Resurgence, p.41
Resurgence, page 41
part #10 of Necroscope Series
‘But what did he do?’ Harry wanted to know, and he was becoming impatient now.
He was one of the greats, Sir Keenan was uncomfortable. He really was. But they cried him down - there was a great deal of ignorance -and it took away much of his faith in himself. You may have to rebuild it, Harry. See, it’s not just a question of him helping you, but of you getting him to help you!
‘What?’
But you ‘ve done it before! Sir Keenan reminded him. Mobius himself needed convincing, before he was able to help you.
‘MSbius was one of a kind,’ the Necroscope replied.
And so is Franz Anton, said the other.
‘Franz Anton?’
Franz Anton Mesmer, Sir Keenan sighed at last That’s who we’re talking about, son. And that’s where he is: in a cemetery in Meersburg, on the shore of Lake Constance…
II
MESMERISM.
As he had told Sir Keenan Gormley, the Necroscope had things to do. But mainly, he wanted to think. Crunching his way through a bowl of ancient cornflakes soaked in suspect milk, and drinking a second mug of coffee, he tried ordering his thoughts. In fact, now that his mental hangover was dissipating they were as clear as he could remember in a long time.
Of course his memory was shot to hell, for as well as the things he was forbidden to remember, there were those he didn’t want to. And there were others that weren’t his anyway. And the giant jigsaw puzzle that his life had become seemed still to be missing at least seventy per cent of its pieces. So that he must build it as a real jigsaw, starting on one corner first.
Oddly enough, he was fairly certain that B.J. Mirlu held the box that the puzzle had come in… but he knew she wasn’t going to show it to him. She didn’t want him to see the entire picture. For his own good? Maybe. Or maybe not. But every time he thought things like that, the indisputable fact of her innocence would immediately spring to mind. And he suspected he’d be in serious trouble (or yet more serious trouble) if he were ever to prove himself wrong in that respect.
Another paradox: he knew she could fix it, put everything right, but that it would only be temporary. For whenever she’d ‘fixed things’ in the past, it had only ever led to periods of even greater confusion.
And so for the moment the Necroscope was pleased to stay away from her, at least until he’d got this corner of the puzzle fitted together. But staying away from her… would be a problem in itself. There was something about the moon. At the moment it wasn’t problematic, but in a week to ten days—
—It would be full again …
Then, he would have to contact her…
Deep inside, some inner contradictory voice corrected him: he even wanted to contact her now - if only to hear her voice - because her lure was twofold. The one that she had imposed, and the one that had grown in him. He didn’t know about the first, but the second was probably love. And he suspected, hoped, that it had grown in her, too. Yet another reason why he didn’t want to be proved wrong about her.
Harry closed his eyes and the frame of his kitchen window stayed frozen on his retinas: a blob of fuzzy light, gradually dissolving at the corners and rounding itself off… Like the moon at its foil, pale and featureless in a misted sky, with a wolf’s head in silhouette thrown back in an ululant howl.
He shook his head and the picture was gone, but B.J. was still there, like a magnet in his mind. And mazed, bewildered, he felt drawn to her, beguiled by her… hypnotized by her?
Hypnotism. Something about a graveyard in Meersburg? The connection was made and Harry was drawn back to earth, back to the present. Again he shook his head, blinked, and resolved to go and talk to Franz Anton Mesmer.
But before that there was still something he must do. B.J. would be worried about him; he could at least allay her fears.
Except he knew he mustn’t talk to her. For then she would want to fix things. Just a few soothing words and he’d be back to square one. So… why not get someone else to speak to her on his behalf?
He went back to his study, to the telephone. The light on his answering machine was blinking. He instinctively wound the tape back and went to hit the play button… then paused. And shaking his head: No, not this time, he told himself. It could only be one person, and the end result would be the same.
He got out his telephone book, looked up the inn where he had been staying with B.J. and the girls, dialled the number.
The receptionist answered and he said, ‘Miss, my name is Harry Keogh. I was staying at your place until last night?’
‘Oh?’ the answer came back. ‘Miss Mirlu’s party?’
That’s right,’ Harry said. ‘And now I have a message for her.’
‘Hold on and I’ll put you through. In fact you’re just in time, for in a little while she’ll be booking out.’
‘No!’ Harry said, perhaps a little too sharply. ‘Er, no, don’t put me through. Just take a message, will you?’
‘Whatever you say.’ (But she sounded puzzled.)
‘We… had a little tiff,’ Harry lied. ‘So, I don’t want to speak to her. But—’
‘—But you do?’ The receptionist gave a low, sympathetic laugh. ‘I think I understand. So what’s the message?’
Tell her I’m OK and she’s not to worry about me,’ Harry said.
‘And tell her Fll know where to find her when the time’s right But I want you to warn her, too.’
Warn her?’ There was a worried note in the receptionist’s voice now. ‘Now just hold on a minute. I’m not going to pass on any threatening messages to a—’
‘No, no threats,’ Harry cut her off. ‘Look, this is important Just tefl her that next time she goes north she’s to keep her eyes peeled. There are people up there she would do well to avoid, OK?’
Well, I don’t know if…’
‘Help a couple of lovers out right?’
‘Oh, all right then.” And the smile was back in her voice again.
Thanks,’ said Harry, and put the phone down.
Then he went upstairs and got his heavy overcoat It would be cold on Lake Constance this time of year…
And it was. Normally, lacking a formal introduction, and therefore coordinates, the Necroscope would have had to find his way by trial and error, obliged to proceed in a series of cautious Mo’bius jumps. But in fact he did have the co-ordinates; they had been there in his metaphyical mind ever since he’d pre-visioned this visit during his stay at E-Branch HQ in London.
Therefore, in precisely the same way as he had been previously enabled to find Le Manse Madonie, and the Drakesh Monastery, he was able to make a single jump to Mesmer’s last resting place. Or to the graveyard, at least All he needed do was recall to mind the vision he’d had, let the location enter itself into his computer mind, and aim himself in that direction via a Mo’bius door.
Then, when he vacated the Continuum… he was there.
He stood at the crossroads of his vision. On the one hand, beyond a low stone wall, the mainly untended plots and leaning headstones of the cemetery were half-obscured by long grasses. While on the other a faded signpost said ‘Meersburg,’ pointing the way to a near-distant town whose silhouette shimmered on a backdrop of shining water.
But Harry wasn’t here for the view.
Following the weed-grown wall until he found an iron gate standing half open, he went into the graveyard and for a minute or two wandered between the plots, letting his feet simply take him where they would. It was very peaceful, quiet and not too bitterly cold; but south-west beyond the town and lake, seeming suspended in the clear clean air, he could make out blue, snow-capped, distantly-rising mountains. Then, if only for a moment the peace of the moment seeped into him.
There was a spell on the place, which the Necroscope was loath to break. But he knew he must And: ‘Franz Anton?’ Harry spoke out loud, secure in his loneliness. ‘Sir, you don’t know me, but I was told you were here.’
Don’t know you? the answer came at once. Oh, but I do! I can even see you, in a fashion; I can see your flame, and feel its warmth. And I haven’t seen or felt anything in a long time. Don’t know you? But most of us know you by now, Necroscope. Or we’ve heard of you, anyway. And now… it’s an honour to meet you personally.
It came as no surprise to Harry to find himself standing at the foot of Mesmer’s simple grave; his talent, or ‘natural’ instinct, had led him here. But as usual, he didn’t quite know how to deal with the praise and the compliments that the Great Majority were wont to offer him - especially hearing them from someone like Mesmer.
But he was mindful of what Sir Keenan had told him: that this great man had lost a lot of faith in himself, and how he might have to restore it before he in turn could benefit from his visit And so:
‘Sir,’ he said. ‘I won’t beat about the bush. I’m here to ask a favour of you.’
Yes, I know, said Mesmer in a littie while, very quietly. And Harry, I only wish I could help you. But I may not be able to.
‘Sir?’
You’re not the only one with problems, Harry, Mesmer told him. And I have had mine - oh, a lot longer than you have had yours!
‘Do you care to explain?’ The Necroscope tucked his overcoat’s tails under him and sat on the rim of Mesmer’s slab. ‘I have the time if you do.’ And he sensed the other adjusting to and appreciating his living presence. Then:
Did you know, Harry, Mesmer began with a sigh, that as a youngster I was much taken with Paracelsus’s theories? Older, I mainly discarded them. But I remember when I was thirty-one, I passed my medical examinations - with honours, I may say - and my thesis was much influenced by Paracelsus. Horace supplied the heading or motto for that work of mine:
‘Multa renascentur, quae jam cecidere cadentque, Quae nunc sunt in honore…’
Do you know Latin, Necroscope? Ah, no! A stupid question! For ifs a ‘dead’ language now, of course. But in any case the languages of the dead are all one to you.
‘And they often convey more than is actually said,’ Harry pointed out ‘You thought it in Latin, but I understood anyway:
‘ “Much will rise again that has long been buried, and much become submerged which is held in honour today.”’
He sensed Mesmer’s nod. Especially relevant, it would now appear. Or perhaps not? The words seem applicable - applied to yourself, that is: your discoveries, your friends’ and mode of life? - but not in the sense intended, and never in connection with myself! (Harry heard his sigh.) Just another contradiction, and my life was full of them! I was so… undoctorlike! So unprofessional. This constant searching for - this actual belief in - a metaphysical medium in which I might work entirely physical cures. Thus my work remains “buried,” in no wise “held in honour,’ to this day. Plainly my reasoning was awry. But as has since been proved, my reasons for reasoning thus were very well founded. Small consolation. In any case, I see no cause to deny what I was never ashamed of. My beliefs and systems were in accord with the age, primitive, and my conclusions incorrect.
‘A great many thousands of people have benefited from your hypnosis,’ the Necroscope told him. You were the first medical practitioner to recognize - or invent? - it.’
(Mesmer’s unseen shrug, by no means complacent, perhaps a little despondent?) There were others who worked similar veins. But ‘inventor?’ - scarcely! Why, the first true adepts weren’t even men but creatures of nature! The snake, for example—
‘—And the octopus? I’ve heard how they “mesmerize” Crustacea, crabs and such - before eating them.’
Really?
‘So it would seem. Fascination, focused through the eyes or the mind behind them. A sort of living magnetism. But didn’t you call it just that: “Animal Magnetism”? Magnetisn, yes: beguilement or hypnotism. Mainly, it’s your contribution we recognize: Mesmerism.’ It might be flattery, but it was largely the truth. While the sciences of the mind - and in Harry’s case, mind over matter - had long since eroded and even obliterated Mesmer’s contributions, still his work had been a landmark.
And you tell me it has been beneficial? D’you know, Harry, but in life, the last quarter century of my life at least - especially after I returned to Switzerland and semi-retirement -I scarcely bothered to follow all the developments, the mutations taking place in my science? I knew nothing of what went on outside myself. My theories had been so thoroughly and frequently ridiculed that even I had begun to lose faith! In 1814 Wolfart published my life work. But much too late. It was already out of date.
Likewise in death: I have been too slow, too lax, too… disillusioned? And now you tell me my work is beneficial? Well, to tell the truth, lam not totally out of touch. Indeed, since you came along, the teeming dead have never been more in touch! But as I hinted, I haven’t been taking notice. As in life, I’ve stuck to my own guns and ignored everyone else’s. Now I am left alone with nothing more than my own theories. ‘Quack’
theories, as I’m sure you’ll appreciate. My fluidum,’ indeed! I see how ridiculous it seems now. But I am a man of habit, as you see.
How was Harry to read that? Was Franz Anton Mesmer the odd man out? The only one of the teeming dead to refute the old law that in death a man will continue to do what he did in life? By continuing to isolate himself - at first from his contemporaries and detractors, and now from more recent practitioners - he may have done just that! And so the Necroscope was disappointed and frustrated. By now Mesmer should be one of the greatest, or even the greatest, hypnotist of all time. But not if he’d abandoned his art, or failed to follow it through. So perhaps Harry had come to the wrong man, the wrong place, after all.
Beneficial, Mesmer mused again. Well, I suppose so. In the reduction of pain, at least. But as the plaything of fakirs and stage magicians? What, to make men bark like dogs or quack like ducks? His thoughts had turned sour; he was losing interest “What about psychiatry, psychoanalysis?’ Harry challenged him. ‘Nothing bogus or theatrical about that And your work is a foundation stone, perhaps the foundation stone!’
Do you think so? It’s very kind of you to say so. And of course I have made advances… well, theoretical advances, at least, if only in my own mind. For down here there has been no one to practice on; I haven’t - what, magnetized? - anyone in a long time. And being dead, incorporeal, sightless, is hardly conducive to practical experimentation! It has been, shall we say, something of a disadvantage? (It was the closest the dead man had come to humour, however dry.) 'I have thought about it, certainly. But how may I exert my will to influence or “hypnotize’ someone I can’t even see?
‘I’m not sure, sir,’ Harry answered. That’s why I’m here: in order to find out’
You came here to consult me? In my… professional capacity? In death? Despite that I was discredited in life?
Obviously flattery wasn’t going to suffice. The Necroscope saw now that indeed Mesmer no longer had faith in himself, and it was all-important that he should have. For if he was without faith, how could he expect his subject to have any? Harry understood how in large part it is the subject’s belief in hypnotism that makes it work. But still:
‘I need someone to examine me,’ he doggedly persisted. To hypnotize me, look inside my head and tell me what”s gone wrong in there. Since you have had a hundred and seventy years to perfect your art I supposed you would be my best bet That was my line of reasoning, and if s why I came here to see you.’
Ah, but you’re one hundred and seventy years too late! For I am dead, after all! How may someone who is ex-animate examine the living? And then, quickly, as if to change the subject But the way you came here - this miracle of instantaneous travel! What manner of new science is this?
For the moment - despite his frustration - the Necroscope allowed himself to be sidetracked from the main purpose of his visit… or perhaps not For he had learned how to argue with the best (or worst) of them, and was quick to see how Mesmer’s interest in his weird talents might provide a key to the door that the good doctor seemed to have locked on his own hypnotic skills. And so he said, ‘A science, sir?’
But if not magic, how else would you describe it? Mesmer couldn’t understand Harry’s hesitancy, the pause of a few seconds in which his mind worked overtime to develop his plan of campaign, his word game. And:
‘A new science,’ he eventually mused … and denied it in a moment Well, scarcely! For as far as I’m aware and excluding my lost son, I’m its sole practitioner! It isn’t something I can publish, for the math is alien, metaphysical. The equations don’t equate, and the formulae mutate within themselves. And as you’ll appreciate, if a formula isn’t constant it isn’t a formula.’
Mesmer tried to understand him, gave up and said: Myself, I was no great mathematician. Are you saying… you ‘re so far ahead of your time you would be misunderstood?
Harry nodded. ‘I suppose so. Much like yourself, in your time. Oh, I could “prove” what I do, but even so I’d probably be called a charlatan, a fraud, a trickster or stage magician, as you were. We see men on our television screens who “fly” or make massive monuments “disappear,” or read the minds of their audiences. Sometimes they “converse” with the dead, too! They are fakers, of course. Yet at the same time, I am living proof that the physical and metaphysical are definitely linked. You were ridiculed - worse, you now ridicule yourself! - for having sought or “invented” a metaphysical medium or “fluidum” in order to explain your physical cures. Yet even now we can’t be sure that the fluidum doesn’t in fact exist.’
But of course we can be sure, because it hasn’t been discovered! Mesmer was hooked… not only on their philosophical exchange but more probably, the Necroscope thought on the notion, the forlorn hope, that perhaps in proposing his theories he hadn’t been such a quack after all.
‘I’m not sure I understand you,’ Harry answered, knowing full well Mesmer’s meaning but feigning ignorance. ‘Not discovered? But neither have we explored the deepest ocean floor, yet we’re sure it’s there!’
