Blood Brothers

rather that his mentality had been depleted.

Harry dreamed of the forbidden Mobius Continuum. Trapped in its flux, he drifted useless as a ship with neither sail nor rudder, a waterlogged hulk rocked and slowly twirled by mathematical tides and algebraic whirlpools, through straits of Pure Number where he was now innumerate. And in the primal darkness of that place beyond or between such places as men are allowed to know, he was aware of a thousand locked doors, all of them drifting with him, around him, even through him, each one of them a mystery to him, closed to him forever. For he was no longer empowered to conjure the Mobius equations which were their keys.

They were doors, yes, to other places, even other times, but without their keys the immensity of the Mobius Continuum might as well be the narrow confines of a dungeon… or the innermost chamber of some sunken Pharaonic tomb, lost forever in the Valley of the Kings.

Such imaginative associations were cyclic and mutative as the stuff of dreams has ever been. Ideas evoked fresh visions as the focus of Harry's dream now shaped itself to this Egyptian motif. So that in the next moment he wondered: Doors? But if these myriad eerily drifting shapes are doors, then why do they look so much like sarcophagi?

Sarcophagi, coffins, caskets: now they were made of glass, allowing him to see into them. And within, all of those teeming dead thousands, the Great Majority, could see out! They could see Harry drifting helplessly by, and soon commenced to shout at him. He saw their mouths working, death's-head jaws grimacing and snapping, the leather of mummied faces cracking where unnatural stress was applied to otherwise inanimate, ex-aminate tissues. They rapped on their glass lids with ivory knuckles, ogled him through empty sockets, waved X-ray hands as he went floating by.

His countless dead friends: they talked to him as of old, questioned him, begged news, items of information, this, that or the other favour. But the ex-Necroscope couldn't hear them and in any case daren't listen, and he knew that he must never ever again try to answer them. Oh, Harry wasn't afraid of the dead and never had been, but he eared, indeed dreaded, their attempted communication with him! For his deadspeak talent had been forbidden to him, even as the most basic numbers were now unknowable. Worse, there would be a penalty to pay: such agony as might easily win him a box of his own!p>

He could only offer them a negative shake of his head (and even then believed he took a risk] as he bobbed heavily along where once he'd skimmed, no longer master but captive of the Mo'bius Continuum. I shouldn't even be here, he told himself. How did I get in here? How will I get out?

As if some One had answered, he saw that the coffins were doors again, one of which opened directly in his path. Offering no resistance (he had none to offer), he was drawn through into another place, another time. Drawn into time itself, but time in reverse! And so Harry began to fall into his own past.

Gathering speed, he was drawn backwards in time like a thread rewinding itself on to its bobbin. Indeed, he watched his own blue life-thread — nothing less than the course and continuity of his fourth-dimensional existence from birth to the grave — streaming back into him as he backtracked years already lived. And the thought occurred: I am going back to my beginnings. I will have it all to live — all to do, all to suffer — all over again!

That was too much. It was the difference between a dream and a nightmare. And Harry Keogh woke up -

— Drenched in his own sweat, and gasping: 'No!'

'Don't!' she told him at once, her voice almost as startled and frightened as his own, but less hoarse. 'You're hurting me.'

'Brenda!' Harry croaked, almost sobbed her name, while at the same time doubting that it was her name, but hoping anyway. Praying that it had all been a dream — and not just this part but all of it, everything — and a moment later knowing that it had not. No, for her fierce breasts, where now on impulse she suddenly hugged his face against them, weren't Brenda's; she didn't smell like Brenda; and anyway he remembered now that the Brenda he'd called out to had been many long years and an entirely different world ago.

'Brenda?' she repeated him, her accent husky, Szgany, as he relaxed his grip on her arms and flopped back into his damp bed. 'Were you dreaming, Harry Dwellersire?' She leaned over him, supported his head with a cool hand, stroked his brow.

'Dreaming?' He looked up at her, tried to focus on her. It wasn't easy; he felt weak as a kitten, drained. And that last word — coupled with what she'd called him, Dwellersire — was a trigger which released more memories. No, not drained, merely depleted. Robbed. By his own son, The Dweller. And none of it had been a dream, or only the last part. And even that had been so close to reality as to make no difference.

He turned his head, looked around the small, stone-built, whitewashed, electric-lamplit room. A crude dwelling, little more than a cave. But luxury to some. Certainly to Travellers, who hadn't known what a permanent home was before The Dweller and his garden. And Harry's voice turned as sour as the fur lining his clammy mouth as he mumbled, 'Starside?'

She nodded, 'Yes, Starside, the garden. And your fever has broken.' She smiled at him. 'You're going to be well again.'

'My… fever?' His eyes went back to her face. It looked very lovely in the soft, uneven yellow flow of the lamplight; most of the electricity from The Dweller's generators went to the greenhouses. 'Yes, my 'fever',' Harry said again, nodding wrily. No fever, he knew. Just his shattered mind, gradually pulling its bits together again. 'How long have I been lying here?'

This is the second sundown,' she told him. She withdrew her hand from under his head, replaced it with a bundled fur for a pillow. Then she stood up from her stool and said, 'I'll prepare soup for you. After you have eaten, The Dweller will want to know that — '

'No!' he cut her short, his anxiety very tangible. 'Not… yet, awhile. He doesn't need to know yet. I want a little time to myself, to get my thoughts in order.'

And she wondered: Is he afraid of his own son? Then perhaps we all should be.

Harry looked at her standing there, a frown on her attractive if careworn face. She was small, amply proportioned, with dark eyes slightly aslant, a small nose for a Gypsy, and hair glossy black where it fell to her shoulders. Passionate as all her race — dressed in soft, supple leather — even motionless there was something animal, sinuous, sensual about her.

Still frowning, she crossed to a fireplace built into the virgin rock of the innermost wall and hung a prepared pot from a tripod. Prodding the fire's embers to glowing life, and aware that Harry's eyes followed her every movement, she finally told him, 'But The Dweller's instructions were very clear: Lardis's people are to tend your needs as best possible until such time as you recover, upon which — and immediately — he is to be informed.'

'My needs are that I'm not to be disturbed,' Harry's wits were a little sharper now. 'I'm not to be excited. You mustn't… mustn't argue with me.' All of this thinking, all of these words, were a big effort. Wearied, he lay back and wondered why he felt only half here. No, he knew why: it was because he was only half here. He had lost, been deprived of, several of his senses — like losing touch and taste. Which left him feeling numb, and life flavourless.

The Gypsy woman smiled and slowly nodded, as if the sharpness of Harry's words had confirmed some unspoken thing. 'You are wilful,' she said what was on her mind. 'All of you hell-landers are alike, wild and wilful. Zekintha, called Zek, and Jazz Simmons: they were the same. If only they had stayed here. Their hot blood — their children — would be welcome among the Travellers. We would be the stronger for it.' It was a Szgany compliment.

'Szgany blood is hot enough,' Harry answered, also a compliment. 'So… will you report my awakening? What's your name, anyway?'

'I am Nana Kiklu,' she answered, coming back to sit beside him as before. 'And no, I will not report your awakening. Not for a little while.'

'Not until morning? Sunup?'

She cocked her head on one side. That's a long time. We're only half-way into the night. There will be others looking after you before sunup, who will surely see that you are recovered.'

'Not if I'm asleep,' Harry answered.

'Perhaps not…' But now she could see how important this was to him, and so made up her mind. 'Mine is the last shift,' she said, thoughtfully. 'If your recovery is still undiscovered when I return, then it can wait till daylight.'

Harry held back a sigh of relief, settled down more easily into his bed. He did actually need the time, didn't