And there were robins on the high garden wall, too, watching her and the maggots both - speculatively, she thought. If she went away the redb.r.e.a.s.t.s would likely make short work of the horrid things. Bon appet.i.t! She wasn't a bit envious. And then, frowning, turning back from the gate and looking up the path towards the house, at last she saw where the stones from the wall had gone.

Obviously it had been Harry's doing after all. He'd been laying them out a s stepping stones on the gentle slope of the lawned area. And on some whim or other, he'd caused them to form letters.

Before she could connect the letters up to see if they had any meaning, H arry appeared at the patio windows with a steaming jug of coffee, cups, milk and sugar on a tray. 'Breakfast in five minutes,' he called down to her. 'By the time you've poured I'll be back with the eats.' And so she forgot the bus iness with the stones and went back up the path to where he'd left the coffee on the garden table.

But half-way through breakfast she remembered and asked: 'What's this th ing with the stones?'

'Hmm?' Harry raised an eyebrow. 'Stones?'

'In the garden, on the lawn.'

'Yes,' he agreed, nodding, 'there are stones surrounding the lawn. What abo ut it?'

'No,' she insisted, 'on the lawn! Stones forming letters.' She smiled and teased: 'What is this, Harry? Are you sending secret messages to the jumbo p ilots flying into Edinburgh Airport or something?'

'On the lawn?' He paused with a forkful of food halfway to his mouth. '

Messages to the - ?' He put his fork down and, frowning now, asked, 'Where on the lawn?'

'Why, just there!' she pointed. 'Go and see for yourself.'

He did, and she could see from the expression on his face that he knew n othing about it. She got up and joined him there, and together they stared a t the peculiar stony legend. It was simple enough, looked unfinished, made n o sense whatsoever: KENL.

TJOR.

RH.

And: 'Messages?' Harry said again, thoughtfully, almost to himself. For a moment longer he stared, then nervously licked his lips and glanced quic kly all around the garden, peering intently here and there. Sandra wondered what he was looking for. He was suddenly quiet, very pale again, obviously seriously concerned about something.

'Harry?' she said. 'Is there something . . .?'

He sensed more than heard her worried tone of voice. 'Eh?' he looked at her. 'No, nothing. Some kids must have been in. So they moved a few stones a round - so what?' He laughed but there was no life in it.

'Harry,' she began again, 'I - '

'Anyway, you were right,' he abruptly cut her short. 'It's too d.a.m.ned cold out here! Let's get inside.'

But as they gathered up the breakfast things she saw him sniff at the air, saw fresh lines of concern, of realization - even of understanding? - gather on his brow.

'Something dead,' she said, and he actually started.

'What?'

'In the reeds, down by the river, Some dead thing. There are maggots on the path. The birds are eating them.' Her words were innocent enough in th emselves, but now Harry looked positively haggard.

'Eating them . . .' he repeated her. And now he couldn't wait to be out of the garden and into the house.

She took the breakfast things from him and carried them through to the kitchen, then returned to his study. He was pacing the floor, pausing every now and then to look out of the patio windows and into the garden. But as she entered he came to some decision or other and tried to adopt a less hag -ridden look. 'So what's your schedule for today?' he inquired. 'Will you b e drawing? What have you got on the board right now, eh?'

Just a few words, but they told her a lot.

Sandra was a fashion designer - ostensibly. In fact she did design fash ionable women's clothes and had enjoyed several small successes, but mainly it was a front for her work within E-Branch. Last night she had told Harry that she wasn't doing anything today. She had thought they might spend it together. But now, for reasons of his own, he obviously wanted her out of h ere. 'You want me to go?' She couldn't keep the disappointment out of her v oice.

'Sandra,' he gave up his weak attempt at subterfuge, sighed and looked a way, 'I need to be alone to do some thinking. Can you understand that?'

'And I'll be in the way? Yes, I can understand that.' But her tone said she couldn't. And before he could answer: 'Harry, this thing about the stones in t he garden. I-'

'Look,' he grated, 'I don't know about the stones! For all I know they're only a small part ... of ... of ... oh, whatever!'

'Part of what, Harry?' Surely he must hear how concerned she was?

But it seemed he didn't. 'I don't know,' his voice was still harsh. He sh ook his head, then shot her an inquiring, almost vindictive glance. 'Maybe I should ask you, eh? I mean, maybe it's possible you know more about what's go ing on here than I do, right?'

She made no answer but began to collect up her things. When this - whate ver it was - had blown over, then there'd be time enough to try to explain a bout her connections with E-Branch. And it would be a good time, too, to qui t the Branch entirely and make a clean start. With Harry, if he'd have her.

He threw some clothes on and was waiting for her in the car when she was ready. They drove along the service road from the old houses, crossed the stone bridge and joined the major road into Bonnyrig. From the village she could get a bus into Edinburgh. She'd done it before and it was no great c h.o.r.e.

She hadn't meant to speak to him again right now, but getting out of the car she found herself saying, 'Will I see you tonight? Should I come up here?

'No,' he shook his head. And as she turned away: 'Sandra!' She looked back into his pale, troubled face. But he could only shrug helplessly and say: 'I don't know. I mean I really don't.'

'Will you call me?'

'Yes,' he nodded, and even managed a smile. 'And Sandra . . . it's OK. I mean, I know you're OK.'

That took a big lead weight off her heart. Something only Harry Keogh c ould do as easily as that. 'Yes,' she leaned down and kissed him through th e open car window, 'we're OK, Harry. I know we're OK.'

In Edinburgh, Darcy Clarke and Norman Wellesley were waiting in the ro ad outside the sweeping terraced facade of Georgian houses where Sandra ha d her flat. They were in the back of Wellesley's car, parked up, with two other Branch men; but as she came into view round a corner they got out of the car and met her at the door of the house. She had the ground-floor fl at; without speaking she ushered them inside.

'Nice to see you again, Miss Markham,' Wellesley nodded, taking a seat.

Clarke was less formal. 'How are things, Sandra?' He forced a smile.

She caught a brief glimpse of his mind and it was all worry and uncertai nty. But nothing specific. Harry was in it somewhere, though, be sure. Of co urse he was; why else would these two be here? She said: 'Coffee?' and witho ut waiting for their answer went into her kitchen alcove. Let them do the ta lking.

'We have time for a coffee, yes,' said Wellesley, in that oh-very-well, I- suppose-I-shall-have-to-accept way of his, as if it were his d.a.m.ned right! 'Bu t actually we're pretty busy and won't prolong our visit too much. So if we ca n get right to it: did you have plans to see Keogh tonight?'

Just like that . . . and 'Keogh', not Harry. Will you be in his bed, or he in yours? Wellesley was asking. Humping again tonight, are you?

There was something about this man that got Sandra's back up. And the fa ct that his mind was a complete blank - not even radiating the faintest glow - was only a small part of it. She glanced back at him from the alcove with eyes that were cold where they met his. 'He said he might call me,' she ans wered, unemotionally.

'It's just that we'd prefer it if you don't see him tonight, Sandra,' Cla rke hurriedly put in, before Wellesley could use that blunt instrument he called a tongue again. 'I mean, we plan on seeing him ourselves. And we'd like t o avoid, you know, any embarra.s.sing confrontations?'

She didn't know, really. But she brought them their coffee anyway and ga ve Darcy a smile. She'd always liked him. She didn't like to see him uncomfo rtable in the presence of his boss. Their boss, though not for much longer.

Not if things worked out as she hoped they would. 'I see,' she said. 'So wha t's happening?'

'No need for you to concern yourself,' Wellesley was quick off the mark. 'J ust routine stuff. And, I'm afraid, confidential.'

And suddenly she was afraid, too ... for Harry. More complications? Som ething to interfere with her own plans, which she hoped would be the best f or him? It was on the tip of her tongue to tell them about the new developm ents, what she knew of them, but she held it back.

There was that in their att.i.tude - Wellesley's anyway -which warned tha t now wasn't a good time. And anyway, it would all go in her end-of-month r eport, along with her resignation.

They all three finished their coffees in silence. And finally: 'That's it, then,' said Wellesley, standing up. 'We won't be seeing you!' - his idea of a smart remark! He nodded, offered her a twitchy half-smile and headed for the door. She saw them out, and Wellesley's parting shot was: 'So if he does, er, call you, do put him off, won't you?'

She might have answered him in kind right there and then, but Clarke gave her arm a rea.s.suring squeeze just above the elbow, as if saying: 'It's OK, I'l l be there.'

But why should Darcy be acting so concerned? She'd rarely seen him looki ng so on edge . . .

7.

Deadspeak

After dropping Sandra off in Bonnyrig and during the short drive home, Harry stopped at a newsagent's and bought himself a pack of twenty cigarett es. He looked at his change but didn't try to check it. It wouldn't make an y sense to him anyway. They could rip him off every time and he just wouldn 't know it.

That was the other thing Harry Jnr had done to him: he was now innumer ate. No way he could use the Mobius Continuum if he couldn't even calculat e the change from a pack of cigarettes! Sandra saw to it that his bills we re paid, or he'd probably get that wrong, too. What price his 'instinctive mathematics' now, eh? The Mobius equations? What the h.e.l.l were they? What had they looked like?

And again Harry wondered: was it a dream? Was that all it had been? A f antasy? A figment of his own imagination? Oh, he remembered how it had been , all right; but as he'd tried to explain to Sandra, it was the way you rem ember a dream, or a book you read in childhood, fast fading now. Had he rea lly, really, done all of those things? And if he had, did he really, really , want to be able to do them again? To talk to the teeming dead, and step t hrough doors no one else guessed existed to travel swift as thought in the metaphysical Mobius Continuum?

Want it? Perhaps not, but what was there without it? What was he with out it? Answer: Harry Keogh, nowhere man.

Back home he went into the garden and looked at the stones again: KENL.

TJOR.

RH.

They meant nothing to him. But still he fixed their meaningless legend in his mind. Then he brought the wheelbarrow, loaded it up and wheeled th e stones back to the wall where ... he paused a moment and stood frowning, before wheeling them back up to the lawn again. And there he left them, i n the wheelbarrow.

For if - just if - someone was trying to tell him something, well, why ma ke things harder for them?

Indoors again, Harry climbed stairs and then ladders to the attic room w hich no one else suspected was there -that large, dusty room with its slopin g rear window, naked light-bulb hanging from a roof timber, and its rows and rows of bookshelves - which was now a shrine to his obsession, if the word 'shrine' were at all applicable. And of course the books themselves. All the facts and the fictions were here, all the myths and legends, all the 'concl usive condemnations' and 'indisputable evidences' for or against, proving, d isproving or standing in the middle ground of Harry's studies. The history, the lore, the very nature ... of the vampire.

Which was in itself a grim joke, for how could anyone ever fully understand the nature of the vampire? And yet if any man could, then it was Harry Keogh.

But he hadn't come here today to look again at his books or delve a littl e deeper into the miasma of times, lands and legends long past. No, for he be lieved that time itself was well past for those things, for study and vain at tempts at understanding. His dreams of red threads among the blue were immedi ate things, 'now' things, and if he'd learned nothing else in his weird life it was to trust in his dreams.

The Wamphyri have powers, father!

An echo? A whisper? The scurry of mice? Or ... a memory?

How long before they seek you out and find you?

No, he wasn't here to look at his books this time. The time to study an e nemy's tactics is before the onslaught. Too late if he's already come a-knock ing at your door. Well, he hadn't, not yet. But Harry had dreamed things, and he trusted his dreams.

He took down a piece of modern weaponry (yes, modern, though its design hadn't changed much through sixteen centuries) from the wall and carried it to a table where he laid it down on newspapers preparatory to cleaning, oili ng and generally servicing the thing. There was this, and in the corner ther e a sickle whose semicircular blade gleamed like a razor, and that was all.

Strange weapons, these, against a force for blight and plague and devas tation potentially greater than any of Man's thermonuclear toys. But right now they were the only weapons Harry had.

Better tend to them . . .

The afternoon pa.s.sed without incident; why shouldn't it? Years had pa.s.s ed without incident, within the parameters of the Harry Keogh mentality and ident.i.ty. He spent most of the time considering his position (which was th is: that he was no longer a Necroscope, that he no longer had access to the Mobius Continuum), and ways in which he might improve that position and re cover his talents before they atrophied utterly.

It was possible - barely, Harry supposed, considering his innumeracy - that if he could speak to Mobius, then Mobius might be able to stabilize wh atever mathematical gyro was now out of kilter in his head. Except first he must be able to speak to him, which was likewise out of the question. For of course Mobius had been dead for well over a hundred years, and Harry was forbidden to speak to the dead on penalty of mental agony.

He could not speak to the dead, but the dead might even now be looking at ways in which they could communicate with him. He suspected - no, he m ore than suspected, was sure - that he spoke to them in his dreams, even t hough he was forbidden to remember or act upon what they had told him. But still he was aware that warnings had been pa.s.sed, even if he didn't know what those warnings were about. One thing was certain, however: he knew that within himself and within every man, woman and child on the surface of the globe, a blue thread unw ound from the past and was even now spinning into the future of humanity, and that he had dreamed - or been warned - of red threads amidst the blue.

And apart from that - this inescapable mood or sensation of something i mpending, something terrible - the rest of it was a Chinese puzzle with no solution, a maze with no exit, the square root of minus one, whose value ma y only be expressed in the abstract. Harry knew the latter for a fact, even if he no longer knew what it meant. And it was a puzzle he'd examined almo st to distraction, a maze he'd explored to exhaustion, and an equation he h adn't even attempted because like all mathematical concepts it simply would n't read.

In the evening he sat and watched television, mainly for relaxation. He'

d considered calling Sandra, and then hadn't. There was something on her min d, too, he knew; and anyway, what right had he to draw her into . . . whatev er this was, or whatever it might turn out to be? None.

So it went; evening drew towards night; Harry prepared for bed, only to sit dozing in his chair. The dish in his garden collected signals and unscra mbled their pictures onto his screen. He started awake at the sound of appla use, and discovered an American chat-show host talking to a fat lady who had the most human, appealing eyes Harry could imagine. The show was called 'In teresting People' or some such and Harry had watched it before. Usually it w as anything but interesting; but now he caught the word 'extrasensory' and s at up a little straighter. Naturally enough, he found ESP in all its forms e ntirely fascinating.

'So ... let's get this right,' the skeletally thin host said to the fat lad y. 'You went deaf when you were eighteen months old, and so never learned how t o speak, right?'

'That's right,' the fat lady answered, 'but I do have this incredible m emory, and obviously I'd heard a great many human conversations before I we nt deaf. Anyway, speech never developed in me, so I wasn't only deaf but du mb, too. Then, three years ago, I got married. My husband is a technician i n a recording studio. He took me in one day and I watched him working, and I suddenly made the connection between the oscillating sensors on his machi nery and the voices and instrument sounds of the group he was recording.'

'Suddenly, you got the idea of sound, right?'

That's correct,' the fat lady smiled, and continued: 'Now, I had of cou rse learned sign-language or dactylology - which in my mind I'd called dumb speak - and I also knew that some deaf people could carry on perfectly norm al conversations, which I termed 'deafspeak'. But I hadn't tried it myself simply because I hadn't understood sound! You see, my deafness was total. A bsolute. Sound didn't exist - except in my memory!' 'And so you saw this hypnotist?'

'Indeed I did. It was hard but he was patient - and of course it mightn'

t have been possible at all except he was able to use dumbspeak. So he hypno tized me and brought back all the conversations I'd heard as a baby. And whe n I woke up -'

' - You could speak?'

'Exactly as you hear me now, yes!'

'The h.e.l.l you say! Not only fully articulate but almost entirely without a ccent! Mrs Zdzienicki, that's a most fascinating story and you really are one of the most Interrrresting People we've ever had on this show!'

The camera stayed on his thin, smiling face and he nodded his head in fre netic affirmation. 'Yessiree! And now, let's move on to - '