'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 but ask the dead, who have nothing to gain from lying. They'll tell you it's true. Moreover, if your ashes were pure, I tell you I could even call you up from the dead! Not with numbers but with words. And this isn't blasphemy, Pythagoras, but simple truth. Or ... perhaps the act itself would constitute blasphemy, I can't be sure. If so then you're right and I am a blasphemer, and plan to be again.'
You could call me up from my ashes?
'Only if they were pure, unsullied. Were you buried in a jar?'
I was buried in soil, in secret, here beneath your feet, where as a boy I ran among the trees. My flesh and bones are now one with the earth. Anyway, I cannot believe you. Words and not numbers? Words are from the lips, frivolous things which are spoken and change, while numbers spring from pure mind and are immutable.
'It's academic, after all,' Harry had shrugged. 'In two thousand years your salts have been washed into the soil. There are no words - and certainly no numbers - which can help you now.'
Blasphemy and sedition! Do you seek to turn my followers against me?
Harry could contain himself no longer. 'Pythagoras, you're a charlatan! In your world you guarded your small, pointless mathematical "secrets" - basic discoveries which any child under instruction knows today from his school-books - as if they were Life and Death. And true death has not changed you. I gave you deadspeak, since when you could have conferred with more modern, more genuine masters, if you'd wished it. To Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein; to Roemer, Maxwell and - '
Enough! the other had been outraged. I should have ignored Möbius! I should have -
'But you couldn't ignore him!' (Harry's turn to cut in.) 'You dared not...'
What do you mean?
'That I know your real secret. That you were a fraud. That you not only made fools of your precious "Brotherhood" in life but continue to deceive them in death! There is no mysticism in numbers, Pythagoras, and you must know it. If only because you're a learned man. Why, you yourself have told me that numbers are immutable, unchanging and unchangeable. Which means that they are solid truth, not flights of fancy! Iron truth, not ethereal magic.'
Liar! Liar! Pythagoras had raged. You twist words, change meanings!
'Why do you hide yourself, even from the dead?'
Because they have no understanding. Because their ignorance is contagious.
'No, because they know more than you! Your followers would desert you. You told them they would migrate, return again to men and meet with you in worlds of pure Number - and now you know that this was false.'
I thought it was truth.
'But that was two and a half thousand years ago. And are you returned? How long does it take to admit you were wrong?'
I have dreamed numbers that would blast you!
'Blast me, then.'
By this time Pythagoras had been sobbing. He hurled a catalogue of numbers at Harry, which shattered against the wall of the Necroscope's metaphysical mind. But at least they shocked him into recognition of his predicament: that again the thing inside was striving to replace him, this time by use of convoluted Wamphyri 'logic'.
On this occasion it was his salvation, for it had never been Harry's desire to hurt or even alarm the dead. And: 'I ... I'm sorry,' he said.
Sorry? You are a fiend! Pythagoras had sobbed. But... you are right.
'No, I merely argued. Perhaps I am right, perhaps not. But I was wrong to argue for the sake of it. And let's face it, I stand in contradiction of my own argument.'
How so?
'I know that numbers are not immutable.' Ahhh! (A long drawn-out sigh.) Would you... could you demonstrate?
At which Harry had shown him the screen of his mind, with all of Möbius's configurations crawling on its surface, mutating and sprawling into infinity. And for a long time the old Greek had been silent. Then: I was a clever child who thought he knew everything, he said, his voice broken. Time has passed me by.
'But it will never forget you,' Harry had been quick to point out. 'We remember your theorem; books have been written about you; there are Pythagoreans even today.'
My theorem? My numbers? If I hadn't done it others would have.
'But it's your name we remember. And anyway, that could be said of anyone and anything.' Except the Necroscope.
But: 'I'm not even sure about that,' Harry had answered. 'I think that perhaps there were others before me. And certainly there was one after me. They dwell in other worlds now.' And will you dwell there, too? 'Possibly. Probably. And perhaps soon.'
What's it like now? Pythagoras had asked after a while, and Harry had suspected it was the first thing he'd inquired of anyone in a long time.
'Upon this island,' the Necroscope had answered, 'lie many of the more recently dead. But you've shunned them. You could have asked them about Samos, the world, the living. But you were afraid to know the truth. And do you know, the last thing of any importance to the living on this island is number? Well, perhaps not entirely true. I'm sure they're interested in the quantities of drachmae to the pound, to the Deutschmark and the dollar.' He explained his meaning.
The world is so small now!
Harry had put on his hat, his glasses, and gone out from the shade into sunlight. With his hands in his pockets the latter didn't bother him too much, but he must go slowly or lose his balance on the rough tracks and roads into Tigani. Pythagoras had gone with him, his deadspeak, anyway; distance wasn't too important once contact had been established.
I'll open up the Brotherhood, dissolve it entirely, put it aside. There's so much to learn.
'Men have landed on the moon,' said Harry.
Pythagoras's mind had flown in circles.