Belief is one of the most powerful organic forces in the multiverse. It may not be able to move mountains, exactly. But it can create someone who can.
People get exactly the wrong idea about belief. They think it works back to front. They think the sequence is, first object, then belief. In fact, it works the other way.
Belief sloshes around in the firmament like lumps of clay spiraling into a potter’s wheel. That’s how gods get created, for example. They clearly must be created by their own believers, because a brief résumé of the lives of most gods suggests that their origins certainly couldn’t be divine. They tend to do exactly the things people would do if only they could, especially when it comes to nymphs, golden showers, and the smiting of your enemies.
Belief creates other things.
It created Death. Not death, which is merely a technical term for a state caused by prolonged absence of life, but Death, the personality. He evolved, as it were, along with life. As soon as a living thing was even dimly aware of the concept of suddenly becoming a non-living thing, there was Death. He was Death long before humans ever considered him; they only added the shape and all the scythe and robe business to a personality that was already millions of years old.
And now he had gone. But belief doesn’t stop. Belief goes right on believing. And since the focal point of belief had been lost, new points sprang up. Small as yet, not very powerful. The private deaths of every species, no longer united but specific.
In the stream, black-scaled, swam the new Death of Mayflies. In the forests, invisible, a creature of sound only, drifted the chop-chop-chop of the Death of Trees.
Over the desert a dark and empty shell moved purposefully, half an inch above the ground…the Death of Tortoises.
The Death of Humanity hadn’t been finished yet. Humans can believe some very complex things.
It’s like the difference between off-the-peg and bespoke.
The metallic sounds stopped coming from the alley.
Then there was a silence. It was the particularly wary silence of something making no noise.
And, finally, there was a very faint jangling sound, disappearing into the distance.
“Don’t stand in the doorway, friend. Don’t block up the hall. Come on in.”
Windle Poons blinked in the gloom.
When his eyes became accustomed to it, he realized that there was a semi-circle of chairs in an otherwise rather bare and dusty room. They were all occupied.
In the center—at the focus, as it were, of the half circle—was a small table at which someone had been seated. They were now advancing toward him, with their hand out and a big smile on their face.
“Don’t tell me, let me guess,” they said. “You’re a zombie, right?”
“Er.” Windle Poons had never seen anyone with such a pallid skin, such as there was of it, before. Or wearing clothes that looked as if they’d been washed in razor blades and smelled as though someone had not only died in them but was still in them. Or sporting a Glad To Be Gray badge.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I suppose so. Only they buried me, you see, and there was this card—” He held it out, like a shield.
“’Course there was. ’Course there was,” said the figure.
He’s going to want me to shake hands, Windle thought. If I do, I just know I’m going to end up with more fingers than I started with. Oh, my goodness. Will I end up like that?
“And I’m dead,” he said, lamely.
“And fed up with being pushed around, eh?” said the greenish-skinned one. Windle shook his hand very carefully.
“Well, not exactly fed—”
“Shoe’s the name. Reg Shoe.”
“
Poons. Windle Poons,” said Windle. “Er—”
“Yeah, it’s always the same,” said Reg Shoe bitterly. “Once you’re dead, people just don’t want to know, right? They act as if you’ve got some horrible disease. Dying can happen to anyone, right?”
“Everyone, I should have thought,” said Windle. “Er, I—”