Necroscope

Brenda, his wife of eight weeks, was bright and chirpy about the flat, which had undergone some fantastic and inexplicable metamorphosis since she had moved in after their registry office wedding. She was less than three months pregnant but already blooming. Harry, too, had been in fine fettle when last she had seen him; but now, in complete contrast -

He barely managed the effort of kissing her on the cheek, was asleep almost before his head hit the pillows.

He had been away for three days, doing 'research', she knew, for a new book he was planning — what and where exactly he'd never bothered to say. Well, that was Harry and she should be used to it by now — but she was not used to him turning up looking like he'd spent three days in a concentration camp!

After he had slept right through the afternoon and seemed to have developed a fever, she called a doctor who visited at about 8:00 p.m. Harry didn't bother to wake up for his visit; the doctor thought it might be

pneumonia, though the symptoms weren't quite right; he left pills, instructions and his telephone number. If Harry got worse during the night, especially if his breathing became irregular or he started coughing, or if his temperature went up appreciably, Brenda was to call him at once.

But Harry got no worse through the night, and in the morning he was able to have a bite of breakfast, following which he engaged Brenda in a peculiar, guarded conversation which she was dismayed to find as depressing and morbid as any talk she'd ever had with him during his gloomy or morose periods of previous, less happy times. After listening to him for a little while, when he began to talk about making a will leaving everything to her, or to their child in the event she was unable to make use of it, then she rounded on him and laughed out loud.

'Harry,' she said, taking his hands where he sat on the edge of the bed with his shoulders slumped, 'what is this all about? I know you've had a bug of some sort or other and that you're still feeling low, and I know that when you're a bit down in the mouth it really seems like the end of the world to you, but here we are married for just eight weeks and you sound as if you expect to be dead by the spring! Yes, and me shortly after! I've never heard anything so silly! Just a week ago you were swimming, fighting, skating, full of life — so what is it that's suddenly bothering you?'

At that he decided he really couldn't hedge any longer. Anyway she was his wife now and it was only right that she should know. And so he sat her down and told her everything, with the exception of his dream of the tombstones, and of course excluding the death of Viktor Shukshin. He passed off his aggressive 'exercising' of the past few months as simply a means of ensuring his fitness for work still to come, work which could well prove dangerous; which in turn led him to speak of the British ESP organisation, but not in any depth. It was sufficient

she should know that he wasn't the only strangely talented person — that in fact there were many more — and that there were foreign powers ranged against the free world who were not above using such talents to its detriment. Part of Harry's work with the organisation would be to ensure that these alien powers failed in their objectives; his talent as a necroscope would be used as a weapon against them; the future therefore seemed at best… uncertain. His talk of wills and such had been simply an expression of this uncertainty: he thought it was best to be prepared for any eventuality.

Even telling her all of this — and while not being too specific on any point — still he wondered if perhaps he was making a mistake, if it would have been better to keep her entirely in the dark. And he wondered at his own motives: was he really confiding in her in order to prepare her for… for whatever? Or was it that she was right, that he was feeling at a low ebb and so needed someone to share the load?

Or there again, was it guilt? He had a course to run now and must pursue it; the chase was not at an end; Shukshin had merely been a faltering step in the right direction. Did he feel that because he chose to go in that direction Brenda was at risk? The dream epitaph — his mother's warning — had said nothing about Brenda dying as a result of anything Harry was yet to do. He had impregnated her, yes, which would result in a birth; but how could any course he took now influence the physical event of the birth itself? And yet a nagging voice in the back of his mind told him that indeed it could.

And so it seemed to him that his motive for telling her was chiefly one of guilt, and also because he needed to tell someone — needed to tell a friend. The trouble was that he seemed to be leaning on the very one he endangered, which aggravated and magnified the guilt aspect out of all proportion!

It was all very confusing and abstruse, and trying to muddle through it made him more tired than ever, so that when he was done talking he was glad to sit back and let her think it over.

Strangely, she accepted everything he said almost as a matter of course — indeed with visible relief — and at once set about to explain why:

'Harry, I know I'm not as clever as you, but I'm not stupid either. I've known there was something in the air ever since you told me that story of yours — about the necroscope. I sort of sensed that you hadn't finished it, that you wanted to say more but you were scared to. Also, there've been times up in Harden when Mr Hannant has stopped me and asked after you. The way he talked, I knew he thought there was something strange about you, too…'

'Hannant?' he frowned suspiciously. 'What did he — ?'

'Oh, nothing to be concerned about. In fact I think he's more than a little frightened of you. Harry, I've listened to you talking to your poor dead Ma in your sleep, and I knew you were holding real conversations! And there were so many other things. Your writing, for instance. I mean, how come you were suddenly a brilliant author? I've read your stories, Harry, and they're not you. Oh, they're wonderful stories, all right, but you just aren't that wonderful! Not the real you. The real you is ordinary, Harry. Oh, I love you — of course I do — but I'm nobody's fool. And your swimming, your skating, your Judo? Did you think I'd believe you were a super man? I promise you it's easier to believe you're a necroscope! It's a relief to know the truth, Harry. I'm glad you've finally told me…'

Harry shook his head in open astonishment. Talk about level-headed…!

Finally he said: 'But I haven't told you everything, love.'

'Oh, I know that,' she answered. 'Of course you haven't! If you're to be working for your country, why obviously there'll be things you need to keep secret — even from me. I understand that, Harry.'

It was as if someone had lifted a great weight off his

chest. He breathed deeply, lay back again, let his head

link into his pillows. 'Brenda, I'm still very tired,' he

yawned. 'Just let me sleep now, there's a love. Tomorrow

I'm to go down to London.'

'All right, my love,' she leaned over him to kiss his forehead. 'And don't worry, I won't ask you to tell me a thing about it.'

Harry slept right through until evening, then got up and ate a meal. They went out about 8:00 p.m. just to walk for an hour in the crisp night air, until Brenda started to feel the cold. Then they hurried home, took hot showers, and made love, and afterwards both of them slept right through the night.

It was the least Harry had done in any single day in his life.

Later he would have reason to recall it as the most wasteful day in his life.

Sir Keenan Gormley was thoughtful as he left ESP HQ, took the lift down to the tiny lobby and went out into the cold London night. Several things had given him cause for concern just recently, not the least of them being Harry Keogh. For Keogh had not yet contacted him, and with each day that passed Gormley felt the time weighing on him like lumps of lead. It was just after nine o'clock as Gormley walked the streets heading for Westminster tube station, and two hundred and twenty-five miles away Harry Keogh himself was just making love to his wife before settling to a night's sleep.

As for Gormley's other causes for concern: there were two of them. One was the way his second in command

kept enquiring after his health, which might seem silly if his second in command weren't Alec Kyle, and if Alec Kyle wasn't a very talented seer, a man whose by no means negligible talent lay in foretelling the future! Kyle's concern for his boss over the last week or ten days had been pretty obvious, no matter how carefully he'd tried to hide it. If there was anything specific, Gormley knew that Kyle would tell him. That was why he hadn't pressed him about it, but it was worrying anyway.