"Lumley, Brian - Vampire World 3 - Bloodwars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

'And the one we saw entering into the computer? In fact, the computer showed it to us, right?'
Trask nodded, stepped away from the tables and beckoned the others back. 'Let them breathe, for Christ's sake!' And to Goodly: 'What about it?'
The way I see it,' Goodly answered, 'that dart or whatever it was, it's been waiting in there. Before, the computer seemed to be running off its own power; you'll remember, it wasn't plugged in? Well, whatever it was that powered the display that time - call it a "ghost", if you like, or an "echo" of Harry Keogh -- it must have just about burned itself out. But this time it was tapping a legitimate power source, which boosted what was left of it. So ... this is what we saw:
'The numbers stopped dead on the screen and, like David
said, formed into something solid - a golden dart! Oh, it was faint as a wisp of yellow smoke - pretty insubstantial stuff - but it was real. And then ... it left the screen!'
'It what?' Trask's frown knotted his forehead.
'It left the screen,' Goodly repeated. 'And it passed out through the wall of the room and was gone.'
'Gone? Gone where?'
Geoff Smart the empath had arrived from somewhere. Having heard what had been said, he now put in: 'I think that's something you'll have to ask Nathan, when he comes out of it.'
Trask glanced at the speaker. Smart was something less than six feet tall, sturdily built, red-haired, crew-cut; he looked like a boxer, aggressive, but was in fact mild-mannered. What he lacked in looks found compensation in what Trask called his 'withness': his intense ability to relate. His talent was empathy, in which capacity he had worked very closely with Nathan. It was odds-on that Smart would be correct in his as yet unspoken estimate of what had occurred. But unspoken or not, Trask read the truth in it anyway.
'You're telling me that this dart - went looking for him?'
Smart nodded. 'And found him! That's my bet. I think it's been in there - in the computer - just waiting for him. Which is why none of you ever messed with Harry's room all this time, because you could sense it in there. Why not? You're all espers, after all. But when Nathan got here, the thing revealed itself. And given a power source at last, when Chung plugged it in .. .'
'.. . The dart went home.' Trask finished it for him. 'Went home to Nathan.'
Again Smart nodded. That's how I see it, yes.'
'It finished the job that we had started on him,' Trask continued almost to himself, staring in something approaching awe at the young man on the second bed. 'It gave him the Mobius Continuum and made him complete. But .. . this was his first time ever? And still he was able to find his way back here -- and bring Zek with him?'
9
8

David Chung spoke up. 'He wasn't entirely on his own. I mean, I think maybe I had something to do with it. Or rather, that this had something to do with it.' He held up Nathan's golden earring in the warped shape of a Mobius loop. 'A vampire Lord called Maglore gave this to Nathan before he escaped from Turgosheim. I think Maglore was using it to spy on him. But as a locating device the earring works both ways. Nathan must have homed in on it, and that's how he found his way back here . ..'
Trask looked at them all standing around him. Looked from face to face, and then at Zek Foener and the Necroscope Nathan Keogh, lying tranquillized in their makeshift beds. Finally he grinned and shook his head in wonder. And to Smart, Goodly and Chung, he said, 'So, all three of you had a hand in it, right? God, what would we do without you? What would any of us anywhere do without you?' His steady gaze spread to encompass the rest of his espers. 'And I do mean all of you.'
It was the finest compliment he had ever paid them ...
The plan was simple: Nathan had revisited Sir Keenan Gormley's resting place to 'fix' its co-ordinates in his mind, and also to tell the ex-Head of Branch that he was experimenting with the Mobius Continuum. Now, having returned to E-Branch HQ, he would attempt a Mobius jump to Gormley's Garden of Repose. In the event that something went wrong, David Chung would be ready with Nathan's sigil earring to guide him home. And so that it would be more in keeping as a genuine scientific experiment, other Branch members would be in situ at Gormley's memorial, to time any lapse between Nathan's jump from HQ and his arrival in the Kensington cemetery.
All was now in place. It was 9.00 a.m., and the mid-city temperature was already climbing; Nathan, Trask and a majority of E-Branch agents were in the Ops room, every single man of them with a film of sweat on his brow although the air-conditioning was up full. Finally Trask said, 'Well, son, and now it's all yours.'
Nathan smiled nervously, looked at them each in his turn, and last but not least at Zek. She smiled reassuringly, reminding him, 'You've done it once.'
He nodded. 'When I had to, yes.'
Trask was anxious and said, 'Look, if you want to postpone this ...'
'No,' Nathan cut him off. 'Let it be now. There's no time left. If I can do it, it will give me the edge I'll need back on Sunside.'
David Chung stepped forward, grinned self-consciously, and said, 'Nathan, I...' and stuck out his hand. They clasped forearms in the Szgany fashion, and Chung stepped back again. Then, as if at a signal, the espers backed away from Nathan where he stood in the centre of the room.
And it was time.
Utter silence fell, and the expressions on all faces grew tense, expectant. Nathan felt the force of their minds concentrated upon him from where they stood in a circle but at a safe distance. And feeling their eyes - their minds - on him like that, and concerned that they might in some way interfere with the process, he closed his own eyes to shut them out. But he couldn't close his mind. Indeed, he must open his mind -
-- Open it, and conjure the numbers vortex!
And at once - instantaneously, so rapidly that the effect almost unnerved him - Mobius equations commenced to mutate on the screen of his metaphysical mind. It was the vortex, and yet it was not the vortex. The numbers, characters and symbols were the same but the pattern was not. There was no actual whirlpool of numbers as such, but an ordered march of evolving calculi and ever-changing equations, like the emerging answer to a question of immense complexity, unravelling onto the screen of some gigantic computer.
But the big difference was this: Nathan was no longer ignorant, no longer innumerate. He now knew what he was looking for, and how to control and use it. And suddenly it
11
10

was there, and he froze it: the Big Equation, framed on the screen of his mind like a page of print-out. Frozen there, yes, for a single moment, before it dissolved and warped ... and formed a door.
A Mobius door!
And Nathan sensed that it was here, that it was real. His eyes snapped open and he saw it, there in the room with him, a single pace away. And he knew he was the only one - the only man in the world - who could see it.
The next scene would be remembered forever by everyone who witnessed it. They were intent upon Nathan; they drank in every aspect of him, his looks, dress, stance, even something of his feelings, perhaps, until the picture of the man entire was etched into their extra mundane minds:
Standing erect, head high, staring a little to one side, and with his bottom jaw falling open a fraction as he became aware of something far beyond the sensory range of the rest, Nathan Keogh was an imposing young man of twenty or twenty-one years. His simple clothes, of this world, were nothing special, but the man inside them was. He was the Necroscope, who talked to dead men in their graves and so had access to all the secrets of the past -- perhaps even of the future -- and yet had no real time to explore or use such knowledge to his own best advantage. Not yet, anyway.
Nathan was something more than six feet tall. He had an athlete's body: broad shoulders, narrow waist, powerful arms and legs. His eyes might be very slightly slanted, or perhaps it was only his frown, the look of rapt attention on his face as he gazed at the mainly Unknown, which to the rest, with the exception of Zek, was completely unknown. His nose was straight and seemed small under a broad forehead flanked by high cheek-bones. And over a square chin which jutted a little, his mouth was full and tended to slant downwards a fraction to the left. In others this might suggest cynicism, but not in him. Rather, the opposite.
For, looking at Nathan, Ben Trask knew the 'truth' of him, which had to be revenant of his father, Harry Keogh: a
natural innocence and compassion, the soulfulness of the mind behind the face. So that without being Keogh's spitting image, still the visitor 'felt' like him. These had been Trask's thoughts the first time he'd laid eyes on Nathan, and nothing had occurred to change them. As for what was happening here: that could only confirm these thoughts beyond any further doubt.
Nathan viewed the Mobius door and stepped forward. The act was almost robotic, automatic, instinctive; as if he were drawn to the door, as if the place beyond it lured him irresistibly, which of course it did. Then, glancing just once at Trask and the others -
- He took a final, unsteady but resolute pace . .. right out of this world.
He was there - and he was gone! They saw his right foot, calf, thigh, half of his body and face disappear, and the rest of him follow into nothingness. The Necroscope Nathan Keogh was no longer in the room. Just motes of dust drifting in the sunlight through the window blinds, flowing into the vacuum where he had been.
Easily stated, but astonishing to the witnesses. An agent on the briefing podium almost forgot to say his magic word into his handset, and only just remembered in time: 'Now!'
And the answer came back at once from the Kensington crematorium: 'Now!'
The man on the podium frowned at his handset. 'Yes, now, for Christ's sake! Why are you repeating me? He's just done it. He's just gone in.'