The Source n-3

by Brian Lumley

  Because of the abundance of water the place was lush with vegetation, but only a handful of species were unknown to Earth. The rest of the flowers, shrubs, trees in the garden would have been perfectly at home in any English garden. Harry Jnr's mother tended them, when she felt up to it. But usually his Travellers looked after the garden, as they looked after almost everything here.

  Harry Jnr's bungalow house was centrally situated, built of white stone with a red tile roof, its front perched over the wide mouth of a well that occasionally gave off streamers of steam. He swam and bathed in the pool regularly. His Travellers (no longer true Travellers, in fact, for they were permanent dwellers here themselves now) inhabited similarly constructed stone houses at the sides of the saddle, where the level ground met rising cliffs. All such homes were centrally heated, with a system of plastic pipes carrying hot water from a deep, gurgling blowhole. They had glass windows, too, and other refinements utterly unheard of before Harry Jnr's time.

  The Dweller (as all of his tenants insisted on calling him) had built greenhouses in which to grow an abundance of vegetable produce. Heated and watered from the springs, his crops were amazing. Also, he had found ways round the long, cold, dark sundowns. Plant species which would adapt already had, but others which wouldn't received artificial sunlight. The permanently running water drove his generators (small but incredibly powerful machines such as Harry Snr had never seen or even dreamed of before), which in turn powered ultraviolet lamps in the greenhouses — and electric lights in the houses!

  'You've done… so much!' Harry Keogh told his son, where he walked with him along the edge of a plot shady with sweet corn grown tall. 'All of this is nothing short of… astonishing!'

  Harry Jnr had heard much the same thing from Zek Foener, Jazz Simmons, every Traveller who ever made it here; it was a common reaction to things he'd come to take for granted. 'Not really,' he answered. 'Not set against what I'm capable of doing. Chiefly I wanted a place to live, for myself and for my mother. So it had to be made liveable. And what is it really but a strip of fertile soil some two hundred or more yards long by eighty wide, eh? As for the running of the place, the Travellers do that for me.'

  'But the buildings,' Harry said, as he'd said it so often during the course of the past sunup. 'Oh, I know they're only bungalows, but they're so, well, beautiful! They're simple but delightful. The great span of their arches, the delicate buttresses, the cut of the roof timbers. They're not Greek, not anything I can put a finger on, just so pleasing. And all built by these… well, by these cave-dwellers of yours!'

  The trogs are people, father,' Harry Jnr smiled. 'But the Wamphyri never gave them a chance to develop, that's all. They're no more primitive than your Australian bushmen, all considered. But on the other hand they're eager to learn. Show them a principle or a system and they catch on quick. Also, they're grateful. Their old gods didn't treat them too well, and I do. As for the architecture which so impresses you: well, that surprises me. Surely you realize that I'm not the designer? I got all this from a Berliner who died back in 1933. A Bauhaus student who never did make it when he was alive, but he's designed some beautiful stuff since then. I'm a Necroscope, like you, remember? All of the very simple, very efficient systems you see in use here were given to me by the dead of your own world! Don't you realize how far you could have gone, the things you could have done, if you hadn't spent the last eight years of your life tracking me?'

  Harry shook his head, still a little dazed by what his son had shown him, by what he'd been told. 'See,' he finally said, perhaps a little desperately, 'that's another thing. Eight years, you said. Now, in my mind you're a boy, an eight-year-old boy. In fact I've prided myself in picturing you that way, in imagining what you'd be like. It would have been far easier to think of you as a baby, which is how I remember you. But I made myself see you as you'd be now — or as I thought you'd be. And… and just look how you are! I still can't get over it.' He shook his head again.

  'I've explained that.'

  'What, how you tricked me?' Harry didn't try to disguise the bitterness in his tone. 'How you not only crossed the divide between universes but displaced yourself in time, too? You went back in time! Long before you were born, and long before I lost you, while I was growing up you were growing up too — here! Just exactly how old are you, anyway?'

  'I'm twenty-four, Harry.'

  Harry nodded, sharply. 'Your mother's now fifteen years my senior! Not that she'd recognize me, anyway. And… and you have looked after her. That was always one of my biggest worries: that she be looked after. But through all of those years I didn't know! Couldn't you have let me know, just once?'

  'And prolong the agony, Harry? So that you'd always be there, just one step behind us?'

  Harry grimaced, turned away. 'I noticed you've skipped the "father" bit, too. You're a man, not the boy I expected. You wear that damned golden mask, so that I can't even see your face. You're… a stranger! Yes, we're like strangers. Well, I suppose that's the way it had to be. I mean, we're hardly father and son, are we? Let's face it, I'm not all that much older than you, now am I?'

  Harry Jnr sighed. 'I know I've hurt you. I knew it all the time you were chasing me.'

  'But you kept running?'

  'I might have come back, but… oh, there were a lot of things. Mother wasn't improving; there were good places I could take her, where she'd be happy; many reasons for not coming back. One day you'll understand.'

  Harry felt something of his son's sadness. Yes, there was a sadness in him. He nodded again, but not so sharply now. For long moments he wrestled with his emotions. In the end blood won. 'Anyway,' he relaxed, took a deep breath, somehow managed to grin, 'just how did you do it?'

  Harry Jnr had felt the tension go out of his father, knew he'd been forgiven. He, too, relaxed. 'Time-travel, you mean? But you did it too, and long before me — relatively speaking.'

  'I was immaterial — literally. I was incorporeal, al! aura. You're flesh and blood. Mobius reckons it can't be done. It would create too many irresolvable paradoxes.'

  'He's right,' Harry Jnr 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 Mobius 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 Mobius 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 Jnr 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 Jnr 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. Al
l of which corroborates things that Zek Foener 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 Jnr 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 Jnr 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…'

  22. 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 Jnr, 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 Snr 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 Jnr 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, massed 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 Jnr 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 Jnr 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 Jnr'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 Jnr 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 Snr, 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 Jnr 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 I 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 Jnr 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 Jnr'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 Snr, 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 flame-throwers, too, and Travellers who had been trained in their use. Harry Jnr 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 Jnr made no bones about it; he believed the manufacturers were well able to stand the loss), he'd bee
n 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 Jnr nodded, but: The flame-throwers 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 Snr had used the Mobius 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.