"Brian Lumley - E-Branch 1 - Defilers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

For where it takes time to make a telephone or video call, telepathy is instantaneous. And where
mechanical extraps could only "guess" at future events, precogs such as lan Goodly occasionally
"glimpsed" the future. And however diligently spies in the sky might search for chemical and
nuclear pollutants in the world's continents and living oceans, locators like David Chung

could actually sniff them out, like an X ray finding a cancer. In other words- and insofar as
Trask's weirdly skilled agents really did touch, taste, and smell much of the otherwise invisible-
they were in many ways superior to the machines, principally in that they didn't need programming
. . . but there were times when they did need inspiring.
Electrical and mechanical clatter-the hum and buzz and stutter from the other side of the large
room-fell to a minimum as Trask climbed four steps up to the podium, then turned to face a
semicircular array of chairs in three ranks, so organized that no one's face was hidden behind
anyone else's. And there they were: his ghosts, or the people who dealt with them, looking right
back at him.
"No niceties," he told them then, his voice rasping like a file on glass. "No congratulations on
work well done. I've been through all that,- and it was well done, but it wasn't finished. So no
'Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,' because it isn't, even if you are. It's a bad afternoon-
it's a black afternoon- ladies and gentlemen. Worse, it could even be one of the last afternoons,
before a hellishly long night. And without wanting to seem too melodramatic, you may be the only
ones standing between the twilight and the final darkness."
He looked at all the faces-blank, emotionless, waiting to receive emotion, inspiration. But where
to find it? Why, in the truth of course, where Trask had always found it.
"You all know the problem," he told them. "But until we-our Australian team-went out there, no one
knew, we couldn't be sure, that the problem knew us. Now we know. There are Wamphyri in our world,


file:///G|/rah/Brian%20Lumley/Brian%20Lumley%20-%20E-Branch%201%20-%20Defilers.txt (11 of 263) [2/13/2004 10:10:51 PM]
 file:///G|/rah/Brian%20Lumley/Brian%20Lumley%20-%20E-Branch%201%20-%20Defilers.txt

and they know that we know about them. Which makes it a very different ball game. Now we hunters
have to be doubly careful and ensure that we don't end up the hunted."
It had happened before, some thirty-odd years ago, when an Earth-born vampire, Yulian Bodescu,
blood-son of Thibor Ferenczy, had set himself against E-Branch to destroy it. Then, only Harry
Keogh and his infant boy child, a Necroscope whose powers rivalled his father's, had been able to
stop the impending destruction of E-Branch and the plague of vampires that would have ensued. But
Trask didn't need to elaborate,- his espers had read the files and knew the story almost but not
quite as well as he did. But Trask had actually been there. And their faces weren't so much blank
or emotionless as respectful-deeply respectful. For of all the great survivors who ever were,
surely Ben Trask must rank among the greatest.
And now that he had started-now that he'd settled down a little and saw how well he commanded the
attention of his audience-Trask began to recognize those oh-so-respectful faces. Why, he even
began to discover likenesses to faces that were no longer there! But with all respect, the latter
were real ghosts now who existed only in fond memory and imagination.
Such as Darcy Clarke. Darcy, the world's most nondescript man, and the one with the world's most
effective, most beneficent-to Darcy-and reliable talent. For he had been a deflector, the very
opposite of accident prone: a man

with a guardian angel, who could stumble blindfolded through a minefield in snowshoes and come out
the other side completely unscathed!
Darcy had been Head of Branch once over-until the thing that had got into Harry Keogh got into