Necroscope - Deadspeak Part 19

'But why, if we already know our man?' Darcy asked.

'Because we don't know him well enough,' Harry told him, as the pain qu ickly subsided. 'And since Faethor sp.a.w.ned him, he's the one most likely to know how to deal with him.'

'Nothing has changed,' said Harry as they drove into the airport in the c ar Manolis had provided. 'Everything stands. I go to Ploiesti, to see if I ca n learn anything from Faethor. I'll spend the entire night there, even sleep in the ruins of his place if I have to. It's the only sure way I can think of to contact him. Sandra goes back home tonight - definitely! Now that this "L azarides", Janos Ferenczy, controls Ken Layard, he can locate anyone he wants to. Anyone a.s.sociated with me will be in danger, and more especially so here in the vampire's own territory.' He paused and looked into each face in turn , then continued: 'Darcy, you stay here with Manolis, dig up everything you can on Lazaride s, his crew, and the Lazarus. Go right back to the start of it, when they fir st appeared on the scene. Manolis can be of real a.s.sistance there; since Jano s has chosen himself a Greek ident.i.ty, it shouldn't be too hard for the Greek authorities to fill in his origins and background.'

'Ah!' said Manolis, looking at Harry in his driving mirror. 'One other thi ng. He has dual nationality, this one. Greek, yes - and Romanian!'

'Oh, my G.o.d!' Sandra gasped at once. And: 'Harry, he can travel freely where you may only go with extreme caution!'

Harry pursed his lips, thought about it for a moment, and said: 'Well, and maybe I should have expected as much. But that doesn't change anything ei ther. By the time he knows I'm there, and if he tries to come after me, I'll be out again. Anyway, I've no choice.'

'G.o.d, I feel so helpless!' Manolis complained as he parked the car and th ey all climbed out. 'Inside, a voice says, "arrest this monster aboard his sh ip!" But I know that this is impossible. I understand we must not alert him u ntil we know all about him. Also, Ken is in his hands, and-'

'Save it, about Ken,' Harry cut in, heading for the departure lounge. 'T here's nothing anyone can do for him.' He turned his haunted eyes on Manolis . 'Except destroy him, which would be a mercy. And even then don't expect hi m to thank you for it. Thank you? G.o.d, no! He'll have your heart out first!'

'Anyway,' Darcy told Manolis, 'you're absolutely right that we can't to uch him yet. We've told you about Yulian Bodescu; he was an innocent, a chi ld, by comparison with Lazarides. Harry thinks so, anyway. But once he knew we were onto him ... we each of us lived in fear of h.e.l.l until he was fina lly dead!'

'Is all academic,' Manolis shrugged. 'What? I should go to the governmen t and say, "send our gunboats to sink a vampire in his s.h.i.+p!" No, quite impo ssible. But when the Lazarus puts in to port again, I think I may be tempted to take out her crew one by one!'

'If you could isolate them, positively identify them as vampires, and ha d a good back-up team who knew what to do and weren't frightened to do it, y es,' said Harry. 'But again this might be to tip Lazarides's hand, which in turn might precipitate something you couldn't even hope to control.'

Guiding Harry and the others to the pa.s.senger control desk, Manolis answere d: 'Don't worry about it. I do nothing until I get your go-ahead. Is frustratin g, that's all . . .'

Harry had only fifteen minutes to wait before being called forward. At th e last minute, Sandra said, 'If we'd thought of it, I could have gone on with you to Athens and flown home from there. But things have happened so quickly I ... I don't like seeing you go off like this, on your own, Harry.'

He held her very close and kissed her, then turned to Darcy and Manolis.

'Listen, I'm coming back, I promise you. But if I should be delayed, go ahe ad and finish things as best you can. And good luck!'

That's my middle name,' Darcy told him. 'Take care of yourself, Harry.'

Sandra hugged him again, and then he stood back, nodded, turned and fol lowed the crowd out onto the dusty concourse, towards the landing strip.

Among the many people there to see friends off, a man in flip-flops, br ight Bermuda shorts and an open-necked white s.h.i.+rt watched Harry's plane ta ke off. He was a Greek who ran the occasional errand for the Russians. Now all he had to do was discover Harry's destination and pa.s.s it on. Not too difficult. His brother worked at the pa.s.senger information desk.

Harry made his Athens connection and landed in Bucharest at 5:45. The a irport and its perimeter were thick with lightly armed soldiers in grey-gre en s.h.i.+rts, drab olive trousers and scuffed boots; but their presence seemed pointless and the men themselves aimless. This was a duty of long standing , out of which nothing had ever come. They didn't expect anything to come o ut of it and in all honesty weren't much interested. They were there becaus e they'd been told to be.

As Harry pa.s.sed through customs, the official stamping pa.s.sports scarce ly looked at him; all eyes were turned towards the three or four members of some foreign delegation or other, who were being given red-carpet treatmen t through the airport and out into the 'freedom' of Romania. Harry reckoned he was lucky.

Manolis had fixed him up with one hundred and fifty American dollars, wh ich he'd sworn were good as gold. He caught a taxi, dumped his holdall on th e back seat and told the driver: 'Ploiesti, please.'

'Eh? Ploiesti?'

'Right.'

'You English?'

'No, Greek. But I don't speak your language.' And G.o.d, I hope you don't speak Greek/ 'Hah! Is funny! We are both speaking English, yes?' The man was unkem pt and his breath was bad, but he seemed amiable enough.

'Yes,' said Harry, 'it's funny. Er, do you take dollars? American?' He sh owed him some green.

'Eh? Eh? The dollars?' His eyes stood out. 'Sure, by gos.h.!.+ I take it! Ploiest i is - I don't know - sixty kilometres? Is, er, ten dollars?'

'Are you asking?'

'Is ten dollars,' he grinned, shrugged.

'Fine!' Harry handed over the money. 'Now I sleep,' he said, leaning back a nd closing his eyes. He didn't intend to sleep, but neither did he want to talk . . .

The Romanian countryside was boring. Even in springtime merging with su mmer there wasn't anything much of green to be seen. Plenty of browns and g reys: piles of sand and cement, cheap breeze-blocks and bricks. Enough buil ding going on to rival all the coastal regions of Spain, Turkey and the Gre ek islands put together. Except that this had nothing to do with tourism, f or there was plenty of wrecking, too. The grotesque, inhuman mechanics of C eausescu's agro-industrial policy: save money by cramming more and more peo ple under one roof, like cattle in pens. Goodbye to peasant autonomy, the p icturesque settlements and village life; h.e.l.lo to the ugly, rearing tower b locks. And all the while the reins of political control drawn tighter. Through eyes three-quarters shuttered, Harry scanned the land as it spe d by beyond the windows of the car. The roadside en route from Bucharest to Ploiesti looked like a landscape in the aftermath of war. Bulldozers worke d in teams in the poisonous blue haze of their rumbling exhausts, erasing s mall farming communities wholesale to fas.h.i.+on empty, muddy acres in their p lace; while other machines stood idle or exhausted alongside huge iron digg ers with their bucket heads lifted and stretching forward, almost as if wat ching. And where once there were villages, now there was only earth and rub ble and desolation.

'More than ten thousand villages in old Romania,' Harry's driver, perha ps sensing that he was still awake, told him out of the corner of his mouth . 'But old President Nicholae reckons that's about five thousand too many.

What a madman! Why, he'd flatten the very mountains if someone would tell h im how to go about it!'

Harry made no answer, continued to nod - but he wondered: and what of Fa ethor's place on the outskirts of Ploiesti? Will Ceausescu flatten that, too ? Has he perhaps already flattened it?

If so, then how might Harry find it again? The last time he was here he'

d come via the Mobius Continuum, homing in on Faethor's telepathic voice. (O r rather, his necroscopic voice, for it was only the dead Harry could speak to in this way; he wasn't a true telepath.) Faethor had spoken to him, and H arry had tracked him down. Now was different: he would only recognize Faetho r's place, know it for sure, when he got there. As to its precise location: he knew only that the birds didn't sing there, and that the trees and bushes and brambles grew no flowers, developed no fruit. For the bees wouldn't go near them. The place was in itself Faethor's tombstone, bearing his epitaph which read: This Creature was Death! His Very existence was a Refutation of Life; wherefore he now lies Here, where Life Itself refuses to Acknowledge him.

As the taxi pa.s.sed a signpost stating that Ploiesti lay ten kilometres a head, Harry shook himself, yawned, and pretended to come more properly awake . He looked at his driver.

'There were some rich old houses once on the outskirts of Ploiesti. The homes of the old aristocracy. Do you know where I mean?'

'Old houses?' The man squinted at him. 'Aristocracy?'

'Then the war came and they were bombed,' Harry continued. 'Reduced to so much rubble. The authorities never touched the place; it was left as a s ort of memorial - until now, anyway.' 'Ah! I know it - or used to. But not on this road, no. On the old road, wh ere it bends. Now tell me quick - is that where you want to go?'

'Yes. Someone I know used to live there.'

'Used to?'

'Still does, as far as I know,' Harry corrected himself.

'Hold on!' said the other, hauling his steering wheel hard right. They b umped off the road onto a cobbled avenue that wound away at a tangent under huge chestnuts.

'It's along here,' said Harry's driver. 'Another minute and I'd pa.s.sed it and would need to turn around and come back. Old houses, the old aristocracy , aye. I know it. But you came at the right time. Another year and it's gone.

Your friend, too. They just knock 'em flat, these old places, and whoever li ves there moves on or gets knocked down with 'em! Oh, the bulldozers will be here soon enough, wait and see . . .'

Half a mile down the road and Harry knew that this was it. The sh.e.l.ls of old buildings began rising left and right behind the chestnuts, dilapidated places mainly, though a few of the chimneys still smoked. And: 'You can dro p me here,' he said.

Getting out of the taxi and picking up his holdall, he asked, 'How about buses? I mean, if I stay with my friend overnight, how will I go about gett ing back into town tomorrow morning?'

'Walk back to the main road, towards Bucuresti,' the other told him. 'Cr oss over onto the right and keep walking. Every kilometre or so, there's a b us stop. You can't miss 'em. Except - don't go offering dollars! Here, you'v e got some change coming. Banis, my Greek friend. Banis and leu - else peopl e will wonder what's up!' And waving, he drove off in a cloud of dust.

The rest of it was instinct; Harry just followed his nose; he would soo n discover he'd been a mile or so off target, but time and distance were pa ssing quickly enough and he sensed he was walking in the right direction. H e saw few signs of humanity: smoke from distant chimney-stacks, and an old peasant couple who pa.s.sed him going in the opposite direction. They looked weary to the bone and pushed a cart piled high with sticks of furniture and personal belongings; without knowing them or their circ.u.mstances, still Ha rry felt sorry for them.

Pretty soon he felt hungry, and remembering a pack of salami sandwiches and a bottle of German beer in his holdall, he left the road through a gate into an ancient cemetery. The graveyard didn't bother him; on the contrary, he felt at home there.

It was as extensive as it was rundown, that old burial ground; Harry wal ked through the ranks of leaning, untended, lichen-crusted slabs until he re ached the back wall, well away from the road. The old wall was two feet thic k but crumbling in places; Harry climbed it where its stones had tumbled into steps and found himself a comfortable place to sit. The sunlight slanted o nto him through the trees, reminding him that in just another hour the sun w ould be down. Before then he must be at Faethor's place. Still, he wasn't wo rried. He felt that he must be pretty close.

Eating his sandwiches (which had kept remarkably well) and draining the sweet lager, he looked out over the sea of leaning slabs. There'd been a t ime when the occupants of this place wouldn't have given him a minute's pea ce, and when he wouldn't have expected it. He'd have been among friends her e, all of them bursting to tell him what they'd been thinking all these yea rs. And it wouldn't matter at all that they were Romanian, for deadspeak -l ike its twin, telepathy - is universal. Harry would have understood them pe rfectly well, and to a man they'd understand him.

Ah, well. . . that was then and this was now. And now he was forbidden to speak with them. Except he must find a way to speak to Faethor.

As that name crossed his mind so a cloud pa.s.sed over the sun and the gr aveyard fell into shade. Harry s.h.i.+vered and for the first time turned and l ooked behind him, out of the cemetery. There were empty fields back there, criss-crossed with bramble-grown tracks and paths, where the land was humpe d in places and spotted with ruins, and the overgrown scars of old craters were still plainly visible. Closer to the main road a half-mile away, the g round had been made swampy where the bulldozers had been at work interferin g with the natural drainage.

Harry scanned the land with the eye of memory, superimposing the curren t scene and the scene remembered, and slowly the two pictures merged into o ne. And he knew that the taxi driver had been right: another year, maybe on ly a month, and he would be too late. For one of these crumbling piles was surely Faethor's, and pretty soon the bulldozers would level it, too, into the earth forever.

Harry s.h.i.+vered again, got down from the wall on the other side and made his way from ruin to ruin, searching for the right one. And as evening turne d to twilight he found and knew the place at once, just from its feel. The b irds kept their distance, singing their muted evening songs in trees and bus hes hundreds of yards away, so that they scarcely reached here at all; there were no bees or flying insects and the foliage bore neither flower nor frui t; even the common spiders kept well clear of Faethor's last place in all th e world. It seemed a singular warning, and yet one which Harry must ignore.

The place was not exactly as he remembered it. The absence of adequate drainage had threaded it with small, stagnant streams, where every slightes t hollow had become a pool. A veritable swamp, normally it would be alive w ith mosquitoes, but of course it was not. At least Harry needn't worry abou t being bitten while he slept. But that (being bitten) was a thought he cou ld well do without! In the deepening twilight he took out a sleeping-bag from his holdall an d made down his bed on a gra.s.sy hump within low, ivy-clad walls. Before sett ling he answered the call of nature behind a crumbling mound of rubble some little way apart, and returning to his place saw that he wasn't entirely alo ne here. At least the small Romanian bats weren't afraid of this place; they flitted silently overhead, then swept away to do their hunting elsewhere. P erhaps in their way they paid homage to the ancient, evil Thing which had di ed here.

Harry smoked one of his rare cigarettes, then tossed away the stub like a tiny meteorite in the night to sizzle out in a small pool of water. Finally he pulled up the zipper on his sleeping-bag and made himself as comfortable a s possible, and prepared to face whatever his dreams would conjure . . .

Harry? The monstrous, gurgling voice was there at once, touching upon his sleeping mind without preamble. So, and it would seem that you have co me. It sounded as close and vibrant as if-a living person spoke to him, an d Harry sensed no small measure of satisfaction in it. But in his dream, t ry as he may, he couldn't remember what he was doing here. Oh, he knew Fae thor's mental voice well enough, but not why the vampire had chosen to see k him out. Unless it was to torment him. And so he kept silent, for the on e thing he did remember was that he was forbidden to speak to the dead.

What, all of that again? Faethor was impatient. Now listen to me, Harry Keogh: I didn't seek you out but the other way around. It is you who visits me here in Romania. And as for being forbidden to speak to me - or to the de ad in general - surely that is why you are here, so that I may undo what has been done to you?

'But ... if I speak to you,' Harry paused and waited for the pain to strike him down, which it did not, 'there's this pain that comes and -'

And has it come? No, because you are asleep and dreaming. Conscious, you may not converse with me. But you are not conscious. Now tell me, pra y, may we get on?

Now Harry remembered: asleep, his deadspeak couldn't hurt him. Oh yes, he remembered that now -and more than that. 'I came ... to find out about J anos Ferenczy!'

Indeed, Faethor answered, that is one of the reasons why you are here. Bu t it is not the only one. Before we consider all of that, however, first answ er me this: did you come here of your own free will?

'I'm here out of necessity,' said Harry, 'because there are vampires in my world again.'

But did you come as a free man, as you yourself willed it? Or were you compelled by force, cajoled or coerced against your own natural desires?

By now Harry was fully 'awake' in his dream and more surely aware of the vampire's wiles. Moreover, he'd grown as skilled in their word-games as the Wamphyri themselves and knew that they were only a form of verbal manoeuvring. 'Compelled?' he said. 'Well, no one pushed me. Coerced? On t he contrary, my friends would have kept me back! But cajoled? Only by you , old devil, only by you.'

By me? Faethor played the innocent. How so? You have a problem and I h ave the answer. Someone reached inside your head, grabbed up your brains a nd tied a knot in them. I can perhaps untie it - if I feel inclined. Which I may not, so long as you create obstacles and make these accusations! So tell me quickly now: how have I cajoled you? In what way?

'The way I understand it,' said Harry, 'the word "cajole" has several mean ings. To coax or persuade with flattery; to wheedle; to make delusive promises . It is to allure or inveigle so as to derive a point of personal gain. These are the meanings of the word. Ah, but when a vampire cajoles . . . then the ob ject of the exercise is far less clear. And the consequences frequently dire.'

Hah! Harry sensed Faethor's exasperation, and his astonishment that a m ere human being should attempt to try him with one of his own games! But he also sensed the vampire's shrug of indifference, and perhaps of finality.

And: Well, said Faethor, that says it all! You do not trust me. So be it; y our journey is wasted; wake up and get yourself gone! I had thought we were friends, but I was mistaken. In which case . . . what care I that there ar e vampires in your world? To h.e.l.l with your world, and with you, Harry Keogh!

Harry wasn't about to fall for that one. He was supposed to plead now, f or Faethor's audience. But Faethor would never have called him here just to dismiss him so casually. It was simply the way of vampires, that was all. A ploy to gain the upper hand. But just as some dreams are brilliantly clear a nd real as life, so this one was developing. Within it, Harry's wits were gr own razor sharp.

'Let's have it out in the open, Faethor,' he said, abruptly. 'For it sudde nly dawns on me that while we've talked now and then, you and I, we've never a ctually met face to face. And I feel certain that if I could only see your ear nest, honest face, why, then I'd be that much more at ease in your presence - and not need to stay so firm on guard!'

Oh? said the other, as if surprised. And are you still here? But I cou ld swear our conversation was at an end. Or perhaps you didn't understand me. Then let me make myself plain: GO AWAY!

Harry's turn to shrug. 'Very well. And no great loss. For let's face it, I could never have relied on anything you said, anyway.'

What? Now Faethor was furious. And how many times have I a.s.sisted yo u, Harry Keogh? And how often have I borne you up, when 1 could - and sh ould - have let you founder?

'We've had this conversation before,' said Harry, unperturbed. 'Must we play it out again? If my memory serves me well, we agreed in a previous ti me that former liaisons had been to our "mutual" advantage: neither one of us gained more than the other." So come down off your high horse and tell m e truly, why now do you insist on this sinister ritual that I should come t o you of my own free will? And if I admit as much, under what obligation wi ll I place myself, eh?'

Ahhh! sighed Faethor, after a moment. And if only it could have been y ou, Harry Keogh, instead of blood-crazed Thibor or that scheming, devious lout Janos! If only I had chosen my sons more carefully, eh? Why, such as you and I could have ruled the world together! But. . . too late now, for Thibor got my egg and Janos was my bloodson. And now there's neither spark nor s.p.u.n.k left of me to form another.

'If I thought for a moment there was, Faethor' (and even dreaming Harry s.h.i.+vered), 'then believe me I wouldn't be here!'

But you are here, and so I beg of you, observe the formalities, that ancie nt 'ritual' of which you speak so harshly and suspiciously.

'So now you beg of me,' said Harry, 'and still I ask myself; what's in it for you?'

Aye, and we've had that conversation before, too! Faethor cried. Well t hen, if I must repeat myself: that bloodsp.a.w.n of mine - that child of my hu man side, Janos - walks in the world of men again, and I cannot bear it! Wh en Thibor was desperate to be up and about, who was it came to your aid in keeping him down, eh? I did, for I loathed the dog! And now it's the turn o f Janos. What's in it for me, you ask? Well, when you destroy him, you migh t remember to tell, him how his father helped you, and even now lies laughi ng in his grave. That will be profit enough.

'What?' said Harry, speaking (and thinking) slowly and very carefully. 'Bu t surely that would be a lie, for nothing at all of you lies in any grave. You burned up in the fire that destroyed your house - didn't you?'

But you know I did! the other cried. But still I am here, in a manner of s peaking, for how else could I talk to you? It is my ghost, my spirit, the echo of a voice long vanished, that you hear. It is your talent, your ability to s peak with the dead, which in itself should be evidence enough of my extinction !.

Harry was silent a while. He knew that it was t.i.t for tat, this for that , and that he'd get nothing without first giving something. Faethor was eage r, indeed insistent, that his rules should apply in any exchange here. And i n the end it was plain the vampire would have his way, for Harry's cause was doomed without him. He thought these things, but yet contrived to hide such thoughts from Faethor.

Ah-ha! And now I see it! the other finally burst out.

You are afraid of me, Harry Keogh! Of me, a long-dead thing, burned up and melted away in a holocaust! But why now? What is different now? We ar e not strangers. This is not the first time we've come together for a comm on cause.

'No,' said Harry, 'but it's certainly the first time I've bedded down wit h you! I've been here before, yes, but when I was awake. And other than that I've only ever spoken to you across great distances, again via deadspeak, whe n there was no possible danger to me. And if there's one thing I've learned a bout vampires, Faethor, it's that when they seem at their most vulnerable, th at's when they're most dangerous.'

We're arguing at odds, getting nowhere, said the vampire, almost despair ingly. But for all the 'fatigue' he displayed, still Harry guessed that Faet hor wouldn't be moved from his stand in this matter. Which meant there remai ned only one way to break the deadlock.

'Very well,' he said, 'and so one of us must give way. Perhaps I'm a fool, b ut . . . yes, I came of my own free will.'

Good! the vampire grunted at once, and Harry could almost sense him sm acking his lips. A most wise and agreeable decision. And why not? For if I 'm to observe your manners and customs, why should not you observe mine, e h? They loved to win, these creatures, even in so small a thing as a conte st of words. Perhaps that was all to the good, for now Faethor might find room to give way in other matters. And as if he had read Harry's thoughts: And now we may face each other on equal terms. You desired to speak to me face to face? So be it.

Until now the dream had been blank and grey and unyielding, a place wit hout substance except in the exchange of thoughts. But now the grey took on a gently swirling motion and rapidly dissolved down to a thickly misted pl ain under a slender horned moon. Harry sat on a ruined wall with his feet d angling in the ground mist where it lapped at his ankles; and Faethor, seat ed upon a heap of rubble, was a dark figure in a shrouding robe, whose hood cast his face in shadows. Only his eyes burned in that hollow darkness, an d they were like tiny scarlet lamps.

And is this more to your liking, Harry Keogh?

'I know this place,' said Harry.

Of course you do, for it is the same place but perceived as it shall be som e small distance in the future. Oh yes, for that was one of my talents, too: to see a little way into the future. Alas, it was unreliable, else I'd not have b een here that night they dropped their bombs.

'I see that the bulldozers have been at work,' Harry looked all around. 'Th is place of yours seems the only place left!'

For the moment, aye, Faethor answered. A ruin on a low plain, surround ed by mud and debris, soon to become an industrial complex. And even if th ere were ears to hear me, who would listen to me then? What, through all of that hubbub and mechanical chaos? How are the mighty fallen, Harry Keogh , that I am reduced to this? And perhaps now you can understand why Thibor was made to suffer, and in the end destroyed; and why Janos must go the s ame way. They could have had it all, everything, and instead chose to defy me. And should I haunt this place, alone, unloved and unremembered, while one of them is returned to the world, perhaps to become a power? Perhaps The Power? No, I shall not rest, until I know that Janos is as little or e ven less than I am - which is nothing.

'And I'm to be your instrument?'

Is it not what you want? Do not our objectives coincide?