Necroscope V Deadspawn - By Brian Lumley Page 0,121

account was how.

How?

More rightly, who, said Möbius.

How? Who? Are we talking about God again?

The Big Bang, said Möbius. The primal light, back at the dawn of space and time. All of this couldn't have come out of nothing, Harry. And yet we've already decided that before The Beginning there was nothing. Which was foolish of us, because we both know that you don't need flesh to have mind!

God, Harry nodded. The Ultimate Incorporeal Being. He made it all, right? But to what end?

Möbius's turn to shrug. To find out what would happen, maybe?

You mean He didn't already know? What's that for omniscience?

Unfair, said Möbius. No one can know before the fact. And it's dangerous to try. But He's known everything since.

Tell me about the other places, said Harry, fascinated despite himself.

The world of Starside and Sunside is one, Möbius told him. But it was ... a failure. There were unforeseen paradoxes and things went disastrously wrong. Starside, the vampire swamps and the Wamphyri themselves: they were cause and effect both! But that's for the future, and for the past! To tell it now might be to change it, which would be presumptuous.

Space and time are relative, Harry argued. Haven't I always said so? And in their own way they're fixed. You can't damage them by talking about them.

Möbius chuckled, however sadly. Clever, Harry, I'll grant you that. But you can't work your vampire wiles on me, my boy! And anyway, Starside isn't the place I'm talking about.

Well, I'm listening, the Necroscope answered, just a little disgruntled.

Once when we talked, Möbius reminded him, you mentioned the balance of the multiverse, with black and white holes shifting matter around between all the different layers of existence and delaying or even reversing entropy. Like the weights governing the swing of an old clock's pendulum. But that's only one sort of balance, the physical sort. Then there's the metaphysical, the mystical, the spiritual.

God again?

The balance between Good and Evil.

Which all had origin in the same source? Your argument, August Ferdinand! Remember, 'there was nothing before The Beginning'. Right?

We're not in dispute, Möbius shook his head. On the contrary, we're in complete agreement!

Harry was astonished. God had a dark side?

Oh, yes, which he cast out!

The mathematician's words and their delivery had riveted Harry. And I can do the same? Is that what you're saying?

I'm saying that the other places are like levels, some of which are higher and some lower. And what we do here determines the next step. We go up or down.

Heaven or Hell?

Möbius shrugged again. If it helps you to think of it like that.

You mean that when I move on, I can leave my dark side - maybe even my vampire - behind me?

While there's a difference, yes.

A difference?

While we may still distinguish between you.

You mean if I don't succumb?

I have to go now, said Möbius.

But I have to know more! Harry was desperate.

I was allowed to come back, Möbius said, simply. But I am not allowed to stay. My new place is higher, Harry. I really can't afford to lose it.

Wait! Harry tried to stir himself, sit up and take hold of Möbius's wrist. But he couldn't move and anyway, it would be like trying to grasp smoke. And like a set of his own esoteric formulae, the great man mutated into nothingness and was gone...

If anything Möbius's visit had wearied Harry even more than before. He drifted deeper into sleep. But his vampire-influenced mind was full of a certain name, which tormented him and wouldn't let him be. And the name was Johnny Found.

Harry was a telepath; he had a quest, a task which he must finish; and he had a vampire in him. When he had gone to face Fa茅thor Ferenczy's bloodson Janos in the mountains of Transylvania, the Ferenczy had warned him that only one of them would come out of it alive, and that the winner would be a creature of incredible power. Janos had read the future, seen the same thing, known he couldn't lose. Except... one should never try to understand the future. Read it if you must, but don't try to understand it. Harry had been the one who came down out of the mountains. And though he didn't yet have the measure of his powers - especially his most recent acquisition, telepathy - still they were incredible. They had been incredible before, but now, with the booster which was his vampire...

Dreaming, he no longer had control over his talents, which were active