Necroscope IV: Deadspeak

'The fact is,' said Darcy, 'I've often wondered why they don't! The people in E-Branch, I mean.'

'I've no doubt that some do,' said Harry. 'No, I'm not talking about E-Branch, but others, people we know nothing about. There must be many talents loose in the world. How do we know that so-called "business acumen" isn't just another talent? Did this man make a million because he has a "knack" for wheeling and dealing, or was it because there's a special something guiding his hand? Something which he himself might not even know about? Is the war hero really as brave as we believe him to be, or has he — like you, Darcy, or even like Gerenko

— got a guardian angel watching over him? Did you know that the casinos have a list of people they won't let in, professional gamblers who have the winning "knack", and that an awful lot of them are rich as Croesus?'

'That's all very well,' said Darcy, reasonably, 'but still you have no proof that this one is a vampire!'

'Proof, not yet,' Harry answered. 'But evidence, plenty. Circumstantial, but still it's there.'

'Such as?' said Sandra.

Perhaps exasperated, he turned to her. 'Sandra, the closest you've been to a vampire is in reading my case file. I take it you have read it? It's a standard text in E-Branch, as a guard against "the next time". But I do know what I'm talking about, and so does Darcy. So while I don't want to be hurtful, still I think you'd best just sit still and listen. Especially you, for we don't yet know that when you saw him — whoever he is — in Trevor's mind, he didn't see you!'

She gasped and sat up straighter, and Harry reached across to pat her hand. 'I'm sorry, but now maybe you can see what's worrying me. Some of it, anyway. Me? — I've been here before, or at least in a similar position. But you? — God, I don't want anything to happen to you!'

Darcy said: 'But you did mention evidence.'

Before Harry could answer, a waiter came to take their order. Darcy ordered a full meal, Sandra a salad and sweet, but Harry only asked for a portion of chicken and plenty of coffee. 'A full stomach always makes me sleepy,' he explained, 'and alcohol is worse still. And I intend that you understand how deadly serious I am about this thing. But if you really want to drink that brandy, just go ahead, Darcy.'

Darcy looked at his brandy glass and the large measure of golden liquid it contained, and put it aside.

'Evidence, then,' said Harry. 'For more than four years the dead haven't attempted to contact me. Or if they have, I haven't been aware of it. Oh, my mother may well have come to me in my dreams; in fact I'm sure she has, for that's her nature. And yet now, suddenly, they've placed me in jeopardy. All right, the fact of them attacking Wellesley was circumstantiaclass="underline" they just happened to be there when he'd planned to murder me. But they were there, delivering a message. And they were doing it, possibly (a) for my mother, or (b) for themselves, out of their concern for me, or (c) for Ken and Trevor, who had been trying to reach me in my dreams.'

Darcy frowned. 'They'd been trying to reach you, telepathically? I didn't know that.'

'Neither did I, until Ken Layard woke up and saw us, and spoke. A mental voice sounds just like the real thing to me, Darcy, and back in Scotland I'd been dreaming that people were trying to reach me, but I didn't know who they were. As soon as I heard Ken's real voice, then I recognized it. As to how they did it: Ken's a locator, he found me. And Trevor's a telepath, he helped send the message. Why me? Because I'm the so-called "expert" on what they both knew they were dealing with. And so they should know, because they too were in on the Bodescu affair.'

Darcy nodded, licked his dry lips. He lifted his brandy and took the merest sip, dampening his mouth with it. 'All right — what other evidence?'

'The evidence of my own senses,' said Harry, 'which, like yours, number more than five.'

'Not any longer,' Sandra pointed out — and at once bit her tongue, hoping he wouldn't take it the wrong way.

Harry didn't. Smiling, however wryly, he said: 'I don't have to be able to talk to the dead to know the difference between a corpse and a live man.'

Again Darcy frowned. 'So what does that mean?' he asked. 'The same goes for any one of us!'

'Have you ever walked down a silent, empty alley at night?' Harry asked him. 'And all of a sudden you're certain someone is there? And sure enough, you see the flare of a match in a dark corner where someone is lighting a cigarette? Have you ever played hide-and-seek where you're it, and when you're searching for the other kids you get this feeling right between the shoulder blades that someone is watching you? And when you look round, again one of them is there? I mean, not the sixth sense which you already know you possess, but just a sort of gut feeling?'

Darcy nodded, and Harry continued: 'Well, just as you sense the presence of living people, so I sense the dead. I know when I'm in the company of dead men. Which is why I can tell you definitely that Ken Layard isn't! Even if I could still speak to the dead, I couldn't have spoken to Ken. For he's not dead. Oh, he's not alive either, but something in between. He's undead, in thrall to some other, and he'll rise up again as a vampire unless we make sure he's put down forever. That's what he was saying to me in my dream, what he was begging me to do: find him, finish him, put him down.'

Again Darcy nodded. 'And when he and Trevor couldn't get through to you, the real dead relayed their message, right?'

'Right,' said Harry. "They tried to spell it out for me, in stone, right there in my garden.'

Sandra shuddered. 'God, but I just might have defied Wellesley, Harry! I might have been there with you when he came after you. Also when They came after him!' She shook her head. 'I don't think I could bear it… to have seen those things.'

He reached out to clasp her hand across the table. 'They're not just things,' he said. They were living people, once. And now they're dead people. Why, most of the soil and sand and sky and sea oh or covering this entire planet was alive one time or another! It's the nature of things, and life's a stage we go through. But the dead think enough of me to transcend the natural order of things.'

'And transcending the natural makes them… supernatural?' This from Darcy.

'I suppose it does,' said Harry, turning his soulful eyes on him. 'But didn't we think of vampires as being supernatural, once upon a time?' And at last he allowed himself a genuine smile, however wan. 'You know, Darcy, for the head of E-Branch you're hellish sceptical! I mean, isn't this what it's always been about? Gadgets and ghosts? The physical and the metaphysical? The natural and the supernatural?'

'I'm not sceptical,' said Darcy, 'for I've seen too much for that. It's just that I like things sorted out, that's all.'

'And have I sorted things out for you?'

'I suppose you have. So… where do we go from here?'

'We go nowhere. We examine what we know, take a stab at what we don't know. And we try to prepare for what's coming. But frankly, if I were you two, I'd simply back right out of it.'

'What?' Darcy wondered if his hearing was all right.

'You and Sandra. You should climb right aboard the next flight for home, go back to E-Branch and utilize whatever powers are available to you from that end. We should play it like we played the Bodescu business: low-key, until we know what we're dealing with.'

Darcy shook his head. 'We're in it together. I can get the Branch jacked-up from right here. Maybe I'd better remind you: falling in harm's way isn't a habit of mine. My guardian angel? And anyway, what can you do on your own? Sandra was right, Harry. You're an ex-Necroscope. You don't have it any more. Where talents are concerned, you no longer figure. And as you yourself pointed out, what happened in Bonnyrig was entirely coincidentaclass="underline" the dead won't be there to help you out every time. So let's face it, of the three of us you're the weakest. It isn't that you don't need us, more that we don't need you.'