The Last Aerie

by Brian Lumley

  “Tzonov and others like him will use any method to obtain information, make people tell them what they want to know. Torture isn’t the only way. Don’t feel that you can’t talk on my account, Nathan. But if you’d like me to leave …” She made to stand up.

  Nathan reached out quickly and took her hand, drawing her down again. “It wasn’t like that.” He shook his head. “Or maybe it was, but it didn’t work out that way.”

  Ian Goodly saw it coming and said, “Nathan, you don’t have to tell us anything about that. Well, just one thing. Did you actually steal the key to your cell, or did she give it to you? If she gave it to you, then we can probably reckon that Tzonov has sent her through the Gate.”

  Nathan nodded, lowered his head. “She gave it to me. Tzonov found us together; he struck me and dragged her out of there; I found the key after she had gone. Also her clasp. But the key wasn’t a mistake. She hadn’t lost it. I’m sure that she left it for me …” He looked up and his eyes were harder now, likewise the edge to his voice. “You people—E-Branch on the one hand, Tzonov and his people on the other—are like two rival Szgany tribes. But you are all people, human. Or I thought you were. What he has done, if he has done it …”

  Trask said, “It changes things, doesn’t it?”

  Nathan nodded. “If it’s true, yes. Finally I will know—I mean, I’ll be sure—that I’m in the right camp, on the right side.”

  Trask nodded. “Well, you are. But we still might have some difficulty proving it. On the other hand, there just might be a way to discover what’s happened to Siggi. If that’s the proof you need—and if you’re the man I think you are—then it’s all up to you.”

  Nathan looked at him. “Up to me? To find out what happened to Siggi?”

  Trask nodded. “The last time we had this problem, with Jazz Simmons, we asked your father to help us out. He had the necessary … skills? He was the Necroscope. But in everything that you’ve told us so far, there’s an all-important thing which you haven’t mentioned. Nathan, when you spoke to me telepathically in my sleep, in Perchorsk, I got the impression that you knew what Harry Keogh could do, where all of his powers sprang from. But there’s only one way you could know, and that’s if you can do it, too. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

  Again their eyes met, and after a long pause Nathan nodded. “Yes. And I can do it. I can talk to the Great Majority, to the teeming dead in their graves. Rather, I could do it … if only they would talk back to me. But they won’t. Not in my world, anyway.”

  Seated around him, the others sighed in unison. And Zek said, “I knew it! Your mind’s the same as Harry’s. Or it comes so close I could scarcely tell the difference. Not as cold as his, no, but the patterns are all the same.”

  Trask nodded. “That’s what I felt the first time I saw you, Nathan: there was no doubt in my mind but that you were Harry’s son, and that you’d been modeled on him. And when you spoke to me telepathically … well, while you’re very much alive, still I felt that this was what it must be like, talking to someone who was dead.”

  Goodly said nothing but merely gave a small shudder, which Trask sensed as a trembling in his elbow where the precog sat beside him. Glancing at Goodly, he said, “Well?”

  “And so it starts,” Goodly answered, looking more cadaverous than ever. “My God, but it’s gathering now, Ben!”

  “What is?”

  “All of this. Why, the future is shifting even now. We’re not changing it, for what will be will be. But it knows …”

  And Chung said, “The future is … sentient?”

  “When it comes to protecting itself, yes,” Goodly answered. “You’d think so, anyway.”

  “You should never try to read it.” Nathan shook his head.

  And Zek agreed with him: “For it’s a devious thing.”

  For a moment they were all silent, until Trask cleared his throat and said, “I know someone—a dead someone—who will speak to you, Nathan. At least I think he will. And after that … maybe the rest of them will follow suit.”

  Trask wasted no time but ordered up two Branch cars, and his party was driven at once to a crematorium, a garden of repose in Kensington. It was a chilly evening and already dark when they got there, but the gates were open. This was a place which was never closed to mourners. Trask led the group to Sir Keenan Gormley’s tiny plot: a granite slab two feet square and some nine inches high, with a stainless-steel plaque which carried his dates and an epitaph reading:

  Much loved and missed, but

  gone now into a better place.

  Requiescat in Pace.

  “His family,” Trask explained. “If it had been the Branch … well, it could be we’d have done something different. Something esoteric, in keeping with his life. Maybe this is for the best. At least it doesn’t attract attention. At least he can rest in peace. His ashes were scattered here, but this is his place. He is here. This is where Harry Keogh spoke to him.”

  When the inscription was read out to him and the last line translated, Nathan shook his head. “They don’t, you know. For they’re restless, most of them. They think, remember, talk a lot. To each other. But it’s a lonely place there in the dark, and it’s certainly not a better one. And they miss much more than they’re missed.”

  But as the last sentence fell from his lips, so he reeled and Trask caught his arm to steady him. “Nathan?”

  For a moment he didn’t answer, because a gonging shout was still ringing in his mind:

  HARRY!!!

  And it had been so forceful, so brimming with life, that for a moment he looked to see whose mouth had issued it. Around him the espers stood silent, astonished. They had seen his jaw fall open, the shocked expression on his face. But in the next moment he knew, and shook off Trask’s hand as he went to one knee in the gravel beside the granite slab. And with his trembling hand resting upon the plaque, using his deadspeak, he said:

  No, not Harry, but Nathan. My name is Nath—

  It’s Harry! The other cut him off. Why, I’d know you anywhere! Your warmth, your “voice,” your … presence! Don’t try to fool an old friend, Harry, but tell me where you’ve been for so long?

  “Tell us what he’s saying!” Zek’s real voice, so urgent in Nathan’s ear, and her hand falling on his shoulder, caused him to start. She knew he was speaking to someone, but it was deadspeak, which was beyond her capabilities.

  “He thinks I’m … he thinks that I’m my father!”

  Not Harry? Gormley’s “voice” was filled with astonishment, disappointment. His son? My God! Has it been that long?

  “Didn’t you know?” Nathan spoke out loud, which made little or no difference; the presence of the Necroscope was sufficient in itself; the dead man—his ashes—“heard” Nathan’s spoken words as clearly as his thoughts. “I mean, about the passage of time? Have none of the others mentioned it?”

  Possibly. Nathan felt Gormley’s deadspeak shrug. Time is of little importance … here. Without you—or rather, without Harry—it’s been of no importance whatsoever!

  “You’ve simply lain there?” Nathan knew that the Thyre were not idle in their graves, so that this seemed to him a terrible waste. “But what about the things you did in life, your interests in the corporeal world?”

  Ahhh! Gormley’s sigh. But little use for such skills here. You see, I was a spotter: I knew when I stood close to exceptionally talented people. Indeed, I was the one who recruited your father, Harry Keogh, into E-Branch. There had been certain great injustices, and only he could put things right.

  “I know,” Nathan told him, “for they—your people in the Branch —have told me. And now there are more injustices, and I have been recruited in my turn.”

  So their conversation went, with Trask and the others hearing only Nathan’s side of it and making what they could of it. But finally the introductions and brief histories were out of the way, and at last Gormley asked, Now tell me, what can I do for you? Tell you your father’s sto
ry? But I know so little of it. I’m sure the new people could tell you much more than me.

  “Oh, I want to have Harry’s whole story, from beginning to end, eventually,” Nathan nodded. “But right now there are more important things. On my way here, Ben Trask told me one or two things about you. And he was right: your talent alerted you to my presence, and my likeness to my father fooled you into contacting me. But would you have spoken to me if you’d believed I was someone else, not Harry?”

  … Ah! Gormley answered, after a moment. And: Perhaps not. And I’ll tell you why.

  “No, let me tell you. There are things which even the dead fear. Am I right? And someone who talks to the Great Majority, well, he just might be one of those things. Do you understand me?”

  The one thing Trask hadn’t told Nathan was how Sir Keenan Gormley had died at the hands of just such a “thing”: a necromancer called Dragosani, in the employ of the then-USSR’s own E-Branch. And one other thing Nathan didn’t know: that Harry Keogh had used his Necroscope powers to kill Dragosani, going on to pare the Soviet organization down to the bone.

  But now Nathan felt Gormley’s unbodied shudder, and knew that he understood only too well. And: I am the victim of just such a monster, the dead man told him. A necromancer, who tore my corpse to pieces in order to get at my secrets. And yes, you are right. These days … the teeming dead are careful who they talk to.

  “Which is my problem exactly,” Nathan told him, and sensed Gormley’s deadspeak gasp.

  The dead won’t speak to you?

  Nathan’s silence was his answer.

  But … have you tried?

  “In my own world? Time and time again, ever since I was a child. There, it was the legacy and the fault of my Necroscope father. For in the end he was Wamphyri and not to be trusted. And so the Szgany dead—Travellers, Gypsies, my own kind—would have nothing to do with me. Only the dead of the Thyre, nomads of the deserts, would let me into their minds. I benefited from it, and so did they. Here, in this world … oh, I’ve heard the dead whispering in their graves, but you’re the first who heard me, and certainly you’re the first who was willing to talk to me.”

  Gormley was silent a moment, then said, There’s nothing to fear in you. You shine in the darkness—the same as Harry in his innocence—and your presence is like a warm blanket over my grave. You do have your father’s warmth, or whatever it was he had. For sometimes Harry could be cold, too, very cold … He snapped out of it. So that’s why you’re here. Nathan felt his decisive deadspeak nod. You require introductions. There are others among the Great Majority whom you would like to contact, except you think they’ll be wary of you. And your purpose?

  “My father was the Necroscope,” Nathan answered. “Which is to say, he could talk to dead people, and it appears they loved him. But he had powers other than that. I’ve been told that you were the key to the greatest of those powers.”

  Gormley understood, but now Nathan sensed the shake of an incorporeal head. No, the key was already in place. The part I played was to show it to him. And it was a key, Nathan! A key to many doors. It was this:

  Nathan knew the symbol at once; why, he even wore it in his ear! His exclamation—his gasp of recognition—was automatic. “My father’s sigil?”

  Yes, in a way. Harry Keogh’s emblem of power.

  “But what does it mean?”

  I’m no mathematician, Nathan. Gormley shrugged in his deadspeak fashion. But I can try to tell you something about it. It would appear to defy logic by reducing three dimensions to two, and two to one.

  “Dimensions?”

  The planes of existence in which we live. It reduces all places to one place, or makes nothing of the gap between. And when Harry used it, it even reduced time down to NOW. He could go wherever he wanted to go, without covering the distance in between. And as a bodiless wraith, he even travelled in time.

  “The ultimate Traveller!” Nathan sighed, and smiled however sadly. “He was Szgany after all.”

  Gormley chuckled. If you want to put it that way.

  “You called it a key to many doors.” Nathan was serious in a moment, for now he recalled what Thikkoul, a dead Thyre stargazer, had said of his future as glimpsed in the stars through Nathan’s living eyes:

  I see … doors! (Thikkoul’s voice had been the rustle of dry leaves.) Like the doors on a hundred Szgany caravans but liquid, drawn on water, formed of ripples. And behind each one of them, a piece of your future …

  “Doors,” Nathan said again, as Thikkoul faded into memory. “What did you mean?”

  Again Gormley’s deadspeak shrug. Space and time. Of course there are doors, but we can’t see them. Harry could, and pass through them.

  “You said I have what he had.” Nathan was eager now. “Well, it’s true, I do. But not all that he had. I want access to the Möbius Continuum. I want to be able to use these doors. Who do I speak to?”

  Why, who better than Möbius himself? Gormley answered. For it was his—what, metaphysics? His lateral thinking?—that brought the Möbius strip into being in the first place. And I do know this: that your father was with Möbius, this brilliant, long-dead mathematician, the first time he conjured one of his doors!

  “Then I’ll go and try to speak to Möbius. Except … I may need an introduction?” It was Nathan’s turn to shrug. “It’s the way of things …”

  Pausing, at last he remembered his other reason for being here. “Oh, and there’s something else you can do for me. That is, if I’m not asking too much.”

  Too much? My one contact with the living, breathing world, and you’re worried you might be asking too much? Ask away! And Nathan, believe me when I tell you I’ll help you if I can. For you’re not the only one with problems. If we can solve yours, then—and only then—you may be able to help me solve mine. And not only mine but a problem facing all of the Great Majority. But … that would be to put the cart before the horse; first the teeming dead must learn to trust you, and speak to you. So for now you’d better tell me what’s troubling you?

  “A woman has … well, it seems she’s disappeared,” Nathan told him. “She’s very important, not only to E-Branch but also to me. Her name is Siggi Dam; she was a member of the Opposition; last known location, Perchorsk in the Ural Mountains. We can’t be sure if she’s dead, or if something else has happened to her. Only the Great Majority would know for certain. Do you think you could ask after her, find out if Siggi’s joined the ranks of the teeming dead? She was a telepath in life, and if she is dead should be easy to contact.”

  A telepath? But in that case, wouldn’t she have contacted you? After all, you are the Necroscope.

  “Still, I need to be sure.”

  Let me work on it, said Gormley, and I’ll get back to you. Think of me now and again, aim your thoughts in this direction, and as soon as I have something … His deadspeak began to fade into a background hiss of mental static. And meanwhile (he was very faint now), you must work on your math. Instinctive mathematician that your father was, still he had a hard time of it. So I can’t see that it will be any easier for you …

  The static took over completely. But coming right through it—not speaking to Nathan directly, but simply thinking her own most passionate thoughts, most fervent desires “out loud”—Zek Föener’s telepathic voice:

  Nathan could talk to Jazz, tell him all the things which, at the end, I was too late to say. He could actually talk to him!

  Standing up and turning to her, he said: “One day, I would be glad to, if it’s what you want. You can count on it, before I go home to Sunside.”

  She smiled her wan smile, sighed, and took his arm.

  And arm in arm, as they walked back down the wind-blown aisles of the garden of repose to the gates, and through them to the parked cars, Trask, Goodly, and Chung followed on behind. The men of E-Branch wondered but said nothing. This was a good place to be quiet and keep the peace …

  But as Trask got into the first of the cars with Zek
and Nathan, he was eager to ask the Necroscope, “Well? And was I right? I know you spoke to Sir Keenan, but was it worth it?”

  “Yes,” Nathan answered him, and went on to reveal what had passed between them. “Sir Keenan said he’d make inquiries for me, and get back to me as soon as he has something.”

  “Get back to you?”

  “If I open my mind to him and seek him out, he’ll converse with me at a distance. Apparently that’s not too hard, not now that we’ve been introduced.”

  “And meanwhile?”

  “I’m to continue studying, improving my math, which isn’t the exciting thing I thought it would be.” Nathan shrugged and pulled a wry face. “It seems that in Harry, numbers were instinctive. But not in me. On the—contrary? Perhaps because I carry them with me always, without knowing their meaning, they weigh on me and tire me out.”

  “We’re all tired,” Trask nodded. “A good night’s sleep is what we all need. Tomorrow you’ll go back to basic numbers. In Harry’s case it was an instinctive art, yes, but even he required a final push before he made his quantum leap. In his case it was do or die, and so he did. With you it’s not so urgent. In three or four months we’ll be ready to send you back through the Romanian Gate—if we can do it. And meanwhile you’ll be well protected. My advice: give all of your attention to your instructors. And if Keenan Gormley comes up with a shortcut, well, that will be all the better.”

  The cars sped back to E-Branch HQ.

  Harry’s room was now Nathan’s room. After eating with Trask and Zek at the hotel restaurant “downstairs,” he retired there with his thoughts. He had been aware through dinner of two men seated at a nearby table, whose flinty eyes in blank, expressionless faces would occasionally turn and stare in his direction. Trask, seeing him looking at them, had warned, “Don’t pay them too much attention. They’re not E-Branch, not those two, but Special Branch. And they’re your minders.”