The Last Aerie (73 page)

“Which is my problem exactly,” Nathan told him, and sensed Gormley’s deadspeak gasp.

The dead won’t speak to you?

Nathan’s silence was his answer.

But… have you tried?

“In my own world? Time and time again, ever since I was a child. There, it was the legacy and the fault of my Necroscope father. For in the end he was Wamphyri and not to be trusted. And so the Szgany dead—Travellers, Gypsies, my own kind—would have nothing to do with me. Only the dead of the Thyre, nomads of the deserts, would let me into their minds. I benefited from it, and so did they. Here, in this world … oh, I’ve heard the dead whispering in their graves, but you’re the first who heard me, and certainly you’re the first who was willing to talk to me.”

Gormley was silent a moment, then said:
There’s nothing to fear in you. You shine in the darkness—the same as Harry in his innocence—and your presence is like a warm blanket over my grave. You do have your father’s warmth, or whatever it was he had. For sometimes Harry could be cold, too. Very cold …
He snapped out of it
. So that’s why you’re here
(Nathan felt his decisive deadspeak nod).
You require introductions. There are others among the Great Majority who you would like to contact, except you think they’ll be wary of you. And your purpose?

“My father was the Necroscope,” Nathan answered. “Which is to say, he could talk to dead people, and it appears they loved him. But he had powers other than that. I’ve been told that you were the key to the greatest of those powers.”

Gormley understood, but now Nathan sensed the shake of an incorporeal head.
No, the key was already in place. The part I played was to show it to him. And it was a key, Nathan! A key to many doors. It was this:

Nathan knew the symbol at once; why, he even wore it in his ear! His exclamation—his gasp of recognition—was automatic. “My father’s sigil?”

Yes, in a way. Harry Keogh’s emblem of power.

“But what does it mean?”

I’m no mathematician
, Nathan. Gormley shrugged in his deadspeak fashion
. But I can try to tell you something about it. It would appear to defy logic by reducing three dimensions to two, and two to one.

“Dimensions?”

The planes of existence in which we live. It reduces all places to one place, or makes nothing of the gap between. And when Harry used it, it even reduced time down to NOW. He could go wherever he wanted to go, without covering the distance in between. And as a bodiless wraith, he even travelled in time.

“The ultimate Traveller!” Nathan sighed, and he smiled sadly. “He was Szgany after all.”

Gormley chuckled.
If you want to put it that way.

“You called it a key to many doors.” Nathan was serious in a moment, for now he recalled what Thikkoul, a dead Thyre star-gazer, had said of his future as glimpsed in the stars through Nathan’s living eyes:

I see … doors!
(Thikkoul’s voice had been the rustle of dried leaves.) Like the doors on a hundred Szgany caravans but liquid, drawn on water, formed of ripples. And behind each one of them, a piece of your future …

“Doors,” Nathan said again, as Thikkoul faded into memory. “What did you mean?”

Again Gormley’s deadspeak shrug.
Space and time. Of course there are doors, but we can’t see them. Harry could, and pass through them.

“You said I have what he had.” Nathan was eager now. “Well it’s true, I do. But not all that he had. I want access to the Mobius Continuum. I want to be able to use these doors. Who do I speak to?”

Why, who better than Mobius himself? Gormley answered. For it was his—what, metaphysics? His lateral thinking?—that brought the Mobius Strip into being in the first place. And I do know this: that your father was with Mobius, this brilliant, long-dead mathematician, the first time he conjured one of his doors!

“Then I’ll go and try to speak to Mobius. Except … I may need an introduction?” It was Nathan’s turn to shrug. “It’s the way of things …”

Pausing, at last he remembered his other reason for being here. “Oh, and there’s something else you can do for me. That is, if I’m not asking too much.”

Too much? My one contact with the living, breathing world, and you’re worried you might be asking too much? Ask away! And Nathan, believe me when I tell you I’ll help you if
1 can. For you’re not the only one with problems. If we can solve yours, then—and only then—you may be able to help me solve mine. And not only mine but a problem facing all of the Great Majority. But… that would be to put the cart before the horse; first the teeming dead must learn to trust you, and speak to you. So for now you’d better tell me what’s troubling you?

“A woman has … well, it seems she’s disappeared,” Nathan told him. “She’s very important, not only to E-Branch but also to me. Her name is Siggi Dam; she was a member of the Opposition; last known location, Perchorsk in the Ural Mountains. We can’t be sure if she’s dead, or if something else has happened to her. Only the Great Majority would know for certain. Do you think you could ask after her, find out if Siggi’s joined the ranks of the teeming dead? She was a telepath in life, and if she is dead should be easy to contact.”

A telepath? But in that case, wouldn’t she have contacted you? After all, you are the Necroscope.

“Still I need to be sure.”

Let me work on it,
said Gormley,
and I’ll get back to you. Think of me now and again, aim your thoughts in this direction, and as soon as
I have something …
His deadspeak began to fade into a background hiss of mental static. And meanwhile (he was very faint now),
you must work on your maths. Instinctive mathematician that your father was, still he had a hard time of it. So I can’t see that it will be any easier for you …

The static took over completely. But coming right through it—not speaking to Nathan directly, but simply thinking her own most passionate thoughts, most fervent desires “out loud”—Zek Föener’s telepathic voice:

Nathan could talk to Jazz, tell him all the things which, at the end, I was too late to say. He could actually talk to him!

Standing up and turning to her, he said: “One day, I would be glad to, if it’s what you want. You can count on it, before I go home to Sunside.”

She smiled her wan smile, sighed and took his arm.

And arm in arm, as they walked back down the wind-blown aisles of the Garden of Repose to the gates, and through them to the parked cars, Trask, Goodly and Chung followed on behind. The men of E-Branch wondered but said nothing. This was a good place to be quiet and keep the peace …

But as Trask got into the first of the cars with Zek and Nathan, he was eager to ask the Necroscope: “Well? And was I right? I know you spoke to Sir Keenan, but was it worth it?”

“Yes,” Nathan answered him, and went on to reveal what had passed between them. “Sir Keenan said he’d make inquiries for me, and get back to me as soon as he has something.”

“Get back to you?”

“If I open my mind to him and seek him out, he’ll converse with me at a distance. Apparently that’s not too hard, not now that we’ve been introduced.”

“And meanwhile?”

“I’m to continue studying, improving my maths, which isn’t the exciting thing I thought it would be.” Nathan shrugged and pulled a wry face. “It seems that in Harry, numbers were instinctive. But not in me. On the—contrary? Perhaps because I carry them with me always, without knowing their meaning, they weigh on me and tire me out.”

“We’re all tired,” Trask nodded. “A good night’s sleep is what we all need. Tomorrow you’ll go back to basic numbers. In Harry’s case it was an instinctive art, yes, but even he required a final push before he made his quantum leap. In his case it was do or die, and so he did. With you it’s not so urgent. In three or four months we’ll be ready to send you back through the Romanian Gate—if we can do it. And meanwhile you’ll be well protected. My advice: give all of your attention to your instructors. And if Keenan Gormley comes up with a shortcut, well that will be all the better.”

The cars sped back to E-Branch HQ.

Harry’s room was now Nathan’s room. After eating with Trask and Zek at the hotel restaurant “downstairs”, he retired there with his thoughts. He had been aware through dinner of two men seated at a nearby table, whose flinty eyes in blank, expressionless faces would occasionally turn and stare in his direction. Trask, seeing him looking at them, had warned: “Don’t pay them too much attention. They’re not E-Branch, not those two, but Special Branch. And they’re your minders.”

His minders. They were like chameleons: ever-changing. He had met several, but they came and went. Sometimes an E-Branch agent would be with them, other times they’d be on their own. They guarded him—against the vengeance of Turkur Tzonov.

But
if Tzonov really has sent Siggi through the Gate,
Nathan thought, where he sat in an easy chair beside his bed,
then he’s the one who will need guarding. From me!
It was his vow. Ah, but where vows were concerned … well, he’d made them before. And so far they’d come to nothing.

Outside in the corridor he heard soft, padding footsteps. His minders again? The Duty Officer? Almost unwittingly he put out a telepathic probe, and met with the mind of David Chung. Chung stood right outside his door with his fist poised to knock.

“Come in,” Nathan anticipated him.

Chung entered, shrugged. “I’m on duty. I was just passing by,”

“Really? But you paused outside my door. I thought it was one of my minders.”

“Well in a way I am. We all are.”

Nathan pulled a face. “I’m not sure I like being minded so well.” Then he looked at Chung more squarely where the other leaned back against the computer console. “And I think you were more than just passing by. What’s on your mind?”

“My talent is on my mind, and this room, and … that earring of yours. Every now and then you touch it sort of thoughtfully, like a moment ago, as soon as I mentioned it. We asked you about Siggi Dam’s clasp, but not about that earring. Can you free it? I mean, would you mind if I held it for a moment? And would you also mind telling me where you got it?”

Nathan freed the golden sigil from his ear and handed it over. “I’m surprised no one else has asked me about it,” he said.

“But there’s been so little time,” Chung answered. “I think you’ll find they’ve all assumed it came from your mother, something Harry might have given her.”

Nathan grunted and his look turned sour in a moment. “To my knowledge, the only thing she got from my father was me … and my brother, Nestor.” As soon as it was out he could have bitten his tongue. He’d wanted to leave Nestor out of this, though why he couldn’t say.

“Nestor?”

Nathan waved a hand dismissively. “You can forget him. Nestor … he died some years ago.”

“The Wamphyri?”

“Yes.”
Oh, yes—yes indeed—Wamphyri!

Chung had been examining the golden earring, holding it in his hands, crushing it between his palms almost in an attitude of prayer. Now he gave it back. “Nothing,” he said.

“What did you expect?” Nathan asked him. “It’s not of this world. It was given me by Maglore of Runemanse, in Turgosheim.”

Chung shrugged. “It was an experiment. You were wearing it when you came through the Perchorsk Gate. I wondered if I could make a mind-bridge to your vampire world, that’s all. I should have known that I couldn’t. It was the same with Jazz Simmons. When he went through the Gate all contact was lost.” Then he frowned. “So Maglore gave it to you, eh? Another sign of his “affection”?”

“Actually, it’s a strange story,” Nathan answered. “For you see, the loop with the half-twist is Maglore’s sigil, too. He’s something of a mage—a mentalist, as I told you—and on the night the Opposition sent their awesome weapon through the Perchorsk Gate, he dreamed of the Necroscope’s Mobius blazon. From which time forward he took it for his own.” He paused a moment, giving Chung the chance to say:

“Blazon? It surprises me you know that word.”

“Why?” Nathan raised an eyebrow. “It’s a Szgany word. Many of our words are more or less the same.” And when Chung made no answer he continued: “Anyway, my father died that night. Perhaps something went out from him in addition to the images which you saw here, and the fragment that entered the computer. Maybe his sign had the power to impress itself into the minds of all manner of sensitive dreamers and mentalists, such as Maglore of Runemanse. But as for me, I’d known it even as a babe in arms, though that was probably coincidental. When we were babies, my mother had given my brother and me leather straps to wear on our wrists, so that she could tell us apart in the night. My strap had the Mobius half-twist.”

“Oh?” said Chung, smiling. “Coincidence? And your father was the Necroscope, Harry Keogh? Well, perhaps …” His smile gradually faded as he watched Nathan fixing the earring back in place. Then: “I’d better get back to my station,” he said.