'It finished the job that we had started on him,' Trask continued almost to himself, staring in something approaching awe at the young man on the second bed. 'It gave him the Mobius Continuum and made him complete. But .. . this was his first time ever? And still he was able to find his way back here - and bring Zek with him?'
David Chung spoke up. 'He wasn't entirely on his own. I mean, I think maybe I had something to do with it. Or rather, that this had something to do with it.' He held up Nathan's golden earring in the warped shape of a Mobius loop. 'A vampire Lord called Maglore gave this to Nathan before he escaped from Turgosheim. I think Maglore was using it to spy on him. But as a locating device the earring works both ways. Nathan must have homed in on it, and that's how he found his way back here . ..'
Trask looked at them all standing around him. Looked from face to face, and then at Zek Foener and the Necroscope Nathan Keogh, lying tranquillized in their makeshift beds. Finally he grinned and shook his head in wonder. And to Smart, Goodly and Chung, he said, 'So, all three of you had a hand in it, right? God, what would we do without you? What would any of us anywhere do without you?' His steady gaze spread to encompass the rest of his espers. 'And I do mean all of you.'
It was the finest compliment he had ever paid them ...
The plan was simple: Nathan had revisited Sir Keenan Gormley's resting place to 'fix' its co-ordinates in his mind, and also to tell the ex-Head of Branch that he was experimenting with the Mobius Continuum. Now, having returned to E-Branch HQ, he would attempt a Mobius jump to Gormley's Garden of Repose. In the event that something went wrong, David Chung would be ready with Nathan's sigil earring to guide him home. And so that it would be more in keeping as a genuine scientific experiment, other Branch members would be in situ at Gormley's memorial, to time any lapse between Nathan's jump from HQ and his arrival in the Kensington cemetery.
All was now in place. It was 9.00 a.m., and the mid-city temperature was already climbing; Nathan, Trask and a majority of E-Branch agents were in the Ops room, every single man of them with a film of sweat on his brow although the air-conditioning was up full. Finally Trask said, 'Well, son, and now it's all yours.'
Nathan smiled nervously, looked at them each in his turn, and last but not least at Zek. She smiled reassuringly, reminding him, 'You've done it once.'
He nodded. 'When I had to, yes.'
Trask was anxious and said, 'Look, if you want to postpone this ...'
'No,' Nathan cut him off. 'Let it be now. There's no time left. If I can do it, it will give me the edge I'll need back on Sunside.'
David Chung stepped forward, grinned self-consciously, and said, 'Nathan, I...' and stuck out his hand. They clasped forearms in the Szgany fashion, and Chung stepped back again. Then, as if at a signal, the espers backed away from Nathan where he stood in the centre of the room.
And it was time.
Utter silence fell, and the expressions on all faces grew tense, expectant. Nathan felt the force of their minds concentrated upon him from where they stood in a circle but at a safe distance. And feeling their eyes - their minds - on him like that, and concerned that they might in some way interfere with the process, he closed his own eyes to shut them out. But he couldn't close his mind. Indeed, he must open his mind -
- Open it, and conjure the numbers vortex!
And at once - instantaneously, so rapidly that the effect almost unnerved him - Mobius equations commenced to mutate on the screen of his metaphysical mind. It was the vortex, and yet it was not the vortex. The numbers, characters and symbols were the same but the pattern was not. There was no actual whirlpool of numbers as such, but an ordered march of evolving calculi and ever-changing equations, like the emerging answer to a question of immense complexity, unravelling onto the screen of some gigantic computer.