Clarke shuddered. 'I saw many . . . things. I smelled them, too.' He sho ok his head, as if to clear it of unbearable memories, and pulled himself to gether. 'So what's your problem, Norman? OK, so during your time here we've mainly been dealing with mundane stuff. Well, that is what we deal with, mai nly. As for what Harry Keogh, Gormley, Kyle and all the others came up again st that time . . . just hope and pray it's all done with, that's all.'

Still Wellesley seemed unconvinced. 'It couldn't have been ma.s.s hypnotis m, ma.s.s illusion, some kind of trick or fraud?' Again Clarke shook his head. 'I have this defence-mechanism thing, reme mber? You might be able to fool me but not it. It only gets scared when the re's something there to be scared of. It doesn't run away from harmless ill usions, only from real dangers. But it sure as h.e.l.l propels me away from de ad people and undead people and things that would chew my f.u.c.king head off!

For a moment Wellesley seemed lost for an answer to that. Eventually he said: 'Would it surprise you to know that I was totally unaware of my own ta lent? All ray life, I mean, until I applied for a job here?' (This was a lie , but Clarke couldn't know it.) 'I mean, how does one know when one has a ne gative talent? If it was common everyday practice for people to read other p eople's minds, then I'd be a freak, the odd man out who couldn't do it and c ouldn't have it done to him. But it isn't common practice and so I had no me asure for it. I only knew - or thought - that I had an interest in parapsych ology, the metaphysical. Which is why I mistakenly put in for a transfer her e. And then you people checked me out for suitability and discovered I kept my mind in a safe.'

Clarke looked puzzled. 'What are you trying to say?'

'I'm not sure myself. I suppose I'm trying to explain why, as the head o f E-Branch, I have so much difficulty believing in what we're doing! And whe n you confront me with the reality of someone like Harry Keogh . . . Well, I mean, parapsychology is one thing, but this is supernatural!'

Clarke grinned one of his rare grins. 'So you're human after all,' he sa id. 'Did you think you were alone in your confusion? Why, there's not a man or woman ever worked here who hasn't known the same doubts. If I had a pound for every time I've thought about it - its ambiguities, inconsistencies and head-on contradictions - h.e.l.l, I'd be rich! What, an outfit as weird as thi s is? Robots and romantics? Super-science and the supernatural? Telemetry an d telepathy? Computerized probability patterns and precognition? Spy-satelli tes and scryers? Of course you're confused. Who isn't? But that's what it's all about: gadgets and ghosts!'

Wellesley was a little happier. He'd managed to get Clarke on his side fo r once. And with what he had in mind, that's where he had to have him. 'And t eleportation?' he said. 'Was that one of Keogh's talents, too?'

Clarke nodded. "That's what we'd call it,' he said, 'but it wasn't like that to Harry. He simply used doors no one else knew were there. He'd step i n a door here and . . . come out somewhere else. Just about anywhere else. W hen I wanted to recruit him in on the Perchorsk business, I went up to Edinb urgh to see him. He said OK, he'd take a chance if I would. That is, if he w as going up against the unknown, he wanted me to taste a little of it too. A nd he brought me back here through a thing he calls the Mobius Continuum. It was quite something, but nothing I'd ever want to do again.' Wellesley sighed again and said: 'I think you're right. If he got his talent s back, we'd have to offer him my job. You'd like that, right?'

Clarke shrugged.

'Don't be coy, Darcy,' Wellesley nodded, knowingly. 'It's plain as day.

You'd rather have him - or anyone - as your boss than me. But what you don't seem to realize is that I'm all for it! I don't understand you or the peopl e who work here and I don't suppose I ever will. I want out, but I know our Minister Responsible won't let me go until there's someone to replace me. Yo u? No, because that would make it look like they made a mistake replacing yo u in the first place. But Harry Keogh . . .'

'Harry's had the best help we can give him,' Clarke said. 'We've hypno tized him, psychoa.n.a.lysed him, d.a.m.n near brainwashed him. But it's gone. S o what can you do for him?'

'It's more what we can do for him, Darcy.'

'Goon.'

'Last night I had a long talk with the Markham girl up in Edinburgh, and - '.

'If there's one part of this that I really hate,' Clarke heatedly cut in, 'it's t hat we've done this to him!'

' - And she advised me to speak to David Bettley,' Wellesley continued, unperturbed, 'because she's worried about Keogh. Can you understand that?

She does have genuine feelings for him. It may be just a job but she is wor ried about him. Or maybe you think he'd be better off on his own? Well, whi chever, she satisfies two needs: one in Keogh, and one in us. The need to k now what's on his mind.'

'The tender art of the mindspy!' Clarke snorted.

'So I took her advice and spoke to Bettley. I got him out of bed to ans wer his telephone. I would have contacted him anyway, about some of his mos t recent reports and recordings; because in them he's given me cause to bel ieve that Keogh is (a) about to develop some strange new talent, or (b) he'

s on the point of cracking up. Anyway, in the course of our conversation Be ttley mentioned how Keogh first discovered this, er, Mobius thing - ?'

'The Mobius Continuum.'

' - Correct. He'd apparently been on the verge of it but needed a spur.

Which came when the East German GREPO found him talking to Mobius in a Lei pzig graveyard. That did it, triggered his mathematical genius. He teleport ed - or used the Continuum - to escape from them. That's why I have his fil e here: I wanted to check that I had it right. And it's also why I'm double -checking with you.'

'So?'

"The way I see it,' Wellesley continued, 'Keogh's like a computer that's s uffered a power failure: the information he requires - and which E-Branch wants to use - is no longer accessible to him. Oh, it's probably still in there bu t it's jammed in limbo. And so far we haven't been able to shake it loose.'

'What do you propose?'

'Well, I'm still working on it. But the way I see it, if we apply just the right spur . . . with a bit of luck it could be Leipzig all over again. You s ee, Keogh has been having some bad dreams lately; and if what you say of him i s true - oh, I don't doubt it, but nevertheless if - then any dream awful enou gh to frighten him must be really bad. But perhaps not quite bad enough, eh?'

'You want to scare him silly?'

'I want to scare him almost to death. So close to death that he escapes i nto the Mobius Continuum!'

Clarke sat still and silent for long moments, until eventually Wellesley l eaned forward and quietly said: 'Well, what do you think?'

'My honest opinion?'

'Of course.'

'I think it stinks. Also, I think that if you plan to fool with Keogh you'd better take out extra insurance. And finally I think that it had better work, because if it doesn't I'm up and gone. When this is finished, no matter how it works out, I won't be able to work with you any longer.'

Wellesley smiled thinly. 'But you do want me out of here, right? And so y ou won't. . . hinder me?'

'No, in fact I insist on being part of it. That way I can be sure that if Har ry has any breaks coming, he'll get them.'

Wellesley continued to smile. Oh, he'll get his breaks, all right, he thoug ht. Broken all the way through, in fact!

And he was one of only a handful of men in the entire world who could t hink such things - especially here in E-Branch HQ - and be certain that no one could hear him doing it.

6.

Sandra

Sandra Markham was twenty-seven, possessed a beautiful face and figure, and was a neophyte telepath. As yet her talent was a fifty-fifty thing; she had very little control over it; it came and went. But where Harry Keogh was concerned, that might be just as well. Sometimes, in Harry's mind, she'd re ad things she was sure had no right to be there - or in any sane mind, for t hat matter.

She and Harry had made love only an hour ago, and afterwards he had at once fallen asleep. Sandra had come to know Harry's habits well enough: he'

d stay asleep for three or four hours, which for him would serve as a full night's rest. As for Sandra: she would have to sleep tomorrow, at her own p lace in Edinburgh, making up the night's deficiency.

Staring right into Harry's pale, relaxed, almost little-boyish face, she saw no sign as yet of the rapid eye movements which would tell her that he was dreaming. So for now she too could relax. It was Harry's dreams which mo st interested her. That was what she tried to keep telling herself, anyway.

She worked for E-Branch. Sometimes she wished she didn't, but she did. Th at was how she earned her daily bread (the meat and gravy, too), so she reall y shouldn't complain. And in fact there hadn't been too much to complain abou t, until Harry came along. At first he'd been just another job - a new friend to get close to, learn about and try to understand - but then she'd got in d eeper. It had 'just happened', and afterwards she'd wanted it to happen again , and again. Until in a little while he wasn't just a job but more a way of l ife, not only 'on her mind', as it were, but under her skin as well. And fina lly she'd started to suppose, and still did, that she was in love with him.

Certainly working on Harry's case (she hated thinking of it like that, b ut it was the truth however she dressed it up) had been more interesting tha n being a human divining rod on cases the police couldn't solve. That was ho w E-Branch used her, usually: to eavesdrop criminal minds - the minds of pri soners in their cells, too tough for the law to crack - looking for those da mning clues which more orthodox methods couldn't turn up. Which would be sat isfying enough work in itself, if only she didn't actually have to go in the re. Because minds like those were often cesspools, which frequently left her knowing how sewers smell. And sometimes, especially if it was a brutal murd er or rape, the smell could linger for a long, long time.

Which was probably the reason she'd fallen in love with Harry Keogh. Bec ause his mind was a field of daisies . . . most of the time. In fact he had the gentlest mind she'd ever come across: not soft, no way! Not even naive, though there was something of that in him too, but just ... just gentle. Har ry wouldn't much like hurting anything, or anybody. With Sandra's looks it would be strange if there had been no men. Ther e had been men, a few. But her talent wasn't something she could just swit ch on and off. Indeed that was its one big drawback: without so much as a by your leave, it came and went. Tonight a man would wine and dine you, ta ke you home and kiss your hand on your doorstep, and ask to see you again.

And as you were about to say yes his mind would open like a book and you would see him in there like some great rutting satyr - and you'd be in the re with him. Not all men, no, but enough.

But that wasn't all; there was also the deceit; the fact that people lie . Like the neighbour in the flat next door who smiles and says, 'Good mornin g,' to you on the stairs, when she's actually thinking: p.i.s.s off and die, yo u ugly b.i.t.c.h! Or the hairdresser who makes small talk while he does your hai r, and you suddenly hear him thinking: G.o.d, they pay me nine pounds an hour for this! She must have more money than sense, the stupid cow!

Oh, there had been men, all right. The good-looking ones who only worri ed how they looked. And the not-so-good lookers whose minds seethed with je alousy if anyone else even smiled at you. And then, having got safely throu gh an entire week of evenings with a 'perfect' companion, to have him make love to you and lie there beside you in your bed, wondering if he'll have t ime for another and still catch the last bus home.

It was life and Sandra knew it, and she'd learned to live with it ever sin ce her middle teens when the thing had first started to develop in her. But it hadn't left much room for 'love'. Not until Harry, anyway.

He was such ... an anomaly.

She'd read his file, as well as his mind. He had killed men, a great ma ny. That's what it said in his file. But it didn't say he remembered and re gretted almost every one of them, or how every now and then he'd get the ur ge to go back and tell them he was sorry, but really he'd had no choice. It didn't say he still had nightmares about some of the things he'd seen and done. And anyway, Sandra really couldn't believe half of the things credite d (credited? Or better perhaps, ascribed?) to him. Her own talent was paran ormal, yes, but what Harry could do - what he'd used to do - was supernatur al. And he'd used his powers the best way he knew how. He had killed many m en with them, but he'd never murdered a one.

Sandra knew how murderers thought, and they didn't think like Harry Keog h. Their thoughts were deep and dark as red wine, but tumbled as a rough sea , and full of shoals and eddies; while his were clear spring water over roun ded pebbles. Oh, his mind could be sharp, too; there were plenty of daggers in there, if you gave him cause to whet them; but they were clearly visible at all times, not hidden away, neither afraid of themselves nor of detection . No, there were no dark corners or mean streets in Harry's mind. Or if ther e were, he wasn't the one to dwell on or in them. And in that same moment, lying there beside him, Sandra knew how she'd defined him. He was, could only be, one of two things: either completely amoral, or naturally innocent. And since she knew there was no lack of mor ality, that made him an innocent. A b.l.o.o.d.y innocent, but nevertheless blam eless. A child with blood on his hands and on his conscience and in his ni ghtmares, which he had chosen to keep to himself except when they were unb earable, when he went to Bettley. Well, she wasn't sure what that made Bet tley - a Judas-priest? A father confessor who told? - but she couldn't be happy with what it made her. And the most terrible thing of all, she belie ved he half-suspected. Which would explain why he was never completely at his ease with her, and why he couldn't seem to enjoy her the way she wante d him to, the way she enjoyed him. Christ, to have found a man like Harry, only to discover that of all men he was the one she probably couldn't hav e! Not the way she wanted him, anyway.

Suddenly angry with herself - wanting to throw off all the covers and l eap out of bed, but caring enough that she wouldn't disturb him - she caref ully removed his hand from where it lay draped diagonally across her and sl id sideways out from between the sheets. And naked she went to the bathroom.

She was neither warm nor cold nor thirsty, but she felt she had to do s omething. Something ordinary, to herself, to change herself physically. And that way perhaps to change her mood, too. In the daytime it would be the s implest thing: she would walk to the park and watch the smallest children a t play, and know that something of their worlds of faerie would soon find i ts way into her own far less Elysian existence. And when that thought came, she knew for certain that for someone who was usually so positive, she mus t now be feeling pretty d.a.m.ned negative. That she should need someone else'

s innocence to balance the weight of her own guilt.

She drank a gla.s.s of water, splashed cold water up under her arms and b reasts where their lovemaking had made her perspire, towelled her flesh dry and examined herself critically in the long bathroom mirror.

Unlike Harry, there was little or no naivete in Sandra. There might be, e xcept for her telepathy. But it's hard to be naive or innocent in a world whe re people's minds are wont to flutter open like pages in a book, and you don'

t have the power to look away but must read what's written there. The other E -Branch telepaths - people like Trevor Jordan - were luckier in this respect; they were obliged to apply, channel their talent; it didn't just come and go for them, like a badly-tuned radio station.

Angry again, Sandra shook her head. There she went again: great waves of self-pity! What? Pity for herself? For this beautiful creature in the mirro r? And how often had she heard it broadcast, from so many of those stations out there: G.o.d, but what I'd give to be like her!

Ah, if only they knew! But how much worse if she'd been ugly . . . ?

She had large, greeny-blue, penetrating eyes over a small, tilted nose; a mouth she'd trained to be soft and uncynical; small ears almost lost in th e burnish of copper hair, and high cheek-bones curving down delicately to a rounded, rather self-conscious chin. Of course she was conscious of herself.

Other people were, and so she had to be.

Her right eyebrow, a slightly upward-tilted line of bronze, was question ing, almost challenging. As if she were saying: 'Go on - think it!' And some times she was.

Her smile was bright, rewarding, involuntary on those occasions when she detected complimentary thoughts. Or she might darken her high brow and narr ow her eyes to knife-point at some of the other things she 'heard'. At a gla nce, then, Sandra's face might well be mistaken for the face on the cover of any number of glossy, popular ladies' magazines. But on closer inspection i t would be seen that there were boundless tracts of character there, too. He r twenty-seven years had not left her unblemished; there were laughter lines in the corners of her eyes, yes, but other faint lines lay parallel and hor izontal on her brow, speaking volumes for the number of times she'd frowned.

She was grateful that the latter didn't detract from her looks overall.

As for the rest of her: But for two personal criticisms, Sandra's body would be near-perfect, or as close as she would wish it to be. She was too large 'up top', which gave h er a bouncing elasticity she was afraid might type-cast her, and her legs wer e far too long.

'Well, you might find those things a disadvantage,' Harry's voice came ba ck to her from a previous time, 'but I'm all for it!' He liked it when, in th eir lovemaking, she'd wrap her legs right round him; or when she let her brea sts dangle in his face, inviting his attentions. Her large nipples, asymmetri cal as most nipples are, seemed a constant fascination to him, at least on th ose occasions when he was all there. But far too often he'd be somewhere else entirely. And now another truth dawned on her: too often she'd used her s.e.x to trap him in the here and now, as if she were afraid that if she released h im he'd fly ... somewhere else.

Suddenly cold, she put out the bathroom light and went back to the bedro om.

Harry lay just as she'd left him, on his side, facing left, his right ar m draped in the hollow she'd occupied. And still his breathing was deep and steady, his eyelids unmoving. A brief telepathic glimpse, unbidden, denned e ndless, empty vaults of dream, through which he drifted looking for a door.

It came and went, and Sandra sighed. There were always doors in Harry's drea ms, revenant perhaps of the Mobius doors he'd once called up mathematically out of thin air. He'd once told her: 'Now that it's over I sometimes get this feeling it was all a dream, or a story read in a book of fantasy. Unreal, something I m ade up, or maybe an out-of-body experience. But that brings back all too cle arly what it was really like to be incorporeal, and I know that it happened for a fact. How can I explain it? Have you ever dreamed you could fly? That you actually knew how to fly?'

'Yes,' she'd answered, in her mildly Edinburghian Scottish accent. 'Ofte n, and very vividly. I used to run down a steeply sloping field to take off, and soar up over the Pentland hills, over the village where I was born. It was sometimes frightening, but I remember knowing exactly how it was done!'

Harry had been excited. 'That's right! And waking up you tried to hang on to it, you were reluctant to let the secret vanish with the dream. And i t vexed you when you were completely awake to learn that you were earthboun d again. Well,' (and he'd sighed as his excitement ebbed), 'that's pretty m uch how it sometimes is for me. Like something I had in a long series of ch ildhood dreams, but burned out of me now and gone forever.'

Better for you, Harry, she'd thought. That world was a dangerous place.

You're safe now.

But not much good for E-Branch, and definitely not why she was here. O n the contrary, they wanted his powers restored and didn't much care how.

And she was supposed to be part of the restoration team.

She slipped into bed with him, as much for his warmth as for anything, an d his free hand automatically cupped her breast. His body was lean and hard, well-trained. He insisted on keeping it that way. 'It's years older than me,'

he'd once told her, without an ounce of humour, 'and so I have to look after it.' As if it wasn't his but something he was care-taking. Hard to believe t here'd been a time when it really wasn't his. But she hadn't known him - or i t - then, and was glad for that.

'Ummm?' he murmured now, as she moulded herself to him.

'Nothing,' she whispered in the darkness of the room. 'Shh!'

'Ummm . . .' he said again, and instinctively drew her closer.

He was warm and he was Harry. She'd never felt so safe with anyone befor e. Him with all his hangups, and yet when she was with him like this it was like clinging to a rock. She stroked his chest, but gently so as not to awak en or arouse him, and tried to will him into deeper sleep - - And like a fool willed herself there instead.

Haaarry . . . ! Harry's Ma, Mary Keogh, called to him from her watery gr ave, and couldn't get through to him. She never could these days, and knew w hy, but it didn't stop her from trying. Harry, there's someone who's trying very hard to talk to you. He says you were friends, and that what he has to say is very important.

Harry could hear her, but he couldn't answer. He knew that he must not answer, for talking to the dead had been forbidden to him. If he should try it, or ever consider trying it, then once more he'd hear that irresistible voice in his mind, reinforcing those commands by means of which his Necros cope powers had been made worthless: Under penalty of pain, you may not, Harry! Aye, great pain. Such tortur e that the voices of the teeming dead would be distorted beyond recognition . Such mental agony that you would never dare try again. I've no desire to be cruel, father, but it's for your own protection - as well as mine. Faeth or Ferenczy, Thibor, and Yulian Bodescu, they might well have been the last - or they might not. The Wamphyri have powers, father! And if there are mo re of them hidden in your world, how long before they seek you out and find you . . . before you can find them? But they will only seek you out if the y have reason to fear you. Which is why I now remove such reason utterly! D o you understand?

To which Harry had answered: 'You do it for yourself. Not because you fe ar for me, but for you. You fear that I'll come back one day, discover you i n your aerie and destroy you. I've told you I could never do that. Obviously my word isn't good enough.'

People change, Harry. You could change, too. I'm your son, but I'm also a vampire. I can't chance it that you'll not come looking for me one day w ith sword and stake and fire. I've said it before: as a Necroscope you're d angerous, but without the dead you're impotent. Without them, no more Mobiu s Continuum. You can't come back here, nor seek me in the other places. And yes, this is another reason why I place these strictures upon you.

'Then you doom me to torture. It's inescapable. The dead love me. They wi ll talk to me!'

They may try, but you will neither hear nor answer them. Not consciously.

I hereby deny you that talent.

'But I'm a Necroscope! I talk to the dead out of habit! And what about w hen I grow old? If I ramble to the dead when I'm an old man, what then? Am I still bound to suffer? All my days?'

Habits are for breaking, Harry. I say it one last time, and then if you doubt me you may try it for yourself: you may not consciously speak to the d ead, and if they speak to you, you must strike their words immediately from memory or - suffer the consequences. So be it.