‘You were immune to the Tree Sickness, Jack,’ he whispered. ‘We don’t know why. I believe it is simple luck, like the luck which allows some people to emerge alive from houses where smallpox or diphtheria has carried off every other soul. But the other Fellows will not see it like that. I swear Dr Allardyce is half expecting you to sprout leaves and branches on your twelfth birthday!’
Jack wanted to know more, of course; what his parents’ names had been, why they had been on Venus, everything. But Dr Ptarmigan would say nothing.
‘I cannot, Jack,’ he explained. ‘My career is at a precarious juncture. The Government has finally agreed to let me take an expedition to Saturn. The aether-ship HMS Aeneas is being made ready at Farpoo. I shall be among the first Natural Philosophers to visit that lonely sphere, where I believe wonders of great import lie waiting to be discovered. If I were to arouse the displeasure of the Institute now, some other man may take my place. I do apologise, Jack.’
So that was that, thought Jack. But the very next evening he found a key lying on his bedroom floor, just inside the door. He guessed at once who had left it there, and what room it would open. That night he lay wide awake, offering up prayers of thanks for Dr Ptarmigan’s kindness, and waiting impatiently for the sounds of the building to fade into silence.
At last, when there were no more footfalls or voices to be heard, and even the whoops and jabberings of the strange animals in the east wing had subsided, he hurried downstairs. No one was about; only the old night-watchman, Slapestone, perched in his cubby-hole by the street door, reading a sporting paper. Jack slipped past him like a shadow and made his way to the records room.
There were a great many files there, but they were all arranged neatly in alphabetical order, and it did not take long for Jack to find the one marked Specimen 1072: Jonathon Havock. He pulled it from the shelf and opened it. And there he saw for the first time the names and faces of his parents: Josiah Havock (1809–1839), a surgeon in the Royal Navy, and his wife Maria (1805–1839), a freed slave-woman from the Windward Islands.
He held his flickering stub of candle and turned the pages quietly, reading the neat, impassive copperplate. His father, he learned, had been the youngest son of a fine old Scots family, the Havocks of Stirlingshire. But they had been outraged when Josiah brought his black bride and young baby home, and had cut him off without a penny. Undaunted, Josiah and Maria had answered the call for settlers to go and live in one of the new colonies on the planet Venus. Josiah was a surgeon, and his wife was a lady doctress (they had met, a footnote explained, while tending sailors sick with Yellow Jack in the West Indies.) The colonists were too sorely in need of good doctors to worry about whether Mrs Havock was black, or red, or green; wives of all those colours were quite common in the outer colonies. Soon the couple were set up in a pleasant cottage behind the hospital at New Scunthorpe, Venus, and there, on December 12th, 1838, their second son, Jonathon, was born.
Jack looked at their pictures for a long time, and his flickery, confusing memories of sea and sky and happiness began to make sense. He remembered the trees too; the rescue parties in their rubberised suits, and the men who had brought him to this chilly Institute.
There was a picture of his family; of what had happened to them. Jack stared at it for a long time, remembering the headland, and the shushing of the sea, and how he had waited for the change which never came.
Everyone who was on Venus that spring succumbed to the sickness, the notes said. Even those who were taken off soon after it broke out fell sick and made the change in the cabins and state rooms of the rescue ships. Of twenty thousand settlers, only young Jonathon Havock was spared.
Why? Why had the pollen which infected everyone around him not changed him as well? What was the secret of his immunity? Or had the Tree Sickness simply taken a different course in him; changed him into something not quite human? That was what the learned gentlemen of the Royal Xenological Institute had been striving all these years to find out. But as far as Jack could tell, after scouring through page after page of their notes, they had not yet found an answer.
He tried to ask Dr Ptarmigan about it the next day, and the day after that; but Dr Ptarmigan had suddenly become almost as cool and uncommunicative as the other gentlemen.
Jack kept the key, and from then on he would often creep down to the records room when the rest of the Institute was asleep. On his first few visits he was content to read and re-read his own file, especially the parts about his parents. But it only served to fill his head with more and more questions, to which it held no answers. At last, tiring of it, he began to explore the other files which lined the shelves. He began to learn the names of some of the Institute’s other occupants, the strange creatures he had glimpsed sometimes in the corridors and gardens. Until then, with the exception of amiable Nipper, they had been frightening; like hobgoblins or creatures out of nightmares. Once he had put names to them and knew a little of their histories, he began to think more kindly of them.
Specimens 1010a and 1010b, the twins who looked like big walking sea anenomes, were believed to be intelligent beings who communicated with each other by the power of thought. Specimen 1026, the blue lizard, had hatched from an egg found frozen in a comet mine way off in the deeps beyond Jupiter. She had been Christened Millicent, after Dr Allardyce’s sister, but the nearest sound her lizardy mouth could make to that name was Ssilissa, and after the first twenty pages or so the record-keepers had taken to calling her that instead. She had, a curious note suggested, an aptitude for Alchemy, which should be investigated. If her unknown race were all as quick as her at calculating courses through the aether and grasping the fundamentals of the chemical wedding, it might spell danger for the Empire …
Around the time of Jack’s twelfth birthday there were changes at the Institute. Dr Ptarmigan went away to Io, where he was to go aboard the aether-ship Aeneas and begin his historic voyage to Saturn. At almost the same time, old Dr Allardyce retired, and in his place a new director was appointed; an outsider with friends in Government. His name was Sir Launcelot Sprigg, and he was a youngish, ginger-haired man with a plump, freckled face and grey eyes as narrow and as cold as razors. When Jack was presented to him, and the other gentlemen explained how and why he had come to the Institute, Dr Sprigg made his eyes go even narrower and said, ‘Been here seven years, eh? Seven years of vittles shovelled into this black savage at the taxpayers’ expense, and to what end, pray? With what result? Eh? Eh?’
‘We have conducted a great many tests, Sir Launcelot,’ quavered Professor Snead.
‘The results are all on file, Sir Launcelot,’ twittered Professor Footlinge. ‘He appears to be a normal, human boy.’
‘Tests be d——d!’ snorted the new director. ‘Files be d——d! And as for whether he’s human or no, I’ll decide that for myself. It’s as bad as the way you maunder about with that blue lizard wench; bringing alchemists here to talk to her, humouring her in her wild, improbable claims, as if a subhuman brute such as she could ever understand Sir Isaac’s great discoveries. Well, there’ll be no more of it! New times, gentlemen, demand new methods. Methods that bring results!’
Jack was stripped, measured and photographed with an experimental camera. The photographer’s assistant set off a tray of flash powder which filled the theatre with smelly blue smoke and made everyone sneeze. Sir Launcelot blew his nose on an enormous paisley handkerchief and said, ‘Very well, gentlemen. That is all we can learn from the outside. Bring the boy tomorrow at …’ (he consulted a list) ‘… eleven in the forenoon. I shall fit him in after Specimen 1029. Good day to you all.’
What did it mean? Nothing good; of that Jack was certain. The old gentlemen looked at each other and at Jack, and shook their heads and whispered. Doctor Snead said, ‘Poor child!’, but none of them would speak to Jack directly, for fear that Sir Launcelot should hear of it and dismiss them. They were all quite elderly, and most had been at the Institute their whole careers. They would have b
een as lost and helpless as Jack himself if they had been forced to try and find a living in the world beyond its walls.
Jack was stripped, measured and photographed with an experimental camera.
That night, Jack lay on his bed, unsleeping, watching the Moon through the bars of his small window, and trying to make out the seas and cities which he knew were on its surface. He had just spotted a clipper taking off from Port George when there was a knock at his door. He sat up, surprised. The knock came again.
He opened the door, and Nipper came into his room.
‘Oh, Jack!’ the crab said, his eye-stalks weaving about in great anxiety. ‘You have to go! We all must, all of us, tonight!’
‘Why, Nipper? What’s wrong?’ asked the boy, running to the kindly crustacean and stroking his shell.
‘I’ve heard what he’s planning!’ Nipper whispered. ‘Heard them talking, through the door. Saw them making ready in the lecture room. Oh, Heavens! Oh, help!’
‘But what’s the matter? What’s to happen?’
‘That new man – that Sir Launcelot; he means to cut you open and look at your insides! Dissection, he calls it. The only certain way to knowledge, he says. Not just you, Jack; Ssillissa and the anemones as well! Oh, help! Oh, Heavens!’
‘He wouldn’t!’ Jack cried.
‘He would, Jack! He will! Unless you leave tonight! The others too! I’ll help you, Jack, dear. He doesn’t like me, that Sprigg. How long before I’m cast out on the street, or dissecticated like the rest of you? We’ll flee, Jack – join the circus, maybe, or take off for the gold fields of America or the salt pans of Spoo …’
He reached inside his shell and drew out a big iron ring, jangling with scores of keys. ‘I took these from Slapestone’s cupboard, Jack. Just like that other key I gave you.’
‘You gave me the record-room key?’ cried Jack, feeling amazed, and also disappointed. For he had always believed that it was Dr Ptarmigan who had given him the means to learn about his past.
Nipper bowed his stalks, which was his way of looking bashful. ‘Heard you questioning Doc Ptarmigan about it in the bone hall that day,’ he admitted. ‘I knew you wouldn’t get an answer from him. Too fearful for his position, he was, and his place upon that expedition. So I took a key for you. Slapestone has spares, and he’s too drunk usually to notice if they’re missing. Like tonight; I left a bottle of gin beside his desk, so he won’t stop us from leaving. It’ll be scary, Jack, out there in the wide worlds all alone. But as long as I’ve got you …’
Jack patted the big crab’s spiny shell. He was very scared, but having Nipper to look after made him feel braver somehow. ‘We’ll be all right, Nip,’ he promised.
Taking the keys, he sped to the rooms where Ssillissa and the anenomes lived and unlocked them. The anemone creatures did not speak English, and only cooed and trilled at him when he explained what was afoot, but their coronae of tentacles flushed blue and red and he believed that they had understood his thoughts, if not his words. As for Ssillissa, she grasped their predicament at once and looked for a moment perfectly terror-struck; she curled up into a ball as if she was wishing herself back inside her egg. Then she seemed to regain her nerve. She smiled at Jack, and this time her pointy grin did not fill him with fear but with new strength, because he knew that here was a friend and ally.
Together, they all five crept downstairs to the hall, where Slapestone was snoring behind his desk, the dregs in the bottom of the gin bottle shining faintly in the glow from his butler’s lamp. But Jack was not ready to leave. ‘Wait here,’ he hissed at his companions, and with Nipper at his heels he ran fleet-foot to the room he had visited so often before; the room of records. Into the pockets of his topcoat he stuffed the contents of his file, his parents’ pictures and his father’s journal. Then he took the files of Ssilissa and the anenomes as well, reckoning that they would be as glad as he had been to learn their histories.
He was halfway back to the hall when another thought struck him. He and Ssilissa and the anenomes were the only thinking beings in the Institute, but what about all those who did not think, or not in ways the Institute could recognise? The east wing was stuffed with unearthly animals and birds sent back by naturalists from the new worlds of space. Must he leave all those poor creatures to be cut up by Sir Launcelot Sprigg?
He could not, of course.
‘Can you be fierce?’ he asked Nipper.
‘I cannot, Jack. It ain’t in my nature. But I could pretend, perhaps …’
They ran to the east wing. They had no key to that part of the building, but Jack broke the lock and forced the door open. There was a custodian on duty there, a man like Slapestone, but awake and sober. It did not matter. Nipper, growling low, advanced upon the poor man, his pincers clashing. He could not help giggling a little at his own performance, but to the terrified custodian that only made him seem more terrifying.
‘’Ave mercy!’ the poor fellow screeched, backed up against a wall. ‘’E’s gorn mad! Call ’im off!’
‘Do as I ask and I won’t let him harm you,’ Jack promised. He gagged the man with his own neckerchief, and used his braces to tie him to a chair.
‘Was I fierce enough?’ asked Nipper, as Jack fished a bundle of keys from the custodian’s pocket.
‘The fiercest ever, Nip!’
They ran into every room in the east wing, unlocking the tall cages that they found there, upending the glass vivariums. The dim corridors filled with jibberings and squeakings, with croaks and chitterings and howls. Blind polypods and spindly insects, furry snakes and beetles the size of writing desks spilled, panicky, from their prisons and ran this way and that. An ungrateful snapping thistle snapped at Jack, and might have eaten him had Nipper not been there to growl and wave his claws and drive it back. When the last cage was opened and the east wing was echoing like a jungle glade to the cries of the freed captives, the great crab took gentle hold of Jack’s coat sleeve and tugged him back towards the entrance hall, reminding him of his waiting friends.
They were waiting still; Slapestone was still asleep, a bubble of spit gleaming on his slack mouth. Jelly birds and Martian umbrella bats flapped about, filling the hallway with alarming shadows. Jack ran to the street door, turned the big key in the lock, heaved on the handle and looked out for the first time into the world beyond the Institute.
He saw iron palings surrounding a dismal garden; gaslight gleaming on wet pavements. Steps led down to the street. He was about to start down them when he heard a clattering sound that grew louder and louder, and around the corner came a gleaming black carriage drawn by two white horses.
Jack stood as if frozen in the open doorway and watched, with his comrades bunched behind him. A behemoth beetle whirred past him and flew towards the glow of the nearest gas lamp. The carriage swerved to a halt at the kerbside, horseshoes striking sparks from the cobbles. Sir Launcelot Sprigg leaped out, wearing evening dress and a long black cape, which swirled around him as he started up the steps. He brandished a cane in one hand, and in the other something round and black, which he shook violently at Jack. Jack and the others all jumped back as the black thing turned into a shiny top hat, which Sir Launcelot set upon his head. ‘What is the meaning of this outrage?’ he bellowed. ‘I was dragged from my box at the opera in the middle of Mrs Paradiso’s aria by reports of a disturbance, and now I find … Where is Slapestone?’
Another carriage came racing down the street and, halting behind Sir Launcelot’s, disgorged a line of constables with truncheons at the ready. Jack looked up, and saw the sky above the Institute swarming with unearthly shapes: helix flies and dragonets, moth-kings and gulpers. A shoal of Icthyomorphs flitted by.
Sir Launcelot, his round face darkening with fury, raised his cane and came heavily up the steps. Ssillissa growled, but Sir Launcelot ignored her; he was used to dealing with unearthly brutes and believed the best thing was to show no fear. He reached out and grabbed Jack by the collar, lifting the silver knobbed cane high,
ready to deal him a blow that might easily have killed him, had Ssilissa not come to his rescue.
Since her hatching, Ssilissa had been made to wear a blue serge dress, very plain and simply cut, whose skirts reached almost to the floor. Because of this, Jack had never realised that she had a tail. In fact, she had a long, muscular, infinitely useful tail, with a bony club at the end far larger than the silver knob of Sir Launcelot’s cane. As the angry director readied himself to strike, she struck instead, half turning, her skirts ripping loudly as her tail lashed round. The bony club collapsed Sir Launcelot’s opera hat, and thudded against the top of his head. He gave a groan and pitched backwards, rolling down the steps.
‘’Ere! Stop that!’ shouted the constables, waving their truncheons as they ran to Sir Launcelot’s aid. ‘Leave it out! You’re nicked!’ Whistles blew. A crowd was beginning to gather, lights showing in windows and doorways on the far side of the square as the Royal Institute’s neighbours looked out to see what was causing all this unwonted noise.
And then, just as the constables were closing in, and Jack was urging Ssilissa not to use her fearsome tail on them as well, for fear of making things even worse, then, with a bellow and a trumpeting, a striped, fanged, four-headed monstrosity from the Martian badlands came bursting out of the Institute’s front door, bowling over the twin anenomes, knocking Jack halfway down the steps and scattering constables in every direction. It prowled down the stairs, lashing its quills, claws like scythe blades slinking on the stonework, and Jack could hear panic spreading across the square as the onlookers saw it.
He reached back for Ssilissa, found her hand, called for Nipper, and thought hard for the Tentacle Twins (as he had already decided to call them) to follow. Down the steps they ran, scrambling over Sir Launcelot, who lay insensate at the bottom. The Martian beastie roared its defiance at the constables, who had found a net from somewhere and were trying to recapture it. None of them saw Jack and the others cross the road and run to the far corner of the square. From there, Jack took one last look back at the towering, soot-black building which had been his home.