The Source

He frowned and tiredly rubbed at his forehead. 'You know, Ma, I can't figure it out. If anyone could find them it has to be me. And I haven't even found a trace of them! When they disappeared, I got those people at E-Branch on it. They couldn't find them. A couple of them even approached me cautiously with the idea - and with a little sensitivity, you understand - that maybe Brenda and the baby were dead. By the time I handed the job over to Darcy Clarke six months later, everyone seemed sure they were dead.

'Now E-Branch has people who could find anybody anywhere - spotters who can pick up psychic emanations on the other side of the world - but they couldn't find my son. And little Harry's talent was far and away greater than mine. But your people,' (he was talking about the Great Majority, the countless dead) 'they say they're alive, that they have to be alive because they don't number amongst the dead. And I know that none of you would ever lie to me. So I think to myself: if they're not dead, and they're not here where I can find them - then where the hell are they? That's what's eating away at me.'

He could sense her nod, feel how sad she was for him. 'I know, son, I know.'

'And as for physically searching for them - ' he went on, as if he hadn't heard her, ' - is there anywhere in this world where I didn't look? But if E-Branch couldn't find them, what chance did I stand?'

Harry's mother had heard all of this before. It was his obsession now, his one passion in life. He was like a gambler hooked on roulette, whose one dream is to find 'the system' where none exists. He'd spent almost five years searching, and nearly three more pla

Harry stood up, dusted a little soil from his trousers. 'I'm going back to the house now, Ma. I'm tired. I feel like I've been tired for a long time. I think I could use a good long rest. Sometimes I think it would be good if I could just stop thinking... about them, anyway.'

She knew what he meant: that he'd reached the end of the road, that there was nowhere else he could look.

That's right,' he said, turning away from the riverbank, 'nowhere else to look, and not much purpose to it anyway. Not much purpose to anything any more...'

Head down, he bumped into someone who at once took his arm to steady him. At first Harry didn't recognize the man, but recognition quickly followed. 'Darcy? Darcy Clarke?' Harry began to smile, only to feel the smile turning sour on his face. 'Oh, yes - Darcy Clarke,' he said, more slowly this time. 'And you wouldn't be here if you didn't want something. I thought I'd already made it clear to you people, I'm through with all of that.'

Clarke studied his face, a face he'd known well from the old days, when it had belonged to someone else. There were more lines than there used to be, and there was also something more of character. Not that Alec Kyle had been without character, but Harry's had gradually imprinted itself on the flesh. Also, there was weariness in that face, and signs that there'd been a lot of pain, too.

'Harry,' Clarke said, 'did I hear you telling yourself just now that there's no purpose to anything? Is that how you're feeling?'

Harry glanced at him sharply. 'How long were you spying on me?'

Clarke was taken aback. 'I was standing there by the wall,' he said. 'I wasn't spying, Harry. But ... I didn't want to disturb you, that's all. I mean,' he nodded toward the river, 'this is where your mother is, isn't it?'

Harry suddenly felt defensive. He looked away, then looked back and nodded. He had nothing to fear from this man. 'Yes,' he said, 'she's here. It was my mother I was talking to.'

Without thinking, Clarke glanced quickly all about. 'You were talking to - ?' Then he looked once more at the quiet flowing river and his expression changed. In a lowered voice, he said: 'Of course, I'd almost forgotten.'

'Had you?' Harry was quick off the mark. 'You mean that isn't what you came to see me about?' Then he relented a little. 'OK, come on back to the house. We can talk as we go.'

As they made their way through brittle gorse and wild bramble, Clarke unobtrusively studied the Necroscope. Not only did Harry seem a little vacant, abstracted, but his style in general seemed to have suffered. He wore an open-necked shirt under a baggy grey pullover, thin grey trousers, scuffed shoes on his feet. It was the attire of someone who didn't much care. 'You'll catch your death of cold,' Clarke told him, with genuine concern. The E-Branch head forced a smile. 'Didn't anyone tell you? We'll soon be into November...'

They walked along the riverbank toward the large Victorian house brooding there behind its high stone garden wall. The house had once belonged to Harry's mother, then to his stepfather, and now it had come down naturally to Harry. 'Time's not something I worry about a lot,' Harry eventually answered. 'When I feel it's getting colder I'll put more clothes on.'

'But it doesn't matter much, right?' said Clarke. 'There doesn't seem to be much purpose to it. Or to anything. Which means you haven't found them yet. I'm sorry, Harry.'

Now it was Harry's turn to study Clarke.

The head of E-Branch had been chosen for that job because after Harry he was the obvious candidate. Clarke's talent guaranteed continuity. He was what they called a 'deflector', the opposite of accident-prone. He could walk through a minefield and come out of it unscathed. And if he did step on one it would turn out to be a dud. His talent protected him, and that was all it did.

But it would ensure that he'd always be there, that nothing and no one would ever take him out, as two heads before him had been taken out. Darcy Clarke would die one day for sure - all men do - but it would be old age that got him.

But to look at Clarke without knowing this ... no one would ever have guessed he was in charge of anything, and certainly not the most secret branch of the Secret Service. Harry thought: he's probably the most perfectly nondescript man! Middle-height (about five-eight or -nine), mousey-haired, with something of a slight stoop and a tiny paunch, but not overweight either: he was just about middle-range in every way. And in another five or six years he'd be just about middle-aged, too!

Pale hazel eyes stared back at Harry from a face much given to laughter, which Harry suspected hadn't laughed for quite some little time. Despite the fact that Clarke was well wrapped-up in duffle-coat and scarf, still he looked cold. But not so much physically as spiritually.

'That's right,' the Necroscope finally answered. 'I haven't found them, and that's sort of killed off my drive. Is that why you're here, Darcy? To supply me with a new purpose, a new direction?'

'Something like that,' Clarke nodded. 'I certainly hope so, anyway.'

They passed through a door in the wall into Harry's unkempt back garden, which lay gloomy in the shade of gables and dormers, where the paint was flaking and high windows looked down like frowning eyes in a haughty face. Everything had been ru

The room looked dim, dusty, foreboding: Clarke found himself hesitating on the threshold.

'Enter of your own free will, Darcy,' said Harry - and Clarke cast him a sharp glance. Clarke's talent, however, told him that all was well: there was nothing to drive him away from the place, no sudden urgency to depart. The Necroscope smiled, if wanly. 'A joke,' he said. Tastes are like attitudes, given a different perspective they change.'