Necroscope - Deadspeak Part 23

You are welcome, Harry, any time. For after all, that is our dual purpose , to return him to dust. And now be on your way. I would like to rest a while in whatever peace is left to me - while I may.

But as Harry took up his holdall, so his feet squelched in the slime of th e rotting toadstools. Their 'scent' reached him in a single poisonous waft. An d: 'Ugh!' He couldn't hold back the exclamation of detestation. And Faethor picked it up, and perhaps saw in his mind something of the cause.

What? he said. Mushrooms? His mental voice was a little sharp, Harry tho ught, and suddenly nervous. Perhaps the finality of his situation was affect ing him after all.

The Necroscope shrugged. 'Mushrooms, toadstools -fungi, anyway. The s un is steaming them away.'

He felt Faethor's shudder and could have bitten off his tongue. His last sentence had been thoughtlessly cruel. But. . . what the h.e.l.l! . . . why should anyone feel sorry about the fate of a long-dead, morbid and totally evil thin g like a vampire?

'Goodbye,' he said, heading out of Faethor's ruined house, back towards the graveyard and the dusty road beyond.

Farewell, that unquiet spirit answered him. And Harry, don't linger over what you must do but seek to make a quick end of it. Time may well be of th e essence.

Harry waited a moment more but Faethor didn't elaborate . . .

As Harry climbed the rear wall of the old cemetery and stepped down am ong the plots and leaning slabs, someone very close to him said: Harry? Ha rry Keogh?

He jumped a foot and glanced all around. But ... no one there! Of course n ot, for it was deadspeak at work -without the terrible mental agony he'd come to a.s.sociate with it. He'd been denied the use of his macabre talent for so lo ng that it would take a little time to get used to it again.

Did I startle you? asked the voice of some dead soul. I'm sorry. But w e heard you talking to that dead Thing Who Listens, and we knew it must be you - Harry Keogh, the Necroscope. For who else among the living could it be, talking to the dead? And who else would even want to talk to or befri end such a Thing as that? Only you, Harry, who have no enemies among the G reat Majority.

'Oh, I've a few,' Harry eventually, hesitantly answered. 'But mainly I get on with the teeming dead well enough, yes.'

Now the entire graveyard came, as it were, to life. Before, there had be en a hush, an aching void to camouflage a pent-up ... something. But now tha t something burst its banks like a river in flood, and a hundred voices sudd enly required Harry's attention. They were full of the usual queries of the dead: how were those they'd left behind doing in the world of the living? Wh at was happening in that bustling world of corporeal being, where minds were housed in flesh? Would it be possible for Harry to deliver a message to thi s oh so well-remembered and -loved father, or mother, or sister, or lover, a nd so on.

Why, he could spend a lifetime simply answering the questions and runni ng the many errands of the inhabitants of this one cemetery! But no sooner had he issued that thought than they knew and recognized its truth, and the mental babble quickly died down.

'It isn't that I don't want to,' he tried to explain, 'but that I can't.

You see, to the living you're dead and gone forever. And apart from a handful of colleagues, I'm the only one who knows you're still here, but changed. Do you think it would help if all your still living friends and loved ones knew that you, too, remained . . . extant? It wouldn't. It would only serve to make their grief that much worse. They'd think of you as being in some vast and terrible prison camp beyond the body! Well, it's bad enough, I know, but not that bad - especially now that you've learned to communicate among yourselve s. But we can't tell that to the living you left behind you, for if we did th ose who've stopped mourning and returned to what's left of their own lives, w hy, they'd start all over again! And I'm afraid there would always be fake Ne cro-scopes to take advantage of them.'

You're right, of course, Harry, their spokesman answered then. It's just that it's such a rare - indeed unique - treat, to speak with a member of the living, I mean! But we can sense your urgency and we certainly didn't intend to hold you up.

Harry wandered amidst the plots, some ancient and others quite new, and inquired: 'How will it affect you? When they get through levelling what's le ft around here, I mean? You'll still be here, I know that, no matter what ha ppens - but won't it bother you that your graves have been disturbed?'

But they won't be, Harry! an Area Planning Council member, late of Ploies ti, spoke up. For this cemetery has a preservation order on it. Oh, it's true , a lot of graveyards have been reduced to rubble, but this one at least esca pes Ceausescu's madness. And I pride myself that I was in part instrumental - but I had to be. Why, members of my family, the Bercius, have been buried he re for centuries! And families should stick together, right? Radu Berciu chuc kled, however wrily. Ah, but I never thought that I'd benefit personally, or at least not so soon. For just nine days after I brought that preservation or der into being, why, I myself died of a heart attack!

Harry was thoughtful enough to enquire: 'Are there any more here only r ecently dead?' For he knew from past experience that they'd be the ones har dest hit, not yet recovered from the trauma of death. At least he could fin d the time to speak to them before moving on.

And eventually a pair of voices, sad, young, and very lost, found strengt h to answer him: Oh, yes, Harry, said one. We're the Zaharia brothers.

Ion and Alexandru, said the other. We were killed in an accident, worki ng on the new road. A tanker crashed and spilled its fuel where we were bre wing tea on a brazier. We burned. And both of us with new wives. If only th ere were some way to let them know that we felt nothing, that there was no pain.

'But. . . there must have been!' Harry couldn't disguise his astonishment.

Yes, one of the Zaharias answered, but we'd like them to believe there was n't. Otherwise they could stay awake every night for the rest of their lives, listening to us scream as we burned. We'd like to spare them that, at least.

Harry was moved, but there was nothing he could do for them. Not yet, an yway. 'Listen,' he said. 'It could be that I may be able to help - not now but at some time in the future. Soon, I hope. If and when that time comes I'l l let you know. Right now, though, I can't promise you any more than that.'

Harry, they tried to tell him in unison, their voices overlapping, that'

s more than enough! You've given us hope, in that we now know we have a frie nd in a place otherwise beyond our reach. All of the teeming dead should be so lucky. And indeed they are lucky - that you're the one with the power.

He moved on, out of the cemetery and into the dusty road, turning righ t in the direction of Bucharest. Behind him the excited graveyard voices g radually faded, talking among themselves now, of him rather than to him. A nd he knew he'd made a lot of new friends. A mile down the road, however, he met two who were not his friends. On the contrary.

The black car pa.s.sed him heading where he'd just been, but hearing the sudden squeal of its brakes he looked back and saw it make a rocking U-turn . And from that moment he felt he was in trouble. Then, as the car drew up alongside and stopped, and as its occupants jumped out, he knew he was in t rouble.

They weren't in uniform, but still Harry would know their sort anywhere.

He'd met them before; not these two in particular, but others exactly like them. Which wasn't strange for they were all very much of a kind. In their d ark grey suits and felt hats with soft rims - which might have been borrowed right out of the Thirties - they were the Romanian equivalent of Russia's K GB: the Securitatea. One was small, thin, ferret-faced; the other tall, wood en and lurching. Their faces were almost expressionless, hidden in the shade of their hats.

'Ident.i.ty card,' the small one growled, holding out a hand and snapping his fingers.

'Work ticket,' said the other, more slowly. 'Papers, doc.u.ments, authorizati on.'

They had both spoken English, but Harry was so badly taken by surprise that he fell straight into their simple trap. 'I ... I have only my pa.s.sport,' he s aid, also in English, and reached for it in his inside jacket pocket.

Before he could produce his forged Greek pa.s.sport, the small, thin one thrust an ugly automatic pistol into his side. 'Carefully, if you please, M r Harry Keogh!' he rasped. And as Harry's hand came back slowly into view, so the doc.u.ment was s.n.a.t.c.hed from him and pa.s.sed to the larger of the two.

Then, while the small one expertly frisked him, the wooden one opened up his pa.s.sport and studied it. After a moment he held it out where his co mrade could glance at it without looking away from Harry; they both grinne d, coldly and without humour, and Harry thought how well they imitated sha rks. But he also knew they had him, and for now there was nothing he could do about it.

The last time anything like this had happened to him was when he'd first gone to speak with Mobius in a Leipzig cemetery. On that occasion he ha d made his escape through the Mobius Continuum. Also, he'd made use of an expert and practical knowledge of the martial arts, taught to him by sever al dead masters. Well, and he was still an expert with many years of pract ice behind him; but at that earlier time he'd been a far younger man, less experienced and wont to panic. He was much calmer now, and with every rea son: in the years flown between Harry had faced terrors such as these two thugs could scarcely imagine.

'And so we are mistaken,' the wooden one said, his command of English sli ghtly guttural but still very good, especially in its sarcastic inflection. '

You are not this Harry Keogh after all but a Greek gentleman named . . . Hari Kiokis? Ah, a dealer in antiques, I see! But a Greek who speaks only English ?'.

The one with the ferret's face was more direct. 'Where did you stay last n ight, Harry?' He prodded the snout of his pistol deep into Harry's ribs. 'What traitor gave you shelter, eh, Mr spy?'

'I ... I stayed with no one,' Harry answered, which wasn't entirely true. He indicated his holdall. 'I slept in the open. My sleeping-bag is in here.'

The tall one took the holdall from him and opened it, and pulled out the sleeping-bag. It had a little mud on it and a few stains from the gra.s.s. An d now the special policeman's face wasn't so wooden. If anything he looked b ewildered, but only for a moment. 'Ah, I see!' he said then. 'Your contact d idn't show up, and so you've had to make the best of things. Very well, then perhaps you'll tell us who was supposed to meet you, eh?'

'No one,' said Harry, as an idea began to form in his head. 'It's just that sleeping out is cheap and I enjoy a little fresh air, that's all. And in any c ase, what business is it of yours? You've seen my pa.s.sport and know who I am, b ut who the h.e.l.l are you? If you're policemen I'd like to see some sort of ident ification.'

And while they stared at him, and at each other, in something of astoni shment, so he reached out with his deadspeak to the minds of his new friend s in the graveyard half a mile away. He spoke (but silently) to Ion and Ale xandru Zaharia, and his message was simple and to the point: I'm under threat from two men. Your countrymen, I'm afraid: Securitatea, Without your help I'm done for! Harry got so much out, and only so much, be fore the small one kicked him in the groin. He saw it coming and managed to deflect most of it, but still he collapsed, rolling in feigned agony in the dust of the road.

'There now!' said the wooden one, his voice cold and empty of emotion.

'You see, you see? You've angered Corneliu! You really must try, Harry Keog h, to be more co-operative. Our patience is by no means infinite.' He went to the back of the car, opened it and threw Harry's things in. But he placed the forged pa.s.sport in his own pocket.

But what can we do, Harry? Ion Zaharia's anxious voice came to him where he huddled on his side, playing for time. We could try to . . . but no, for you're too far away. We'd never get to you in time.

No, Harry answered, you stay right where you are. Only dig yourselves ou t, that's all. You and anyone else who -well, who's still in shape - and who wants to help. But don't go wasting yourselves trying to come to me, for I think I know how to bring these b.a.s.t.a.r.ds to you.

'Jacket!' the small, thin one - Corneliu - snapped. 'Quickly!'

Harry sat up, half-shrugged out of his jacket before it was s.n.a.t.c.hed from his back.

'All very disappointing, really,' said the other one, who wasn't so muc h wooden now as disdainful, superior. 'We fully expected that we would have to shoot you! Such things they told us about you! Such problems you've cau sed our friends across the border! And yet ... you don't seem very desperat e to me, Harry Keogh. Perhaps your reputation is undeserved?'

Harry had given up all thoughts of trying to bluff it out. They knew wel l enough who he was, if not what. 'That was all a long time ago,' he said, '

when I was younger. I'm not so foolish now. I know when the game is up.'

An open-backed truck rumbled by heading for Bucharest. In the back, sea ted on benches along the sides-, twin rows of men and women, mainly aging p easants, faced each other. Their eyes were uniformly empty of hope; they sc arcely glanced at Harry where he kneeled in the dirt with a pair of thugs s tanding over him; they had troubles of their own. They were the dest.i.tute, the homeless ones, their lives blighted by Ceausescu's blind, uncaring agro -industrial policy.

'Well, the game is most certainly up for you, my friend,' the tall one co ntinued. 'You'll know, of course, that they want you for espionage and sabota ge - and murder? Oh, a great deal of the latter, apparently!' He took out han dcuffs. 'So much, in fact, that I think we'll just immobilize you a little. O ne can never be too careful. You look harmless enough, and you're unarmed, bu t . . .'

He put the cuffs on, locking Harry's hands together.

'Return air tickets to Rhodos,' (the ferret had been ferreting in Harry's po ckets), 'cigarettes and matches, and a lot of American dollars. That's all.' And to Harry: 'Get up!'

He was bundled into the back of the car with the small one beside him, ho lding his gun on him. The tall, lurching one got into the driver's seat. 'And so you were heading for the airport,' the latter said. 'Well, we shall give you a lift. We have a small room there where we can wait for the flight from Moscow. And after that you are out of our hands.' He started the car and head ed for Bucharest. 'I don't get it,' said Harry, genuinely puzzled. 'Since when have the Se curitatea been big friends with the KGB? I would have thought the USSR's gla snost and perestroika were totally at odds with what Ceausescu is doing? Or perhaps you two, as a team, are a two-edged sword, eh? Is that it? Are you w orking for two bosses, Mr, er - ?'

'Shut up!' the ferret sc.r.a.ped his gun down Harry's ribs. 'No, let him ta lk,' their driver merely shrugged. 'It amuses me to discover how little they know, in the West.' He glanced over his shoulder. 'And how much of what the y do know is based on guesswork. Mr Keogh, you may call me Eugen. And why no t, since our acquaintance will be so short? But does it surprise you that Ru ssia has friends in Romania, when Romania has been a satellite and neighbour of the USSR for so very long? Why, next you'll be telling me that there are no Russian agents in England, or France, or America! No, I can't believe yo u're that naive.' 'You're . . . KGB?' Harry frowned. 'No, we're Securitatea - when it suits us to be. But you see, compared to the leu the rouble has al ways been so very strong and stable - and we all must look to our futures, e h? We all must retire sooner or later.' He glanced back, smiled at Harry, an d gradually let the smile slide from his face. 'In your case, sooner.'

So ... these two were in the pockets of the KGB, who in turn would have a section working with Harry's old 'friends' at the Soviet E-Branch HQ in Moscow. It was the Russian espers who were raising their ugly head again; t hey remembered Bronnitsy too well and desired to pay Harry back for it. Yes , and they must fear him mightily! First Wellesley's crazy plot in Bonnyrig , and now this. He would be smuggled quietly out of Romania and into the US SR, handed over to Soviet E-Branch, and simply . . . disappear. Or at least , that was the scenario as they had worked it out.

But it told Harry quite a lot. If he was to be smuggled out of Romania, then patently the actual Romanian authorities didn't know about him at all . To them he was simply what his pa.s.sport said he was: Hari Kiokis, a perfe ctly legitimate businessman from Greece. It made sense. The KGB (or E-Branc h) had contacted their own in Romania, men who could be trusted to expedite the job - because to try to arrange any other kind of extradition would on ly prove to be lengthy and frustrating. So maybe there was something to be said for Ceausescu's way of running the show after all.

'Er, Eugen?' he said. 'It seems to me that your main task was simply to p ick me up. So why didn't you do it yesterday, at the airport? Because you nee ded to avoid publicity?'

"That was one reason,' the tall one answered over his shoulder. 'Also, w e thought to kill two birds with one stone: tail you and discover your conta ct. You must have come here to see someone, after all. So we simply followed your taxi. But alas, a puncture! These things happen. Later we picked up yo ur taxi driver and he showed us where he'd dropped you off. Also, he said you'd be catching a bus back into the city in the morning. Now that was frustr ating! All that driving up and down since dawn, waiting for you to put in an appearance. As a last resort, of course, we would be obliged to return to B ucharest and wait for you at the airport. There is only one flight to Athens today. As it happened, however, that wasn't necessary.'

'There was no contact!' Harry suddenly blurted it out. 'I was just. . . j ust supposed to leave certain instructions, and pick up certain information.'

He was taking a chance they knew almost nothing about him, except that he wa s to be detained for their Russian bosses. Also, time was getting shorter. By now his friends in the cemetery back there should be very nearly ready for h im.

Eugen applied the brakes, slowed the car to a halt. 'You left instructions?

There's a drop, back there?'

'Yes,' Harry lied.

'And the information you picked up? Where is that?'

'It wasn't there. That's why I waited all night, to collect it this morning. But it still wasn't there.'

Eugen turned around in his seat and stared at Harry with narrowed eyes. 'Y ou are being very open, my friend. I take it this all has to do with our peasa nt fifth-columnists, right?'

Harry tried to look frightened, which wasn't at all hard. He knew nothing about Romania's peasant fifth-columnists, but he did understand something of the psychology of thugs such as these. 'Something like that,' he said. 'But . . . you said you have a room at the airport? Well, I think I'd rather tell you everything now, than have comrade Corneliu here beat it out of me in priv ate later.'

'A great shame,' Corneliu grunted, and shrugged. 'Still, I might beat you anyway.'

Eugen said: 'You will show us this letter drop?'

'If it will make life easier for me, yes,' Harry answered.

'Hah!' scoffed Corneliu. This one, tough?' And to Harry: 'Are they all girls , your British spies?'

Harry shrugged. In fact he knew very little about standard British spies, only about espers: mindspies.

Eugen turned the car around and backtracked; there was no more conversation until Harry called a halt at the entrance to the graveyard. 'It's in here,' he said then. 'The letter drop.'

They all got out of the car and Corneliu used his gun to prod Harry on a head. As he went he sent his deadspeak before him: We're here. One of them a t least has a gun -trained on me. In the moment that he sees you he'll be di stracted. That's when I plan to disarm him. Is everything OK?

We're OK, Harry, the Zaharias answered at once. And there are several others who wouldn't be dissuaded. We don't know if they'll be much good. But . . . strength in numbers, eh?

I don't see you, Harry looked worriedly all about. Are you in hiding?

The others are just under the soil, Harry, Ion Zaharia told him. And we're out of our boxes, in our sarcophagus.

Harry remembered: the Zaharias had been buried in the same plot and had a joint sarcophagus, its heavy, beautifully veined lid standing some eight een inches above the surrounding marble chips of their plot. They hadn't se emed to mind him sitting there for a few moments while he was talking to th em. So, they were waiting under the lid, eh? Well, and that should come in very handy.

'Move, Keogh!' Corneliu growled, shoving him forward down an aisle be tween rows of leaning headstones. 'Where is this drop, anyway?'

'Right there,' Harry pointed ahead. He moved to the huge tomb and stood looking down at its ma.s.sive lid. 'I had to lever it to one side, but togethe r we should slide it easily enough, once we lift it from its groove.' He hop ed that the thugs hadn't noticed how ripe the air was, and how much worse th e smell was growing from second to second, but this was something he dare no t ask.

'Oh?' Eugen grinned mirthlessly. 'Desecration, too, eh? Why, you should be ashamed of yourself, Harry Keogh, posting letters to the dead! They can 't answer you, you know.' And to Corneliu: 'You hold your gun on him, while I give him a hand.'

How wrong you are! Harry thought, as he and the tall agent strained at the lid - which suddenly, and very easily, slid to one side. The Necroscope had expected that, certainly, and held his breath; but Corneliu and Eugen had not, and didn't. Nor were they expecting what happened next, in the mom ent after the tomb's trapped ga.s.ses whooshed out.

'G.o.d!' Eugen staggered back, his hands flying to his nose and mouth. Bu t Corneliu, standing back a little, simply gasped and bugged his eyes. And the weapon in his hand seemed to automatically transfer its aim from Harry'

s back to what was first sitting up, then standing, and finally reaching ou t from the shadowy mouth of the tomb!

Before he could squeeze the trigger, if indeed sufficient strength remai ned for that, Harry broke his wrist with a kick he seemed to have been savin g for years. The gun went flying, and so did Corneliu - directly into the bu rned and blistered, blue and tomb-grey hands of the Zaharias! The brothers g rabbed and held him, stared at him with their dead bubble eyes, and threaten ed him with blackened bone teeth in straining, scorched cartilage jaws.

The other agent, Eugen, gibbering as he crashed through the ancient bram ble-grown plots towards the graveyard's exit, didn't even pause to look back . . . until he ran into what was waiting for him. Those others of whom the Zaharias had reported: 'they wouldn't be dissuaded'. And for all that they w ere mainly fragmentary - or possibly because that's what they were - these c rumbling, crawling, spastically kicking parts of corpses stopped Eugen dead in his tracks.

One of them was a woman, whose legs and life had been lost in a terribl e accident. Long-buried, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were rotting onto her belly, sloughing away from her in grotesque lumps; but still she stood upright on her stump s and found a supernatural strength to cling to Eugen's shuddering thighs w here he danced and screamed to heaven for mercy, and tried to push her face away from his midriff. Finally he succeeded and the vertebrae of her neck parted; her entire head flopped over backwards like that of a broken doll, as if it were hinged, exposing maggots where they seethed in her throat and fed on ravaged flesh and torn tendons.

With a series of frenzied leaps and kicks born of the sheer terror of hi s situation, at last Eugen freed himself from the dead woman's crumbling tor so and reached inside his jacket. He brought out an automatic pistol and coc ked it, turning it upon others of these impossibly animated parts where they came crawling or jerking towards him. Harry didn't want that gun to go off; Eugen's screams were bad enough; gunshots might easily attract investigator s.

The dead picked up Harry's concern as surely as any spoken word and mov ed to dispel it. The pile of loathsomeness which was the legless woman stru ggled upright and toppled itself against Eugen's weapon, and her mouldy han ds drew its barrel into the trembling jelly cavity of her neck. With her tr unk she deadened the sound of Eugen's first shot, while Harry saw to it tha t there wouldn't be a second one.

Coming upon the agent from behind and clenching his manacled hands, he rabbit-punched him unconscious, and as he fell kicked the gun from his ha nd. Collapsing, Eugen saw Harry's face fading slowly into darkness, and wo ndered why nothing of horror was written in his strange, soulful eyes.

Regaining consciousness a few minutes later, the tall, awkward secret po liceman was sure that what he'd experienced had been a vivid and especially terrifying nightmare . . . until he actually opened his eyes and looked arou nd. Then: 'My G.o.d! Oh . . . my . . . G.o.d!' he burst out. For a moment his eyes bulge d, and then he closed them again -tightly.

'Don't faint,' Harry warned him. 'I've only so much time left and there ar e things I want to know. If I don't get the answers I need, these dead people will probably be angry - with you!'

Eugen kept his eyes closed. 'Harry . . . Harry Keogh!' he finally gasped. 'B ut these people . . . they're dead!'

'I just said they were,' Harry told him. 'You see, that's where your "friends across the border" made their mistake. They told you who I am but not wh at I am. They didn't tell you how many friends I have, or that they're all de ad.'

The other mumbled something in Romanian, began to gibber hysterically.