Deadspeak

Harry nodded. 'I have my suspicions,' he said, 'but we'd all better pray I'm wrong! See, I know the dead wouldn't harm me; they wouldn't deliberately risk hurting me. And yet this thing is so important to them, or to me, that it's almost as if they've been tempting me into conversation! But my son did a hell of a good job on me. I don't remember my dreams in any detail - not the ones which they send me, anyway - and I can't try to clarify them. And as for the Möbius Continuum... God, I can't add two and two without it comes out five!'

Darcy Clarke had personal experience of the Möbius Continuum. Harry had taken him there once, taken him through it. From here, this very house, to E-Branch HQ in London over three hundred miles away. And that had been a trip Darcy would never forget and, he hoped, never repeat, all the days of his life. Even now, these years later, it was printed on his memory in vivid detail.

There had been Darkness on the Möbius Strip, the Primal Darkness itself, as it was before the universe began. A place of negativity, yes, where Darkness lay upon the face of the deep. And Darcy had thought that this could well be that region from which God had commanded, Let There Be Light, and caused the physical universe to split off from the metaphysical void.

There had been no air, but neither had there been time, so that Darcy didn't need to breathe. And without time there was likewise no space; both of these essentials of a universe of matter had been absent. But Darcy hadn't ruptured and flown apart, because there'd been nowhere to fly to!

Harry had been Darcy's single anchor on Sanity and Being and Humanity; he couldn't see him for there was no light, but he could feel the pressure of his hand. And perhaps because Darcy was himself psychically endowed, he'd felt he had some small understanding of the place. For instance: he knew it was real because he was here, and with Harry beside him he'd known he need not fear it because his talent hadn't prevented him from coming here. And so, even in the confusion of his near-panic, he'd been able to explore his feelings about it.

Lacking space it was literally 'nowhere', but by the same token lacking time it was every-where and -when. It was core and boundary both, interior and exterior, where nothing ever changed except by force of will. But there was no will, except it was brought here by someone like Harry Keogh. Harry was only a man, and yet the things he could do through the Möbius Continuum were... Godlike? And what if God should come here?

And again Darcy had thought of The God, who wrought a Great Change out of a formless void and willed a universe. And then the thought had also occurred: We aren't meant to be here. This isn't our place.

'I understand how you feel,' Harry had told him then, 'for I've felt it, too. But don't be afraid. Just let it happen and accept it. Can't you feel the magic of it? Doesn't it thrill you to your soul?'

And Darcy had had to admit it thrilled him - but it scared him witless, too!

Then, so as not to prolong it, Harry had taken him to the threshold of a future-time door. Looking out, they'd seen a chaos of millions, no, billions, of threads of pure blue light etched against an eternity of black velvet, like an incredible meteor shower, except the tracks didn't dim but remained printed on the sky - indeed, printed on Time! And the most awesome thing was this: that two of these twining, twisting streamers of blue light had issued from Darcy and Harry themselves, extruding from them and racing away into the future -

The blue life-threads of humanity, of all Mankind, spreading out and away through space and time... But then Harry had closed that door and opened another, a door on the past.

The myriad neon life-threads had been there as before but this time, instead of expanding into a misted distance, they'd contracted and narrowed down, targeting on a faraway, dazzling blue core of origin.

And in the main, that was what had most seared itself on Darcy's memory: the fact that he'd seen the very birthlight of Mankind...

'Anyway,' Harry's voice, decisive now, brought him back to the present, 'I'm coming with you^ To Rhodes, I mean. You might need my advice.'

Darcy gazed at him in astonishment. He hadn't seen or heard him so positive in ... how long? 'You're coming with - ?'

'They're my friends, too,' Harry blurted. 'Oh, maybe I don't know them like you do, but I trusted in them once and they trusted in me, in what I was doing. They were in on that Bodescu business. They have their talents, and they have invaluable experience of ... things. Also, well it seems to me the dead want me to go. And lastly, we really can't afford to have anything happen to people like those two. Not now.'

'We can't afford it? What "we", Harry?' And suddenly Darcy was very tense, waiting for Harry's answer.

'You, me, the world.'

'Is it that bad?'

'It could be. So I'm coming with you.'

Sandra looked at them both and said: 'So am I.'

Darcy shook his head. 'Not if it's like he thinks it might be, you're not.'

'But I'm a telepath!' she protested. 'I might be able to help with Trevor Jordan. He and I used to be able to read each other like books. He's my friend, too, remember?'

Harry took her arm. 'Didn't you hear what Darcy said? Trevor's a madman. His mind has gone.'

She pulled a face and tut-tutted. 'What does that mean, Harry? Minds don't just "go", you of all people should know that. It hasn't "gone" anywhere - just gone wrong, that's all. I might be able to look in there and see what's wrong.'

'We're wasting time,' Darcy was growing anxious. 'OK, so it's decided: we're all three going. How long will it take you to get ready?'

'I'm ready,' Harry answered at once. 'Five minutes to pack a few things.'

'I'll need to pick up my passport on our way through Edinburgh,' Sandra shrugged. 'That's all. Anything else I need I'll buy out there.'

'Right,' said Darcy. 'You phone a taxi, and I'll help Harry pack. If we have time I can always put HQ in the picture from the airport. So let's go.'

And in their graves the teeming dead relaxed a little -for the moment, anyway. Harry, because he thought he'd heard their massed sighing, gave a small shudder. It wasn't terror or dread or anything like that. It was just the frisson of knowing. But of course his friends - his living friends - knew nothing at all of that.

Unbeknown to the three, Nikolai Zharov was at Edinburgh Airport to see them off. He had also been across the river with a pair of KGB-issue nite-lite binoculars when Wellesley broke into Harry's house in Bonnyrig. And he'd seen what had left the garden to plod back to their riven plots in a cemetery half a mile away. He'd seen and known what they were, and still looked haggard from knowing it.

But that didn't stop Zharov coding a message and phoning it through to the KGB cell at the embassy. So that in a very short time indeed the Soviet intelligence agencies knew that Harry Keogh was en route to the Mediterranean.

It was 6:30 p.m. local time at Rhodes Airport when Manolis Papastamos met them off their flight; during the taxi ride into the historic town, he told them in his frenetic fashion all he knew of what had transpired. But seeing no connection, he made no mention of Jianni Lazarides.