Necroscope V Deadspawn - By Brian Lumley Page 0,23

or equations or formulae of my own? Necroscope or none, you are presumptuous!

'Presumptuous?' Harry's anger had been aroused. 'Equations? Formulae? Why, I have formulae such as you could never dream.' And he'd displayed the computer screen of his mind, and covered it with the endlessly mutating algebraics of Möbius mathematics. Then he'd formed a Möbius door, and let the other gaze a moment upon the nowhere and everywhere across the threshold.

Until, gaspingly: What... what is that?!

The Big Zero,' Harry had growled then, letting the door close on itself. The place where all numbers begin. But I'm wasting my time. I came to talk to a master and ended up chatting with a mere student - and a middling one at that. Now tell me: do I get my audience with Pythagoras or don't I?'

He ... he is in Samos.

'Where he was born?'

The same. The last place anyone would think to look for him, he thought... And then, frantically: Necroscope -plead with him for me! I have betrayed him! He will exclude me!

'Rubbish!' Harry had growled, but without scorn. 'Exclude you? He will elevate you - for you have gazed upon the secret mathematical door to all times and places.

You don't believe me?' (And he'd shrugged). 'Well, it's your choice. My thanks anyway - and farewell.' And conjuring another Möbius door he'd stepped through it -

- And out again on Samos, twenty miles away, where Pythagoras had spent his childhood two and a half millennia ago, and to which his bones had been returned in secrecy when at last he died. Pythagoras, however introvert, secretive, diffident, could hardly escape or ignore the Necroscope's deadspeak probe at such close range. That thought in itself had been deadspeak and as such the recluse (in death even more than in life) had heard it. And answered: What is your number?

'Any you choose for me,' Harry had shrugged, homing in on the mystic's mental whisper. And when he'd located him definitely, one further Möbius jump took him from a deserted, wooded shoreline straight there: to a small olive grove on a terraced hillside above a headland with a tiny white church. Down the coast a little way, scarcely glimpsed through pines and wind-warped oaks, Tigani's harbour glinted turquoise, blue, silver; music from a taverna came drifting on the bright summer air.

It was cool in the shade of the trees and the Necroscope had been grateful to take off his wide-brimmed hat, also the dark-lensed spectacles which protected his now delicate eyes. And because Pythagoras had remained silently thoughtful: There are numbers galore. I'm not fussy.'

Then you should be, the mystic's whisper was tremulous, fevered. They are The All. The gods themselves are numbers, though no man knows them. When I have discovered the numbers of the gods, then my metempsychosis may commence.

'If you truly believe that, then you've a long time to wait,' Harry had answered at once. 'You can know all the numbers in all their combinations from now to eternity and it won't change anything, not for you. It isn't a magical thing, Pythagoras. However many numbers you employ, your soul won't fly into a new body. There's no science or sorcery can help you now.'

Hah! the other was filled with wrath and not a little scorn. Only see who utters these blasphemies! And is this the Necroscope, who was impotent and innumerate, to whom the simplest sum was a mystery? Are you the one they pleaded for, the legions of dust, the teeming dead? Möbius came to me on his knees for you, and what are you after all but an ingrate?

Harry had been needled but hid it from the Greek. Likewise he hid his thoughts: Pompous old fart! While out loud: 'I came to thank you, for my numeracy. Without it I'd be like you: dust in a grave. Or perhaps not like you, for there was a man who would have called me up to torture me for my secrets.' A necromancer? 'Just so.' It is a black art!

'Not always. It has its uses. What I am doing now is a sort of necromancy after all. For I am a living man, talking to one who is dead.'

Pythagoras gave this a moment's thought, and: I overheard your conversation with one of the Brothers, he said. Is blasphemy your byword? You alleged reincarnation, transmigration, metempsychosis.

'I stated a fact,' said Harry. 'I was one man in his own body, and when it died I inhabited another. Don't take my word for it