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said Trask. 'It seems to me we've caught this just in time, before it's had a chance to
really take hold. But on the other hand, if we should fail...' He looked at Jake, and his
expression was bleak.
And Jake said, 'I'll spend the rest of my life in a cell?'
'Try in a straitjacket,' said Trask. 'And strapped down to a bed!'
'What?' Jake's jaw fell open.
'Figure it out for yourself,' said Trask. 'A mind under the control of a vampire a
mind like yours, capable of doing the things only you can do running completely
amok? Not a hope in hell, Jake. Madness and the Möbius Continuum just don't mix. If
you got loose we could never take you again. And we could never know what you'd do
next, or who you'd be doing it for.'
You see? You see? I was right! Korath howled, but only Jake could hear him. Are
you blind? Can't you see I was only protecting you? You must not let them dabble, Jake.
You can't let them fool with your mind. I'm embedded now melded with your inner being
a part of your very identity. If they attempt to rip me loose, who knows what else might
go with me? Have you forgotten what you said about prefrontal lobotomy? Mightn't this
work out the same? And if so, will you ever again be yourself?
'Oh... why don't you... shut the fuck up!' Jake groaned, then shook his head
wildly, bared his teeth, and began to rock to and fro in his chair.
'It's Korath again!' Liz gasped, going to her knees beside Jake. 'It's him. I don't
know what he's saying or trying to do, but I can feel him there raw and ugly, like a
running sore festering in Jake's mind!'
'Are Jake's shields down?' Trask yelled, as the precog and the locator grabbed
Jake's arms, holding him still. And:
'Yes!' All four of his espers answered as one person.
'He's fighting with Korath,' said Liz. 'A mental struggle, as if with himself. He's
fighting to keep his shields down, so that when we find Harry he can let him in.'
'But apart from that it's a complete and utter shambles in there,' Millie said, falling
back and leaning against the wall. 'His thoughts are spinning like a wall of whirling
numbers a mathematical cry for help.'
'But his aura is awesome!' said Chung. 'He's a giant dynamo running wild.'
'And his future his immediate future is Ahhh!' The precog staggered.
Clutching at Trask with one hand, he held on to Jake's arm with the other. But the hand
and arm that held Jake were vibrating as if from an electric shock.
'What do you see?' Trask barked.
'I see... I see... I see Harry!' said the precog.
And suddenly Jake was still, and everyone in the room knew instinctively what he
or she must do.
Jake's chair stood central. The E-Branch team closed in on it, joined hands and
made a circle around it. And as on several previous occasions they acted as a body or
rather as a mind, one mind willing it to happen.
Chung was the locating force; his probe went out, searching for a once well-
known, never-to-be-forgotten psychic signature. Trask clung to the truth of things
willing that it come true and sought to dispel all lies and evil. Millie and Liz linked
minds as well as hands, and followed the locator's probe where it washed out from him
on its mission of discovery. And Goodly held them together, carried them all forward,
second by second, into the ever-devious future.
Jake's eyes were wild, wide, bulging; his teeth were clenched in straining jaws;
sweat dripped from his chin. 'The bastard is... he's fighting me,' he groaned. 'But he
isn't... he isn't going to win!'
And in his mind: No! Ah, no! Nooooooo! Korath howled his denial, then fell
abruptly silent. For something had come. Something was here.
Jake's eyes closed; every straining muscle went slack; his head fell forward onto
his chest...
The light in the room dimmed. The temperature fell. In the space of mere
seconds the room was cold. But it was more a psychic than a physical chill. And Jake...
was no longer Jake. Or rather, his outline in the chair seemed to have taken on a
different shape.
'Harry!' Chung breathed, where he almost hung between Trask and Millie. 'His
signature was faint but unmistakable. He came speeding from oh, from far away and
I can't say if it was space or time or both. Or neither. I mean, he was here, and yet he
wasn't, isn't. I mean... I don't know what I mean!'
'From space and time,' said the precog, looking as gaunt as ever in the sudden
gloom. 'From a different space, perhaps, and a time between. But on the other hand he
has always been here.'
This was his place,' said Trask, in an hoarse aside to Liz on his left, she being
the only one present who had never actually known the original Necroscope. 'And I
knew that if we were to find him it would have to be in here.'
'But how can we be sure it's him?' said Liz, her voice shivery in the eerie hush of
the place. 'What if it's Korath making fools of us all?'
'I can be sure it's him,' said Chung.
'And me,' said Trask. 'Now tell me, Liz, Millie: is Jake in there or not?' He was
asking them to probe the apparition telepathically.
The 'apparition. 'That was the only way to describe it. On the one hand it was
Jake, tied to a chair. But he was scarcely solid; his outline shimmered, lit from within by
the only real light in the room. And superimposed in Jake seeming to drift or hover
within and around his slumped figure the neon-blue foxfire outlines of a boy were
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