Brian Lumley - Necroscope - Invaders

'And if you're wrong?' said Liz.

'I hope I'm wrong!' Trask answered. 'I believe I'm wrong, and I want to be wrong. But if I'm right I'll be alive, and so will you, Liz. Look, you've read about Harry but you never knew him, you haven't seen what he could do. Not the other things he could do. I have, and I don't want to see powers such as those fall into the wrong hands. That could mean the end of us all/

He sat back in his chair, let his brooding eyes rest speculatively on Jake and Lardis at the bar, but only for a moment. Then he finished by saying, 'So that's that. For now let it go. Let's all of us let it go. But Liz, try to remember what I've said. And the next time I ask you to do something, don't be so damn quick off the mark to question my motives..'

Meanwhile, at the bar, Jake had asked the bartender for a sedative, something to help him sleep during the next stage of the journey. And after the man had gone off to fetch him something:

'Haven't you had enough of sleep?' Lardis asked him.

Jake looked at him. 'Sleep is a funny thing,' he said. 'Do you know what my doctor told me, when I was laid up in hospital in Marseille that time, after I'd got myself trampled on?'

'But how could I possibly know?' Lardis answered, as yet a long way from mastering the vagaries of the English tongue. 'It isn't as if I was there with you, now is it?'

'Anyway,' said Jake, 'I had things to do and wanted to be out of there, but they wouldn't let me go. And this doctor told me I needed to rest, get some sleep. He said there were different kinds of sleep: a kind that comes from physical exhaustion, and another from mental. And that even when you've done no physical or mental work, there's the kind that tells you your body and brain have been mobile for too long without a decent break. Sleep is a medicine — the best you can get — following injury or mental trauma, yet too much of it can be debilitating rather than curative. You can walk and talk in your sleep, and in some cases solve intricate problems. Sleep can be induced, resisted, prolonged or interrupted, but no one can do without it for too long…' As he fell silent, Lardis said, 'Phew! Ask a simple question!' Jake nodded his agreement, said, 'I'm not usually so longwinded, but it's been on my mind — not so much what that doctor said about sleep, but the things he left out. At the time those things didn't apply to my case. Now they do.'

Tm learning a lot about sleep!' Lardis grunted. 'Tell me more.'

'It produces dreams,' said Jake. 'Often they're enigmatic, insoluble, and they're usually unremembered because they don't mean anything. Are you with me?'

'And I'm learning a lot of new words, too!' Lardis sighed. 'But go on, go on.'

'But from time to time,' Jake went on, 'from time to time, they do mean something. They're like — I don't know — clearing houses for all the jumble of our waking hours. And when the rubble has been cleared away, sometimes there's a silver nugget or two left over.'

'And you've been pros— er, prospec— er…'

'Prospecting?'

'Right! Right?'

'Aboard the jetcopter,' Jake answered, Tm sure my dream — my nightmare — meant something. And I want to get back into it.' He offered a weary shrug. 'I must be crazy, right? To look forward to returning to a bad dream? But anyway, what the hell? I may have been sleeping, but I didn't get much rest. I'm still dead on my feet.'

'It's the heat,' said Lardis. 'It drains a man's strength. I'm tired, too… we all are. On Sunside I'd probably be under some tree right now, asleep in a deep cool forest. But I've had trouble with my dreams, too, Jake. The fact is, I'd probably be nightmaring about the hell that's brewing in Starside! And that kind of sleep… well, you're right: it can't cure anything.'

'Me, I'll risk it anyway,' Jake muttered. 'Just as soon as I'm back on that chopper…'

When the pilot declared the jetcopter refuelled, the two technicians were the first out across the asphalt. Jake and Lardis were next, and tailing them Trask, Goodly and Liz. They had at least one hundred and fifty yards to walk to the helipad.

'Funny thing,' Goodly reported as they left the embarkation building and set out into the sizzling sunlight, 'but what Liz said suddenly makes sense. There's Jake in plain view, not forty yards ahead, and I can't read a thing of his future. Not any longer.'

'But isn't that normal?' Trask was immediately concerned.

'Aren't you always telling us that this talent of yours isn't controllable, that you can't just switch it on and off)'

Goodly nodded and said, 'Right. But I should at least be aware of something. My original prediction, that Jake would be with us for some time to come, hasn't changed. The future doesn't chop and change like that; what has been foreseen is inevitable… or it should be. It's how it will be, its circumstances, that can change. But now, with Jake, I can't sense a damn thing! It's as if there were nothing there.'

'Like he's shielded?' Now Trask was even more concerned. 1 suppose so, yes,' said the precog.

'Huh!' Trask grunted. 'It's the same for me. I thought I was imagining it. I still know the truth of him, the reality? But I'm no longer sure whose truth it is.'

'Harry's dart?' Goodly wondered. 'The Necroscope had powerful shields. Has he perhaps passed them on to Jake?'

'Yes, Harry was shielded,' Trask answered. 'Him, and the traitor Wellesley, too. But Nathan also has shields, and likewise — and especially — the Wamphyri! So Harry isn't the only one who could have passed this on, whatever it is. And I can't help thinking: maybe it hasn't been passed for the best possible reasons. I mean, why should he want to keep us out?'

And Liz put in: 'Maybe it's not deliberately or aggressively active, but just… active?'

'Like something new, feeling its way?' Trask said. 'Well, it's possible, I suppose.'

'You could always check it out,' the precog said. 'David Chung can locate us — any one of us — just like snapping his fingers. He'd soon tell us if we have something of that nature travelling with us.'

'Mindsmog?' said Trask.

By which time Liz was thoroughly alarmed. 'Or it could be just his taint!' she now broke in. 'Harry's taint, I mean. For he was, after all—'

'—We know what he was,' Trask quickly cut her short.

'And we knew then what he was,' Goodly said, taking Liz's side. 'And we accepted it. You especially, Ben. It was you who let him go, remember? When Harry's house — his last vestige on Earth — when we burned it to ashes, you could have killed him then.'

'I could have tried,' said the other.

'But you didn't.'

'We all have our talents,' Trask argued. 'Maybe mine told me it wasn't possible.'

'And maybe it told you to let him live,' said Goodly. (As Trask's closest friend, he was the only member of E-Branch who had ever been able to talk to him as openly as this.)

'I was younger then,' Trask answered gruffly, 'and a sight more foolish. The Necroscope could have been lying when he said he was quitting Earth for Starside. Talent or no talent, I

didn't have the right to take that chance. But I did. Foolish, as

I

> j > ve said.

'Younger I remember,' the precog nodded. 'But foolish? If Harry hadn't lived, what then? Who would have stopped Shaitan, and given his life for us in the vampire world? And what would have been our fate then? The chance that you took paid off

But now the jetcopter loomed, with Jake leaning out and down, offering a helping hand to Liz. And: 'We'll just have to let it go for now,' Trask murmured, his voice almost inaudible even to his companions as the engine coughed into life and the rotor blades began slicing the air overhead. 'But that doesn't

mean we'll stop watching. And sooner or later, we'll see what