there, and it's gone. Right?'
Jake knew she was fishing — albeit for something he wasn't able to give her, not yet — and said, 'Weren't we talking about Gates?'
'There are two/ she answered. 'The one under the Carpatii Meridionali is the original; it occurred naturally and has been there for — well, no one knows how long. It's like a black hole, or perhaps a grey hole, and its other end comes out in Starside in a vampire world. A long time ago, warrior Lords would throw their conquered enemies into it. It's how vampires got here in the first place/
Jake accepted that; it felt real, he knew it was so. 'And the other?'
'Is man-made/ Liz told him. And settling back, she said, 'This is how the story goes:
'Thirty years ago the Americans put one over on the Soviets. A >ig one, that is. And good for them — for us, the whole world — too, because since World War Two the Russians had been bluffing the West right out of its pants. Kennedy was the first US President to call that bluff, over Cuba. Later, Ronald Reagan and Maggie Thatcher would have their say. They just said no. Thatcher was good at that/
'Said no to what?' Jake was no historian.
'To the Russian military build-up/ she answered. 'To trying to keep up with all of that expenditure on ships, aircraft, bombs, the space race. And so President Reagan or his advisors invented SDI, the Space Defense Initiative.'
''Star Wars?'' He remembered that much, at least.
'Right,' Liz said. 'A fantasy scenario if ever there was one. And the Soviets fell for it. Now the boot was on the other foot and eventually their expenditure went over the top. It was probably the beginning of the end for Russian Communism. But in the early '80s, while they were still financially stable, their top boffins and physicists were tasked to dream up an answer to the USA's SDI — a programme that didn't exist except on paper, and very thin paper at that.
'Well, that's what Perchorsk was all about. They built a dam across a powerful watercourse in a ravine to give them the hydroelectric power they needed, also to give them some camouflage against the West's spy satellites — which was something else that didn't work — and carved out a subterranean complex from the bedrock. They put in an atomic pile to boost the project's energy requirements, and bingo, they were in business. But they very quickly went out of business.
'The idea was… I don't know, some kind of radar? A fan of energy raking the sky, covering all the north- western territories of the then Soviet Union. It was an experiment, but if it had worked they'd have built more complexes just like it as 'defensive' measures against incoming missiles or bombers. Hitting that fan would be like running into a brick wall; nothing was going to be able to get through. In effect, a force-screen. Huh! Talk about an 'Iron Curtain?' And what price SDI then, eh? Except of course, there was no SDI…
'… And no force-screen, either. During the first test it backfired, the pile imploded and a new kind of energy — or perhaps a different and extremely primal kind of energy, a different kind of heat — was discovered. And where the pile had been, right at the core of the Perchorsk Complex, there was this… well, this hole. This hole that went right through the wall of our universe.
In Starside the new singularity appeared in close proximity to the original, the 'natural' one. So—'
'—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 whom 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 the 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 in the past tense, which is now present tense 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 being thorough in 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 he 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 trreir own tactics against them, too.' 'Eh?' Jake queried, walking beside him. 'Disguises, smokescreens, visual lies — 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, that: '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: that secrecy is synonymous — hah! — 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 only 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 jetcopter, 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 back-up 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
