E-Branch - Invaders Part 15

'Like what?'

'Oh, one or two ambiguities. Anyway, I think I've already worked out some of the answers.'

'Go on/ 'Well/ he said, 'this file cover, for one thing. It has a few dents in it... it's obviously not new. In fact, it's got to be years old. As for this label on the cover, it's been thumbed to death! But these pages, I mean the paper itself, is new, and the text has at least one glaring ambiguity/ 'Oh?'

He nodded. 'It talks about an underground exit in the Carpathian foothills - one underground exit, that is. But it also mentions Gustav Turchin, and how he flooded a Gate in Perchorsk in th e Urals/ He frowned again and continued, Tunny, but when I was reading this stuff it seemed to make sense. I don't know, I seemed to understand. But now I only remember the text/ 'Like ... Eureka!' Liz said. 'That wor d on the tip of your tongue. That abrupt but transient flash of insight. It's there, and it's gone. Right?' Jake knew she was fishing - albeit for something he wasn't able to give her, not yet - and said, 'Weren't we talking about Gates?'

'There are two/ she answered. 'The one under the Carpatii Meridionali is the original; it occurred naturally and has been there for - well, no one knows how long. It's like a black hole, or perhaps a grey hole, and its other end comes out in Starside in a vampire world. A long time ago, warrior Lords would throw their conquered enemies into it. It's how vampires got here in the first place/ Jake accepted that; it felt real, he knew it was so. 'And the other?'

'Is man-made/ Liz told him. And settling back, she said, 'This is how the story goes: 'Thirty years ago the Americans put one over on the Soviets. A >ig one, that is. And good for them - for us, the whole world - too, because since World War Two the Russians had been bluffing the West right out of its pants. Kennedy was the first US President to call that bluff, over Cuba. Later, Ronald Reagan and Maggie Thatcher would have their say. They just said no. Thatcher was good at that/ 'Said no to what?' Jake was no historian.

'To the Russian military build-up/ she answered. 'To trying 154.

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to keep up with all of that expenditure on ships, aircraft, bombs, the s.p.a.ce race. And so President Reagan or his advisors invented SDI, the s.p.a.ce Defense Initiative.' '"Star Wars?'" He remembered that much, at least.

'Right,' Liz said. 'A fantasy scenario if ever there was one. And the Soviets fell for it. Now the boot was on the other foot and eventually their expenditure went over the top. It was probably the beginning of the end for Russian Communism. But in the early '80s, while they were still financially stable, their top boffins and physicists were tasked to dream up an answer to the USA's SDI - a programme that didn't exist except on paper, and very thin paper at that.

'Well, that's what Perchorsk was all about. They built a dam across a powerful watercourse in a ravine to give them the hydroelectric power they needed, also to give them some camouflage against the West's spy satellites - which was something else that didn't work - and carved out a subterranean complex from the bedrock. They put in an atomic pile to boost the project's energy requirements, and bingo, they were in business. But they very quickly went out of business.

'The idea was ... I don't know, some kind of radar? A fan of energy raking the sky, covering all the north-western territories of the then Soviet Union. It was an experiment, but if it had worked they'd have built more complexes just like it as "defensive" measures against incoming missiles or bombers.

Hitting that fan would be like running into a brick wall; nothing was going to be able to get through. In effect, a force- screen. Huh! Talk about an "Iron Curtain?" And what price SDI then, eh? Except of course, there was no SDI...

'... And no force-screen, either. During the first test it backfired, the pile imploded and a new kind of energy - or perhaps a different and extremely primal kind of energy, a different kind of heat - was discovered. And where the pile had been, right at the core of the Perchorsk Complex, there was this ... well, this hole. This hole that went right through the wall of our universe.

In Starside the new singularity appeared in close proximity to the original, the "natural" one. So-'

'-So,' Jake took it up, 'when Turchin flooded the Perchorsk complex he drowned both Gates on Starside, making any sort of travel through them impossible.'

She smiled at him. 'For someone who hasn't read the files, you figured that out pretty quickly!' Which gave him pause, because he'd been thinking much the same thing; and again he knew that what she'd tol d him was so.

But Liz was already going on; 'Well, there you have it, the answer to at least one of your ambiguities. Now, what about the others?'

'Just one other/ Jake told her, 'but a difficult one. In a way it makes no sense, while in another - in the light of our involvement - it makes too much sense. The file talks about how the Gates were closed, "drowned" by Gustav Turchin, which "guaranteed" Earth's safety. Similarly, it talks about Harry and Nathan Keogh, father and son, men whom it credits with "destroying" the Wamphyri. But if the world is safe and the danger past, why is a ll of this information laid out in the present tense? Also, how can it possibly fit with what we saw and did last night?' Liz nodded. 'This is the bit you already have the answers for, right? It's self-explanatory. Well, you're correct. Those inserts in the file are brand new, hastily prepared, and incomplete.

Makeshift replacements for the old text that used to be in the past tense, which is now present tense because-'

'Because that's the nature of the problem,' Jake finished it for her. 'As we saw last night, it's here and now. Not left for dead in another world's past, but alive and well and horribly real in our world's present. Fine, or not so fine, whichever - but it still doesn't answer my questions, doesn't tell me where I fit in.'

Liz tossed her head. 'I, I, b.l.o.o.d.y I!' she said. 'Is that all you exist for, Jake? You?' But he could get just as irritated, and: 'No,' he rasped. 'I exist for something else. Something I 156.

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haven't finished, that I still have to do and that all of this is pushing to one side.''

'Jake?' came a gruff query from out in the morning. 'Jake Cutter? Is that you in there, huffing and puffing again?' Lardis Lidesci, his shadow falling across the tent's doorway.

'Right on cue,' Liz snapped. 'And very welcome. If anyone can answer your questions, Lardis can. He'll certainly be able to add to your knowledge, anyway. And if nothing else comes of it at least I'll get a break from your moaning, and find something better to do with all of the valuable time I'm currently wasting on you.''

E-Branch staff and espers were busy all around the camp, stripping personal and Branch kit and equipment from the vehicles. A lot of the 'gadgetry' - the hardware in the Ops vehicle - was in reality common-or-garden stuff, computers and communications equipment on loan from the Australian Army along with the truck itself. Mobility would be the key word in any future war - the mobility of Ops Centres, that is, and war meaning any 'conventional' war between nations, not species - and all of the WACs, the Western Alliance Countries, used compatible equipment. But the software and such belonged to E-Branch. And just as Trask's people had been thorough in cleaning up last night's mess, now they were being thorough in removing every last trace of their work and presence here. For, as Trask had pointed out, covert organizations such as E-Branch couldn't remain secret if too many people knew about them. And in the sort of war that he envisaged, the Branch's secrecy would be of the utmost importance, indeed Cosmic.

'On Sunside,' Lardis said, 'oh, not all that long ago, the Szgany fought the Wamphyri with whatever weapons were to hand.

Here your weapons are far super- er, superior! And not only your guns, grenades, and flame-throwers. No, for it seems to me that you're using trreir own tactics against them, too.' 'Eh?'

Jake queried, walking beside him. 'Disguises, smokescreens, visual lies - like that vehicle there.

Beer? No such thing. A deadly weapons system! Or if not a weapon itself, a system capable of directing and controlling weapons. Ben has told me that in Earth's past the vampires had a saying, that: "Longevity is synon- er, synonymous, yes? - with anon- er, anonym- er ..."' 'Anonymity/ said Jake, and knew it for a certainty, without knowing how he knew.

'Yes!' Lardis nodded his grizzled, bandaged head. 'And in E- Branch they have another saying: that secrecy is s ynonymous - hah!- with survival. Pretty much the same, wouldn't you say?'

'Pretty much,' said Jake. 'But vampires are one thing and I'm another. And frankly, I've had it with all the secrecy. If I'm so important to the Branch, why can't I be told about it?'

'At first it was because you might be less - or other - than you seemed,' Lardis told him. 'Now it's because you might be more. And also because you mightn't like what you are - if you are. Confusing? Well, not only for you, believe me!

Anyway, regardless of what Liz says, it's not my job to tell you about you but about me and mine and the way things were, and the way they could be again by now, on Sunside/Starside.'

Around the camp, goodbyes were being said, hands shaken, the Australian contingent making ready to move out. Soon there would be just the Ops truck, with its array of worldwide communications devices, one jet-copter, and another on its way back from Carnarvon. The two choppers were transport for Branch personnel and SAS commanders; the Ops truck would stay until they were airborne, when it too would move out. In their next location, Trask's team of espers and support staff would be on their own until their Aussie back-up teams caught up with them. Thus these farewells were temporary; the same parties would soon be meeting up again, next time on the far side of the continent.

This was something that puzzled Jake. 'How come we don't move as a complete unit? Trask has all the contacts; why can't he order up one of those big military transport choppers?

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why doesn't he just call on ahead and arrange for a new righting force to be waiting for us?'

'He could probably do any or all of those things/ Lardis answered, 'but how would it look if we all arrived together at our next camp? Wouldn't you consider that indis-er, indisc- er, indiscreet, Jake? Remem ber, it's no easy thing for a man or men to hide their intentions from the Wamphyri. Any event unusual enoug h to arouse the interest of ordinary citizens is bound to arouse theirs, too.'

'Like a sudden influx of specialist troops?' said Jake. 'Indeed,'

said Lardis, with a nod. 'And as for starting out fresh with a brand new platoon of soldiers... but doesn't that go against the very first rule? The fewer people who know about us-' 'The longer we survive/ said Jake.

'Hah!'said Lardis. 'Finally we make progress. And the problem with Mrs Miller becomes that much clearer, too.'

The first vehicles were pulling out now, and the Old Lidesci grunted his approval. 'This I like/ he said. 'It's what the Traveller is all about: constant movement between one place and the next. On Sunside, we Szgany became Travellers to stay ahead of the Wamphyri; we rarely stood still for very long in any one place. But here? Here we are the hunters. We move to track them down, and then we kill the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds! Oh, yes, I like it a lot.'' He smacked his lips.

The pair had arrived at the place of last night's campfire. The back-burner, stoves and oven were gone, but a steaming pot of coffee and a few paper cups had been left beside the trench.

And as these very different men from entirely different worlds sat down on the last of the folding chairs, Jake said, 'Lardis, why don't you tell me about Sunside/Starside? I mean, all about Sunside/Starside, or as much as I can take in. For since that's where all this seems to have started, maybe it's my best starting place, too/ And Lardis said, 'As you will. But I may as well tell you now, it still won't answer your one big question/ 'I had a feeling it wouldn't/ Jake grunted. 'But tell me anyway/ And in a low growly voice, in words that strove valiantly to accommodate Jake's language - and when they failed reverted to Lardis's native Szgany, which the listener took in as best he could - the Old Lidesci complied ...

'As its name suggests, though in more senses than one, Sunside/ Starside is a divided world. On Sunside, a slow and benevolent sun spins out days to mo re than four times the length of Earth days. But it sits low in the sky and casts long shadows - the shadows of the barrier mountains - on Starside. And the gloom and the long nights of Starside must have been the greatest of aids in the evol-er, the evolution, yes, of the Wamphyri.

'We don't know how it started; it happened in a time lost to memory except in myths and legends, campfire stories carried down - and altered, of course - by word of mouth. But before the Wamphyri there was something of a young civilization, in a world much like this world, with oceans and mountains, islands and continents, and even seasons. And its peoples were setting out to explore it, just as your first sailors explored yours.

'Then, an accident. Not of Man but of Nature. A white sun fell from the sky. Ben Trask will tell you it was some kind of "singularity" ... but that is science, of which I know very little. Anyway, it bounced over the world like a flat stone skipping on water. In one place where it bounced, the impact caused its outer sh.e.l.l to break in pieces which fell to earth in such numbers they couldn't be counted. According to Nathan Keogh - called Kiklu upon a time - the land there became hot; chemicals in the soil gathered into pools; acids ate the white sun's metal skin into rust. Thus a "Great Red Waste" came into being, which today lies east of the barrier mountains.

'But the core of the white sun made a final leap. Shrinking, it sped west and slightly north; and such was its lure or fascination - its incredible "gravity?" - that even as it fell to 160.

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earth it drew up from the earth those mountains that formed the barrier range.

'I've probably made light of this; it should be said that the entire planet was in shock, convulsion. Lightnings crashed, the earth shook and broke open, and oceans stood on end, hurling themselves upon the land. From a benign wor ld, the planet was changed to a nightmare. Entire races were wiped out, vanishing forever in the tumult of earth and fire, wind and water. It can't be known for a fact, but Trask's science has created a model for such a disaster which calculates that ninety-five out of every hundred human beings on my homeworld were killed in that historic upheaval! The seasons were no more; even our world's...o...b..t around its sun was changed, again by the "gravity" of the white sun, which had not destroyed itself but come to rest in a crater on Starside. The barrier mountains reared where none had reared before, and north of the mountains grim and pitiless lands of ice shone dark blue under writhing auroras. It was as if a h.e.l.l had descended from the sky, and the Szgany - those of my race who remained - were its denizens.

'But they weren't its only denizens ... 'At first, there were no Wamphyri. But there were always other peoples. The Szgany had avoided other races; they deemed them strange and called them un-men. Among these others, survivors of a northern clan of troglodytes now settled in caverns in the lee of Starside. Un-men from warmer southern climes, secretive desert folk known as the Thyre, became inhabitants of the burning regions south of Sunside's fertile green belt. It is even said that a race of cannibals - necromancers who tortured and ate the dead - existed and perhaps still exist in a remote far eastern country beyond the Great Red Waste, the mountains, and all other places known to the Szgany. Of these latter: I have never seen one, and do not wish to.

'But all of this resettling, and all of the planet's gradual recovery, took years and centuries and even millennia. Trask has said that it must have seemed like "an endless nuclear winter."

Well, to the people of the time, I suppose it was. But it did end eventually. And then there were no seasons, or only the very smallest climatic changes; and the green belt close to the barrier mountains was the only land in all of Sunside that could support the Szgany tribes, who slowly but surely began to multiply and forage in the forests.

'On Starside, where a great pa.s.s splits the mountainous divide, there in its crater resting-place at the fringe of the barren boulder plains the white sun sat like a blind eye deep in its socket, shining its white ligh t up into the night like a beacon, or perhaps a warning? It was like ... like a door, or a gateway to the unknown! For if a man should climb down to touch that blinding light... ah, be sure he would not come up again! And because it had brought h.e.l.l to the Szgany, it became known as the h.e.l.l-Lands Gate, aye.

'From then on, hunters and wanderers in the heig hts of the barrier mountains would look down on Starside and see the light of the h.e.l.l-Lands Gate, and they would curse it by their stars, and turn their faces away. And the faces of all the Szgany were turned away from Starside and its Gate.

'But then, who would be interested in exploring Starside?

What was Starside but barren and endless boulder plains reaching north, and towering stone pinnacles - stacks, or "b.u.t.tes," as Trask calls them - reaching thousands of feet into the sky, and to the north the frozen oceans, and beyond the oceans the Icelands with their eerie auroras? No fit habitation for men, my friend, where the sun shone only on the topmost spires, and the cold was a knife in your bones. I have been to the foot of one of those great fangs ... that far but no further.

And now, thanks to Harry and his sons, there are no aeries as such ...

'But it appears I've gone ahead of myself. Best if I slow down.

I was speaking of the past, and this is how it was: 'Came the vampires. Ask me how, I can only shake my head.

Today, no man knows. None living, anyway. We know their spores were born in the swamps west of the farthest reach of the barrier mountains, an d Nathan Keogh has spoken of similar 162.

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swamps in the east. Very well then, that's where they came from, but how did they get there? Ben Trask has a theory - his people, these E-Branch people, have theories for most things - which has it that they were released into my world's skies out of the debris of the white sun: an alien life form from the stars. Perhaps it is so, but I am not a scientist.

'Anyway, and however it was, they came. Legend has it that Shaitan was the first.

Because he couldn't bear the sun, he co-habited with trogs in the gloom of Starside caverns. But he was more like unto a man, and he wondered about the Szgany, of whom the trogs had told him. Finally, when he grew weary of the company and the blood of trogs, he came in the night into Sunside. And the curse of the vampire - Shaitan's mark, his vices - was left on all the tribes of the Szgany for all time to come.

'There's that of Shaitan in all of us, and I think in all of your people, too, especially the espers - but mercifully it amounts to very little. Watered down by time and blood, we see it only in these rare talents that Ben Trask collects and uses against the forces of evil. In him it's his ability to see the truth and therefore to recognize falseness; in Goodly it's his visions of the future, and in me it's my seer's blood, warning me of dangers whose scent is blown on the air, felt in. running waters, and glimpsed in the leaping flame of fires or patterns in the dust. When all is not well, I feel it. And in you- 'In you it is something else ... 'But once again I've strayed.

'In Sunside Shaitan recruited thralls. But the sun was too strong for him and his; they retreated into Starside. And there he built the first aerie of the Wamphyri, in those great stacks out on the boulder plains.

'And the Great Vampire begat other vampires out of Sunside women and even out of trogs, and he raided on Sunside for blood and plunder. And while the Wamphyri prospered, the Szgany suffered every conceivable torment.

'Fortunately the Szgany had been nomadic, Travelling folk 164.

for long and long before the advent of the Wamphyri. Since land was their only possession, they had to beat the bounds to protect it and lay claim to ownership. And so they were rarely at rest. Just as well, for their mobility was their survival. They could run and they could breed and they could hide, but that was all. And at night the vampire would ride his flyers out of Starside to hunt and to "play" in Sunside's darkened forests.

And everything that the Szgany are today is built out of the incredible, the des pica ble depredations of the Wamphyri.

'The Szgany learned to hide, not only their trembling bodies but their very thoughts. Why, eventually they even learned how to fight back! But that was a long time in the coming. And as evolution taught the Szgany its lessons of survival, so the vampire - by nature lazy - found it increasingly difficult to take his prey. And then, from time to time, vampire would turn upon vampire, and all Starside become a battle zone.

'The wars of the WTamphyri, their bloodwars, were endless, and except when truces were called they were times of rejoicing for the Szgany clans. But gutted aeries would always need replenishing, and depleted larders filling, and fallen flyers and broken warrior creatures refashioning in their morbid masters' vats of metamorphosis. And however long it took, the Wamphyri would return to Sunside, its pleasures and plunders.

'The Szgany Lidesci were the fiercest fighters of all. I make no boast, though naturally I'm proud, but merely state a fact when I say that my fathers' fathers - the forefathers of the Szgany Lidesci - were the first of the Travellers to lay traps for the Wamphyri, their lieutenants, thralls and creatures. We were staking, beheading, and burning those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds a hundred years ago! Aye, even before The Dweller and Harry h.e.l.l-Lander took up our fight and showed those monsters what a real war looked like, the Lidescis had the respect of the Wamphyri ... along with t heir hatred, of course.

'I was Chief of the Szgany Lidesci when The Dweller came, and later Zekintha, and later still Jazz Simmons. And finally 165.

Harry h.e.l.l-Lander, called Dwellersire. But Harry and his sons, The Dweller and Nathan Keogh, they all moved as you move, Jake ... between the s.p.a.ces used by common men, along a route invisible. Nathan Keogh still does, but in Sunside, in my world, on the far side of s.p.a.ce-time; or one of its far sides, at least.

Which is Ben Trask speaking, you understand. Me? Hah! I don't even know where s.p.a.ce-time is!

'Anyway, I was Chief when Harry and his boy fought their battle in The Dweller's garden - their grand battle with the Wamphyri - and won! I couldn't be there with them, more's the pity, couldn't stand alongside Zek, and Jazz Simmons, and the Lady Karen, too; no, for I had problems of my own and arrived too late. But with these very eyes I saw what they had don e: how they'd used the science of another world, the h.e.l.l- Lands, and weird talents from ... well, from beyond any lands of the living, to defeat the forces of Lord Shaithis of the Wamphyri and kick his backside into the Icelands.

'We thought that was the end of it. All of the aeries bar one, Karen's, had been burned out, toppled, and brought crashing down onto the boulder plains. Why, the thunder of it - the shaking of the earth - had been felt in Sunside itself! Well, perhaps not as far away as that, but you get the idea. It had been awesome. And as I have said, we thought that was the end of it, that finally the Wamphyri were no more.

'Most of my people thought so, anyway...

'But I have a seer's blood in me - perhaps even vampire blood ... oh, it's possible! - and I didn't believe that the Wamphyri were no more. It simply didn't smell right, it didn't feel right, and for a time equal to four of your Earth years I couldn't settle but watched and waited and held my breath.

And from time to time I would climb up into the barrier mountains, through the high crags and pa.s.ses, and down into The Dweller's garden, all fallen into ruin, where I would sit alone to think it over ... and to worry.

'And not without good reason. One time when I went there, Harry came back. But he was changed. No, don't ask my meaning; he simply wasn't the man I'd known. But I believe he was soil my friend. And the Necroscope had chosen a most opportune time to return to my world, for my seer's blood had told me no lie: the Wamphyri were back in Sunside/Starside! Not only the last of them, but also the first.

'Shaitan the Unborn himself, aye, come back like a plague that can never die ...'

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CHAPTER TWELVE.

The Rest Of Lardis's Story 'Shaitan the Fallen - Shaitan the Unborn, Shaitan himself- and his banished descendant, Lord Shaithis: the two of them back in Starside after four years of peace and quiet and nights without nightmares, back from the Icelands. They had flyers and warrior beasts, the makings of a small but deadly army.

And Harry h.e.l.l-Lander ... no longer himself. And his son The Dweller much less than himself, for he was a changeling creature. As for the Lady Karen: who could say what Karen would do or where her loyalties now lay, who for four long years had been alone and brooding in Karenstack, the last great aerie of the Wamphyri?

'Well, the rest of it is strange and frightening. I know, I know: all of it is strange and frightening!

But to me far worse, for it came of Earth's science, of which I knew nothing at that time. And when I saw it I knew we had named the h.e.l.l-Lands Gate aright, for most certainly this was made in h.e.l.l. What? It was the very breath of h.e.l.l.' This is how it was: 'Shaitan, Shaithis and their forces, they had made camp at the Starside Gate. The Necroscope had been taken prisoner, the Lady Karen, too, for in fact she'd sided with Harry. Which was only natural, I suppose. After all, Karen had always been Shaithis's most deadly enemy. As for the details: I can't be definite about any of this, because my observation point was so far away, high in the mountai ns. I a.s.sume they were suffering torture. Certainly 168.

bonfires were blazing down there among the many clumps of boulders surrounding the Gate.

'Then, I felt something happening. And I sensed it was of the Necroscope's doing. My seer's blood warned me not to look, and I warned the others there with me. Mostly, they heeded my cry of warning. But one of them, Peder Szekarly, was young and sometimes stupid - brave but stupid. He continued to look, and was witness to it. H e sa w it... then saw no more, ever again. The light was such that it burned him, burned his eyes out and blinded him. Nor did he live for very long.