'Oh?' Mobius raised his eyebrows again. 'Oh? And can you go to the centre of a star in Betelgeuse to measure its temperature? Can you visit the moons of Jupiter or sit in the middle of that planet's monumental tornado which we call the Red Spot? Can you journey to the bottom of the Marianas Trench and every other deep on Earth to calculate the mass of water in this world? No, you can't. But I can — and have! Now grant me this: that I know the Mobius Continuum better than you do!'
When the point was made like that, there seemed little use in arguing it. Harry could only agree, but: 'I think you're going to tell me something I don't want to hear,' he said.
'You know I am!' Mobius told him. 'There are no other doors we haven't discovered, Harry. Not in the Mobius Continuum. Other universes? — which seems to me something of a contradiction in itself — I can't say. And in any case you're talking to the wrong man, for I only deal in the three-dimensional worlds we know. But of one thing I'm sure: you won't find your way into any parallel world through the Mobius Continuum…' He fell silent as Harry's disappointment swelled like a physical thing, until it hung heavy over Mobius's grave like a blanket of fog.
'Sir,' Harry finally said, 'I thank you for your time; I've already wasted far too much of it.'
'Not at all,' Mobius answered. 'Time is only important to the living. I have more than enough of time! I just wish I was able to help.'
'You've helped,' Harry was grateful, 'if only to settle a point I've argued with myself time and time again. You see, I know Harry Jnr and his mother are alive, and I know that he can use the Mobius Continuum maybe even better than we can. He's alive but not in this universe, so he must be in some other. There's no way round that. I thought he'd gone there, wherever, along the strip. You've assured me that he hasn't. So… there has to be some other route. I already have a clue where to start looking for it, except… from here on in my work becomes that much more dangerous, that's all. And now-'
'Wait!' said Mobius. 'I've been considering your diagrams. Can I show you one for a change?'
'By all means.'
'Very well: here's your ribbon universe again — and a parallel universe of a similar construction:'
'As you can see,' Mobius continued, 'I've joined them by use of — '
'A black hole?' Harry guessed.
'No, for we're talking about survivability. Nothing of solid matter and shape can enter that sort of awful maw and retain any sort of integrity. No matter what you are when you enter a black hole, you come out — if you come out — gaseous, atomic, pure energy!'
'Which cancels out white holes, too.' Harry was growing gloomier by the minute.
'But not grey ones,' said Mobius.
'Grey holes?' Harry frowned.
'… Yes, I see it now,' Mobius mused, almost to himself. 'Grey holes, without the disruptive gravity of black holes, and lacking the awesome radiation of white ones. Gateways pure and simple, between universes. Entropy radiators, perhaps? Inescapable once entered into, there would have to be more than one — if a traveller intended to make the return journey, anyway…'
Harry waited, and in a little while weird equations began flickering once more on that amazing computer screen which Mobius called his mind. They came faster and faster, calculi in endless streams, which left Harry dizzy as he tried to grasp their meaning. For seconds merging into minutes the mental display continued — only to be shut off, suddenly, leaving the screen blank. And in a little while longer:
'It is… possible,' said Mobius. 'It could occur in nature, and might even be duplicated by man. Except of course that men would have no use for it. It would be a by-product of some other experimentation, an accident.'
'But if I knew how — if I could translate your math into engineering — you're saying I could manufacture this, well, gateway?' Harry was clutching at straws.
'You? Hardly!' Mobius chuckled. 'But a team of scientists, with enormous resources and a limitless energy supply — yes!'
Harry thought of the experiments at Perchorsk, and his excitement was now obvious. 'That's the confirmation I needed,' he said. 'And now I have to be on my way.'
'It was good to talk to you again,' Mobius told him. 'Take care, Harry.'
'I will,' Harry promised. And hugging his overcoat close to him (or if not "his" overcoat, one which he'd borrowed from Jazz Simmons's wardrobe) Harry conjured a Mobius door and took his departure.
Leaves blew skitteringly between the graves and along the pathways. One such leaf, taken by surprise as it leaned against Harry's shoe, suddenly went tumbling across the empty flags where a moment ago he'd been standing. But now, under the high-flying moon and cold, glittering stars, the Leipzig graveyard was quite, quite empty…
Some three days prior to (and an entire dimension away from) Harry's visit to Mobius:
Jazz Simmons journeyed west with Zek, Lardis and his Travellers, journeyed in the golden glow of the slowly setting sun. He'd been pleased to be relieved of his kit, all except his gun and two full magazines, and knew that even though he was dog-tired he could now hold out until the Travellers made camp.
By this time, too, he'd had the opportunity to get a good close look at Zek in the extended evening light of Sunside, and he hadn't been disappointed. She had somehow found the time to snatch a wash in a fast-flowing stream, which had served to greatly enhance her fresh, natural beauty. Now she looked good enough to eat, and Jazz felt hungry enough, too, except that would be one hell of a waste.
Zek had wrapped her sore feet in soft rags and now walked on grass and loamy earth instead of stone, and for all that she too was tired her step seemed lighter and most of the worry lines had lifted from her face. While she'd cleaned herself up, Jazz had used the time to study, the Travellers.
His original opinion seemed confirmed: they were Gypsies, Romany, and speaking in an antique 'Romance' tongue, too. It was hard not to deduce connections with the world he had left behind; maybe Zek would be able to explain some of the similarities. He determined to ask her some time, yet another question to add to a lengthening list. He was surprised how quickly he'd come to rely on her. And he was annoyed to find himself thinking about her when he should be concentrating on his education.
Many of the male Travellers wore rings in the lobes of their left ears, gold by the look of it, to match the bands on their fingers. No lack of that precious metal here, apparently; it decorated in yellow bands the hauling poles of their travois, studded their leather jackets and stitched the seams of their coarse-weave trousers, was even used to stud the leather soles of their sandals! But silver was far less in evidence. Jazz had seen arrows and the bolts of crossbows tipped with it, but never a sign of the stuff used for decoration. In this world, he would in time discover, it was far more precious than gold. Not least for its effect on vampires.
But the Travellers puzzled Jazz. He found strange, basic anomalies in them beyond his understanding. For example: it seemed to him that in many ways their world was very nearly primal, and yet the Travellers themselves were anything but primitive. Though he'd not yet seen an actual Gypsy caravan here, he knew that they existed; he'd observed a small boy of four or five years, sitting on a loaded, jouncing travois, playing with a rough wooden model. Between its shafts a pair of creatures like overgrown, shaggy sheep, also carved of wood, strained in their tiny harnesses of leather. So they had the wheel, these people, and beasts of burden; even though none were in evidence here. They could work metals, and with their use of the crossbow their weaponry could hardly be considered crude. Indeed, in almost every respect it was seen that theirs was a sophisticated culture. But on the other hand it was hard to see how, in this environment, they'd achieved any degree of culture at all!
As for the 'tribe' Jazz had expected to see, so far there were no more than sixty Travellers in all: Arlek's party (now fully accepted back into the common body) and Lardis's companions, plus a handful of family groups which had been waiting in a stand of trees to join up with Lardis at the Sunside exit from the pass and head west with him through the foothills. And all of these people going on foot, with the exception of one old woman who lay in a pile of furs upon a travois, and two or three young children who travelled in a similar fashion.
Jazz had studied their faces, taking note of the way they'd every so often turn their heads and stare suspiciously at the sun floating over the southern horizon. Zek had told Jazz that true night was a good forty-five hours away; but still there was an unspoken anxiety, a straining, in the faces of the Travellers, and Jazz believed he knew why. It was that they silently willed themselves westward, desiring only to put distance between themselves and the pass before sundown. And because they knew this world, while Jazz was a newcomer, he found himself growing anxious along with them, and adding his will to theirs.
Keeping his fear to himself, he'd asked Zek: 'Where is everyone? I mean, don't tell me this is the entire tribe!'
'No,' she'd told him, shaking her damp hair about her shoulders, 'only a fraction of it. Traveller tribes don't go about en masse. It's what Lardis calls "survival". There are two more large encampments up ahead. One about forty miles from here, the other twenty-five miles beyond that at the first sanctuary. The sanctuary is a cavern system in a huge outcrop of rock. The entire tribe can disappear inside it, spread out, make themselves thin on the ground. Hard for the Wamphyri to winkle them out. That's where we're heading. We hole up there for the long night.'
'Seventy miles?' he frowned at her. 'Before dark?' He glanced at the sun again, so low in the sky. 'You're joking!'
'Sundown is still a long way off,' she reminded him yet again. 'You can stare at the sun till you go blind, but you won't see it dip much. It's a slow process.'
'Well, thank goodness for that,' he said, nodding his relief.
'Lardis intends to cover fifteen miles between breaks,' she went on, 'but he's tired, too, probably more than we are. The first break will be soon, for he knows we all need to get some sleep. The wolves will keep watch. The break will be of three hours' duration — no more than that. So for every six hours' travel we get a three-hour break. Nine hours to cover fifteen miles. It sounds easy but in fact it's back-breaking. They're used to it but it will probably cripple you. Until you're into the swing of it, anyway.'
Even as she finished speaking Lardis called a halt. He was up front but his bull voice carried back to them: 'Eat, drink,' he advised, 'then sleep.'
The Travellers trudged to a halt, Zek and Jazz with them. She unrolled her sleeping-bag, told Jazz: 'Get yourself a blanket of furs from one of the travois. They carry spares. Someone will come round with bread, water, a little meat.' Then she flattened a patch of bracken, shook out her bed on top of it and climbed in. She pulled the zipper half-way shut from bottom to top. Jazz lit her a cigarette and went to find himself a blanket.
When he too lay down close by, food had already been brought for them. While they ate he admitted: 'I'm excited as a kid! I'll never get to sleep. My brain's far too active. There's so much to take in.'
'You'll sleep,' she answered.
'Maybe you should tell me a story,' he said, lying back. 'Your story?'
The story of my life?' she gave him a wan smile.
'No, just the bit you've lived since you came here. Not very romantic, I know, but the more I learn about this place the better. As Lardis might say, it's a matter of survival. Now that we know about this Dweller — who apparently has a season ticket to Berlin — survival seems so much more desirable. Or more correctly, more feasible!'
'You're right,' she said, making herself more comfortable. 'There have been times when I've just about given up hope, but now I'm glad I didn't. You want to hear my story? All right then, Jazz, this is how it was for me…'
She began to talk, low, even-voiced, and as she got into the story so she fell into the dramatic, colourful style of the Travellers — and of the Wamphyri themselves, for that matter. Being a telepath, their manner and modes of expression had impressed themselves upon her that much more quickly, until now they were second nature. Jazz listened, let her words flow, conjured from them the feel and the fear of her story…
'I came through the Gate kitted-up just like you,' Zek commenced her tale, 'but I wasn't as big or as strong as you are. I couldn't carry as much. And I was dog-tired…