But only as it — that solitary life-line, one life-line — departed. Harry himself, Harry alone… without Penny!
Slowing from forty to thirty miles per hour while the bike yawed and his tyres found purchase, Harry remembered a vastly important rule: never try to read the future, for that can be a devious thing. But he had taken even this temporary deceleration into account, and even so the timing was still only a second, one tick of a clock. So what was wrong? The answer was simple: Penny was wrong.
Had she once obeyed him? Had she once obeyed his instructions to the letter? No, never! She might be in thrall to him, in love with him, fascinated by him, but she didn't go in fear of him. He was her lover, not her master. And in her innocence, Penny had been inquisitive and vulnerable.
'Don't open your eyes,' he'd said, but being Penny she had; opened them as they shot through the Möbius door into Perchorsk, opened them in time to see the glaring Cyclops-eye Gate looming where the bike skidded, fish-tailed and rocketed towards it. And seeing, 'knowing', they were going to crash, she'd reacted. Of course they were going to crash — crash right through — which was the whole plan and shouldn't be her concern. If time wasn't of the essence, he might have explained all of that to her.
All of which flashed across the Necroscope's mind in the split second that Penny screamed and let go of his waist to cover her eyes… and his rear suspension bucking like a bronco to absorb the shuddering of the steel plates… and just exactly like a bronco ass-hooking the gasping girl into an aerial somersault! In the next split second he ruptured the Gate's skin and shot through… but on his own, a thing alone. Or at best, with only Pete the Vampire Biker hanging on behind.
Shit! Pete's deadspeak howled in Harry's mind. Necroscope, you've lost your Pillion Pussy!
Harry saw it in his mirrors, looked out through the Gate's skin and watched Penny come down in dreadful slow-motion on to the plates of the disc. He saw the languid flash of lightning that stiffened her limbs to a crucifix, laced her hair and clothes with webs of blue fire and spun her body like a giant, coruscating Catherine-wheel. He saw the acid rain come down and the curtain of hissing vapour which at once went up; saw Penny turn wet and black and red, skittering like a flounder on her back where her skin peeled open or was eaten away; saw her rhumba roller-skated this way and that across the steel plates on vibrating molecules of her own boiling blood, like droplets of water flicked into a greasy, smoking-hot pan.
She'd been dead, of course, from the first flash of blue fire, and so felt nothing of it. But Harry did. He felt the absolute horror of it. And he sucked in his breath as at last the current glued her to the steel fish scales, where acid and fire both worked on her, turning her to ashes, tar, smoke and stink.
And… there was nothing he could do.
Not even Harry Keogh.
For he was through the Gate and no way back.
But there are certain mercies. Her single, silent, telepathic shriek had failed to reach him, for he'd already been over the threshold and into another world. Likewise her deadspeak; if she was using it now, it was shut out by the Gate…
The Necroscope wanted to die. Right here, right now, he could happily (unhappily?) die. But that wasn't the way of the Thing inside him. And Pete the Angel wasn't about to let it happen, either. Between them, they closed Harry down, turned him to ice, froze him out.
Lolling there emotionless, mindless, vacant in the saddle of the Screaming Eagle, he wasn't riding the bike any more but they were. And they rode it all the way to Starside…
When Harry recovered he was a full mile out on the boulder plain, seated on a rock beside the now silent Harley-Davidson. The big machine stood there, silvered by full moon and ghostly starlight. It had seemed awesome enough in a showroom on Earth, but here on Starside it was utterly (and literally) alien. The bike was alien, but Harry wasn't. Wamphyri, he belonged here.
A picture of Penny surfaced out of memory's scarlet swirl; he remembered, drew breath to howl and choked on it, then clenched his fists and closed his red eyes for long moments, until he'd driven her out of his mind for ever.
The effort left him limp as a wet rag, but it had to be done. Everything Penny had been — everything anyone had been — was a dimension away and entirely irretrievable. There was no going back, and no bringing her back.
Bad vibes, man, said Pete the biker, but quietly. What now, Harry? We done riding?
Harry stood up, straightened up, and looked around. It was sundown, and in the south there was no gold on the jagged peaks of the mountains. East lay the low, tumbled tumuli of shattered aeries, the fallen stacks of the Wamphyri. Only one remained intact: an ugly column of dark stone and grey bone more than a kilometre high. It was or had been the Lady Karen's, but that was a long time ago and Karen was dead now.
South west, up in the mountains, that was where The Dweller had his garden. The Dweller, yes: Harry Jr with his Travellers and trogs, all secure in the haven he'd built for them. Except… The Dweller was a vampire. And the battle with the Wamphyri lay four long years in Starside's past, so that Harry wondered: Is my son still ascendant, or has the vampire in him finally taken control?
His thoughts were deadspeak, of course. And Pete the Angel answered them: Whyn't we just go and see, man?
The last time I was here,' Harry told him, 'we argued, my son and I, and he gave me a hard time. But — ' and he shrugged, ' — I suppose he has to know sooner or later that I'm back, if he doesn't know it already.'
So let's go! Pete was eager to ride. Just climb aboard the old Screamin' Eagle and start 'er up, man.
But the Necroscope shook his head. 'I don't need the bike, Pete. Not any more.'
The ex-Angel was cast down. Hey, that's right. You got your own form of transport. But what about me?
Harry thought about it a while, then gave a wan smile. And it was a measure of his strength that he still had it in him to smile. Pete the biker read his deadspeak thoughts, of course, and whooped wildly. Necroscope, do you mean it? He was breathless with excitement.
'Sure,' said Harry. 'Why not?' And they got aboard the big bike.
They turned her around, found a good straight stretch of hard-packed, boulder-free earth, and took her up to a ton. And it was as if a primal beast bellowed in the starlit silence of Starside. Then, still howling a hundred and waving a tail of dust half a mile long, Harry conjured a Möbius door and they shot through, followed by a future-time door which they likewise crashed. And now they rode into the future with a great many blue and green and (Harry noted) even a few red life-lines. The blues were Travellers, the greens would be trogs, and the reds…
… Vampires? Pete picked the thought out of his mind.
Looks like it, said Harry, sighing.
But Pete only laughed like a crazy man. My kind of people! he yelled.
And on they rode, for a little while.
Until Harry said, Pete, here's where I get off.
You mean… she's all mine?
For ever and ever. And you needn't ever stop.
Pete didn't know how to thank him, so didn't try. Harry opened a past-time door, then paused a while before crossing the threshold and watched the big Harley rocketing away from him into the future. Eventually he heard the Angel's whooping cry come echoing back: Heee-haaaaaaaaaa! Well, at least Pete was happy now.