me.
Harry shook his head. Maybe it didn't. You see, what we're doing now isn't the same. It isn't telepathy but deadspeak. You control it yourself. You don't have to speak to me if you don't want to. That other thing you had was uncontrollable. You didn't even know it was there. If someone hadn't noticed it — hadn't discovered that your mind was a stone wall — you still wouldn't know you'd ever had it. Am I right?
I suppose you are. But what are you getting at?
I'm not sure, said Harry. I'm not even sure if it's possible. But it would be one hell of a bonus if I had that talent of yours!
Well, obviously it would, Wellesley answered. But as you've just pointed out, it wasn't a talent. It was some kind of negative charge. It was there all the time, working on its own, without my knowledge or assistance.
Maybe so, but somewhere in your mind there's the mechanism that governed it. I'd just like to see how it works, that's all. Then, if I could sort of imitate it, learn how to switch it on and off at will…
You want to have a look inside my mind? Are you saying there's a way you can do that?
Maybe there is, said Harry, with your help. And maybe that's why no one else ever could: because you just kept them out… Now tell me, did you ever read my file?
Of course, Wellesley gave a wry chuckle. At the time I thought it was fantastic. I remember one of the espers seeing your file lying on my desk, and telling me: 'I wouldn't be caught dead speaking to that guy!'
That's not at all bad! Harry laughed. But he was serious again in a moment. And did you read about Dragosani, and how he stole Max Batu's evil eye?
That, too, Wellesley answered. But he cut it out of his heart, read it in his guts, tasted it in his blood.
Yes, he did, Harry nodded, but it doesn't have to be that way. You see, that's always been the difference between me and Dragosani's sort. It's the difference between a necromancer and a Necroscope. He would take what he wanted by force. He would torture for it. But me, I only ask.
Anything I have, I give it willingly, Wellesley told him.
Again Harry nodded. Well, that will go a long way with the dead, he said.
So how will you do it? Wellesley was eager now.
Actually, said Harry, it's you who has to do it.
Really? So tell me how.
Just let your mind go blank and invite me in, Harry answered. Just relax like I was a hypnotist putting you to sleep, and say to me: enter of your own free will.
As easily as that?
The first part, anyway, said Harry.
Very well, Wellesley was committed. So let's try it…
15. Thracians — Undead in the Med — Szgany
Later, Mobius came calling:
Harry? Listen, my boy, I'm sorry I've been so long. But those mental doors of yours were giving me real problems. However, and as you well know, the more difficult a problem is, the more surely it fascinates me. So, I've been in conference with a few friends, and between us we've decided it's a new maths.
What is? Harry was bewildered. And what friends?
The doors in your mind are sealed shut with numbers! Mobius explained. But they're written as symbols, like a sort of algebra. And what they amount to is the most complicated simultaneous equation you could possibly imagine.
Go on.
Well, I could never hope to solve it on my own — not unless I cared to spend the next hundred years on it! For you see, it's the sort of problem which may only be resolved through trial and error. So ever since I left you I've been looking up certain colleagues and passing it on to them.
Colleagues?
Mobius sighed. Harry, there were others before me. And some of them were a very long time before me. But as you of all people know, they haven't simply gone away. They're still there, doing in death what they did in life. So I've passed parts of the problem on to them. And let me tell you, that was no simple matter! Mercifully, however, they had all heard of you, and to my delight they welcomed me as a colleague, however junior.
You, junior?
In the company of such as Aristotle, Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler, Galilei, Sir Isaac Newton, Ole Christensen Roemer… even I am a junior, yes. And Einstein a mere sprout!
Harry's thoughts whirled. But weren't they mainly astronomers?
And philosophers, mathematicians and many other things, said Mobius. The sciences interlace and interact, Harry. So as you can see, I've been busy. But through all of this there was one man I would have liked to approach and didn't dare. And do you know, he came looking for me! It seems he was affronted that he'd been left out!
So who is he? Harry was fascinated.
Pythagoras!
Harry was stunned. Still here?
And still the Great Mystic, and still insisting that God is the ultimate equation… But here Mobius grew very quiet. And the trouble is, I'm not so sure any more that he's wrong.
Still Harry was astonished. Pythagoras, on my case? My mother told me there were a lot of people willing to help me. But Pythagoras?
Mobius snapped out of his musing. Hmm? Yes, oh yes!
But… does he have the time for it? I mean, aren't there more pressing — ?
No, Mobius cut him short, for him this is of the ultimate importance. Don't you realize who Pythagoras was and what he did? Why, in the 6th Century b.c. he had already anticipated the philosophy of numbers! He was the principal advocate of the theory that Number is the essence of all things, the metaphysical principle of rational order in the universe. What's more, his leading theological doctrine was metempsychosis!
Lost, Harry could only shake his head. And that has something to do with me?
Again Mobius's sigh. My boy, you're not listening. No, you are, you are! It's your damned innumeracy which makes you blind to what I'm saying! It has everything to do with you. For after two and a half millennia, you are living proof of everything Pythagoras advocated. You, Harry: the one flesh and blood man in all the world who ever imposed his metaphysical mind on the physical universe!
Harry tried to grasp what Mobius had said but it wouldn't stand still for him. It was his innumeracy getting in the way. So… I'm going to be OK, right?
We're going to break down those doors, Harry, yes. Given time, of course.
