'I can't actually bring you up out of the ground until tomorrow?' Dragosani tried not to show too much relief. Not until then, no. I am too weak, Dragosani. But I note you've brought me a gift. That is very good. I shall derive a little strength from your offering… and after you have taken away the chains — 'Very well,' said the necromancer. 'Where do I dig?' Come closer, my son. Come to the very centre of this place. There — there! Now you can dig …
The flesh crept on Dragosani's back as he got down on hands and knees and tore at the dirt and leaf-mould with his fingers. Cold sweat started to his brow — but not from his effort — as he remembered the last time he was here, and what had happened then. The vampire sensed his apprehension and chuckled darkly in his mind: Oh, and do you fear me, Dragosani? For all your bluff and bluster? What? A brave young blood like you, and old Thibor Ferenczy just a poor undead Thing in the ground? Bah! Shame on you, my son!
Dragosani had scraped most of the surface soil and debris to one side and was now five or six inches deep. He had reached the harder, more solidly frozen earth of the grave itself. But as he drove his fingers yet again into that strangely fertile soil, so they contacted something hard, something that clinked dully. He worked harder then, and the first links he uncovered were of solid silver — and massive! The links were at least two inches long, and forged of silver rods at least half an inch thick!
'How… how much of this stuff is there?' he gasped.
Enough to keep me down, Dragosani, came the answer. Until now.
The vampire's words, simple and spontaneous as they were, nevertheless contained a menacing something which set the short hairs at the back of Dragosani's neck standing erect in a moment. Thibor's mental voice had bubbled like boiling glue, filled with all the evil of the pit itself. Dragosani was a necromancer — he knew himself for a monster — but next to the old devil in the ground he felt innocent as a babe!
He caught hold of a great rope of silver links, stood up, used a strength which astonished even him to rip up the chains from the earth. They came up, cracking open the ground, erupting in scabs of clotted soil and crusts of dusty, smoking leaf-mould; even shaking the roots of the trees which had grown up through all the long years to cover this place and keep it secret. And dragging the treasure in three trips to the outer rim of the circle of roots and shattered flags and torn earth, Dragosani calculated that there must be at least five or six hundred pounds of the stuff! In the Western World he would be a rich man. But in Moscow… to even try to profit from it would be worth ten years in the Siberian salt mines at least. No such thing as treasure trove in the USSR — only theft!
On the other hand, what good was treasure to him? No good at all, except as a means to an end. He couldn't enjoy the fruits of his labours like other men. But one day soon he would be able to enjoy, when other men — all other men — crawled to his feet, and world leaders came to do obeisance in the courts of the Great Wallachian Hyper-State. These were thoughts Dragosani kept hidden as he hauled the last of the chains aside and stood panting, staring in darkness at the scarred, riven earth of this secret place.
And he gave a wry snort of self-derision as he remembered a time when it would have been hard to see anything at all in this dark place, even with his cat's eyes. But now: why, it was like daylight! Yet another proof that a vampire lived in him, battening on his body as it would one day attempt to batten on his mind. And as for Thibor's promise to abort the thing: Dragosani knew that wasn't worth a handful of tomb-dirt! Well, if he must live with the leech so be it; but he would be master and not the beast within. Somehow, somewhere, he would find a way.
And these thoughts, too, he kept to himself…
At last he was done and the silver chains lay in a great circle all about the torn-up area. 'There,' he told the Thing in the ground. 'All finished. Nothing to keep you down now, Thibor Ferenczy.'
You've done well, Dragosani. I'm well pleased. But now I must feed and then I must rest. It is no easy thing to return from the grave. So now your offering, if you please, which I trust you'll leave me in peace to enjoy. I shall require the same again tomorrow night, before I can stand with you under the stars. Then, and only then, will you too be free…
Dragosani kicked the ewe which at once started to life.
He trapped the shivering animal between his legs as it lurched to its feet, yanked back its head. The glittering blade he wielded passed through the front part of its neck effortlessly, coming away clean before the first spurt of blood gushed out on to the dark, unhallowed ground. Then he picked the shuddering animal up — as a man might pick up a cat, by scruff of neck and rump — and spun with it, tossing it centrally into the circle. It thudded down, and again came to its feet — and only then seemed to realise that it was hurt and that this was the end. Awash in blood the beast fell on its side, kicking spastically in its own reek as the rest of its life pumped out of it.
Dragosani stepped back then, and farther yet, and in his mind he heard the vampire's great deep sigh of pleasure, of monstrous craving.
Ahhhh! Not greatly to my taste, Dragosani, but satisfying beyond a doubt. I owe you thanks, my son, but they can wait until tomorrow. Now begone, for I'm tired and hungry, and loneliness is a drug whose addiction I've not yet broken…
Dragosani needed no second bidding. He backed away from the broken tomb, from the twitching, huddled shape at the centre of the circle. But even as he went his eyes were on the alert for some sign of the vampire's new freedom, its mobility. Oh, yes! — for Thibor Ferenczy was mobile now — the necromancer could feel him underfoot, could sense him stretching himself, could almost hear the creak of leathery muscles and the groan of old bones as they soaked in blood and something of their brittleness went out of them.
Then -
The ewe's carcass sagged, slumped lower, closer to the blood-soaked earth. It was as if some seismic suction had pulled at the animal, as if the earth itself were a mouth that sucked. Something moved beneath the slaughtered beast, but Dragosani could make out nothing for certain.
He backed away, backed up against a tree and quickly groped his way around it, putting the rough bole between himself and what was happening. But still he kept his eyes riveted on the ewe's carcass.
The animal was large and heavy with wool, but even as Dragosani watched so it seemed its bulk shrank down a little, caved in upon itself — diminished! The necromancer sent out a mental probe towards the Thing in the ground, but such was the lusting bestiality it was met with that he at once withdrew it. And still the ewe continued to shrink, shrivel, dwindle away.
And as the ewe was devoured, so the cold ground about began to smoke, a stinking mist rising and rapidly thickening, obscuring the rest of the act. It was as if the earth sweated — or as if something down there breathed, which had not breathed for a long, long time.
That was enough. Dragosani turned away and quickly joined Max Batu. With a finger to his lips he beckoned the other to follow, and quickly they descended the firebreak together and made their way back to the car.
Earlier that same day and some seven hundred miles away, Harry Keogh decided, standing at the grave of August Ferdinand Mobius, (born 1790, died 26th September 1868) that it had been a very bad day for the science of numbers, a very bad day indeed. Or more specifically, a bad day for topology, and not forgetting astronomy. The day in question was the date of Mobius' death, of course.
There had been students here earlier — East German, mainly, but much like students anywhere else in the world — long-haired and tattily attired; but properly respectful, Harry had thought. And so they should be. He, too, felt respectful; even awed that he stood in the presence of such a man. In any case, not wanting to appear too strange, Harry had waited until he was alone. Also, he had needed to think how best to approach Mobius. This was no ordinary figure lying here but a thinker who'd helped guide science along many of the right paths.
Finally Harry had settled for a direct approach; seating himself, he let his thoughts reach out and touch those of the dead man. A calm came over Harry then; his eyes took on their strange, glassy look; for all that it was bitterly cold, a fine patina of sweat gleamed on his brow. And slowly he grew aware that indeed Mobius — or what remained of him — was here. And active!
Formulae, tables of figures, astronomical distances and non-Euclidean, Riemannian configurations beat against Harry's awareness like the pulses of mighty, living computers. But… all of this in one mind? A mind which processed all of these thoughts very nearly simultaneously? And then it dawned on Harry that Mobius was working on something, flipping through the pages of memory and learning as he sought to tie together the elements of a puzzle too complex for Harry's — or for any merely living man's — comprehension. All very well, but it might go on for days. And Harry simply didn't have the time.
'Sir? Excuse me, sir? My name is Harry Keogh. I've come a long way to see you.'
The phantasmal flow of figures and formulae stopped at once, like a computer switched off. 'Eh? What? Who?'
'Harry Keogh, sir. I'm an Englishman.'
There was a slight pause before the other snapped: 'English? I don't care if you're an Arab! I'll tell you what you are: you're a nuisance! Now what is this, eh? What's it all about? I'm quite unused to this sort of thing.'
'I'm a necroscope,' Harry explained as best he could. 'I can talk to the dead.'
'Dead? Talk to the dead? Hmm! I considered that, yes, and long ago came to the conclusion that I was. So obviously you can. Well, it comes to us all — death, I
mean. Indeed it has its advantages. Privacy, for one — or so I thought until now! A necroscope, you say? A new science?'
Harry had to smile. 'I suppose you could call it that. Except I seem to be its one practitioner. Spiritualists aren't quite the same thing.'
'I'll say they're not! Fraudulent bunch at best. Well then, how can I help you, Harry Keogh? I mean, I suppose you've a reason for disturbing me? A good reason, that is?'
'The best in the world,' said Harry. The fact is I'm tracking down a fiend, a murderer. I know who he is but I don't know how to bring him to justice. All I have is a clue as to how I might set about it, and that's where you come in.'
Tracking down a murderer? A talent like yours and you use it to track down murderers? Boy, you should be out talking to Euclid, Aristotle, Pythagorus! No, cancel that last. You'd get nothing from him. Him and his damned secretive Pythagorean Brotherhood! It's a wonder he even passed on his Theorem! Anyway, what is this clue of yours?'
Harry showed him a mental projection of the Mobius strip. 'It's this,' he said. 'It's what ties the futures of my quarry and myself together.'
Now the other was interested. Topology in the time dimension? That leads to all sorts of interesting questions. Are you talking about your probable futures or your actual futures? Have you spoken to Gauss? He's the one for probability — and topology, for that matter. Gauss was a master when I was a mere student — albeit a brilliant student!'
'Actual,' said Harry. 'Our actual futures.'
'But that is to presuppose that you know something of the future in the first place. And is precognition another talent of yours, Harry?' (A little sarcasm.)
'Not mine, no, but I do have friends who occasionally" catch glimpses of the future, just as surely as I — '
Twaddle!' Mobius cut him off. 'Zollnerists all!'
' — talk to the dead.' Harry finished it anyway.
The other was silent for a moment or two. Then: Tm probably a fool… but I think I believe you. At least I believe you believe, and that you have been misled. But for the life of me I can't see how my believing in you will help you in your quest.'
'Neither can I,' said Harry dejectedly. 'Except… what about the Mobius strip? I mean, it's all I have to go on. Can't you at least explain it to me? After all, who would know more about it than you? You invented it!'
'No,' (a mental shake of the head,) 'they merely stamped my name on it. Invented it? Ridiculous! I noticed it, that's all. As for explaining it: once there was a time when that would be the very simplest thing. Now, however — '
Harry waited.