by Brian Lumley
“And yours, now,” said Trask. “As to how we’ll go about it: this isn’t the first time we’ve done this sort of thing. As Ian hinted a moment ago, the last time was on Starside. Then we had Zek and Nathan’s help, and without Nathan we couldn’t have done it at all. We moved a world, Jake, turning it on its axis until the sun shone on Starside! The end of vampiric life, throughout all the Vampire World. So we thought—huh! But this time we’re not looking to move anything, merely to attract something. It’s like recovering a lost file in a computer. We are the disks, so to speak, and also the power source, and Harry—”
“—Is the lost knowledge,” said Jake. “And I’m the monitor screen. But can it damage me? I mean, what if it blows my chip? What if my mind overloads or something?”
“In our experience,” said Trask, “the mind of a Necroscope, of the Necroscope, is a hard thing to overload. Without wanting to put you down, I have to tell you you don’t know half of what Harry knew, or Nathan…and they didn’t know half of what The Dweller knew! You’re young; your brain can accept a lot of knowledge yet. So I don’t believe there’s any danger in it for you. Indeed, it could well be your opportunity to grow, to learn the rest of it. But I can’t make you do it. The decision is yours.”
“Let me think about it,” said Jake. “Just give me five minutes to think it over—or rather, to talk it over.”
“With Korath?” said Liz, reading it in Jake’s mind. “Surely you know he’ll try to talk you out of it?” She was anxious now.
“Yes, and I fully expect him to,” Jake answered. “But often as not Korath’s word games and arguments supply as much information as they conceal. They let me learn things. For example, if he wants me to do something, then it’s invariably to his advantage. And if he doesn’t it’s usually to mine. I only need a few minutes.” And:
“Go right ahead,” said Trask. “We’ll give you some privacy, and when you’re ready you can call us back in.” He indicated to the rest of the team that they should leave, was last to go and closed the door behind him.
Then Jake pulled a wheeled chair out from under an ancient-looking computer console, sat down in it, and looked around the room. He looked around Harry’s Room, and wondered why it looked and felt so familiar. For what was it after all but a small and outdated hotel room? Oh, it had been fitted out with a computer console, but that had been a long time ago, in Harry’s time.
Genius loci? Well, maybe. On those previous occasions when he’d been in here, he hadn’t really had the time to think about it. But now, on his own, with nothing pressing…
…Nothing pressing? said Korath, apparently or ostensibly astonished. These “friends” of yours want to call up some freak out of space and time, some ghost who has already tried to take over your mind more than once, and you don’t feel any pressure? What, are you insane? You’d swap me for him? But why should you, when I’m nothing more than Trask named me—an unwanted tenant? That’s all I am, Jake—a tenant to whom you’ve let a room, for which you’re now sorry while I’m very grateful. But as for this Harry: how do you know he doesn’t want the whole house? Oh, and by the way, I heard what you said about me. About my word games and arguments. But of course they’re to my advantage! Naturally they are! Isn’t that the very nature of arguments?
Jake shook his head and chuckled however wryly. He couldn’t help it. And: “You know something, Korath?” he said. “If Malinari and those others hadn’t rammed you into that pipe—if you had somehow managed to die a ‘natural’ death—do you know how you would have ended up? You’re so twisted, they would have had to screw you into the ground!”
Ah, a joke! said Korath. While considering my expulsion—
“Your exorcism,” Jake corrected him.
—you find room for crude jests! Be warned, Jake: whatever else you do, don’t make an enemy of me. And remember this: that whatever Trask says about the human mind’s capacity, its mechanisms are delicate things. The mansion of your mind is furnished, and I am in here with all your treasures! Suppose I should, er, stumble and bring something crashing down? Ah! Who can say what damage such an “accident” would inflict upon you?
“Treasures?” said Jake, a little warily.
Memoriesss, Korath hissed. Habitsss, instinctsss—and what of emotionsss? For example: can human love become lust? Ah, but the dividing line is narrower than you think. Far narrower than the centuries separating you from barbarous ancestors. So then, what if I were to pick the lock on the primal “you,” the avatar that lies buried in your genes, to let him loose?
“You’ve been reading over my shoulder again,” said Jake.
But so illuminating! said Korath. So fascinating, and oh so revealing of your current penchant. All those great heavy books on psychology—
“—Were required reading,” said Jake. “If I were carrying a tapeworm I’d need treatment, medicine, a physical solution. But in your case—since you’re a mindworm—the answer has to be metaphysical: some kind of exorcism, yes. But I wasn’t about to let anyone else mess with my mind before first reading up on it myself. And it was useful. I learned quite a bit.”
And I have been learning about you, said Korath darkly. But then, as if afraid of divulging too much, he quickly continued, As for the books: the reason for my interest is simply stated. Since you sought an answer to me, I must seek an answer to the answer! (And “despairingly”): But see how low I am fallen! How are things come to this, that I am now considered a mere parasite?
“But you always were,” said Jake. “You and every other vampire who ever existed. So stop playing with words and listen to me. Do you know why I’m bothering to talk to you at all?”
To torment me? To gloat over me, perhaps for the last time, before these mentalist friends of yours attempt my removal? Ah, but what if they fail? What then of our relationship, our ‘partnership,’ Jake? Do you think I’ll ever trust you again?
“About as much as I trust you,” said Jake. “But in any case you’re wrong. I’m not gloating, not yet. For I know well enough that you won’t be a pushover. But on the other hand, if they do succeed in banishing you back to that black sump where Malinari left you…well, I just want you to know that I won’t let you rot there. That’s why I’m talking to you.”
Hah! said Korath. Another “joke,” for I have already rotted there!
“I meant,” said Jake, “that I’m not about to let your bones lie there in the dark. I wouldn’t sentence anyone—not even a rabid dog—to an eternity of night. And despite that you’re a loathsome parasitic Thing, you have saved my neck several times over. For that…well, I owe you a decent grave at least. And I’ll see that you get one. You can take that as a promise.”
And after a moment’s silence: Your vow? said Korath wonderingly, yet with something in his voice which hinted that Jake’s offer hadn’t been totally unexpected.
“My vow, yes,” Jake gave a deadspeak nod—and frowned. For he was just as surprised at himself as Korath should have been.
What? said Korath, trying not to gurgle his pleasure, which by all rights should have been his astonishment. Are you really offering to take my bones out of there? But why? And what’s in it for you?
“As to why,” Jake shook his head. “I’m not at all sure. You can put it down to my ridiculous, probably ill-founded sense of fairness, I suppose. Fair play, Korath: a human folly, yes. But if I ‘befriend’ you—if I show you mercy—maybe the teeming dead will give you some leeway, too. Who can say, in time they might even review your case. Maybe they won’t exclude you.”
Ah! said Korath. And now I think I understand! For you have known the misery of exclusion, too—though never to the extent that I knew it before you discovered me in my sump. Indeed, the Great Majority are wary of you still.
“Thanks to you,” said Jake. “But compassion goes a long way with the dead. If I can show a grain of mercy even for a creature as terrible as yourself—”
Then they will think well of you, said Korath. Yes, I see.
“Do you see?” said Jake with a frown. For now, suddenly it seemed to him that Korath was supplying logic for feelings and emotions that he himself didn’t understand.
Oh, yes. I see…several things, said the other, his deadspeak voice hardening again. But mainly I see a clever ploy to quell my fighting spirit, making it easier for your friends or this Harry Keogh to cast me out. Hah! For if a man believes in heaven, he will die that much easier. Alas, Jake, but the Wamphyri, their lieutenants and thralls, have no such faith. Even if there were a heaven, there’d be no room in it for them. No, you shall do your worst, I’m sure. And I shall resist you with all my strength, no matter what you promise.
“I expected nothing less,” said Jake with a shrug. “But if they do find a way to kick you out, I’ll keep my word anyway.”
As you will, said Korath. But if they should fail—which they will—do not expect leniency on my part. For I am what I am, and above all else tenacious.
“Then that’s it,” said Jake. “Conversation over. I’m out of here. And with a bit of luck so will you be, and very shortly.”
Let the battle commence, said Korath, with no quarter asked and none given. I fight for my existence, with whatever weapons are to hand!
“As you will,” said Jake, equally resolute.
But…I mean…in the event of my failure—which isn’t going to happen—but if they actually do find a way to cast me out…? (An uncertain quaver in the dead vampire’s voice now, as even in these final moments he sought to find an advantage.)
Jake gave a sad shake of his head, and before he opened the door to call Trask and the rest of the team back into the room, sighed and said, “No need to concern yourself, Korath. Speaking for myself—if only for myself—a promise is a promise.”
“How did it go?” said Liz.
“Much as I expected,” Jake answered. “He doesn’t want it to happen. But on the other hand, I don’t think he’s too afraid of it, either. Even if you get Harry back here—if you can manage to invoke him—Korath doesn’t think he’ll be any real problem. If he did I’m sure he would have argued a hell of a lot harder. But no, while he’s not about to take any chances, Korath really doesn’t believe Harry can expel him. Frankly, neither do I. For the fact is Harry Keogh is less than Korath. Oh, he was a power in his own time, yes, but now he’s scattered, diffused, thinned out. While Korath, however incorporeal, is real and embedded in my mind. I should know. I invited him in, after all.”
“Of your own free will,” Liz nodded. “In order to save me.”
“Whichever.” Jake shrugged. “But he’s in there.”
“And you did, er, talk to him?” said Trask, who for all his time as the Head of Branch, and despite all the evidence of his “six” senses, still found the concept of the Necroscope fantastic, so that he had to force himself to accept it.
“Yes, I did,” said Jake. “And I went easy on him, made him a promise. I told him whichever way it went, that when I get an opportunity I’ll shift his bones out of that sump and give them a decent burial.”
“You were trying to bargain with him?” said Ian Goodly.
“No,” said Jake, “but he has my word on it anyway. The way I see him—the way I remember him when Harry first introduced us—is as a frightened creature trapped in a night-dark place forever. Soulless but sentient, and totally lost and alone. The Great Majority won’t have anything to do with him; his thoughts go unheard; madness brings no relief. I can’t imagine any worse torture, and it’s never-ending. So, I’m going to bury his bones where I can go and talk to him now and then.”
“I don’t understand,” said Trask. “This creature is ruining your life; he has to be the ultimate voyeur; there’s no privacy with him in there, no thought you can think that he won’t eavesdrop. As long as he’s around you can’t ever have a life of your own!”
“I wouldn’t have a life of my own, but for him,” said Jake. “And not just me.” He looked at Trask and the others pointedly.
Trask shook his head in disbelief. “Man, you’re even beginning to sound like him! Can’t you see what a word game this is? It’s a circular argument, Jake. You feel you owe him because he saved our lives? But it was Korath who put our lives at risk in the first place, when he messed with your numbers!”
“Maybe, but I still think he can teach me things.” Jake was as stubborn as ever.
And Millie came in with, “Are you saying you don’t want rid of him after all?”
“Of course I want rid of him!” said Jake, while yet wondering if that were really so. But then he looked at Liz and said, “Damned right I do! But I want him where I can access him. In a place where I can still talk to him—but on my terms. You see, of all the Great Majority, he is one of only a very small handful who’ll have anything to do with me. I mean, what’s the good of deadspeak if I can’t use it?”
At which Trask relaxed a little, sighed his relief, and said, “You know, Jake, you really had me going there? In fact I think you had all of us going!”
But as Trask spoke, suddenly Jake noticed the selfsame look on all their faces: a worried look, fading now, that said for a moment there they hadn’t known what they were dealing with. And he could understand that well enough, for he’d just this moment realized that neither had he known what he was dealing with!
Feeling weak and cold, Jake reached for the chair to steady himself. “I…I’m not myself,” he said, as he sat down with a bump. “Not at all myself.” And he absolutely meant it.
Liz was there beside him at once, her hand on his shoulder. “What is it, Jake?” she said, trying to probe him. His shields immediately went up, turning aside her telepathy. And Millie’s, too. For all five of them were focussing upon him now: the precog’s weird talent, attempting to scan his future, Chung like a lodestone, and Ben Trask doing his best to read the “truth” of it, whatever it was. But none of them getting through, because his shields were that good. And the only trouble with that was that Jake hadn’t raised them!
“It was something he said to me,” he choked the words out, his face writhing.
“Korath?” Liz gripped his shoulder harder still. “What did that bastard say to you?”
“He hinted he could mess with my mind,” Jake answered. “And that could be why he’s been keeping so much to himself recently. He’s been practising. And now, I think he’s actually doing it!”
“Messing with your mind?” Trask snapped. “How?”
“He called my mind a furnished mansion,” Jake growled, “and said he’s inside with all my treasures: my memories, habits, and instincts. He wanted me to consider what would happen if he had an ‘accident’ that brought something crashing down, and he wondered what the result would be if he released my primal avatar, the basic, instinctive, animal meeee!”
Jake’s lips had drawn back from his teeth in an utterly uncharacteristic snarl. Glaring his hatred at his—his what? His tormentors?—he thrust Liz away from him, came surging to his feet.
Which was when Trask hauled off and hit him, and the lights went out…
11
Calling Harry Keogh
ON COMING TO, JAKE FOUND HIMSELF BOUND TO the chair with computer cable. And with his jaw still aching from Trask’s knockout blow, and likewise his head where it had slammed into the wall, the last thing he needed was Korath’s deadspeak voice hammering away at the back of his mind:
Didn’t I warn you? What, “friends” of yours, these people? The very first time you act as your own man—attempt to regain something of your independence—and what happens? This Trask, whom everyone holds in such high regard, strikes like the treacherous dog he is! After all you have done for them…no, after all we have done for them, to knock you unconscious and tie you down? And now perhaps you’ll stop this ridiculous charade, come to your senses and begin to fight back. And I shall be with you all the way…
But fully in the picture now, Jake brushed Korath aside and looked up groggily at the people surrounding him. T
hree of them wore wary, watchful expressions; one other (Liz) was very obviously concerned—she was dabbing at Jake’s lip where he’d bit it when he was hit—while the last, Ben Trask, looked as mean as Jake had ever seen him. And:
“For an old man,” Jake mumblingly told the latter, “you hit pretty damned hard!”
“Consider yourself lucky,” Trask growled. “After what I saw just five minutes ago, it’s a wonder I didn’t shoot you dead!”
“But you didn’t, because you recognized the ‘truth’ of it,” said Jake.
“Barely in time,” Trask nodded, “before you got completely out of control. It was what you said, about your primal avatar, the basic, animal you. Also what you said about not being yourself. I didn’t see the truth of ‘you’ because your shields were up, but I could still read the truth of your spoken words. Damn right you weren’t yourself! That was him pulling your strings.”
“He’s done it,” said Jake. “Found a way to get at my ‘mechanisms,’ knows which buttons to press.”
“Which means that from now on,” Liz said, “you’re going to have to keep a very tight grip on yourself. If anything doesn’t feel right—doesn’t feel like you—that’ll be him, and you’ll have to fight it all the way.”
“It means a lot more than that,” Trask growled. “Unless we can shift this bloody thing or find a way to block it, Jake is going to be useless to us, and to himself. In fact he won’t be himself! There’s no way we’re going to work with someone who’s likely to turn on us at any moment, most probably at a crucial time. Also, it strikes me that this time—this first time—Korath wasn’t in complete control, that he was clumsy. I don’t know, maybe he was desperate and pushed too hard on the pedals. But if he’s only just learned how to drive, and if that was the result, how soon before he memorizes the owners’ manual and gets it down pat?”
“The one thing he’s not short of is memory,” said Jake. “He got it from Malinari whose talent is eidetic. That’s how Korath remembers the Möbius equations, those numbers which I guarantee would baffle any of you. If Harry Keogh hadn’t passed on, well, whatever it was to me, they’d baffle me, too.”