by Brian Lumley
“You see—” said Trask, becoming frustrated now, “I need to know—is there any way to detect a spore’s infection? I mean, in the early stages, are there any positive symptoms? How can I tell if a man has breathed mutative vampire spores and is commencing to change? And how long does that change take? In short, how much time do we have?”
“A lot of questions,” said Harry, wispy again, “and I don’t have any answers, not as gospel. I can speak only from personal experience.”
“Then that must suffice,” said Trask. “How was it for you? How long after breathing Faethor’s spores did you know for certain that…that you were in trouble?”
“Just a few days,” said Harry. “But without the Möbius Continuum I might not have suspected it for quite a while. In fact the actual…condition came on quite slowly. Its ‘symptoms,’ as you call them—my love of the night, a liking for raw meat, and the redness in my eyes—were things that came later. And as you know, Ben, I fought them.”
“For us,” said Trask.
“And for myself,” said Harry. “For if I’d submitted, then I wouldn’t be here, or there, or anywhere now. No, for you would have seen to that.”
“But you won,” said Trask. “We all saw it, how you escaped into the myriad Universes of Light.”
“I wondered if you would,” said Harry. “I tried my hardest to show you. And you—all of you, your talents—did the rest. But the Continuum was my medium, and in the end it was my saviour, too. But escaped? No, I died…and went on.”
“The Möbius Continuum,” said Trask, returning to what Harry had said earlier. “You said that it gave you your first indication of your condition. How, exactly?”
“When I disposed of Faethor along the future-time streams,” Harry answered, “I stood at the threshold of a future-time door and watched my blue life-thread unwinding out of me. But it was tinged with red. There was that of the vampire in me…and it was growing!”
Trask grasped the concept immediately, grasped the truth of it, and said, “Jake has access to the Continuum!”
“Of course,” said Harry, looking puzzled, “for I gave it to him. In your world, your now, Jake is the Necroscope.”
“But just like you, in your time,” Trask continued, “he may have pushed it too far, come too close…”
“I see,” said Harry, slowly. “And now you would like him to test himself, by following his thread into the future and checking that its colour stays true. But if Jake is in fact infected…do you think that’s wise? And in any case, it may be pointless.”
“How so?”
“Because Korath is in him, at the moment suppressed—as is Jake himself—by my presence. Let me explain. Before I got rid of Faethor my life-thread was tinged red. We both supposed this was his fault: that being a part of me, his presence was tangible, made visible, in Möbius space-time. But I tricked him into leaving my mind, and when he left erected impenetrable shields. Still he clung to me, but I dislodged him and sent him into the loneliest future any creature has ever known. But while Faethor was gone, my thread was still tinged red. I suppose it had been his plot to usurp me entirely; which is possibly Korath’s plot, too, this time with Jake as the vessel.”
“So if Jake’s lifeline is red,” said Trask, “that’s because of Korath?”
“You won’t know for sure until he gets rid of Korath,” said Harry. “But in any case, your advice to Jake should be to avoid trying to read the future.”
At which Ian Goodly said, “As you avoided me?” He sounded a little hurt.
“The future is a devious thing,” said Harry, turning now to the precog. “Oh, I know that your talent has often stood you in good stead, but you of all men must surely be aware that it can also let you down. I wasn’t so much avoiding you, Ian, as finding you hard to read. In many ways your mind is much like mine: it won’t stay fixed in one time.”
“I can’t help what I am,” said Goodly.
“Nor should you apologize for it,” the other answered. “But as for myself: I was wary of the future. I only rarely followed future time-streams, and then not to the end. And as it happens this was a wise precaution, because if I’d known the end of it, I might very well have ended it myself, and much sooner.”
“You would have saved yourself a lot of pain,” said Goodly, believing that he understood.
“And saved the pain of others,” said Harry. “Having me as a friend was a dangerous business.”
The apparition’s neon outline was wavering again, his blue-neon filaments fading. Trask cautioned the others to leave the questioning to him, urged them to concentrate instead on keeping the ex-Necroscope’s revenant focussed in the here and now, and returned anxiously to his previous theme:
“Harry, you said we can’t be sure of Jake—whether or not he’s contaminated—until he gets rid of Korath. Is that possible? I mean, how can Jake rid himself of this monster? And if he can’t, could you perhaps do it for him?”
And beside him, Trask heard Liz’s fervent prayer, “Oh yes! God, yes! Please let it be so.”
Harry’s neon glow was an intermittent pulse now. Like some failing light source he came and went. And similarly his telepathic voice in their minds, fading and strengthening moment by moment but never coming back to its full strength. The lure of this space-time was weakening, and likewise the team’s hold on him. And as he retreated from them psychically, so their needs retreated from him; his answers took longer, and his responses became more vague.
“Listen everyone!” Trask snapped. “You have to concentrate as never before, else all our efforts go for nothing. Keep him here!” And then, to the fading image: “Harry? Can you hear me? Can you answer me?”
“Harry?” said the other queryingly, like a faint echo from far away. “You want to speak to Harry? But there are—or have been, or will be—a great many Harrys. Which one is it you’re looking for?”
“It’s you we need!” Trask cried.
“But I’m in so many, and so many are in me,” said the apparition. “So take your pick. Is it the one you see, or—”
And the boy was back, elbow on knee, chin in hand, strange eyes staring into some ill-defined distance. “—This one?” he said in his boy’s voice, which Trask was gratified to note was a little stronger now. “Or maybe one of these?” Harry said, in a barely remembered voice, as he metamorphosed into a startled-looking Alec Kyle, a previous Head of Branch. His guises—his incarnations or host bodies in however many worlds and times—came and went in rapid procession:
A brawny black-haired Szgany youth with strangely familiar features…an old, white-haired mage…a baby in a crib in a garret room with a sloping ceiling…a gaunt, crimson-eyed spectre of a man in mummy wrappings…a Thing with tentacles and a naked, throbbing three-lobed brain…a furry, wolflike creature with triangular eyes, whose hands were those of a man…a burned, smoking figure in the shape of a crucifix, tumbling endlessly, head over heels in darkness. Until finally—
“—Or perhaps this one?” Harry grunted, in the obscene but far stronger, sardonic tones of the Wamphyri! And there he sat as Trask had last seen him in the flesh, the monstrous Vampire Lord that Harry had been before departing Earth for Starside.
For comparison Jake Cutter’s central outline, the shape of a full-grown man, was like that of a child, a waif, within the thing’s neon framework. Harry (the awakened, vampire Harry, as once was) was wearing an entirely ordinary suit of ill-fitting clothes which seemed at least two sizes too small for him, and his upper torso sprouted massively from the trousers. Framed by a bulging jacket which was held together at the front (barely) by one straining button, the wedge-shaped bulk of his rib cage was hugely muscular.
His open-necked shirt had burst open at the front, revealing the ripple of muscle-sheathed ribs and the powerful depth of his chest; the shirt’s collar stuck up from his jacket like a crumpled frill, made insubstantial against the corded pillar of his leaden neck. His flesh (for all that he was immaterial, a hologram) gle
amed a sweaty grey-blue, while his face—
—Was the absolute embodiment of a waking nightmare!
Harry looked at Trask through halogen, Halloween eyes that seemed to drip sulphur, and smiled. At least in the alien world of Sunside/Starside—especially Starside—it might be called a smile. But here on Earth, in London, at E-Branch HQ, it was a writhing of thin scarlet lips, a flattening of convolute snout, a slow gape of mantrap jaws.
That face…that mouth…that crimson cavern of jagged teeth, like shards of white, broken glass! And:
“No,” Trask croaked from a suddenly dry throat. “No, Harry, we don’t need that one. Never that one!”
“Good God Almighty!” Liz gasped from beside Trask, physically repelled by the sight of the thing in the chair. Her hand jerked out of Trask’s grasp as she backed away, and the apparition began to fade faster yet, guttering like a spent candle.
But behind Trask and Liz the door to Harry’s Room had just that moment opened, and now a sixth figure joined the five. It was Lardis Lidesci, and filling the gap between Trask and Liz, he grabbed up their hands and growled, “I felt called here, by my seer’s blood. It told me he was here, Harry Hell-lander!”
And the three-dimensional neon hologram at once firmed up; the vampire Harry morphed back into the twenty-year-old Harry; his hollow eyes fixed themselves on Lardis, and he said, “It’s been a long, long time, old chieftain.”
And Trask breathed a sigh of relief. The image was as firm as ever, and perhaps more so. Reinforced by Lardis’s presence, it was proof indeed of a seer ancestor’s blood, still coursing in the Old Lidesci’s veins. And Lardis, no stranger to strange things, knew what he was doing here; the fact that this apparition had spoken to him hadn’t thrown him at all.
“Still you come and go in that weird way of yours,” the old man grunted, nodding his head. “But weirder far now…because I saw you die at the Gate on Starside! You, Karen, and The Dweller. Along with Shaithis and Shaitan and all that was theirs.”
“True,” said Harry. “But death isn’t like that, and I have gone on.”
“Gone on, and gone into!” said Lardis. “And is this really you here and now, gone into Jake? You did me and mine no harm, Harry Hell-lander, not even at your worst, and I can’t believe that you’re seeking to usurp this poor lad.”
“Nothing of the sort!” said Harry. “For I was called here, even as you have been called. That of me which is now in Jake, it’s for the good, or so I’m given to hope. And this image you see is just a facet, and transient.” And then to Trask, “But I can’t stay here indefinitely. You asked me something, Ben, and I may have the answer.”
And eagerly now Trask said, “The answer to Jake’s problem? How he might expel this Korath?”
The other shook his immaterial head. “There’s no way he can do that, not while Korath clings like a leech to his inner mind. It was the same for me: I couldn’t dislodge Faethor Ferenczy. I had to trick him out into the open and then keep him out. But I did manage to shut him down. I blanketed him, trapped him in an empty room in the manse of my mind, and so excluded him from my affairs.”
“You could do this at will?” Trask licked his dry lips.
And Harry nodded. “The mind has unsuspected mechanisms for which it has no use. Like the appendix they’re mainly obsolete, redundant. Or perhaps they’re as yet undeveloped? Anyway, while I can’t say whether they’re atavistic or futuristic, in certain psychically talented people such as you and your agents they’re very strong. You call them shields, and Jake Cutter’s shielding mechanisms have enormous potential. Despite that I was drawn to him—that he was to be my successor, as it were—his shields were so strong that for a while they defied even me. Jake knew instinctively how to use his shields externally, to keep telepaths and other psychics at bay, but there’s at least one more trick that he hasn’t mastered. Perhaps I could show him how to turn his shields inwards.”
“To isolate the thing within him?” Freakish as the concept was, still Trask managed to grasp it.
“Precisely,” said Harry. “It’s the same principle that lets us switch off unpleasant or traumatic memories, which after all have origin in our minds. It’s just that the switch needs turning up a little, or tuning to a higher degree.”
And Liz broke in, “Can you really do that?”
“I can try,” Harry told her.
“Which might confine Korath,” said Trask, “but it won’t get rid of him.”
Harry nodded. “It can only be done step by step. But assuming that Jake does find a way to expel Korath, there’s another, even finer mechanism he might employ. Again a kind of shielding is involved—but shielding carried to the nth degree! And even though Korath has managed to gain access previously, he’d never get in again.” Harry paused to look at Trask expectantly. And:
“I think I may have seen something of this mechanism—this talent—at work,” said Trask, narrowing his eyes thoughtfully.
“And so you should,” said Harry. “Upon a time, in E-Branch, there was just such a man. By virtue of his ‘talent’—the fact that no one could get at him—he was even the Head of Branch, albeit briefly. But he was a traitor, a double agent whose actions gave him away, and you caught him before he could kill me. I think you remember him well enough, Ben.”
“Norman Harold Wellesley,” said Trask. “A psychic blank. He couldn’t be read, couldn’t be located…he was quite literally a zero in the psychic aether!”
“The same,” said Harry. “Well, when he was dead he tried to make amends for his past misdeeds by offering me this metaphysical defence mechanism. I accepted it, and in my turn now offer it to Jake, to use at will. Except—”
“—Now please, Harry,” Liz cut in, her anxious grip tightening on Trask’s and Lardis’s hands. “Don’t make conditions, but if you can do these things, please do them now!”
“—Except,” Harry went on, “if he is in fact infected—”
“—Then it will make him stronger still,” said Trask, his face suddenly gaunt and ashen.
At which everyone looked at him. For this was his decision. And for good or bad, Ben Trask had never been afraid of making decisions…
12
Starside—a Wolf’s-Eye View
TRASK LOOKED RIGHT BACK AT HIS AGENTS, especially at Liz, and said, “I know that in the end it’s my decision, and that it’s now or never. But now as never before I need your input, each of you in turn, and as quickly as possible. But remember this: if we let Harry do this, and if Jake is…other than he appears to be, then Baron Frankenstein will have been a veritable saint compared to us! What we’ll be making might well be indestructible. Jake is the Necroscope, yes, but what if he’s a vampire, too, or even Wamphyri? Immune to our talents—invisible behind Norman Wellesley’s shields—we’d never be able to read or locate him. And he knows almost everything there is to know about us. You really do need to consider that…” He paused to let it sink in, and finished off: “That’s it, enough said. Now we have to get done with this. So starting with Liz we’ll work right to left. What’s it to be, people?”
And almost before he’d finished Liz was speaking. “Jake is Jake,” she gasped. “He isn’t anything else. No one knows Jake’s mind like me, and if there was something wrong with him—other than this Korath—then I’m sure I would know it. Also, this is Jake’s last chance. Korath knows his mind’s mechanisms and from now on, when Harry’s finished and gone from here, he’ll be able to control him. There’s only one way to fight Korath: by taking those controls away from him, giving Jake the power to lock him away, to exclude him from his thoughts and actions. If we don’t we’ll have lost our greatest weapon. And if that’s the case…if that’s the case…”
She was almost sobbing now, and on her left the precog took over from her. “We’ll be taking a chance,” he said, “but it’s a chance we have to take.” And, enigmatic as ever, “Always remember this: whatever we say or do, the future is laid out for us. What will be has been.�
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Millie spoke up. “I’m with Liz, and anyway we’ve no choice. If we don’t do it Korath will have Jake, and then…then we’d have to kill him. Don’t misunderstand me; Jake saved my life in Szwart’s hideous garden under London; he’s saved all our lives, but still there’s no escaping the facts. Yes, we’d have to kill him, for with Korath in command it would be just like Ben said: Jake would be—if not truly, then virtually—a vampire with the incredible powers of a Necroscope, and access to the Möbius Continuum. So I vote we ask Harry to do whatever needs doing.”
It passed to Chung, who said, “From the moment Jake came to us I felt that the Necroscope was back. I mean the Necroscope—this one apparently sitting here—the one who held us together through some of our darkest years. In Jake there was nothing of darkness. Rebelliousness, yes, but then he had a mission of his own. How I see it: if we had left him out of things he wouldn’t be in this mess now. And God knows we owe him. I mean, Millie’s right, we’d all be dead without him! So let Harry do his thing. I’m with Liz.”
And then it was Trask’s turn. “So it’s fairly obvious,” he said, “that even if I was against it I’d be outvoted. Not only that, but as a team we’d be finished. A classic case of ‘united we stand,’ and all that. But in fact I’m for it. Just listening to you people—listening to your hearts speaking way over your heads—reminded me that this isn’t the first time I’ve had to make a choice like this…” He looked pointedly at Harry’s neon image, and Harry replied:
“The last time it was me, right, Ben? And you took a chance with me. Well, maybe your luck is holding. As for Jake…consider it done. All it took was a tweak here and there.”
“Consider it done?” Liz repeated him. “You mean—?”
“—I cornered Korath in an empty room, and locked him in,” said Harry. “And if sometime in the future Jake can find a way to expel him, then he’ll be able to lock him out—permanently. But that’s a maybe, for no one can second-guess the future.”