Omega Point Read Free Page A

openness.
      "Outside? I'm outside," Richards said, and cracked open an eye.
      He was outside. Score one for the great detective, he thought.
      A knocker clinked on its plate as if a door had been slammed, although it was attached to a bricked-in space where a door wasn't. It was a lonely noise, rapidly swallowed by the night. The outside lantern, a baroque thing held aloft by a grimacing centaur, went out, rolling up its tongue of light.
      "k52, what the hell are you playing at?" said Richards. He sighed as his eyes adjusted themselves to the dark; stupid human eyes with poor night vision. Ornamental woods gone wild surrounded the house. Wind rustled through trees silhouetted against a starless sky, black marbled purple and blue, a pregnant moon hanging large, its light casting the landscape in stark monochrome.
      A loud crack came from the woods. Richards wasn't sure if he should feel afraid or not, but he did; he could not disengage himself from his fear. Being at the mercy of his emotions was new to him. He decided to play it safe and get back in, to break the dog-man's limited programme and find out what the hell was going on. He half-expected k52 to burst from the trees, and that would be trouble.
      The house was massive but not large, its solidity giving it a weight far beyond that of its dimensions, and Richards went round it in no time at all. A cruel iron fence kept him at a distance. The stone was so dark it sucked in what little light there was, so he couldn't make much out. He looked back to the woods. The trees rattled, branches beckoning him.
      Richards grasped the fence and heaved himself astride it. He fell awkwardly. His trailing leg snagged, cloth and flesh tore with equal ease on an iron barb, and he landed gracelessly on a flowerbed full of trash.
      "Shit!" he hissed. He scrambled up again. His leg throbbed dully. He probed the wound. "Ouch," he said. His fingers glistened black in the moonlight. "This is far too realistic."
      Blood dripped down Richards' leg as he limped to the wall and felt along it for a door. As inside, so outside: no windows or doors. The frames were there, but the spaces between were as unseeing as skin healed over empty eye sockets. He reached a space where the moon shone unimpeded by trees and looked harder. A nightmare scene was coaxed from the shadows, painted where window glass should be. A ghastly face with too many teeth, flaking eyes fixed on his. Night drew in closer, hunting. Sibilant promises came from the windows. Richards caught the odd word.
      "That's not very nice," he said.
      He went round the house again inside its skirt of iron. He swore and grumbled as his feet encountered hard rocks and unmentionable softness. All the windows were the same, daubed with horror. When he was sure there was no way in, he scrambled back over the railings, more carefully than before.
      An owl shrieked. Too loud, too close.
      "Woods it is after all," he said. He was trying to feel brave. Richards felt fear ordinarily all right, but not in the way that men did, and not for the same reasons. When he did feel fear as men do, he did it because he wanted to, and it was fake; it could be deactivated. This could not. This was people fear, glandular fear. He glanced behind him, enjoying the novelty of ungovernable emotion even as it quickened his heart and impelled him to hurry down the drive. The crunch of gravel underfoot made him wince. A gust of wind tickled the trees. Dead rhododendron leaves rustled in the understorey; a sterile, woody scent carried from them.
      He made sure he kept to the middle of the road, away from the fringes of the woods, just in case.
      Richards turned from looking behind himself just in time to walk into a musty barrier, as solid as a brick wall, in a dirty fur coat.
      Richards spat hair from his mouth and looked up, and up.
      Heavy paws dangled like mallets from long arms. Close-set eyes burned cold in a face as