Bloodwars Page 3

  The realization of his deadspeak had supplied the will to live, while his goal had been the Mobius Continuum (though at that time he’d had no knowledge of it, except that it was some great secret which hid itself in the mathematical maze of the numbers vortex). Well, and now that he had tamed the vortex, the Mobius Continuum was his to explore at will.

  So the two talents went hand in hand, while Nathan’s telepathy was a bonus which his father had not known; or at least, not until the last of his days. But as for other esoteric talents, Harry Keogh had not gone wanting. Indeed, he had explored and practised one such ‘art’ (namely, the resurrection of men out of their immemorial dust) which, in the light of what Nathan had learned of Earth’s religions, might only be considered blasphemous. For it was one thing that rotting cadavers should feel empowered to will themselves up from their graves for the love of others, but another entirely that the long dead should be called back into life against their will, and raised up out of their very salts, dust and ashes by a sorcerer for his own dark purposes.

  Yes, a monstrous talent, this necromancy. And yet without it…

  … In a town called Bonnyrigg, not far from Edinburgh, there had lived a small boy who lost his puppy under the wheels of a speeding car. But for Harry Keogh’s ‘skill’, the pup would have stayed lost. Who could gauge the enduring pleasure that a mongrel dog’s life had brought into the world of a boy, a youth, a man, even a family? For Paddy was alive still - the dog and his master both, grown up now - and Nathan had been to visit them.

  But while on the one hand Paddy was only a mongrel dog, Harry Keogh’s first experiment with necromancy, on the other hand there had been men, too, called back into life by his ‘art’; even a pretty young girl called Penny. All of whom had known the hell of dying twice, needlessly, because of Harry. And yet, not all of the people he’d touched in this way had been victims.

  In the Zarundului mountains of Romania, Nathan talked to a Thracian Warlord called Bodrogk, and to his wife, Sofia … or rather, to what remained of them. For they were no more of the flesh but a few handfuls of dust blown away on the winds of the world. But because they’d died here, they remained here still, to tell Nathan of his father’s works. And none of the dead that he had spoken to or would speak to had more praise for Harry than Bodrogk the Thracian and his wife Sofia.

  In the dark of night, in the ruins of an old castle under a waxing moon, their deadspeak voices thin as air appraised him of Harry Keogh’s works: how the Necroscope had gone up against the last of the fabled Ferenczys here - Janos, the bloodson of Faethor - and won! And Nathan knew the story must be true, not only because the dead were telling it, but because the very name Ferenc was a curse in his own world, too. As were all the names of the Wamphyri!

  But when Nathan learned of the things this Janos had done — of the men he’d called up from their sacred dust to torture them for their secrets, and of their long-dead women which he’d used for other purposes - then finally his mind was decided on the subject: Necromancy was a talent he

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  would not pursue. In any case, it was abhorred by the Thyre and the dead of the Szgany alike, which was why the latter had avoided Nathan: because he was the son of the hell-lander, Harry Keogh. It was the last legacy of his father, which in his own world at least Nathan still must live down; either live it down, or prove that Harry’s reputation in this respect was unwarranted.

  But in this world, now that the Great Majority had finally befriended him:

  Nathan visited a graveyard outside of Ploiesti in Romania, whose dead had risen up on his father’s behalf against Securitatea thugs in the days of Ceausescu. They were still there and they still remembered, and made him welcome. His father was a legend to them, and they swore that despite the timidity of the Great Majority in general, they had never turned their backs on Harry Keogh.

  What? But Harry had been responsible for the removal of a great cancer out of their earth: the termination of Faethor Ferenczy himself, and his expulsion into the infinite abyss of future time - indeed, into Mobius time. For within the Mobius Continuum, Harry had sent the incorporeal spirit of the master vampire Faethor winging down future time-streams with only his mind intact and no possible hope of rescue. Such had been the Necroscope’s loathing of vampires … and such was his son’s loathing of them . ..

  He visited a cemetery not far from Newcastle in England’s north-east, to talk to a prostitute Harry had known. Pamela’s one regret was that she had never known his father ‘that’ way … but she had known and liked him enough to dig her way out of her grave for him when he was in trouble. It had happened at a time shortly before Harry had been driven out of (or had chosen to leave) this world for Starside, when the Necroscope had been up against a monster in human guise by the name of Johnny Found. With Pamela’s help -and the help of others of the teeming dead, Pound’s victims all - Harry had destroyed him right there in that graveyard.

  So Nathan learned of his father’s works, from the living

  and the dead alike: from his friends in E-Branch and from the teeming dead in their graves across the world. And so he spanned the world in his efforts to track down any who had known Harry Keogh, in order to vindicate his father and re-establish his reputation.

  In point of fact, it wasn’t an absolute requirement that Nathan visit their last resting places in order to talk to the dead; it would be far easier to reach out a deadspeak probe, seek them out across all the miles, and do it that way. But that had not been his father’s way. The first Necroscope had never been the one to ‘shout’ at the Great Majority; when he had desired to speak to a dead man, then he had gone to ‘see’ him. Except in matters of extreme urgency, it had seemed the polite thing to do; and so it seemed to Nathan.

  In this respect, too, he must use extreme caution. A good many of Harry Keogh’s dead friends lay in graves or other resting places within perimeters which had enclosed the once USSR. Even with the Mobius Continuum to command, Nathan knew enough to restrict his visits to places such as these. Just as there were espers in the West, so there were ‘talented’ men in the East - and most of them belonged to Turkur Tzonov!

  But so many dead people to visit, because this might be his last chance; so many of them who he must talk to. And all to be seen to in little more than twenty-four hours: a day, a night and a morning. Because that was all the time Nathan had left.. .

  … In this world, at least.

  To most men, his itinerary - the amount of work he packed into those few short hours - would have been exhausting; without the Mobius Continuum it would have been impossible. Nathan was Szgany, however, and accustomed to the seemingly interminable hours of day- and night-time on Sunside/Starside, where each day/night cycle was equivalent to a week in the parallel world of Earth. In this respect, he could and did drive himself to an almost insomniac extent.

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  But when all or as much as possible was done, and Nathan returned to E-Branch HQ after one last trip - to a graveyard in the north-east of England where he’d talked awhile and said a fond farewell to a personal friend, the revenant spirit of a small girl called Cynthia, dead before her time - then, even he was weary. It showed in his face as he stepped out of the Mobius Continuum into Harry’s room, where David Chung was no longer required to act as a homing beacon, for Nathan had the co-ordinates now.

  And it also showed when he reported to Ben Trask, as he had been instructed to do after each Mobius trip …

  II

  Trouble at E-Branch - The Mobius Route

  The Head of Branch wasn’t looking too good himself. Trask’s voice was more than a little testy when he reminded: ‘It’s Friday, Nathan, and we’ve a plane to catch - you, me and a couple of minders. There’ll be more of our people waiting in Belgrade, in case Turkur Tzonov is watching and has agents there. In fact, you can bet your life he has! And while we’re on the subject of Tzonov: you may not know it, but I worry when you’re away from here
on your own - that you might stray too far into his territory, that he might somehow trap and kill you. So maybe you’d like to tell me why you’ve kept me waiting? I was beginning to think you’d left it too late. Our plane leaves in just three hours’ time. It’s a standard flight of around two and a half hours; maybe you can catch up on some lost sleep in the air. Frankly, you look like you could use it.’

  But Nathan shook his head and said, ‘No, I don’t think so. Flying isn’t for me. I don’t really care for airplanes.’

  It took the wind right out of Trask’s sails. He frowned and said, ‘What the —?’

  ‘I wasn’t much for riding on Wamphyri flyers, either.’ Nathan’s smile was wan, despite the tan he’d picked up in the Ionian. ‘And in a way planes are just as bad - perhaps worse. It was exciting enough at first, I suppose, but .. . let’s face it, nothing that heavy should jump that high! So why don’t you take David Chung to Belgrade, and I’ll do my sleeping here and catch up later?’

  ‘You’ll catch up -?’

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  ‘Later,’ Nathan repeated it. ‘My way. As soon as you’re in the Refuge at Radujevac .. .’

  After a moment’s silence: ‘Your way …’ Trask said. The way he breathed the words, they were like a sigh. And in that same instant of time, both men realized how much the older envied the younger. But then, perhaps in an attempt to disguise the fact, Trask asked, ‘Does it come that easy to you now?’

  ‘It’s getting easier, yes.’

  ‘With Harry, it was like walking, talking, breathing. But he’d had practice.’

  ‘And I’m getting it.’

  ‘You .. . you brought Zek here that way. I mean yesterday.’ Trask had had plenty of time to think about it; the idea should be old hat to him, but it wasn’t and never could be. ‘You just, well, brought her here, from Zakynthos.’

  That’s right, I did.’ Nathan wasn’t boasting; in the main, it was still a mystery to him, too; he was just stating an anything but simple fact. And even without his telepathy, somehow he knew what was on Trask’s mind, what was coming next.

  ‘Son, do you think …’ Trask began, and squirmed a little in his chair. He hated to obfuscate and liked all things clear-cut. Perhaps it was his talent working in reverse. ‘- I mean, in his time your father took quite a few people with him along the Mobius route. But it’s something strange to me, an experience I can never know . .. Isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s still strange to me, too,’ Nathan answered. ‘And yet attractive, maybe even addictive. Do you want to try it?’

  ‘I … I don’t know.’ Trask began to shake his head, then stopped and nodded. ‘Yes, I want to try it. This could well be my one and only chance.’

  ‘And do you trust me?’

  This time there was no hesitation. ‘Yes, of course I do. You know I do.’

  Nathan shrugged and smiled again. ‘So be it,’ he said.

  And so it would be …

  Nathan slept, but Trask was too excited to do anything but sit at his desk, shuffle paper and try to keep his mind off what was coming next, in just a few hours’ time. For to dwell upon it … he knew he’d get no work done at all! Trask had been in a good many strange places and had done a good many strange things — the strangest! - but this was to venture into a place where only a handful of men had ever been, one which shouldn’t even exist, except in the fevered dreams of theoretical physicists or abstruse mathematicians. The Mobius Continuum! Only let him think of it … off he would go again, into crazy dreams and fancies of his own. But only fancies, because there was no imagining how it would really be.

  In the end, he pushed the paperwork aside and went to the Ops room. This was to be the stepping-off point for Romania. It was empty now, but in about three more hours …

  They would all be here, E-Branch in its entirety, or with the sole (the soul?) exception of Anna Marie English, eco-path, who for some months now had been working with the kids in the Romanian Refuge, and at the same time making the way ready for Nathan. Even the Minister Responsible would be here, because this was something he’d never seen, either.

  But Ben Trask had seen it, even before Nathan:

  That time at Harry Keogh’s place not far from Bonnyrigg, his ‘last refuge’ on Earth, when the Necroscope had reached the end of his time in this world. Trask had seen Harry in his Wamphyri mode - had witnessed something of a vampire’s weird metamorphosis - and sometimes he nightmared about it still. But as for the Mobius Continuum: that was something you didn’t see, unless you were the one who conjured it. But you could see it in use, certainly.

  Remembering the way Harry had looked that night when the Branch burned his house, Trask shivered again. Jesus! The Wamphyri overlords of Nathan’s world - or of Starside at least - were like that? He knew that they were, of course;

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  indeed, that they were worse than that. For Harry had fought the evil within himself all the way down the line, and according to Nathan even into Starside itself. But the Wamphyri: they gave free rein to their passions, their lusts, their evils. They were evil incarnate.

  As so often before, one last picture of Harry Keogh came floating to the surface of Trask’s memory. It was a scene from that same, sad, terrifying time when the Necroscope had almost but not quite succumbed to his vampirism:

  An esper called Geoffrey Paxton - a treacherous telepathic dog who should never have been inducted into E-Branch in the first place - had tried to kill Harry, tried to shoot him with a crossbow. Failing, he had fallen prey to Harry, and almost to the creature within him.

  There in the garden of his burning house, the vampire -the Wamphyri Lord, Harry Keogh - had picked Paxton up like a stuffed toy, examining him eye to eye, face to face. One fragile human being, albeit a piece of trash, up against someone who had been the most human being and was now a monster. Paxton, gape-jawed and bulge-eyed, his trembling, cold-sweating flesh only inches from the white-gleaming, salivating gates of hell.

  Harry’s face, his mouth … that crimson cavern of stalactite, stalagmite teeth, glistening and jagged as shards of broken glass. What? The gates of hell? All of that and worse.

  And Trask had thought: Paxton is a piece of candy, a sweetmeat, a Coconut Flake. He’s something to munch on. Why, Harry could bite his face off if he wanted to! Following which, the thought had occurred: Maybe he does want to! Maybe he will!

  The memory persisted, with Trask shouting, ‘Harry, don’t!’

  And the Necroscope slowly closing those monstrous, mantrap jaws, looking up in the ruddy illumination of the burning house and glaring at Trask across the misted garden. Then:

  Your world is safe, Ben, Harry had told him in his mind. I’m not staying here.

  And: Starside? Trask had wondered.

  Harry’s mental shrug. There’s nowhere else.

  At which he had released Paxton and let him fall to the earth like the piece of rubbish he was, and at the same time let Trask know that the war was over. But it hadn’t been over for Paxton.

  Snatching up his crossbow, again the telepath had tried to shoot Harry, at which the Necroscope had disappeared into the Mobius Continuum. And that had been the first time Trask had ever seen it, close up, in actual use:

  With the deceptively sinuous grace of the Wamphyri, Harry had stepped or flowed backwards away from Paxton and into . .. nothing! And to Trask and the E-Branch agents in the garden, it had seemed that he had simply ceased to be. Paxton’s bolt had shot forward into the misty swirl of Harry’s vacuum and been eaten up by it, leaving the telepath panting: ‘I got him! I’m sure I got the bastard! I couldn’t miss!’

  But the mist where it had closed on the Necroscope opened up again, and a clotted, gurgling, apparently incorporeal voice had come out of it, saying, ‘How sorry I am to have to disappoint you.’

  At that, Trask had snatched a breath of hot, smoky air, as a clawlike hand with nails like rusted fish hooks reached out of empty space, closed over Paxton’s head and dragged him
shrieking out of the garden and out of this world. Then …

  Harry might oh so easily have killed the telepath, but he hadn’t. Instead, moments later, he’d delivered him back to the garden: a man bereft of his telepathy. Which was the last favour that the Necroscope had ever done for E-Branch and the world in general.

  Following which: a brief exchange of words - an acknowledgement of the friendship they had known - and Harry had said, ‘Look after yourself, Ben.’

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  Trask remembered it so well. The way he’d felt: confusion, pity, shame. And his last futile attempt to find another way: ‘Harry, wait!’

  But again the Necroscope had used a Mobius door to make his exit, and for the last time Trask had seen him step sideways into another place, space, time. If there’d been a rope, it might well have been the Indian rope trick … if there’d been a trick! But there was no trick, and the magic was all mathematical.

  Look after yourself, Ben …

  Again, in the eye of memory, Trask saw Harry standing there - a monster, yes, but a man for all that - followed by a replay of his eerie disappearance. Then dreams and memories gradually fading … until suddenly, even startlingly, the Head of Branch was back in the empty Ops room …

  . .. Where now a hand fell on his shoulder!

  Trask gave a massive start, half-turned, saw the Necroscope standing there! But it was a newer, younger Necroscope, himself startled by the older man’s reaction to his presence and drawing back from him. Until Trask regained control and took his arm.