.cs.pdx.edu, in /pub/frp/stories/SLN