as he bobbed heavily along where once he'd skimmed, no longer master but captive of the Mo'bius Continuum. I shouldn't even be here, he told himself. How did I get in here? How will I get out?
As if some One had answered, he saw that the coffins were doors again, one of which opened directly in his path. Offering no resistance (he had none to offer), he was drawn through into another place, another time. Drawn into time itself, but time in reverse! And so Harry began to fall into his own past.
Gathering speed, he was drawn backwards in time like a thread rewinding itself on to its bobbin. Indeed, he watched his own blue life-thread - nothing less than the course and continuity of his fourth-dimensional existence from birth to the grave - streaming back into him as he backtracked years already lived. And the thought occurred: I am going back to my beginnings. I will have it all to live - all to do, all to suffer - all over again!
That was too much. It was the difference between a dream and a nightmare. And Harry Keogh woke up -
- Drenched in his own sweat, and gasping: 'No!'
"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"
'Don't!' she told him at once, her voice almost as startled and frightened as his own, but less hoarse. 'You're hurting me.'
'Brenda!' Harry croaked, almost sobbed her name, while at the same time doubting that it was her name, but hoping anyway. Praying that it had all been a dream - and not just this part but all of it, everything - and a moment later knowing that it had not. No, for her fierce breasts, where now on impulse she suddenly hugged his face against them, weren't Brenda's; she didn't smell like Brenda; and anyway he remembered now that the Brenda he'd called out to had been many long years and an entirely different world ago.
'Brenda?' she repeated him, her accent husky, Szgany, as he relaxed his grip on her arms and flopped back into his damp bed. 'Were you dreaming, Harry Dweller-sire?' She leaned over him, supported his head with a cool hand, stroked his brow.
'Dreaming?' He looked up at her, tried to focus on her. It wasn't easy; he felt weak as a kitten, drained. And that last word - coupled with what she'd called him, Dwellersire - was a trigger which released more memories. No, not drained, merely depleted. Robbed. By his own son, The Dweller. And none of it had been a dream, or only the last part. And even that had been so close to reality as to make no difference.
He turned his head, looked around the small, stone-built, whitewashed, electric-lamplit room. A crude dwelling, little more than a cave. But luxury to some. Certainly to Travellers, who hadn't known what a permanent home was before The Dweller and his garden. And Harry's voice turned as sour as the fur lining his clammy mouth as he mumbled, 'Starside?'
She nodded, 'Yes, Starside, the garden. And your fever has broken.' She smiled at him. 'You're going to be well again.'
'My ... fever?' His eyes went back to her face. It looked very lovely in the soft, uneven yellow flow of the lamplight; most of the electricity from The Dweller's generators went to the greenhouses. 'Yes, my "fever",' Harry said again, nodding wrily. No fever, he knew. Just his shattered mind, gradually pulling its bits together again. 'How long have I been lying here?'
This is the second sundown,' she told him. She withdrew her hand from under his head, replaced it with a bundled fur for a pillow. Then she stood up from her stool and said, 'I'll prepare soup for you. After you have eaten, The Dweller will want to know that -'
'No!' he cut her short, his anxiety very tangible. 'Not ... yet, awhile. He doesn't need to know yet. I want a little time to myself, to get my thoughts in order.'
And she wondered: Is he afraid of his own son? Then perhaps we all should be.
Harry looked at her standing there, a frown on her attractive if careworn face. She was small, amply proportioned, with dark eyes slightly aslant, a small nose for a Gypsy, and hair glossy black where it fell to her shoulders. Passionate as all her race - dressed in soft, supple leather - even motionless there was something animal, sinuous, sensual about her.
Still frowning, she crossed to a fireplace built into the virgin rock of