"Lumley, Brian - Necroscope - The Lost Years Volume 2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

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his taxi and thought through the way events were shaping up. There were some odd circumstances and queer coincidences here, and George lanson had never quite believed in the latter. His years on the force had taught him otherwise.
BJ.'s description of the watcher had been a good one; too good to have been conjured out of thin air, even if it had been her purpose to deceive (and why should she want to?) But as it was, the description had been so real it could even fit one or two persons of lanson's aquaintance...and one in particular. Ridiculous to attempt to match it with the latter, however --
-- Wasn't it? And yet...
The Inspector could feel Angus McGowan's book weighing in the large inside pocket of his overcoat That old edition, probably a first (according to its date, anyway), but wrapped in a dust jacket from a more recent edition -- surely? Well, that was possible; it must sometimes happen, lanson was sure. Yet to the best of his knowledge the later editions -- one of which he had handled at Angus's place during a rare visit -- didn't have the old vet's picture in the back. And it was that photograph that concerned him most
For if the jacket did go with the book, if they were both originals...
He was tempted to go back inside and show it to B.J. Mirlu. He would, if he didn't feel so stupid about it. But he did feel stupid about it, and rightly so. What, a bloody book that was twenty-eight years old, embellished with a photograph that looked like it had been taken yesterday? But it was the price of the book that really stymied him. The price on the replacement dust jacket if it was a replacement
Just seven shillings and sixpence, which nowadays wouldn't even buy you a paperback...
ffl
dead serious talk:
BONNffi JEAN'S DILEMMA.
On and under the riverbank, it was dark, cold and inhospitable. Above, the cold was the natural chill of a winter's night and the grass was glazed and brittle with rime. If not for a recent melt up-country, the release of a torrent to stir the water and keep it liquid, there might even be a treacherous skim on the river itself. Without a doubt the water was treacherous in that place. But in a small backwater where the current was subdued and the ripples sluggish, the ice had more of a chance.
There, under the overhanging bank, under the water itself, in the deep mud of the weedy bottom, the cold was unnatural, a 'dead' cold. For in and around an unmarked watery grave (but a very important grave, of someone taken before her time) it was the cold of death itself. And she was Mary, the mother of the Necroscope, Harry Keogh.
There she lay, all mud and bones and weed, and to all intents and purposes, to everyone except Harry himself, it was as if she had never been, because there was nothing physical left of her to remind anyone. She was dead and departed, almost but not quite forgotten. But forgotten by the living, anyway.
For the living cannot know and wouldn't care to be told, and if they were told they would want it proved, and even then they still wouldn't believe...that death isn't like that. It isn't The Absolute End that most men in their hearts believe it to be, not entirely. The flesh dies, but the mind goes on; the Great Majority go on, in their fashion. Great thinkers continue to think their great thoughts, to be shared among their teeming dead colleagues. Great architects build fantastic cities of the mind which may only exist in their minds, for their voices have been silenced except to the Necroscope, Harry Keogh. Great mathematicians and astronomers continue to puzzle out the nature of a universe whose secrets they can never expose, except to those gone
Brian Lumley
Necroscope: The Last Yean -- Vol. II
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down with them into the earth. And to one other. Or maybe two others...
Thus, while on the surface the waters of the pool in that small bite of a bight might seem relatively calm -- rippled by a mournful wind and awash with stars reflected on the darkly mobile mirror -- and the night silent bar the wind itself -- and the ether void of all evidence of life...underneath was less than calm, was indeed unquiet, where the dead conversed.
And maybe seventy-five yards up-river, set back from the water behind a high wall and a long, wild garden, and standing central between two sagging, derelict companions, an old house gloomed put across the ruffled ribbon. Upstairs, a pair of dim lights behind matching windows were like bleary close-set eyes: Harry Keogh's bedroom, where the Necroscope had fallen asleep with the lights still burning, and now lay dreaming.
This time Harry dreamed in sounds, not pictures, and the voices in his pillow were quiet and secretive as whispers, and shielded so that he wouldn't overhear them -- or if he did, so that he would know he was only dreaming...
Mary, can we really afford to take that chance? Dare we do, or not do, as you advise? Surely you know how we ache from our inactivity? Why, it's been years that we've lain here doing nothing! But it's Harry, Mary, Harry himself! And your son has done so very, very much for us. So why won't you let us at least try to do something for him?
The dead voice was Sir Keenan Gormley's; Harry would know it anywhere, any time. And yes, it had been years, three years at least, since he had been in London and talked to Sir Keenan. For there could be no mistaking the fact that the teeming dead were talking about him. And because his mother was close (and her voice, too, so very familiar), he could separate out these individual sources from the background 'static' which he alone knew to be the murmur of a million voices, the private conversations of the Great Majority.
But this time that static was far less evident, and Harry knew why: across a vast swath of land -- or under it -- the dead in their graves weren't talking but listening to this same conversation. And if for that and no other reason, he knew it must be very important to them. But he must listen carefully -- like an eavesdropper, yes, despite that he was the subject of their conversation, or because he was -- else they would sense him and close him out
Do you think I don't want to help, don't want you to help? (His Ma's voice brimmed with her frustration.) Can you think of anything I wouldn't do for him? Can you name anything I haven't done for him? Indeed not, for there'd been a time when she had even risen from the river for him.
But --
No buts, Keenan Gormley! I gave him life, remember? While it was you and yours who took it from him! For it was the work he did for you that killed him in the end.
Unfair, said another voice when Gormley failed to answer; and the Necroscope knew this one, too. It was his old physical training instructor, Graham 'Sergeant' Lane, speaking from his grave in a Harden cemetery. Oh Harry's your son, Mary Keogh -- but you only had him for a few short years. Me, I watched him grow up. I saw the grit in him, and I knew how special he was. He's a fighter, that one! I know it, for I've had the privilege of fighting with and through him. We all know it, which is why we can't bear to see him crash now.
And unfair in another sense, too, Sir Keenan at last put in. It's true that his work with E-Branch got him in trouble. But he knew what he was getting into. And always remember, if Harry hadn't learned what he did when he was with E-Branch -- about the Mobius Continuum -then when he died he would have stayed dead! His metempsychosis wouldn 't have been possible. We wouldn 't be talking about him now but to him -- and in our own medium, on our own level! He died, Mary, yes, but now he lives again. And we want to keep it that way.
Harry's Ma let him finish, but she was still considering what Sergeant had said before him. Crash? (Her voice was even more a whisper). How crash? Do you mean die, and join us here? What, and are we to ignore all the talented people we've listened to? And lifting her dead voice for everyone to hear What of our precogs, Keenan Gormley, who have told us that my son is to go on? And singling out Sergeant How can you even think to presume to know my son better than I? We're of one flesh. Why, even when he's silent -- when he shuts himself off from me -- still I know what he's thinking!
But we've all known something of that, Mary. (It was Gormley again, but gentler now, for he felt something of her fear).
No, (Harry sensed the incorporeal shake of his Ma's head, and her faceless but unforgotten, indomitable smile), not like that at all. I mean...the feelings at the very core of him. I mean all the aches and hurts and moods of his heart. I know him like...like a mother? And who else could have put it better than that?
And we know him as the one shining light in our darkness, Sergeant was as rough as ever, but a rough diamond for all his bluntness. Which we aren't about to see blown out! A babble of ready agreement went up from at least a dozen more dead voices that Harry hadn't recognized as yet Yes, (Sergeant continued, cutting them off), our precogs tell us that Harry will go on. But it's the future we're talking about, and that's an inexact science. Who can second-guess tomorrow? Who wants to risk it? So Harry is going to live, going to go on, is he? But who or what as? Himself...or something else?
Necroscope: The Lost Years -- Vol. II
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Knowing the depth of Sergeant's feelings -- that he, too, had come to Harry's rescue in the past as all of them would if given the chance -- Mary Keogh wasn't overwhelmed or outraged by his passion; she merely tut-tutted, and quietly inquired of all the rest So, what would you have me do? What would you do, if you were closest to him? What advice would you give him?
We would simply tell him the truth, Sir Keenan answered. And we would want to know why he hasn't seen it for himself! I mean, we know he's in trouble again; things have come into our world that are not human, things that were human but have suffered a change, things that lived' between life and death. And even truly dead, still they are evil and the Great Majority of us hold them at bay, ostracised. The Necroscope...sent them here -- but we can't blame him for that. They're a plague that had to be cut out of a world where our children and loved ones still live.
So, you'd tell him the truth, Harry's Ma was patient And how would you go about it? 'Harry, we know there are still evil creatures in your world. We know, because you keep sending them to our world. So tell us: what is it that's caused you to team up with one of them? And not just a vampire, Harry, but a shewolf-a werewolf- too!'Is that what you'd tell him?
Something like that, yes. But Sir Keenan was cautious.
Listen to me, all of you, she said then. My son is in as much danger from himself as he is from them. It's been a long time since he spoke to me -- or to any of us -- but the last time he did he asked me if I thought he was going mad. He thought he might have a drink problem, not of his making but one passed on to him in his new body. He thought he might have inherited something of Alec Kyle's talent, too. His dreams were insane, nightmares in the truest sense of the word. And even awake, during a conversation with me, he saw strange visions; portent of things to come, I'm sure, but far beyond his understanding. And beyond mine -and in life I was a psychic in my own right! But because / was a psychic, and because he's my son, I heard more than his spoken words. I understood more than he was trying to convey to me. And I knew that he didn't know what was wrong with him. She paused to clear her thinking, see her way, and then continued:
So I spied on him, in his waking hours and sleeping hours alike, to see if I could discover what was wrong. And I discovered more than I had bargained for. This female Thing who holds him in her spell: she, this Bonnie Jean, has caused him to live in two different worlds, even different minds. In one of these, he knows what she is, and it horrifies him! But yet he is bound to her, in thrall to her-but no, thank God, not as a vampire thrall! Yet in his other mind he's also enthralled, but...differently. Which any man who ever loved will understand. Complicated? Oh, but that isn't the half of it. Don't you see what's
become of him? He is literally, a split-person if not a split-personality!
But even before B.J., his difficulties defied description. What, his mind in another man's body? His wife and child, fled from him, gone off to a place where even he, where even we (and again I thank God, that they haven't come among us!) can't find them? In his search for them, my son has discovered vampires in his world -- but he can't admit it or do anything about it until B.J. lets him. She has...hypnotized him, absolutely! But more than that, I suspect there's something else wrong with him that neither he nor I understand. Something that interferes with his talents, his use of the Mobius Continuum, even his willingness to talk...to talk to his own mother! Now tell me: don't you think Harry has problems enough?