Necroscope - The Lost Years, Vol II Part 39

... Harry Houdini, said the other. I'm here to do a benefit on the behalf of the Great Majority - and I'm delighted to make your acquaintance.

'Harry Houdi-!' Harry started to say, before his jaw fell open.

Houdini, yes, the dead showman said, from his plot in the Machpelah Cemetery, Cypress Hills, Queens, Brooklyn. And out of the blue: How much slack have you worked into those things?

The Necroscope said. "What?" Then finally got himself together again and sighed his relief. 'My straps, you mean? This strait-jacket? Why not come on in and see for yourself?' And he opened His mind more yet May I? said Houdini, touching him mind-to-mind.

'Be my guest,' the Necroscope sighed again, gladly. 'Come right on in, Harry, and make yourself at home.

But you'll have to excuse me if it's none too comfortable around here. In feet, even knowing who you are and something of what you've done, it still seems pretty hopeless to me.' He felt some of the elation of a few seconds ago evaporating. Time isn't on our side, and this jacket would be bad enough without the chair...'

The jacket's nothing, said the other Harry. / made a study of such restraints. The reason you're still in it is to make it easier for your "keepers.' When they want to move you, they'll simply release your arms from the chair, fold them across your chest and tie the m. So your only real problem is the chair. And Harry, while I never tried it, I think I could probably get out of one of those things underwater! OK, so just let go and let me take it from here.

The Necroscope did as instructed, relaxed as best he could, and let the expert take over. And a moment later he felt a new and different kind of magic in his life...

Fifteen minutes later Willis arrived with Harry's breakfast. In the control cell, the CCTV screen had been down, which meant he hadn't been able to do a remote check on the ward's inmates. It didn't matter; the padded cell s had safety-gla.s.s windows; Harry was sitting in a corner, like little Jack Horner, and he'd soon be eating his curds and whey - or was that little Miss m.u.f.fet? Whichever, he'd eat it or get it stuffed into him! A single glance into the dim cell had been sufficient - no change since last night Just the nutter w ith his arms strapped down and his head on his chest Asleep? Well, he'd soon be wide awake.

Willis put the tray on a rounded shelf surface built into the padded wall, turned and closed the door, then turned again to face Harry -who was facing him!

'Good morning, Mr Willis,' said Harry from where he stood not two feet away. And then, to someone Willis couldn't see and wouldn't have believed in anyway: Sergeant, he's all yours!

And as Willis's thick-lipped mouth formed its incredulous '0', 'Sergeant' Graham Lane - an ex-ex-army physical training instructor - did the rest...

Director Cyril Quant got in to work just half an hour later, in time for all h.e.l.l to break loose. It broke as he finished reading the note on his desk for the second time: To Whoever Probably Isn't Much Concerned - You have an ape called Willis on your staff. I wouldn't let this man clean out the monkey house in Edinburgh Zoo. He's brutal and s.a.d.i.s.tic and has just had his a.r.s.e kicked. When I get the time, 111 be sending a full report to the proper authorities. Or, you can investigate yourself and save us both a lot of trouble.

Harry PS.

Leave me out of your investigations - unless you want to end up in one of your own strait-jackets.

367.366.

It was the name that did it Director Quant tore open his desk drawer, ripped out a handful of the paper contents, tilted the rest onto the floor. But the only evidence that 'Harry1 had ever been here - his scribbled, meaningless notebook - was no longer there.

And ten minutes later, down in C-Section of D-Ward, Quant saw that indeed Dave Willis had had his a.r.s.e kicked. The other orderlies were in the process of freeing the unconscious, simian Willis from the chair. He had a broken nose and collarbone, a black eye and fat lip - and his hair was matted with congealing porridge...

Back h ome, the Necroscope could scarcely believe the change in himself. After a shower, some decent food, a sleep lasting well into the afternoon, he felt... well, not quite as good as new, but better than he'd been for a long time. His memory was still at fault, (the post-hypnotic commands that governed many of his thoughts, actions and mental processes were still in place, however shakily), but there was this newfound sense of freedom in him that wasn't just the result of his actual freedom. In fact he felt uplifted and reasoned that it was because he now had a sense of direction, a course to follow, and things to do. Just how those things would work out... remained to be seen.

But it was more than just that. In the madhouse Harry had regained a little of his faith in the teeming dead - therefore in himself. He was no longer so shy of them; he knew that when he needed them, they'd be there for him. Without knowing what it signified, he felt a weakening of James Anderson's original commands, brought about by Mesmer's probing. And he no longer felt so restricted, so fearful in his use of the Mttbius Continuum. These things had been major shackles but were now falling away from him.

Likewise his doubts about BJ. Mirlu. Harry no longer wondered if he was only her dupe; if it was so then it was so; but nothing was proven, and until it was Harry would love her as he desperately wanted to believe she loved him. Should unknown dangers lie ahead, they would face them together - but at the same time he wasn't about to face anything blindfold, or even blinkered.

Nostradamus had given him clues galore, only a handful of which had sufficed to drive him over the edge, or close enough to it that he didn't care to be reminded. Yet in a way he felt strengthened by the experience; he knew the dangers now of trying to learn too much too soon. From this time forward he would proceed step by step, adjusting as he went But Bonnie Jean was constantly on his mind. Her w eird attraction continued to lure him, and he felt his rece nt (but how recent? Just how long had he languished in the asylum?) resolve to stay away from her dissolving to nothing as the monthly cycle neared its full.

The monthly cycle? Its full? The full moon!

A MSbius trip into town, to the newsagent's, told him how right he was.

Tomorrow! The moon would be full tomorrow! Little wonder he could smell the musk of her perfume ... or simply her musk? He knew where she was even now and must cling desperately hard to his crumbling will in order not to go to her immediately - this very minute!

But no, for there was work to do, and he still had a full day in which to do it before he could no longer resist.

Nostradamus's riddles.

The incoherent ramblings, scribbled quatrains, and 'meaningless' jottings in his notebook. Dangerous work.

He had been try ing to decipher them - read something into them - when he ... But that was all over n ow and he must begin again.

And sitting in his kitchen, he opened the notebook on the table before him...

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HARRY: WORKING FT OUT. MOON-CHHDREN: ANSWERING THE CALL.

Harry's several levels of being and knowledge were once more in place, however insecurely. On his conscious level - in his real world - he knew that his future was somehow tied to a place in the cold waste of Tibet Or perhaps not; for he had incontrovertible evidence that he had already returned to that place once, to hide Zahanine's body there, so maybe that fulfilled not only his vision but also Alec Kyle's weird forecast of nuclear devastati on. Certainly the Necroscope had experienced enormous emotional devastation on discovering Zahanine's decapitated corpse in his study.

Or perhaps the vision's purpose had been simply, to make a connection: to show him that the device at Greenham Common was of Tibetan origin? A fact which Darcy Clarke had corroborated. Harry had felt uneasy about those red-robed monks from the beginning; but again, that could have been a revenant of Kyle's intuitive precognitive powers.

So then: that the monks were enemies of the country - and indeed of the civilized world - seemed self-evident But why were they BJ.'s enemies? Who was B.J., that she could call up such allies to her aid as he had seen (or thought he had seen) in that animal shelter in the snowstorm?

But no, that line of investigation was forbidden. The Necroscope had been there before; it was one o f the reasons he had gone over the edge, shutting himself down almost beyond recall. And anyway, every time he found himself casting doubts on B J., a little voice from the back of his head would immediately deny it and cry her innocence. Actually, Harry had certain reservations about that voice, for sometimes it sounded a h.e.l.l of a lot like B J. herself! But- -There it was again, that immediate denial! And perhaps a warning, too. So he went back to thinking about the red-robes.

Some scribbled lines in his notebook took his attention: The face staring over the frozen waste. Red thoughts, red robes. Labyrinth. Golden bells.' And the quatrain fell into place: The face looks out across a frozen waste, Red the thoughts and robes of him who dwells Within the labyrinth of that dire place, Within the fluence of the golden bells.

A face over a dire, labyrinthine place, looking out across a frozen wasteland. The monastery? It could only be. 'Red the thoughts and robes of him who dwells...'

Him, and not them? The master of the monastery, then. So, whoever he was, he would be the one to look out for. And there was a line in the notebook containing the word 'master.' Harry turned a page and found it: '... Her master 's kennel-maid.' (Harry felt he was skating on thin ice again, but went on anyway.) 'A castle, hollow and high.

Glowing yellow bed. Resting place ...'

Did that make sense? Did he know something about it? f.u.c.k it! Why did simply thinking about it make him sweat? (Maybe he wasn't supposed to think about it - not yet.) And so he moved on.

'Of one blood, composed of it Takers of life. The stake, the fire, the knife!' And again the quatrain: They are of one blood, one and all, composed of blood, inheritors of life, which was not theirs to take. Their fall is possible: the stake, the fire, the knife!

And yet again he must stop, for at this juncture the ice was just too thin to support him. He let that one ominous word cross his mind again - Wamphyri! - and quickly moved on.

Nostradamus had told him that one of his actual, published quatrains pertained directly to the Necroscope.

And sure enough when he checked his notebook: 'Second "C", under Nostr a's name. Tree(s). Pride - shame.'

Whatever it meant it was a couplet in itself: Second 'C', under Nostra's name, Tree is trees, and pride is shame.

Outside, it was already dark. The moon was low, almost at its full where it limned the rims of scudd ing clouds in flowing silver. Harry 370.

Nec roscope: The Lost Yean - Vol. II 371.

shivered, closed the curtains, made a MSbius jump to a back street near the library in Bonnyrig. The library was closed - good! Another jump took him inside, to the shelf with the books on Nostradamus. He chose an armful at random and took them home with him.

Beginning with a volume containing the complete quatrains, he turned the pages to the second 'Century,' the second set of one hundred four-liners, still without knowing what he was looking for. All he knew was that it had something to do with Nostradamus's name. What's in a name? Names and numbers...

That was what Nostradamus had said to him: 'F ind it under my name - use your numbers, and mine.' But he hadn't meant the Necroscope's intuitive grasp of maths; no, his meaning had been more esoteric.

Indeed he had meant esoteric numerology!

And so Harry used numbers. The Hebrew system: MI CHELDENOSTREDAME 413553455734254145.

The total of Nostradamus's name was seventy, which Harry remembered from his conversation with the dead seer. Likewise, if he were called Michel de Nostradamus, the modern version of his name, the total came out the same. In both cases the N ecroscope had added the seven and the zero to make Seven: the number of the bookworm, mystic, occultist, and magician.

But the actual number of his name or names was seventy in both cases. And now Harry turned to the page with quatrain number 70 of the second Century.

Le dard du ciel fera son estendu, Mors en parlant: grand execution: La pierre en 1'arbre la fiere gent rendue, Bruit humain monstre purge expiation.

d.a.m.nation! It was in the original French. They all were, with translations 'according to the author,' doubtless to suit the author's opinions. Beginning to feel like a fool on a wild-goose chase, the Necroscope delved into his pile searching for a book with direct trans lations. But the only one he had didn't contain this specific quatrain.

He opened metaphysical channels, spoke to friends' in the local graveyard. 'I need someone who speaks - spoke - French.' The teeming dead had never heard him so blunt and to the point They knew his urgency and quickly responded, finding him an ex-linguist who had once taught French at a school in Edinburgh.

Following brief introductions, Harry quickly took down the translation in his notebook: The dart from heaven makes its journey. Death in speaking... A great execution. The stone in the tree(s); the toppling of a proud (shameful) nation. Suspicion or rumour of human monsters, which shall be purged and expiated.'

But Nostradamus had 'seen in brief,' in flashes or momentary visions, and he wrote his quatrains accordingly.

Also, he had probably jumbled the sequences to get the things to rhyme. But all done very quickly so that the meaning would be lost on anyone except Nostradamus.

Therefore Harry must use what he knew, remembered, guessed or sensed, to restructure the thing into a meaningful observation or clue.

The dart (of knowledge?) completes its cycle, to one who speaks from (or to?) the dead. There are rumours of human monsters, where the stone rises from the tree(s). But following a purge and expiation, a proud (and/or shameful?) race shall be toppled...'

Harry remembered the telepathic vision he had been privileged to see in Nostradamus's mind: of a figure falling into the past (therefore out of the future). Spreadeagled as on a cross, the figure had been male, burned, blackened, smoking, which had been ghastly enough in itself; but yet there had been something even more horrible about it. And Harry had known that he'd seen or experienced this thing before. Or perhaps that he was yet to experience it... ?

Then: That blinding flash, that disintegration, that bomb-burst of golden fragments, 'darts,' that hurtled outwards in all directions from the s.p.a.ce where that crucified sh.e.l.l of a body had been! The way they had moved, full of intent, sentient, as they sought exits from their NOW into other places, other times.

And one of them had found Nostradamus in time to lift him from the debris of a wrecked life, when the physician had been unable to save his wife and family from the bubonic plague. He had been the recipient of knowledge from the future; he'd been gifted with a means to change that future! With a means to ensure that eventually a golden dart would come back to him! And Harry heard himself as in a dream repeating: "What came first, the chicken or the egg?'

As for the line about human monsters: the Necroscope had purged a few of those in his time! But did this mean he was yet to purge more? What had happened that time up in the Ca irngorms when B J.

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cancelled their climbing trip? And what else - other than a treasure vault - had he discovered at Le Manse Madonie? Thin ice again, and time to skate away from it. He did so, and moved on ...

... Or tried to. But a certain word had stuck in his mind. Cairngorms. Harry knew that a cairngorm is a stone, a variety of smoky-yellow or brown quartz found mainly in the Cairngorm Mountains, of course. So that now he thought Is it the stone in the trees,' or the stone rising from the trees? Is it in fact the granite ma.s.sif of the Cairngorms, rising up from the fertile tree-clad valley of the Spey!?

The Cairngorms, where B J. climbed and lived off the land. And Auld John's cottage at Inverdruie. And memories that simply would not come however hard the Necroscope tried to recall them to mind.

Bonnie Jean. 'Bonnie' meaning lovely, or at the very least pretty. And the quatrains sprang at once to mind: Her name is Pretty, but her thoughts are dark. Hers is to choose where no choice fits her rote in His survival.

Six hundred since the mark of pestilence entered his soulless soul.

She is her master's kennel-maid. His castle is a hollow place and high; his bed is yellow, glowing where he laid himself to rest who would not die.

He knows! - yet may not know, until set free by the kennel-maid; he sees, yet may not understand, until this Pretty's eyes search out the treachery, in the dog that would bite its keeper's hand...

The interface was very close now and the Necroscope knew it. Beads of sweat formed on his brow; tremors shook his body. There was knowledge here, there was truth, and there was great danger. The meaning of Nostradamus's lines, burning now in his memory, couldn't be mistaken. But the great seer, Nostradamus himself, could be. Hadn't he admitted that forecasting the future was at best a dubious art?

Harry knew the danger of arguing with himself, forced himself to close the books, sit back and relax as best he was able. Until the trembling in his limbs subsided and the kaleidoscopic but indistinct pictures on the flickering screens of his memory and mind's eyes gradually faded away...

Something was very wrong and Daham Drakesh knew it The scenario in England - more properly Scotland - was wrong to start with; it was working out other than the last Drakul had intended. But that was secondary to the main threat. The main threat had been reported by Colonel Tsi-Hong from Chungking.

Just a week ago Drakesh had received another ominous message from the garrison at Xigaze; the messenger had been a noncommissioned officer (indeed, a lowly Corporal), the commander of a snow-cat driven by another NCO from the rank and file. But Drakesh wasn't overly concerned with his apparent loss of face, the fact that he no longer warranted liaison with a senior officer. More importantly, the messenger had no t even waited on an answer. Therefore the contents of the seale d envelope could be one of only two things: executive commands (in other words orders), or matters of an advisory or instructional nature.

In fact they had been the latter, but that hadn't relieved the pressure.

Drakesh understood the Communist Chinese psyche only too well. As an a.s.set, their agent in a remote region - and especially 'under the wing,' as it were, of Tsi-Hong - he had been left largely to his own devices. He had even been empowered to argue or 'state his case.' make demands and requisitions almost as a puppet dictator, though on a much smaller scale. His 'empire' was after all no greater than a monastery and walled city, and his value as yet conjectural. But only let his loyalty fall suspect, or his usefulness wane; only let him fall from favour ... his standing would suffer, and indeed was suffering, accordingly.

As to what had brought about this reversal, Daham Drakesh believed he knew that well enough: the disappearance and 'presumed' death of Chang Lun, and the deceased Major's unfavourable reports before Drakesh had dealt with him. And the letter had appeared to corroborate this conclusion. It was private (genuinely private this time, for the seal wasn't broken; of course not, for Chang Lun was no more) and bore the signature of Tsi-Hong himself. Also, it was to the point: The Red Army's security services were 'dissatisfied' with the situation at the Drakesh Monastery. Drakesh's spies - his so-called 'emissaries abroad' - had brought the sect into disrepute; there could be repercussions on an international scale. At least one foreign agency had discovered connections between Drakesh's 'monks'

and certain Chinese military authorities. In the very highest places behind closed doors, awkward questions were being asked and trouble was brewing even now...

Basically, that was the substance of it It would be more than Tsi-Hong's rank and position were worth to clarify the situation any further. But because he had been Drakesh's sponsor, and therefore

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might somehow be considered 'involved,' in effect the letter was a further warning, additional to the one already received. And now, if there was anything at the Monastery or in the walled city that Drakesh (or Tsi- Hong) would not wish to be discovered there -anything that lay outside the parameters of Drakesh's approved experimental mandate - now was the time to be rid of it...

Following which Tsi-Hong had appended an apparently innocuous note: Because of the increasing incidence of Tibetan insurrection in a handful of border towns and villages, the repl acement Officer Commanding of Xigaze Garrison was now scheduled to take up his appoin tment in only nine or ten days time. Also in respect of the hostilities, he would be supported by a half- Company of Special Forces - storm-troopers! Armoured transportation for the group was forming up at the air-bridgehead in Golmud on the Sino-Tibetan border even now. It might be prudent to antic.i.p.ate a meeting with the Major just as soon as he was in situ...

And the last Drakul had greatly appreciated this fool Colonel's warning. Since the letter had arrived a week ago, surely an inspection of his 'facilities' was now imminent? Indeed Drakesh knew it was so, for in the last forty-eight hours his familiar albino bats had reported the arrival of several armoured convoys at Xigaze, and flurries of activity within that previously sluggish garrison. His aerial observers - unseen against the stark white backdrop of winter - would likewise make report to Drakesh at the first sign of any ma.s.sed movement in his direction. Which would come, he was sure.

A shame, for if he'd been faced with a merely token force, Drakesh might have taken them on and gained himself a few extra weeks. But a half-Company of trained commandoes? His monks were vampires, true, but even they were only flesh and blood. And as for his warrior creatures: they were waxing, but not yet formed enough to be brought out of their vats and unleashed, like his many children in the walled city, they were immature, and despite that they were created in his image it would be a while yet before any of them - men and monsters alike - took on the true aspect of their father.

Except the last Drakul wasn't about to wait that long. His plans must be brought forward; tomorrow would be remembered (by its survivors) as the first day in a last long winter of death. The death of civilization as humanity knew it, but the birth of the new order. He had hoped to avoid it until his vat creatures were fully waxed, until his brood in the walled city had sucked their mothers dry and gnawed on their bones; but alas there was no avoiding it not any longer. For he needed a diversion, something to draw the attention of the soldiers at Xigaze away from himself, and then to draw them away from Xigaze, back to Peking and whichever front lines would soon be opening. For this would be a diversion of the first magnitude!

What Daham Drakesh did not know (nor even Tsi-Hong, else he would never have dared send a warning of any kind) was that his stolen weapons of ma.s.s destruction were no longer a secret, no longer in place, no longer a threat For two weeks ago Yuri Andropov had informed his counterpart in Peking of the Chungking bomb, and had supplied the intelligence necessary to make the final connection with Drakesh. This if) response to a British ultimatum that if he didn't tell the Chinese authorities, they would.

And as in England, and as in Russia, the Chinese were now waiting for that radio signal out of Tibet which would inform them of the date and time that the High Priest of Drakesh Monastery was to have commenced Armageddon. The military force at Xigaze would also receive that signal, triggering an overwhelming response. And at the Red Chinese air-bridgehead in Golmud, a fighter-bomber force was waiting even now.

So that whether or not mis was an act of rebellion by the Tibetan nation, or the crazed scheme of one mad mind, its author would cease to exist at its source, and there was no authority on the entire planet that could condemn China for its action.

None of which was known to Drakesh - and certainly not to Colonel Tsi-Hong, who was after all only a civilian in uniform, an adviser on the possible military applications of ESP-ionage and parapsychology in general. Without his knowing, his superiors had already cleared him. But such had been their att.i.tude during a brief period of covert investigation that he had sensed something in the air, hence his warning to Drakesh. He had simply been covering his back.