“Good God!” said Trask. But Scott—with that strange look in his eyes again—shook his head and said:
“No, God can do it even faster.” Then turning to Shania he said, We have to try the Möbius Continuum.
And unheard by the others, Shania’s Khiff said, I approve, for it appears we must. And as for myself, why not? I no longer have anything to lose. Scott, I will go with you.
Wolf came limping. Me, too, he said. For without me—
“I know,” said Scott. “We could never find the way.”
It’s this nose of mine, said Wolf. Yes, and my directions. This Gelka person touched me—she hurt me—and I shall always know her scent. Wherever she goes and no matter how far, I will always be able to find her. And lifting his muzzle to sniff the air, he went on: Even now, I know where she is!
Almost as one, Paul Garvey and Millicent Cleary looked at the animal, frowned, and said, “What is he talking about?” And: “Is someone shielding his or herself? What’s going on here?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Scott said. “And don’t worry about what happens next.” Turning to Shania, he clasped her and said, “We have to do this, and you have to let her go.”
“My Khiff!” she said, her eyes filming where tears formed. And in desperation, to her Khiff: But the numbers and formulae: you said you couldn’t remember them. At least you weren’t sure!
I have been practicing, said her Khiff, emerging from the hollow of her slender neck and transferring to Scott. I believe I remember them now.
And if you don’t?
“Then what does it matter?” said Scott. “Shania, it isn’t as if we have a choice.”
She clung to him. “But even if you should find her vessel, and if you can get inside it, what then? She has the touch!”
And so do I, said a very different, deadspeak voice that, despite that it spoke to Scott alone, Shania heard “echoing” in his metaphysical mind: the voice of the single remaining member of the dead from the cryogenic level, a girl whose leather and bone legs had fragmented, broken away below the knees, causing her to crawl. I have their monstrous touch! she said again. Or if not the Shing’t touch, something very much like it. That is why I held on here when the others let go, because I believe I can offer yet more help. Now tell me, Necroscope: do you remember the beast-thing who tortured me?
“Oh, yes,” said Scott, grimly. “I’ll never forget him! In fact, I can’t wait to see him again.”
Crawling closer as Trask and his people backed off—then rearing to her knees, clutching Scott’s hand for support—the dead girl managed a nod and said, But when he touched me again it didn’t work. The power that called me up—your power—is superior to his and his touch came close to rebounding on him! Alas, because I am slow-moving he was able to make his escape. But as for this dreadful Gelka creature, if or when I confront her in her vessel . . . where can she run?
As Scott took the girl up she wrapped her bony arms around his neck; which caused Trask—despite that he knew more than most about the Necroscope’s powers—almost to gag as he said, “Can someone tell me what the hell is happening here? And what was that . . . that thing I saw passing between the two of you?” He looked from Shania to Scott and back again.
Scott took no notice. He could smell the girl; a very dry and musty smell, but one that he didn’t find at all offensive. Indeed there was a definite familiarity about it, as if he (or someone else?) had known that smell before, and frequently.
But Shania told Trask, “What you saw wasn’t a ‘thing,’ Mr. Trask. It was a life-form—a familiar creature, if you wish—that has lived in me since I was a small child. And she is our very last chance.”
She turned to Scott. “I want to go with you!”
“No.” He shook his head. “What good would that do? You’ve got your work to do here. It’s our work that’s out there.”
“But—”
“Our time has run out,” said Scott. “So if we’re going at all it has to be right now.” He sensed that Shania’s Khiff had already set the thing in motion; and as he shrugged the flamethrower’s strap from his shoulder and put the weapon down, then stooped to grab up Wolf, so Möbius’s incredible, evolving math began to scroll up the dual screen of his and the Khiff’s metaphysical minds. Mutating symbols, equations, esoteric formulae flowing and fluxing, until suddenly Scott recognized a certain pattern.
Stop! he said. But no need, for Shania’s Khiff had seen it, too. And a Möbius door formed out of nowhere!
My Scott, said the Khiff. Is this the one, do you think? Is this the door we need?
“Only one way to find out,” said Scott. And Shania, Trask, and his E-Branch team saw him take a single tentative step forward, and disappear as if he’d never been there at all . . .
In the Möbius Continuum they spun head over heels, but only for a moment, until Scott steadied them up. For he knew how; it was as if he had always known how, and for him there was nothing to fear in this place.
But Wolf’s yelp was deafening!
Don’t do that, said Scott. Don’t be afraid, and don’t bark or howl. For even thoughts have weight in the Möbius Continuum, and a shout or a bark is like a bomb going off!
But . . . where are we? said Wolf, and Scott felt the beginnings of a small, bewildered whimper.
Anywhere we want to be, he replied. But we only want to be where Gelka Mordri is. Now tell me, can you find her?
First I must find my . . . my directions, said the other, as his unique mind settled to analysing and aligning alien orientations. But then: Ah, yes! he said, “pointing” in Scott’s mind. She is that way, but such a very, very long way!
Then that’s the way we’re going, said Scott as he set them in motion. And no matter how far, it makes not the least bit of difference . . .
In Schloss Zonigen, Trask asked Shania, “What now?”
“Now we wait,” she answered. “But we won’t wait for long. Minutes, at best—or worst. And meanwhile I must work.”
As she went to seek out more of the wounded, Alan McGrath came running. “That trench back there, where it’s issuin’ this beam: it’s full o’ gold! Molten gold! But the gold is changin’. Even through that green glow you can see small patches of grey ash formin’.
Hearing him, Shania looked back from where she assisted a wounded man who had come staggering, gasping, bleeding from the artificial mouth he had cut himself. It was Hans Niewohner, who now gave himself up to Shania’s ministrations so that she could lay her healing hands on him. And she called out, “Mr. McGrath, Ben Trask, the process of transmutation, from gold into energy, is slow right now because it powers Gelka at her current speed. But after she initiates a more powerful gravity wave, then the gold will be consumed that much faster. In other words—”
“Mr. Goodly’s Big Bang,” said Trask.
“Yes,” Shania answered, “which either occurs here or—if Scott is successful—far out in space at Gelka’s location. We must hope for the latter.” And she continued with her work.
“Well then, let’s do more than just hope,” Trask muttered, leading his agents toward the poisonous-looking, pulsating glow from the trench. “In fact, it might be a good idea if we were to start praying . . .”
Out in deep space, more than twenty-five billion miles from the rim of the planetary solar system, Mordri One’s vessel had come to a halt. At its rear, a seemingly solid beam or tube of white light reached all the way back to the cavern in Schloss Zonigen. Seated at a monitor screen, Gelka Mordri watched the countdown, one hundred to zero, to the optimum moment when she would issue the vocal command to trigger Earth’s demise. Mere moments after that her ship would automatically drop into a gravity sublevel and hook up on the wave emanating from what had been the innermost planets of the solar system.
But outside the ship, stationary now in the Möbius Continuum: This is the place, said Shania’s Khiff. I sense her Khiff, very close and very erratic, insane, bent once again on murder. The death of an en
tire world. But in order to fix Gelka’s precise location—
She transferred from Scott to Wolf, becoming one with his mind, and said, Ahhh! Now we have her!
Another transference, but this time to the dead girl. And: We go, said Shania’s Khiff.
I’m sorry it ends like this, said Scott, with his emotions—his feelings, for an utterly alien being—wrenching at his insides. But:
Perhaps it doesn’t end like this, said Shania’s Khiff. Who can say? Perhaps there’s life after death even for my kind. For after all, Necroscope, you’ve proved that it’s so for your kind. And now farewell. Take care of Shania and be her One always.
Then conjuring a door of her own, and taking the dead girl with her, the Khiff transferred to Gelka’s vessel . . .
The changing Shing’t numerals on Mordri One’s monitor screen had counted themselves down to thirty when suddenly she felt a waft of disturbed air and sensed a presence. There on her left in the cramped ship’s interior, in a curved chair that should have been Guyler Schweitzer’s—
—Was something she just couldn’t believe!
“Gah!” she said, throwing up a claw-like hand as the dead girl reached for her. And their hands—claw and fretted paw alike—met.
It was Gelka’s immediate instinct to apply the touch with all the force she could muster . . . a deadly touch, and a fatal instinct. For no sooner was the power flowing from her than it reversed and flowed back into her—but with redoubled, trebled, and even quadrupled force. And:
“Gah!” she said again, as the irreversible change commenced. Her stick-thin arms shrivelled and her spindly legs began to bend sideways and up from the hips, tearing open her kaftan. As she sank deeper in her chair, her over-long neck concertinaed and her head shrank down; while in her nether parts she gaped open as if she were giving birth, her flesh curling up on her to expose inner organs that dangled like the weird appendages on a crimson nudibranch . . . one of which was not so much an organ as a hideously altered Khiff, a shuddering, poisonous blob that collapsed into loathsome liquescence even as the dead girl’s jaws cracked open to smile an awful, vengeful smile.
Thus, in mere seconds, Gelka’s evagination was complete, and she was left a gory, dripping, truly alien cucumber thing as finally the inverted flesh closed over her head.
Lolling there in her curved seat she quivered helplessly, utterly incapable of issuing any destruct command, and the timing on her monitor screen was down to ten.
Now you can go, Necroscope, said the dead girl in Scott’s mind.
But what of you? Scott asked of Shania’s Khiff.
In your world and without the localizer I would only feel myself fading away, said that one. That would be painful for my Shania. Here I’ll feel nothing at all. So here is better, where I shall abide with my new friend.
Go now! said the dead girl.
And of course Wolf knew the way home . . .
In the Möbius Continuum:
Scott and Wolf felt their motion brought to a halt. What? said Scott. For even Harry Keogh in his time had known nothing like this. Then, out of the timeless nothingness of the Continuum, a dozen, a hundred, ten thousand golden darts sprang into existence. And Scott (or something in him) said, You’re just a little too late. It’s over. And anyway what kept you? What? So many of you, and you couldn’t get here on time?
Thousands of us, yes, one of them answered him. The smallest handful of our kind. But in this universe alone our worlds number billions, and the parallel places are countless! Anyway, we haven’t come to help you. Only to clean up after you. So now go home. You still have work to do, and then we’ll do ours . . .
In the cavern in Schloss Zonigen the gold in the trench turned to ashes. It happened in a moment: a complete collapse of elements, a transmutation of metal into raw energy.
The pulsating green glare switched itself off; the beam of light from the trench contracted, gave the illusion of shooting up through the gaping hole in the ceiling, and was gone. Normal daylight flooded down from the same hole, finding Trask and his E-Branch agents wincing and holding their breath as one person. Until Shania, in the smallest possible voice, said, “We win!”
And from behind them where they stood at the edge of the trench, Scott St. John said grimly, “Only one thing left to do. But where is he?”
You had better ask me, said Wolf as Scott put him down. My jaw is still aching from the jolt his device gave me. But I have his scent and he’s not very far away. Not very far at all.
Scott nodded, and with Wolf loping at his side went to recover the flamethrower from where he had left it . . .
In the cryogenics tunnel, Simon Salcombe frothed and gibbered. He had thought to threaten the frozen ones—use the touch to bring them back to a hideous half-life, offer them hope of last resort with lies and promises he could never keep. They were to have been his personal bodyguards, protecting him from whatever threats the future might bring. Except . . . their bitter coffins were open, empty, and there was no one here.
Searching the full length of the icy, glittering tunnel—from its root in the heart of Schloss Zonigen to its mouth that gaped high in the precipitous face of the crag—Mordri Two had scrabbled among the cryogenic units, desperate to find the dead people who he and his Mordri colleagues had so often tormented. But no more.
Now he stood on the rim of the cave with nothing out there but a brand-new day, a risen sun and rising breeze, and a dizzy drop to the scree thousands of feet below. Alone of his kind in this place and afraid now, he communed with his familiar creature: My Khiff: what can I do?
Flee, my Mordri! said that one. You must flee this place, and at once! Salcombe’s rage flared up anew, because his Khiff, with its useless advice, appeared to be laughing at him!
Do you mock me? he said. What is it that so amuses you?
Why, your fear, my Mordri! Your terror, which feeds me. I enjoy it as much as anyone else’s!
You mad thing! Salcombe cried. You advise me to flee, but there’s nowhere to go!
Then stay here. I like it here, where I can drink in your nightmares for ever and always—or perhaps not for always—for see . . . even now another nightmare approaches!
Hearing the hum and throb of an electric motor, Salcombe looked back along the tunnel to where an open car had arrived at the end of the track. In its prow stood a man, and Salcombe recognized him from the central cavern. This was the one Gelka Mordri had been afraid of, the one she had run from, the POWER she had told him to confront. He was carrying his fire weapon. And now the man—along with a wicked-looking grey quadruped—now they were stepping down from the car and coming toward him, coming for him.
Scott triggered the pilot light on his weapon and called, “Simon Salcombe, it’s the end of the road for you.”
Salcombe showed his sharp fish teeth in a snarl, crouched down, and came unsteadily forward. Emerging from his ear onto a narrow shoulder, his Khiff told him: It is time I took my leave of you, for now I spy another mind to madden.
Ungrateful thing! said Salcombe. And to Scott, “Why do you do this? What have I done to you?” A delaying tactic, for still he crept forward.
Scott, too, pacing inexorably forward, and answering, “You murdered a woman in London, England. Her name was Kelly—Kelly St. John.”
“Ah, the reporter bitch!” Salcombe cried. “I remember her. But what was she to you?” He made as if to spring; likewise his familiar creature, bunching itself on his shoulder.
“She was my wife!” Scott choked the words out, and without pause triggered his flamethrower.
A shimmering lance roared out and in a single moment half melted Mordri Two’s insubstantial, suddenly shrieking Khiff to his shoulder. Trying frantically to reenter Salcombe, the creature oozed its seared, bubbling mass back in through his right ear—which caused him yet more excruciating agony! And hosing Salcombe head to toe with a near solid jet of heat, Scott grimaced as the stink of roasting flesh hit him. It was so terrible that he might even have re
lented—but in his mind: An eye for an eye, Scott, someone or thing said, and so he kept his finger on the trigger.
Simon Salcombe’s kaftan had gone up in flames. His pallid skin was blackening, crisping, beginning to peel from him. And backing off, dancing like a fiery puppet—with his thin knees jerking high and his pipestem arms beating in vain at the fire that consumed him so mercilessly—in another moment he skittered on the rim of the abyss.
His Khiff came blundering out of him through his right eye and forced the eyeball out with it. Sightless, seared, the dislocated orb hung there for a moment before melting like candle wax and running down his cheek along with the liquefied Khiff.
Utterly relentless now, Scott applied yet more pressure to the trigger. And over the edge Salcombe went: a shrieking fireball pin-wheeling down the face of the cliff, flying apart into several flaming pieces as they spun and bounded from one jagged outcrop to the next, all the way down.
And finally it was done.
Then Scott released the trigger, letting the flamethrower fall to the floor. And apart from himself and Wolf, it was the only warm thing in the entire ice tunnel . . .
Meanwhile in Schloss Zonigen and elsewhere, indeed in a great many places, a host of—but of what? Forces, powers, superior intelligences? Golden darts? God’s little helpers? But in any case a host—had commenced putting the finishing touches to what must be put right lest the world have cause to believe in an utterly hostile universe; which runs contrary to the facts. For the Mordris were the exceptions that prove the rule, and fear of strangers and the unknown is the fuel that drives the wheels of war . . .
EPILOGUE
In the central cavern, assisted by Trask and his people, Shania had done all she could of ministering to the physically and mentally wounded. Now she stood aside with Trask and the precog Ian Goodly and waited on Scott’s return.
It was obvious from Trask’s drawn features, however, that he was still very uncertain about what was happening here. And turning to the precog he said, “You know, I still can’t work it out? What I mean is: you are what you are, and you do you what you do, and you’ve never once been wrong, not that I can remember. Oh, the future has played its weird tricks on you—or on us—but the outcome is always as close as never mind to your predictions. Yet this time you predicted a Big Bang, and—”