The Source (50 page)

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Authors: Brian Lumley

BOOK: The Source
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“I was immaterial—literally. I was incorporeal, all aura. You're flesh and blood. Möbius reckons it can't be done. It would create too many irresolvable paradoxes.”
“He's right,” Harry Jr. nodded. “In the purely physical sense—in any entirely physical universe—it can't be done.”
“Are you telling me there are other sorts of universe?”
“You know of at least one?”
Harry felt he'd had this conversation before. “The Möbius Continuum? But we've already agreed that—”
“Harry,” his son cut in, “I'll tell you. You took the universe you knew and gave it a Mobius half-twist. You did to space-time what your mentor had done to a strip of paper. And the ability to do that came down to me. But let's face it, you always knew I'd go one better than that. Well, I did. I took the Möbius Continuum
itself
and did to
it
what Felix Klein did to his bottle! That allowed me to break the time barrier and retain a physical identity,
and
come through to this place. But you know, this is only one place …”
Harry said nothing, just stood very still and absorbed what his son had said. There
were
more places, more worlds, an infinite number. Just as space and time were limitless, so were the spaces in between space and time.
Now Harry knew what Darcy Clarke had meant when he said he felt like he stood in the presence of an alien. Harry Jr. was
that
far ahead! Or was he?
“Son—” said Harry eventually, “—tell me: are you still vulnerable?”
“Vulnerable?”
“Can you be hurt—physically?”
“Oh, yes,” Harry Jr. answered, and he sighed again. “I'm vulnerable, and never more so than now. In about one hundred hours it will be sundown again. And that's when I'll discover just how vulnerable I am.”
Harry frowned. “Do you want to explain?”
“Just like the Wamphyri have their spies, so I have mine. And I get … a
feel
for what the opposition is up to. This place has been under observation for months, close scrutiny. Bats on high; trogs down below, on the plain; even Wamphyri mentalists trying to wriggle into my mind—as they've doubtless got into the minds of my Travellers. All of which corroborates things that Zek Föener has already told me. But what reads can be read, you know? What observes can be observed.”
“An attack?” his father frowned. “But you told me they'd tried that before, with no success. So what's different now?”
“This time they're united,” Harry Jr. answered. “This time they'll
all
come! Their combined army will be massive. Three dozen warriors; countless trogs; all the Lords and their lieutenants. Shaithis has stirred them up.”
“But … you can get out of it,” Harry was bewildered, saw no real problem. “You know the way—all of the ways! We can all be long gone from here.”
Harry Jr. smiled a sad smile. “No,” he shook his head. “You can, and the others, the Travellers and trogs—whoever wants to go. But I can't. This is my place.”
“You'll defend it?” Harry shook his head. “I don't understand.”
“But you will, father. You will …”
The Dweller's Secret—Karen Defects—War!
THE SUN'S DECLINING RAYS WERE STARTING TO FADE WHERE they turned the highest peaks gold when The Dweller, Harry Jr., called his meeting. He wanted to speak to everyone who lived in or was supported by the garden, and he must do it now, while there was still time. He stood on a balcony under the hollow eaves of his house and addressed guests, Travellers, trogs, making no distinction. His mother was there, too, for a little while, before she went indoors. Smiling, sweet, grey-haired and quite bereft of mind, but happy too in her ignorance. Harry Sr. couldn't bear to look at her, forgetting that in his Alec Kyle body she wouldn't recognize him. He was glad when she went inside. And anyway, to her it had all been so long, long ago.
“Friends, it's time for truths,” Harry Jr. held up his arms and the low hubbub of voices was stilled. “It's time for you to make up your minds about certain things. I haven't deliberately misled you, but neither have I told you everything. Well, now I want to put that right. There are some of you here who have nothing to fight for. This just isn't your fight at all. You came or were sent here by the will of others. And I can just as easily take you out of it. Zek, Jazz, Harry, I'm talking to you.
“As for you Travellers, you can return to your travelling. The way is open to you: go now down the saddle and through the passes to Sunside. And you trogs: you can be down on the plain on Starside and hidden away in your caves—or in other, safer places—long before the Wamphyri strike. But you should all be aware that they
will
strike, and soon.”
A low, missed moaning went up from his shuffling, bewildered trogs; Harry, Zek and Jazz looked at each other in dismay; a young male Traveller cried: “But why, Dweller? You are powerful. You have given us weapons. We can kill the Wamphyri! Why do you send us away?”
Harry Jr. looked down on him. “Are the Wamphyri your enemies?”
“Yes!” they all cried. And: “They always have been,” shouted the same young man.
“And do you desire to kill them?”
“Yes!” again the massed shout. “All of them!”
He nodded. “Aye,
all
of them. And you trogs. There was a time when you served a Wamphyri Lord. Would you now turn against them?”
There came a brief, grunted discussion. “For you, Dweller, aye,” answered their spokesman. “We know good from evil, and you are good.”
“And you, Harry—father? You've been a scourge on vampires in your own world. Do you hate them still?”
“I know what they would do to my world,” Harry answered. “Yes, I would hate them in this and any world.”
Harry Jr. looked at them all, his eyes behind his golden mask flitting over them where they stood in a body. Finally his gaze fell on Zek and Jazz. “And you two,” he said. “I can take you out of here, back where you came from. Do you know that? Any place in your world where you want to go. Do you understand?”
They looked at each other, then Jazz said. “If you
can do it now, then you can do it later. You saved us once, not so long ago. And we've faced the Wamphyri before. How can you think we'll run out on you?”
Again Harry Jr.'s nod. “Let me tell you how it is,” he said. “Before most of you came here, at a time when I was beginning to build something here and had only my trogs to help me, I found a wolf on the hillside. His pack had turned on him, attacked him. He was badly torn, dying—I thought. I didn't know or understand the things I know now. I took the wolf in, healed him, made him well. Soon he was up on his feet again. Too soon, and I thought I had saved his life.
But in fact he'd been saved by the creature within him!”
No one spoke. A hushed silence had fallen over the gathering. Harry Keogh found himself taking a step forward under the balcony, gazing fearfully up at his son.
“Father,” Harry Jr. continued, “I told you there were reasons why I couldn't come back. Reasons why I must stand and defend my place. But all of you have told me how you hate and would destroy the Wamphyri.
All
the Wamphyri! So how can I ask you to fight for me?”
“Harry—” his father began, only to be cut short.
“This is how the wolf repaid me,” said The Dweller. And he took off his golden mask.
Beneath it was the face of a young Harry Keogh; Harry knew now beyond any doubt that he gazed upon his own true son. But the eyes in his face were scarlet in the twilight!
 
A long, low sigh went up from the crowd. For long moments they stood and stared, began to mutter, to talk in breathless whispers. Finally the crowd began to break up, drift away in small groups. In a little while only Harry Sr., Jazz and Zek remained. And The Dweller thought:
They're here because without me they have nowhere to go.
“I'll take you out of here now,” he said.
“Like hell you will!” his father growled. “Come the hell down from there and explain. You might be The Dweller but you're also my flesh. You, a vampire? What
kind
of vampire that so many people have loved you? I don't believe it!”
Harry Jr. came down. “Believe it or not,” he said. “it's the truth. Oh, I'm different, all right. My mind and will are too strong for it. I have mastery over it, I have it tamed. It takes me on now and then, but I'm always ready and always win. Or have so far, anyway. So the vampire works for me, and not the other way around. I get its strength, its powers, its tenacity. It gets a host, and that's all. But there are disadvantages, too. For one, I have to stay here on Starside, or close to Starside. The sunlight—real sunlight—would hurt me. But the main reason I stay here is because this has become my place.
My
place, my territory. No other shall have it!”
He looked at them with his scarlet eyes, smiled mirthlessly. “So there you have it. And now, if you're ready … ?”
“Not me,” Harry shook his head. “I'm staying, until this is over, anyway. I didn't look for you for eight years just to leave you now.”
Harry Jr. looked at Jazz and Zek. Jazz said: “You already have our answer.”
Trogs came shuffling out of the twilight. Their spokesman said: “We were Lesk's creatures, and we didn't like it. We liked working for you. Without you we have nothing. We stay and fight.”
Harry Jr.'s face showed his despair. The trogs may be fast learners, but they weren't much good with his weapons. Then lanterns came bobbing, together with a familiar jingling, from the direction of the Traveller dwellings.
Jazz and Zek tried to count heads; pointless, there
were as many as before. Maybe eighty of them. Not a man, woman or child had run out.
“So,” said Harry Sr., looking at them all where they regrouped themselves, “it looks like we stand and fight!”
His son could only throw up his hands in amazement. And gladness, Harry thought …
 
An hour later at The Dweller's armoury, Jazz Simmons had finished handing out German-made pump-action shotguns and shells to the Travellers. The armoury was well-stocked and there were weapons for everyone. There were half-a-dozen flamethrowers, too, and Travellers who had been trained in their use. Harry Jr. was there to point out that the shells for the shotguns were probably the most expensive ammunition ever made; their shot was pure silver. Though most of the equipment had been stolen (Harry Jr. made no bones about it; he believed the manufacturers were well able to stand the loss) he'd been obliged to order and buy these shells. Jazz, ever practical, had asked how they'd been paid for. With Traveller gold, he'd been told, of which this world had an abundance. The Travellers considered it pretty, and of course it was very malleable; on the other hand it was much too heavy to carry around in large amounts, and far too soft for serious metalworking. It made nice baubles, which was about as much as could be said for it!
For himself, Jazz had chosen a heavy caliber machine-gun, a Russian job firing a mix of tracer and explosive shells. The weapon could be used with a tripod or carried in both arms; it took a strong man to handle it. Jazz knew the gun and had trained with it; it was capable of laying down a deadly and shattering barrage of fire.
“But still,” he told The Dweller, “from what I've seen of Wamphyri warriors, I'd say these things are toys.”
Harry Jr. nodded, but: “The flamethrowers are not
toys,” he said. “And I assure you the Wamphyri won't like this silver shot! Still, I take your meaning. One warrior—even a dozen—but forty? Ah, but you haven't seen all my weapons!” He showed Jazz a grenade.
Jazz weighed the thing in his hand. It was as large as an orange and very heavy. He shook his head. “I don't know this one.”
“It's American,” The Dweller told him. “For clearing pill-boxes and foxholes. A very grim weapon: it shivers into fragments of blazing metallic phosphorus!”
Meanwhile, Harry Sr. had used the Möbius Continuum (for the first time in this world) to convey two very important Travellers to a nearby peak rearing high over most of the others. They knew their job and had practiced it on many previous occasions. In a hollowed out depression at the peak's crest, literally an “aerie” in its own right, great mirrors had been rigged on swivels to catch the dying sun's rays and hurl them down—or up —at any attackers. The Travellers also had shotguns and bandoliers of vampire-lethal shells.
As Harry dropped off his astonished charges and prepared to return to the garden, so his keen eyes spotted something approaching in the sky. As yet it was two or three miles east of the garden, but even at that distance its size and shape made it unmistakable. A flyer, like Shaithis's mount!
The Travellers had seen it too. “Shall we try to burn it?” they cried, springing to their mirror-weapons.
“One flyer?” Harry frowned. Instinct cautioned him against abrupt action. “Not unless it makes an attack on the garden.”
He went back there, looked for Harry Jr. Instead he found Zek Föener, her eyes closed where she stood facing east and slightly north, one trembling hand to her brow. “Is something wrong, Zek?” Harry asked.
“No, Harry,” she answered, without opening her eyes, “something's right! The Lady Karen is coming to join us. She wants to fight on our side. She has four
fine warriors, but they're holding back until she calls to them. Now … she wants to know if it's safe for her to land.”
“She's not attacking us?”
“She's
joining
us!” Zek repeated. “You don't know her like I do, Harry. She's different.”
Karen was closer now, a mile at the outside but still wary, still holding off. Everyone in the garden had seen her. Jazz Simmons came hurrying, a shining brass belt dangling from the ammo-housing of his gun. “What is it?” he said.
At the same moment The Dweller had materialized. Zek spoke to both men, told them what she'd told Harry Sr. “Harry,” The Dweller turned to his father. “Go and tell the Travellers to hold their fire. Let's see if she's genuine.”
Before anything else, Harry detoured straight to the peak where the Travellers manned their mirror-weapons. He passed on Harry Jr.'s message, then spread the word right through the garden and its defenders. Meanwhile, Zek had told the Lady Karen:
land in front of the wall, between the wall and the cliffs.
Karen's flyer swept closer, swooped lower, swiftly grew larger in the sky. Far behind it, four dark shapes made spurting motions across the star-sprinkled indigo of the heavens. Tiny at this distance, still everyone knew how big they really were, knew
what
they really were. “Here she comes,” Zek breathed.
The flyer, turning face-on to a low night wind that moaned from the west, dropped lower. It seemed to hover for a moment, like a kite, then dipped down and uncoiled its nest of springy worm “legs” to the earth. It bumped gently down, lowered its wings for stability. The thing parked there, swaying and nodding hugely, gazing with vacuous disinterest first at the garden, then down the sweeping ramps of the mountains to the plain, then back to the garden. Karen dismounted, came to the
wall. She was dressed—or undressed—to cause consternation, as was her wont.
The two Harrys, Jazz and Zek met her there. It was Zek's impulse to hug her, but she held back. She saw that Jazz was immediately shaken, stricken by Karen's looks. Harry Sr., too: awed by Karen's beauty. It was an unearthly beauty, of course, for it was the work of her vampire. But what it had given her in looks, shape and desirability, it had taken from her in the bloody fire of her eyes. She was unmistakably Wamphyri.
Only The Dweller seemed unmoved. “You've come to join us in the coming battle?” His voice was unemotional.
“I've come to die with you,” she answered.
“Oh? And is it that certain?”
“Certain?” she repeated him. “If you believe in miracles, pray for one! For myself, I don't care.” And she told them her dilemma, reinforcing what Zek Föener had already made known, how whichever way she jumped the Wamphyri meant to be rid of her. “This way … at least I'll take a few of them with me!”

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