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sitting out there in the ravine with their sensors, listening to it ... until
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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.
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Brian Lumley - Necroscope 5 - Deadspeak
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 . . .'
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'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,
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Brian Lumley - Necroscope 5 - Deadspeak 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!'
'What?'
Harry let go of him, jerked himself back away from him.
Luchov snatched back the covers of his bed and showed the Necroscope the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]