‘Sir? Excuse me, sir? My name is Harry Keogh. I’ve come a long way to see you.’
The phantasmal flow of figures and formulae stopped at once, like a computer switched off. ‘Eh? What? Who?’
‘Harry Keogh, sir. I’m an Englishman.’
There was a slight pause before the other snapped: ‘English? I don’t care if you’re an Arab! I’ll tell you what you are: you’re a nuisance! Now what is this, eh? What’s it all about? I’m quite unused to this sort of thing.’
‘I’m a necroscope,’ Harry explained as best he could. ‘I can talk to the dead.’
‘Dead? Talk to the dead? Hmm! I considered that, yes, and long ago came to the conclusion that I was. So obviously you can. Well, it comes to us all – death, I
mean. Indeed it has its advantages. Privacy, for one – or so I thought until now! A necroscope, you say? A new science?’
Harry had to smile. ‘I suppose you could call it that. Except I seem to be its one practitioner. Spiritualists aren’t quite the same thing.’
‘I’ll say they’re not! Fraudulent bunch at best. Well then, how can I help you, Harry Keogh? I mean, I suppose you’ve a reason for disturbing me? A good reason, that is?’
‘The best in the world,’ said Harry. The fact is I’m tracking down a fiend, a murderer. I know who he is but I don’t know how to bring him to justice. All I have is a clue as to how I might set about it, and that’s where you come in.’
Tracking down a murderer? A talent like yours and you use it to track down murderers? Boy, you should be out talking to Euclid, Aristotle, Pythagorus! No, cancel that last. You’d get nothing from him. Him and his damned secretive Pythagorean Brotherhood! It’s a wonder he even passed on his Theorem! Anyway, what is this clue of yours?’
Harry showed him a mental projection of the Mobius strip. ‘It’s this,’ he said. ‘It’s what ties the futures of my quarry and myself together.’
Now the other was interested. Topology in the time dimension? That leads to all sorts of interesting questions. Are you talking about your probable futures or your actual futures? Have you spoken to Gauss? He’s the one for probability – and topology, for that matter. Gauss was a master when I was a mere student – albeit a brilliant student!’
‘Actual,’ said Harry. ‘Our actual futures.’
‘But that is to presuppose that you know something of the future in the first place. And is precognition another talent of yours, Harry?’ (A little sarcasm.)
‘Not mine, no, but I do have friends who occasionally” catch glimpses of the future, just as surely as I -‘
Twaddle!’ Mobius cut him off. ‘Zollnerists all!’
‘ – talk to the dead.’ Harry finished it anyway.
The other was silent for a moment or two. Then: Tm probably a fool . . . but I think I believe you. At least I believe you believe, and that you have been misled. But for the life of me I can’t see how my believing in you will help you in your quest.’
‘Neither can I,’ said Harry dejectedly. ‘Except . . . what about the Mobius strip? I mean, it’s all I have to go on. Can’t you at least explain it to me? After all, who would know more about it than you? You invented it!’
‘No,’ (a mental shake of the head,) ‘they merely stamped my name on it. Invented it? Ridiculous! I noticed it, that’s all. As for explaining it: once there was a time when that would be the very simplest thing. Now, however -‘
Harry waited.
‘What year is this?’
The abrupt change of subject bewildered Harry. ‘Nine teen seventy-seven,’ he answered.
‘Really?’ (Astonishment.) ‘As long as that? Well, well! And so you see for yourself, Harry, that I’ve been lying here for more than a hundred years. But do you think I’ve been idle? Not a bit of it! Numbers, my boy, the ultimate answer to all the riddles of the universe. Space and its curvature and qualities and properties – properties still largely unimagined, I imagine, in the world of the living. Except I don’t have to imagine, for I know! But explain it? Are you a mathematician, Harry?’