‘But you can, to me.’
‘So let’s talk. It might give me some more ideas, or tell me what’s wrong with the ideas I’ve got now.’
They carried on walking, hand in hand. ‘Right,’ she said, and after frowning for a moment, ‘happy thoughts.’
‘Eh?’
‘The dead, in their graves. I think they’d think happy thoughts. That would be the equivalent of heaven, you know.’
‘People who were unhappy in their lives don’t think anything,’ he told her, matter-of-factly. ‘They’re just glad to be out of it, mostly.’
‘Ah! You mean that you’re going to have categories of dead people: they won’t be all the same or think the same thoughts.’
He nodded. ‘That’s right. Why should they? They didn’t think the same thoughts when they were alive, did they? Oh, some of them are happy, with nothing to complain of. But there are others who lie there sick with hatred, because they know the ones who killed them live on, unpunished.’
‘Harry, that’s an awful idea! What sort of story is it, anyway? It has to be a ghost story.’
He licked his lips, nodded again. ‘Something like that, yes. It’s about a man who can talk to people in their graves. He can hear them, in his head, and know what they’re thinking. Yes, and he can talk to them.’
‘I still think it’s terrible,’ she said. ‘I mean, it’s horrible! But the idea is good. And these dead people actually talk to him? But why would they want to?’
‘Because they’re lonely. See, there’s no one else like this man. As far as he knows, he’s the only one who can do it. They don’t have anyone else to talk to.’
‘Wouldn’t that drive him mad? I mean, all those voices in his head at the same time, all yammering for his attention?’
Harry gave a wry smile. ‘It doesn’t happen like that,’ he said. ‘See, normally they just lie there, thinking. The body goes – I mean, you know, it rots – eventually becomes dust. But the mind goes on. Don’t ask me how, that’s something I won’t try to explain. It’s simply that the mind is the conscious and the subconscious control centre of a person, and after he dies it carries on – but only on the subconscious level. Like he’s sleeping; and in fact he is sleeping, in a way. It’s just that he won’t wake up again. So you see, the necroscope only talks to the people he wants to talk to.’
‘Necroscope?’
That’s my name for such a person. A man who looks into the minds of the dead . . .’
‘I see,’ said Brenda, frowning. ‘At least, I think I do. So happy people just lie there remembering all the good things, or thinking happy thoughts. And unhappy people, they just switch off?’
‘Something like that. Malicious people think bad things, and murderers think murderous thoughts, and so on: their own particular sorts of hell, if you like. But these are the ordinary people, with ordinary thoughts. I mean, their thoughts run on a low level. Let’s say that in life their thoughts were pretty mundane. I’m not putting them down; they just weren’t very bright, that’s all. But there are extraordinary people, too: creative people, great thinkers, architects, mathematicians, authors, the real intellectuals. And what do you suppose they do?’
Brenda looked at him, trying to gauge his thoughts. She paused to pick up a bright, sea-washed pebble. And in a little while: ‘I suppose they’d go on doing their thing,’ she said. ‘If they were, say, great thinkers in their lives, then they’d just go on sort of thinking their special thoughts.’
‘Right!’ said Harry emphatically. ‘That’s exactly what they do. The bridge-builders go on building their bridges – in their heads. Beautiful, airy things that span entire oceans! The musicians write wonderful songs and melodies. The mathematicians develop abstract theories and polish them until they are crystal things even a child could understand, and yet so astonishing that they hold the secrets of the universe. They improve upon what they were doing when they were alive. They carry their ideas to the limits of perfection, finishing all the unfinished thoughts they never had time for when they lived. And no distractions, no outside interference, no one to bother or confuse or concern them.’