Necroscope

brought it on. He killed me, Harry, Max Batu. That face of his, that evil eye, it generates mental poison! His power bites like acid, melts the brain, the heart. He killed me…'

'Then he's another I have to settle with,' Harry answered, cold determination stiffening his resolve. 'But be careful, Harry.' 'I will.'

'I think the answers are in you, my boy, and God only knows how much I pray you can find them. Just let me give you this warning: when Dragosani was… with me, I sensed something else in him. It wasn't just his necromancy. Harry, there's an evil in that man that's older than time! With him loose in the world nothing, no one is safe. Not even the people who think they control him.'

Harry nodded. 'I'll be watching out for him,' he said. 'And I'll find the answers, Keenan, all of them. With your help. For as long as you can give me that help, anyway.'

'I've thought about that, Harry,' said the other. 'And you know, I don't think it'll be the end. I mean, this isn't me. What you see here used to be me, it was me — but so was a baby born in South Africa, and so was a young man who joined the British Army when he was seventeen, and so was the head of E- Branch for thirteen years. They've all gone now, and after my funeral pyre this part will also be gone. But me, I'll still be here. Somewhere.'

'I hope so,' said Harry, opening his eyes and standing up, and avoiding looking at the room.

'Find yourself a hotel, then,' said Gormley, 'and get back to me when you can. The sooner we get started the better. And afterwards — I mean when all of this is over and done, if it ever is — '

'Yes?'

'Well, it would be nice if you could look me up some time. You see, unless I'm mistaken, you're the only one who'll ever be able to. And you know you'll always be welcome.'

An hour later Harry locked himself in his cheap hotel room and got in touch with Gormley again. As always, having already been in contact with him, it came very easy. The ex-boss of E-Branch was waiting for him, had been considering what to tell him and gave the information in order of priority. They started with E-Branch itself — a deeper view of the branch and the people who worked in it — and went on to the reasons why at this stage Harry should not approach Gormley's second in command or in any way attempt entry into the organisation.

'It would be too time-consuming,' Gormley explained. 'Oh, there would be benefits, of course. For one thing you'd be funded — any necessary expenses would be covered — but at the same time they'd want to give you a good close going-over. And naturally they'd be eager to test your talent. Especially now that I'm gone, and when it comes out what someone has done to my corpse…'

'You think I'd be suspect?'

'What, a necroscope? Of course you'd be suspect! I do have a file on you, true, but it's pretty sketchy and obviously incomplete — and actually I'm the only one who could have vouched for you! So you see, by the time our side had cleared you the other side would have raced ahead. Time is of the essence, Harry, and not to be wasted. So what I propose is this: you won't attempt to join E-Branch right now but work on your own. After all, the only ones who know anything at all about you at this time are Dragosani and Batu. The trouble with that, of course, is that Dragosani knows everything about you, for he stole it directly from me! What we must ask ourselves is this: why did Borowitz send these two here? Why now? What's brewing? Or is he just stretching his tentacles a bit? Oh, he's had agents here before, certainly, but they were only intelligence gatherers. They were enemy, and they sought information — but they weren't killers! So what has happened that Borowitz has decided to turn a cold ESP war into a hot one?'

Harry told him about Shukshin, gave him a brief overview of things as he saw and understood them.

Gormley's thoughts were wry indeed when he answered: 'So you've been working for us for some time, it appears! What a pity I didn't know all of this that time I came to see you. We could have done the job that much more quickly. Shukshin might have been import—

ant to you, Harry, but in reality he was very small fry. We might even have been able to use him.'

'I wanted him for myself,' said Harry viciously. 'I wanted him used up! Anyway, I didn't know there was any connection. I only found that out after I killed him. But that's done with and now we have to get on. So… you want me to work on my own. But there's the rub: see, I don't have the foggiest idea of how to be an agent! I know what I want to do: I have to kill Dragosani, Batu, Borowitz. That is my priority — but I can't even begin to think how to go about it.'

Gormley seemed to understand his problem. That's the difference between espionage and ESPionage, Harry. We all understand the first. All the cloak-and-daggery, the thud-and-blundering, the DTB — or Dirty Tricks Brigade — it's all old hat. But none of us really knows a lot about the second. You do what your talent tells you to do. You find the best possible ways to use it. That's all any of us can do. For some of us it's easy: we don't have sufficient talent to worry about, we can't expand it. Myself, for example. I can spot another ESPer a mile away; but that's it, end of story. In your case, however — '

Harry began to grow frustrated. His task seemed huge, impossible. He was one man, one mind, one barely mature talent. What could he do?

Gormley picked him up on that: 'You weren't listening, Harry. I said you have to find the best way to use your talent. Until now you haven't been doing that. Let's face it, what have you achieved?'

'I've talked to the dead!' Harry snapped. 'That's it, it's what I do. I'm a necroscope.'

Gormley was patient. 'You've scratched the surface, Harry, and that's all. Look, you've written the stories a dead man couldn't finish. You've used the formulae

that a mathematician never had time to develop in life. Dead men have taught you how to drive, how to speak Russian and German. They've improved your swimming and your fighting and one or two other things. But what do you personally reckon all of this amounts to?'

'Nothing!' Harry answered, after only a moment's thought.

'Right, nothing. Because you've been talking to the wrong people. You've been letting your talent guide you, instead of you guiding your talent. Now I know these are probably bad examples, but you're like a hypnotist who can only hypnotise himself, or a clairvoyant who forecasts his own death — for tomorrow! You have a ground- breaking talent, but you're not breaking any ground. The problem is that you're entirely self-taught. So in a way you're ignorant: like a heathen at a banquet, stuffing yourself full of everything and savouring none of it. And not recognising the good stuff because of the way it's dressed up. But if I'm right you had the answer at your fingertips way back when you were a kid. Except your kid's mind failed to see the possibilities. But you're a man now and the possibilities should be starting to make themselves obvious. Not obvious to me but to you! After all, it's your talent. You have to learn how best to use it, that's all…'

What Gormley said made sense and Harry knew it. 'But where do I start?' He was desperate.

'I have what might just be a clue for you,' Gormley was careful not to be too optimistic. 'The result of an ESP game I used to play with Alec Kyle, my second in command. I didn't mention it before because there might not be anything in it, but if we have to have a starting point — '

'Go on,' said Harry.

And with his mind, Gormley drew him this mental picture:

'What the hell's that?' Harry was nonplussed.

'It's a Mobius strip,' said Gormley. 'Named after its inventor, August Ferdinand Mobius, a German mathematician. Just take a thin strip of paper, give it a half-twist and join up the ends. It reduces a two- dimensional surface to only one. It has many implications, I'm told, but I wouldn't know for I'm not a mathematician.'

Harry was still baffled, not by the principle but by its application. 'And this is supposed to have something to do with me?'

'With your future — your immediate future — possibly,' Gormley was deliberately vague. 'I told you there mightn't be anything in it. Anyway, let me tell you what happened.' He told Harry about his and Kyle's word- association game. 'So I started off with your name, Harry Keogh, and Kyle came back with 'Mobius'. I said, 'Maths?' — and he answered, 'Space-time'!'

'Space-time?' Harry was at once interested. 'Now that might well fit in with this Mobius strip thing. It seems to me that the strip is only a diagram of warped space, and space and time are inextricably linked.'

'Oh?' said Gormley, and Harry pictured his surprised expression. 'And is that an original thought, Harry, or do you have… outside help?'