Necromancer

by Gordon R. Dickson

  "You won't tell me why?" asked Blunt.

  "If I could," said Paul, "I would. But it's a matter of language. I don't have words for you." He hesitated. "You could take it on faith."

  "Yes," said Blunt, suddenly and heavily as if the strength had gone out of him. "I could take it on faith, if I were bigger." He straightened up suddenly and looked with a deep, penetrating curiosity at Paul.

  "Empath," he said. "I should have suspected it sooner. But where did the talent come from?"

  "From your plans for me," said Paul. "I told the truth. It's a high wall that separates the inner parts of one identity from the inner being of another. From having the experience of no wall between you and me, I could learn to tear down the walls between myself and all others."

  "But why?" said Blunt. "Why would you want to?"

  Paul smiled again.

  "Partly," he said, "because unlimited power or strength is a little like credit. In the beginning it seems that enough of it would do anything. But, when you achieve it, you find that it, too, is limited. There are areas in which it's helpless, like other things. Can you hammer out a roughness in a delicate piece of carved jade?"

  Blunt shook his head.

  "I don't see how it applies," he said.

  "It's just that I have some things in common," said Paul. "And Kirk was very nearly right. It's not possible to change the future except by changing the present And the only way to change the present is to return to the past and change that."

  "Return?" asked Blunt. "Change?" Blunt's eyes had lost their earlier hardness. They were now fully alive. He leaned on his cane and looked directly at Paul. "Who could change the past?"

  "Perhaps," said Paul, "someone with intuition."

  "Intuition?"

  "Yes. Someone," Paul said, "who could see a tree in a garden. And who knew that if that tree were to be cut down, then some years in time and some light-years in distance away, another man's life would be changed. A man, say, who has conscious intuitive process and can immediately realize all the end possibilities of an action the moment he considers it. Someone like that could step back into time, perhaps, and make changes without risk of error."

  Blunt's face was perfectly still.

  "You aren't me, at all," Blunt said. "You never were me. I think it was you who animated Paul Formain's body, not me at all. Who are you?"

  "Once," said Paul, "I was a professional soldier."

  "And an Intuit?" asked Blunt. "And now an Empath as well?" His voice was a little harsh. "What next?"

  "An identity," said Paul slowly, "needs to be a dynamic, not a static, quantity. If it is static, it becomes helpless within the pattern of its existence. This is a lesson man eventually will have to learn. But if it is dynamic, it may direct its existence as a mining machine is directed, through the otherwise impassable fusion of rocky elements known as reality. From being dominated and imprisoned by them, it can pass to dominating and making use of them, and with its existence plow through, pulverize, and handle reality until it separates out those uniquely real and valuable parts of it which the identity wishes to make its own."

  Blunt nodded, slowly, like an old man. It was not clear whether he had understood and was agreeing, or whether he had given up the attempt to understand and was merely being agreeable.

  "They all would have their futures," he said. "That's what you told them, wasn't it?" He stopped nodding and looked at Paul for the first time with eyes that were a little faded. "But not me."

  "Of course, you," said Paul. "Yours was the greatest vision, and simply the one furthest from realization, that was all."

  Blunt nodded again.

  "Not," he said, "in my lifetime. No."

  "I'm sorry," said Paul. "No."

  "Yes," said Blunt. He took a deep breath and straightened up. "I had plans for you," he said. "Plans rooted in ignorance. I had everything set up for you." He glanced at Kantele. "It was almost like having a———" He checked himself, threw back his head, and took a firmer grip on his cane. "I planned to retire after tonight, anyway."

  He started to turn away. As he turned, he stooped a little. He hesitated and looked back at Kantele. "I don't suppose. . . . No," he said, interrupting himself. He straightened up once again, so straight the cane merely brushed the surface of the rug underfoot. He threw back his shoulders and for a moment towered in the room, as if he were young again.

  "It's been an education," he said, and saluted Paul with the cane. Turning, he strode out. Behind his back, Kantele made a little gesture after him with her hands, and then let her hands and gaze drop. She stood, her head bent, her eyes on the carpet at her feet, like a maiden, captive to the stranger's bow and spear.

  Paul looked at her.

  "You love him," he said.

  "Always. Very much," she said, almost inaudibly, not looking up.

  "Then you're a fool to stay," he said.

  She did not answer that. But after a moment she spoke again, uncertainly, her gaze still on the carpet.

  "You could be mistaken," she said.

  "No," said Paul; and she did not see the centuries-old pain that came into his eyes as he said it. "I never make mistakes."