Necroscope 4: Deadspeak (20 page)

“In the green stripes where the light came through the blinds,” Harry answered. “The stripes on her belly and thighs, in the moment before that hellish thing fastened on me. They were green-tinted, almost submarine, but as my blood began to spurt they turned red. Red stripes streaming off her body into the dim past, and also into the future. Writhing red threads among the blue life-threads of humanity. Vampires!”

The doctor said nothing, waited, felt the other’s horror—and fascination—washing out from him, welling into the study like a sick, almost tangible flood tide. Until Harry shook his head and cut off the flow. Then, abruptly, he stood up and headed a little unsteadily for the door.

“Harry?” Bettley called after him.

At the door Harry turned. “I’m wasting your time,” he said. “As usual. Let’s face it, you could be right and I’m frightened of my own shadow. Self-pity, because I’m nothing special any more. And maybe scared because I know what
could
be out there waiting for me, but “ probably isn’t. But what the hell—what will be will be, we know that. And the time is long past when I could do anything about it or change any part of it.”

Bettley shook his head in denial. “It wasn’t a waste, Harry, not if we got something out of it. And it seems to me we got a lot out of it.”

The other nodded. “Thanks anyway,” he said, and closed the door behind him. The doctor got up and moved to his window. Shortly, down below, Harry left the building and stepped out into Princes Street in the heart of Edinburgh. He turned up his coat collar against the squalling rain, tucked his chin in and angled his back to the bluster, then stepped to the kerb and hailed a taxi. A moment later and the car had whirled him away.

Bettley returned to his desk, sat down and sighed. Now he was the one who felt weak; but Keogh’s psychic essence—a near-tangible “echo” of his presence—was already fading. When it had faded into nothing, the empath rewound his interview tape and dialled a special number at INTESP HQ in London. He waited until he got a signal, then placed the handset into a cradle on the tape machine under his desk. At the press of a button, Harry’s interview began playing itself into storage at E-Branch.

Along with all of his other interviews …

In the back of the taxi on the way to Bonnyrig, Harry relaxed and closed his eyes, leaned his head against the seat and tried to recall something of that other dream which had bothered him on and off for the last three or four years, the one about Harry Jr.. He knew what the dream was in essence—what had been done to him, how and why—but its fine detail eluded him. The what and how part was obvious: by use of the Wamphyri art of fascination, hypnotism, Harry Jr. had made his father an ex-Necroscope, at the same time removing or cancelling his ability to enter and manoeuvre in the Möbius Continuum. As to why he’d done it:

You would destroy me if you could,
he heard his son’s voice again, like a record played a hundred times, until he knew every word and phrase, every mood and emotion or lack of it, by heart.
Don’t deny it, for I can see it in your eyes, smell it on your breath, read it in your mind. I
know your mind well, father. Almost as well as you do. I’ve explored every part of it, remember?

And now, under his breath, Harry answered again as he’d answered then: “But if you know that much, then you know I’d never harm you. I don’t want to destroy you, only to cure you.”

As you “cured” the Lady Karen? And where is she now, father?
It hadn’t been an accusation; there’d been no sarcasm in it, no sourness; it was just a statement of fact. For the Lady Karen had killed herself, which Harry Jr. knew well enough.

“The thing had taken too strong a hold on her,” Harry had insisted. “Also, she’d been a peasant, a Traveller, without your understanding. She couldn’t see what she’d gained, only what she thought she’d lost. She didn’t have to kill herself. Maybe she was … unbalanced?”

You know she wasn’t. She was simply Wamphyri. And you drove her vampire out and killed it. You thought it would be like killing a tapeworm, like lancing a boil or
curing
out a cancer. But it wasn’t. You say she couldn’t see what she’d gained. Now tell me, father, what
you
think the Lady Karen had gained?

“Her freedom!” Harry had cried in desperation, and in sudden horror of himself. “For God’s sake, don’t prove me wrong in what I did! I’m no bloody murderer!”

No, you’re not. But you are a man with an obsession. And I’m afraid of you. Or if not afraid of you, afraid of your goals, your ambitions. You want a world—your world-free of vampirism. An entirely admirable objective. But when you’ve achieved that aim … what then? Will my world be next? An obsession, yes, which seems to be growing in you even as my vampire is growing in me. I’m Wamphyri now, father, and there’s nothing so tenacious as a vampire—unless it’s Harry Keogh himself!

Can’t you see how dangerous you are to me? You know many of the secret arts of the Wamphyri, and how to destroy them; you can talk to the dead, travel in the Möbius Continuum—even in time itself, however ephemerally. I ran away from you, from your world, once. But now, in this world, I’ve fought for my territories and earned them. They’re mine now and I’ll not desert them. I’ll run no more. But I can’t take the chance that you won’t come after me, daren’t accept the risk that you won’t be satisfied. I’m Wamphyri! I’ll not suffer your experiments. I’ll not be a guinea pig for any more “cures” you might come up with.

“And what of me?” Harry had spoken up then, even as he now whispered the words to himself. “How safe will I be? I’m a threat to you, you’ve admitted as much. How long before your vampire is ascendant and you come looking for me?”

But that won’t happen, father. I’m not a peasant; I do have knowledge; I shall control myself as a clever addict controls his addiction.

“And if it gets
out
of control? You, too, are a Necroscope. And in the Möbius Continuum there’s nothing you can’t do, nowhere you can’t go, and always carrying your contamination with you. What poor bastard will get
your
egg, son?”

At which Harry Jr. had sighed heavily and taken off his golden mask. His scars from the battle in the Garden had healed now; there was nothing much to be seen of them; his vampire had been busy repairing him, moulding his flesh as his father feared it would one day mould his will.
So you see we’re at stalemate,
he’d said. And his eyes had opened into huge crimson orbs.

“No!” Harry gasped out loud, now as he’d gasped it then. Except that then it had been the last thing he’d said for quite some time, until he’d woken up at E-Branch HQ. Whereas now:

“Whazzat, Chief?” his dour-faced driver, puzzled and frowning, glanced back at him. “But did ye no say Bonnyrig? Ah surely hope so, “cos we’re a”most there!”

The real world crashed down on Harry. He was sitting upright, stiff and pale, with his bottom jaw hanging slightly open. He licked his dry lips and looked out through the taxi’s windows. Yes, they were almost there. And:

“Bonnyrig, yes, of course,” he mumbled. “I was … I was daydreaming, that’s all.” And he directed the other through the village and to his house.

North London in late April 1989; a fairly rundown bottom-floor flat in the otherwise “upwardly mobile” district of Highgate just off Hornsey Lane; two men, apparently relaxed, talking quietly over drinks in a large sitting-room lined with bookshelves full of books and many small items of foreign, mainly European bric-a-brac …

Very untypical of his race, Nikolai Zharov was slender as a wand, pale as milk, almost effeminate in his affectations. He used a cigarette holder to smoke Marlboros with their filters torn off, spoke excellent English albeit with a slight lisp, and had in general a rather limp-wristed air. His eyes were dark, deep-set and heavy-lidded, giving him an almost-drugged appearance which belied the alert and ever calculating nature of his brain.

His hair was thin and black, swept back, lacquered down with some antiseptic-smelling Russian preparation; under a thin, straight nose his lips were also thin in a too-wide mouth. A pointed chin completed his lean look; he appeared the sort who might easily bend but never break; “real men” might be tempted to look at him askance but they wouldn’t push their luck with him. Out in the city’s streets Zharov would certainly warrant a second glance, following which the observer would very likely look away. The Russian tended to make people feel uneasy.

He made Wellesley uneasy, for a fact, though the latter tried hard to conceal it. As owner of the flat, Wellesley was worried someone might have seen his visitor coming here, or even followed him. Which would be one hell of a difficult thing to explain away. For Wellesley was a player in the Intelligence Game, and so was Zharov, though ostensibly they worked for different bosses.

At five feet eight inches tall Norman Harold Wellesley was some five or six inches shorter than the spindly Russian; he had more meat on him, too, and more colour in his face. Too much colour. But it wasn’t his stature or mildly choleric mottling that put him at a disadvantage. His current mental agitation hailed not so much from physical or even cultural disparities of race and type as from fear pure and simple. Fear of what Zharov was asking him to do. In answer to which he had just this moment replied:

“But you must know that’s plainly out of the question, not feasible, indeed little short of impossible!” Explosive-seeming words, yet uttered quietly, coldly, even with a measure of calculation. A calculated attempt to dissuade Zharov from his course, or perhaps re-route it a little, even knowing that he wasn’t the author of the “request” he’d made but merely the delivery boy.

And the Russian had obviously expected as much. “Wrong,” he answered, just as quietly, but with something of a cold smile to counter the other’s flush. “Not only is it entirely possible but imperative. If as you have reported Harry Keogh is on the verge of developing new and hitherto unsuspected talents, then he
must
be stopped. It is as simple as that. He has been a veritable plague on Soviet ESPionage, Norman. A disaster, a mental hurricane … a psiclone? Oh, our E-Branch survives, lives on despite all his efforts, but barely.” Zharov shrugged. “On the other hand, perhaps we should be grateful to him: his, er,
successes
have made us more than ever aware of the power of parapsychology—its importance—in the field of spying. The problem is that as a weapon he gives your side far too much of an edge. Which is why he has to go.”

If Wellesley had been paying any real attention to Zharov’s argument it hardly showed. “You will recall,” he now started to reply, “—I mean, you have probably been informed—that my initial liability was a small one? Very well, I owe your masters a small favour—I’m in their debt, let’s say—but not such a large debt even now. And their interest rates are way too high, my friend. Beyond my limited ability to pay. I’m afraid that’s my answer, Nikolai, which you must take back with you to Moscow.”

Zharov sighed, put down his drink and leaned back in his chair. He stretched his long legs, folded his arms across his chest and pursed his lips; he allowed his heavy eyelids to droop more yet. The pupils of his dark eyes glinted from their cores, and for several long moments he studied Wellesley where he was seated on the opposite side of a small occasional table.

Wellesley’s red hair was receding fast. At forty-five he was perhaps six or seven years the Russian’s senior, and looked every day of it. A generally unattractive man, his one redeeming feature was his mouth: it was firm, well-shaped and housed an immaculate set of teeth. Other than that his nose was bulbous and fleshy, his watery blue eyes too round and staring, and his excess of colouring brought the large freckles of his forehead into glaring yellow prominence. Zharov concentrated on Wellesley’s freckles a moment more before straightening up again.

“Ah, detente!” he tut-tutted.
“Glasnost!
What have they brought us to when we must bargain with debtors? Why, in the good old days we would simply send in the debt-collectors! Or perhaps the bully-boys? But now … the gentleman’s way out: bankruptcy, receivership! Norman, I’m very much afraid you’re about to go bankrupt. Your cover is about to be—” he formed his mouth into a tube and puffed cigarette smoke through it in a series of perfect rings,”—blown!”

“Cover?” Wellesley’s eyes narrowed suspiciously and his colour deepened more yet. “I have no cover. I am what I appear to be. Look, I made a mistake and I understand I must pay for it. Fine—but I’m not about to kill for you! Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you—for me to turn a small debt into a massive great overdraft! But it’s not on, Nikolai. So go ahead, Comrade, drop me in it. “Bankrupt” me, if that’s the threat. I’ll lose my job and maybe my liberty for a while, but not forever. But if I play your game I’m a goner. I’d be in even deeper. And what will it be next time, eh? More treachery? Another murder? What you’re doing is blackmail and you know it, but I’m not having any. So do your worst and kiss any “favours” I owe you goodbye forever!”

“Bluff,” Zharov smiled. “And nicely played, too. But bluff all the same.” His smile fell from his face and he stood up. “Very well, I call: you are a mole, a sleeper!”

“A sleeper?” Wellesley’s fists shook where he held them clenched at his sides. “Well, and maybe I was—but never activated. I’ve done nothing wrong.”

Zharov smiled again but it was more a grimace. He gave a small shrug of his thin shoulders and headed for the door. “That will be your side of it, of course.”

Wellesley jumped to his feet and got to the door first. “And where the hell do you think you’re going?” he rasped. “We’ve resolved nothing!”

“I have said all I had to say,” said the other, coming to a halt and standing perfectly still. After a moment’s pause he carefully reached out and took his overcoat from a peg. “And now—” his voice had deepened a little and his thin mouth twitched in one corner,”—now I am leaving.” He took thin, black leather gloves from a pocket of the overcoat and swiftly pulled them on. “And will you try to stop me, Norman? Believe me, that would be something of an error.”