He had always known that death wasn’t the end: that whatever a man pursues in life, he will keep pursuing in his afterlife continuation. Harry Keogh had been the master of the Möbius Continuum; so it was hardly a surprise to find himself there now, in Möbius time, hurtling back among the blue, green, and red threads of Starside into their remote past. A surprise … no, but strange anyway, for in the end he had not conjured a door. He had not contrived an escape.
Which could only mean that he’d been . . . rescued?
But by Whom? And if indeed Someone or Ones had seen fit to save his incorporeal mind, what possible purpose could He or They have with his burned, vampiric body? For as Harry shot back into Starside’s past, he saw his separate, smoking corpse tumbling alongside, winding back on its scarlet thread to his point of entry into Starside, and then plunging on beyond it. And he went with it, but incorporeal, apart, speeding blindly into times he’d never physically known.
As for his ruined shell’s destination – and his own, for that matter – and the question of Who was their guide . . .
Harry had never in his life been one hundred per cent sure, positive sure, about God or a god. But back there in Starside he’d sensed the arrival, the presence of a Power, and had known that Shaitan sensed it, too. Moreover, he had known the source of that Power, and also that Möbius and Pythagoras before him had been right.
Now . . . Harry and his exanimate shell were mere impulses in the Mind he had called the ‘Möbius Continuum’ , integers in the infinite matrix of the Great Unknowable Equation. And he wasn’t afraid when at long last that Mind itself spoke to him:
Things have uses, Harry, always. What use to create, if your efforts are only to be wasted? Sometimes we succeed, and sometimes we fail. But there are always uses for the best, and for the worst, of our works.
Harry couldn’t tell if an answer had been invited, and in any case he didn’t really have one. But he did have a question, however brief. ‘God?’
He sensed a vast shrug. A creator, an adviser, an angel? God is . . . let’s say He’s a few steps higher up the ladder. His mind, as you know, is vast! We carry His thoughts, expedite His wishes. As best we can.
‘I’ve had my doubts,’ Harry admitted.
So do we, sometimes. So did Shaitan, when he was one of us. . . Except he would have tried to convince everyone that he was right, throughout all the Universes of Light! He would have forced their belief- in him!
Harry believed he understood. And understanding should have been enough. But because he was or had been human – and because he saw that his course was veering, angling away from his tumbling corpse – even now he was curious. So that he asked, ‘What now?’
Your feet are on the first few rungs. You’ve made your point, chosen your course and stuck to it. You are a success story. We don’t believe in waste; certainly we wouldn’t waste someone as valuable as you! Like Shaitan, you won’t remember, but you will know!’ Except where he knew only a great darkness, you shall know light. In all of your worlds.
‘All of my . . . ?’
Wherever you manifest. For His worlds are infinite as His thoughts.
‘And . . . that?’ Harry indicated his blackened shell where it grew small, tumbling towards some undefined purpose.
Causes have effects, and effects causes. Nothing may come to pass which has not passed before. The world of Sunside and Starside was a failure where evil won. So maybe a second chance is in order. Also it will occupy Shaitan, who has balanced himself against light in a great many worlds. Here . . . he begins again, on the bottom rung. For as you well know, Harry Keogh, what will be has been. Time is relative.
Harry’s turn to shrug. With no vampire in him, he was innocent again. The very heart of innocence. ‘It’s all very hard to understand,’ he said, ‘but I suppose I’ll learn as I go-‘