Страница 6 из 153
'He looks well,' his unknown Gypsy nurse told Nana as she came in from Starside's long night, shrugging herself out of a heavy coat of fur. 'His fever is in abeyance; all the clamminess has gone out of him; he took enough soup for two men! I think he'll wake soon. We should tell The Dweller.'
And feigning sleep, Harry heard Nana's answer:
'Let's not be too hasty. The Dweller is resting. Sunup is five hours away and the dawn will be time enough. Don't worry, I will see to it.'
'As you will,' the other answered, and left.
Harry had done most of his thinking in his sleep, which in the main had been restful; also in his dreams, which were less so. He was aware that his son would soon take him out of this world into his own and leave him there, and that he would be a free man again. But only a man, no more Necroscope, and no way round it. He wasn't reconciled to it but had no choice. For the time being, however, his frustration seemed all burned out of him; except ... he supposed it must return. Yes, as long as there were locked rooms in the mansion of his mind - while he remembered the Möbius Continuum, and the myriad dead friends who were lost to him now - it would always return.
But looking at Nana Kiklu where she came to stand over him, looking at her through three-quarters shuttered eyes, which yet feigned sleep, he found himself remembering other, more mundane things. Earthly, even earthy things; yet not of the earth, and certainly not of the grave. For Nana Kiklu was far from that. On the contrary, she was full of life. And he remembered how her breasts had felt against his face when she'd hugged him.
And then he knew why he continued to feign sleep: so that he could watch her watching him. He wanted to consider her expression, and see if he could sense that in her which he felt in himself. It had been a long, long time since he'd known a woman.
When Nana sat beside him he merged into her shadow, felt drawn to her. The top buttons of her soft leather blouse were open; leaning over him to straighten his pillow, the curves of her elastic breasts were partly exposed. Only lift his hands a little and he could test their weight. It was a struggle not to. And to control his breathing.
She cocked her head a little on one side, half-shuttered her own eyes, frowned at him. But her eyes, like her thoughts, were very deep. She had noticed the rise and fall of his chest: a trifle ... irregular? Both Harry and the Gypsy, each wondered what were the other's thoughts.
In the same moment that he felt he must touch her, finally she moved, got up, went to the door - and barred it. And Harry knew, in the way people do, what was going to happen; also that he wanted it to happen.
She came back, her Gypsy hips swaying hypnotically, and sat down again. But as she adjusted his blanket, so her hand crept beneath it on to his naked thigh. Harry stopped breathing, stiffened with the shock of her touch, and her suspicions were at once confirmed. Her laugh was low and husky. 'I thought your fever had cooled a little. But look, here you are hot as ever! Hot -and hard ...'
Already erect, his manhood grew more yet into her tightening, deliciously mobile fist, to hammer like a heart against her palm. Until he groaned, 'No! Wait! Nana, don't waste me!' His trembling hands found the buttons of her blouse and her breasts tumbled free. While he fondled and kissed their softness, teasing her brown nipples to life, she struggled to be rid of her clothes and into bed with him.
'Fill me, Harry Dwellersire,' she moaned, 'for we've both been empty and aching for far too long. I'm not sure why you ache, but this may be part of the cure.'
He made no answer, found the sucking gate to her sex and drove into it. In the next moment, for a moment, he held himself back, then panted: 'I can't - daren't -damn it, I'll get you pregnant!'
'No,' she shook her head, rolled over on top and came down slow and heavy on him, trapping his flesh deep in her lava core and his face in the silky curtain of her hair. And slowly working her body, with her breasts lolling in his face, she gasped, 'I'm ... barren.' It was a lie; Hzak's seed had been at fault, she knew. But as for Nana, she wanted a child - so why not Harry's?
Harry felt himself swelling, shook his head wildly. 'Nana, I can't hold it!'
'Don't try,' she told him, and instantly felt him jerking, geysering into her. His long bursts seemed unending, lubrication for the hot engine of her womanhood.
Too quick,' he moaned, angry with himself. 'Too damned quick!'
'Yes,' she murmured, smothering him in her breasts, her kisses. Too quick. But that one was for you. This one will be for me, and it will be slower.'
It was. And so was the next...
In the grey twilight, just before sunup, Nana crept from Harry's bed and dressed, went to The Dweller and told him that his father's fever had broken. When she left her lover of a few brief hours, he was sleeping a dreamless, exhausted sleep, and somehow she knew it was the last she would see of him.
But, warm inside, she also knew that it was not the last of his works.
II
Four years later: Lardis Lidesci's house stood on a rise a little above Settlement, where the grassy, temperate but abrupt foothills of Sunside climbed towards rocky outcrops and steep, forested heights. He liked sitting in front of the house at sundown, to catch the last rays of the sun; likewise before sunup, to watch it rise. Unthinkable four short years ago (two hundred 'days', or sunup-sundown cycles), and even now nerve-tingling: to be up and about, safe and sound, and the parent star itself not yet risen. Strange, too, to live in one place, in a house; though almost all of the Szgany did these days -certainly the majority of Lardis's prosperous, ever-increasing band.
The Szgany Lidesci: Lardis's people.
Oh, there were still a few families who preferred their hide-covered caravans along the valley trails, and those who dragged their scant belongings on travois from place to place, unwilling to rest, relax, rejoice in the fact that the scourge of the Wamphyri was a thing of the past. But in the main they were settled or settling now, while other tribes, clans, bands of Travellers were following suit, building their own places along the forest's rim, east to west down the spine of the barrier range.
Lardis's cabin was styled after The Dweller's house on Starside. Providing shelter for Lardis, his young wife Lissa, and not least their small son Jason - who had been named by his father after someone he very much admired - it stood a mile east of Sanctuary Rock. Lardis had chosen the spot himself, built the house, finally taken a wife and settled here, all in that period of twenty-four solar rotations following immediately upon The Dweller (whom some saw fit to call 'the changeling' now, and others Harry Wolfson) sending the Szgany out of his garden on Starside. And while Lardis had toiled to construct his home here in the lower foothills, so his people had followed his example, felled trees and built Settlement.
Since the place was the first community of its kind in more than two thousand years of wandering, Lardis found its simple name in keeping - if not the high, stout fence which the Gypsies had seen fit to throw up around it. With its catwalks, turret watchtowers and various defensive systems ... perhaps 'Fortress' would have been a more suitable name! But memories of hard times die hard, and Szgany dread of Wamphyri terror and domination was instinctive and immemorial.
The Wamphyri, aye!
Sitting here in the faint, false-dawn light of Sunside, looking down on Settlement - with its tiny gardens and allotments, blue smoke spiralling from its stone chimneys, the first antlike movements in its cramped streets - Lardis wondered if the Wamphyri would ever return. Well, possibly, for they were like a recurrent nightmare which fades but not entirely from i