He avoided her glance. “I would use it, as a last resort, yes.”
“And leave him brain dead? A vegetable?”
“And leave us with his knowledge, everything!”
“Only as a last resort? You did say that you’d kill him.”
Tzonov was tired of this. “Get dressed, and quickly. Meet me in the control room.”
“Where are you going?” She followed him to the door.
“To check the security of this damned place. Then to talk to Trask, see if he knows anything about all of this—and how much. If it’s nothing, all well and good. And after that, we’ll just have to make sure that those two are the very last to know anything! Now get dressed. I fancy we’re going to be busy …”
Tzonov was right: from then on he, at least, was busy.
While Siggi dressed, he organized search parties to work their way through the various levels of the complex, each room and laboratory, every nook and cranny, from the Gate itself to the reception area. Then, as the search commenced, he spoke to and commended the efforts of the prowler-guard who had checked Nathan’s cell and found something suspicious in the way he lay there so motionless in his bed. Fetching the key from the control room, the guard had found Nathan’s pillows tucked under the blanket in a manner to resemble the human figure. But the door had been locked, so last night’s guard must still be in possession of the duplicate key. Without checking that last detail, the prowler-guard had then reported the mystery to Tzonov, but with some small trepidation. There could be a simple explanation, after all. What if the prisoner had been moved?
Tzonov’s admiration was boundless. But then—
He sent for Siggi’s guard from the previous night, and threatened and dressed the man down almost to the point of nervous collapse. Following which, when he’d cooled down a little, he had dispatched a man to check on Trask and Goodly: were they up and about yet? What was their itinerary for the day, et cetera—his way of finding out their physical and mental condition and perhaps discovering if they knew anything, and how much they knew. (But never a mention from his messenger to them with regard to the alien escapee.) And finally he had spoken to the two-man security guard at the main entrance, one at his post inside the massive doors, the other outside. Their reports corresponded precisely: between midnight and seven A.M. no one had either departed from or entered into the complex … at least, no unauthorized persons had done so.
But three supply vehicles had gone out about an hour ago: two heading east for the mainly derelict barracks and military airport at Beresovo, and the third to meet a train at Ukhta in the west …
When Siggi met Tzonov in the control room, he was looking sour. Tossing her a parka, he told her, “Put it on. The weather isn’t too good, and we’re going out.”
“Where to?” She pulled on the parka and took snow goggles from one of its pockets to replace her tinted glasses.
“I was hoping you could tell me,” Tzonov growled, leading the way from the control room to the entrance bay. “Let’s face it, you were with him long enough! Don’t you have any clues? Any idea at all where he might be heading?” Outside the open doors, a driver was ticking over the engine of his half-track vehicle, turning the grey morning atmosphere blue with shimmering diesel fumes. It was starting to snow.
She shook her head. “Are you sure he’s gone out? In this weather, and so far north? Even a trapper or one of the local lumberjacks would find it hard going on foot.”
“I’ve got teams of men searching every level, the entire complex,” Tzonov answered. “The first reports are already in. Not a trace of him, and I don’t think there’s going to be one. No, he has to be out here. I think he stowed away on a supply truck.”
Siggi’s throat was dry; her heart was hammering and she must control it, also her breathing. But was it really true? Was Nathan off and running? She hoped so; but if so, she had been the instrument of his release! Turkur must be right: she was a madwoman. God, but she must watch her thoughts and actions carefully now! “A supply truck? Surely the guards would have searched it?”
Tzonov snorted, his breath pluming where he climbed up beside the driver and helped Siggi up alongside. “There were three trucks,” he answered. “Two for Beresovo, one for Ukhta. They left before the escape was discovered. As for a search: What? And security around here as slack as hell? Even our own people have been bored to tears—but no more! Siggi, if we don’t find this alien, we’re in real trouble.”
“But why? And why do you continue to refer to him as an alien? Nathan’s as human as you or I, a human mind in a human … body. He’s no plague-bearer. And anyway, we will find him. Of course we will. To him, this is the alien world, and we’re the aliens. Where can he go? Who will give him shelter?” Even saying these things, asking these questions, she prayed that she was wrong. For her own sake as much as Nathan’s.
Tzonov glanced at her as the half-track revved up in a cloud of diesel exhaust gasses and started up the pass along the western flank of the ravine. “He has only two choices. If he came as a spy, he’s now seen as much as he needs to see—of Perchorsk, at least—and must try to get back to his own world. If he is the great telepath you believe him to be, he must know by now that there’s a second Gate, and its location. Heading for it, he’ll continue to gather information for his Wamphyri masters.” He paused, and then went on:
“That’s one scenario. But if he’s an outcast or runaway, an ‘illegal immigrant,’ as it were, then he can’t go back and so must try to hide, fit in with the people around him, merge into our society. Or with any other society that he can reach. That’s the danger, Siggi. And as you’re surely aware, borders and check posts don’t amount to much these days. People come and go as they will.”
“And we can’t simply let him do that?” (She wished they could.) “We can’t just let him go, and forget him?”
Now Tzonov’s glance was suspicious. “Have you lost your wits completely? Are you so easily besotted? He is most probably the son of Harry Keogh! The British will find him if we don’t. And they’ll discover and bring on whatever powers lie latent within him, for their own use! I mean, think about it. Can we afford for our enemies to be in control of another Necroscope? Can we afford that he might lead some British expedition back into his own world ahead of our plans? And just at a time when our country, under our intellectual and political guidance—and funded by the riches of a brand new world—is ready to reassert itself in world affairs? No, of course we can’t simply forget him.”
Siggi had known about Nathan’s “choices,” of course, and even knew which one he had made, but she wouldn’t tell Tzonov. Anything else the Russian wanted to know, but not that. And in any case, Nathan hadn’t told her everything, for which she was glad. What the eye can’t see, the mind won’t grieve.
So why was Tzonov heading west? Or was it just instinct? For it would seem that if he was right and Nathan had escaped in one of three trucks, then the fugitive was likely to be heading east. Two out of three would seem the better odds. But in fact Tzonov had probably guessed correctly. If Nathan had used his telepathy to read the destinations of those vehicles in the minds of their drivers, he would have stowed away in the one heading for Ukhta. Ukhta, Moscow, Kiev, and Romania, yes, and a cold and lonely two-thousand-mile journey between, before reaching the underground river that fed the once-blue Danube, the Dunarea, on its way to the Black Sea. Of course, because for Nathan there was no other choice but that he head for the Romanian Gate, his one route back to Sunside/Starside and Misha, the girl he’d left there in peril of her very life, or death, or undeath …
And now it was time that Siggi told something of these things, too, to Tzonov. It couldn’t hurt, not now that he was on the right track anyway and might soon recapture the fugitive. But as Siggi prepared herself to relate Nathan’s story:
“The trucks are equipped with radios,” Tzonov mused to himself, gloomily. “Here in this bloody wilderness, they need them. The drivers probably won’t
see another human being all along their routes, unless you would describe the local peasants as human beings! Out of the pass, it’s two hundred and fifty miles to Ukhta, and forest—and snow—all the way. They’ll see a broken-down cart or two, a tractor, the smoke of a logging camp. But if they were to break down, and then a storm came up … That’s why they need the radios.”
Siggi looked at him. “You’ve contacted them, from Perchorsk?”
He shook his head. “Siggi, this place is the arsehole of the world! Nothing works here. Contacted them? From the ravine, the complex? That’s a laugh. Have you seen the radio room? My God … talk about antiques! Also, there’s this weird interference, and the snow doesn’t help much. The operator got through partially, to the lead truck heading for Beresovo. Enough that the driver was able to clear himself, then stop and check the other vehicle. Which leaves only one: the one that climbed up through this pass an hour and twenty minutes ago.” He looked up at the wide jagged canyon of light overhead, the firs growing dark on the slopes. “He’s got a good start, our alien.”
“What will you do to him?” She had to speak up, almost shout as the driver dropped a gear to tackle a steep hairpin. Even so, her tone of voice had been unmistakable.
Tzonov’s gaze was penetrating, but she kept it out. “Oh, yes,” he said, nodding thoughtfully. “But this one really got to you, didn’t he, Siggi?” And before she could answer: “Perhaps you’d better tell me all about him, and about his world. His alien world first, I think.”
At least it would keep her mind busy, off other things. Things she really didn’t dare think about. And as the clatter of the engine and the clanking of linked tracks on the frozen metalled surface of the road died down a little, she started to tell it.
“Sunside and Starside,” she said. “The two halves of a world split down the middle by barrier mountains. Sunside is home to nomadic tribes, Gypsies, travelling folk, except they stopped travelling some twenty years ago after Harry Keogh and his Earth-born son, called The Dweller, destroyed the Wamphyri Lords of Starside. That’s as much as Nathan knew about it; he wasn’t even born then. But when he was a child of four a handful of vampires returned to Starside. He doesn’t know how or where from.
“Again they were destroyed, this time by ‘fires of hell’ that came roaring out of the hell-lands Gate! The other end of the Perchorsk Gate, Turkur. That’s what Travellers and the Wamphyri alike call that white-glowing, half-buried portal out on the Starside plain: the hell-lands Gate. Because their legends say it’s the gate to hell. And the hellfire that spewed out of it almost seventeen years ago? One of Viktor Luchov’s Tokarev missiles? It had to be. A nuclear hell, yes, that was spawned right here in Perchorsk. That was the end of the Wamphyri, or so it seemed. And Nathan grew up on Sunside.
“About the Travellers—”
“—Wait!” Tzonov stopped her. “Let’s see to this first. And you can help.”
They were at the top, the apex of the saddle which formed the Perchorsk Pass. Below them, the ravine was misty in Urals daylight shaded grey from the steady fall of large, soft snowflakes. The cloud ceiling was very nearly total, where only a stray beam of sunlight found its way through on the far southeastern horizon. They were lucky; even a moderate wind could easily turn this into a blizzard.
The driver had brought his vehicle to a clattering halt; he assisted them in turning back the tarpaulin on the back of the half-track and manhandling a Norwegian-built snowcat down the ramp of the extended tailgate.
“We’re going cross-country,” Tzonov explained. “Even with snow chains a truck is limited to forty kilometres per hour on roads such as these. And no snowploughs before Kozhva. Also, if my judgment of Perchorsk’s drivers in general is correct, this one will be stopping every hour or so for cheese and biscuits, black coffee from his Thermos, and a sip of vodka. And that’s not all, for I’m reliably informed that on this run they normally take a break in Kozhva—to chat with the village girls and post letters! Slack, as I believe I may have hinted previously.” His sarcasm was biting. “Damn everything! Even in this threatening weather I would have preferred to use the jet-copter, but it isn’t back from Moscow.”
He started up the snowcat and helped Siggi mount and belt up, then climbed aboard the wide leather saddle in front of her and fixed his own belt. “The half-track will wait here for us. If we’re not back by midday, the driver will go back down and take a meal, then return. We have fuel for two hundred miles, which is about right for a return trip to Kozhva. If we’re low I can refuel there. Cross-country, it’s only half the distance the truck will have to cover. With luck we’ll get into Kozhva half an hour to an hour ahead of our quarry. Meanwhile they’ll be trying to contact the driver by radio. Are you ready? Then we’ll get under way and you can continue with your story—or rather, with his story.”
The snowcat’s engine was quiet and very efficient; its skis cut the snow with a low hiss, like the outriggers of a trimaran slicing water, where it sped along the narrow white verge of the road down toward the foothills. When they were out of the mountains proper, Tzonov would turn off the road and head northwest for Kozhva through the forests, along the many miles of ruled-line logging tracks. The wraparound windshield gave excellent protection; Siggi was able to continue Nathan’s story without shouting.
She took up her description of the people of the world beyond the Gate. “The Travellers have very little of science as we know it. And what they do have is rudimentary, sufficient only to their needs. But like our own Gypsies they’re good at making signs, marking forest trails, leaving cryptic messages for others who may follow after. They might have had the beginnings of a technology at some time in their history, but the advent of the Wamphyri put an end to that. Any scientific advances they might have made have been defeated by the constant need to keep moving. Survival is their priority, not science. Now they’re five hundred to a thousand years behind us—in some ways.”
And before he could question what Siggi had told him so far, she continued: “So … no physics as such, but metaphysics? There seems to be a little of the Wamphyri in all of them. They’re not vampires, not even remotely, but there are degrees of what we might term … what, ‘tainted blood’? So that what the Wamphyri have in large measure, certain Travellers have inherited down the centuries but to a lesser degree.
“Occasionally a ‘mentalist’ or telepath will show up among them. Or one of them could be a precog like our Mr. Goodly, with fleeting visions of the future. Thus, just like Earth’s Romany, seers, stargazers, and palmists are not uncommon among them. It makes sense that in a world dominated by very real night fears, superstition should be so rife. But there again—and as you and I and all the world’s E-Branches are surely aware—parapsychology is not superstition. And neither are the Wamphyri!
“There are degrees of vampire, of which the Wamphyri are the ultimate form. But in all their shapes and forms they can only exist on Starside, away from the sunlight. From there they raid on Sunside during its long nights, taking … food, and captives, back across the barrier range into the shadows of the mountains before … before the sunrise …”
Here Siggi lapsed into a reflective silence, causing Tzonov to inquire, “Well?”
“Um?” She gave herself a shake, which was more a shudder. “Oh, yes! Well, Nathan told me a great deal about the Wamphyri. And also that you would be a fool to ignore his warning: which is that only a lunatic would attempt to invade Wamphyri territory. He knows our plans, do you see? Plucked from your mind while you were trying to read his!”
“Huh!” Tzonov grunted. “A ‘taint’ of the Wamphyri, do you suppose? Or something he got from his father?”
Despite that Tzonov wasn’t able to see her, Siggi shook her head. “Nathan knows nothing about that. Or rather, he knew nothing about it, not for certain, until he read it in Trask’s mind. As far as he was concerned his father was Szgany, a Traveller called Hzak Kiklu, who was fatally wounded by a Wamphyri weapon before Nathan was bor
n. He did have certain suspicions, though, which our various thoughts have confirmed. But it does seem to be a pure coincidence that he is the one who has come through the Gate.”
“And how did that come about?”
“It seems to have been his punishment for something, some crime which he couldn’t quite specify. But a crime against the Wamphyri! And so he was cast out of his own world into hell—into the hell-lands Gate—from which no one has ever returned.”
“Well, that’s true enough,” Tzonov answered. “Except for the other Gate in Romania, it’s a one-way system. So … tell me more about the Wamphyri. Why do you hesitate?”
Because you can’t see in my mind what I saw in his. Nor will you ever, because I’m not going to let you into my mind again. And if you could see what Nathan showed me, then you wouldn’t want to see it! But out loud she only said, “Because it’s gruesome.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“Very well …” She decided not to elaborate, and after a moment:
“The contagious bite of the vampire is rarely fatal; on the contrary, for after the—what, transfusion?—the victim’s blood mutates and his longevity is assured. Or it would be if he were left to develop to his full. But as a fledgling vampire he’s now a thrall, in thrall to whichever monster occasioned the change in him. And of course, once a man is taken by the plague he can’t stay on Sunside but must make his way to the safety of Starside and the aerie of his master.
“In Starside, as a thrall, his fate could be one of many, none of them pleasant. His flesh, blood, even his bones could be required for the ‘provisioning’ of the aerie. Drained of all life-sustaining fluids and truly dead, his body could be dried out, ground down, and mixed with coarse grains as an ingredient of the meal which the Wamphyri Lords feed to their flyers, warriors, and other creatures.