The Source

Clarke stepped inside. 'Home,' said Harry, following him and sliding the doors shut in their frames. 'Don't you think it suits me?'

Clarke didn't answer, but he thought: well, your taste was never what I would have called flamboyant. Certainly the place suits your talent!

Harry waved Clarke into a cane chair, seated himself behind a blocky oak desk dark with age. Clarke looked all about and tried to draw the room into focus. Its gloom was u

Harry nodded his agreement. 'It was my stepfather's room,' he said. 'Shukshin - the murdering bastard! He tried to kill me, you know? He was a spotter, but different to the others. He didn't just smell espers out, he hated them! Indeed, he wished he couldn't smell them out! The very feel of them made his skin crawl, drove him to rage. Drove him in the end to kill my mother, too, and to have a go at me.'

Clarke nodded. 'I know as much about you as any man, Harry. He's in the river, isn't he? Shukshin? So if it bothers you, why the hell do you go on living here?'

Harry looked away for a moment. 'Yes, he's in the river,' he said, 'where he tried to put me. An eye for an eye. And the fact that he lived here doesn't bother me. My mother's here, too, remember? I've only a handful of enemies among the dead; the rest of them are my friends, and they're good friends. They don't make any demands, the dead...' He fell silent for a moment, then continued: 'Anyway, Shukshin served his purpose: if it hadn't been for him I might never have gone to E-Branch - and I mightn't be here now, talking to you. I might be out there somewhere, writing the stories of dead men.'

Clarke, like Harry's mother, felt and was disturbed by his gloomy introspection. 'You don't write any more?'

'They weren't my stories anyway. Like everything else, they were a means to an end. No, I don't write any more. I don't do much of anything.' Abruptly, he changed the subject:

'I don't love her, you know.' 'Eh?'

'Brenda,' Harry shrugged. 'Maybe I love the little fellow, but not his mother. See, I remember what it was like when I did love her - of course I do, because / haven't changed - but the physical me is different. I've a new chemistry entirely. It would never have worked, Brenda and me. No, that's not what's wrong with me, that isn't what gets to me. It's not knowing where they are. Knowing that they're there but not knowing where. That's what does it. There were enough changes in my life at that time without them going off, too. Especially him. And you know, for a while I was part of him, that little chap? However unwillingly - unwittingly? - I taught him much of what he knows. He got it from my mind, and I'm interested to know what use he's made of it. But at the same time I realize that if they hadn't gone, she and I would have been finished long ago anyway. Even if she'd recovered fully. And sometimes I think maybe it's best they did go away, and not only for her sake but his, too.'

All of this had flooded out of Harry, poured out of him without pause. Clarke was pleased; he believed he glimpsed a crack in the wall; maybe Harry was discovering that sometimes it was good to talk to the living, too. 'Without knowing where he'd gone, you thought maybe it was the best thing for him? Why's that?' he said.

Harry sat up straighter, and when he spoke his voice was cold again. 'What would his life have been like with E-Branch?' he said. 'What would he be doing now, aged nine years old, eh? Little Harry Keogh Jnr: Necroscope and explorer of the Mobius Continuum?'

'Is that what you think?' Clarke kept his voice even. 'What you think of us?' It could be that Harry was right, but Clarke liked to see it differently. 'He'd have led whatever life he wanted to lead,' he said. This isn't the USSR, Harry. He wouldn't have been forced to do anything. Have we tried to tie you down? Have you been coerced, threatened, made to work for us? There's no doubt about it but that you'd be our most valuable asset, but eight years ago when you said enough is enough... did we try to stop you from walking? We asked you to stay, that's all. No one applied any pressure.'

'But he would have grown up with you,' Harry had thought it all out many, many times before. 'He'd have been imprinted. Maybe he could see it coming and just wanted his freedom, eh?'

Clarke shook himself, physically shrugged off the mood the other had begun to impose upon him. He'd done part of what he came to do: he'd got Harry Keogh talking about his problems. Now he must get him talking, and thinking, about far greater problems - and one in particular. 'Harry,' he said, very deliberately, 'we stopped looking for Brenda and the child six years ago. We'd have stopped even sooner, except we believed we had a duty to you - even though you'd made it plain you no longer had one to us. The fact is that we really believed they were dead, otherwise we'd have been able to find them. But that was then, and this is now, and things have changed...'

Things had changed? Slowly Clarke's words sank in. Harry felt the blood drain from his face. His scalp tingled. They had believed they were dead, but things had changed. Harry leaned forward across the desk, almost straining toward Clarke, staring at him from eyes which had opened very wide. 'You've found... some sort of clue?'

Clarke held up placating hands, imploring restraint. He gave a half-shrug. 'We may have stumbled across a parallel case - ' he said, ' - or it may be something else entirely. You see, we don't have the means to check it out. Only you can do that, Harry.'

Harry's eyes narrowed. He felt he was being led on, that he was a donkey who'd been shown a carrot, but he didn't let it anger him. If E-Branch did have something... even a carrot would be better than the weeds he'd been chewing on. He stood up, came round the desk, began pacing the floor. At last he stood still, faced Clarke where he sat. Then you'd better tell me all about it,' he said. 'Not that I'm promising anything.'

Clarke nodded. 'Neither am I,' he said. He glanced with disapproval all about the room. 'Can we have some light in here, and some air? It's like being in the middle of a bloody fog!'

Again Harry frowned. Had Clarke got the upper hand as quickly and as easily as that? But he opened the glass doors and threw back the curtains anyway. Then: Talk,' he said, sitting down carefully again behind his desk.

The room was brighter now and Clarke felt he could breathe. He filled his lungs, leaned back and put his hands on his knees. There's a place in the Ural Mountains called Perchorsk,' he said. That's where it all started...'