by Brian Lumley
“And if you’re wrong?” said Liz.
“I hope I’m wrong!” Trask answered. “I believe I’m wrong, and I want to be wrong. But if I’m right I’ll be alive, and so will you, Liz. Look, you’ve read about Harry but you never knew him, you haven’t seen what he could do. Not the other things he could do. I have, and I don’t want to see powers such as those fall into the wrong hands. That could mean the end of us all.”
He sat back in his chair, let his brooding eyes rest speculatively on Jake and Lardis at the bar, but only for a moment. Then he finished by saying, “So that’s that. For now let it go. Let’s all of us let it go. But Liz, try to remember what I’ve said. And the next time I ask you to do something, don’t be so damn quick off the mark to question my motives … .”
Meanwhile, at the bar, Jake had asked the bartender for a sedative, something to help him sleep during the next stage of the journey. And after the man had gone off to fetch him something:
“Haven’t you had enough of sleep?” Lardis asked him.
Jake looked at him. “Sleep is a funny thing,” he said. “Do you know what my doctor told me, when I was laid up in hospital in Marseille that time, after I’d got myself trampled on?”
“But how could I possibly know?” Lardis answered, as yet a long way from mastering the vagaries of the English tongue. “It isn’t as if I was there with you, now is it?”
“Anyway,” said Jake, “I had things to do and wanted to be out of there, but they wouldn’t let me go. And this doctor told me I needed to rest, get some sleep. He said there were different kinds of sleep: a kind that comes from physical exhaustion, and another from mental. And that even when you’ve done no physical or mental work, there’s the kind that tells you your body and brain have been mobile for too long without a decent break. Sleep is a medicine—the best you can get—following injury or mental trauma, yet too much of it can be debilitating rather than curative. You can walk and talk in your sleep, and in some cases solve intricate problems. Sleep can be induced, resisted, prolonged, or interrupted, but no one can do without it for too long … .”
As he fell silent, Lardis said, “Phew! Ask a simple question!”
Jake nodded his agreement, said, “I’m not usually so long-winded, but it’s been on my mind—not so much what that doctor said about sleep, but the things he left out. At the time those things didn’t apply to my case. Now they do.”
“I’m learning a lot about sleep!” Lardis grunted. “Tell me more.”
“It produces dreams,” said Jake. “Often they’re enigmatic, unsolvable, and they’re usually unremembered because they don’t mean anything. Are you with me?”
“And I’m learning a lot of new words, too!” Lardis sighed. “But go on, go on.”
“But from time to time,” Jake went on, “from time to time, they do mean something. They’re like—I don’t know—clearing houses for all the jumble of our waking hours. And when the rubble has been cleared away, sometimes there’s a silver nugget or two left over.”
“And you’ve been pros—er, prospec—er …”
“Prospecting?”
“Right! Right?”
“Aboard the jet-copter,” Jake answered, “I’m sure my dream—my nightmare—meant something. And I want to get back into it.” He offered a weary shrug. “I must be crazy, right? To look forward to returning to a bad dream? But anyway, what the hell? I may have been sleeping, but I didn’t get much rest. I’m still dead on my feet.”
“It’s the heat,” said Lardis. “It drains a man’s strength. I’m tired, too … we all are. On Sunside I’d probably be under some tree right now, asleep in a deep cool forest. But I’ve had trouble with my dreams, too, Jake. The fact is, I’d probably be nightmaring about the hell that’s brewing in Starside! And that kind of sleep … well, you’re right: it can’t cure anything.”
“Me, I’ll risk it anyway,” Jake muttered. “Just as soon as I’m back on that chopper.”
When the pilot declared the jet-copter refuelled, the two technicians were the first out across the asphalt. Jake and Lardis were next, and tailing them Trask, Goodly, and Liz. They had at least one hundred and fifty yards to walk to the helipad.
“Funny thing,” Goodly reported as they left the embarcation building and set out into the sizzling sunlight, “but what Liz said suddenly makes sense. There’s Jake in plain view, not forty yards ahead, and I can’t read a thing of his future. Not any longer.”
“But isn’t that normal?” Trask was immediately concerned. “Aren’t you always telling us that this talent of yours isn’t controllable, that you can’t just switch it on and off?”
Goodly nodded and said, “Right. But I should at least be aware of something. My original prediction, that Jake would be with us for some time to come, hasn’t changed. The future doesn’t chop and change like that; what has been foreseen is inevitable … or it should be. It’s how it will be, its circumstances, that can change. But now, with Jake, I can’t sense a damn thing! It’s as if there were nothing there.”
“Like he’s shielded?” Now Trask was even more concerned.
“I suppose so, yes,” said the precog.
“Huh!” Trask grunted. “It’s the same for me. I thought I was imagining it. I still know the truth of him, the reality? But I’m no longer sure whose truth it is.”
“Harry’s dart?” Goodly wondered. “The Necroscope had powerful shields. Has he perhaps passed them on to Jake?”
“Yes, Harry was shielded,” Trask answered. “Him, and the traitor Wellesley, too. But Nathan also has shields, and likewise—and especially—the Wamphyri! So Harry isn’t the only one who could have passed this on, what-ever it is. And I can’t help thinking: maybe it hasn’t been passed for the best possible reasons. I mean, why should he want to keep us out?”
And Liz put in: “Maybe it’s not deliberately or aggressively active, but just … active?”
“Like something new, feeling its way?” Trask said. “Well, it’s possible, I suppose.”
“You could always check it out,” the precog said. “David Chung can locate us—any one of us—just like snapping his fingers. He’d soon tell us if we have something of that nature travelling with us.”
“Mindsmog?” said Trask.
By which time Liz was thoroughly alarmed. “Or it could be just his taint!” she now broke in. “Harry’s taint, I mean. For he was after all—”
“—We know what he was,” Trask quickly cut her short.
“And we knew then what he was,” Goodly said, taking Liz’s side. “And we accepted it. You especially, Ben. It was you who let him go, remember? When Harry’s house—his last vestige on Earth—when we burned it to ashes, you could have killed him then.”
“I could have tried,” said the other.
“But you didn’t.”
“We all have our talents,” Trask argued. “Maybe mine told me it wasn’t possible.”
“And maybe it told you to let him live,” said Goodly. (As Trask’s closest friend, he was the only member of E-Branch who had ever been able to talk to him as openly as this.)
“I was younger then,” Trask answered gruffly, “and a sight more foolish. The Necroscope could have been lying when he said he was quitting Earth for Starside. Talent or no talent, I didn’t have the right to take that chance. But I did. Foolish, as I’ve said.”
“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. “But that doesn’t mean we’ll stop watching. And sooner or later, we’ll see what we’ll see.”
&nb
sp; What he didn’t tell them, keeping it back for the moment, was that in fact he had already 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 relief to take over his duties, allowing him to join up with his colleagues in Brisbane.
… so damn 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 I?
He was floating. Not 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?
You 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 nothing here. As if this were the bottom of a bottomless pit, or the darkest of dark nights, or—
Or the kind of nowhere and no-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 Möbius 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?”
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 metaphysical 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 Möbius 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 Möbius Continuum, Jake—not in a place where 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 Möbius Continuum it’s reality. Well, of sorts. A parallel reality, at least.
“So … I’ve no need to talk?”
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 Möbius 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 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 “Ahhhhhh!” 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 Möbius-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 neon 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 space—indeed, printed on time! And all Jake could say was, “W-what?”
The blue life-threads of humanity, of all Mankind from 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 of 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 to
ld 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 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 Möbius 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 Ian 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 Möbius-time and coming to an end there. But among all the myriad lives that had been, his was soon lost to sight.
“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 be on your own, so try to remember these coordinates. As for future-time doors: that’s easy. They point the other way, that’s all! You’ll work it out (a barely suppressed chuckle,) in time.
