She lay back, closed her eyes, said: 'Well, here's to optimism, and to the conclusion of a trouble-free trek — and to the Dweller, and, oh — '
The future?'
The future, yes,' she agreed. 'I'll drink to that. God knows it has to be better than the past.
From Leipzig, Harry Keogh returned direct to E-Branch HQ in London. He materialized in the armoury, a room not much bigger than a cupboard, took a 9mm Browning automatic and three full magazines (and signed for them) and was out of the place almost before the alarms could start up.
Then back to Jazz Simmons's flat where he donned a black shirt, pullover and slacks, and finally to Bonnyrigg near Edinburgh to visit his mother. This last wasn't absolutely necesary, for once Harry had communicated with a dead person he could usually speak to that person again even over great distances, but whenever possible it seemed only polite and much more private and personal to go to them in their final resting places or the places where they had died.
'Ma,' he said, the moment after emerging onto the riverbank above the place where the water gurgled dark and deep. 'Ma, it's Harry.'
Harry! she answered at once. I'm so glad you've come. I was just about to start looking for you.
'Oh? Is there something, Ma?'
You asked about people dying in the Upper Urals.
'Jazz Simmons?' For a moment Harry felt like the ground had been ripped out from under him. If Simmons was dead after all, here in this world, it rubbished all of Harry's and Mobius's theories. And it left Brenda and Harry Jnr stranded…. wherever.
But: Who? his mother seemed taken by surprise. But only for a moment. Oh! No, not him. We couldn't find him. This is someone else. Someone who knew him.
'Someone who knew Jazz Simmons? At Perchorsk?' Relief flooded through Harry. 'Who are you talking about, Ma?'
A different voice spoke in Harry's head. A voice that was new to him. She means me, Harry. Kazimir Kirescu. I knew Jazz, yes, and now I'm paying for it. Oh, I don't blame him, but someone is to blame. Several people. So… if you can help me, son, then I'll be very glad indeed to help you.
'Help you?' Harry stood on a riverbank in Scotland and talked to a dead person two and a half thousand miles away, and it seemed perfectly natural to him. 'But how can I help you, Kazimir? You're dead, after all.'
Ah! But it's how died, and it's where am now.
'You want revenge, through me?'
That's part of it, yes, but mainly I want… to be still!
Harry frowned. Often the dead were more vague than the living. 'Maybe I'd better come and see you. I mean, this is sort of impersonal. Is it safe where you are?'
It's never safe here, Harry, Kazimir told him. And where I am it's always horrible. I can tell you this much: I'm in a room at the Perchorsk Projekt, and at the moment I'm alone. At least there are no people with me. But… do you have a strong stomach, Harry? How are your nerves?
Harry smiled briefly. 'Oh, my stomach's strong enough, Kazimir. And I think my nerves will hold up.' Then the smile slipped from his face. What was the other's situation, he wondered?
Then come, by all means, said the old man. Only don't say I didn't warn you!
Harry grew cautious. It had been his intention to visit Perchorsk anyway. That was why he had come to see his mother; so that with the aid of her friends she could guide him there. But now… 'Just tell me this,' he said. 'If I come, right now, will my life be endangered?'
No, nothing like that. I've been told you can come and go as you wish, and in any case we're not likely to be disturbed — though there is always that possibility. But… I'm with something that isn't pleasant. The old man's mental voice was full of shudders.
'I'll come,' said Harry. 'Just keep talking to me and I'll home in on you.' He conjured a Mobius door and followed Kazimir's thoughts to their source…
At Perchorsk it was an hour after midnight. The room of the thing was in darkness, where only the red ceiling lights gave any illumination. Harry emerged from the Mobius Continuum there, stared all about in the red-tinged gloom and felt the sinister heart of the place throbbing through the floor under his feet. Then he saw the tank, and the shape inside it, but for the moment he couldn't quite see what that shape was.
Me! said Kazimir Kirescu. My resting place. Except it doesn't rest.
'Doesn't rest?' Harry repeated him, but softly. There were dimmer switches on the wall, a nest of them. Harry reached for them, went to turn up the lights. They came up slowly. 'Oh, my God!' said Harry in a shaky whisper. 'Kazimir?'
That's what ate me! the other answered, in a voice horrified as Harry's own. That's where I am. I don't mind being dead so much, Harry, but I would like to lie still.
Harry moved uncertainly across the room toward the creature in the tank. It seemed slug-or snail-like; its corrugated 'foot' or lower body pulsated where it adhered to the glass wall; atop its lolling neck sat an almost human head with the face of an old man. Flaccid 'arms' hung down bonelessly from rubbery 'shoulders', and several rudimentary eyes gazed wetly, vacantly from where they opened like suckers in the thing's dark skin. Its normal eyes — those in the old man's face — moved to compensate for the languid lolling of the head, remained firmly fixed upon Harry. But they were only normal in that they occupied a face. Other than that, they were uniformly scarlet.
My face, said Kazimir with a sob. But not my eyes, Harry. And dead or alive, no man should be part of this thing.
And then, while Harry continued to stare at the monstrosity, Kazimir told him all he knew about the Perchorsk Projekt, and of the events leading to his current predicament…
Fifteen minutes later and a mere fifty yards away:
Major Chingiz Khuv, KGB, came awake, sat up jerkily in his bed. He was hot, feverish. He'd been dreaming, nightmaring, but the dreams were quickly receding in the face of reality. Reality, as Khuv was well aware, was often far more nightmarish than any dream. Especially here in Perchorsk. But it was as if the unremembered dreams were premonitory; Khuv's nerves were already jangling to the buzzing of his doorbell. He got up, threw on a dressing-gown and went to the door.
It was Paul Savinkov, puffing and panting from his exertions, his fat hands fluttering.
'What is it, Paul?' Khuv brushed sleep from the corners of his eyes.
'We're not sure, Major. But… Nik Slepak and I — '
Khuv came fully awake on the instant. Savinkov and Slepak were both ESP-sensitives; they could detect and recognize foreign telepathic sendings, psychic emanations, anything of a paranormal nature. And in the event of ESPionage, they were adept at intercepting and scrambling alien probes.
'What is it, Paul?' Khuv demanded this time. 'Are they spying on us again?'
Savinkov gulped. 'It could be worse than that,' he said. 'We think… we think something is here!'
Khuv's jaw dropped. 'You think something is — ?' he grabbed the other's arm. 'Something from the Gate, do you mean?'
Savinkov shook his head. His fat face was shiny, eyes very bright. 'No, not from the Gate. Those things that come through the Gate, they leave a slimy trail in the mind. They're alien — to this world, I mean. This thing we can sense here, it isn't that sort of alien. It might even be a man; Nik Slepak thinks so. But it — he, whatever — has no right to be here. Two things we're sure of: whatever it is, it's powerful! And it is here.'
'Where?' Khuv threw back the top half of his dressing-gown, thrust his left arm through the leather loop of a shoulder-holster hanging from a peg inside the door. The holster contained Khuv's KGB-issue automatic. Belting his dressing-gown savagely about his waist, he shoved Savinkov ahead of him down the exterior corridor.
'Where?' he shouted now. 'What, are you deaf as well as queer? Has Slepak also been struck dumb?'
'We don't know where, Major,' the fat esper gasped. 'We've got our locator on it, Leo Grenzel.' As he stuttered his apologies, so Slepak and Grenzel came hurrying round the bend of the corridor. They saw Khuv and Savinkov, hurried to meet them.
'Well?' said Khuv to Grenzel, a small, sharp-featured East German.
'Encounter Three,' Grenzel whispered. His eyes were an incredibly deep grey and very large in his small face. Never larger than right now.
Khuv frowned at him. 'The thing in the glass tank? What about it?'
That's where he is,' Grenzel nodded. His face was pale, strangely serene, like the mask of a sleep-walker. His talent affected him that way.
Khuv turned sharply to Savinkov. 'You — hurry, get Vasily Agursky.' Savinkov made off down the corridor. 'I said hurry.' Khuv called after him. 'Meet us in the room of the creature, and make sure you're both armed!'