“Very interesting,” Bilson said while scratching his chin.
Their meal on the terrace had been well prepared and even more so finely delivered. The spread across the table had satisfied all their senses, even when it came down to the sizzling beef and pomegranate; its sizzle had been absolutely sizzling.
So now, with full bellies and savoured flavours still lingering upon their tongues, they all sat in the archive room which Bilson also liked to call the library.
“Now let me get this straight,” Bilson continued, “rock crushes scissors, scissors cuts paper, and paper covers rock?”
“Right,” Billy affirmed, “and we count one.... two.... three.... and on the third we show our weapons.”
Meanwhile, during such time as the boys were playing frivolous games and generally being raucous, Cetra and Gabby took it upon themselves to begin the search for whatever they could find that might be of some use in getting Billy home.... because someone had to make a start.
“What are these?” Cetra called out to Bilson, more so to get his attention than an actual answer.
“Those are receipts of some sort,” Bilson answered, his hand shaped like a rock, “The whole shelf is receipts.”
But Cetra already knew that, because that’s what the labels on the boxes said. Her aim was to coax the boys into abandoning their game, so when they did she smiled and clasped her hands together, happy with her conquest.
“So my young guests,” Bilson said, spreading his arms out in welcome, “what we need to do is find anything we can that refers back to this Earth you’ve mentioned. Can’t say I have ever heard of it, but it must exist because you both say you’ve been there.”
Billy and Barret nodded, “Live there,” Billy corrected.
“Yes....” Bilson trailed off while he glanced around the room and considered where he might begin.
“I believe I have a question,” Rod said, standing up atop the backrest of the armchair he had been placed to observe the games, “What if the plain we are looking for is one which has yet to be discovered? In that instance there would be no record of it to find here.”
“Not possible,” Bilson replied a little pompously, “You see, magnetic energy is everywhere; subject a metal rod to an electrical field and you’ve got a magnet, but it won’t have the ability to move from one plain to another. That’s where our single sourced H.M.E. comes into play; only it is capable of moving us between the plains, where it doesn’t exist there is no way for anything to pass through. Then, if that were the case, both Billy and Barret would not be here.”
“Brock said that we’ve probably come from a plain with a broken or abandoned Elevator,” Barret said, “Do you know how stupid that really sounds?”
“Stupid no!” Bilson said seriously, “Possible yes. If an Elevator were to be broken then its energy would be scattered. When I say broken I mean more so demolished. Now if that energy was to come together again.... randomly.... and someone or something became caught up in it.... well, who knows where they could find themselves.”
There was a chorus of ahhh’s around the room.
“Ok,” Gabby joined in now, “here’s a question for you; if you need this H.M.E. present on both plains to travel from one to the other and as you say, it is single sourced, how do you get it from one plain to the next in the first place considering that it does not exist yet on undiscovered plains?”
Rod nodded his approval of the question, “Bravo young Gabby,” he cheered.
Bilson smiled and clapped his hands, “Wonderful,” he sang out, “There is a concentrated level of H.M.E. which will actually punch holes through the universe....”
He trailed off in thought for a moment, everyone waited and just as Barry was about to walk over and wave a hand in front of his Grandpa’s face, he continued.
“Can I confide in you all?” he asked, “I mean, we say universe, and for thousands of years now we have believed that we’re travelling the universe, but I have a different notion.”
“Have you become the theorist now, Grandpa?” Barry butted in.
“Say this, all these plains exist on one planet only.”
“Like separate dimensions,” Billy suggested.
“Indeed! It seems quite implausible that magnetic energy could send someone hurtling from one side of the universe to the other....”
“I know what you mean Grandpa,” Barry said with less sarcasm this time, “Like each plain is layered one above the other. I’ve been thinking the same thing.”
“Yes my boy, and how is it that you may have come to such a conclusion?”
“One sun, one moon, Grandpa,” Barry said excitedly, “Everywhere I go there’s only one sun and one moon.”
“And,” Bilson added, “star constellations are always the same.”
“Ok,” Billy jumped in, his curiosity aroused, “so how would all those layers look from outer space?”
“How did it look from your Earth?” Bilson asked.
“Well, it looked like Earth.”
“So it might appear as whatever plain one went into outer space from?” Barry said, tripping over his tongue a little.”
“Although few are actually privy to any such technology needed to find out,” Bilson added.
That is when rod calmly stepped in.
“Hold on for a moment chaps, before you all get ahead of yourselves....” he paused. “Bilson old boy, you seem to have descended from a line of great intelligence, a family with thousands of years worth of discovery and invention, and yet, with this evidence you have brought forward, you would think that you might be the first ones to have come up with such a theory?”
“Well....” Bilson dropped his bottom lip.
Cetra stopped smiling long enough to look hard at Rod, “I think you might have been a little harsh then, Rod,” she scolded.
“That is alright,” Bilson said and waved his hand in the air, “I welcome criticism. How are we to move forward if our actions and ideas are not challenged by others?”
“All I was trying to say,” Rod spoke softly now, “is that, one sun, one moon, the same star constellations.... they are all very obvious similarities, surely they can’t have gone unnoticed for thousands of years?”
“Well....” Bilson said again and hesitated before answering, “I suppose. But, the idea has certainly never been documented, not to my knowledge anyway.... and I am the keeper of the archives.... nor has it ever been suggested, not by my father, or his father.... We have simply always referred to the whole scheme of things as taking place in this big wide universe of ours.”
Cetra giggled, “It does sound more romantic put that way though.”
The comment invoked nods of approval and a hum of hmmm’s around the room. It was Cetra’s light heartedness that brought them all back to the task at hand.
“So where do we start?” Barret asked.
“Anywhere you want,” Bilson shrugged.
Anywhere they wanted encompassed a wide area indeed. It was a large room; it had many books and many boxes, and a fair amount of dust also.
“Do you mind if I clean as I go?” Cetra offered and grabbed for the feather duster conveniently resting on a nearby table.
“I would welcome it my dear,” Bilson said graciously.
He turned to rod who was still perched atop the back of the lounge chair and motioned for him to climb aboard. “We can discuss ideas and opinions,” Bilson said.
Everybody began to wander and peruse, glancing at titles and names and labels, wiping their hands across shelves and rubbing the dust between their fingers. Barret found himself leafing through books with an historical content, their only title being a number embossed onto the spine; Billy and Gabby discovered an entire corner devoted to personal journals; and Barry wound up doing very little to help at all.
“The problem we have,” Bilson said to Rod, “is that we have no real time line to go by. Who knows how far back we might need to go to find this Earth of theirs?”
“Well, to begi
n with,” said Rod peering forward from Bilson’s shoulder at the shelves filled with folders, “how far back are you actually acquainted with? Maybe that could be our starting point?”
Bilson tapped his chin with an index finger and said, “Perhaps.”
The one thing they all came to realise quickly was that no record in that entire library known as the archives was dated. Apparently the reason behind this was that it was all in order anyway, and every plain had different measurements of time, so what was the point?
In the corner of the room Billy and Gabby were pulling out journals randomly and glancing through them, each book was entitled with the writer’s name and there really were thousands of them, all arranged from ceiling to floor. There was one book though which stood out amongst the sea of spines and names; it sat a little crooked on its lower shelf, and it appeared to be missing at best about three quarters of its pages.
It was Bradley’s journal. Coincidence? Yeah probably.
The pages had been torn out leaving the binding in tatters. On the last one was a final entry, it read R.I.P.M.
Billy flicked a few pages back and discovered that each entry was separated by a funny squiggle; it was from the last squiggle that he began to read aloud to Gabby.
“Darn this day. That is how I shall start.... Darn this day very much. My beautiful Sarah is gone from me. She is no longer.... and therefore nor am I. My venture began this darn day at Avebury Manor, my dealings with the servants there have always gone very well....”
Billy’s ears pricked at the sound of his own voice, “Avebury Manor?” he repeated. “Yes! Avebury Manor is in Wiltshire. Barret, I’ve found it!”
Barret’s and everybody else’s eyes turned toward Billy’s excitement. Amongst that excitement Billy bounded toward one of the four lounge chairs in the middle of the room, sat himself down, and continued to read out aloud.
“They certainly are nice folk. Cuthbert is especially fond of pilfering little trophies from his Lordship’s collections to trade with me. ‘It don’t ma’er,’ he says to me, ‘they woont know what they got,’ and then he laughs. He is missing his two front teeth, the poor fellow. Spits when he talks. I always make sure I stand at a distance.
“Afterwards, I rode to visit my love.... Sarah.... We laid a rug down in the field and took supper together. Sarah is a handsome cook and she is precious company. If it were true that such a moment could have lasted forever....”
In the background Cetra and Gabby both sighed and sought out each other’s hands.
“Now my Sarah is but a distant dream to me. Her disapproving father’s quest was to seek us out and destroy our love. When he found us together he pursued me with his writhe hatred all the way back to the Elevator.... and there I cannot go back. My assumption is that he has torn the stones down in his rage.... and now my Sarah is gone for all time....”
“Wouldn’t the Elevator have been invisible?” Barret asked.
Bilson cleared his throat and said, “Concealing technology has only been available to us for a few hundred years, so assuming this account is prior to that, then the answer is no.”
“Also,” Billy added, “if memory serves me, Avebury Manor has only been around since the sixteenth century.”
“So we’re looking at a period somewhere between three hundred to five hundred years ago,” Barret concluded.
“Oh yes, that’s all fine,” Gabby protested, “but how does the story finish up?”
Billy glanced down at the final few paragraphs written in the journal, “Um....” he read forward in his head, then, “....lost without her.... blah blah blah.... life not worth living.... blah blah blah.... then this R.I.P.M.”
“And thus broken hearted,” Gabby sang out, continuing the story with drama, “he tore out the remaining parchment from his uncompleted journal and gave his life over to the bitterness of death.”
Rod clapped and cheered, “Bravo little lady,” he said.
“Actually,” Bilson cut in, “I remember such a story, if this is the same account. He was so stricken with grief after the loss of his one true love that he did indeed kill himself. Now the technical side of the story is that the Elevator must have been broken and rendered useless, so the plain would have been listed as Defunct.”
“Is that what we are looking for then,” Barry said, “one of the defunct listings from three hundred to five hundred years back?”
“Oh yes,” Bilson agreed, and then he shuffled slowly across the floor toward a shelf filled with black folders, deep in thought all the way.
The folders carried manifests of every plain ever discovered, from their names to climates, to major trade, from those that still operated to those which were now classified as Defunct. Over time numbers were added and removed from the list; like Brock had said.... there were gaps.
Bilson took four of the folders and shared them out between his guests.
“What do you think we should be looking for now, Billy?” he whistled.
Billy sat back with his folder opened across his and Gabby’s laps before humming his thoughts. He was reasonably quick to give an answer, but during that time he considered the possibility that sixteenth century Earth wasn’t at all known as Earth. What they should probably be looking for is a listing for Wiltshire, or even more so England.
They all nodded and began their search, and in fact it wasn’t long before Cetra quickly became excited over her discovery of plain #85, name: England, climate: wet.
CHAPTER FORTY FIVE