JC still stumbled doggedly towards him, Kim floating timidly at his side. Even with his renewed mental discipline, he was still seeing things. Great inhuman faces, with incomprehensible expressions, watching, watching. They seemed to come from all directions at once, and some things that weren’t even directions. Strange things moved through the air, filling up the spaces between spaces, like the micro-organisms that roil and riot in a drop of water. They shot this way and that, passing through things and people and even each other. And then there were large forms, so big JC couldn’t even guess at what they were, moving through the building and its contents as though they were the ghosts.
JC forced them all out of his gaze and his thoughts, and went on, step by step, refusing to be stopped or turned aside until finally he reached Happy and Melody, after what seemed like miles, or hours, or worse. Melody was trying to talk to Happy, but her words couldn’t reach him. She didn’t seem as bothered by the surroundings, perhaps because most of her attention was fixed on Happy. JC lurched forward and thrust his face right in front of Happy’s. He whipped off his sunglasses, so that his golden eyes stared right into those of the telepath, filling his view. Happy met the golden gaze and slowly relaxed, as though someone had thrown him a lifeline. The golden glare kept everything else out. Happy breathed deeply, and sense returned to his eyes. He nodded jerkily, first to JC, then to Melody.
“All right. I’m back. I’m not sure where, and I don’t think I like it, but I am quite definitely here. Can we go now?”
“Go where?” said JC, stepping back. “You see any way out of here? We’re in the world of the New People now, and we have to start with them.”
He turned to face them, and everything else disappeared. Driven away, pushed aside, by the sheer presence of the New People. Only them, and the light they stood in. Or generated. And when they finally spoke, they all spoke at once, like a thunderous cloud or choir of voices. Just four motionless figures, in all their many dimensions, but when they spoke, there might have been four hundred or four thousand, as many aspects as there were dimensions.
We’ve been waiting for you. The intrepid Ghost Finders of the Carnacki Institute. We knew you were coming. Clearing up the mess left by our creation. Birth is always messy.
“Do you know who’s behind your creation?” said JC, forcing the words out. “Do you know about Patterson?”
Of course. He had plans for us. So did the people he represented. But they were so limited in their thinking. So human. Patterson couldn’t understand us. Nor could his organisation. We are so much more than they expected. They planned our creation but couldn’t deal with what they got. You are all of you incapable of understanding what we are, what we have become. The human mind lacks the capacity to contain what we are. And what we will do.
“What do you want?” said JC.
To make everyone like us, of course. To wake up the world, and everything in it, and set it to useful work. To do all the things that matter, instead of filling in time till death. There is so much that needs doing, matters of great scale and worth-putting the universe to rights.
“What if we don’t want that?” said Happy, moving forward to stand with JC. “What if we’d rather choose our own way?”
You will want it. After you’ve been changed. Upgraded. Made wondrous New People, like us. When you are like us, you’ll understand everything. The universe and its purpose will be clear to you. All the answers to all the questions you ever had, will be yours.
“But will we still care about those questions, and those answers, when we’re not human any more?” said Melody, stepping forward to be with JC. “Will we still care about any of the things we care about now, as poor, limited, human beings?”
“Will we still love?” said Kim, stepping in beside JC. “Will he still care for me, and I for him, as man for woman? Will we still have that?”
Don’t be afraid. We are more than you, not less. We have gained much and lost nothing. We are different from you now, but we still contain you.
“That isn’t answering the question,” said JC. “Would Kim and I, Happy and Melody, still share our simple human love for each other? Would the fundamental things still apply-care and compassion, honesty and honour, good and evil, life and death? Would they still matter to us? And if not, how could we still be us?”
Why would you want to settle for something so small?
“You see?” said JC. “You’re the ones who don’t understand. You’d have to destroy what makes us… us, to make us you. You’ve gone too far, progressed too far beyond us. The world isn’t ready for you. Not yet. People aren’t ready yet. You can’t jump to the front of the queue, to the top of the evolutionary ladder. We have to get there on our own, achieve it on our own, or it won’t mean anything. We have to earn it by our own efforts, one step at a time. Remember what you were. Who you were. What it felt like to be human. Small joys and small achievements are no less real for being small. Remember what you wanted out of life before chemical godhood gave it to you on a platter.”
We remember… but only as a dream. A long nightmare from which we have at last awakened. But yes-we do remember.
“You think all our junk DNA being blocked off just… happened?” said JC. “No. It’s there waiting, for the right time. For us to be ready for it. It’ll awaken itself when conditions are right. And then, and only then… we’ll all become like you. When the world needs us to be like you. Because by then, hopefully, we’ll have earned it.”
The New People paused. They seemed to be talking among themselves, but it was not speech that JC or Happy or Melody or Kim could comprehend. Finally, they spoke again.
Yes. This is not our Time. We are ghosts from the Future. That’s where we belong. So that is where we will go. Now.
And they were gone. All of them, gone. The overpowering presence of the New People disappeared, snapped off, as they moved on into Future Time. Except… JC was always sure afterwards, that for a moment one of the New People, the terrible transformed living gods, dropped her godly mask to look back at him as the young woman she’d originally been… to give him just the ghost of a smile, before she left.
The four Ghost Finders, the three living people and the dead woman, looked slowly around them. They were standing in an empty floor at the top of an office building in London, and everything else they had seen there was already a fading memory. The world was back the way it should be, and full of only those things that belonged there. And the warm amber street light falling through the glass windows was like a benediction.
“That’s it,” said Happy. “It’s all over?”
“No,” said JC. “This is over, but we still don’t know who or what Patterson represented. Why they wanted us, and what they hoped to achieve. Remember what those Crowley Project agents said, down under Oxford Circus Tube Station? That there are people operating behind the scenes, weakening the walls of the world, for purposes of their own. .. Nothing to do with the Project or the Carnacki Institute. We need to find out who these people are. Before they do something even worse than this.”
“Could we at least take a day off, first?” said Happy. “I am so tired I feel like I could go into reverse.”
“Of course!” said JC, smiling broadly on his people. “All work and no play makes Jack a pain in the arse. But still, you know, I have to wonder… what kind of world the New People might have made. Whether it might actually have been… something very like Heaven.”
NINE
Some hours later, outside Chimera House
The night was almost over. The sun was fighting its way up the sky, pushing back the dark with streaks of red and gold. The shadows were no longer as deep, or as menacing, and a few of the more optimistic birds had started singing. London’s morning traffic was getting under way, the muted roar barely audible in the distance. It was still bloody cold, though.
