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Drea when Harry laid his head on the pillow, but the ht, and it was his tiht, but in the dark of the night they were sensitive as never before Even those which governed or were governed by his subconscious er, too

He dreamed first about Möbius and sensed that it was -dead mathematician came and sat on his bed, and while his face and form were indistinct, his deadspeak voice was as sharp and no-nonsense as ever

The last time we can talk, Harry - in this world, anyway

Are you sure you want to? the Necroscope answered It seeue, weightless figure of Möbius nodded Yes, but we both know that’s not you That’s why I’ve chosen to come to you nohile your dreams are still your own

Are they?

I think so Certainly you sound more like the Harry I used to know

Harry relaxed a little, sighed and sank down in his bed So what is it you want to talk about?

The other places, Harry The other worlds

My cone-shaped parallel di They were u, my vampire and I

That’s as it ht anyway Your intuition, Harry The only thing your vision didn’t take into account was how

How?

More rightly, who, said M&ou Bang, said M&ouht, back at the dawn of space and ti, Harry And yet we’ve already decided that before The Beginning there was nothing Which was foolish of us, because we both know that you don’t need flesh to haveHe ht? But to what end?

M&ou To find out ould happen, maybe?

You mean He didn’t already know? What’s that for omniscience?

Unfair, said M&ouerous to try But He’s known everything since

Tell me about the other places, said Harry, fascinated despite himself

The world of Starside and Sunside is one, Möbius told him But it wasa failure There were unforeseen paradoxes and things went disastrously wrong Starside, the vampire swamps and the Wamphyri themselves: they were cause and effect both! But that’s for the future, and for the past! To tell it now e it, which would be presuued Haven’t I always said so? And in their oay they’re fixed You can’t da about them

M&ourant you that But you can’t work your vampire wiles on me, my boy! And anyway, Starside isn’t the place I’, the Necroscope answered, just a little disgruntled

Once e talked, Möbius reminded him, you mentioned the balance of thematter around between all the different layers of existence and delaying or even reversing entropy Like the weights governing the swing of an old clock’s pendulum But that’s only one sort of balance, the physical sort Then there’s the ain?

The balance between Good and Evil

Which all had origin in the saust Ferdinand! Reht?

We’re not in dispute, Möbius shook his head On the contrary, we’re in coreement!

Harry was astonished God had a dark side?

Oh, yes, which he cast out!

The mathematician’s words and their delivery had riveted Harry And I can do the sa that the other places are like levels, soher and soo up or down

Heaven or Hell?

M&ouain If it helps you to think of it like that

You mean that when I move on, I can leave my dark side - maybe even my vampire - behind me?

While there’s a difference, yes

A difference?

While we uish between you

You o now, said Möbius

But I have to know more! Harry was desperate

I was allowed to come back, Möbius said, siher, Harry I really can’t afford to lose it

Wait! Harry tried to stir himself, sit up and take hold of Möbius’s wrist But he couldn’t rasp sreatMöbius’s visit had wearied Harry even more than before He drifted deeper into sleep But his vampire-influenced mind was full of a certain name, which tormented him and wouldn’t let him be And the name was Johnny Found

Harry was a telepath; he had a quest, a task which he one to face Fa��thor Ferenczy’s bloodson Janos in the mountains of Transylvania, the Ferenczy had warned him that only one of them would come out of it alive, and that the winner would be a creature of incredible power Janos had read the future, seen the sa, known he couldn’t lose Except one should never try to understand the future Read it if you must, but don’t try to understand it Harry had been the one who cah he didn’t yet have the measure of his powers - especially his most recent acquisition, telepathy - still they were incredible They had been incredible before, but noith the booster which was his vaer had control over his talents, which were active nevertheless Dreahouses of the -room where all the junk and trivia of life are discarded and the ful set in order That is the function of men’s dreams That and wish fulfilment And also, for anyone with a conscience, the elevation of suppressed guilt Which is why uilt, andfulfil his waking hours, his subconscious self - and the vampire which was part of it - would try to put in order while he slept

His enhanced awareness spread outwards froly, leaped all the et was the sleeping mind of Johnny Found, a mind with a talent as weird as it arped Which Harry desired to know about

And with the sinister guile of the vaest, propose, strike this chord or maybe that, and with any luck at all Johnny Found would tell hi, too, of his childhood This wasn’t soht spectre kept rapping on the door of childhoodthat he open it

Childhood memories? Oh, he had the or drea about Which hy he didn’t Usually

He tossed a little in his bed; his subconscious mind moaned and went to take up a ha pushed the hammer aside, beyond his reach, and Johnny could only watch helplessly as the door creaked open Inside, all the Bad Things of yesterday aiting for hie of punishments and penalties he’d been made to pay for them But he’d been a child then and innocent (so they said) and would soon grow out of it; and only Johnny hirow out of it, and that they’d never be able to find punishh to fit his cris he did were bad, and had alh to know that they lied to him, because they didn’t understand And because they didn’t understand, they would never kno good the things hich he did How good they made him feel

Yes, it had been a lonely place, childhood, where no one understood his he did Because they didn’t want even to think of such things, let alone know about the door And how s to talk to? And to play with And to tor, his clever ith creatures which were noan orphan hadn’t been nearly so bad Because he’d known there were others worse off than hiht was far worse And that if it wasn’t, then Johnny could soon make it worse

The open door both repelled and attracted him Beyond it, the ainst his will? - Johnny found hih the door Where all his childhood aiting for him

They’d called him ’Found’ because he had been, in a church And the pews had vibrated with his screa when the verger had come to see what all the to-do was about He was still bloody fro, and wrapped in a Sunday newspaper; and the placenta which had followed hi, stuffed under the bench in one of the pews

But lusty? Johnny had screalass s and bring down the ceiling, alht to be in that church Perhaps his poor mother had known it, too, and this had been her atte him Which had failed And not only was Johnny lost, but so was she

In any case, he’d yelled like that until they took him out of the church to the intensive care unit of a local hospital’s maternity ward And only then, away from God’s house, had he fallen silent

The ambulance which whirled hiainst a headstone in the churchyard in a pool of her own blood, head lolling on her swollen breasts Except unlike Johnny she didn’t survive the journey Or perhaps she did, for a little while

A strange start to a strange life, but the strangeness was only just beginning

In the intensive-care ward Johnny had been washed, cared for, given a cot and, for the moment - and indeed for all his life - a na which circled his little wrist, to distinguish him from all the other babies And Found he’d stayed

But when a nurse had looked in on hione quiet so suddenly that had been the weirdest thing of all Or perhaps not, depending on one’s perspective For his young mother hadn’t been quite dead after all And perhaps she’d heard the babies crying and had known that one of them was hers That must be the answer, surely? For what other explanation could there be?

There Johnny’s unnamed, unknown mother had sat, beside his e a dribble of cold milk froe until he was five, then fostered for three ic circue in York

About his foster parents: the Prescotts had kept a large house on the very outskirts of Darlington, where the town met the countryside At the tihter of four years; but there had been problems and Mrs Prescott was unable to have more children A pity, for the couple had always planned to be the ’perfect’ fairl Johnny would seem to fit the bill nicely and make up the deficiency

And yet David Prescott had been uneasy about the boy fro solid, just - so; but because of it things were just a little less perfect than they should be