Harry would be drawn to this one. And that's something else you might give some thought to: if you want Jake firmly on the team, and his mind exclusively on the job in hand, you could do a lot worse than find this man, this Luigi Castellano.'
Trask 'And then what? Let Jake go after him?'
Goodly: 'This Castellano is rubbish and should be disposed of — we're all agreed on that. I think Jake will chase him down no matter what, which makes Castellano a distraction. But if he were to be taken out…. no more distraction. And we would have Jake's gratitude.'
Trash, mildly surprised: 'Well now! And just listen to the cold-blooded one! But you're right, and we're checking into it. Interpol and other friends abroad. If we could just bring Castellano to justice, that might suffice.'
Goodly: 'No, it wouldn't.' (A sensed shake of the precog's head). 'When he is dead, that will suffice. You know as well as I do how Jake dealt with the other members of that gang. Do you really think he'll be satisfied to see their boss nice and comfortable, all warm and well fed behind bars?'
Lardis: 'Anyway, in case I haven't already said it loud or often enough, I like Jake Cutter. And so does Liz.'
Liz, heatedly: 'I do not! Well, not especially.'
Lardis, chuckling throatily: 'See?'
Then silence for a while, the darkness deepening, and Jake finally adrift in dreams. And a strange cold current taking him in tow, steering him to an unknown yet oddly familiar destination…
A river bank, and below its grassy, root-tangled rim, the water swirling in the eddies of a small bight. A boy, sitting on the edge and leaning forward at what seemed an unsafe angle, dangling his feet close to the slowly swirling surface. His elbows were on his knees, his hands propping his chin, and he appeared to be talking to someone. Perhaps to himself.
Jake's shadow fell on him, and the boy turned his head to look up at him. He didn't seem at all surprised by Jake's presence (but then, neither did Jake). On the contrary, he smiled a pale, painful, yet appreciative greeting. 'Hello, there! So you came. Why don't you sit down a while and talk to me?'
'I, er, didn't like to cut in on you!' Jake answered, not knowing what else to say. And then, because he wasn't sure what else to do, either — and wondering if he knew the other — he finally followed his suggestion, sat down, and asked him: 'Er, do you think it's possible we've met somewhere before?'
Beginning to feel the strangeness of it all, he looked the boy over more closely, perhaps even warily.
Apart from the obvious fact that the other had recently been fighting, there didn't seem to be anything especially odd about him. He could be any scruffy boy, though for some reason Jake found himself doubting that. Maybe eleven or twelve years old, sandy-haired, freckled; he wasn't skinny yet barely filled out his ill-fitting, threadbare, second-hand school jacket. The top button was absent from a once-white shirt that hung halfway out of his grey flannel trousers, and a frayed, tightly knotted tie with a faded school motto hung askew from his crumpled collar. His lumpish nose supported plain prescription spectacles, small, circular windows through which dreaming blue eyes gazed out in a strange mixture of wonder and weird expectation.
Then, suddenly aware of Jake's inspection, the boy looked down at himself, wrinkled his nose in disgust, said: 'This will be the school bully, big Stanley Green's work. He's got it coming, has our Stanley. In about a year from now, or maybe two.' And his lips were thinner, tighter, more determined.
There was dried blood on those lips, a gash in the corner of his mouth, but little or nothing of fear in his dreamy eyes, which were now other than dreamy and contained a certain glint. Indeed, they looked older than the rest of him, those eyes, and Jake thought there was probably a pretty mature mind in there, somewhere behind that half-haunted face. But he could never in a million years have guessed how mature — or how wise in otherworldly ways.
And because the boy hadn't as yet answered his first question (as to whether or not they knew each other), Jake now felt the urge to remind and prompt him. 'Er, son?'
But he needn't have concerned himself. Obviously the other had considered Jake's earlier question, and now took his prompt into account, too.
'Son?' he finally repeated Jake, and cocked his young-old head on one side. 'And you're wondering if we know each other? Well, I've got to answer no to both questions. Uh-uh, Jake. You and I don't know each other, not yet. And I'm not too comfortable with you calling me 'son'. It's a case of — I don't know — what came first, the chicken or the egg?' There was no animosity in his reply.
'Eh?' Jake frowned. 'Someone else just bursting with riddles? I don't need that right now.'
'But it's a hell of an adventure,' said the boy, sounding not at all like a child, despite his child's voice. 'Er, working them out, that is. I've done my share of that, Jake.' Then, sitting back and gazing directly into Jake's eyes, studying his face and perhaps more than his face: 'So you're him. And you've been having a hard time of it, right?'
'Well, since you seem to understand what's going on here,' Jake answered, perhaps peevishly, 'why don't you tell me?' His dream might be working something out for him, resolving a problem.
And the other nodded. 'Very well, I'm telling you: you're having a hard time of it. But that's just as much your fault as mine; you have a very defensive mind. And me, I don't have much of a mind at all! Or I do, but not all in one place, not all at one time. Oh, I know — I mean, I've known — a lot of things. But what I remember and what I've forgotten are completely random. Like a kind of amnesia or a bad case of absent-mindedness. Except it's not. For you see, I'm really not all here. Or putting it more sympathetically, all of me isn't here. Which means that while I won't get things one hundred per cent wrong, I may not get them entirely right either. That's why I need a focus. But now, since you seem determined to reject me, it looks like it may be hard for us to get along, and harder still for me to get it together. So, how long do you plan to keep slamming the door in my face, Jake?'
'Who are you?' Jake asked him then, feeling a weird tingle in his scalp, an unheard-of sensation of negative deja vu: that it wasn't him but the boy who had been here —
or somewhere — before. And Jake felt he knew where he'd been.
But the other frowned and now seemed as uncertain as Jake. 'I… I'm all sorts of people and things,' he said. 'I'm Alec, Nestor, Nathan, take your pick. There's something of Faethor in me, or has been, or will be. And something of me in a whole lot of people. It all depends on the time, the date, the place. And time is relative: what will be has been, ask any precog. That's why we have to be sure it works out right, don't you see?'
'You… you're Harry Keogh!' said Jake, shivering without knowing why — until he remembered what Harry Keogh was. 'You're the ghost they've been telling me about!'
'And you're the gadget,' said Harry.
'But I don't want to be!' Jake felt himself riveted to the river bank; he wanted to leap away but couldn't move. It was the dream, the nightmare — one of those nightmares — where, try as you might, you can't escape from the thing that's chasing you.
I'm not chasing you,' the young Harry protested. 'You are chasing me. Chasing me away!' And in fact he was wavering, physically (or metaphysically) wavering, his figure a mere outline, his face and form thinning towards transparency.
'But you're after my mind, my body!' Jake cried.
The boy, the dream-Harry, the ghost (who by now was beginning to look ghostly, insubstantial as smoke) gave a desperate shake of his almost immaterial head. 'That's not me, Jake. It's the Wamphyri who want your mind, body and soul. I am the one — or rather we are the ones, and maybe the only ones — who might be able to stop them. So don't send me away, Jake. Don't fight me off!'
And suddenly Jake realized that he could, that he was actually doing it: fighting the other off, sending him away. And:
'I… I can, can't I?' he said, his fear retreating.
'You very nearly did!' said Harry, sighing as he firmed up again. 'Okay, so perhaps this is too strange for you, the wrong time and place, the wrong me. I didn't think you'd see any harm in a small boy, that's all.'
'What, in a child who talks like a man?' Jake felt himself shivering again, but less violently. 'A boy whose eyes are innocent as a baby's yet old as the ages? A boy capable of metempsychosis — who's in my mind right now — while I'm the helpless intended vessel?'
'You're by no means as helpless as you think,' said Harry, perhaps admiringly. 'That mind of yours: stubborn as hell, with good shields you've never had reason to use, nor even suspected you had them! Anyway, mind
