Necroscope IV: Deadspeak

falling in love with you. That just happened, and now they can stuff their job.'

Harry smiled in his wan way, then staggered a little. She at once caught him, held him up. 'You shouldn't even be on your feet! You look terrible, Harry!'

'I'm still a bit dizzy, that's all,' he answered. 'Anyway, what you were saying: I heard all that, too, when I was waking up. And what the hell, I think I've always known that you were one of theirs. You and Old Man Bettley. So what? So was I, once. And let's face it, I can use all the help I can get, right?'

Darcy was still looking at the stones, his forehead creased in a frown. 'Does this mean what I think it means-?' he asked. They all looked at the incomplete word:

RHODF

'Rhodes,' said Harry, nodding. 'They didn't have time to finish the E and the S, that's all. And now it all adds up.'

'But to what?' Sandra and Darcy said together.

Harry looked at them and made no attempt to hide his fear. 'To something I've been praying wouldn't happen, and yet half-expecting ever since I returned from Star-side,' he said. Then he shivered and added, 'Let's get inside.' And for the moment that was all he would say about it…

When Wellesley woke up and Darcy told him it looked like he was in big trouble, at first he was full of bluster. But then he had to face down Harry, too, and that was when he caved in. He knew how lucky he was that he wasn't a murderer, knew too that Harry hadn't let his dead friends kill him, even though he'd had the right and couldn't have been blamed for it. What's more, he knew what it had cost Harry to call them off. And so he told everything, the whole story: how he'd been recruited by Gregor Borowitz because of his negative talent (the fact that his mind couldn't be read), and how he'd been a sleeper until they tried to activate him.

Harry had been their chief interest — though doubtless they would have got around to the rest of E-Branch, too, when they were satisfied that he was no longer a player — and so Wellesley had been feeding them details of his progress. But when it had seemed that Harry might be on the verge of new things, then they'd wanted rid of him. Harry, with his old powers returned to him, or maybe new talents they hadn't even heard of, would be just too dangerous.

Then Darcy had given his men their orders, to take the ex-head of the Branch back to London and hand him over, and finally he'd spent a long session on the telephone talking to the Minister Responsible. One subject had been Nikolai Zharov, Wellesley's Russian contact. He was still loose somewhere, and alas would stay loose for the time being. Diplomatically immune, they couldn't even pick him up. Eventually a protest would be made to the Soviet Embassy, requiring Zharov's expulsion for the usual 'activities inconsistent with…' etc.

By the time Darcy was through, Harry had a lot more coffee inside him and a bite of brunch, and was looking more his usual self. Not doleful, Darcy thought, just sort of placid and not entirely with it. He reminded him of nothing so much as a powerful hand torch minus its batteries. Fully charged he could really shine, but right now there wasn't even a spark.

Or maybe there was.

'When are you going to Rhodes?' Harry asked him.

'Now, as soon as I can get a flight out. I'd be out of here right now but I wanted to be sure you were OK first. I reckoned I owed you that at least, and probably a lot more. But I want to arrange to get Trevor and Ken out of there, if they can be moved. Also, I have to see if I can discover what they came up against. Their Greek liaison man is still out there and might be able to help me on that.' He looked at Harry speculatively. 'And I had hopes that you might be able to help me, too, Harry, what with these… messages you've been getting, and all.'

Harry nodded. 'I have my suspicions,' he said, 'but we'd all better pray I'm wrong! See, I know the dead wouldn't harm me; they wouldn't deliberately risk hurting me. And yet this thing is so important to them, or to me, that it's almost as if they've been tempting me into conversation! But my son did a hell of a good job on me. I don't remember my dreams in any detail — not the ones which they send me, anyway — and I can't try to clarify them. And as for the Mobius Continuum… God, I can't add two and two without it comes out five!'

Darcy Clarke had personal experience of the Mobius Continuum. Harry had taken him there once, taken him through it. From here, this very house, to E-Branch HQ in London over three hundred miles away. And that had been a trip Darcy would never forget and, he hoped, never repeat, all the days of his life. Even now, these years later, it was printed on his memory in vivid detail.

There had been Darkness on the Mobius Strip, the Primal Darkness itself, as it was before the universe began. A place of negativity, yes, where Darkness lay upon the face of the deep. And Darcy had thought that this could well be that region from which God had commanded, Let There Be Light, and caused the physical universe to split off from the metaphysical void.

There had been no air, but neither had there been time, so that Darcy didn't need to breathe. And without time there was likewise no space; both of these essentials of a universe of matter had been absent. But Darcy hadn't ruptured and flown apart, because there'd been nowhere to fly to!

Harry had been Darcy's single anchor on Sanity and Being and Humanity; he couldn't see him for there was no light, but he could feel the pressure of his hand. And perhaps because Darcy was himself psychically endowed, he'd felt he had some small understanding of the place. For instance: he knew it was real because he was here, and with Harry beside him he'd known he need not fear it because his talent hadn't prevented him from coming here. And so, even in the confusion of his near-panic, he'd been able to explore his feelings about it.

Lacking space it was literally 'nowhere', but by the same token lacking time it was every-where and — when. It was core and boundary both, interior and exterior, where nothing ever changed except by force of will. But there was no will, except it was brought here by someone like Harry Keogh. Harry was only a man, and yet the things he could do through the Mobius Continuum were… Godlike? And what if God should come here?

And again Darcy had thought of The God, who wrought a Great Change out of a formless void and willed a universe. And then the thought had also occurred: We aren't meant to be here. This isn't our place.

'I understand how you feel,' Harry had told him then, 'for I've felt it, too. But don't be afraid. Just let it happen and accept it. Can't you feel the magic of it? Doesn't it thrill you to your soul?'

And Darcy had had to admit it thrilled him — but it scared him witless, too!

Then, so as not to prolong it, Harry had taken him to the threshold of a future-time door. Looking out, they'd seen a chaos of millions, no, billions, of threads of pure blue light etched against an eternity of black velvet, like an incredible meteor shower, except the tracks didn't dim but remained printed on the sky — indeed, printed on Time! And the most awesome thing was this: that two of these twining, twisting streamers of blue light had issued from Darcy and Harry themselves, extruding from them and racing away into the future —

The blue life-threads of humanity, of all Mankind, spreading out and away through space and time… But then Harry had closed that door and opened another, a door on the past.

The myriad neon life-threads had been there as before but this time, instead of expanding into a misted distance, they'd contracted and narrowed down, targeting on a faraway, dazzling blue core of origin.

And in the main, that was what had most seared itself on Darcy's memory: the fact that he'd seen the very birthlight of Mankind…

'Anyway,' Harry's voice, decisive now, brought him back to the present, 'I'm coming with you^ To Rhodes, I mean. You might need my advice.'

Darcy gazed at him in astonishment. He hadn't seen or heard him so positive in… how long? 'You're coming with — ?'

'They're my friends, too,' Harry blurted. 'Oh, maybe I don't know them like you do, but I trusted in them once and they trusted in me, in what I was doing. They were in on that Bodescu business. They have their talents, and they have invaluable experience of… things. Also, well it seems to me the dead want me to go. And lastly, we really can't afford to have anything happen to people like those two. Not now.'

'We can't afford it? What 'we', Harry?' And suddenly Darcy was very tense, waiting for Harry's answer.