E-Branch - Invaders Part 21

But he needn't have concerned himself. Obviously the other had considered Jake's earlier question, and now took his prompt into account, too.

'Son?' he finally repeated Jake, and c.o.c.ked his young-old head on one side. 'And you're wondering if we know each 232.

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other? Well, I've got to answer no to both questions. Uh-uh, Jake. You and I don't know each other, not yet. And I'm not too comfortable with you calling me "son". It's a case of - I don't know - what came first, the chicken or the egg?' There was no animosity in his reply.

'Eh?' Jake frowned. 'Someone else just bursting with riddles? I don't need that right now.'

'But it's a h.e.l.l of an adventure,' said the boy, sounding not at all like a child, despite his child's voice. 'Er, working themout, that is. I've done my share of that, Jake.' Then, sitting back and gazing directly into Jake's eyes, studying his face and perhaps more than his face: 'So you're him. And you've been having a hard time of it, right?'

'Well, since you seem to understand what's going on here,' Jake answered, perhaps peevishly, 'why don't you tell me?' His dream might be working something out for him, resolving a problem.

And the other nodded. 'Very well, I'm telling you: you're having a hard time of it. But that's just as much your fault as mine; you have a very defensive mi nd. And me, I don't have much of a mind at all! Or I do, but not all in one place, not all at one time. Oh, I know - I mean, I've known - a lot of things. But what I remember and what I've forgotten are completely random. Like a kind of amnesia or a bad case of absent-mindedness. Except it's not. For you see, I'm really not all here. Or putting it more sympathetically, all of me isn't here. Which means that while I won't get things one hundred per cent wrong, I may not get them entirely right eith er. That's why I need a focus. But now, since you seem determined to reject me, it looks like it may be hard for us to get along, and harder still for me to get it together. So, how long do you plan to keep slamming the door in my face, Jake?'

'Who are you?' Jake asked him then, feeling a weird tingle in his scalp, an unheard-of sensation of negative deja vu: that it wasn't him but the boy who had been here - or somewhere - before. And Jake felt he knew where he'd been.

But the other frowned and now seemed as uncertain as Jake.

'I ... I'm all sorts of people and things,' he said. 'I'm Alec, Nestor, Nathan, take your pick. There's something of Faethor in me, or has been, or will be. And something of me in a whole lot of people. It all depends on the time, the date, the place.

And time is relative: what will be has been, ask any precog.

That's why we have to be sure it works out right, don't you see?'

'You ... you're Harry Keogh!' said Jake, s.h.i.+vering without knowing why - until he remembered what Harry Keogh was.

'You're the ghost they've been telling me about!'

'And you're the gadget,' said Harry.

'But I don't want to be!' Jake felt himself riveted to the river bank; he wanted to leap away but couldn't move. It was the dream, the nightmare - one of those nightmares - where, try as you might, you can't escape from the thing that's chasing you.

I'm not chasing you,' the young Harry protested. 'You are chasing me. Chasing me away!' And in fact he was wavering, physically (or metaphysically) wavering, his figure a mere outline, his face and form thinning towards transparency.

'But you're after my mind, my body!' Jake cried.

The boy, the dream-Harry, the ghost (who by now was beginning to look ghostly, insubstantial as smoke) gave a desperate shake of his almost immaterial head. 'That's not me, Jake. It's the Wamphyri who want your mind, body and soul. I am the one - or rather we are the ones, and maybe the only ones - who might be able to stop them. So don't send me away, Jake. Don't fight me off!'

And suddenly Jake realized that he could, that he was actually doing it: fighting the other off, sending him away. And: 'I... I can, can't I?' he said, his fear retreating.

'You very nearly did!' said Harry, sighing as he firmed up 234.

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again. 'Okay, so perhaps this is too strange for you, the wrong time and place, the wrong me. I didn't think you'd see any harm in a small boy, that's all.'

'What, in a child who talks like a man?' Jake felt himself s.h.i.+vering again, but less violently. 'A boy whose eyes are innocent as a baby's yet old as the ages? A boy capable of metempsychosis - who's in my mind right now - while I'm the helpless intended vessel?'

'You're by no means as helpless as you think,' said Harry, perhaps admiringly. 'Tha t mind of yours: stubborn as h.e.l.l, with good s.h.i.+elds you've never had reason to use, nor even suspected you had them! Anyway, mind transference isn't something that I ... that I have in mind? I've had my time, Jake, my lives -and I'm still having them - b ut I do get your point. So, very well, let's try something else ...'

A moment ago it had been warm in evening sunlight that came in flickering beams, fanning through the trees on the far bank and setting the water sparkling out towards the middle of the river where the current ran fastest. Now, in a single instant, it was cold and dark; frost lay thick on the ground, and the river was a ribbon of ice, frozen and motionless. A full moon hung low in a windswept sky, and a trio of gardens fronted rich houses that reared to the right of Jake and the boy where they walked along the river path. Except Jake's companion was no longer a boy but a youth.

Jake started away from the stranger - stumbled, might have fallen into frosted brambles on the overgrown river bank - but Harry was quick to take his arm, hold him steady. 'It's okay,' he said, to still Jake's cry of alarm. 'It's a different time, that's all, an older me. But the same place, more or less. The same river . We were back there,' he thumbed the air, indicated the path behind them, 'a few hundred yards downriver, sitting on the bank. It was summer and I was talking to my mother when you came by. Now it's ... oh, quite a few winters later. I'm a little closer to your own age now, so perhaps we'll be able to get along that much better.'

Closer to my own age? Jake thought. But you're a good deal firmer, too. That's a Ml of a strong grip you have on my arm, and how much stronger on my mind?

But Harry the youth only shook his head in disappointment.

'Hiding your thoughts won't help. I'm in here, remember? Well, at present I am, anyway, while you accept me.'

'Jesus!' Jake gasped. 'It's like something out of A Christmas Carol! When I wake up, I won't believe it.' 'That's what I'm afraid of,' said Harry. 'Worse still, you may not even remember it. That's why we have to get things done while we can, and hope they get fixed in your mind.'

'Things?'

'Until you trust me,' the other answered, 'until you allow me a little permanency, we'll have to move in stops and starts. We'll get nowhere until I know the whole story, and I won't be able to help you until you believe.'

'Believe in a ghost?'

'But I'm not, not really. And Jake, you wouldn't - I mean you really wouldn't - believe how often I've been through this before! Oh, I've had trouble convincing others before you.'

While Harry talked, Jake looked him over. It was the same 'boy' for sure, but he'd be nineteen or maybe twenty years old now. Wiry, he would weigh some nine and a half stone and stand seventy inches tall. His hair was an untidy sandy mop that reminded Jake of Glint Eastwood's in those old western movies of more than thirty years ago. But his face wasn't near ly so hard and his freckles were still there, lending him a naive and definitely misleading boyish innocence.

More than any other feature, Harry Keogh's eyes were especially interesting. Looking at Jake, they seemed to see right through him (the sure sign of an esper, as Jake was now aware), as if he were the revenant, and not the reverse. But they were oh so blue, those eyes, that startling, colourless blue which always 237.

236 looks so unnatural, so that one thinks the owner has to be wearing lenses.

More than that, there was something in them which said they'd seen a lot mor e than any twenty-year-old has any right seeing.

But still Jake felt a little easier with all of this now. After all, it was only a dream. And since this ghost, or whatever it was, was conversational, why not talk to it? Or humour it, as the case might be.

'So, if convincing people is as hard as you make out, why do you put yourself to the trouble?' he asked his strange companion.

They had come to a halt before the gate in the garden wall of the central house. Lights in the downstairs room adjacent to the garden sent angular black shadows marching over the brittle shrubbery arid garden path ... the shadows of men, glimpsed only briefly before the patio doors were slammed and curtains jerked hurriedly across the wide windows.

For a long moment Harry made no answer to Jake's question; he stood as if transfixed, looking in through the gate's horizontal bars. But the house was mainly dark, where mere c.h.i.n.ks of light escaped at odd angles from the corners and joins of poorly-fitted curtains.

Then the youth start ed, blinked his eyes in the pale moonlight, and breathlessly answered, 'Why do I keep putting myself out?

That's easy, Jake. It's because I was the beginning, and I have to be the end ...' Then he gave another start, and said: 'We can't stay here. T hat house there is where I was born. My stepfather has visitors - B.

oris Dragosani and Max Batu - and later, I'll be visiting him, too. Tonight is the night I killed him. But there are things you mustn't see, not yet.'

'You ... you killed him?' And now the cold that Jake felt wasn't entirely physical, if it ever had been.

'I will,' said the other. 'But I don't want to see it, and I don't want you to see it. So now we have to go. Another place and time. Are you up to it?' 'Do I have a choice?'

'You can always wake up, but I wouldn't advise it! It was hard enough g etting into you this time. And if you're as badly frightened as-'

'Frightened?' Jake cut him off, his pride surfacing. 'Maybe I am, but I'm also interested - very. I want to know where this is going, want to find out what it's all about. And since they won't tell me-'

'They?' (Harry's turn to cut in).

'Ben Trask and his people,' Jake answered.

'Ah!' said Harry, nodding his head and smiling knowingly. 'I might have guessed. In fact, I suppose I knew. You mentioned "them" before, and obviously E-Branch HQ was where I aimed you that first time, when I first became aware of you. But that was then and this is now, and we have to move on. Since this was my home for so many years, we'll probably be back. But... my timing was years off, and I can't think why. It must be my memory, which is incomplete. You see, I'm incomplete! I'm not entirely here. Actually, I'm not entirely anywhere! It seems to be only the strongest of times and places to which I'm drawn.'

'Maybe it's a variation on the old theme,' said Jake. 'The killer returning to the scene - and time - of the crime!'

'Very clever,' said Harry. 'And you could even be right - in a way. The lure of powerful times and places. Yes, I can see that.

But a killer?' He shrugged. 1 can't deny it, and I won't try to explain it, not now. It's like I said: this isn't a good time for me.

So I'll ask you once again-'

And: 'Yes,' Jake nodded. Tm up to it. I think.'

'Very well,' the other nodded. 'But this time I'll try for a place of innocence.'

'Er, before we go,' Jake quickly put in, 'can you answer a question or two? I mean, while I'm still steady on my feet?'

'I'm surprised you haven't asked them sooner,' Harry 239.

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answered, his eyes still anxious where they peered through the bars of the gate at the house.

'Why me?' Jake said. 'Why not one of these people you seem to know so well, the E-Branch crowd? Surely they would have accepted you that much more readily. From some of the things I've heard them say about you, they hold you in some kind of awe.'

'But you're young,' said t he other. 'You're strong enough to face whatever it is that's coming. Ben Trask and the others, they're old now. And they don't need-'

'Yes?'

'-Redemption? No, that's not it. Let's just say they're not troubled. They're straight in what they have to do. But you are troubled. There's a lot of anger in you, Jake, an explosive strength. And that's what is needed. It's what we have to find a use for, but the right use.'

'So I was chosen out of nothing?' Jake frowned. 'Because I need saving? What if I don't want saving? You see, I still have a job to do, and one way or the other I'll do it. What I'm saying is you're taking a chance with me. I might not work out the way you want me to/ 'There was a certain element of chance in it, yes/ Harry answered. 'But there were also things I couldn't ignore. In the Mobius Continuum, down future time-streams, I've seen your blue life-thread crossed with the red of vampires where you're going to meet up with them. But where some of them blink out, expire, your blue thread goes on. Deja vu, Jake! I just couldn't ignore it. I want to make sure that blue thread goes on and on, that's all'

Bewildered, Jake shook his head. 'None of which makes any sense at all to me/ 'But it will, when you understand the Continuum. When you command it. And when you're able to do ... other things/ 'Command it? This ... this going-places thing? You're saying there's some kind of order to it? I can control it?

And as for doing other things: frankly, that worries me. You're beginning to sound a lot like these E-Branch people/ 'How's your math?' The other turned his back on the house, looked out over the star-shot river of ice.

'My math?' Jake's bewilderment grew apace.

'Your numbers, your reckoning/ 'I don't get short-changed, if that's what you mean/ 'We should talk to Mobius/ said Harry. 'Except we can't, for he's long gone. That's a problem. So I suppose you'll have to learn it parrot-fa s.h.i.+on. From me. And that could be a problem in its own right, because what I do now is pretty much instinctive, intuitive/ 'And no t very accurate/ said Jake. 'And probably dangerous, too. What good's all this jumping about if it doesn't get you where you want to go?'

'But it does/ 'But not this time!' Jake waved a hand at the house. 'You said so yourself/ 'Uh-uh/ Harry shook his head. 'You're all confused. You keep forgetting that this is only a dream - and your dream at that! I can guide these subconscious thoughts of yours, I can aim them, but I'm not flying you. I'm just the co-pilot. Deep inside you want to know about me, my times, places, and history. That's what's driving all of this, your need to know. So give me a little help to move on, won't you? I can't concentrate to best effect in this location. I'm not at all comfortable here/ 'You didn't need help the first time/ Jake reminded him, 'when you moved us from daylight to night, fr om the river bank to this place, and-'

'-And when you didn't expect it/ the other pointed out. 'But it's this mind of yours. It resists me - resists psychic or metaphysical interference - and its resistance grows stronger all the time. Maybe that's another reason why I was drawn to you: because you were a rare one with a talent of your own, if not all your own, just waiting to be developed. In 241.

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fact a great many people have one sort of ESP-ability or another; in most of them it's usually stillborn, incapable of further development. But I suspect that as esper begets esper the powers of the mind will come more and more into their own. Evolution, Jake: that was how it happened to me, and also how it happened in Sunside. Szgany s.h.i.+elds are powerful, too. They h ave to be, or the Szgany would be extinct. In you it was dormant, waiting for an opportunity to break out. But now that it has been awakened - perhaps by contact with me, my dart - or then again by E-Branch ...'

'Your dart? That really was you, then?' Jake was managing to absorb some of this, at least.

'Part of me, something of me. Awareness, Jake, awareness! Do you know the easiest way to magnetize a piece of iron? You throw it in with a lot of big magnets, that's how. And as for you-'

'I was thrown in at the deep end,' said Jake.

The other nodded. 'Apparently. So now if you'll only relax a little, we'll move on.'

And Jake relaxed ...

To anyone else these time and location s.h.i.+fts might b e unnerving: fr om a summer day on the river, to a moonlit winter night, to a night-light in a tiny garret room. Unnerving even if they worked as intended, but this time it seemed something had gone wrong. For in the little room where the dreamer now found himself he was on his own and there was no sign of his host. (His ghost?) But Jake - one of those rare types who can often distinguish between dreams and reality - wasn't too concerned. I f anything he was pleased. Or rather he was glad on the one hand (for the dream had been getting out of hand) and a little disappointed on the other. Just when he'd thought he was getting somewhere, learning something ...

But you still are, said Harry. Startled, Jake looked all about. But he looked too quickly and saw nothing. And at the same time it dawned on him that he hadn't so much heard Harry's voice as felt it. 'Telepathy?' he said. 'Does that mean you didn't make it? In which case, where the h.e.l.l are you?'

I'm over here, said Harry. Sucked into the most innocent of places. Innocent for the time being, a nyway.

The 'over here' was a direction-finder as clear as and clearer than any voice. And now that Jake looked again he saw what he'd missed the first time: a cot, standing on rockers in the corner of the small room, where the eaves came down low.

And lowering his head a little, he stepped towards it.

Within the cot, an infant; the baby had kicked himself free of a soft woollen blanket, lay naked and chubby, exposed except for diapers. His face was angelic, and his eyes- 'You!' said Jake.

Different times, different Harry Keoghs, said the other.

'But a baby, you?'

Well, I was, once upon a time! But what you're looking at ...

no, it isn't me. On the other hand, I am in here. For this is a time when I was incorporeal, Jake, and my son's mind was like a black hole. It sucked me in, saved me until I could become someone else.

'He ... he has your eyes,' said Jake, because there was no other way to answer what he'd just heard. And yet it did ring a bell, for lan Goodly had tried to tell him something similar.

He has my mind, too! Harry told him, gurgling happily - or unhappily? - in his cot. His and mine both. And unless I'm mistaken we've arrived at a very bad time.

'What, again?'

I was looking for innocence and f ound it. But if I'm right, that's just about to end. You see, this is the time, almost to the moment, when Harry Jr moves on, becomes The Dweller. Which in turn means- A woman's voice cried out from an adjacent room in the garret flat. A cry of uttermost terror! But: Don't panic, said Harry, despite that his own mental voice was filled with urgency now. That's his mother, but things are well 242.

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under control. And we 're almost out of here. Before that, though ... Jake, I need the names of these invaders, the creatures I've seen crossing your life-thread in Mobius time. If you know who they are, I can probably trace their histories to discover their weaknesses, maybe work out some way for you to deal with them.

(Soun ds of cras.h.i.+ng furniture came from the other room, and a single shrill cry: No!' Followed by a dull thud, a low moan, and silence ... for a moment. Then a padding, and a hoa.r.s.e, low panting. Sounds such as an animal might make. A large animal.) Their names! cried Harry in Jake's mind.

'Names?' Jake answered, his eyes on the door where it stood slightly ajar. 'Lords Malinari and Szwart, and the Lady Vavara: Wamphyri out of Starside.'