on space — 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 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 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 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-time 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…?'
Too many huts, said Harry. And 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 someone (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 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 Goodly 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 rage in Jake's cringing mind. Whatever else 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
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.
