'For all I saw was how cold and lonely that future would be…'
Goodly's delivery, the way he had told the story of the events of that night at E-Branch HQ from his own personal viewpoint — the obvious passion and compassion in this apparently reserved, indeed phlegmatic man — had brought him into far greater definition in Jake's perception; or rather, it had brought him into focus as a three- dimensional character in his own right. Previously a shadow or a soft-voiced cipher, he had somehow filled out. And Jake understood now that the precog had been a major part of this scene for a very long time.
Now, too, and also for the first time, Goodly's physical person had impressed itself upon the Branch's most recent however hesitant recruit. lan Goodly: all of six feet four inches tall, skeletally thin and gangly, grey-haired and mainly gaunt-featured. His expression was usually grave; he rarely smiled; only his eyes
— warm, brown, and totally disarming — belied what invariably constituted an unfortunate first-impression appearance, that of a cadaverous mortician. Except, and as Jake was suddenly aware, you can't always tell a book from its cover. He would have done better to take more notice of Goodly's eyes than his outline.
Outside the Ops truck, he cornered the precog and drew him away from the others into the shade of a tree.
'What is it?' Goodly asked, though he believed he already knew well enough. For just like Trask and Lardis Lidesci before him, he'd left several blank pages in his telling of the story. Jake was still fishing for the bits that would bring the whole thing into focus.
'Just you and me/ Jake answered. 'Just the two of us, and no one else to confuse the issue. Would you mind if I ask you a few questions? I mean, right from square one I've had this feeling that you're on my side, that you think I should be told the whole thing. The others are holding stuff back, but you're reluctant to do so. Am I right?'
Goodly smiled a wry smile, sighed and said, Til tell you what I can. But even though you're right about my being on your side
— or rather, about my talent being on your side — still I won't be able to answer all of your questions. The Branch comes first, and Ben Trask is the Branch. What Ben says goes.'
'Some of my questions, then,' Jake pressed. And he quickly went on: 'So you're a precog, right? And this talent of yours, this precognition, it lets you see into the future?'
'That's the general idea,' Goodly sighed again. 'But only a very rough idea, for it's not nearly as simple as that. Haven't I made that plain?' And now he was frowning.
'Okay, fine,' Jake placated him. 'But you did tell me you'd seen some of my future, right? You did say that I'd be with you, with E-Branch, for quite some time to come.'
'That's true, yes,' Goodly answered.
'In what capacity?'
'I don't know.'
'Okay, then is it going to be that way simply because Trask won't let me go off and do my own thing, or…?'
'Possibly because he won't let you go,' the precog answered. 'He has to see how you work out, which could take a while. That could be — it obviously is — part of the reason why I've foreseen your continuing presence, yes. But what is this, Jake? Are you still uncertain? I thought you'd decided to stay?'
'… Or, is it mainly because he thinks I'm going to be useful to you?' Jake ignored Goodly's last.
'Well, that too, we hope. But Jake, you're talking in circles. And I don't see—'
'—I'm getting to it!' Jake growled, his attitude intense now. And after a moment's thought: 'So tell me, is it me, Jake Cutter, who'll be useful to you, or is it this Harry?'
'Er, that was my meaning, yes,' said the precog, 'that the Necroscope would definitely be useful to us. But if you want me to pick and choose, I can't do it. I would have to answer, both of you — you'll both be extremely useful to us. I thought that had been made plain, too.'
'He's… what, contacting me, this Harry? Getting into my head to guide me, is that it?' Jake was pushing it now. 'Or is he simply using me?'
'Using you? Personally, I would say he's keeping you safe. Wouldn't you?'
'But in my head, like telepathy? A kind of telepathic control?' Jake scowled.
'Telepathy?' Goodly seemed uncertain. 'Something like telepathy, yes. But Harry had a different name for it.'
''Had'? Why is it that when we talk about this Harry everything has to be past tense?' Then Jake gave a snort. 'Huh! Dumb question — because he's dead, of course! — which I can't see at all. For if he's dead, how can he do whatever it is he's doing to me? See, I don't believe in ghosts. They're a concept I just can't seem to wrap my head around. And as for Harry Keogh: he's something I don't want to wrap my head around, even though it's apparent he's already seen to that! But, since he's obviously a disembodied voice out of the past, then it must be equally obvious that his talent was similar to yours. I mean, Harry didn't so much read the future as reach into it… is how it seems to me? But okay, fine, let's keep it going: so if what he's doing to me isn't telepathy, then what did he call it?'
'It wouldn't help you to know, not at this stage.' Goodly shook his head. 'In fact it could easily become an obstruction, a deterrent to your acceptance of… of everything.'
Jake's frustration was mounting again. 'A deterrent to my acceptance?' he snapped. 'Don't you think there are enough deterrents already? It's nuts, all of it! I mean, what am I, some kind of psychic medium? If there was a reason, just one logical reason, why I should suddenly become this dead bloke's target, his focus, his genius loci, then I might be willing to believe at least some of this… this whatever. See, I know that what I've actually seen and experienced so far is real, but I don't know that a lot of what I've been told is real. I trust my own five senses, or used to, but I don't understand how or why I'm involved. I'd even like to believe what I've heard, if only as an alternative to considering myself some kind of psycho, some kind of schizoid nutcase. But… but… but Harry is fucking dead!'
'Well, in a way he's dead,' said the precog, just as serious as ever, as if their conversation was utterly mundane. 'But you see, Harry didn't view existence, life and death, as we do. There was a time when he really was two people. It was after he suffered
… well, an accident, that his mind temporarily manifested itself in the identity of his own infant son. And later, he underwent another singular change. Best to think of it as a kind of metempsychosis, or—'
'Metempsychosis?' Jake cut him short. For despite that he was sure he'd never heard the word before, still he understood it; likewise another word that meant much the same thing. 'You mean transmigration? Of souls? Like he was… what, some kind of body-snatcher?' And now suspicion was written plain on the younger man's face.
'It wasn't like that at all!' the precog protested.
'What?' Jake's voice was brittle now, cracking like glass splintering under the heel of a boot. 'I don't give a twopenny toss what it was like! Shit, look at it from my point of view! This bloke's dead but he's trying to control my mind? And then what, my body? And if he ever got it, do you really think he'd want to give it back? And what about me, Mr lan bloody Goodly, precog? What the fuck about me? Is that why you can't tell me my future? Because the real me doesn't have one!?'
'Calm down, for goodness sake!' Goodly looked alarmed. 'My word, but you've a very short memory, Jake Cutter!'
'Eh?' That had served to slow Jake down a little. 'A short memory? How so?'
'But didn't Harry get you out of jail? Hasn't he saved your life twice already, and Liz's, too?'
Jake considered it, relaxed a very little, said: 'But what does he hope to do with me, this… this ghost?'
'Well, perhaps that's one I can answer,' Goodly told him. 'You see, the Necroscope's principal tenet was that whatever a man does in life he will continue to do after death. He proved it, too: used it to discover the Mobius Continuum. You'll just have to take my word for that, for the time being, anyway. But Harry's greatest claim to fame, or one of them, lay in finding and destroying vampires. Oh yes, the Earth was infested before this latest invasion. And believe me, Jake, without the Necroscope on our side, our world would have become an unimaginable hell-hole of a place a long time ago. So…'
'… So, you think he intends to keep on doing what he did before/ Jake nodded his understanding, all the while fighting hard to suppress his disbelief. 'This Harry… he's trying to come back because he somehow knows they have come back, and he wants to go on killing vampires. He's the avenging ghost and I… I'm his gadget?'
The precog shrugged and answered, 'And there you have it.'
