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

And again the answer, in a brief burst of static: 'Who's repeating you? I'm telling you! He's just come out! He's here, now!'
No time-lapse at all, not to them. But to Nathan:
He stepped in through the metaphysical Mobius door, and entered a place beyond all places, beyond all times, yet encompassed by and encompassing space-time itself. It was not the same as - could not be likened to - any experience he'd ever known before. Even the first time he'd been ...
12
13

here, with Zek, less than twenty-four hours ago, it had been different. At the very least there had been water then, a great spout of Ionian sea-water which had entered the Continuum under its own pressure, dispersing to ... wherever. Now there wasn't even that.
There was nothing!
It was a place of utter darkness: perhaps even the Primal Darkness itself, which existed before this universe or any parallel universe such as Nathan's began. Except there wasn't only an absence of light, but an absence of everything. Nathan might well be at the entirely conjectural core of a black hole (his E-Branch tutors had dealt with certain of the basic theories of cosmology, at least); except a black hole has enormous gravity, and this place had none. No gravity, no time (and therefore no space), no light. Not a place obeying one single Law of Nature or Science, and therefore a place outside the Universe we know. And yet existing within the Universe we know, for it had twice been conjured by a common -- or an uncommon -- human being; by the Necroscope Nathan Keogh. As for Nathan's father: Harry had been an habitual user, almost an inhabitant, of 'the place'.
Both central and external, the Mobius Continuum was nowhere and it was everywhere; from such a starting point one might go anywhere, or go nowhere forever. And it would be for ever, for in this timeless - environment? -- nothing would ever age or change except by force of will... which was a fact that Nathan knew without knowing how he knew it. But then, how does a moorhen chick know how to swim? It was in his mind, his blood, his genes.
A 'place', then, this Mobius Continuum: which might well be its best, indeed its only description. But Nathan's tutors had also touched upon theology, especially that of the Christian religion. And Nathan sensed that in some way this might even be a 'holy' place. If so, then little wonder he'd been put to such pains to discover it. For it must be a very private holy place, in which no God as yet had uttered
those wonderful words of evocation: 'Let there be light!' Or if such words had been spoken ... then this was the source of everything, the initial singularity from which THE ALL had shone out in a great and glorious beginning!
And as that thought dawned, at a stroke, so Nathan hit upon the greatest secret of all, which had taken his father a veritable lifetime to discover. But it was only a thought, which he hadn't recognized as the truth .. .
What he did recognize was this: that empty as this 'place' was - and as far removed from man's laws as could be - still it had laws and forces of its own. For even now he could feel one such force working on him, trying to move, remove, or dislodge him from this unreal place back into the real. But Nathan had a will of his own and wasn't about to be moved except in the direction he desired.
'Behind' Nathan, if mundane directions had any meaning in such a place, the Mobius door closed. And, remembering his purpose here, he pictured the Garden of Repose in Kensington which was his target destination. It had been his plan to 'picture' Sir Keenan Gormley's memorial marker, to focus upon the plaque and use it as a different kind of marker, but he now saw that this wasn't necessary.
For no sooner had the crematorium in Kensington entered his thoughts, than he found himself in motion and knew that he was headed in that 'direction'. It was as if he were drawn along a route, though whether in a straight line, a curve, up or down ... it was impossible to say or even guess. But definitely he felt the first tentative tugging of some force other than the Mobius Continuum's rejection forces. Not even a tugging, as such, but more a gentle pressure that seemed to want to guide him. He'd known something like it before when tracking the Mobius loop symbol from Zakynthos in the Aegean back to E-Branch HQ. Then it had been his lifeline - Zek's, too - and, remembering that, he felt in no way threatened.
He simply went with the motion, the feeling, following it to its source: the co-ordinates of Keenan Gormley's Garden
15
14

of Repose in Kensington. And, like seeing a light at the end of a tunnel, so Nathan sensed the way ahead and accelerated his metaphysical motion by willing himself . .. that way, towards it. And as if he'd been walking and had suddenly broken into a run, he sensed that he was moving that much faster. So incredibly fast indeed that he was there!
And going from the incalculable 'velocity' of thought to stationary in less than a second - yet feeling no discomfort whatsoever - Nathan conjured another Mobius door and stepped across the threshold.
Light! Such brilliant light that he gasped and screwed his eyes tight shut. And gravity! Nathan staggered a moment as his feet touched solid earth and his legs trembled where they took his weight. Then someone said, 'Now!' And eager hands reached out to steady him.
And despite that time had seemed to pass during Nathan's trip from E-Branch HQ to Kensington, this was that same moment when the voice of the esper on the podium made his all-important mistake, and asked his all-important question: 'Yes, now, for Christ's sake! Why are you repeating me?' Which sounded now from a handset in the Kensington crematorium where Nathan stood. Important for this reason: it was the first proof positive that 'time' in the Mobius Continuum is non-existent.
'Well done, Nathan!' Someone gasped his amazement, his congratulations. While in the Necroscope's deadspeak mind:
Well done, son! Sir Keenan Gormley applauded his efforts. And now .. . more than ever you feel like your father.
In answer to which, Nathan was quick to inquire: As he was in the beginning, or at the end?
For a moment the other was silent, but Nathan sensed his shudder. Then: It's true, Harry made mistakes. Sir Keenan gave a deadspeak nod. But don't forget, mistakes are what make us human.
And, almost as if his experience in the Mobius Continuum had soured his mind, making it caustic and cynical (though in fact it was simply nerves), again Nathan's rapid riposte,
Oh? But surely, Harry's mistake made him inhuman! It's what cost him his humanity! But he knew that the other wasn't going to let him get away with that.
A clever man learns by his mistakes, Sir Keenan answered in a little while. By his own mistakes, and by those of others. In your case, by your father's. You have a long way to go yet, son, but Godspeed. And take care along the way, Nathan. Take care along the way ...
After that, and during the next twenty-four hours, which was all the time he had left:
Nathan used the Mobius Continuum and the markers or co-ordinates which were his ever-growing coterie of dead friends constantly, until the geography of this strange world was no longer just a series of contour lines, trigonometrical points, watercolour oceans or bland white ice-caps in the pages of an atlas, but a living, breathing source of constant wonder, astonishment, even awe. For the difference between this world and his own was like that between garlic and honey; and not simply in the sense that one was sour and the other sweet (not necessarily, for Sunside had its sweetness too), but that in almost every other instance they were poles apart. Indeed, they were parallel dimensions apart!
Only in the mountainous regions was there any real similarity, of flora and fauna, if nothing else; but even the mountains were different in a world where the sun shone on both sides of the range! For this Earth was one world - a complete, continuous system; one system, like a living creature in its own right - while Sunside/Starside, as its name might suggest, had often seemed like two. Sunside was a place of light, warmth, love and life; while Starside was cold and gloomy, full of obscene black hatreds, bitter feuds and loathsome undeath. How could it possibly be otherwise? The one housed the Szgany, Nathan's people, while the other was home to the Wamphyri!
But Earth - this parallel Earth - was wholly beautiful, and that, despite that, certain of its people were not. So
17
16

Nathan thought at first, anyway, before he'd seen the industrial wastelands of Eastern Europe, and those regions closed off to men forever because of their seething nuclear pollution ...
Harry Keogh had had a great many friends among the dead, and now they all wanted to speak to Nathan. In one way it was new to him: the Szgany dead of his home world had wanted nothing to do with him, although he had often heard them whispering to each other in their graves. But on the other hand it seemed very familiar, for the ostensibly 'primitive' Thyre of Sunside's furnace deserts had been eager to know him from the first, when he had gone out into the sweltering desert to die, only to find the will to live and a goal or worthwhile direction in which to aim his life.
The realization of his deadspeak had supplied the will to live, while his goal had been the Mobius Continuum (though at that time he'd had no knowledge of it, except that it was some great secret which hid itself in the mathematical maze of the numbers vortex). Well, and now that he had tamed the vortex, the Mobius Continuum was his to explore at will.
So the two talents went hand in hand, while Nathan's telepathy was a bonus which his father had not known; or at least, not until the last of his days. But as for other esoteric talents, Harry Keogh had not gone wanting. Indeed, he had explored and practised one such 'art' (namely, the resurrection of men out of their immemorial dust) which, in the light of what Nathan had learned of Earth's religions, might only be considered blasphemous. For it was one thing that rotting cadavers should feel empowered to will themselves up from their graves for the love of others, but another entirely that the long dead should be called back into life against their will, and raised up out of their very salts, dust and ashes by a sorcerer for his own dark purposes.
Yes, a monstrous talent, this necromancy. And yet without it...
... In a town called Bonnyrigg, not far from Edinburgh, there had lived a small boy who lost his puppy under the wheels of a speeding car. But for Harry Keogh's 'skill', the pup would have stayed lost. Who could gauge the enduring pleasure that a mongrel dog's life had brought into the world of a boy, a youth, a man, even a family? For Paddy was alive still - the dog and his master both, grown up now - and Nathan had been to visit them.
But while on the one hand Paddy was only a mongrel dog, Harry Keogh's first experiment with necromancy, on the other hand there had been men, too, called back into life by his 'art'; even a pretty young girl called Penny. All of whom had known the hell of dying twice, needlessly, because of Harry. And yet, not all of the people he'd touched in this way had been victims.
In the Zarundului mountains of Romania, Nathan talked to a Thracian Warlord called Bodrogk, and to his wife, Sofia ... or rather, to what remained of them. For they were no more of the flesh but a few handfuls of dust blown away on the winds of the world. But because they'd died here, they remained here still, to tell Nathan of his father's works. And none of the dead that he had spoken to or would speak to had more praise for Harry than Bodrogk the Thracian and his wife Sofia.
In the dark of night, in the ruins of an old castle under a waxing moon, their deadspeak voices thin as air appraised him of Harry Keogh's works: how the Necroscope had gone up against the last of the fabled Ferenczys here - Janos, the bloodson of Faethor - and won! And Nathan knew the story must be true, not only because the dead were telling it, but because the very name Ferenc was a curse in his own world, too. As were all the names of the Wamphyri!
But when Nathan learned of the things this Janos had done -- of the men he'd called up from their sacred dust to torture them for their secrets, and of their long-dead women which he'd used for other purposes - then finally his mind was decided on the subject: Necromancy was a talent he
18
19