Jake's frustration was mounting again. 'A deterrent to my acceptance?' he snapped. 'Don't you think there are enough deterrents already? It's nuts, all of it! I mean, what am I, some kind of psychic medium? If there was a reason, just one logical reason, why I should suddenly become this dead bloke's target, his focus, his genius loci, then I might be willing to believe at least some of this… this whatever. See, I know that what I've actually seen and experienced so far is real, but I don't know that a lot of what I've been told is real. I trust my own five senses, or used to, but I don't understand how or why I'm involved. I'd even like to believe what I've heard, if only as an alternative to considering myself some kind of psycho, some kind of schizoid nutcase. But… but… but Harry is fucking dead!'
'Well, in a way he's dead,' said the precog, just as serious as ever, as if their conversation was utterly mundane. 'But you see, Harry didn't view existence, life and death, as we do. There was a time when he really was two people. It was after he suffered
… well, an accident, that his mind temporarily manifested itself in the identity of his own infant son. And later, he underwent another singular change. Best to think of it as a kind of metempsychosis, or—'
'Metempsychosis?' Jake cut him short. For despite that he was sure he'd never heard the word before, still he understood it; likewise another word that meant much the same thing. 'You mean transmigration? Of souls? Like he was… what, some kind of body-snatcher?' And now suspicion was written plain on the younger man's face.
'It wasn't like that at all!' the precog protested.
'What?' Jake's voice was brittle now, cracking like glass splintering under the heel of a boot. 'I don't give a twopenny toss what it was like! Shit, look at it from my point of view! This bloke's dead but he's trying to control my mind? And then what, my body? And if he ever got it, do you really think he'd want to give it back? And what about me, Mr lan bloody Goodly, precog? What the fuck about me? Is that why you can't tell me my future? Because the real me doesn't have one!?'
'Calm down, for goodness sake!' Goodly looked alarmed. 'My word, but you've a very short memory, Jake Cutter!'
'Eh?' That had served to slow Jake down a little. 'A short memory? How so?'
'But didn't Harry get you out of jail? Hasn't he saved your life twice already, and Liz's, too?'
Jake considered it, relaxed a very little, said: 'But what does he hope to do with me, this… this ghost?'
'Well, perhaps that's one I can answer,' Goodly told him. 'You see, the Necroscope's principal tenet was that whatever a man does in life he will continue to do after death. He proved it, too: used it to discover the Mobius Continuum. You'll just have to take my word for that, for the time being, anyway. But Harry's greatest claim to fame, or one of them, lay in finding and destroying vampires. Oh yes, the Earth was infested before this latest invasion. And believe me, Jake, without the Necroscope on our side, our world would have become an unimaginable hell-hole of a place a long time ago. So…'
'… So, you think he intends to keep on doing what he did before/ Jake nodded his understanding, all the while fighting hard to suppress his disbelief. 'This Harry… he's trying to come back because he somehow knows they have come back, and he wants to go on killing vampires. He's the avenging ghost and I… I'm his gadget?'
The precog shrugged and answered, 'And there you have it.'
Jake shook his head, looked bewildered, said: 'Come again? Didn't you get something backwards just then? Surely you meant there it has me!'
But Goodly was weary of this now. 'As you will,' he answered. And, pursing his thin lips, he turned away.
Jake saw his mistake, didn't want to alienate someone who obviously gave a damn, and quickly said, 'Listen, I appreciate everything you've told me. I'm not trying to mess you about — none of you — but looking for a little firm ground, somewhere I can safely plant my feet. The way I'm feeling, every step is like quicksand. And what you just said doesn't help any. What, I'm supposed to be happy with the notion of this Harry working his will through me, if not actually on me? Well, that's probably fine by you E-Branch people, all nice and safe in your own talented little skulls, but—'
'But… there's no safe place in E-Branch, Jake,' the precog cut him short, glancing back over his shoulder. 'However, I did say you would be around for quite some time. Which with the Necroscope — or something of him — on your side, seems a very fair forecast to me.'
'But a ghost?'
'There are ghosts and ghosts/ the other answered, walking away.
'But he's dead, for Christ's sake!' Made meaningless now, through repetition, still Jake's exclamation exploded from his dry lips. 'And not just a ghost — not just any old spook — but one who has access to my mind!'
'In E-Branch/ Goodly told him, without looking back, we do believe in ghosts, especially in the ghost of Harry Keogh. We have every good reason to. But that's something you don't have to take my word for, Jake. You see, I'm sure that before very long you 11 believe in them, too. I, Mr lan bloody Goodly, precog, am very sure of it, yes.. p>
CHAPTER SIXTEEN A Meeting Of Minds
Jake was in Chopper one with Trask, Liz, Goodly, Lardis, and a pair of technicians, Jimmy Harvey and Paul Arenson. Their next stop was Alice Springs (a 'mere' eight hundred miles east) for refuelling. Chopper two needed an hour's maintenance and would follow on behind. As for the vehicular contingent:
'They're heading south for Kalgoorlie,' Paul Arenson, a gangling, blue-eyed blond of maybe thirty-three years was telling his younger colleague. 'From there they'll go piggyback on a freight train to Broken Hill, then back on the road again to Brisbane. All except the big artic. It has to be the Great Aussie Bight coast road for the big feller. I calculate something like two thousand three hundred miles all told. We'll be home and dry in less than five hours; that's taking it easy, including a stop to stretch our legs at Alice. But as for the lads in the big truck… just be glad you're not one of them. Five hours for us, and three or four days for them!'
The conversation buzzed in Jake's head, singing with the vibration of the jetcopter. The airplane was safe and stable, but with its paramilitary design it hadn't been built for comfort. Jake sat on the floor in the narrow stowage area towards the tail, where there were no seats. Half-reclining, his large, angular frame was cushioned by holdalls, sausage-bags, and various packs of personal belongings, some hard and some soft; it wasn't his idea of luxury. But tired, and even hoping to get a little sleep, he repositioned himself as best he could and let the aircraft's singing soak into him.
The 'tune' was much too regular for a lullaby, and snatches of muted conversation kept drifting back to him, monotone lyrics that didn't fit the music but clung like cobwebs to his thoroughly weary mind. Cocooned in this odd mix of white noise and blurred babble, gradually Jake felt himself nodding off.
Liz Merrick was loosely belted into the rearmost of the seats, a gunner's swivelling bucket-seat between wide sliding doors on both sides. Her long legs were up, flopping over the gunner's arm rests; the gun itself slumped nose-down, strapped in position. Glinting a dull blue-grey, and despite its proximity to Liz's lovely body, the weapon looked sullenly impotent. But the picture Jake kept in his mind as he drifted into sleep was that of a naked Liz with the gun between her legs…
… But then he was asleep, and he was the gun between her legs! And — damn it to hell! — he wasn't fucking Liz but was facing xwsy from her out of the door. And she wasn't trying to ride him but was firing him… her arms round his waist, with one hand massaging his balls while the other, working his rampant dick, shot burst after burst of silvery, smoking semen at nightmarish vampire shapes that flapped in the chopper's slipstream, snarling their bloodlust as they fought to get inside the plane, to get at Liz, Trask, Goodly and the others!