Necroscope V: Deadspawn n-5

by Brian Lumley

  Harry had stayed grudgingly silent for a moment, until: ‘I too have given the matter a little thought,’ he said. ‘Though purely on the theoretical level, because the physical measurement of a constantly changing quantity seems rather fruitless to me. Whereas to understand what is happening, how and to what degree the age of the universe is tied to its rate of expansion — a constant, incidentally — and so forth, seems so much more satisfying.’

  (An astonished pause.) Oh, indeed! And Harry had almost been able to see Möbius’s eyebrows joining in a frown across the bridge of his nose. ‘You’ have thought about it, have you? Theoretically, you say? And might I inquire as to ‘your’ conclusions?

  ‘You want to know all about space, time, light and the multiverses?’

  If you’ve the time for it! Möbius had been scathing in his sarcasm.

  To which the Necroscope had answered: ‘Your initial measurement will suffice; no other is necessary. Knowing the size of the universe — and not only this one, incidentally, but all the parallels, too — at any given moment of time, we will automatically know their exact age and rate of expansion, which will be uniform for all of them.’

  Explain.

  ‘Now the theory,’ said Harry. ‘In the beginning there was nothing. Came the Primal Light! Possibly it shone out of the Möbius Continuum, or perhaps it came with the colossal fireball of the Big Bang. But it was the beginning of the universe of light. Before the light there was nothing, and after it there was a universe expanding at the speed of lightr

  Eh?

  ‘Do you disagree?’

  The universe was expanding at the speed of light?

  ‘Actually, at twice the speed of light,’ said Harry. ‘That was the essence of your problem, remember, which sparked the return of my numeracy? Switch on a light in space and a pair of observers 186,000 miles away from it on opposite sides would both see its light one second later, because the light expands in both directions. Now, do you disagree?’

  Of course not! The Primal Light, as any light, must have expanded just as you say. But… the universe?

  ‘At the same speed!’ said Harry. ‘And it still is expanding at that speed.’

  Explain. And make it good.

  ‘Before the light there was nothing, no universe.’

  Agreed.

  ‘Does anything travel faster than light?’

  No — yes! We can, but only in the Möbius Continuum. And I suppose thought is likewise instantaneous.

  ‘Now think!’ said Harry. The Primal Light is still travelling outwards, expanding on all frontiers at a constant speed of 186,000 miles per second. Tell me: does anything lie beyond those frontiers? And I do mean any thing?’

  Of course not, because in the physical universe nothing travels faster than light.

  ‘Exactly! Wherefore light defines the extent — the size — of the universe! That’s why I called it the universe of light. A formula:

  aU = rU

  c

  Do you disagree?’

  Möbius had looked at the thing scrawled on the screen of Harry’s mind. The age of the universe is equal to its radius divided by the speed of light. And after a moment, but very quietly now: Yes, I agree.

  ‘Hah!’ said Harry. ‘It’s hard to get a decent argument going these days. Everyone cries uncle.’

  Möbius had been angry. He had never seen Harry like this before. Certainly the Necroscope’s instinctive maths was a wonderful thing, an awesome talent in its own right, but where was Harry’s humility? What on earth had got into him? Perhaps Möbius should let him continue to expound and then try to pick holes, bring him down a peg or two.

  And time? And the multiverses?

  But Harry had been ready for him: ‘The space-time universe — which has the same size and age as any and all of the parallels — is cone-shaped, the point of the cone being the Big Bang/Primal Light where time began, and the base being its current boundary or diameter. Is that feasible, logical?’

  Desperately seeking errors, still Möbius had been unable to discover them. Yes, he was obliged to answer, eventually. Feasible, logical, but not necessarily correct.

  ‘Grant me feasible,’ said Harry. ‘And then tell me: what lies outside the cone?’

  Nothing, since the universe is contained within it.

  ‘Wrong! The parallels are cone-shaped, too, born at the same time and expanding from the same source!’

  Möbius had pictured it. But… then each cone is in contact with a number of other cones. Is there evidence of this?

  ‘Black holes,’ said Harry at once, ‘which juggle with matter and so perform a necessary balancing act. They suck matter out of universes which are too heavy, into universes which are too light. White holes are, of course, the other ends of the black holes. In space-time such holes are the lines of contact between cones, but in space they are simply — ‘ (a shrug,) ‘ — holes.’

  Möbius was tired, but: Cones are circular in cross-section, he’d argued. Put three together and you get a triangular shape between them.

  And Harry had nodded his agreement. ‘Grey holes. There’s one at the bottom of the Perchorsk ravine, and another up an underground river in Romania.’

  And so he’d made his point and won his argument, if there had been one to win in the first place. For the fact was he’d only argued for the sake of it and neither knew nor cared if he was right or wrong.

  But Möbius had cared, because he didn’t know if Harry was right or wrong either…

  Another time, the Necroscope had talked to Pythagoras. Again his principal reason for going to see him was to convey his thanks (the great Greek mystic and mathematician had been of some assistance in his quest for numeracy), but again the visit had ended in argument.

  Harry had thought to find the Greek’s grave at Metapontum, or if not there then at Crotona in southern Italy. But all he found was a follower or two until, by pure chance, he stumbled upon the forgotten, 2,480-year-old tomb of a member of the Pythagorean Brotherhood on the Island of Chios. There was no marker; it was a stony, ochre place where goats ate thistles not fifty yards from a rocky shore looking north on the Aegean.

  Pythagoras? No, not here, that one informed, in a hushed and very secretive manner, when Harry’s deadspeak broke into his centuried thoughts. He is elsewhere, waiting out his time.

  ‘His time?’

  Until his metempsychosis, into a living, breathing man!

  ‘But do you converse? Are you able to contact him?’

  He will occasionally contact us, when a thought has occurred to him.

  ‘Us?’

  The Brotherhood! But I have said too much. Begone. Leave me in peace.

  ‘As you wish,’ Harry had told him. ‘But he won’t thank you that you turned away the Necroscope.’

  What? The Necroscope? (Astonishment, and awe.) You are that one, who taught the dead to speak out in their graves, so enabling them to talk to one another as in life?

  ‘The same.’

  And do you seek to learn from Pythagoras?

  ‘I seek to instruct him.’

  That is a blasphemy!

  ‘Blasphemy?’ Harry had raised an eyebrow. ‘And is Pythagoras a god, then? If so, a painfully slow one! Consider this: I have already achieved my metempsychosis. Even now I embark upon a second phase, a new… condition.’

  Your soul is in process of migration?

  ‘I may say that a change is in the offing, certainly.’

  And after a while: If I speak to our master Pythagoras on your behalf, and if you have lied to me, be sure he willdamn you with Numbers. Aye, and possibly me with you! No, I dare not. First prove yourself.

  ‘Perhaps I can show you some numbers.’ Harry had contained his impatience as best he could. ‘As a member of the Brotherhood, I’m sure you will appreciate their importance.’

  Do you seek to seduce me with your puny figures? What, the work of a mere lifetime? Are you suggesting that in the two thousand years and more which have passed si
nce I was lain to rest here I’ve dreamed no numbers or equations or formulae of my own? Necroscope or none, you are presumptuous!

  ‘Presumptuous?’ Harry’s anger had been aroused. ‘Equations? Formulae? Why, I have formulae such as you could never dream.’ And he’d displayed the computer screen of his mind, and covered it with the endlessly mutating algebraics of Möbius mathematics. Then he’d formed a Möbius door, and let the other gaze a moment upon the nowhere and everywhere across the threshold.

  Until, gaspingly: What… what is that?!

  The Big Zero,’ Harry had growled then, letting the door close on itself. The place where all numbers begin. But I’m wasting my time. I came to talk to a master and ended up chatting with a mere student — and a middling one at that. Now tell me: do I get my audience with Pythagoras or don’t I?’

  He … he is in Samos.

  ‘Where he was born?’

  The same. The last place anyone would think to look for him, he thought… And then, frantically: Necroscope — plead with him for me! I have betrayed him! He will exclude me!

  ‘Rubbish!’ Harry had growled, but without scorn. ‘Exclude you? He will elevate you — for you have gazed upon the secret mathematical door to all times and places.

  You don’t believe me?’ (And he’d shrugged). ‘Well, it’s your choice. My thanks anyway — and farewell.’ And conjuring another Möbius door he’d stepped through it -

  — And out again on Samos, twenty miles away, where Pythagoras had spent his childhood two and a half millennia ago, and to which his bones had been returned in secrecy when at last he died. Pythagoras, however introvert, secretive, diffident, could hardly escape or ignore the Necroscope’s deadspeak probe at such close range. That thought in itself had been deadspeak and as such the recluse (in death even more than in life) had heard it. And answered: What is your number?

  ‘Any you choose for me,’ Harry had shrugged, homing in on the mystic’s mental whisper. And when he’d located him definitely, one further Möbius jump took him from a deserted, wooded shoreline straight there: to a small olive grove on a terraced hillside above a headland with a tiny white church. Down the coast a little way, scarcely glimpsed through pines and wind-warped oaks, Tigani’s harbour glinted turquoise, blue, silver; music from a taverna came drifting on the bright summer air.

  It was cool in the shade of the trees and the Necroscope had been grateful to take off his wide-brimmed hat, also the dark-lensed spectacles which protected his now delicate eyes. And because Pythagoras had remained silently thoughtful: There are numbers galore. I’m not fussy.’

  Then you should be, the mystic’s whisper was tremulous, fevered. They are The All. The gods themselves are numbers, though no man knows them. When I have discovered the numbers of the gods, then my metempsychosis may commence.

  ‘If you truly believe that, then you’ve a long time to wait,’ Harry had answered at once. ‘You can know all the numbers in all their combinations from now to eternity and it won’t change anything, not for you. It isn’t a magical thing, Pythagoras. However many numbers you employ, your soul won’t fly into a new body. There’s no science or sorcery can help you now.’

  Hah! the other was filled with wrath and not a little scorn. Only see who utters these blasphemies! And is this the Necroscope, who was impotent and innumerate, to whom the simplest sum was a mystery? Are you the one they pleaded for, the legions of dust, the teeming dead? Möbius came to me on his knees for you, and what are you after all but an ingrate?

  Harry had been needled but hid it from the Greek. Likewise he hid his thoughts: Pompous old fart! While out loud: ‘I came to thank you, for my numeracy. Without it I’d be like you: dust in a grave. Or perhaps not like you, for there was a man who would have called me up to torture me for my secrets.’ A necromancer? ‘Just so.’ It is a black art!

  ‘Not always. It has its uses. What I am doing now is a sort of necromancy after all. For I am a living man, talking to one who is dead.’

  Pythagoras gave this a moment’s thought, and: I overheard your conversation with one of the Brothers, he said. Is blasphemy your byword? You alleged reincarnation, transmigration, metempsychosis.

  ‘I stated a fact,’ said Harry. ‘I was one man in his own body, and when it died I inhabited another. Don’t take my word for it but ask the dead, who have nothing to gain from lying. They’ll tell you it’s true. Moreover, if your ashes were pure, I tell you I could even call you up from the dead! Not with numbers but with words. And this isn’t blasphemy, Pythagoras, but simple truth. Or… perhaps the act itself would constitute blasphemy, I can’t be sure. If so then you’re right and I am a blasphemer, and plan to be again.’

  You could call me up from my ashes?

  ‘Only if they were pure, unsullied. Were you buried in a jar?’

  I was buried in soil, in secret, here beneath your feet, where as a boy I ran among the trees. My flesh and bones are now one with the earth. Anyway, I cannot believe you. Words and not numbers? Words are from the lips, frivolous things which are spoken and change, while numbers spring from pure mind and are immutable.

  ‘It’s academic, after all,’ Harry had shrugged. ‘In two thousand years your salts have been washed into the soil. There are no words — and certainly no numbers — which can help you now.’

  Blasphemy and sedition! Do you seek to turn my followers against me?

  Harry could contain himself no longer. ‘Pythagoras, you’re a charlatan! In your world you guarded your small, pointless mathematical “secrets” — basic discoveries which any child under instruction knows today from his school-books — as if they were Life and Death. And true death has not changed you. I gave you deadspeak, since when you could have conferred with more modern, more genuine masters, if you’d wished it. To Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein; to Roemer, Maxwell and — ‘

  Enough! the other had been outraged. I should have ignored Möbius! I should have -

  ‘But you couldn’t ignore him!’ (Harry’s turn to cut in.) ‘You dared not…’

  What do you mean?

  ‘That I know your real secret. That you were a fraud. That you not only made fools of your precious “Brotherhood” in life but continue to deceive them in death! There is no mysticism in numbers, Pythagoras, and you must know it. If only because you’re a learned man. Why, you yourself have told me that numbers are immutable, unchanging and unchangeable. Which means that they are solid truth, not flights of fancy! Iron truth, not ethereal magic.’

  Liar! Liar! Pythagoras had raged. You twist words, change meanings!

  ‘Why do you hide yourself, even from the dead?’

  Because they have no understanding. Because their ignorance is contagious.

  ‘No, because they know more than you! Your followers would desert you. You told them they would migrate, return again to men and meet with you in worlds of pure Number — and now you know that this was false.’

  I thought it was truth.

  ‘But that was two and a half thousand years ago. And are you returned? How long does it take to admit you were wrong?’

  I have dreamed numbers that would blast you!

  ‘Blast me, then.’

  By this time Pythagoras had been sobbing. He hurled a catalogue of numbers at Harry, which shattered against the wall of the Necroscope’s metaphysical mind. But at least they shocked him into recognition of his predicament: that again the thing inside was striving to replace him, this time by use of convoluted Wamphyri ‘logic’.

  On this occasion it was his salvation, for it had never been Harry’s desire to hurt or even alarm the dead. And: ‘I… I’m sorry,’ he said.

  Sorry? You are a fiend! Pythagoras had sobbed. But… you are right.

  ‘No, I merely argued. Perhaps I am right, perhaps not. But I was wrong to argue for the sake of it. And let’s face it, I stand in contradiction of my own argument.’

  How so?

  ‘I know that numbers are not immutable.’ Ahhh! (A long drawn-o
ut sigh.) Would you… could you demonstrate?

  At which Harry had shown him the screen of his mind, with all of Möbius’s configurations crawling on its surface, mutating and sprawling into infinity. And for a long time the old Greek had been silent. Then: I was a clever child who thought he knew everything, he said, his voice broken. Time has passed me by.

  ‘But it will never forget you,’ Harry had been quick to point out. ‘We remember your theorem; books have been written about you; there are Pythagoreans even today.’

  My theorem? My numbers? If I hadn’t done it others would have.

  ‘But it’s your name we remember. And anyway, that could be said of anyone and anything.’ Except the Necroscope.

  But: ‘I’m not even sure about that,’ Harry had answered. ‘I think that perhaps there were others before me. And certainly there was one after me. They dwell in other worlds now.’ And will you dwell there, too? ‘Possibly. Probably. And perhaps soon.’

  What’s it like now? Pythagoras had asked after a while, and Harry had suspected it was the first thing he’d inquired of anyone in a long time.

  ‘Upon this island,’ the Necroscope had answered, ‘lie many of the more recently dead. But you’ve shunned them. You could have asked them about Samos, the world, the living. But you were afraid to know the truth. And do you know, the last thing of any importance to the living on this island is number? Well, perhaps not entirely true. I’m sure they’re interested in the quantities of drachmae to the pound, to the Deutschmark and the dollar.’ He explained his meaning.

  The world is so small now!

  Harry had put on his hat, his glasses, and gone out from the shade into sunlight. With his hands in his pockets the latter didn’t bother him too much, but he must go slowly or lose his balance on the rough tracks and roads into Tigani. Pythagoras had gone with him, his deadspeak, anyway; distance wasn’t too important once contact had been established.

  I’ll open up the Brotherhood, dissolve it entirely, put it aside. There’s so much to learn.

  ‘Men have landed on the moon,’ said Harry.

  Pythagoras’s mind had flown in circles.

  ‘They have calculated the speed of light.’