by Brian Lumley
“—So,” Jake took it up, “when Turchin flooded the Perchorsk complex he drowned both Gates on Starside, making any sort of travel through them impossible.”
She smiled at him. “For someone who hasn’t read the files, you figured that out pretty quickly!” Which gave him pause, because he’d been thinking much the same thing; and again he knew that what she’d told him was so.
But Liz was already going on: “Well, there you have it, the answer to at least one of your ambiguities. Now, what about the others?”
“Just one other,” Jake told her, “but a difficult one. In a way it makes no sense, while in another—in the light of our involvement—it makes too much sense. The file talks about how the Gates were closed, ‘drowned’ by Gustav Turchin, which ‘guaranteed’ Earth’s safety. Similarly, it talks about Harry and Nathan Keogh, father and son, men who it credits with ‘destroying’ the Wamphyri. But if the world is safe and the danger past, why is all of this information laid out in present tense? Also, how can it possibly fit with what we saw and did last night?”
Liz nodded. “This is the bit you already have the answers for, right? It’s self-explanatory. Well, you’re correct. Those inserts in the file are brand new, hastily prepared, and incomplete. Makeshift replacements for the old text that used to be past tense, which is now present because—”
“Because that’s the nature of the problem,” Jake finished it for her. “As we saw last night, it’s here and now. Not left for dead in another world’s past, but alive and well and horribly real in our world’s present. Fine, or not so fine, whichever—but it still doesn’t answer my questions, doesn’t tell me where I fit in.”
Liz tossed her head. “I, I, bloody I!” she said. “Is that all you exist for, Jake? You?” But he could get just as irritated, and:
“No,” he rasped. “I exist for something else. Something I haven’t finished, that I still have to do and that all of this is pushing to one side!”
“Jake?” came a gruff query from out in the morning. “Jake Cutter? Is that you in there, huffing and puffing again?” Lardis Lidesci, his shadow falling across the tent’s doorway.
“Right on cue,” Liz snapped. “And very welcome. If anyone can answer your questions, Lardis can. He’ll certainly be able to add to your knowledge, anyway. And if nothing else comes of it at least I’ll get a break from your moaning, and find something better to do with all of the valuable time I’m currently wasting on you!”
E-Branch staff and espers were busy all around the camp, stripping personal and Branch kit and equipment from the vehicles. A lot of the “gadgetry”—the hardware in the ops vehicle—was in reality common or garden stuff, computers and communications equipment on loan from the Australian army along with the truck itself. Mobility would be the key word in any future war—the mobility of ops centres, that is, and war meaning any “conventional” war between nations, not species—and all of the WACs, the Western Alliance Countries, used compatible equipment. But the software and such belonged to E-Branch. And just as Trask’s people had been thorough in cleaning up last night’s mess, now they were thorough removing every last trace of their work and presence here. For as Trask had pointed out, covert organizations such as E-Branch couldn’t remain secret if too many people knew about them. And in the sort of war that be envisaged, the Branch’s secrecy would be of the utmost importance—indeed, Cosmic.
“On Sunside,” Lardis said, “oh, not all that long ago, the Szgany fought the Wamphyri with whatever weapons were to hand. Here your weapons are far super—er, superior! And not only your guns, grenades, and flamethrowers. No, for it seems to me that you’re using their own tactics against them, too.”
“Eh?” Jake queried, walking beside him.
“Disguises, smokescreens, visual ties—like that vehicle there. Beer? No such thing. A deadly weapons system! Or if not a weapon itself, a system capable of directing and controlling weapons. Ben has told me that in Earth’s past the vampires had a saying: longevity is synon—er, synonymous, yes?—with anon—er, anonym—er …”
“Anonymity,” said Jake, and knew it for a certainty, without knowing how he knew.
“Yes!” Lardis nodded his grizzled, bandaged head. “And in E-Branch they have another saying: secrecy is synonymous—bab!—with survival. Pretty much the same, wouldn’t you say?”
“Pretty much,” said Jake. “But vampires are one thing and I’m another. And frankly, I’ve had it with all the secrecy. If I’m so important to the Branch, why can’t I be told about it?”
“At first it was because you might be less—or other—than you seemed,” Lardis told him. “Now it’s because you might be more. And also because you mightn’t like what you are—if you are. Confusing? Well, not alone for you, believe me! Anyway, regardless of what Liz says, it’s not my job to tell you about you but about me and mine and the way things were, and the way they could be again by now, on Sunside/Starside.”
Around the camp, goodbyes were being said, hands shaken, the Australian contingent making ready to move out. Soon there would be just the ops truck, with its array of worldwide communications devices, one jet-copter, and another on its way back from Carnarvon. The two choppers were transport for Branch personnel and SAS commanders; the ops truck would stay until they were airborne, when it too would move out. In their next location, Trask’s team of espers and support staff would be on their own until their Aussie backup teams caught up with them. Thus these farewells were temporary; the same parties would soon be meeting up again, next time on the far side of the continent.
This was something that puzzled Jake. “How come we don’t move as a complete unit? Trask has all the contacts; why can’t he order up one of those big military transport choppers? Better still, why doesn’t he just call on ahead and arrange for a new fighting force to be waiting for us?”
“He could probably do any or all of those things,” Lardis answered, “but how would it look if we all arrived together at our next camp? Wouldn’t you consider that indis—er, indisc—er, indiscrete, Jake? Remember, it’s no easy thing for a man or men to hide their intentions from the Wamphyri. Any event unusual enough to arouse the interest of ordinary citizens is bound to arouse theirs, too.”
“Like a sudden influx of specialist troops?” said Jake.
“Indeed,” said Lardis, with a nod. “And as for starting out fresh with a brand new platoon of soldiers, doesn’t that go against the very first rule? The fewer people who know about us—”
“The longer we survive,” said Jake.
“Hab!” said Lardis. “Finally we make progress. And the problem with Mrs. Miller becomes that much clearer, too.”
The first vehicles were pulling out now, and the Old Lidesci grunted his approval. “This I like,” he said. “It’s what the Traveller is all about: constant movement between one place and the next. On Sunside, we Szgany became Travellers to stay ahead of the Wamphyri; we rarely stood still for very long in any one place. But here? Here we are the hunters. We move to track them down, and then we kill the bastards! Oh, yes, I like it a lot!” He smacked his lips.
The pair had arrived at the place of last night’s campfire. The back-burner, stoves, and oven were gone, but a steaming pot of coffee and a few paper cups had been left beside the trench. And as these very different men from entirely different worlds sat down on the last of the folding chairs, Jake said, “Lardis, why don’t you tell me about Sunside/Starside. I mean, all about Sunside /Starside, or as much as I can take in. For since that’s where all this seems to have started, maybe it’s my best starting place, too.”
And Lardis said, “As you will. But I may as well tell you now, it still won’t answer your one big question.”
“I had a feeling it wouldn’t,” Jake grunted. “But tell me anyway.”
And in a low growly voice, in words that strove valiantly to accommodate Jake’s language—and when they failed reverted to Lardis’s native Szgany, which the listener took in as best he coutd—the
Old Lidesci complied.
“As its name suggests, though in more senses than one, Sunside/Starside is a divided world. On Sunside, a slow and benevolent sun spins out days to more than four times the length of Earth days. But it sits low in the sky and casts long shadows—the shadows of the barrier mountains—on Starside. And the gloom and the long nights of Starside must have been the greatest of aids in the evol—er, the evolution, yes, of the Wamphyri.
“We don’t know how it started; it happened in a time lost to memory except in myths and legends, campfire stories carried down—and altered, of course—by word of mouth. But before the Wamphyri there was something of a young civilization, in a world much like this world, with oceans and mountains, islands and continents, and even seasons. And its peoples were setting out to explore it just as your first sailors explored yours.
“Then, an accident. Not of Man but of nature. A white sun fell from the sky. Ben Trask will tell you it was some kind of ‘singularity’—but that is science, of which I know very little. Anyway, it bounced over the world like a flat stone skipping on water, and came to rest on the barren boulder plains of Starside. But its coming was such that it ravaged the world.
“Once a benign planet, our world became a place of nightmarish ferocity. Great storms lashed from year to year, oceans stood on end, and entire races were wiped out, gone forever in the tumult of earth and fire, wind and water. The seasons were no more, while far to the north, beyond the barrier mountains, the pitiless Icelands shone dark blue under writhing auroras. It was as if a hell had descended from the sky, and a handful of Szgany survivors were its mazed denizens.
“But they weren’t its only denizens … .
“Time passed—oh, years and centuries and even millennia—and as the planet settled down the Szgany prospered awhile. Then came the Great Vampires, the Wamphyri! Don’t ask me how, or from where, for I can only shake my head. Anyway, what does it matter? However it was, they came, and made their aeries in the rearing stacks of Starside beyond the mountains, where the sunlight never fell except upon the topmost ramparts of those accursed crags.
“Legend has it that Shaitan was the first; he changed men into vampires in Sunside, and thus left his curse upon all the tribes of the Szgany—and even upon all men—for all time to come.
“Aye, for there’s that of Shaitan in all of us, and I think in all of your people, too, especially the espers, though mercifully it amounts to very little. Watered down by time and blood, we see it only in such rare talents as Ben Trask gathers to use against the forces of evil. In him it’s his ability to see the truth, and therefore to recognize falseness; in Goodly it’s his visions of the future, and in me it’s my seer’s blood, warning me of dangers whose scent is blown on the air, felt in running waters, and glimpsed in the leaping flames of fires or patterns in the dust. When all is not well, I feel it. And in you—
“In you it is something else … .
“But do not let me stray.
‘The vampires prospered; they raided on Sunside for blood and plunder. And the Szgany suffered every conceivable torment. They could move from place to place during the mercifully long days, gathering their food and learning the forest ways, but at night they could only hide themselves away—and pray to their stars not to be found. And when the sun went down the vampires would come on their flyers over the barrier mountains from Starside to hunt and ‘play’ in Sunside’s darkened woods. And everything that the Szgany are today is built out of the incredible, the despicable depredations of the Wamphyri.
“The Szgany learned to hide, not only their trembling bodies but their very thoughts. Why, eventually they even learned how to fight backl But that was a long time in the coming. And as evolution taught the Szgany its lessons of survival, so the vampire—by nature lazy—found it increasingly difficult to take his prey. And then, from time to time, vampire would turn upon vampire, and all Starside would become a battle zone.
‘The wars of the Wamphyri, their bloodwars, were endless, and except where truces were called they were times of rejoicing for the Szgany clans. But gutted aeries would always need replenishing, and deplenished larders filling, and fallen flyers and broken warrior creatures refashioning in their morbid masters’ vats of metamorphosis. And however long it took, the Wamphyri would return to Sunside, its pleasures and plunders.
“It was during one such war that the rest of the vampire Lords rose up against Shaitan and banished him to the Icelands. And so he was gone a thousand years and more … . a pity it wasn’t for good. And a greater pity that he left behind the spawn of his loins and tainted blood.
“But let me get on … .
“Now we move to modern times. How many years are flown? I do not know, I cannot say. But I was the chief of my tribe, the Szgany Lidesci, when Harry Keogh’s Earth-born son, who was known to the Szgany as The Dweller, came among us; and later Zekintha—Zek Föener, to you—and later still that fighter of fighters, Jazz Simmons, whose name I gave to my own poor son, Jason, to honour him. Jason, aye, lost to the bloodlust of vampires … .
“And then, finally, there was Harry himself—Harry Hell-lander, called Dwetlersire—he, too, came among us.
“But Harry and his sons—The Dweller and Nathan Keogh—they moved much as you move, Jake, between the spaces used by common men, along a route invisible! Nathan does so still, but in Sunside, in my world, on the far side of space-time; or one of its far sides, anyway. Which is Trask’s voice speaking, you understand. Myself? Hab! I can’t even say where space-time is!
“Anyway, I was chief when Harry and his son fought their battle in The Dweller’s garden—their grand battle with the Wamphyri—and won! I couldn’t be there with them, more’s the pity, couldn’t stand alongside Zek, and Jazz Simmons, and the Lady Karen, too; no, for I had problems of my own and arrived too late. But I saw what they had done: how they had used the science of another world, these Hell-lands, and weird talents from … well, from beyond any lands of the living, to defeat the vampire Lords and kick their backsides into the Icelands. Even the one known as Shaithis, spawn of Shaitan, finally broken, defeated and thrown out.
“We thought that was the end of it—most of the Szgany thought so, anyway. But I have a seer’s blood in me and didn’t believe that the Wamphyri were no more. It simply didn’t smell right, it didn’t feel right, and I couldn’t settle but watched and waited and held my breath. And I would climb high into the barrier mountains from time to time, to gaze out over Starside and think on things … and to worry.
“And not without good reason … .
“One time when I went there, Harry came. But he was … a changed man. Don’t ask my meaning; he simply wasn’t the man I’d known, but I believe he was still my friend. And the Necroscope had chosen a most opportune time to return to my world, for my seer’s blood had told me no lie: the Wamphyri were back in Sunside/Starside! Not only the last of them, but also the first.
“Shaitan the Unborn himself, no longer a myth or legend but a terrible reality. Shaitan—brought back from the Icelands by his descendant Shaithis—come back to batten on the Travellers as of old, like a plague that can never die … !”
12
THE REST OF LARDIS’S STORY
Lardis had paused for several long moments, pondering the best way to finish his tale. Finally he went on:
“This must be a lot for you to take in all at one gulp. So best, I think, to cut a long story short. And to tell the truth what’s left of it saddens me. I … lost some good friends that time. Not least The Dweller—who I think was my friend—and certainly his father, Harry Keogh.
“Aye, for they were beaten in the end, cruelly put down by Shaitan, and by his descendant, Shaithis, who had returned from the Icelands. And I was privileged—if that is the right word, but horrified might do just as well—to witness the end of it, which came as the Great Vampires celebrated their victory close to that dome of dazzling brilliance called the Hell-lands Gate: in fact the fallen white sun of legend, or Ben T
rask’s ‘singularity,’ where it sits in the lee of the mountains on Starside.
“As to what happened:
“That Harry Keogh engineered it, I have no doubt. How is a different matter. But the Wamphyri, Lords Shaitan and Shaithis, had crucified and burned the Necroscope down there by the light of the Gate, and what followed was, I am sure, his revenge. For that was ever his way: an eye for an eye. Or, on this occasion, their lives and all their creatures with them, for Harry’s one invaluable life.
“It came in a flash of light, a crack! of doom, a fireball and mushroom cloud. It was the Voice and the Breath of Hell itself, and it blew away those vampire Lords as if they had never been. We were there—myself and a handful of my Szgany faithful—safely distanced, high in the crags watching it all happen. We saw it happen, yet still we could scarcely believe it.
“Ben has told me what it was. A ‘tactical weapon,’ he says—which I’m told means a small one of its kind—had been fired through the Gate from the underground complex at Perchorsk. And would you believe it, he pretends not to understand why I still think of your world as the Hell-lands!?
“So, we didn’t know it was a weapon, and since its deadly cloud swept north we didn’t suffer its effects on Sunside. But when it was all over and done the Gate shone as bright as ever, and Starside looked no different, except now beyond the Gate a softly glowing plume lay fallen on the earth, forever pointing north in the direction of the Icelands. And no matter the rainstorms and howling winds, that plume was there for many a year, only very gradually fading.
“Then for a while we blessed the Gate, because it had issued that awful Breath of Hell that destroyed the first and last of the Wamphyri. So we thought for long and long. And this time I admit that I believed it, too. For with all we had learned of the tenacity of the vampire, we had not yet learned the lessons of history.