There he took a long deep swig from a hip flask of brandy, tossed the flask away. He tied a fifty-foot length of nylon cord to the neck of the waterproof bag, went back to the midnight river and exited the Mobius Continuum into the water at the required location. As the kit-bag sank he swam furiously for the cave of the sphere. Climbing back onto the ledge, he hauled in the kit-bag and quickly changed into warm clothes. The bag also contained a heavy, special-issue machine-gun, which he now checked against the possibility of damp or damage. Everything seemed OK.
Ahhh – ! He was aware of a concerted mental sighing as he stood on the ledge and paused to wonder if he’d forgotten anything. He comes and goes like a ghost! He has a deal of magic!
Harry smiled. ‘Oh, I’ve got some magic, all right,’ he agreed. ‘But as for being a ghost . . . I’m flesh and blood, and it’s you fellows who – ‘
Harry! said a different voice, a very frightened, very primitive, guttural, almost animal voice in his mind. Be careful, Harry Keogh. It’s dangerous to speak to the Wamphyri as you have spoken to them!
Harry found the speaker – a squat, dwarfish aboriginal creature – crouched in a cramped cavity apart from the others. A stalagmitic sheath had almost completely enveloped him, so that it seemed to Harry he conversed with what was very nearly a stone statue.
‘You’re not Wamphyri?’ he said.
Hah! The others were part amused, part outraged. Him – that! – Wamphyri? A trog, you fool!
Trog?’ Harry glanced from the trog to the others and back. ‘Oh, yes, I remember! I was told I might find a trog or two here. Travellers, too, perhaps?’
Travellers, too, Harry, said yet another voice, much more human. But it sounded very distant, that voice, very faint and fading. Alas, we don’t have the same durability as trogs and Wamphyri. I’m afraid we’re little more than memories now.
‘So, several sorts of people from the world beyond the Gate,’ Harry mused. ‘And none of you willing to help me, eh?’ He adjusted his goggles, tightened the strap of his weapon across his shoulder. ‘What, dead these thousands – or at least many hundreds – of years, you trogs and Travellers, and still the Wamphyri oppress you? I’d hoped to ask your advice.’
He looked up, gazed at the glaring white surface of the sphere. If he reached up a hand he could touch it.
Only ask it! Several Traveller voices spoke up. In our time we fought the Wamphyri. We staked them through their black hearts and burned them. But when they came to power, this is how they avenged themselves. Still, we have no regrets. So speak to us, Harry. We were not primitive, fearful trogs but men!
There was pride in their fading voices – then sudden panic as Harry stood on his toes, stretched a straining hand toward the surface of the glaring sphere where its huge globe bulged downward from the ceiling. HARRY -DON’T!
Too late – his hand had touched the sphere, broken the surface of its skin. He tried to snatch the hand back, which was about as much use as asking a hurled stone not to return to earth.
Harry heard the grim laughter of the Wamphyri, the groans of trogs and Travellers alike – felt himself grasped, drawn up, passed into the sphere. And in a moment the cave and gurgling river had disappeared from sight, and he floated up, up, weightless as a feather in a beam of white light, toward a different place –
– A different world!
21
The Dweller – The Problem at Perchorsk – In the Garden
Perhaps inspired by the reaction of the sphere-cave’s ossified inhabitants, Harry’s first reflex was to panic. Instinctively, he came close to conjuring – almost attempted to fashion – a Mobius door, and only just retreated from that action in time to avert a disaster. God alone knew where, or how, he would end up if he tried to use Mobius mathematics here, inside the grey hole!
And so he floated, drawn irresistibly upward – or passed – through the Gate; and almost before he knew it …