transference isn't something that I… that I have in mind? I've had my time, Jake, my lives — and I'm still having them — but I do get your point. So, very well, let's try something else…'
A moment ago it had been warm in evening sunlight that came in flickering beams, fanning through the trees on the far bank and setting the water sparkling out towards the middle of the river where the current ran fastest. Now, in a single instant, it was cold and dark; frost lay thick on the ground, and the river was a ribbon of ice, frozen and motionless. A full moon hung low in a windswept sky, and a trio of gardens fronted rich houses that reared to the right of Jake and the boy where they walked along the river path. Except Jake's companion was no longer a boy but a youth.
Jake started away from the stranger — stumbled, might have fallen into frosted brambles on the overgrown river bank — but Harry was quick to take his arm, hold him steady. 'It's okay,' he said, to still Jake's cry of alarm. 'It's a different time, that's all, an older me. But the same place, more or less. The same river. We were back there,' he thumbed the air, indicated the path behind them, 'a few hundred yards downriver, sitting on the bank. It was summer and I was talking to my mother when you came by. Now it's… oh, quite a few winters later. I'm a little closer to your own age now, so perhaps we'll be able to get along that much better.'
Closer to my own age? Jake thought. But you're a good deal firmer, too. That's a Ml of a strong grip you have on my arm, and how much stronger on my mind?
But Harry the youth only shook his head in disappointment. 'Hiding your thoughts won't help. I'm in here, remember? Well, at present I am, anyway, while you accept me.'
'Jesus!' Jake gasped. 'It's like something out of A Christmas Carol! When I wake up, I won't believe it.'
'That's what I'm afraid of,' said Harry. 'Worse still, you may not even remember it. That's why we have to get things done while we can, and hope they get fixed in your mind.'
'Things?'
'Until you trust me,' the other answered, 'until you allow me a little permanency, we'll have to move in stops and starts. We'll get nowhere until I know the whole story, and I won't be able to help you until you believe.'
'Believe in a ghost?'
'But I'm not, not really. And Jake, you wouldn't — I mean you really wouldn't — believe how often I've been through this before! Oh, I've had trouble convincing others before you.'
While Harry talked, Jake looked him over. It was the same 'boy' for sure, but he'd be nineteen or maybe twenty years old now. Wiry, he would weigh some nine and a half stone and stand seventy inches tall. His hair was an untidy sandy mop that reminded Jake of Glint Eastwood's in those old western movies of more than thirty years ago. But his face wasn't nearly so hard and his freckles were still there, lending him a naive and definitely misleading boyish innocence.
More than any other feature, Harry Keogh's eyes were especially interesting. Looking at Jake, they seemed to see right through him (the sure sign of an esper, as Jake was now aware), as if he were the revenant, and not the reverse. But they were oh so blue, those eyes, that startling, colourless blue which always looks so unnatural, so that one thinks the owner has to be wearing lenses. More than that, there was something in them which said they'd seen a lot more than any twenty-year-old has any right seeing.
But still Jake felt a little easier with all of this now. After all, it was only a dream. And since this ghost, or whatever it was, was conversational, why not talk to it? Or humour it, as the case might be.
'So, if convincing people is as hard as you make out, why do you put yourself to the trouble?' he asked his strange companion.
They had come to a halt before the gate in the garden wall of the central house. Lights in the downstairs room adjacent to the garden sent angular black shadows marching over the brittle shrubbery arid garden path… the shadows of men, glimpsed only briefly before the patio doors were slammed and curtains jerked hurriedly across the wide windows.
For a long moment Harry made no answer to Jake's question; he stood as if transfixed, looking in through the gate's horizontal bars. But the house was mainly dark, where mere chinks of light escaped at odd angles from the corners and joins of poorly-fitted curtains.
Then the youth started, blinked his eyes in the pale moonlight, and breathlessly answered, 'Why do I keep putting myself out? That's easy, Jake. It's because I was the beginning, and I have to be the end…' Then he gave another start, and said:
'We can't stay here. That house there is where I was born. My stepfather has visitors — Boris Dragosani and Max Batu — and later, I'll be visiting him, too. Tonight is the night I killed him. But there are things you mustn't see, not yet.'
'You… you killed him?' And now the cold that Jake felt wasn't entirely physical, if it ever had been.
'I will,' said the other. 'But I don't want to see it, and I
don't want you to see it. So now we have to go. Another place and time. Are you up to it?' 'Do I have a choice?'
'You can always wake up, but I wouldn't advise it! It was hard enough getting into you this time. And if you're as badly frightened as—'
'Frightened?' Jake cut him off, his pride surfacing. 'Maybe I am, but I'm also interested — very. I want to know where this is going, want to find out what it's all about. And since they won't tell me—'
'They?' (Harry's turn to cut in).
'Ben Trask and his people,' Jake answered.
'Ah!' said Harry, nodding his head and smiling knowingly. 'I might have guessed. In fact, I suppose I knew. You mentioned 'them' before, and obviously E-Branch HQ was where I aimed you that first time, when I first became aware of you. But that was then and this is now, and we have to move on. Since this was my home for so many years, we'll probably be back. But… my timing was years off, and I can't think why. It must be my memory, which is incomplete. You see, I'm incomplete! I'm not entirely here. Actually, I'm not entirely anywhere! It seems to be only the strongest of times and places to which I'm drawn.'
'Maybe it's a variation on the old theme,' said Jake. 'The killer returning to the scene — and time — of the crime!'
'Very clever,' said Harry. 'And you could even be right — in a way. The lure of powerful times and places. Yes, I can see that. But a killer?' He shrugged. 1 can't deny it, and I won't try to explain it, not now. It's like I said: this isn't a good time for me. So I'll ask you once again—'
And: 'Yes,' Jake nodded. Tm up to it. I think.'
'Very well,' the other nodded. 'But this time I'll try for a place of innocence.'
'Er, before we go,' Jake quickly put in, 'can you answer a question or two? I mean, while I'm still steady on my feet?'
'I'm surprised you haven't asked them sooner,' Harry answered, his eyes still anxious where they peered through the bars of the gate at the house.
'Why me?' Jake said. 'Why not one of these people you seem to know so well, the E-Branch crowd? Surely they would have accepted you that much more readily. From some of the things I've heard them say about you, they hold you in some kind of awe.'
'But you're young,' said the other. 'You're strong enough to face whatever it is that's coming. Ben Trask and the others, they're old now. And they don't need—'
'Yes?'
'—Redemption? No, that's not it. Let's just say they're not troubled. They're straight in what they have to do. But you are troubled. There's a lot of anger in you, Jake, an explosive strength. And that's what is needed. It's what we have to find a use for, but the right use.'
'So I was chosen out of nothing?' Jake frowned. 'Because I need saving? What if I don't want saving? You see, I still have a job to do, and one way or the other I'll do it. What I'm saying is you're taking a chance with me. I might not work out the way you want me to/
'There was a certain element of chance in it, yes/ Harry answered. 'But there were also things I couldn't ignore. In the Mobius Continuum, down future time-streams, I've seen your blue life-thread crossed with the red of vampires where you're going to meet up with them. But where some of them blink out, expire, your blue thread goes on. Deja vu, Jake! I just couldn't ignore it. I want to make sure that blue thread goes on and on, that's all'
Bewildered, Jake shook his head. 'None of which makes any sense at all to me/
