Krakovitch smiled. ‘Romania,' he said, ‘has always been something of an island.'

‘True,' Dobresti agreed. ‘But that not always good. World is big. No strength in being small. Also, being cut off means stagnation. Nothing new ever comes in.'

Kyle nodded, thinking to himself, and some of the old things are things you can well do without.

It had been a rough night for Brenda Keogh.

When Harry Jnr had finished his small hours feed, he hadn't wanted to go back to sleep again. He wasn't bad about it, just wouldn't sleep.

After an hour or two of rocking him, then cradling and crooning to him, she'd finally put the baby down and gone back to bed herself.

But at 6.00 A.M. he'd been right on time again, crying for his change and another feed. And she'd known from the way he twisted his little face and clenched his fists that he was tired: he'd been awake right through the night, from no cause that Brenda could discover. But good? What a good little chap he was! He hadn't cried at all until he was hungry and uncomfortable, just lay there in his cot through the night doing his own thing — whatever that might be.

Even now his will to stay awake and be a part of the world was strong, but his yawning told his mother that he couldn't. With dawn an hour away, Harry was going to have to go to sleep. The world would have to wait. No matter how fast your mind grows up, your body goes more slowly.

As his baby son went to sleep, Harry Snr found himself free and was struck with a thought as strange as any he'd ever had, even in his thoroughly strange existence.

He's leeching on me! he thought. The little rascal's into my mind, into my experiences. He can explore my stuff because there's lots of it, but I can't touch him because there's nothing in there — yet!

He put the extraordinary idea to the back of his mind. Now that Harry Jnr had released him he had places to go, people — dead people — to talk to. There were things he knew which he was unique in knowing. He knew, for instance, that the dead inhabit another sphere; also that in their lonely nether-existence they go on doing all the things they've done in life.

The writers write masterpieces they can never publish, each line perfectly composed, each paragraph polished, every story a gem. Where time isn't a problem and deadlines don't exist, things get done right. The architects plot their cities of the mind, beautiful aerial constructs flung across fantastic worlds and spanning sculpted oceans and continents, each brick and spire and sky-riding highway immaculately positioned, no smallest detail missing or botched. The mathematicians continue to explore the Formulae of the Universe, reducing THE ALL to symbols they can never put on paper, for which men in the corporeal world should be grateful. And the Great Thinkers carry on thinking their great thoughts, which far outweigh any they thought in life.

That had been the way of it with the Great Majority. Then Harry Keogh, Necroscope, had come along.

The dead had taken to Harry at once; he had given their existence new meaning. Before Harry, each one of them had inhabited a world consisting of his own incorporeal thoughts, without contact with the rest. They had been like houses with no doors or windows, no telephones. But Harry had connected them up. It made no difference to the living (who simply weren't aware) but it made a great deal of difference to the dead.

Möbius had been one such, mathematician and thinker both, and he had shown Harry Keogh how to use his Mobius continuum. He'd done so gladly, for like all of the dead he'd quickly come to love the Necroscope. And the Möbius continuum had given Harry access to times and places and minds beyond the reach of any other intelligence in all of man's history.

Now Harry knew of a man whose one obsession in life tad been the myths and legends and lore of the vampire. His name was Ladislau Giresci. How was it going for him now, Harry wondered, in the aftermath of his murder? Max Batu had killed him with his evil eye, for no good reason other than that Dragosani had ordered it. Killed him, yes, but not Giresci's life-long penchant for the legend of the vampire. What had been an obsession in life must certainly have continued afterwards.

Harry could no longer make any headway with Thibor, and Thibor would not let him get through to Dragosani. His next best bet had to be Ladislau Giresci. How to reach him, however, was a different matter. Harry had never met the Romanian in life; he did not know the ground where Giresci's spirit lay; he must rely on the dead to supply him with directions, see him on his way.

Across the road from Brenda's flat — once Harry and Brenda's flat — there sprawled a graveyard hundreds of years old, containing a large number of Harry's friends. He knew most of them personally from previous conversations. Now he drifted towards the lines of markers and occasionally leaning tombstones, his mind drawn by the minds of the dead where they lay in their graves communing. They sensed him at once, knew that it was him. Who else could it be?

Harry! said their spokesman, an ex-railway engineer who'd lived all his life in Stockton, until he died in 1938. It's good to talk to you again. Nice to know you haven't forgotten us.

‘How are things with you?' Harry inquired. ‘Still designing your trains?'

The other came aglow in a moment. I have designed the train! he answered. Do you want to hear about it?

‘Unfortunately I can't.' Harry was genuinely sorry. ‘My visit is purely business, I'm afraid.'

Well, spit it out, Harry! someone else exclaimed, an ex-bobby of Harry's acquaintance, late of Sir Robert Peel's time. How can we help you, sir?

‘There are some hundreds of you here,' Harry answered. ‘But is there anyone from Romania? I want to go there, and I need directions and an introduction. The only people I know there are... bad people.'

Voices rose in something of a babble, but one of them cut through, speaking directly to Harry. It was a girl's voice, sweet and small. I know Romania, it said. Something of it, anyway. I came here from Romania after the war. There were troubles and oppressions, and so my elder brothers sent me away to an aunt who lived here. Strange, but I came all this way, then caught a cold and died! I was very young.

‘And do you know someone I can seek out, who can perhaps help me on my way?' Harry didn't like to seem too eager to be off, but he really couldn't help himself. ‘It's very important, I assure you.'

But my brothers will be delighted to guide you, Harry! she said at once. It's only since you came that we've all been able to... well, get together again. We all owe you so much.

‘If I may,' Harry answered, ‘I'll come back and talk to you again some time. Meanwhile, I'm afraid I've no time to spare. What are your brothers called?'

They are Jahn and Dmitri Syzestu, she said. Wait and I'll call them for you. She called, and in a moment her brothers answered. They were very faint, like voices on a telephone from the other side of the world. Harry was introduced.

‘Just keep talking to me,' he told the brothers, ‘and I'll find my way to you.'

He excused himself from the company of his friends in the Hartlepool cemetery, found a space-time door and passed through it into the Mobius continuum. ‘Jahn, Dmitri? Are you still there?'

We're here, Harry, and we're honoured to be able to help you like this.

He homed in on them, emerged through another door into the grey Romanian dawn. He found himself in a field of grass beside a pock-marked wall fast crumbling into ruins. There were ponies in the field but of course they couldn't see him; they just stood still, shivering a little, their coats shining with drops of dew. Plumes of warm air came snorting from their nostrils like smoke. In the distance, the last lights of a town were blinking out as the sun rose on the eastern horizon.