The Source by Brian Lumley

They’re no kind of footgear for this terrain,’ he said.

‘I know it now,’ Zek answered, ‘but I’d forgotten. Sunside is bad enough, but this pass is worse. And Starside is sheer hell. I had boots when I came here, like you. They don’t last. Your feet harden quickly, you’ll see, but some of these pebbles and rocks are sharp as knives.’

He gave her chocolate, which she almost snatched. ‘Maybe we should rest right here,’ he said.

‘Safe enough, with the sun on us,’ she answered, ‘but I’d prefer to keep moving. Since we can’t use the sphere, and we can’t stay Starside, it’s best we get back to Sunside as soon as we can.’ Her tone was ominous.

‘Any special reason?’ Jazz was sure he wouldn’t like the answer.

‘Lots of them,’ she told him, ‘and they all live back there.’ She nodded back the way they’d come.

‘Do you feel like telling me about – them?’ Jazz unhooked one of his kidney-packs; he knew it contained, among other things, a very basic first-aid kit. He took out gauze bandages, a tube of ointment, plasters. And as Zek talked he kneeled and carefully slipped the sandals off her feet, began to work on her wounds.

‘Them,’ she echoed him, making the word sound sour; and again a shudder ran through her. ‘The Wamphyri, do you mean? Oh, they’re the main problem, it’s true, but there are other things on Starside almost as bad. Did you see Agursky’s “pet”, the thing in the tank at Perchorsk?’

Jazz looked up, nodded. ‘I saw it. Telling you exactly what I saw would be a different matter!’ He tore off a strip of gauze, soaked it in water from his flask, gently wiped away the caked blood from her toes. She sighed her appreciation as he squeezed ointment from its tube and rubbed it into the splits under her toes and the pads of her feet.

‘That thing you saw was what happens when a vampire egg gets into a species of local fauna,’ she told him. She said it as simply as that, her voice quite neutral.

Jazz stopped working on her feet, looked her straight in the eye, slowly nodded. ‘A vampire egg, eh? That is what you said, isn’t it?’ She stared at him, obstinately, until he had to look away. ‘OK, a vampire egg,’ he shrugged, began wrapping her feet in gauze. ‘So you’re telling me that the Wamphyri are oviparous? They’re egg-layers, right?’

She shook her head, changed her mind and nodded. ‘Yes and no,’ she said. The Wamphyri are what happens when a vampire egg gets into a man – or a woman.’

Jazz put her sandals on. They’d been a little loose, tending to cause burns and blisters. Now they were tighter, stopping the feet from sliding about too much. ‘Is that better?’ he asked. He thought about what she’d just told him, decided to let her tell it all in her own time, her own way.

‘That feels good,’ she said. Thanks.’ She stood up, helped him get his packs hooked up, and they set off toward the sun again.

‘Listen,’ he said, when they were underway. ‘Why don’t I just listen and let you tell me everything that’s happened to you while you’ve been here? All you’ve seen, learned, everything you know. So far as I can tell we’ve got plenty of time on our hands. Vision’s good, and we don’t seem in any sort of immediate danger. The sun’s up ahead, and we have some good moonlight . . .’

‘Have we?’ Zek answered. Jazz craned his neck, looked at the moon. It had crossed the pass and already its rim touched the eastern peaks. A few more minutes and it would be gone. The planetary rotation period is incredibly slow,’ she began to explain. ‘But on the other hand the moon’s orbit is closer and much faster. A “day” here is about a week on Earth. Oh, and incidentally, this place is “Earth”. That’s what they call it. It isn’t our Earth, of course not, but it’s theirs. I thought it was strange at first, but then I thought: what else would they call it?

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