Brian Lumley - Necroscope V - Deadspawn

After that, it had soon become apparent just what the sphere was: the fact that the failed experiment had blown a hole through the wall of this universe into another, which lay parallel. And the sphere was the doorway, the portal… the Gate. But it was a weird kind of gate; anything going through it couldn't come back; likewise for anything that came through from the other side, from the parallel world of Sunside and Starside. And the trouble with Starside, of course, was that it was the source of vampirism, the 'home' of the Wamphyri.

Things had come through from the other side, which by the grace of God — or by chance, good fortune — had been destroyed before they could carry their lethal taint, the plague of vampirism, into the outside world. But such had been their horror that men just couldn't face up to them. Hence the Katushevs. Hence the flamethrowers everywhere evident, where in other secret establishments one might expect to find fire extinguishers. Hence the FEAR which had lived and breathed and occasionally held its breath in Perchorsk. The FEAR which lived here even now.

Even now, yes…

It was different, Harry observed, but not that different. For one thing the wooden floorboards of the Saturn's rings platform had been replaced by these steel plates, radiating outwards from the sphere like giant fish scales.

The Katushevs had gone, too, leaving the Gate surrounded at its own height by a system of ominous-looking sprinklers. And higher up the curving wall of the cavern, on platforms of their own, were the great glass carboys which contained the liquid agent for this sprinkler system: many gallons of highly corrosive acid. The steel plates of the rings sloped slightly downwards towards the centre, so that any spilled acid would run that way; below the sphere Gate, central on the magmass floor, a huge glass tank served as a catchment area for the acid when its work was done.

Its 'work', of course, would be to blind, incapacitate, and rapidly reduce to fumes anything that should come through from the other side; for after the last grotesque emergence — of a Wamphyri warrior creature — Viktor Luchov had known that exploding steel or a team of men with conventional flamethrowers just wouldn't be enough. Not for that sort of thing.

What had been enough was the failsafe system which was in use at that time, which poured thousands of gallons of explosive fuel into the core and then ignited it. Except it had also reduced the complex to a shell. Since when -

'Why didn't you get out then?' Harry inquired, when he'd seen everything he needed to see. 'Why didn't you just quit the place, close it up?'

'Oh, we did — briefly,' Luchov answered, blinking rapidly where he peered at his dream visitor in the glare of the Gate. 'We got out, sealed off the tunnels, filled all the horizontal ventilation and service shafts into the ravine with concrete, built a gigantic steel door onto the old entrance like a door on a bank vault. Why, we did as good a job on the Perchorsk Projekt as they'd later do on the reactor at Chernobyl! And then we had people sitting out there in the ravine with their sensors, listening to it… until we realized that we just couldn't stand the silence!'

Harry knew what he meant. The horror at Chernobyl couldn't reactivate itself; it wasn't likely to become sentient. But if sentient minds could plug the holes at Perchorsk, others — however alien — might always unplug them.

'We had to know, to be able to see for ourselves, that all was well down here,' Luchov continued. 'At least until we could deal with it on a more permanent basis.'

'Oh?' Harry was keenly interested. 'Deal with it permanently? Will you explain?'

And Luchov might have done just that, except Harry had allowed himself to become just a fraction too intense, too real. And suddenly the Projekt Direktor had known that this was more than any ordinary dream.

Starting awake in his austere, cell-like room, the Russian jerked upright in his bed and saw Harry sitting there, staring at him with eyes like clots of fluorescent blood in the room's darkness. Then, remembering his dream, and panting his shock where he pressed himself to the bare steel wall, Luchov gasped, 'Harry Keogh! It is you! You… you liar!'

Again Harry knew what he meant. But he shook his head. 'I told you no lie, Viktor. I haven't killed men for their blood, I've created no vampires, and I wasn't myself infected that way.'

'That's as may be,' the other gasped, 'but you are a vampire!'

Harry smiled, however terribly. 'Look at me,' he said, his voice very soft, almost warm, even reasonable. 'I mean, I can hardly deny it, can I?' And he leaned himself a little closer to Luchov.

The Russian was as Harry remembered him; his skin might be a shade more sallow, his eyes more feverish, but basically he was the same man. Small and thin, he was badly scarred and the hair was absent from the left half of his face and yellow-veined skull. But however vulnerable Luchov might seem, Harry knew that in fact he was a survivor. He had survived the awful accident which created the Gate, survived all of the Things which subsequently came through it, even survived the final holocaust. Yes, survived everything. So far, anyway.

Luchov blanched under the Necroscope's scrutiny and panted that much faster. He prayed that the steel wall would absorb him safely within itself, maybe to expel him in the cell next door, away from this… man? For Luchov had faced a vampire before, and even the thought of it was terrifying! Finally he forced out words. 'Why are you here?'

Harry's gaze was unwavering. He watched the yellow veins pulsing rapidly under the scar-tissue skin of Luchov's seared skull, and answered, 'Oh, you know why well enough, Viktor. I'm here because of what E-Branch told you or caused you to be told: that I'm obliged to abandon this world, and in order to do so must use the Perchorsk Gate. But no big deal. Why, I should have thought you'd all be glad to see the last of me!'

'Oh, we would! We would!' Luchov eagerly agreed, nodding until droplets of sweat flew. 'It's just that… that…'

Harry inclined his head a little on one side and smiled his awful smile again. 'Go on.'

But Luchov had already said too much. 'If what you say is true,' he babbled, trying to change the subject, 'that as yet you've… harmed no one… I mean…'

'Are you asking me not to harm you?' Harry deliberately yawned, politely hiding the indelicate gape behind his hand — but not before he'd let the Russian glimpse the length and serrated edges of his teeth, and not without displaying the hand's talons. 'What, for the sake of my reputation? Every esper in Europe and possibly even further afield baying for my blood, but I have to be a good boy? Fair's fair, Viktor. Now, why don't you just tell me what E-Branch told your lot, and what they've asked you to do? Oh yes, and what measure — what permanent solution — there could possibly be to this Frankenstein monster you've created here at Perchorsk?'

'But I can't… daren't tell you any of those things,' Luchov whined, cringing against the steel wall.

'So despite all you've been through, you're still a true, brainwashed son of Mother Russia, eh?' Harry grimaced and gave a mocking snort.

'No.' Luchov shook his head. 'Just a man, a member of the human race.'

'But one who believes everything people tell him, right?'

'What my eyes tell me, certainly.'

The Necroscope's patience was at an end. He leaned closer still, grabbed Luchov's wrist in a steel claw and hissed, 'You argue well, Viktor. Perhaps you really should have been one of the Wamphyri!'

And at last the Projekt Direktor could see his worst nightmare taking shape before his eyes, the metamorphosis of a man into a potential plague, and knew that he might all too easily become the next carrier. But he still had a card left to play. 'You… you defy every scientific principle,' he babbled. 'You come and go in that weird way of yours. But did you think I had forgotten? Did you think I wouldn't remember and take precautions? Better go now, Harry, before they burst in through that door there and burn you to a crisp!'