by Brian Lumley
In Sicily, where Jake had finally rid the world of Castellano and his organization—and in the process discovered why he had felt so driven by his vendetta: that this had been part of a task begun but left unfinished, even unremembered, by the original Necroscope—the new Necroscope “heard” Liz’s desperate cry for help. Across all the many miles between them, Jake heard it. It was the rapport which existed between them, which had boosted Liz’s developing telepathic talent.
But when Jake required Korath to show him the Möbius equations in order that he might use the Continuum to find Liz and rescue her…then Korath had sprung his trap!
Korath had already discovered that Jake couldn’t be bribed or threatened when his own life was at stake, for without Jake there would be no Korath; so whatever else the vampire did, he would try to keep his host alive. But Jake would definitely be open to persuasion if another’s life were at risk…and more especially if that other was the woman he loved. Now Jake knew Korath’s real objective: access to his inner mind—to be one with him, a part of him—and perhaps permanently!
Jake couldn’t refuse…
Without Korath’s help, Liz was as good as dead…
In order to view the equations, create a Möbius door, teleport through the Continuum and rescue Liz, he must first accept this dead but incredibly dangerous thing’s conditions. And this despite Harry Keogh’s warning: that he must never let a vampire into his mind…
But there was no longer any other way…
He went along with it, gave Korath access to the very core of his mind and welcomed him in “of his own free will”…and only then discovered how he had been duped, that he would have been able to conjure the formula all along—if Korath had not been blocking his every attempt!
Too late now, though, to do anything about it, for Liz was in trouble on a small Greek island hundreds of miles away…
Jake was in the nick of time. In Krassos, he reunited Liz with her E-Branch colleagues, who then informed him of the plight of the telepath Millie Cleary in London. Using the Continuum, Jake returned Trask and company to their London HQ, where the espers combined their weird talents to locate Millie. Still alive, her psychic aura was well known to Liz who was then able to contact her and determine her precise whereabouts. Now it was up to the new Necroscope.
Taking Millie’s coordinates from Liz’s mind, Jake “went” to the distraught telepath in her previously unknown temple prison. There he found not only Millie, but also Lord Szwart’s terrible deadspawn garden, which (after a nightmarish confrontation with the “Lord of Darkness” himself) he managed to destroy by bringing about an explosion of natural gas.
So now, and despite that the plans of the Wamphyri were in disarray, the main question had to be: how many of the invaders themselves had survived? Had Vavara died when her limo crashed, throwing her into the sea? Had Malinari been trapped below, in Vavara’s garden, when it was buried? Had the metamorphic Szwart suffered the true death in a Roman temple whose destruction had even registered on the seismographs at Greenwich?
Now, too, with Ben Trask and his people in Jake’s debt, it was time for a showdown. Time for Jake to give up his secret—the fact that he harboured a vampire intelligence in his mind—and ask for E-Branch’s help, but also time for him to demand to know the full story: why had Trask been so reticent in his dealings with him, and what had been the problem with the previous Necroscope that the Head of Branch hadn’t dared talk about it?
Harry Keogh’s ability to raise the dead? But Jake had found that out for himself; indeed, it accounted for the grey streaks at his temples, and the hint of fearful, forbidden knowledge in his eyes. But he knew that wasn’t the entire story. Perhaps one day the teeming dead—that Great Majority of human souls gone before—might believe in Jake, have enough faith in him that he could ask them, but for now he was asking Ben Trask.
Or he would have been.
But at a meeting in Trask’s office, when all Jake’s questions might finally have been answered:
An urgent message from the Minister Responsible: something had come up which he knew would “interest” E-Branch. His usual British understatement, for in fact the minister knew that it was something which only E-Branch could handle.
And now read on…
1
The Sun, the Sea, and the Drifting Doom
AT SOME 35,000 TONS AND JUST OVER 700 FEET from stem to stern, the Evening Star was a Mediterranean cruise ship without peer. Her eight public decks were all served by elevators, and with her casino, gymnasium, outdoor pools, bars, gift shops, sports deck—all the usual amenities—the Star was the pride of her line. Of an evening, her 1,400-plus passengers could choose to relax in the Moulin Rouge lounge or the All That Jazz show bar, dance the night away in the Sierra Ballroom, or simply sit and be serenaded, watching the sunset from the panoramic sundeck.
This being the Star’s last voyage of the season, however, last night had been a little different. A mid-cruise “extravaganza,” the extra glitz of its shows and its grand finale—a fireworks display from the stern, lighting the Aegean sky with dazzling spirals and brilliant, thunderclap bomb-bursts—had been one of the highlights of the voyage; the locals ashore in Mytilene on the island of Lesbos had enjoyed it as much as the passengers aboard. Add to this cuisine straight out of a gourmet’s dream of paradise, and it was easy to see why the onboard partying had gone on and on through the night, and why the run on the champagne locker had seemed unending…
But all good things do come to an end.
Now…it was early morning of a Monday in October, and in the galley breakfast was being prepared for those who still had the stomach for yet more food, while those who didn’t slept off their excesses. A few younger passengers were up and about, making the most of the pools while yet they had them to themselves, and as if emulating their energy a pod of dolphins, like so many silver minisubmarines, played chicken on the bow wave, crisscrossing the prow just beneath a sparkling surface that was so flat calm it might well be a horizon-spanning plate of diamond-etched glass. While the sun had risen no more than half an hour ago, already the deck rails were warm from its rays.
Perfect!
So thought Purser Bill Galliard where he strolled the main deck for’ard, having risen early to prepare the shore excursion roster for the Star’s midday visit to the picturesque island of Límnos. Thus far the cruise had gone precisely to plan, without a hitch, and Galliard had wanted to do his bit to ensure things stayed that way. Now that he’d finished with the Límnos documentation, he could take it easy for an hour or so, at least until the bulk of the passengers were astir and those who desired to go ashore were readying themselves for terra firma.
Now in the very prow of the ship, forty feet above and forward of the spot where the knifelike stem sliced the water, he leaned on the deck rail and looked out across the vast curve of the ocean. No land in sight, but Galliard came from a long line of deckhands; he knew how quickly land masses could take shape on the horizon, especially in the Aegean, looming up as if from nowhere into cloud-capped mountain ranges. And with the cooling breeze of the vessel’s forward motion in his face, and the hiss of parted waters in his ears, he reflected on the trip so far.
Most of the passengers were middle-aged, comfortably well-to-do, generally easygoing Brits, and the crew was composed of a British captain, officers and senior stewards, supported by a largely Greek Cypriot body of deckhands, engineers, chefs, and an “international” lineup of entertainers. The passengers had flown out from England to Cyprus, joining the cruise in Limassol. After a week of sailing they would return to Cyprus before flying home.
Sailing from Limassol on Thursday evening, the Evening Star had cruised all day Friday, providing an ideal opportunity for the passengers to get to know the vessel and fellow holidaymakers. Saturday it had been “all ashore who’s going ashore” in Vólos on the Greek mainland, and Purser Bill had taken time out to visit friends in their villa at the foot of Mount Pelion, also to
pick up some gifts in Vólos’s bustling bazaar for the folks back home. Sunday they’d cruised to Lesbos and Mytilene, where the sightseers had gone ashore again, and last night had been the food and fireworks fest.
That brought Galliard up to date. The next port of call in some four hours’ time would be Límnos’s new deep-water harbour, and tomorrow they’d be through the Dardanelles on their way to Istanbul. But that was to look too far ahead, and cruises such as this were best taken one day at a time.
As he thought these things through, Galliard had been idly scanning the forward horizon. A moment ago—if only for a moment—he’d caught sight of something in direct line ahead. The fact hadn’t made a great impact on him; shipping of one sort or another can be found any time in Mediterranean waters, and just about anywhere. Anyway, it had been a flash of white on a glittering surface…maybe a dolphin had leaped clear of the water and the splashdown had caught his eye. But—
Purser Galliard stepped to one of two telescopes mounted on the rail and focussed ahead. For a while there was nothing, but then…now what was that? A Greek caïque? Just sitting there, all these miles from the nearest island? Nothing peculiar about the boat itself; the islands were full of them—like gondolas in Venice—but they usually stuck pretty close to shore. This one looked becalmed, and it simply shouldn’t be here.
The canopied boat was maybe three-quarters of a mile ahead—but dead ahead—and it definitely wasn’t moving!
Galliard took out his on-board communicator and pressed 1 for the bridge three decks higher. His call sign was recognized, and a voice answered, “Bridge. What can we do for you, Purser Bill?” It was Captain Geoff Anderson, informal as ever.
“You might try swinging her a tad to port and calling full stop on all engines,” Galliard told him at once. “We’re about a minute and a half from running someone down!”
“Wait,” came the terse answer, and ten seconds later: “Well done, Purser Bill. We would have seen and cleared her okay, but if they need help we’d have had to slow down and come about. So you’ve saved us some time and a little embarrassment, possibly. Now for your trouble you can arm yourself with a hailer and get down starboard onto B deck, okay?”
“Aye, aye, Cap’n,” Galliard answered with a grin, heading at the double for his office amidships. After only a few paces, he was gratified to feel the gentle shudder of a sudden deceleration, the barely noticeable shifting underfoot as the Star began veering a few degrees to port…
From just below the surface of B deck (the vessel’s basement) a section of the hull had been rotated outwards to form stairs. And from the bottom step, Purser Bill Galliard threw out a line to the tattered-looking man in the shade of the caïque’s canopy. Accompanied by three stewards and a deckhand, Galliard watched as the figure of the man in the caïque made fast the line, then began to haul his boat in alongside.
“That’s okay,” Galliard called out. “I’ll do that. You just sit tight.”
“Water,” the shaded, crumpled-seeming man answered him, his voice a dry croak. “The lady and I…we’re burning up.”
A lady? That must be the second figure, lying supine between the thwarts. Even as Galliard drew the caïque alongside, he saw her jewel-green eyes flicker open to fix his own, in the moment before a luminous glow suffused her face, making it indistinct. And:
God, she’s beautiful! he thought…before wondering where that idea had come from, since as yet she was barely visible in the shade of the boat’s canopy, which made a jet-black contrast with the blinding sunlight.
“Shade,” said the gaunt, ragged figure of the man, standing hunched under the canopy. “The sun. We have…suffered!”
“We have juice,” said Galliard, passing a pitcher down. “Sip a little. It will ease your throats, give you strength. But how long have you been out here?”
“Too long,” said the other, sipping and passing the pitcher to the woman, then reaching out a hand to Galliard. “Help me to get her up there.”
The purser took his hand, and felt its chill. Strange, on a day as hot as this to feel a hand so cold. Stranger by far that the hand seemed to smoke in the sunlight! But Galliard was much too busy, too concerned, to wonder about the apparent contradictions here. The woman was heavily muffled; wrapped head to toe, she seemed almost mummified as she struggled to her feet, tottering where she emerged into the light. Galliard leaned forward, held to the rail with one hand and caught her round her slender waist with the other. She stepped—was lifted up—from the boat to the stairs, and her man-friend close behind, apparently eager to enter into the shade of the ship.
“But what on earth happened here?” Galliard enquired, as he and the stewards assisted the pair up into the ship and towards the elevators, and the deckhand left to go about his business. “I mean, that you got into trouble, adrift way out here?”
“We ran out of fuel,” said the man, throwing off the jacket he’d been using to cover his head. “We were taken by an unusual tide off Krassos. We used up our fuel trying to get back to the island. A little jaunt turned into a nightmare.”
His story sounded incredible: that even in this mad El Niño summer they’d been lost in the Aegean—adrift and going unnoticed through all the regular shipping routes—long enough to have become so dehydrated and so badly burned. But on the other hand it must be true, for the condition of the pair admitted of no other explanation.
Galliard looked sideways at the tall, dark, would-have-been handsome man; “would-have-been” because the skin was peeling from his blackened face, and his sunken cheeks were pitted almost as if by small meteorites. The woman’s condition…was harder to describe, similar yet different. She was burned, too, blackened in places—as if by real fire as opposed to strong sunlight—and yet that strange glow obscured most of her facial ravages. She had thrown off some of her upper wrappings, revealing her face, and now breathed so much easier in the electric light of the ship’s bowels. But despite that she was close enough to lean on Galliard, still he couldn’t make out her features.
And riding the elevator up through four decks to the fifth, the bridge deck, Purser Bill frowned and shook his head. He continued to support the woman (also to wonder why, like her companion, she felt so cold) but was aware now of something weirder far. Despite that he somehow “knew” she was beautiful, she felt decidedly unlovely. Her waist where his arm circled it, and also her body where he supported it, they were hard, angular, bony!
But now, breaking into his thoughts as Galliard shrank back a little from these far from ordinary people:
“Take us to the Captain, Purser Galliard,” the man growled, his voice firmer now and commanding. “And don’t let the details concern you. All will become clear—shortly.”
“You…you know my name?”
“But of course I do, just as you told it to me,” the other answered (despite that Galliard was sure he’d told him no such thing.) And through all his burns, somehow the enigmatic stranger managed to smile a leering smile.
They left the elevator and headed for the bridge, at which the purser’s weird sensation of suspended reality—of all of this not really happening—eased off a little. Then, releasing the woman and drawing farther apart from her, he turned to the stewards, saying, “Lads, there’s something not quite right, in fact totally wrong…here?”
And far more so than Galliard had suspected, or so it appeared. For the stewards—all three of them—seemed dazed, in a world of their own. Having taken the woman’s weight, now they were wholly intent upon her, unable to take their eyes off her. And they weren’t listening to Galliard at all!
Just beyond a sign saying OFFICERS AND CREW MEMBERS ONLY, Purser Galliard came to a stiff-legged halt and turned to face the man he had so recently rescued. “What—?” he started to say, and stopped. For the tall stranger had moved so quickly, taking his face between his cold, burned hands, that the purser hadn’t been able to avoid the contact. Following which it was too late anyway. And:
Your knowl
edge of the vessel, the words flowed like a river of ice in Galliard’s trembling mind, freezing him solid. Of its Captain and other officers. Of anything that might be dangerous to me and my…companion. I need to understand your communication capability with the outside world and other ships—ahhh! your radio room, yesss!—and the location of any weapons that you are carrying. Do not think to deny me, Purser Galliard, for the pain I can cause you will not be denied! Give me everything I want and suffer no further, or suffer all that I can bring to bear in the knowledge that I shall still get what I want!
Galliard fought—or rather, he fought to move, to cry out, to break free—but it was useless. The icy power of this creature, the alien nightmare of his sucking hands, feeding on the purser’s knowledge, held him rooted to the spot. But he sensed what was happening to him, felt the flow of his thoughts—in fact his memories—going out of him, and knew that the chill they left behind them was the emptiness of a mental vacuum, as cold as the spaces between the stars.
You are correct, the Thing (surely not a man) told him. My mind is a great storehouse of memories, only a small number of which are mine. But knowledge is power, Bill Galliard, without which I’m at the mercy of a strange environment. So don’t hold back now, but let me have it all, everything. Then, as I “remember,” so you shall forget—even how to hurt. For as Nephran Malinari reads a book, so he tears out its pages!
“You men,” Galliard gasped, swiveling his bulging eyes to stare at the three stewards, at the same time trying to shrink down into himself away from his tormentor, but held up—held fast—by the monster’s hands. “You men…you have to…to do something! You have to fight it! Fight them!”
One of the stewards had heard him. His eyes focused as he staggered back away from the woman and looked at the purser in the hands of the demoniac stranger. “Purser Bill?” he mumbled, blinking rapidly. “I mean, what the hell…?”