Sandra shrank down into herself. 'No love in you,' she said. 'And should we advise you, so that you may kill us?'

'But isn't that the point of all this?' said Layard. 'Isn't it what we want, while still we have a choice?'

'Is it? Oh, is it?' She clutched one of his broken hands. And to Harry: 'I thought I no longer wanted to live, not like this. But now I don't know, I don't know. Harry, Janos has... has ... he has known me. He knows me! There's no cavity of my body he hasn't filled! I loathe him... and yet I want him, too! And that's the worst: to lust after a monster. But lust is part of life, after all, and I've always loved life. So what if you win? Will it be for me as it was for the Lady Karen?'

'No!' the thought repelled him. 'I couldn't do anything like that again. Not to you, not to anyone, not ever. If I win, it will be as easy for you as I can make it.'

'Except you can't win!' Layard moaned. 'I only wish you could.'

'But he might! He might!' Sandra jumped up. 'Perhaps Janos is wrong!'

'About what?' Harry felt he'd broken through and was now getting somewhere. 'Perhaps he's wrong about what?'

'He's looked into the future,' Sandra said. 'It's one of his talents. He's read the future, and seen victory for himself.'

'What has he seen? What, exactly?'

'That you will come,' she answered, 'and that there will be fire and death and thunder such as to wake the dead. That the living and the dead and the undead shall all be embroiled in it: a chaos spawning only one survivor, the most terrible, most powerful vampire of all. Ah, and not merely a vampire but... Wamphyri!'

'A paradox,' Layard sobbed. 'For now you know the reason why you must not come!'

Harry nodded (if only to himself), and said: "That's always the way it is when you read the future.'

Then-

- The dungeon's heavy door burst open! Janos stood there, handsome as the devil, evil as hell. And hell's fire burned in his eyes. And before the scene dissolved entirely and turned to darkness, Harry heard him say:

'So, give you enough rope and you hang yourselves. I knew you would contact him! Well, and what you have done for yourselves you can doubtless do for me. So be it!'

14

Second Contact - Horror on Halki -Negative Charge

Turbulent in his Rhodian hotel bed, Harry might have woken up there and then; but no sooner was his contact with Sandra and Layard broken than another voice intruded on his dreams, this time a far more welcome visitation:

Harry? Did you call out? Did you call His Name, Harry, into the void?

It was Möbius, but the waft and whisper of his dead-speak voice told the Necroscope that he was just as mazed and wandering as ever. 'His name?' Harry mumbled, still tossing and turning in his sticky sheets but gradually settling down again. 'Your name, do you mean? Probably. But that was earlier.'

No, His Name! Möbius insisted.

'I don't know what you're talking about,' Harry was bewildered.

Ah! Möbius sighed, partly in relief but mainly in disappointment. But I thought for a moment that you had reached a similiar conclusion. Not at all impossible, nor even improbable. For as you know, I've always considered you my peer, Harry.

He still wasn't making much sense, but Harry didn't like to tell him so. His respect for Möbius was limitless. 'Your peer?' he finally answered. 'Hardly that, sir. And whatever new conclusion you've reached, no way that I could ever match it. Not any more, for I'm not the man I used to be. Which is the reason I was looking for you.'

Ah, yes! I remember now: something about losing your deadspeak? Something about being innumerate? Well, as for the former, obviously not-for how else would you be speaking to me right now? And innumerate? What, Harry Keogh? Möbius chuckled. That is not how I would describe you!

Harry's turn to sigh his relief. Möbius's mind, at first misty, was at last coming through to him with something of its usual crystal clarity. He pressed his case:

'But that's just it: it's the only way to describe what's happened to me. I am now innumerate; I can't conjure the equations; I no longer have access to the Möbius Continuum. And I need the Continuum now as never before.'

Innumerate! the other said yet again, plainly astonished. But how may I accept it? How may I believe it of you? You were my star pupil! Here, try this: and he inscribed a complicated mathematical sequence on the screen of Harry's mind.

Harry looked at it, examining each symbol and number in turn, and it was like trying to fathom an alien language. 'No use,' he said.

Astonishing! Möbius cried. That was a very simple problem, Harry. It appears this disability of yours is serious.

'That's what I've been saying,' Harry tried to be patient. 'And it's why I need your help.'

Only tell me what you would like me to do.

Now Harry's sigh was a glad one, for it seemed that at last he had Möbius's total attention. He quickly told him how Faethor had got into his mind and untangled the connections he'd found there, which had been stimulated into agonizing being each time Harry had attempted to use his deadspeak.

'Faethor was probably the only one who could ever have corrected it,' he explained, 'because it was one of his own sort who'd snarled it up in the first place. And so I got my deadspeak back. But that wasn't the only obstruction Faethor found in there, not by a long shot. The areas governing my basic and instinctive understanding of numbers had been closed off almost entirely. Here's what he discovered: closed doors, barred and bolted -with all my maths locked up behind them. Now Faethor is no mathematician, but still, by sheer force of will he got one of these doors open. Only for a moment, before it slammed shut again, but long enough. And beyond it... the Möbius Continuum! That was too much for him and he got out of there.'

Entirely fascinating! said Möbius. And: It seems we'll have to start your education all over again.

Harry groaned. 'That isn't quite the way I see it,' he said. 'I mean, I was hoping there'd be a much quicker way. You see, this is something I need right now, or I'm very likely a goner. What I mean is, well, Faethor could only handle those areas in which he was the expert. And so I was thinking that maybe you -'

But Harry, Möbius seemed shocked, I'm no vampire! Your mind is your own, private and inviolable, and -

'But not for much longer,' Harry cut him off. 'Not if you turn me down!' And desperately now: 'August Ferdinand, I have to go up against something entirely monstrous, and I need all the help I can get. But it's not just for me, it's for everyone and everything. For you see, if I lose this one, then my enemy gets it all - even the Möbius Continuum itself! Believe me, I'm not exaggerating. If you can't open those doors in my head, he will. And... and... and after that -' Yes?

' - After that, I just don't know.' Möbius was silent for a moment, and then: That serious, eh?

That serious, yes.'

But Harry, all your secrets are in there, your ambitions, your most private thoughts.

'Also my desires, my vices, my sins. But it's no peep-show, August. You don't have to look where you don't want to.'

The other sighed his acquiescence. Very well. How do we go about it?

Harry was eager now. 'August Ferdinand, you're the one man among all the dead who can go anywhere -literally anywhere - in three-dimensional space. You've been out to the stars, down to the bed of the deepest ocean. Through your knowledge of the Möbius Continuum, you've thrown off the fetters of the grave. So ... how we go about it is simple. I hope so, anyway. I'm going to clear my mind and drift in sleep, and simply invite you in. I'm going to say: Möbius, come into my mind. Enter, of your own free will, and do whatever is necessary to...'