FINAL INTERVAL:
Harry Moradian glanced at his watch. It was 4:15 P.M. and he was already fifteen minutes late for his all-important governmental board. But time, however relative, had flown and Harry felt desiccated; the papers before him grown to a thick sheaf; his whole body was cramped and the muscles in his right hand, wrist and arm felt tied in knots. He couldn't write another word.
"I've missed the board," he said, hardly recognizing his own voice. The words came out in a dry croak. he tried to laugh but only managed a cough. "Also, I think I'm missing two pounds! I haven't moved from this chair in over seven hours, but it's been the best day's exercise I've had in years. My suit feels loose on me. And dirty!"
The ghost nodded. "I know," she said, "and I'm sorry. I've taxed your mind and body both. But don't you think it was worth it?"
"Worth it?" Moradian laughed again, and this time made it. "The Soviet E-Branch is destroyed...."
"Will be," the other corrected him, "a week from now."
"----and you ask if it's been worth it? Oh, yes!" Then his face fell. "But I've missed the board. That was important."
"Not really," the ghost told him. "Anyway, you didn't miss it. Or rather, you did but I didn't."
Moradian frowned, shook his head. "I don't follow you."
"Time...." the other began.
"----Is relative!" Moradian finished it for her in a gasp.
The ghost smiled. "There's a door to all times out there on the Mobius strip. I am here---yet I'm also there. they might've given you a hard time, but not me. Gerrard's work---your work, and mine----continues. you'll get all the help you need and no hassle."
Moradian slowly closed his mouth, let his brain reel for a moment until it steadied itself. He felt weary now, worn out. "I expect you'll want to be going now," he said, "but there are still a couple of things I'd like to ask you. I mean, I know who you are, for you couldn't be anyone else, but----"
"Yes?"
"Well, where are you now? I mean, your now? What's your base. Where is it? Are you talking to me from the Mobius continuum, or through it? Molly, where are you?"
Again the ghost's patient smile. "Ask instead, 'who are you?'" she said. And answered: "I'm still Molly Stewart. Molly Stewart Junior."
Harry's mouth once more fell open. It was all there in his notes but it hadn't jelled, until now. Now the pieces fell into place. "Who's raising your children, Molly? Brian---I mean, your husband---was due to die. His death had been foretold. And how can anyone change or avoid the future? You yourself have shown how that's impossible.
Molly nodded. "He will die," she said. "Briefly, from his suicide attempt, he'll die----but the dead won't accept him."
"The dead won't---what?!" Moradian was lost.
"Death is a place beyond the body," said Molly. "The dead have their own existence. Some of them knew it but most didn't. Now they do. It'll change nothing in the world of the living, but it means everything to the dead. Also, they understand that life is precious. They know because they've lost it. If Brian dies, my life, too, will be in jeopardy. That's something they can't allow. They owe me, you see."
"They won't accept him? You mean they'll give his life back to him?"
"In a nutshell, yes. There are brilliant talents there in the netherworld, Harry, a billion of them. There's not much they can't do if they really want to. As for my own epitaph: that was just my mother being over-protective----and pessimistic!" Her outline began to shimmer and the light from the windows seemed to glance more readily through her. "And now I think it's time I...."
"Wait!" said Moradian, starting to his feet. "Wait, please. Just one more thing."
Molly raised ghostly eyebrows. "But I thought I'd explained it all. And even if I haven't, I'm sure you'll work it out."
Moradian quickly nodded his agreement. "I'm sure you will---I think. All except why. Why did you bother to come back and tell me?"
"Simple," said Molly. "My daughter will be me. But she'll have her own personality, she'll be her own being. I don't know how much of me will get through to her, that's all. There might be times when she'll need reminding. One thing's certain, though: she'll be a very talented young lady!"
And at last Moradian understood. "You want---me, us, the branch----to sort of look after her, is that it?"
"That's it," said Molly Stewart, beginning to fade away, shimmering now with a strange blue light, as if composed of a million fiber-thin neons. "You'll look after her----until she's ready to start looking after you. All of you. Think you can do that?"
Moradian stumbled out from behind his desk, held out his arms to the shimmering, rapidly diminishing spectral thing. " Oh, yes! Yes, we can do that!"
"That's all I ask," said Molly. "And also that you look after her father."
The blue shimmer became a haze, snapped into a single vertical line or tube of electric blue light, shortened to a single point of blinding blue fire at eye-level---and blinked out. And Moradian knew that Stewart had gone to be born.
"We'll do it, Molly!" he shouted hoarsely, feeling tears hot on his cheeks and not knowing why he cried. " We'll do it.....Molly?"
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