by Brian Lumley
‘Oh?’ He didn’t look at her, but his voice was a low purr, a rumble, a growl.
‘Yes, for you have your father’s strength.’ Zek knew she was right to believe it. After all, like Harry before him, Nathan had saved her life.
The precog lan Goodly did nothing (he had no weapon), said nothing, did his best not to feel the agony of the great barbed tine in his thigh. It couldn’t be removed here; Zek had wrapped it with strips of cloth from her skirt; amazingly, she’d stopped the worst of the bleeding. While David Chung comforted him, the precog could only grit his teeth and wait for the Big One. Nodding, feeling faint, his head swaying, he groaned it out loud:
The Big One … coming!’
‘What?’ Chung couldn’t believe his ears. ‘Do you mean this isn’t it?’
The tumbling moon had come up. Silver, bloated, it floated well above the horizon; its full face told mockingly of a
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sunup that was still six or seven hours away. But the moon itself - its strange, eccentric orbit — told more than that, to Nathan, if to no one else.
So close to the Gate, trapped here between two camps of vampires, unable or not daring to make use of the Mobius Continuum, and vulnerable to viciously cruel weapons if he should try to make a break for it in either direction - which was out of the question anyway, because of Goodly — the Necroscope had found time to think. Rather, his intuitive maths, both physical and metaphysical, had been at work within him.
Before . .. he’d often wondered at the weird physical properties of his vampire world, where some of the ‘universal laws’ he’d discovered in Trask’s world didn’t seem to work, or where they had been bent out of shape by the advent of an immemorial ‘white sun’ that fell out of the sky and buried itself in the bottom of a crater - the original Gate. And he’d likened the world’s wobble to that of an ill-balanced bolas, whose connecting rope had stiffened to a bar of unbreakable metal.
The maths of the thing was now clear in his mind; he simply ‘knew’ it, without knowing what to do with it or even if there was anything he could do with it. Knowing that it takes twelve thousand bricks to build a house doesn’t get it built. Knowing that E = Me2 isn’t enough in itself to create a brief but very destructive star in your garden. On the other hand, how often had he been told ‘numbers don’t do anything, they simply are’? Time and again, by everyone from the mainly innumerate desert-dwelling Thyre to a highly sophisticated Earth mathematician. And he was the living proof that all of them were wrong!
Which was why now, as once before, he wondered what would happen if he conjured a door so strong it challenged the alien, immutable gravitational force of the Gate or Gates? If he were to make one of his ‘usual’ Mobius doors in the immediate vicinity of the Gate, it would tremble, collapse, and get sucked into the Gate or hurled away from it; in all
probability, he and his friends would go with it, perhaps into a place where life simply couldn’t exist. Two magnets, their like poles facing each other, pushed or held apart by equal forces. But if they were driven towards each other, there must come a point when something had to give.
The Necroscope decided to try an experiment. At the moment nothing was happening, had been happening ever since they took cover here. The vampires seemed happy enough simply to harrass them, hold them in situ, make them keep their heads down. But that was self-explanatory: these creatures hemming Nathan and the others in knew better now than to show themselves too frequently. The fugitives had been in possession of a handful of grenades which they had used, unfortunately, less than effectively. But there were fresh blast marks around several of the wormholes near the Gate, and there must have been some damage, at least in the surrounding boulder clumps.
Also, there was no urgency on the part of the ambushers now, no need to take any further action. Devetaki Skullguise wanted these fugitives alive, and she would soon be here. Her main forces were pulling out of Sunside, all heading for Wrathstack. David Chung was able to guarantee that last: the siege of Settlement had been lifted, and the fighting stopped. There was no profit wasting good flesh and effort now that the birds were flown, especially since they’d flown into the trap! Sunup was still a long way off, but the vampires knew it was coming and would feel a lot safer Starside of the barrier mountains.
So Nathan had time on his hands, however little . ..
He let his numbers vortex swarm free, to surround his mind with a maelstrom of once-esoteric equations. Except, of course, they were no longer secret to him. Only call them down onto the computer screen of his brain, he could decipher all of them in as much time as it takes to tell.
But even the vortex warped away from the Gate’s influence, disturbed by its proximity: the physical affecting the metaphysical. But if the metaphysical were stronger? Could
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it affect, even overpower, the physical? Certainly! Hadn’t the Necroscope proved it every time he’d travelled in the Continuum? The mathematics of the problem was right there, waiting for him to unravel it. But at a time and in a place like this, why even bother?
It was partly instinct, intuition, but more than that it was what the Thyre had told him, and what Goodly had corroborated. In fact, and if it worked, it was the Big One. The very, very Big One! The correction of a disordered world, which had gone wrong when an alien body mutated to a dimensional singularity (or multiplicity?) and fell on Starside!
Again he thought of what Thikkoul and others of the dead Thyre ancients had told him, remembering the way Thikkoul had expressed what to the Ancient was an unthinkable concept:
Instead of the moon, the sun, the stars in their eternal revolutions … I feel this very earth itself moving, leaning towards the sun.’ And: The turning of the world, Nathan! Stars moving in the night sky, from south to north with the turning of the earth!
Also what Goodly had said when Nathan had asked him when the Big One was scheduled, night or day? He’d answered that it would happen in the night, and in the morning!
Was there a clue there? Of course there was!
Nathan’s numbers proved it; he held the equations steady on the screen of his mind and followed them through, saw their solution and knew its truth! Except … his mind simply wasn’t big enough, wasn’t strong enough. He knew the number of bricks it would take to build his house, but he had no mortar! Unless the mortar of his anger, and the strength of Eygor’s evil eye, and —
‘- And our strength?’ Zek’s hand closed over his where it was clenched, trembling. ‘Our combined strength?’ He knew what she meant. He’d heard the idea broached back at E-Branch HQ in her world: in times of extreme danger, the joining of ESP talents into one super-ESP identity, one POWER.
Could his friends provide the extra bit of mortar that he needed to hold his bricks together? All of their metaphysical energy together, against the Gate?
The moon was fully up now, and borne on a wind from the north-east (it could only be from Wrathstack) came a tumult of sound: thunderous music and an indescribably mournful howling. It was like an omen on the Necroscope’s decision - or maybe a warning of Devetaki’s imminent arrival! ‘She’s almost through the pass,’ Chung gasped. ‘Fifteen minutes at the outside!’
Nathan quickly explained what he would do, but he needed their help. The immovable centre of gravity at the core of the world would be his fulcrum; the invisible, unbend-able force it exerted on the Gate would be his lever; effort would come from the combined energy of their minds, concentrated upon the most powerful door he’d ever conjured. And the task -
- Would be to turn a world, correct its eccentricity, make the stars move through the sky, and turn a night into morning!
They didn’t understand, but neither did they question him as they stood up and linked arms, and glared back at the glaring Gate through narrowed eyes; all of them with the exception of Trask, who must mind their backs while they worked. Watchful, he stayed down between their legs, weighing his precious mag
azine and wondering how many bullets were left in it, then forgetting to wonder anything as the Necroscope fortified his numbers vortex and conjured his Mobius door!
‘Now!’ Nathan said, as the thing warped and fluttered and rippled like water in his mind. They held, and glared, chewed their lips, and weighed their minds against the weight of the Gate. And held, and the door held with them! It shaped up; it glowed with the energy of their combined effort; it was visible!
For the first time ever, people who were not of the Necroscope Harry Keogh’s flesh saw a Mobius door: a hole
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in nothing, going nowhere, and everywhere. But it fluttered like a flag; it must collapse at any moment, or be hurled away, or be shredded and drawn into the Gate. But it didn’t and it wasn’t, for Nathan held it with his mind and Eygor’s eye - the most powerful combination of wills to ever exist in the vampire world.
And: ‘Hold it!’ Nathan husked. ‘Hold it!’
And: ‘Yes,’ Goodly gasped the single word. ‘Yes!
And: ‘A black cloud in the heights over the pass,’ Trask said. Then: ‘Cloud, nothing! It has to be Devetaki!’ The ruination of everything, if she should get here first. It galvanized the Necroscope to greater effort. And as Trask’s machine-pistol barked a single shot, and barked again, Nathan groaned:
‘Push! We have to do more than just hold it - so push!’
And: ‘Yes,’ said Goodly. ‘Yes!’
Trask thought he felt the ground trembling under his feet where he kneeled, but nothing was happening. Nathan’s metaphysical door had firmed up and shone and shimmered like a fiery portal, but that was all. The energy the four were burning made the air hum, but nothing had changed. Trask groaned, saw motion in the corner of his eye - the glitter of a whirling bolas - snapped off a shot and brought the thrall down before he could release his weapon. But a moment later and Trask saw a different kind of motion, an impossible kind of motion:
The moon, performing a slow curve across the sky! Not its weird orbit, but a curve from south to north!
‘Jesus!’ Trask sobbed raggedly, the breath catching in his throat as a wild wind blew out of nowhere, tugging at his hair. ‘Oh, sweet Jesus!’ The very vault of the heavens seemed to be moving; the ice-chip Northstar was receding over the last great aerie of the Wamphyri; the rest of the stars were following on behind, uniformly marching south to north across the sky!
‘Push!’ Nathan’s voice was a whisper. ‘Yes!’ Goodly’s too.
‘My God! My God!’ Zek heard the moaning of the wind, and the moaning of a hundred vampire voices in her head. The world was turning and a far faint flush limned the high peaks of the barrier mountains.
Then, through all the telepathic tumult of fearful vampire moanings, one voice sounding loud and shrill with the realization of what was happening and who was making it happen. Devetaki Skullguise, commanding: KilJ them! Do it now, be/ore they doom us, each and every one!
And up out of the magmass wormholes came five feral-eyed thralls, and out from behind the boulders stepped the lieutenant and others of the ambush crew. Trask knew he couldn’t possibly have more than three or four rounds left, but he’d make every one of them count. He would have to, for Nathan was out of it and must continue confronting the Gate with his irresistible door. And the world continued to turn, the wind to howl, the thunderous music from Wrath-stack to blare like the trumpets of hell.
The whirl of a bolas: crack1 And a thrall, leaking brains from a hole between his eyes, went toppling.
Another bolas: crack! Trask took his eye out.
The lieutenant came loping, ducking, weaving. He wore a gauntlet. Crack! The man spun round in a complete circle; his eyes went to the scarlet-pumping hole in his shoulder; he kept coming. Crack! He was knocked over backwards, flipped from his shoulders where they hit the dirt, came springing to his feet. Crack! And this one took him in the heart, which finally swatted him.
The five thralls were closing from the direction of the Gate. Seeing Trask aiming at them, they crouched low, spread out, came zigzagging towards the fugitives. One of them made a sideways leap when he saw Trask lining up his sights; somehow, he got between the Gate and Nathan’s door. His body was illumined in a golden glow for a split-second — like a flash of lightning - before he disintegrated like a sheet of paper in a shredder! He was there and he was gone, disrupted, vanished without trace!
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The others came on; Trask squeezed the trigger; the bolt flew forward and - nothing!
Zek touched Trask’s head, managed to grin at him even through her tears as she passed something down to him -her bullet. ‘Fuck it!’ she said. He yanked back the bolt, pushed the bullet home with his thumb, looked at her. His heart was in his mouth. The vampires from the wormholes were coming.
One of them started to swing his bolas and Trask didn’t think twice. Crack! The man went down, spraying red.
Half a mile away, towards the pass, the sky had turned black with flyers. Devetaki! But the world was still turning, the wind still howling, the defenders of two universes still standing to the end. Except this was the end, surely?
But if so, why had the vampires from the magmass stopped advancing? What was that look on their faces? What could it mean? Trask glanced behind - and saw what it meant. That the dead of Starside weren’t about to let this happen, not to the Necroscope Nathan Keogh!
Trask’s jaw fell open. The vampires from the rockpiles were fighting with dead men … with mummified pieces of men … with the desiccated debris of men! It was a rebellion of the dead against that which must never be; the destruction of their one champion in the world of the living.
The teeming dead, not called up but come up of their own accord. All of the countless Szgany who over a thousand years had trudged the dreary road to the aeries of the Wamphyri and never made it, suffering the true death out here on these barren boulder plains. All the victims of vampire bloodwars long forgotten by the leaning menhirs of Starside. All the ragged scraps and dust of men long gone, knowing that they must come up to a semblance of life at least, else life itself had not been worth it.
Jason Lidesci was their leader; albeit a slender lich, he was a true Lidesci to the end. But there were many others the Necroscope had never known. Glina Berea was among them, who in her time had vowed vengeance on Nestor, and
now fought for his brother. Oh, their names were legion, which they sang to Nathan like a battlecry, even knowing that he couldn’t answer, for he was engaged in a battle of his own.
As for the vampires: the blinding dust of dead men was in their eyes, choking dust in their nostrils, throats, ears. And they knew how unequal was the battle - because dead men can’t die twice. But Devetaki and hers did not know that, not yet.
All she knew was that the world was turning, the peaks of the barrier mountains gleamed golden in her wake, and the furnace sun was rising like a great blazing meteor to fry her eyes and scorch her undead bones! Ahead of the rest, she came swooping over and through and around the glare of the Gate, driving her mount in what was very nearly a suicide dive right at the group of aliens in the shallow depression.
Nathan saw her coming and his gaze, his mind, his strength was diverted from the glowing Mobius door -which at once collapsed! There was nothing he could do about it; he couldn’t concentrate on two problems at the same time, and Devetaki was now the most immediate threat. He went into his killing crouch and glared doom and destruction at the Lady, her flyer, Alexei Yefros where the Russian locator hung on behind her.
The merest pulse of his former power, there was little of strength in it; fuelling the door had drained him to the dregs. Still, his mind-bolt was not entirely without effect: Devetaki gave a small choking cry, yanked on the reins to haul back her mount’s head, climbed up, up into a sky no longer black, where now the stars were the merest flecks of flickering light -
- And yet a sky blacker than the blackest night to Devetaki, for she was blind! Bli
nd, her eyes ruined … yet she saw quite clearly. Saw that it was the end. Sensed cessation. Felt finality - as her soaring blinded beast lofted her into sighing, searing sunlight!
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‘Ahhh!’ Devetaki herself sighed wonderingly, groped for her scowling mask, didn’t quite make it. And at last the pain (but briefly), the rapid devolution: a drift of smoke and slow, silent rain of smouldering ashes. Along with a faster rain, of leaden trappings, leather, iron and a few charred bones. Alexei Yefros, not long a vampire, fell with the saddle, shrieking until he hit, then lying still. The sun would do the rest.
The sun! For it had risen on Starside, and despite that Nathan’s door was no more, it was still rising. And the moon a strange pale orb where it hung in the sky, no longer tumbling. And in the north, Wrathstack a golden finger pointing toward a glorious future, or perhaps at the North-star, more properly a ‘north’ star now: a blink of silver against faded auroras …
The dawn had happened first and fastest, of course, Sunside of the barrier mountains. It had come as something of a surprise, to say the least; not least to the Lady Ursula Torspawn. Standing a discreet distance from her funeral pyre, Lardis Lidesci wondered very briefly who she’d been, then put her out of his mind forever. She’d been Wamphyri, definitely, else at the end there’d been much less of a commotion.
In fact, nothing had gone right for Ursula. Earlier, she’d taken up with a party of ex-supplicant Szgany, and trembling in every beautiful limb (from fears which weren’t entirely feigned and so served to lend her story veracity), she had told how she was the lone survivor of a family group slaughtered by the Wamphyri. That had been several hours ago, shortly after the party itself had survived an attack, which made Ursula’s story doubly acceptable. If she had known it at the time, however, she might have tried her luck elsewhere. The skirmish had made these people-extra vigilant; they clung together; she’d not had a chance to lure anyone away and . .. tend to her needs.
