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endless, empty vaults of dream, through which he drifted looking for a door.
It came and went, and Sandra sighed. There were always doors in
Harry's dreams, revenant perhaps of the Möbius doors he'd once called up
mathematically out of thin air.
He'd once told her: 'Now that it's over I sometimes get this feeling it was
all a dream, or a story read in a book of fantasy. Unreal, something I made
up, or maybe an out-of-body experience. But that brings back all too clearly
what it was really like to be incorporeal, and I know that it happened for a
fact. How can I explain it? Have you ever dreamed you could fly? That you
actually knew how to fly?'
'Yes,' she'd answered, in her mildly Edinburghian Scottish accent. 'Often, and
very vividly. I used to run down a steeply sloping field to take off, and soar
up over the Pentland hills, over the village where I was born. It was
sometimes frightening, but I remember knowing exactly how it was done!'
Harry had been excited. 'That's right! And waking up you tried to hang on to
it, you were reluctant to let the secret vanish with the dream. And it vexed
you when you were completely awake to learn that you were earthbound again.
Well,' (and he'd sighed as his excitement ebbed), 'that's pretty much how it
sometimes is for me. Like something I had in a long series of childhood
dreams, but burned out of me now and gone forever.'
Better for you, Harry, she'd thought.
That world was a dangerous place. You're safe now.
But not much good for E-Branch, and definitely not why she was here. On the
contrary, they wanted his powers restored and didn't much care how. And she
was supposed to be part of
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Gasping his shock the restoration team.
She slipped into bed with him, as much for his warmth as for anything, and his
free hand automatically cupped her breast. His body was lean and hard,
well-trained. He insisted on keeping it that way. 'It's years older than me,'
he'd once told her, without an ounce of humour, 'and so I have to look after
it.' As if it wasn't his but something he was care-taking. Hard to believe
there'd been a time when it really wasn't his. But she hadn't known him - or
it - then, and was glad for that.
'Ummm?' he murmured now, as she moulded herself to him.
'Nothing,' she whispered in the darkness of the room. 'Shh!'
'Ummm . . .' he said again, and instinctively drew her closer.
He was warm and he was Harry. She'd never felt so safe with anyone before. Him
with all his hangups, and yet when she was with him like this it was like
clinging to a rock. She stroked his chest, but gently so as not to awaken or
arouse him, and tried to will him into deeper sleep -
- And like a fool willed herself there instead.
Haaarry . . . !
Harry's Ma, Mary Keogh, called to him from her watery grave, and couldn't get
through to him. She never could these days, and knew why, but it didn't stop
her from trying.
Harry, there's someone who's trying very hard to talk to you. He says you were
friends, and that what he has to say is very important.
Harry could hear her, but he couldn't answer. He knew that he must not answer,
for talking to the dead had been forbidden to him. If he should try it, or
ever consider trying it, then once more he'd hear that irresistible voice in
his mind, reinforcing those commands by means of which his Necroscope powers
had been made worthless:
Under penalty of pain, you may not, Harry! Aye, great pain. Such torture that
the voices of the teeming dead would be distorted beyond recognition. Such
mental agony that you would never dare try again. I've no desire to be cruel,
father, but it's for your own protection - as well as mine. Faethor Ferenczy,
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Thibor, and Yulian Bodescu, they might well have been the last - or they might
not. The Wamphyri have powers, father! And if there are more of them hidden in
your world, how long before they seek you out and find you . . . before you
can find them? But they will only seek you out if they have reason to fear
you. Which is why I now remove such reason utterly! Do you understand?
To which Harry had answered: 'You do it for yourself. Not because you fear for
me, but for you. You fear that I'll come back one day, discover you in your
aerie and destroy you. I've told you I could never do that. Obviously my word
isn't good enough.'
People change, Harry. You could change, too. I'm your son, but I'm also a
vampire. I can't chance it that you'll not come looking for me one day with
sword and stake and fire. I've said it before: as a Necroscope you're
dangerous, but without the dead you're impotent. Without them, no more Möbius
Continuum. You can't come back here, nor seek me in the other places.
And yes, this is another reason why I place these strictures upon you.
'Then you doom me to torture. It's inescapable. The dead love me. They will
talk to me!'
They may try, but you will neither hear nor answer them. Not consciously. I
hereby deny you that talent.
'But I'm a Necroscope! I talk to the dead out of habit! And what about when I
grow old? If I ramble to the dead when I'm an old man, what then? Am I still
bound to suffer? All my days?'
Habits are for breaking, Harry. I say it one last time, and then if you doubt
me you may try it for yourself: you may not consciously speak to the dead, and
if they speak to you, you must strike their words immediately from memory or -
suffer the consequences. So be it.
'And all the maths Möbius taught me, am I to forget that, too?'
You have already forgotten it! That is my most immediate stricture, for I
won't be invaded in my own territory! Now be done with arguing, for it's over,
it
... is ...
done!
At which Harry had felt a terrible wrenching in his mind, which made him cry
out; followed by darkness; followed by ...
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Gasping his shock
. . . His return to consciousness in London, at E-Branch HQ.
That had been four years ago. He had told E-Branch all he could, helped them
complete and close their files on him and all his works. He was no longer a
Necroscope; he could no longer impose his metaphysical will on the physical
universe; the branch should have no further use for him now. But even after
they'd tried and discarded every means at their disposal to return his
paranormal powers to him, still he'd been certain they wouldn't let it rest
there. As a Necroscope he'd been too great an asset. They'd never forget him,
and if they could get him back they would. And so would his millions of
friends, the teeming dead. Oh, Harry's actual friends - his real comrades
among the Great Majority - numbered around one hundred only. But the rest knew
of him.
To them he would always be the one light in their eternal darkness.
And now one of them, by far the most important one to Harry, was trying to
speak to him again:
Harry, oh my poor little Harry! Why won't you answer me, son?
He had always been her little Harry.
'Because I can't,' he wanted to tell her - but dare not, not even asleep and
dreaming. For he'd tried once before, down at the riverbank, and now
remembered it only too well:
He'd gone there within the hour of his return to his home near Bonnyrig, the
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house which she had owned before him, and Viktor Shukshin in between. Shukshin
had drowned her under the ice, and left her body to float to this bight in the
frozen river. There she'd settled to the bottom, to become one with the mud,
the weeds and the silt. And there she'd stayed - until the night Harry called
her up again to take her revenge! Since when she'd lain here in peace, or been
gradually washed away in pieces. But her spirit was here still.
And it had been here when, like so many times before, he'd gone to sit on the
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