… 50 damn hard to get in?! The hinted question but definite exclamation rang like a shout in Jake's sleeping mind, startling him. But he immediately recognized the Voice' and said: 'You? I was hoping you'd come by.'
You could have fooled me! said the ex-Necroscope. But for that tiny piece of me that will be with you always, I wouldn't know where to find you. Even with it, it's hard to get through your shields. Still, maybe that's a good thing. I'm sure it's going to be, eventually.
'But where are you?' Jake had been waiting for everything to straighten up but nothing had, so that now he wondered: And for that matter, where am IP
He was floating. Not surprising, really, for he had often dreamed he could fly, and as often been disappointed on waking up to discover that he couldn't. This must be a different version of the same thing. But floating in darkness?
You don't recognize the place? Harry Keogh's disembodied voice asked him.
'A place?' Jake answered. 'But there's nothing here. Nothing at all.' And as he lazily turned (or at least he felt like he was turning) on his own axis, he could see that what he had said was literally true. There was absolutely nothing here. As if this were the bottom of a bottomless pit, or the darkest of dark nights, or—
Or the kind of nowhere and no~when place that the universe must have been like before there was light? Yes, I know, said Harry. Once experienced, however, there's no forgetting it. So when we were here last you must have had your eyes shut. I can understand that. It's always been the same, and for just about everyone who ever tried it — including me! So now let me welcome you to the Mobius Continuum. No gravity or light or matter at all. Not even a sound unless we make it, which isn't advisable. Not here.
'And this is it? Your way of… of getting about?'
This is it. But it's still only a dream. Your dream, Jake. And the only thing that's real about it is me.
'So how did I get here?'
I influenced it, and you dreamed it. I just wanted you to see it through my eyes, and maybe get used to it. For, you see, you've been lucky on three occasions now. Three times when you thought you were in danger — two of which you really were — I was close enough to help you out.
'My escape from jail?' Jake nodded his understanding. 'And the next time from Bruce Trennier, right?'
Right. But as my dart — let's call it my metaphysical intuition — becomes a more accepted part of you, there'll be less room for the actual me. Already you've reached the stage where you're almost able to shut me out. But before you can do that, you still have a lot to learn.
'About the Mobius Continuum?'
For one thing, yes.
(Jake was still turning; he didn't know which way was up, but he wasn't at all dizzy from it.) 'And that's why I'm here?'
You tell me. You dreamed it! But it's as good a starting place as any.
'You did influence it, though?'
Yes, but you must have wanted it. Wanted to visit, wanted to know.
'To know how to use it, you mean?'
Exactly. And how not to misuse it.
'Eh?'
Well, if this were really it, the Continuum, you'd probably be stone deaf by now. You see, you don't talk in the Mobius Continuum, Jake — not in a place where even thoughts have weight.
'Thoughts have weight here?'
They do in the physical world, too. Ask any telepath, or any scientist for that matter. Those tiny sparks that jump the gaps in your brain, Jake? If they didn't make the connections, you couldn't think. Have you never wondered why geniuses have 'weighty thoughts'?
'But that's just an expression, surely?'
But in the Mobius Continuum it's reality. Well, of sorts. A parallel reality, at least.
'So… I've no need to talk?'
Not at all. Thinking will suffice. But here in your dream it makes no difference — because you aren't talking anyway. Or at best you're only muttering to yourself.
'You're making me feel like a cretin!' Jake burst out. 'I don't know where I am or how I got here — or how to get out of here — and you're telling me I have a lot to learn about it? A lot to learn about nothing, about nowhere, about emptiness?'
Oh, it isn't nothing, Jake. It isn't nowhere, but a route to everywhere and — when! Let me ask you to do something for me… actually, for you. Just keep quiet for a moment or two, and float. And feel it! Feel the Mobius Continuum!
Jake did, and felt it. 'It's… big/ he said then, feeling very small. 'It's… huge! It knows I'm here, and it doesn't especially want me here. But where here?'
Everywhere! said Harry. Or anywhere. Anywhere you want to be, want to go, as long as you know the coordinates. Come with me. Just come, and you'll see.
'You mean follow you?' And suddenly Jake was afraid. 'But I can't even see you!'
I'm in your head, Jake. Just let go.
'Of you?'
Of everything.
And Jake did it, let go. He sensed motion in himself, and also felt himself come to a halt. At a door.
A time door, said Harry. A door on past time. And:
'But this is even more like a… a… ahhhh!' said Jake. Because now he was standing on the threshold, looking back into the past. And while it wasn't deliberate he was echoing what he seemed to be hearing:
A concerted 'Ahhhhhk!' like some unending one-note chorus, the vocal product of a vast choir of angels echoing in a sounding church or cathedral. And yet Jake only seemed to be hearing it; it was in his mind as a result of what he was seeing, which must surely be accompanied by just such a SOUND — the sound of life, of evolution, from its prehistoric source to this present moment, this very NOW.
More like A Christmas Carol? Harry finished it for him. I suppose it is, in a way. But this isn't a ghost of the past, it is the past — as viewed in Mobius-time.
Looking out, looking back, through the door, Jake saw what appeared to be the core of some vastly distant nova, an incredible neon-blue bomb-burst, whose streamers were lines of light. A myriad endlessly twisting, twining, frequently-touching lines or neon tubes of blue light, all reaching out from that central explosion, expanding towards him, rushing upon him like a luminous meteorite shower. Except the tracks didn't dim but remained printed 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.