Wednesday273Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8DUTP8K2ts
11:45 P.M.
Fifteen minutes to midnight in Gloudon on Britain's northeast coast
A thin drizzling rain turned the empty streets shiny black. The last bus for the colliery villages along the coast had left the town half an hour ago; the pubs and cinemas had all turned out; gray cats slinked in the alleys and a last handful of people headed for their homes on a night when it simply wasn't worth being out.
But in a certain house in the Tuxhorn Alley there was a muted measure of activity. In the garret flat, Kate Cowell had fed her baby daughter and put him down for the night and was now preparing herself for bed. In the hitherto empty first floor flat, Adam Shiveley and Robert Petley sat in near-darkness, Petley nodding off to sleep and Shiveley listening with an anxious awareness to the timbers of the old house creaking as they settled for the night. Downstairs in the ground floor flat, its permanent "residents," to Special Branch men, were playing cards while a uniformed policeman made coffee and looked on. In the entrance hall a second uniformed officer kept his vigil just inside the door, smoking a slightly damp and ill-made cigarette while he sat in an uncomfortable wooden chair and wondered for the tenth time just what he was doing here.
To the Special Branch men it was old hat: they were hear for the protection of the girl in the garret flat. She didn't know it, but they weren't just good neighbors, they were her protectors. Hers and little Molly's. They'd looked after her for the better part of a year, and in all of that time nobody had so much as blinked at her; theirs must be the cushiest, best paid number in the entire length and breadth of the security business! As for the two uniformed men: they were on overtime, kept over from the middle shift to do "special" duties. They should have gone off home at 10:00 P.M., but it appeared there was this bloody maniac running loose, and the girl upstairs was thought to be one of his targets. That was all they'd been told. All very mysterious.
On the other hand, in the flat above, Shiveley and Petley knew exactly why they were here---and also what they were up against. Petley uttered a quiet snort and his head lolled where he sat close to the curtained window in the living-room. He gave a grunt and straightened himself up a little, and in the next moment began to nod again. Shiveley scowled at him without malice, turned up his collar and rubbed his hands for warmth. The room felt damp and cold.
Shiveley would have liked to put on a light but didn't dare; this flat was supposed to be empty and that was the way it must appear. No fires, no lights, as little movement as possible. All they'd allowed themselves by way of comfort was an electric kettle and a jar of instant coffee. Well, a little more than that. Comforting too was the fact that earlier in the day a flame thrower had been delivered to Shiveley, and both men had crossbows.
Shiveley picked up his crossbow now and looked at it. It was loaded, with the safety on. How dearly he would love to sight it on Dragos Matei's black heart. He scowled again and put the weapon down, lit up and drew deeply on one of his rare cigarettes. He was feeling tired and miserable, and not a little nervous. That was probably to be excepted, but he put it down to the fact that he'd been taking his coffee blacker and blacker, until he felt sure that his blood must now be at least 75% pure caffeine! He's been here since the early hours of the morning, and so far---nothing. At least he had that much to be thankful for...
Down in the entrance hall, Constable Dudley Pope quietly opened the door of the flat, looked into the living-room. "Stand in for me, Basil," he said to his colleague. "Five minutes for a breath of fresh air. I'm going to stretch my legs down the road a bit."
The other glanced once more at the Special Branch men at their game, stood up and began buttoning his jacket. He picked up his helmet and followed his friend out into the hall, then unlocked the door and let him out into the street. "Fresh air?" he called after him. "You're joking. Looks like there's a fog coming up to me!"
Basil Marsden watched his colleague stride off down the road, went back inside and closed the door. He should by rights lock it but was satisfied to throw home the single, small stainless steel bolt. He took his seat beside an occasional table bearing a heap of junk mail and some old newspapers---and a tin of cigarette tobacco and papers! Basil grinned, rolled himself a "free" one. He'd just smoked the cigarette down when he heard footsteps at the door and a single, quiet knock.
He got up, unbolted the door, opened it and looked out. His colleague stood with his back to the door, rubbing his hands and glancing up and down the road. A fine film of moisture gleamed black on his raincoat and helmet. Basil flipped the stub of his cigarette out into the night and said, "That was a long five...."
But that was all he said. For the next moment the figure on the threshold had turned and grabbed him in hands huge and powerful as iron bands---and he'd taken one look at the face under the helmet and knew it wasn't Dudley Pope! It wasn't anyone human at all!
These were his last thoughts as Dragos Matei effortlessly bent Basil's head back and sank his incredible teeth into his throat. They closed like a mantrap on his pounding jugular and severed it. He was dead in a moment, throat torn out, neck broken.
Dragos lowered him to the floor, turned and closed the door to the street. He pushed home the light bolt; that would suffice. It had been the work of mere seconds, a most efficient murder. Blood stained Matei's mouth as he snarled silently at the door of the ground floor flat. he reached out his vampire senses and sent them beyond the closed door. Two men in there, close together, busy with whatever they were doing and totally unaware of their danger. But not for long.
Dragos opened the door and without pause strode into the room. He saw the Special Branch officers seated at their card table. They looked up smiling, saw him, his helmet and raincoat, and casually returned to their game----then looked again! But too late. Dragos was in the room, pacing forward, reaching a taloned hand to pick up a service automatic with its silencer already screwed in positon. He would have preferred to kill in his own way, but he supposed that this was as good as any. The officers had barely drawn breath, were scarcely risen to their feet, before he'd fired at them point-blank, half-emptying the weapon's magazine into their cringing, shuddering bodies....
Adam Shiveley had been on the point of falling asleep; maybe for a little while he had been asleep, but then something had woken him up. He lifted his head, all of his senses at once alert. Something downstairs in the hall? A door closing? Furtive footsteps on the stairs? It could have been any of these things. But how long ago---seconds or minutes?
The telephone rang and shocked him upright, rigid as a pillar in his chair. Heart pounding, he reached for the phone, but Robert Petley's hand closed on it first. "I woke up a minute before you." Petley whispered, his voice hoarse in the darkness. "Adam, I think something's up!"
He put the handset to his ear, said: "Petley?"
Shiveley heard a tinny voice from the telephone, but couldn't make out what it said. But he saw Petley give a massive start and heard his whooshing intake of breath.
"Jesus!" Petley exploded into life. He slammed the phone down, came rearing unsteadily to his feet. "That was Greenway," he panted. "He's found the bastard again---and guess where he is!"
Shiveley didn't have to guess, for his talent had taken over. It was telling him to get the hell out of this house; it was even propelling him towards the door. But only for a moment, for his talent "knew" that there was danger out there on the landing, and now it was heading Adam towards the window!
Shiveley knew what was happening. He fought it, grabbed up his crossbow, forced himself to follow Petley's bulk to the door of the flat.
Out on the first floor landing, Dragos had already sensed the hated espers in the room. He knew who they were, and how dangerous they were. An old upright piano stood on broken castors with its back to the handrail at the top of the stairs. It must weigh almost a fifth of a tone, but that was hardly an obstacle to the vampire. He grasped it, gave a grunt, and dragged it bodily into place in front of the door. Its castors snapped off and went skittering, their broken housing ripping up the carpet as Drago finally got the piano positioned to his satisfaction.
No sooner was he finished than Petley was on the other side of the door, trying to push it open. "Shit!" Petley snarled. "It can only be him, and he's trapped us in here! Adam, the door opens outwards----give me a hand..."
They thrust their shoulders at the door together, and at last heard the piano's broken claws squealing on the scored floorboards. A gap appeared, and Petley thrust out an arm into darkness, got a grip on the top of the piano and started to haul himself up and over it. He dragged his crossbow after him, with Shiveley pushing from behind.
"Where the hell are those idiots from downstairs?" Petley panted.
"Hurry, for God's sake!" Shiveley urged him on. "He'll be up the stairs by now-----" But he wasn't. The landing light came on.
Sprawled on top of the piano, Petley's eyes stood out like shiny pebbles in his face as he gazed directly awful visage of Dragos Matei. The vampire wrenched Petley's crossbow from fingers made immobile through shock. He turned the weapon and fired its bolt directly into the gap of the door behind the piano. Then he gurgled something from a throat clogged with blood, and began to methodically batter at Petley's head. The wire string of the crossbow hummed with the speed and force of his blows.
Petley had screamed once---one high, shrill scream---before he felt silent under Dragos's onslaught. Blow after blow the vampire rained on him, until his head was a raw red pulp that dripped brains onto the piano's keyboard. And only then did he stop.
Inside the room, Shiveley had heard the thrumm of the bolt where it missed him by a hairsbreadth. And looking out through the gap in the door, half-blinded by the light, he had seen what this nightmare Thing had done to Petley. Numb with horror, nevertheless he tried to line up his own weapon for a shot, but in the next moment Dragos had thrust Petley's corpse back inside the room on top of Shiveley, and rammed the piano back up against the door. And that was when Shiveley broke: he couldn't fight that Thing out there and his talent! The latter wouldn't let him. Instead he dropped the crossbow, stumbled back inside the flat and sought a window looking down on the street outside.
There was no longer any coherency left in him; all he wanted to do was get away. As far and as swiftly as possible....
In the garret flatlet, Kate Stewart had been asleep for only twenty minutes. A scream---like the welling cry of a tortured animal---had snatched her awake, brought her tumbling out of bed. At first she thought it was Molly, but then she heard scuffling sounds from downstairs and a noise like the slamming of a door. What the hell was going on down there?
She went a little unsteadily to her door, opened it and leaned out to listen for any recurrence of the sounds. But all was silent now, and the tiny landing stood in darkness---a darkness which suddenly flowed forward to send her crashing back into the room! And now Dragos was within an ace of his revenge, and his coughing growl was full of triumph as he gazed with a wolf's eyes on the girl sprawled on the floor.
Kate saw him and knew she must be nightmaring. She must be, for nothing like this should live and breathe and move in any sane waking world!
The creature was or had been a man; certainly he stood upright, however forward-sloping. His arms were----long! And the hands at the ends of those arms were huge and clawlike, with projecting nails. The face was something unbelievable. It might have been the face of a wolf, but it was hairless and there were other anomalies which also suggested bat. His ears grew flat to the sides of his head; they were long and projected higher than the rearward sloping, elongated skull. His nose---no, his snout was wrinkled, convoluted, with black, gaping nostrils. The skin of the whole was scaly and his yellow eyes, and scarlet-pupiled, were deep sunken in black sockets. And his jaws!---his teeth!
Dragos Matei was Wamphyri, and he made no effort to conceal it. That essence of vampire on him had found the perfect receptacle, had worked on him like yeast in a potent beer. He was at the peak of his strength and power and he knew it. In everything he'd done, no trace had been left which might definitely identify him as the author of the crime. INTESP would know it, of course, but no court could ever be convinced. And INTESP, as Dragos had discovered, was far from omnipotent. Indeed, it was impotent. Its members were only human, and fearful; he would hunt them down one by one until he'd smashed the entire organization. He would even set himself a target: say, one month, to be rid of all of them for good.
But first there was this child of a woman, that scrap of life which contained his one and only peer in powers---his helpless peer....
Dragos swept upon the girl where she cringed, locked his beast's fist in her hair and half dragged her to her feet. "Where?" his gurgling voice questioned. "The child---where?"
Kate's mouth fell open. Molly? This monster wanted Molly? Her eyes widened, flashed involuntarily towards the baby's tiny room---and the vampire's eyes lit with knowledge as he followed her glance. "No!" she cried, and drew breath for a scream of sheer terror---which she never uttered.
Dragos threw her down and her head banged against the polished floorboards. She lost consciousness at once and he stepped over her, loped to the open door of the small room.....
In the middle flat, struggling blindly with an old sash window which seemed jammed, Adam Shiveley suddenly felt his terror drain out of him; or if not his terror, certainly his urge to flee. His talent's demands were ebbing, which could only mean that the danger was receding. But how? Dragos Matei was still in the house, wasn't he? As sanity returned, Shively stopped trembling, found a switch and put on the light. Adrenalin flooded into his system. Now he could focus his eyes again, could see the catches with which the window had been made secure. He released them and, unprotesting, the window slid upward along its grooves. Shiveley sighed his relief; at least he now had an emergency exit. He glanced out of the window, down into the midnight road---and froze.
At first his eyes refused to accept what they were seeing. Then he gasped his horror and felt the flesh creep on his shoulders and back. The road outside the house was filling with people! Silent streams of them were converging, massing together. They were coming out of the cemetery gates, over its front wall; men, women and children. All silent, crossing the road to gather in front of the house. But worse than the sight of them was their silence. For they were quiet as the graves they had so recently vacated!
Their stench drifted up to Shiveley on the damp night air, the overpowering, stomach-wrenching reek of moulder and advanced decay and rotting flesh. Eyes popping, he watched them. They were in their graveclothes, some of them recently dead, and others----others who had been dead since the eighteenth century! They flopped over the cemetery wall, squelched out of its gate, shuffled across the road. And now one of them was knocking on the house door, seeking entry.
Shiveley might have thought he was mad, and indeed that thought had occurred to him, but in the back of his mind he knew and remembered that Molly Stewart wasn't just a woman, she was the Mollyscope. He knew Stewart's history: a woman who could talk to the dead, whom the dead respected, even loved. What's more, Stewart could raise the dead up when she had need of them. And didn't she have need of them now? That was it! This was Molly's doing. It was the only possible answer.
The crowd at the door began to turn their gray, fretted heads upward. They looked at Stewart, beckoned to him, pointed at the door. They wanted him to let them in---and Shiveley knew why. Maybe I'm mad after all, he thought, as he ran back through the flat to the door. It's past midnight and there's a vampire on the loose, and I'm going downstairs to let a horde of dead men come inside!
But the door of the flat was immobile as ever, with the piano still wedged against it on the landing outside. Shiveley put his shoulder to it and shoved until he thought his heart would burst. The door was giving way, but only one inch at a time. He just didn't have the bulk.....
…..But Robert Petley did.
Shiveley didn't know his dead friend had stood up until he saw him there at his side, helping to force the door open. Petley----his head a crimson jelly where it flopped on his shoulders, with the broken skull showing through---inexorably thrusting forward, filled with a strength from beyond the grave!
And then Shiveley just fainted away.....
The two Mollys had looked out through the infant's eyes into the face of terror itself, the face of Dragos Matei. Crouched over the infant's cot, the leering malignancy of his eyes spoke all too clearly of his intention.
Finished! Molly Stewart thought. All done, and it ends like this.
No, another voice, not her own, had spoken in her mind. No it doesn't. Through you I've learned what I had to learn. I don't need you that way anymore. But I do still need you as my mentor. So go, save yourself.
It could only have been one person speaking to her, doing it now, for the first time, when there was no longer any time to question the hows and whys of it. For Molly had felt the child's restraints falling from her like broken chains, leaving her free again. Free to will her incorporeal mind into the safety of the Mobius continuum. She could have gone right there and then, leaving her namesake to face whatever was coming. She could have gone---but he couldn't!
Matei's jaws had yawned open like a pit, revealing a snake's tongue flickering behind the dagger teeth.
Go! little Mollly had said again, with more urgency.
You're the closest thing I have to a daughter! Molly had cried. Damn you, I can't go! I can't leave you to this!
Then give me the powers I need to protect myself! the infant demanded. What would you do in a situation like this?
The beast's taloned hands were reaching for the child in her cot.
Dragos saw now that Molly Jr. was----was more than a child. Molly Stewart was in her, yes, but it was even more than that. The baby girl looked at him, stared at him with wide, moist, innocent eyes---and was totally unafraid. Or were those eyes innocent? And for the first time since Hartley House, Dragos knew something of fear. He drew back a fraction, then checked himself. This what he was here for, wasn't it? Best to get it over with, and fast. Again he reached for the baby.
Little Molly had turned her small round head this way and that, seeking a Mobius door. There was one beside her, floating up out of her pillows. It was easy the ability now implanted in her genes. Molly Stewart had indeed given little Molly Jr. her powers. Her control over her mind was awesome; over her body, much less certain. But she'd been able to manage this much. Bunching inexpert muscles, she'd curled herself up, rolled into and through the Mobius door. The vampire's hands and jaws had closed on thin air!
Dragos strained back and away from the cot as if it had suddenly burst into flames. He gaped---then pounced upon the cot's covers, tearing them to shreds. Nothing! The child had simply disappeared! One of Molly Stewart's tricks, the work of the Mollyscope.
Not me, Dragos, said Molly from behind him. Not this time. I gave her the power to do it for herself. And now, you'll get what you deserve!
Dragos whirled, saw Molly's shapely naked figure outlined in glowing blue neon mesh, advanced menacingly upon him. He passed through the manifestation, found himself tearing at nothing. "What?" he gurgled. "What?!"
Molly was behind him. You're finished, Drago, she told him then, with a deal of satisfaction. Whatever evil you've created, we can undo it. We can't give life back to those you've destroyed, but we can give some of them their vengeance.
"We?" The vampire spoke around the snake in his mouth, his words dripping like acid. "There's no 'we,' there's only you. And if it takes me forever, I'll...."
You don't have forever. Molly shook her head. In fact, you have no time left at all!
There was a soft but concerted shuffling of footsteps on the landing and up the stairs; something, no, a good many somethings, were coming into the flat. Dragos swept out of the tiny bedroom into the flat's main room and skidded to a halt. Kate Cowell no longer lay where he'd tossed her, but Dragos barely noticed that.
The Stewart manifestation, suspended in thin air, moved after the vampire to watch the confrontation.
A policeman, his throat torn out, was leading them. And with steps slow and staggering, but full of purpose, they came on. You can kill the living, Dragos, Molly told the mewling vampire, but you can't kill the dead.
"You...." Dragos turned to her again. "You called them up!"
Not just me, said Molly. Molly Jr. called some up as well. I have been talking to them for quite some little time. And now they will care for her as much as they care for me.
"No!" Dragos rushed to the window, saw that it was old and no longer opened. One of the corpses, a thing that shed maggots with every step, lurched after him. In its bony hand it carried Adam Shiveley's crossbow. Others had long wooden staves, taken from cemetery fences. Animated corruption was now spewing into the room like pus from a ruptured boil.
It's all over, Dragos, said Molly.
Matei turned on them all, scowled his denial. No, it wasn't over yet. What were they anyway but a mirage and a mob of dead men? "Stewart, you bodiless bitch!" he snarled. "And did you think you were the only one with powers?"
He crouched down, spread his shoulders, laughed in their faces. His neck elongated, the flesh rippling with a life of its own. His terrible head was now like that of some primal pterodactyl. His body seemed to flutter, flattening in depth and increasing in width until his clothes, unable to contain it, tore into so many rags around him. He reached out his arms and lengthened them, forming a blasphemous cross, then grew a webbing of wing down each side of his body. With greater ease, more fluency far than ever Thrulk Benedek had possessed, he completely remolded his vampire flesh. And where moments before a manlike being had stood, now a huge batlike creature confronted its hunters.
Then---the thing that was Dragos Matei turned and launched itself at the thin-latticed panes of the wide bay window.
Don't let him get away! Molly told them; but without need, for that wasn't their intention.
Dragos went out through the latticework, showering glass and fragments of painted woodwork down into the road. Now he formed an airfoil, curving his monstrous body like a straining kite to catch a night wind blowing up from the west. But the avenger with the crossbow stood in the gap of the shattered window and aimed his weapon. A corpse without eyes should not see, but in their weird pseudolife these pieces of crumbling flesh enjoyed all of the senses they'd known in life. And this one had been a marksman.
He fired, and the bolt took Dragos in his spine, halfway down his rubbery back. The heart, Molly admonished. You should have gone for his heart. But in the end, it was all to work out the same.
Dragos cried out, the raucous, ringing cry of a wounded beast. He bent his body in a contortion of agony, lost his control, sank like a crippled bird towards the graveyard. He tried to maintain his flight, but the bolt had severed his spine and that would take time to mend. There was no time left. Dragos fell into the cemetery, crashing into the damp shrubbery; and at once the crumbling dead turned in their tracks and began to file out of the garret flat, shuffling in pursuit.
Down the stairs they went, some with their flesh dropping off their bones, and others who couldn't help but leave bits behind, which followed of their own accord. Molly went with them, with all the dead she'd befriended, oh---how long ago?---when she'd lived here and new friends she hadn't even spoken to yet.
There were two young policemen among them, who'd never return home to their wives; and another two from Special Branch, with bullet holes like scarlet flowers blooming in their clothing; and there was a fat man called Robert Petley, whose head wasn't much of anything anymore but whose heart was in the right place. Petley had come to Gloudon with a job to do, which he expected to finish right now.
Down the stairs, out of the door and across the road they all went, and into the cemetery. There were plenty of stragglers there who hadn't made it over the road to the flat, who just weren't in any condition to do so. But when Dragos had fallen they ringed him about, advancing upon him with their staves and threatening in their mute and moldering way.
Stab him through the heart, Molly told them when she arrived.
Hell's Bells, Molly, but the filthy beast won't keep still! one of the 18th-century corpses protested. His hide be like India-rubber, sad to say, and these staves be blunt.
I have the answer, sir. Another corpse, recently dead, came forth. This was Constable Dudley Pope, who walked all aslant because Dragos had broken his back in an alley not a hundred yards down the road. In his hands he carried the cemetery caretaker's sickle, a little rusty from lying in the long grass under the graveyard wall.
That's the way, Molly agreed, ignoring Dragos's hoarse screaming. The stake, the sword, and the fire.
I've got the last. Someone whose head had collapsed utterly (Robert Petley) stumbled forward dragging heavy tanks and a hose--an army flame-thrower! And if Dragos had screamed before, now he did so in earnest. The dead payed him no heed. They piled onto him and held him down, and in his extreme of terror--even Dragos Matei terrified----he reshaped his vampire body into that of a man. It was a mistake, for now they could find his heart more easily. One of them brought a piece of a broken tombstone for a hammer, and at last a stave was driven home. Pinned down like some hideous butterfly. Dragos writhed and screamed, but it was nearly over now.
Dudley Pope, looking on, sighed and said, An hour ago I was a policeman, and now it seems I'm to be an executioner.
It's a unanimous verdict, Dudley, Molly reminded him.
And like the Grim Reaper himself, so Dudley Pope advanced and took Dragos's head as cleanly as possible, even though he had to strike more than once or twice. After that it was Robert Petley's turn; he worked on the now quiet vampire with roaring, gouting, blistering, cleaning fire until there was really nothing much left of him at all. And he didn't stop until his tanks were empty. By then the dead were dispersing, back to their riven graves.
It was time for Molly to move on. The wind had blown away Dragos's fog, the stench of putrefaction, too, and stars were shining in the night sky. Molly's work was finished here, but elsewhere there was still a great deal to be done.
She thanked the dead, one and all, and found a Mobius door.....
Molly was almost used to the Mobius continuum now, but she suspected that most human brains would find it unbearable. For it was always nowhere and nowhen on the space-time Mobius strip; but a (wo)man with the right equations, the right kind of mind, could use it to ride anywhere and everywhen. Before that, of course, (s)he would need to conquer his/her fear of the dark.
For in the physical universe there are degrees of darkness, and Nature seems to abhor all of them much as she abhors a vacuum. The metaphysical Mobius continuum, however, is made solely of darkness. That is all it consists of. Beyond the Mobius doors lies the very Primal Darkness itself, which existed long, long before the Big Bang happened.
Molly might be at the core of a black hole, except a black hole has enormous gravity and this place had none. It had no gravity because it contained no mass; it was immaterial as thought itself, yet like thought it was a force. It had powers that reacted to Molly's presence and worked to expel her, like a mote caught in its eye. She was a foreign body, which the Mobius continuum must reject.
At least, that was how it used to be. But this time Molly sensed that things were different.
Previously there had always been this sensation of masterless forces pushing at her, attempting to dislodge her from the unreal back into the real. And she had never dared to allow that to happen except where or when she wished it to happen, else she might well emerge in a place or time those same forces were bending a little, maybe even jostling each other to accommodate her. And in Molly's unfettered, incorporeal mind, she believed she knew why. Intuition told her that this was her---yes, her metamorphosis!
From real to unreal, from a flesh and blood being to an immaterial intelligence, from a living person to----a ghost? Molly had always refused to accept that premise, that she was in fact dead, but now she began to fear that it might indeed be the case. And mightn't that explain why the dead loved her so? The fact that she was one of their own?
She rejected the idea angrily. Angry with herself. No, for the dead had loved her before this, when she was still a woman, full-fleshed. And that was a thought which also angered her. I still am a woman! she told herself, but with far less authority. For now that she'd conjured it, the idea of a subtle metamorphosis was growing in her.
Something less than one year ago she had argued with August Ferdinand Mobius about a possible relationship between the physical and metaphysical universes. Mobius, in his grave at a Leipzig cemetery, had insisted that the two were entirely separate, unable to impose themselves in any way upon the other. They might occasionally rub up against each other, the action producing reaction on both sides---such as "ghosts" or "psychic experiences" on the physical plane---but they could never overlap and never run concurrent.
And as for jumping from one to the other and back again....
But Molly had been the outlier, the fly in Mobius's ointment, the spanner in the works. Or was she merely the exception that proves the rule?
All of that, however, had been when she had form, when she was corporeal. And now? Maybe now the rule was at last asserting itself, ironing out the discrepancy. Molly belonged here; she was no longer physical but metaphysical, and so should remain here. Here forever, riding the unimaginable and scientifically impossible flux of forces in the abstract Mobius continuum. Maybe she was becoming one with the place.
Word association: force-flux---force fields---lines of force---lines of life. The bright blue lines of life extending forward beyond the doors to future time! And suddenly Molly remembered something and wondered how it could possibly have slipped so far to the back of her mind. The Mobius strip couldn't claim her, not yet at least, because she had a future. Why didn't she see it before?
She could even witness it again if she wished, by merely finding a future-time door. Or maybe this time it wouldn't be that simple. What if the Mobius continuum should claim her while she traveled in time? That was an unbearable thought: to hurtle into the future forever! But no need to take the chance, for Molly could remember it well enough.
The scarlet lifeline drifting closer, angling in towards her own and Molly Jr.'s blue threads. Dragos Matei, surely?
And then the infant's life-thread abruptly veering away from Molly, racing off at a tangent. That must have been her escape from the vampire, the moment when she'd first used the Mobius continuum. After that---then there'd been that impossible collision:
That strange blue life-thread, dimming, crumbling, disintegrating, converging with Molly's own thread out of nowhere. The two had seemed to bend towards each other as though by some mutual attraction, before slamming together in a neon blaze and speeding on as one thread. Briefly Molly had felt the presence---or the faint, fading echo---of another mind; but then it was gone, extinct, and her thread rushing on alone....
Yes, and she had recognized that dying echo of a mind!
Now she knew for sure where she must go, who she must seek out. And with something less than her usual dexterity, she found her way to INTESP HQ in London....
The top floor---self-contained suites of offices, labs, private quarters, and a communal recreation room---which comprised INTESP HQ were in turmoil. Fifteen minutes ago something had occurred which, despite the nature of the HQ and the various talents of its personnel, was completely beyond all previous experience. There had been no warning; the thing had not telegraphed itself to INTESP's telepaths, precogs or other psychic sensitives; it had just "happened," and left the espers running round in circles like ants in a disturbed nest.
"It" had been the arrival of Molly Stewart Jr. and her mother.
The first INTESP had known of it was when all the security alarms went off simultaneously. Indicators had shown that the intruder was in the top office, Harry Moradian's control room. No one but John Gifford had been in that room since Moradian flew to Italy, and the place was now secured. There couldn't possibly be anyone in there.
It could be a fault in the alarm system, of course, but---and then had come the first real intimations of what was going on. All of INTESP's espers had felt it at the same time: a powerful presence, a mental giant in their midst, here at HQ. Molly Stewart?
Finally they'd got the door to Moradian's office open---and found mother and child curled up together in the middle of the office carpet. Nothing physical had ever manifested itself in this way before; not here at INTESP, anyway. When Stewart herself had visited Moradian here, she had been incorporeal, without substance, a mere impression of the beautiful young woman Molly Stewart had been. But these people were real, solid, alive and breathing. They had been teleported here.
The "why" of it was obvious: to escape Dragos Matei. As for the "how," that would have to wait. Mother and daughter---and therefore Brian Cowell and INTESP---were safe, and that was all that mattered.
At first it'd been thought that Kate Cowell was just asleep; but when Gifford carefully examined her he found the large soft lump at the back of her head and guessed she was concussed. As for the baby: she had looked around, alert and wide-eyed, appeared a little startled but not unduly afraid, lying in her mother's relaxed arms sucking her thumb! Not much wrong with her.
With the greatest care and attention to their task, the espers had then carried the pair to staff accommodation and put them to bed, Brian Cowell had been located and phoned, and a doctor had been summoned. Then INTESP's buzzing members had concentrated themselves in the ops room to talk it over. Which was when Molly came on the scene.
While her coming was startling, if anything it was less of a shock and more of an anticlimax; the previous materialization had readied them for it. It might even be said that she was expected. John Gifford had just taken the ops room podium and turned the lights down a little when Molly appeared. She came in the form all the espers had heard about but which few of them, and none present, had ever seen: a faint mesh of luminous blue filaments---almost a hologram---in the image of an attractive woman. And again that psychic shockwave went out, telling them all that they were in the presence of a metaphysical Power.
John Gifford felt it, too, but he was the last of them to actually see Molly, for she'd appeared on the podium's platform slightly to Gifford's rear. Then the permanent Duty Officer heard the concerted gasp that went up from his small audience when they'd taken their seats, and he turned his head.
"My God!" he said, staggering a little.
No, said Molly, just Molly Stewart, code name Angel. Are you all right?
Gifford had nearly fallen from the podium, only finding his balance at the final moment. He steadied himself, said, "Yes, I think so," then he held up his hand to quiet the buzz of excited, expectant conversation. "What's happening, Molly?" He got down off the podium and backed away.
Don't be afraid, please, Molly told them all. This was a ritual she was getting used to. I'm one of you, remember?
"We're not afraid, Molly," Hugh Mede found his voice. "Just---cautious."
"I'm looking for Harry Moradian, said Molly. Is he back yet?
"No," Gifford shook his head, turned his face away a little. "And he probably won't be. But your ex-boyfriend's wife and daughter got here OK."
The Stewart manifestation sighed, visibly relaxed. This told her the extent of the baby's delving into her mind. Good! she said---about Brian, Kate and the baby, I mean. I knew mother and daughter would be somewhere safe, but this place has to be the safest....
The handful of espers were now on their feet, had come forward to the base of the raised platform. "But did you, er, send them here?" Gifford was puzzled.
Molly shook her neon head. In a way. I willed my powers to Molly Jr. She brought them both here, through the Mobius continuum. You'd better look after her, for, thanks to me, she's going to be one hell of an asset! Listen, there are things that can't wait, so explanations will have to wait. Tell me about Harry.
Gifford did, and Mede added, "I know he's there, at the Castillo, but I read him like---well, like he's dead."
That hit Molly hard. That strange blue life-thread, dimming, crumbling and disintegrating must have been Harry Moradian's!
There are things you'll want to know, she told them, apparently in a hurry now. Things you have every right to know. First, Dragos Matei is dead.
Someone whistled his appreciation, and Mede cried, "Christ, that's wonderful!"
It was Molly's turn to avert her face. Robert Petley is dead as well, she said.
For a moment there was stunned silence, then someone asked, "Adam Shiveley?"
He's fine, Molly answered, as far as I know. Listen, everything else will have to wait. I've got to go now. But I've a feeling I'll be seeing all of you again.
She collapsed in upon herself to a single point of radiant blue light, and vanished. Molly knew the way to the Castillo Mikhailov well enough, but the Mobius continuum fought her all the way. It fought to restrain her, to keep her to itself. The longer she remained unbodied, the worse it would become, until finally she'd be trapped in the endless night of an alien dimension. But not yet.
Harry Moradian was not dead and Molly knew it; if he had been then Molly could just reach out her mind and speak to him, as he talked to all the dead. But though she tried---however tentatively at first, cringingly----mercifully there was no contact. This made her bolder; she tried harder, putting every effort into contacting Moradian's mind, while yet hoping that she'd fail. But this time.....
-----Molly felt horror wash over her as indeed she picked up the faint, fading echo of the man she'd known. An echo, yes: a despairing, fading cry trailing off into nothing. But it was all the beacon Molly needed, and she homed in on it a moment.
Then---it was as if she were in a maelstrom! It was Molly Jr. all over again, but ten times worse, and this time there was no resisting it. Molly didn't have to fight free of the Mobius continuum but was ripped out of it intact. Torn from it and inserted---
Somewhere else!
It hadn't been easy but Agnes Daschner had eventually fallen asleep, only to toss and turn for hours in the throes of sheerest nightmare. Finally she'd started awake in the wee hours of the morning and looked all about in the darkness of her spartan room. For the first time since coming to the Castillo Mikhailov the place seemed alien to her; her job here was empty now; it offered neither reward nor satisfaction. Indeed it was evil. It was evil because the people she worked for were evil. Under Alik Morozov things had been different, but under Roman Demochev----his very name had become a foul taste in Agnes's mouth. Her life would be impossible if he took control here. And as for that squat, murderous toad Makar Alexeyeva….
Agnes had got up, splashed cold water on her face, made her way down to the cellars which housed the Castillo's various experimental laboratories. On her way, on the stairs and in a corridor, she'd passed a night-duty technician and an esper; both had nodded their respect but she'd barely noticed, merely brushed by them and continued on her way. She had her own respects to pay, to a man as good as dead.
Letting herself into the mind-lab, she'd take a steel chair and sat beside Harry Moradian, touched his dark Negro flesh. His pulse was erratic, the rise and fall of his chest weak and abnormal. He was almost totally brain-dead, and less than 24 hours from now---The authorities in West Berline wouldn't know who he was or what had killed him. Murder, plain and simple.
And she had been part of it. She had been duped, told that Moradian was a spy, an enemy whose secrets were of the utmost importance to the USSR, while in reality they were only of the utmost importance to Roman Demochev. She had protected herself before that sick creature, made excuses when he said he'd been party to it----but there was no defense against her own conscience.
Oh, it was easy for Demochev and the thousands like him, who only ever read reports. Agnes read minds, and that was a different matter entirely. A mind is not a book; book sonly describe emotions, they rarely make you feel them. But to a telepath the emotion is real, raw and powerful as the story proper. She hadn't just read Harry Moradian's stolen diary, she'd read his life. And in doing so she had helped to steal it.
An enemy, yes, she supposed he'd been that, in that he held allegiance to another country, a different code. But a threat? Oh, in higher echelons of his government there were doubtless personalities who would wish to see Russia devolve, become subservient. But Moradian wasn't a militarist, he'd been no subversive strategist worrying at the foundations of Communist identity and society. No, he'd been humanitarian, with an overwhelming belief that all men were brothers---or should be. And his only desire had been to maintain a balance. In his work for the British E-Branch he'd been used, much as Agnes herself was now being used, when both of them could have been working towards greater things.
And where was Harry Moradian now? Nowhere. His body was here, but his mind---a very fine mind---was gone forever.
Eyes filming, Agnes looked up, looked scathingly at the machinery backed up against the sterile walls. Vampires? The world was filled with them. What of these machines, which had sucked out his knowledge and sluiced it all away forever? But a machine can't feel guilt, which is an entirely human emotion....
She came to a decision: if it were at all possible, she'd find a way to break free of E-Branch. There'd been cases before where telepaths lost their talent, so why shouldn't she? If she could fake it, convince Demochev that she was no longer of any use to this sinister organization, then...
Agnes's train of thought stopped right there. Under her fingertips where they lay on Moradian's wrist, his pulse had suddenly grown steady and strong; his chest was now rising and falling rhythmically; his mind---his mind?
No, the mind of another! An astonishing wave of psychic power washed outwards from him. It wasn't telepathy----wasn't anything Agnes had felt before----but whatever it was, it was strong! She snatched back her hand and sprang to her feet, found her legs wobbly as jelly, and stood gulping, staring at the man lying on the operating table that should have been his deathbed. His thoughts, at first jumbled, finally fell into a rhythm of their own.
It's not my body, Molly told herself, without knowing that someone else was listening, but it's a good one and it's going free! There's nothing left of you, Harry, but there's still a chance for me----a good chance for Molly Stewart. God, Harry, wherever you are now, forgive me!
Her identity was in Agnes's mind and she knew she'd made no mistake. Her legs began to buckle under her. Then the figure---whoever, however it was---on the table opened its eyes and sat up, and that finished the job. For a moment she passed out, two or three ticks of the clock, but sufficient time in which to slump to the floor. Time enough, too, for him to swing his legs off the table and go down on one knee beside her. He rubbed his wrists briskly and she felt it, felt his warm hands on her suddenly cold flesh. He was warm, alive, strong hands.
"I'm Molly Stewart," he said, as her eyes fluttered open.
Agnes had a little English from British tourists on Mallorca. "N---No, that can't be," she said. "Molly Stewart was----was a young woman!"
He looked at her, at her gray Castillo uniform with its single diagonal yellow stripe across the heart, looked all around the room and its instruments, finally looked---with a great deal of wonder---at his own naked self. Yes, at her new male body, now. And to her s/he said accusingly, "Did you have something to do with this?"
Agnes stood up, looked away from her/him. She was still shaky, not quite sure of her sanity. It was as if s/he read her mind but in fact s/he merely guessed. "No," s/he said, "you're not crazy. I'm Molly Stewart in Harry Moradian's body. And I asked you a question: did you destroy Harry Moradian's mind?"
"I was part of it," she finally admitted. "But not with---that." Her blue eyes flickered towards the machinery, back to Harry/Molly. "I'm a telepath. I read his thoughts while they...."
"While they erased them?
She hung her head, then lifted it and blinked away tears. "Why have you come here? They'll kill you, too!"
Harry/Molly looked down at her/himself. S/he was becoming aware of his nakedness. At first it had been like wearing a new suit of clothes, but now s/he saw it was only flesh. Her/His flesh. "You haven't sounded the alarm," s/he said.
"I haven't done anything---yet," she answered, shrugging helplessly. "Maybe you're wrong and I am crazy...."
"What's your name?"
She told her/him.
"Listen Agnes," s/he said. "I've been here before, did you know that?"
She nodded. Oh, yes, she'd known about that. And about the devastation Molly Stewart had wrought.
"Well, I'm going now---but I'll be back. Probably soon. Too soon for you to do anything about it. If you know what happened last time I was here you'll heed my warning: don't stay here. Be anywhere else, but not here. Not when I come back. Do you understand?"
"Going?" Agnes began to feel hysterical, felt ungovernable laughter welling up inside. 'You think you're going somewhere, Molly Stewart, or whoever you are now? Surely you know that you're in the heart of Russia!" She half turned away, turned back again. "You haven't a chance in...."
Or perhaps s/he did have a chance. For Harry/Molly was no longer there...…
Molly called out Robert Petley's name into the Mobius continuum, and was at once rewarded with an answer. We're here, Molly. We've been expecting you, sooner or later.
We? Molly felt her heart sink.
Myself, Alik Morozov, Eldar Polyakov and Immanuil Vorobyov. Makar Alexeyeva got all of us. You know Alik and Eldar, of course, but you haven't met Immanuil yet. You like him. He's a real character! Hey, what about Harry? How did he make out?
"No better than you," said Molly, homing in on them.
She emerged from the infinite Mobius strip into the blasted ruins of Thrulk Benedek's Carpathian castle. It was just after 3:00 A.M. and clouds were fleeing under the moon, turning the wide ledge over the gorge into a land of phantom shadows. The wind off the Ukrainian plain was cold upon Molly's naked flesh.
So Harry copped it too, eh? Petley's dead voice had turned sour. But then he brightened. Maybe we'll all be able to look him up!
"No," said Molly. "No, you won't. I don't think you'll ever find him. I don't think anybody will." And she explained her meaning.
You have to square things up, Molly, said Petley when he'd finished.
"It can't be put right," Molly told him. "But it can be avenged. Last time I warned them, this time I have to wipe them out. Total! That's why I came here, to see if I could motivate myself. Taking life isn't my thing. I've done it, but it's messy. I'd prefer the dead to love me."
Most of always will, Molly, Petley told him.
"After what I did to Mikhailov last time," Molly continued, "I wasn't sure I could do it again. Now I know I can."
Alik Morozov had been quiet until now. I haven't the right to try and stop you, Molly, he said, but there are some good people there.
"Like Agnes Daschner?"
She's one of them, yes.
"I've already told her to get out of it. I think she will."
Well (Molly could hear Morozov's sigh, and almost picture his nod). I'm glad for that at least......
"Now I suppose it's time I got mobile," said Molly. "Robert, maybe you can tell me: does E-Branch have access to compact high explosive?"
Why? Petley replied, the branch can get hold of just about anything, given a little time?
"Hmm," Molly mused. "I was hoping to do it a bit faster than that. Even tonight."
Now Immanuil Vorobyov spoke up: Molly, does this mean you're going after that maniac who killed us? If so, maybe I can help you. I've done a lot of blasting in my time---mainly with gelinite, but I've also used the other stuff. In Kolomyya, there's a place where they keep it safe. Detonators, too, and I can explain how to use them.
Molly nodded, seated herself on the stump of a crumbling wall at the edge of the gorge, allowed herself a grim, humorless smile. "Keep talking, Immanuil," she said. "I'm all ears..."
Something brought Roman Demochev awake. He couldn't have said what it was, just like the feeling that something wasn't right. He dressed as fast as possible, got the night Duty Officer on the intercom and asked if anything was wrong. Apparently nothing was. And Makar Alexeyeva was due back any time now.
As Demochev switched off the intercom, he glanced out of his great, curving, bulletproof window. And then he held his breath. Down there in the night, silvered by moonlight, a figure moved furtively away from the Castillo's main building. A female figure. She was wearing a coat over her uniform, but Demochev knew who it was. Agnes Daschner.
She was using the narrow vehicular access road; she had to, for the fields all around were mined and set with tripwires. She tried to walk light and easy, casual, but there was that in her movements which spoke of stealth. She must have booked out, presumably on the pretext of being unable to sleep. Or maybe she really couldn't sleep, was just out for a walk and a little night air. Demochev snorted. Oh, indeed? A long walk, presumably---probably right to Leonid Brezhnev himself, in Moscow!
He hurried down the winding stone stairs, took the key to his duty from the watchkeeper at the door, and set off in pursuit. Overhead, to the west, the lights of a helicopter signaled its approach: Makar Alexeyeva, hopefully with a good excuse for the mess he'd earlier hinted at on the phone!
2/3 of the way of the massive perimeter wall that surrounded the entire grounds, Demochev caught up with the girl, pulled up alongside and slowed to a halt. She smiled, shielded her eyes from the dazzle of the headlights----then saw who was hunched behind the wheel. Her smile died on her face.
Demochev slid open his window. "Going somewhere, Fraulein Daschner, my dear?" he said...…
Ten minutes earlier Molly/Harry had stepped out of the Mobius continuum into one of the Castillo's pillbox gun emplacements. S/he'd been there before and knew the precise locations of all six, and guessed that they'd only be manned in the event of an alert. Since that might well be the current state of readiness if Moradian's absence had been discovered, s/he carried a loaded automatic pistol in the pocket of an overcoat s/he'd stolen from a peg in the ordinance dump in Kolomyaa.
Across her/his shoulders s/he bore the weight of a bulky sausage-shaped back that weighed all of one hundred pounds. Putting it down, s/he unzipped it and took out the first of a dozen gauze-wrapped cheese: that was how s/he thought of the stuff, like soft gray cheese, except it smelled a lot worse. S/he molded the ultra-high-explosive plastic over a sealed ammunition box, stuck in a timer-detonation and set the explosion for ten minutes' time. This had taken her/him maybe thirty seconds; s/he couldn't be sure for s/he had no watch. Then s/he moved on to the next pillbox, where this time s/he set the detonation for nine minutes, and so on....
Less than five minutes later s/he began to repeat the process inside the Castillo itself. First s/he went to the mind-lab, where s/he materialized beside the operating table. It seemed strange that he (yes, he, now) had been lying on that table something less than 3/4 of an hour ago! Sweating, s/he stuffed UHEP into the gap between two of the filthy machines they'd used to drain Moradian's mind, set the detonator, picked up her/his much lighter bag and stepped through a Mobius door.
Emerging into a corridor in the accommodation area, s/he met face to face with a security guard doing his rounds! The man looked tired, shoulders drooping where he ambled down the corridor for the fifth time that night. Then he looked up and saw Molly/Harry, and his hand went straight for the gun at his hip.
Molly didn't know how her new male body would react to physical violence; this was when s/he would find out. S/he'd learned his/her stuff long ago from one of the first friend's she'd ever made among the dead: "Sergeant" Max Anderson, an ex-Army PT instructor at her old school, who'd died in a climbing accident on the beach cliffs. "Sergeant" had taught her a lot and Molly hadn't forgotten it.
Her/his hand shot out and trapped the guard's hand where it snatched at the pistol, jamming it back down into its holster. At the same time s/he drove his/her knee into the man's groin and butted him in the face. The guard made some noise but not much. And then he was out like a light.
Molly/Harry set another charge right there in the corridor; but now s/he noticed just how badly his/her were shaking, how profusely s/he was sweating. S/he wondered how much time s/he had left, considered the possibility of getting caught in her/his own fireworks.
S/he made one more jump---straight into the Castillo's central Duty Room---and in the instant of emerging caught the Duty officer a blow that knocked him clean out of his swivel chair. The man hadn't even had time to look up. Molding the rest of her/his UHEP onto the top of the desk between the radio and a switchboard, Molly/Harry fixed a last detonator and straightened up---and looked straight down the barrel of a Kalishnikov rifle!
On the other side of the raised counter, unnoticed, a young security guard had been dozing in a chair. This was obvious from his gaping mouth and dazed expression. The sound of the Duty Officer hitting the floor must've roused him. Molly/Harry didn't know how awake he was, how much he'd seen or understood, but s/he did know s/he was in big trouble. S/he'd only set one minute on the final detonator!
As the guard gabbled a startled question in gasping Russian, Molly/Harry shrugged and made a sour face, pointed at a spot just behind the other. It was an old ploy, s/he knew, but the old ones are often the best. And sure enough it worked. The guard jerked his head that way, turned the hideous snout of his weapon, too...273Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡujY39p2NXJ
And when he turned back Molly/Harry was no longer there. Which was just as well, for his/her ten minutes were up.
The pillboxes went up like Chinese firecrackers, blowing their concrete lids off and bursting their walls. The first explosion---the intense flash if not the blast proper, which was minimal at this distance----caused Agnes Daschner to stagger and cower back where she was about climb up into Demochev's jeep. Then the crack and rumbling roar sounded, and the earth gave the first and least of many shudders. Anti-personnel landmines, fatally distributed in the fields around, began to go off, spouting fountains of dirt and turf. It was like a bombing raid.
"What?" Demochev turned in his seat and looked back, couldn't believe what he was seeing. "The pillboxes?" He shielded his eyes against the blaze of light.
"Molly Stewart! In Harry Moradian's body!" Agnes Daschner breathed, but to herself.
Then the main building went; its lower walls of massive stone seemed to inhale and go on inhaling. They bowed outwards, and finally blew apart in white light and golden fire! This time Agnes did feel the blast: it tossed her down on the road and stung her hands where she held them up before her face.
The Castillo Mikhailov was slowly settling down into itself. A sandcastle caught in the first wave of a swelling tide, it crumbled like so much chalk. Volcanic fires burned in its guts, and spewed out through its cratered walls; and as the upper stories and towers imploded, so there came secondary blasts to throw them up again. Already the Castillo was a total ruin, but then the big one in the Duty Room added its voice to the cacophony of destruction.
By this time Agnes had managed to climb into the jeep beside Demochev. They felt a huge fist batter at the rear of the vehicle, shove it forward; felt their ears savaged by the massive detonation, shuttered their eyes against a sudden incendiary glare. A brilliant fireball like the breath of hell turned everything into a negative photograph, blotted out the whole scene and made the night into blinding day, then slowly faded and revealed the truth---that the Castillo Mikhailov was no more. Bits of it, from pebbles to huge blocks of concrete, still rained to earth. Black smoke curled up across the moon; white and yellow fire seethed and roiled in the gutted ruins; a mere handful of figures stumbled about like crippled flies, trying to make their way outwards from the center of the inferno.273Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMPOobmsrE8
Demochev, stunned, had stalled the jeep and it wouldn't start again. Now he got out, ordered Agnes out, too. The helicopter had veered sharply away as the first explosion occurred; it circled, came down and landed with a thump on the road near the perimeter wall. Makar Alexeyeva spoke briefly with the pilot, climbed out and advanced at a run. Agnes Daschner and Demochev made their way staggeringly towards him.273Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjvTcw4Xht0
"For Harry," said Molly Stewart/Harry Moradian softly to her/himself.273Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0j7jCDUBG8
S/he stood in the shadows at the foot of the perimeter wall and watched the three people moving towards the helicopter. S/he took note of the two men---one the mere husk of a man and the other a hulking brute---and the way they manhandled the girl into the chopper. Then the machine lifted off and Molly/Harry was alone with the night and her/his hideous handiwork. But like an after-image, a mental picture of those two men kept superimposing itself over the leaping flames. Molly/Harry didn't know who they were, but her/his intuition told her/him that these two above all others ought not to have escaped the holocaust.273Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBaVBCGCWjE
S/he'd have to speak to Robert Petley and Alik Morozov about them.....273Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡckaQHrJRop
