It was a very small and ordinary thing—just a small cough, a dry clearing of the throat. But it came from behind the desk.
The shriveled, scorched body was swaying a little; the charred hands were pushing across the desk, leaving black smears; a tremor was apparent in the blackened jaw.
For a moment they only watched in horror. Then, drawn by the same irresistible impulse, they slowly approached the desk.
The blind, ghastly movements continued. Then the burnt lips parted, and they heard the whisper—a whisper that was in every syllable a hard-won victory over seared tissues.
"I should be dead, but strange vitalities linger in him who has possessed a talisman. My eyes are embers, but I can dimly see you. Come closer, that I may say what must be said. I have a testament to make, and little time in which to make it, and no choice as to whom it is made. Draw nearer, that I may tell you what must be done for the sake of all worlds."
They obeyed, sweat starting from their foreheads in awe of the inhumanly sustained vitality that permitted this charred mummy to speak.
"Purely by chance, a man of the Dawn Civilization discovered a talisman—a small nonmechanical engine controlled by thought—giving him the power of traveling in time, and across time, and into the regions beyond time. There it led him to seven other talismans, and to a similar but larger engine of even greater power, which he named the Probability Engine. He took in with him seven accomplices, I being one, and together we used the Probability Engine to split time and make actual all possible worlds, preserving only the best of them, and—so we thought—destroying the rest."
The whisper slowly began to diminish in strength. Clawly and the other leaned in closer to the black, white-foreheaded face.
"But I discovered that those destroyed worlds still exist, and I know too well what mad tinkering the others will be prompted to, when they make the same discovery. You must prevent them, as I intended to. In particular, you must find the Probability Engine and summon its true owners, whatever creatures they may be, who built it and who lost the first talisman. They're the only ones fitted to deal with the tangle of problems we have created. But to find the Probability Engine, you must have a talisman. Ters, who destroyed me, took mine, but that was one which I had stolen. My own original talisman is in the possession of Thorn, the Thorn of this world, who stole it from me, I now believe, because of some unconscious prompting from the True Owners, groping through many-layered reality in an effort to find their lost engine. That Thorn is worlds away from here, more worlds than you suspect. But you"—his fingers fumbled sideways, touching those of the other Thorn, who did not withdraw his hand—"can get into touch ... with him ... through your linked ... subconscious minds." The whisper was barely audible. It was obvious that even the talisman-vitalized strength was drawing to an end. "That talisman ... which he has ... is inert. It takes a key-thought ... to unlock its powers. You must transmit ... the key-thought ... to him. The key-thought ... is ... 'Three botched ... worlds—'"