The Last Aerie (69 page)

“Oh?”

“If you were going to read my mind anyway, you might have at least followed through,” Trask told him. “It’s like reading the first pages of a book, or a chapter out of the middle: you didn’t get the whole story.”

“And what is the whole story?”

“You
would
make a fantastic weapon, yes,” Trask nodded. “I was thinking that. And I would ‘use you,’ if that’s the way you choose to see it. Not for myself, Nathan, but to save an entire world, or both of our worlds if it should come to that.” He sat back in his chair. “Very well, you want to read my mind. I have no problem with that. Go right ahead, and welcome to it. See if I’m telling you the truth.” Trask’s hypnotic implant was still in place, but he wasn’t using it. He hadn’t used it since Perchorsk five days ago.

Nathan looked into Trask’s eyes a moment and felt tempted to scan his mind again, however briefly. Then his face coloured up and he looked away. Trask thought he knew what the red flush signified: shame. The espers didn’t spy on each other and Nathan knew it. But he also knew that Trask had told him the truth, and that in any case the way Trask would or would not use him had nothing to do with his problem.

Nathan’s problem was not that he didn’t trust Trask or his team of mindspies—he’d checked them all out and knew that he could, with his life—but simply that things weren’t moving fast enough for him. It was his mounting frustration. The novelty had worn off and in just a few days he was heartily sick of what seemed to him an entirely sick world. All he wanted now—and
right
now—was to get back to Sunside. But Trask had told him it just couldn’t be.

Trask knew there was a problem, too. Nathan hadn’t spoken about it as yet, but it was there. Trask could play a guessing game with him, he supposed, and when he hit the right question read the truth of Nathan’s answer in his expression, but that wasn’t Trask’s way. Anyway, he believed he already knew what Nathan’s trouble was. “You’re homesick,” he said. “And you’re taking it out on your friends.”

Trask had used a new word but its meaning was perfectly obvious. “Oh?” Nathan answered. “And wouldn’t you be … what, homesick? In
a
strange world, dressed in strange clothes, eating strange food and putting your trust—your entire life—in the hands of strangers? A world you always thought of as a sort of hell, and the more you get to know about it, the more likely it seems you were right! A world where you own nothing except what’s been given to you, where you don’t know anything except what you’re told, and where you can’t go anywhere unless you’re taken. This world of yours has so many wonders … and
so
many horrors! Why, you people don’t even understand its ailments yourselves! It astonishes me that madness isn’t rife, and I’ve only seen a small part of it. Homesick? Yes, I am. I have a wife on Sunside … maybe. But Sunside is a whole world away, and I don’t even know if she lived through the attack. By now, she could be in thrall to some vampire Lord in Starside.” But he didn’t say that the Lord would probably be his own brother, a vampire in his own right.

“Homesick for a vampire world,” Trask said, trying hard to understand. Oh, he understood the loneliness, but not the rest of it. Instead of feeling… well, alone, yes, but safe, like a refugee, Nathan felt like an outcast. And despite the living nightmares which dwelled in Starside and called themselves Wamphyri, still he wanted to go home.

“I can’t help reading you,” Nathan said, looking directly into Trask’s eyes. “Not when you’re coming across so clear. Yes I
still
want to go home! Homesick? I suppose so, but that’s not all it is. I’m not sure what it is, except that somehow I might have the answer. I think it’s in me: the answer to all of this, the final destruction of the Wamphyri. A weapon? Yes, possibly, but in order to destroy the enemy you have to take your weapons to him. You can’t hide from him in alien worlds.”

That had been pretty eloquent, Trask thought, from someone who just one short week ago didn’t understand a word of English. He tried to think of something to say that wouldn’t sound trite and was saved by the approach of a small, waddling, gap-toothed waiter. “Are you ready to order, sir?”

“Onion bhagi starters for two,” Trask told him. “And a main course of chicken biriani. Also for two. Oh, and two beers.”

They were in a place just off Oxford Street. It was a down-to-earth place, hardly haute (or
nouvelle
) cuisine, but Trask didn’t eat high class, not if he could avoid it. It just wasn’t his thing: collages in brightly coloured soup, raw vegetables and half-cooked fish didn’t turn him on. And he didn’t think Nathan would respond to it either.

“But you’re doing so well,” he said. “You’ve been with us, what, four days? Just four days,” he nodded, “and already you fit right in. And you’re learning, Nathan. We’re teaching you all we can …”

“And learning from me?” Nathan was disarmingly frank.

Trask nodded. “Yes, of course we are. How you feel about Sunside is how we feel about our world. And narrowing it down a little, it’s how we feel about our different cultures, east and west. Just as you have enemies in Starside, so we have potential enemies in the east. You know one of them, Nathan, and you discovered his intentions: to infiltrate your world as an aggressor. But if he succeeds … your world is only the first. Next comes our world, which he’ll overthrow using whatever resources he wins in Sunside/Starside. So you see it’s as simple as that. We need to know about your world in order to counter his aggression, if it should ever come to that.”

Nathan nodded. “I think I understand all of that. But now you have to understand. One of the first things they showed me in your headquarters was film of your history. It was very …
condensed?
Yes, but it was very—
graphic?
—too. And I keep thinking about it. Your wars have been devastating! And one of the worst things about them is that you don’t just fight them on your own and your enemy’s territory but on—
neutral?
—ground too. And you leave the scars of your battles behind. As your weapons got better, the scars they left got bigger. Don’t forget, Ben, that I’ve seen the result of one of your weapons used on Starside. It was bad enough there, but if it had been Sunside …” He shook his head.

“Not one of ours,” Trask told him. “Theirs.”

“Does it really matter?”

Trask thought about it a moment. But there was only one truth and he knew it. “If Tzonov investigates, invades, tries to plunder your world, we’ll do our damnedest to stop him. Oh, we’ll try to stop him here first, thwart his plans as best we can. But if we can’t … he’s not the only one with a gateway into Sunside/ Starside.”

Nathan’s face was suddenly very pale, sad. “So, despite all my arguments and everything you told me—that you only wanted to help me—still you will take your weapons, and men who can use them, an army however small, into Sunside?”

“Against Tzonov—if it’s necessary that we go against him—yes.” Trask wasn’t going to lie; even if he did Nathan would know it sooner or later, and he wouldn’t forgive him for it.

“Then you are as mad as he is!”

“Not mad, dedicated.”

“And is Tzonov dedicated, too?”

“But to himself,” Trask nodded. “To his own ideals. While our dedication is to freedom.”

“Your freedom. Not the freedom of the Travellers.”

“The freedom of all men, Nathan. If this thing starts, and when it’s all over, your world can still be yours. But without your help it might not be. You might lose it to Turkur Tzonov and others just like him.”

“Possibly.” Nathan looked doubtful, worried. “But on the other hand I see a very different … what,
scenario?
And I wonder: have you even considered that Sunside/ Starside might end up
belonging
to the Wamphyri in its entirety?” Just for a moment, the expression on Nathan’s face was so like his father’s had used to be—innocent, bemused, and lonely, yet paradoxically cold, knowing, enigmatic—that Trask actually saw Harry Keogh sitting there. But only for a moment, for in the next his laughter was forced, harsh, even sardonic. Until he was through and quietly said:

“I tell you one more time: you, your people, Turkur Tzonov—
anyone
of this world who would venture into mine knowing so little about it—you are all mad! The Wamphyri will eat you. I mean they will simply—literally?—
eat
you!” He was still trying out new words. “Yes, literally. And very definitely …”

Again he reminded Trask of his father; his conviction was that concentrated, his warning that clear. Harry Keogh, yes, as Keenan Gormley had first known him, before the Necroscope developed his powers to their full. But Trask must be slipping: here Nathan had presented him with yet another opportunity to learn more about the Wamphyri, and he’d almost let it go.

“You’ve seen film of our weapons of war, which make Lardis Lidesci’s shotguns look like toys, and yet you still think the Wamphyri can triumph?”

Outside the plate-glass window a tourist bus passed slowly in heavy midday traffic. “Do you see. that … vehicle?” Nathan indicated the bus. “In Turgosheim I saw one of Vormulac’s aerial warriors—a creature freshly waxed in his vats, twice the size of that vehicle, armoured like one of your tanks and weaponed tip-to-tail—go crashing into the gorge. It was a training flight and the warrior had … design faults? But when this monster hit the bottom, the force of the crash was such that it tore chunks of stone out of the turrets of a lesser manse. And even the chunks were as big as that vehicle!”

Trask shrugged, but not carelessly. “You’ve seen our tanks, then. And their firepower? Now tell me: do you really think a warrior creature could stand up to a machine such as that?”

“No.” Nathan shook his head. “Not even the most ferocious of them, for even they are only flesh and blood. I don’t think so and I didn’t say so. But now you tell me something: if you can’t get me through this Romanian Gate, how can you possibly hope to get a tank through?”

Trask grinned, but again without malice, and said: “You haven’t seen all of our films, then. Nathan, we’ve got tank-killing weapons that can be fired by single soldiers as easily as you fire a crossbow! One good shot can take out an entire tank. And as for a warrior: they’d just blow it in half! And these are weapons which we can take through!”

“But not me?”

“Not yet.”

“Why not?”

Trask sighed. “I thought I’d explained something of that in Perchorsk, and again on your first day at E-Branch HQ. We haven’t even seen the Romanian Gate yet, Nathan! Oh, we know it’s there … your father used it once, to enter into Starside. But so far he’s the only human being who ever did.”

“You did explain it to me, yes,” Nathan answered. “Maybe I wasn’t paying too much attention. There was a lot going on. Please tell me again.”

Their food arrived. While Trask talked, Nathan tried his starter course, found it delicious, ate with gusto. His beer was also good but he sipped cautiously; Trask had warned him of its potency; Nathan wanted to keep a clear head.

“The Gate is up an underground river which empties into the Danube,” Trask began. “Shortly after your father discovered it, Romania overthrew its government and opened its borders. Communism was on the point of collapse. Conditions in that country were dreadful! Many of the people lived like animals, all as a result of political corruption …” He paused. “Are you getting all of this?”

“Yes,” Nathan nodded. “I hope you don’t mind, but —”

“You’re matching my thoughts to my words?”

“If it’s permitted.”

“It is. I don’t have anything to hide.”

“Then go on.”

Trask went on:

“The Western World was asked to help. Not only in Romania but in all of the old USSR’s satellite countries. The West had the power, the knowhow, the wealth which our democratic systems had created, while the USSR and friends were bankrupt not only of ideologies but also of hard cash. That is to say, they were incapable of further expansion or interference in the affairs of lesser states; they were no longer a threat; they had nothing with which to bargain. They could only beg.

“If the boot had been on the other foot, doubtless they’d have rolled over us. But it’s as I’ve been telling you: here in the West we believe in the freedom of all men. So we helped them out, and we’ve been doing so ever since.

“The children of Romania had suffered especially badly. So … we built a refuge for them; I mean
we
, E-Branch, with our government’s blessing of course. And we built it over the mouth of the Romanian tributary, using the force of the resurgent water to drive our turbines. It was a place of safety, a hospital, a school—and a trap, a filter, a dragnet!

“The water coming out of that underground river was all channeled through a screening system which would isolate any … solids. It was our way of ensuring that we weren’t going to have any more ‘visitors’ from your world, Nathan. For you see, that Romanian river had been the source of vampirism in this world for as long as men can remember. But from now on, nothing bigger than a small fish would ever get out into the Danube.

“So what we had was this: two Gates, one under the Urals in Perchorsk, and one buried deep underground in Romania. You know about Perchorsk through personal experience, and now you know about the other Gate. The Russians looked after the one, kept it secure, took precautions against any Wamphyri contamination which might come out of Starside. And we looked after the place in Romania. The only difference was this: that they had access to their Gate, while ours was beyond our reach.

“So how did Harry Keogh, your father, reach it? Well —”

“This much I know,” Nathan cut him off. And now he did the talking while Trask ate. “It was in Tzonov’s mind in Perchorsk. Something my father could do, which Tzonov feared. And he wondered if I had it, too. Also, it has been in the mind of almost all of your mentalists, your espers. Including you, Ben. Something called the Mobius Continuum. My father used it as a means of … of
going
to places.”

Trask paused with a forkful of food half-way to his mouth, and said, “He could use it to go almost anywhere in this universe! Certainly in this world. But Sunside/ Starside is another universe expanding parallel to this one, and Harry didn’t know how to use the Mobius Continuum to bridge the gap. Mobius himself didn’t know that. Only one man did: your brother, called The Dweller in your world. Harry Keogh told us that much when finally he returned to us. But about The Dweller himself … we really don’t know very much—except that in the end both he and Harry were Wamphyri. And maybe The Dweller still is.”