E-Branch - Invaders Part 23

'Younger I remember,' the precog nodded. 'But foolish? If Harry hadn't lived, what then? Who would have stopped Shaitan, and given his life for us in the vampire world? And what would have been our fate then? The chance that you took paid off But now the jet-copter loomed, with Jake leaning out and down, offering a helping hand to Liz. And: 'We'll just have to let it go for now,' Trask murmured, his voice almost inaudible even to his companions as the engine coughed into life and the rotor blades began slicing the air overhead. 'Bu t that doesn't mean we'll stop watching. And sooner or later, we'll see what mi > we 11 see.

What he didn't tell them, keeping it back for the moment, w as that in fact he had al ready contacted David Chung by telephone from the airport.

From now on they wouldn't be the only ones who were 'watching.'

And while Chung, the Branch's top locator, would still be far distant in the purely physical sense, psychically he would be very close indeed - and closer in both senses when he found a 256.

257.

relief to take over his duties, allowing him to join up with his colleagues in Brisbane ...

... 50 d.a.m.n hard to get in?! The hinted question but definite exclamation rang like a shout in Jake's sleeping mind, startling him. But he immediately recognized the Voice' and said: 'You? I was hoping you'd come by.'

You could have fooled me ! said the ex-Necroscope. But for that tiny piece of me that will be with you always, I wouldn't know where to find you. Even with it, it's hard to get through your shields . Still, maybe that's a good thing. I'm sure it's going to be, eventually.

'But where are you?' Jake had been waiting for everything to straighten up but nothing had, so that now he wondered: And for that matter, where am IP He was floating. No t surprising, really, for he had often dreamed he could fly, and as often been disappointed on waking up to discover that he couldn't. This must be a different version of the same thing.

But floating in darkness?

Y.

ou don't recognize the place? Harry Keogh's disembodied voice asked him.

'A place?' Jake answered. 'But there's nothing here. Nothing at all.' And as he lazily turned (or at least he felt like he was turning) on his own axis, he could see that what he had said was literally true. There was absolutely not hing here. As if this were the bottom of a bottomless pit, or the darkest of dark nights, or- Or the kind of nowhere a nd n o&tild;when place that the universe must have been like before there was light?

Yes, I know, said Harry. Once experienced, however, there's no forgetting it. So when we were here last you must have had your eyes shut. I can understand that. It's always been the same, and for just about everyone who ever tried it - including me! So now let me welcome you to the Mobius Continuum. No gravity or light or matter at all. Not even a sound unless we make it, which isn't advisable. Not here.

'And this is it? Your way of... of getting about?'

258.

This is it. But it's still only a dream. Your dream, Jake. And the only thing that's real about it is me.

'So how did I get here?'

I influenced it, and you dreamed it. I just wanted you to see it through my eyes, and maybe get used to it. For, you see, you've been lucky on three occasions now. Three times when you thought you were in danger - two of which you really were - I was close enough to help you out.

'My escape from jail?' Jake nodded his understanding. 'And the next time from Bruce Trennier, right?'

Right. But as my dart - let's call it my m etaphysical intuition - becomes a more accepted part of you, there'll be less room for the actual me. Already you've reached the stage where you're almost able to shut me out. But before you can do that, you still have a lot to learn.

'About the Mobius Continuum?'

For one thing, yes.

(Jake was still turning; he didn't know which way was up, but he wasn't at all dizzy from it.) 'And that's why I'm here?'

You tell me. You dreamed it! But it's as good a starting place as any.

'You did influence it, though?'

Yes, but you must have wanted it. Wanted to visit, wanted to know.

'To know how to use it, you mean?'

Exactly. And how not to misuse it.

'Eh?'

Well, if this were really it, the Continuum, you'd probably be stone deaf by now. You see, you don'

t talk in the Mobius Continuum, Jake - not in a place wher e even thoughts have weight.

'Thoughts have weight here?'

They do in the physical world, too. Ask any telepath, or any scientist for that matter. Those tiny sparks that jump the gaps in your brain, Jake? If they didn't make the connections, you couldn't think.

Have you never wondered why geniuses have 'weighty thoughts'?

'But that's just an expression, surely?'

But in the Mobius Continuum it's reality. Well, of sorts. A parallel reality, at least. 'So ... I've no need to talk?'

259.

Not at all. Thinking will suffice. But here in your dream it makes no difference - because you aren't talking anyway. Or at best you're only muttering to yourself.

'You're making me feel like a cretin!' Jake burst out. 'I don't know where I am or how I got here - or how to get out of here - and you're telling me I have a lot to learn about it? A lot to learn about nothing, about nowhere, about emptiness?'

Oh, it isn't nothing, Jake. It isn't nowhere, but a route to every- where and -when! Let me ask you to do something for me ...

actually, for you. Just keep quiet for a moment or two, and float. And feel it! Feel the Mobius Continuum!

Jake did, and felt it. 'It's ... big/ he said then, feeling very small. 'It's ... huge! It knows I'm here, and it doesn't especially want me here. But where here?'

Everywhere! said Harry. Or anywhere. Anywhere you want to be, want to go, as long as you know the coordinates. Come with me. Just come, and you'll see.

'You mean follow you?' And suddenly Jake was afraid. 'But I can't even see you!'

I'm in your head, Jake. Just let go.

'Of you?'

Of everything.

And Jake did it, let go. He sensed motion in himself, and also felt himself come to a halt. At a door.

A time door, said Harry. A door on past time. And: 'But this is even more like a ... a ... ahhhh!' said Jake. Because now he was standing on the threshold, looking back into the past. And while it wasn't deliberate he was echoing what he seemed to be hearing: A concerted 'Ahhhhhk!' like some unending one-note chorus, the vocal product of a vast choir of angels echoing in a sounding church or cathedral.

And yet Jake only seemed to be hearing it; it was in his mind as a result of what he was seeing, which must surely be accompanied by just such a SOUND - the sound of life, of evolution, from its prehistoric source to this present moment, this very NOW.

More like A Christmas Carol? Harry finished it for him. I suppose it is, in a way. But this isn't a ghost of the past, it is the past - as viewed in Mobius-time.

Looking out, looking back, through the door, Jake saw what appeared to be the core of some vastly distant nova, an incredible neon-blue bomb-burst, whose streamers were lines of light. A myriad endlessly twisting, twining, frequently- touching lines or ne on tubes of blue light, all reaching out from that central explosion, expanding towards him, rushing upon him like a luminous meteorite shower. Except the tracks didn't dim but remained printed on s.p.a.ce - indeed, printed on time! And all Jake could say was, 'W-what?'

The blue life-threads of humanity, of all Mankindfrom its very beginning, Harry told him, quietly. And that central nova: that is the beginning, the source, the birthlight a quarter of a billion years ago, when our ancestors crept out of the soupy oceans to evolve primitive lungs on volcanic-lava beaches.

'Life-threads?' Jake whispered. He had scarcely heard the other, was merely repeating him like a man in a dream - which o f course he was.

The tracks we've left in time, Harry answered, like metaphysical fossils. A photograph of Man's snail-trail, his evolution from his humblest beginnings. The proof of it is there, Jake, right before your eyes. For see, one of those blue life-threads connects with you. Follow it back far enough and you'd see it blaze into being, a pure blue glow to light you on your way through life. The moment you were born, yes ...

And: 'You don't appear to have a thread,' said Jake. But since the explanation was obvious, he quickly went on: 'If I were to trip and fall through this door, I might fall all the way back to the Big Bang!'

No, Harry told him. But if you willed it you might travel back through all your ancestors to the beginning of life. Awesome, isn't it? And before Jake could answer: Back there some little way I saw your blue thread crossed by scarlet. But the 260.

261.

vampire threads stopped right there, while yours sped on. It was Bruce Trennier and his brood, when they died the true death.

'At which time/ Jake frowned, '-what, just yesterday? - I.

had already received your dart. Some kind of paradox?'

He sensed Harry's shrug, his irritation. But that was one of the reasons you received it! Time is relative; what will be has been. You think of time as having been, or as being now, or as still to come. But the way I see it times are just different places, all within reach. It's the fourth dimension, Jake. And the Mobius Continuum lies parallel to all four. As for paradoxes: they'd be rife if we could actually change the past or see the future. That's why precogs like lan Goodly have such a hard time of it. It's why they are allowed to know something of what will be, but never how it will be.

Jake looked again through the door and made a futile effort to follow the track of the neon-blue thread that flowed out of him where it twisted and twined its way to his origins. Perhaps he would see what Harry had seen: scarlet threads crossing it in Mobius-time and coming to an end there. But among all the myriad lives that had been, his was soon lost to sight. And: 'All the world's past/ he said.

This time I helped you find it, said Harry. The next time - if you should ever need it - you could well he on your own, so try to remember these coordinates.

As for future-ti me doors: that's easy. They point the other way, that's all! You'll work it out (a barely suppressed chuckle) in time.

'I... I shouldn't be here/ said Jake, suddenly dizzy. 'I mean, no one should be here/ That's a normal reaction, (Jake sensed Harry's nod). Anyway, we have to be moving on. Those names you gave me: I found a connection, someone who knew their owners.

'N-not in this world, you didn't/ said Jake, as the time door closed. 'They were Wamphyri and came out of Starside/ True, said the other, hut they didn't come alone. I... I have been advised to look up someone who came with them. And I think you should meet him, too.

More motion - an acceleration - that Jake sensed rather than felt. 'W-where are we going?'

To the Refuge. 'But it isn't there any more/ Its ruins an.

'But why there?'

To talk to someone who died there.

'Someone who died? Past tense? But we can't be going into the past. The past-time door has closed/ That's right. And anyway it's not physically possible, not for you. You couldn't materialize there. No, we're going to the Refuge in your present, your now, your dream.

'But if this someone is dead, how can we ... ?'

T.

oo many huts, said Harry. An d anyway, we're there.

'There' was an awful place to be. Jake was up to his knees in cold water, in a darkness almost as deep as that of the Mobius Continuum itself. The water - river water from the resurgence, he supposed - slopped around his legs and roved on, while the unseen ceiling dripped cold moisture down his collar. The atmosphere was stale, still foul with a lingering stench of smoke, spent explosives, and ... other tastes and taints.

As Jake's eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, he began to make out certain features of this cavern ... and saw that it was more than just a cavern. It was the sump, what was left of it in the aftermath of Zek Foener's horrific, heroic death. Now he remembered Trask's story, also something of what Harry Keogh had said: that they were here to talk to so meone (a dead someone?) who had come through from Starside with Malinari and the others. And: Oh, he's here, the incorporeal Harry told him, causing Jake to start yet again.

Zek, too, but she has company. Good company, as do a majority of the dead. A Great Majority. When Zek 15 ... when she's accustomed to all this, then I'll return and talk to her about old times, remind her that we'll be together again - all of us - eventually. But that might take 262.

263.

some time yet, for Zek was very much alive. She was one of my very dearest friends right to the end. Which reminds me of our reason for being here ... to talk to the other fellow.

Harry's voice had dropped to a low growl; it seemed to Jake that an unaccustomed darkness had crept into it, and a very uncharacteristic threat. So threatening, in fact, that in another moment his mind went into overdrive as he identified the source of his main concern, which until now had mainly been lost among the minutiae and maziness of dreaming: the fact that Harry Keogh was here to talk to someone who was dead.

'The other fellow?' Jake repeated the words of his still unseen companion. 'I thought Zek was alone down here? And anyway, how can - you - we - talk - to ... ?' But by now everything was coming together that much faster, including things Jake really didn't want to think about, but which were there anyway.

Like the meaning of a certain word or name: 'Necroscope'.

And what the precog lan Good ly had told him about Harry: that he didn't view life and death the way others did, and his means of communication was similar to telepathy, but he had a different name for it.

Like what? Like necromancy?

'You're a necromancer!' Jake gasped, before he could check himself.

NO!!! The incorporeal other's denial lashed him, like a cry of rag e in Jake's cringing mind. Whatever els e I am or may have been, I'm NOT a necromancer! Never call me that again!

And now another voice out of nowhere, but sweet as a breath of fresh air to fan Jake's feverish mind. And despite that he'd never known her, still he knew her: Zek Foener!

Necromancer? Ah, no, (her voice was a sigh). Just call him Harry, and know him for a true friend. And as for this - this blessing he gave us, letting us comfort each other through the long lonely night of death - do you take it for an evil thing? Then you're mistaken. It's our one light in this eternal darkness. And you may simply call it deadspeak ...

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

Korath's Story / knew tha t you'd be back, Harry, Zek said.

From the moment I saw you ride away on that big American motorcycle, with Penny, on your way to Starside, I always knew you'd be back. I sensed you in Nathan; it wasn't really you but ... but a like&tild;father&tild;like&tild;son thing? This time it really is you. Ana you're as different from the dead now as you were from the living then.

Zek, Harry answered, his deadspeak voice crestfallen now. I didn't mean to disturb you. That's the last thing I wanted.

But you of all people should have known, she scolded him, however gently, however fondly, that what we do in life we continue to do in death. 'And you were a cla.s.s act,' Jake cut in. 'A telepath, and a good one.'

She was the best, Harry told him. And apparently she still is, except it's no longer telepathy but deadspeak.

Your Ma was your spokesperson in the long ago, Harry, Zek reminded him, but it looks like I'll be taking over. The Great Majority haven't forgotten you, and I know they'll never forget your son, Nathan. But you'll appreciate that towards the end ... well, there were problems.