found the large soft lump at the back of her head and guessed she was concussed. As for the baby: he had looked around, alert and wide-eyed, appeared a little startled but not unduly afraid, lying in his mother's relaxed arms sucking his thumb! Not much wrong with him.
With the greatest care and attention to their task, the espers had then carried the pair to staff accommodation and put them to bed, and a doctor had been summoned. Then INTESP's buzzing members had concentrated themselves in the ops room to talk it over. Which was when Harry came on the scene.
While his coming was startling, if anything it was less of a shock and more of an anticlimax; the previous materialisation had prepared them for it. It might even be said that he was expected. John Grieve had just taken the ops room podium and turned the lights down a little when Harry appeared. He came in the form all of the espers had heard about but which few of them, and none present, had ever seen: a faint mesh of luminous blue filaments — almost a hologram — in the image of a man. And again that psychic shock-wave went out, telling them all that they were in the presence of a metaphysical Power.
John Grieve felt it, too, but he was the last of them to actually see Harry, for he'd appeared on the podium's platform slightly to Grieve's rear. Then the permanent Duty Officer heard the concerted gasp that went up from his small audience where they'd taken their seats, and he turned his head.
‘My God!' he said, staggering a little.
No, said Harry, just Harry Keogh. Are you all right?'
Grieve had almost fallen from the podium, only finding his balance at the last moment. He steadied himself, said, ‘Yes, I think so,' then he held up his hand to quiet the buzz of excited, expectant conversation. ‘What's happening, Harry?' He got down off the podium and backed away.
Try not to be frightened, Harry told them all. This was a ritual he was getting used to. I'm one of you, remember?
‘We're not frightened, Harry,' Ken Layard found his voice. ‘Just… cautious.'
I'm looking for Alec Kyle, said Harry. Is he back yet?
‘No,' Grieve shook his head, turned his face away a little. ‘And he probably won't be. But your wife and son got here OK.'
The Keogh manifestation sighed, visibly relaxed. This told him the extent of the baby's delving into his mind. Good! he said, — about Brenda and the baby, I mean. I knew they'd be somewhere safe, but this place has to be the safest.
The handful of espers were now on their feet, had come forward to the base of the raised platform. ‘But didn't you, er, send them here?' Grieve was puzzled.
Harry shook his neon head. That was the baby's doing. He brought them both here, through the Mobius continuum. You'd better look after that one, for he's going to be a hell of an asset! Listen, there are things that can't wait, so explanations will have to. Tell me about Alec.
Grieve did, and Layard added, ‘I know he's there, at the Chateau, but I read him like… well, like he's dead.'
That hit Harry hard. That strange blue life-thread, dimming, crumbling, disintegrating. Alec Kyle!
There are things you'll want to know, he told them, apparently in a hurry now. Things you have every right to know. First, Yulian Bodescu is dead.
Someone whistled his appreciation, and Layard cried, ‘Christ, that's wonderful!'
It was Harry's turn to avert his face. Guy Roberts is dead, too, he said.
For a moment there was silence, then someone asked, ‘Darcy Clarke?'
He's fine, Harry answered, as far as I know. Listen, everything else will have to wait. I've got to go now. But I've a feeling I'll be seeing all of you again.
He collapsed in upon himself to a single point of radiant blue light, and disappeared.
Harry knew the route to the Chateau Bronnitsy well enough, but the Mobius continuum fought him all the way, It fought to retain him, to keep him to itself. The longer he remained unbodied, the worse it would become, until finally he'd be trapped in the endless night of an alien dimension. But not yet.
Alec Kyle was not dead and Harry knew it; if he had been then Harry could simply reach out his mind and talk to him, as he talked to all the dead. But though he tried — however tentatively at first, cringingly — mercifully there was no contact. This made him bolder; he tried harder, putting every effort into contacting Kyle's mind, while yet hoping that he'd fail. But this time —
— Harry felt horror wash over him as indeed he picked up the faint, failing echo of the man h~ had known. An echo, yes: a de-pairing, fading cry tailing off into nothing.
But it was all the beacon Harry needed, and he homed in on it in a moment.
Then… it was as if he were caught in a maelstrom! It was Harry Jnr all over again, but ten times worse, and this time there was no resisting it. Harry did not have to fight free of the Mobius continuum but was ripped out of it intact. Torn from it and inserted — Elsewhere!
It hadn't been easy but Zek Foener had eventually fallen asleep, only to toss and turn for hours in the throes of sheerest nightmare. Finally she'd started awake in the small hours of the morning and looked all about in the darkness of her spartan room. For the first time since coming to the Chateau Bronnitsy the place seemed alien to her; her job here was empty now; it offered neither reward nor satisfaction. Indeed it was evil. It was evil because the people she worked for were evil. Under Felix Krakovitch things had been different, but under Ivan Gerenko… his very name had become a bad taste in Zek's mouth. Her life would be impossible if he took control here. And as for that squat, murderous toad Theo Dolgikh.
Zek had got up, splashed cold water in her face, made her way down to the cellars which housed the Chateau's various experimental laboratories. On her way, on the stairs and in a corridor, she'd passed a night-duty technician and an esper: both had nodded their respect but she'd hardly noticed, merely brushed by them and continued on her way. She had her own respects to pay, to a man as good as dead.
Letting herself into the mind-lab, she'd taken a steel chair and sat beside Alec Kyle, touched his pale flesh. His pulse was erratic, the rise and fall of his chest weak and abnormal. He was almost totally brain-dead, and less than twenty-four hours from now… The authorities in West Berlin wouldn't know who he was or what had killed him. Murder, pure and simple.
And she had been part of it. She had been duped, told that Kyle was a spy, an enemy whose secrets were of the utmost importance to the Soviet Union, while in reality they were only of the utmost importance to Ivan Gerenko. She had defended herself before that sick creature, made excuses when he said she'd been party to it — but there was no defence against her own conscience.
Oh, it was easy for Gerenko and the thousands like him, who only ever read reports. Zek read minds, and that was a different matter entirely. A mind is not a book; books only describe emotions, they rarely make you feel them. But to a telepath the emotion is real, raw and powerful as the story itself. She hadn't simply read Alec Kyle's stolen diary, she'd read his life. And in doing so she had helped to steal it.
An enemy, yes, she supposed he'd been that, in that he held allegiance to another country, a different code. But a threat? Oh, in higher echelons of his government there were doubtless personalities who would wish to see Russia devolve, become subservient. But Kyle wasn't a militarist, he'd been no subversive strategist worrying at the foundations of Communist identity and society. No, he'd been humanitarian, with an overwhelming belief that all men were brothers — or should be. And his only desire had been to maintain a balance. In his work for the British E-Branch he'd been used, much as Zek herself was now being used, when both of them could have been working towards greater things.
And where was Alec Kyle now? Nowhere. His body was here, but his mind — a very fine mind — was gone forever.
Eyes filming, Zek looked up, looked scathingly at the machinery backed up against the sterile walls. Vampires? The world was full of them. What of these machines, which had sucked out his knowledge and sluiced it all away forever? But a machine can't feel guilt, which is an entirely human emotion.
She came to a decision: if it were at all possible, she'd find a way to break free of E-Branch. There had been cases before where telepaths lost their talent, so why shouldn't she? If she could fake it, convince Gerenko that she was no longer of any use to this sinister organisation, then — Zek's train of thought stopped right there. Under her
fingertips where they lay on Kyle's wrist, his pulse had suddenly grown steady and strong; his chest was now rising and falling rhythmically; his mind… his mind?
