Brian Lumley - Necroscope

Finally Harry had settled for a direct approach; seating himself, he let his thoughts reach out and touch those of the dead man. A calm came over Harry then; his eyes took on their strange, glassy look; for all that it was bitterly cold, a fine patina of sweat gleamed on his brow. And slowly he grew aware that indeed Mobius — or what remained of him — was here. And active!

Formulae, tables of figures, astronomical distances and non-Euclidean, Riemannian configurations beat against Harry's awareness like the pulses of mighty, living computers. But… all of this in one mind? A mind which processed all of these thoughts very nearly simultaneously? And then it dawned on Harry that Mobius was working on something, flipping through the pages of memory and learning as he sought to tie together the elements of a puzzle too complex for Harry's — or for any merely living man's — comprehension. All very well, but it might go on for days. And Harry simply didn't have the time.

'Sir? Excuse me, sir? My name is Harry Keogh. I've come a long way to see you.'

The phantasmal flow of figures and formulae stopped at once, like a computer switched off. 'Eh? What? Who?'

'Harry Keogh, sir. I'm an Englishman.'

There was a slight pause before the other snapped: 'English? I don't care if you're an Arab! I'll tell you what you are: you're a nuisance! Now what is this, eh? What's it all about? I'm quite unused to this sort of thing.'

'I'm a necroscope,' Harry explained as best he could. 'I can talk to the dead.'

'Dead? Talk to the dead? Hmm! I considered that, yes, and long ago came to the conclusion that I was. So obviously you can. Well, it comes to us all — death, I

mean. Indeed it has its advantages. Privacy, for one — or so I thought until now! A necroscope, you say? A new science?'

Harry had to smile. 'I suppose you could call it that. Except I seem to be its one practitioner. Spiritualists aren't quite the same thing.'

'I'll say they're not! Fraudulent bunch at best. Well then, how can I help you, Harry Keogh? I mean, I suppose you've a reason for disturbing me? A good reason, that is?'

'The best in the world,' said Harry. The fact is I'm tracking down a fiend, a murderer. I know who he is but I don't know how to bring him to justice. All I have is a clue as to how I might set about it, and that's where you come in.'

Tracking down a murderer? A talent like yours and you use it to track down murderers? Boy, you should be out talking to Euclid, Aristotle, Pythagorus! No, cancel that last. You'd get nothing from him. Him and his damned secretive Pythagorean Brotherhood! It's a wonder he even passed on his Theorem! Anyway, what is this clue of yours?'

Harry showed him a mental projection of the Mobius strip. 'It's this,' he said. 'It's what ties the futures of my quarry and myself together.'

Now the other was interested. Topology in the time dimension? That leads to all sorts of interesting questions. Are you talking about your probable futures or your actual futures? Have you spoken to Gauss? He's the one for probability — and topology, for that matter. Gauss was a master when I was a mere student — albeit a brilliant student!'

'Actual,' said Harry. 'Our actual futures.'

'But that is to presuppose that you know something of the future in the first place. And is precognition another talent of yours, Harry?' (A little sarcasm.)

'Not mine, no, but I do have friends who occasionally" catch glimpses of the future, just as surely as I — '

Twaddle!' Mobius cut him off. 'Zollnerists all!'

' — talk to the dead.' Harry finished it anyway.

The other was silent for a moment or two. Then: Tm probably a fool… but I think I believe you. At least I believe you believe, and that you have been misled. But for the life of me I can't see how my believing in you will help you in your quest.'

'Neither can I,' said Harry dejectedly. 'Except… what about the Mobius strip? I mean, it's all I have to go on. Can't you at least explain it to me? After all, who would know more about it than you? You invented it!'

'No,' (a mental shake of the head,) 'they merely stamped my name on it. Invented it? Ridiculous! I noticed it, that's all. As for explaining it: once there was a time when that would be the very simplest thing. Now, however — '

Harry waited.

'What year is this?'

The abrupt change of subject bewildered Harry. 'Nine teen seventy-seven,' he answered.

'Really?' (Astonishment.) 'As long as that? Well, well! And so you see for yourself, Harry, that I've been lying here for more than a hundred years. But do you think I've been idle? Not a bit of it! Numbers, my boy, the ultimate answer to all the riddles of the universe. Space and its curvature and qualities and properties — properties still largely unimagined, I imagine, in the world of the living. Except I don't have to imagine, for I know! But explain it? Are you a mathematician, Harry?'

'I know a little.'

'Astronomy?'

Reluctantly, Harry shook his head.

'What is your understanding of science — of SCIENCE,

that is. Your understanding of the physical, the material, and the conjectural universe?'

Again Harry shook his head.

'Can you understand any of… this — ' and a stream of symbols and equations and calculi flashed up on the screen of Harry's mind, each item in its turn more complex than the last. Some of it he recognised from talks with James Gordon Hannant, some he knew through intuition, but most of it was completely alien.

'It's all… pretty difficult,' he finally said.

'Hmm!' (The slow nod of a phantom head.) 'But on the other hand… you do have intuition. Yes, and I believe it's strong in you! I suppose I could always teach you, Harry.'

Teach me? Mathematics? Something you worked on all your life and for a hundred years since that life ended? Now who's talking twaddle? It would take me at least as long as it has taken you! Incidentally, what's a Zollnerist?'

'J. K. F. Zollner was a mathematician and astronomer — God help us! — who outlived me. He was also a crank and a spiritualist. To him numbers were "magickal"! Did I call you a Zollnerist? Unpardonable! You must forgive me. Actually, he wasn't far wrong. His topology was wrong, that's all. He tried to impose the unphysical — or mental universe — on the physical one. And that doesn't work. Space-time is a constant, fixed and immutable as pi.'

That doesn't leave much room for metaphysics,' said Harry, certain by now that he'd come to the wrong place.

'No room at all,' Mobius agreed.

Telepathy?'

Twaddle!'

'What's this, then? What am I doing right now?'

Mobius was a little taken aback. But then: 'Necroscopy, or so I'm given to believe.'

'That's picking nits,' said Harry. 'What about clairvoyancy, or far-sightedness: the ability to view events at a great distance through the medium of the mind alone?'

'In the physical world, impossible. You would perpetuate Zollner's errors.'

'But I know these things can be done,' Harry contradicted. 'I know where there are people who do them. Not all the time, never easily or with any great accuracy, but occasionally. It is a new science, and it requires intuition.'

After another pause Mobius said, 'Again I'm tempted to believe you. What point would there be in your lying to me? Man's knowledge — of all things — increases all the time. And after all, I can do it! But then, I'm not of the physical world. Not any longer…'

Harry's head whirled. 'You can do it? Are you telling me that you can scry out distant events?'

'I see them, yes,' said Mobius, 'but not through any crystal ball. Nor are they strictly distant. Distance is relative. I go there. I go where the events I wish to watch are scheduled to occur.'