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. All 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!