If he was killed . . .
But he couldn’t be, because then . . .
Paradoxes swam wearily through his brain.
And those children . . . those weird kids . . .
Thinking of them, he fell asleep.
He must have slept for several hours, despite the distant crashes of anti-aircraft guns, the heavy thuds that shook dust from the ceiling. Because when he woke, things had changed. There were a lot less people; those left were packing up, folding blankets, heaving bags and small children onto their backs.
Jake groaned. He was so stiff his joints cracked as he stretched; one arm was numb from his weight on it.
He mumbled, “What time is it?”
“Eight o’clock, love. The all-clear has sounded.” The woman next to him swept a blanket into a suitcase quickly.
“Where’s everyone going?”
She stared. “Work, mostly. Or to see if their houses are still standing.”
He thought of the collapsed street, the weak whisper of a voice in the wreckage. That woman . . . Alicia. She was dead now.
He sat up slowly, pushed back his hair and rubbed his face with both dirty hands. He should find the mirror.
Then he reached into his pocket, pulled out the luggage ticket, and looked at it.
He had promised her, and she was dead now.
Above ground, London lowered in a dark, rainy dawn.
He walked on the streaming pavements, collar up, soaked. Workers and women, cars, buses, and army trucks hurried past. The past was a place of strange illusions; at one corner he could almost believe he had never even journeyed, because the doorways and alleyways were so ordinary and familiar. And then a huge advertisement board for Pond’s Cream, or Bovril Meat Extract confronted him like a stark reminder of some alternative reality. Gradually, street by street, he saw how the shops were different—smaller, their fronts shaded by dripping awnings, their windows crisscrossed with protective tape. Sandbags were heaped in great walls down the road. Barriers—were they tank traps?—blocked every junction. There were no traffic lights, no automatic crossings, none of the normal paraphernalia of the city he knew. And then he turned a corner and muttered in surprise, because a whole landscape of rubble lay cold under the rain, and in the middle of it, completely undamaged, one small barber shop flaunted its striped red-and-white pole defiantly, and a few men queued to be shaved in makeshift seats in the debris.
There were other queues. Even this early, patient lines of people had formed outside nearly all the shops. At a baker’s, the smell of hot fresh bread made his hunger painful. He had a purse full of pre-decimal coins—part of Piers’s safety protocol—heavy in his pocket. He joined the queue.
Ten minutes later he reached the counter.
“Ration book?”
Jake said, “Sorry?”
“Your ration book, son.”
“I . . . forgot it.”
The baker stared at him in disbelief. “You what?”
“I just want . . .”
“Whatever you want, there’s no chance. Go home and get it. Next, please.”
Jake stalked out in cold fury, but there was nothing he could do. This was a different world to his, a world where he barely existed, and he had to get used to it. A few streets on, he managed to buy a small dried-up apple from a street stall, and chewed it sourly as he hurried on through the rainy dawn.
Tottenham Court Road was quieter than in his time; the cars and trucks strangely cube-like and slower, the exhaust fumes smokier, making him cough.
There were no signposts, no street names; not wanting to talk to anyone, he summoned up a hazy map of London from his memory and headed north, working his way to the grimy thoroughfare of Euston Road and trudging along it, head down, rain-blinded and cold.
He had been to St. Pancras before, to catch the Eurostar to Zurich—he remembered a huge Victorian station, beautifully renovated. Now it loomed up before him, soot-blackened and oddly shrunken by the barrage balloon tethered above. Crowds of soberly dressed men and women surged out of it, many in uniform.
Inside the vast arrivals hall, at least it was dry. He shook his wet hair and looked around. Trains, people, porters. Echoing voices. The roar of engines.
Near the refreshment room was a window in the wall, the sign LEFT LUGGAGE painted above it in dark green letters.
He walked quickly over.
No queue. Amazing.
He glanced carefully around. A few naval officers sat laughing at a round table; a soldier and his girl embraced over a pile of suitcases. No one took any notice of Jake.
He took the ticket out and went up to the window.
Behind it was a wooden counter, and behind that a keen thin man in a railway uniform who said, “Yes?”
“Come to collect this.” Jake pushed the ticket across.
The man read it. “Six fifteen. Did you deposit it yourself?”
“No. It’s . . . for my aunt.”
“Right.” The man looked even more keen, all at once. “Just wait there, please.”
He went into the depths of the room. Jake saw hanging coats, boxes, piled trunks, a stack of corded parcels. Behind him a train came in, and he turned in delight at the vast eruption of steam, the hissing brakes of the engine.
“Sign here, please.” A small brown suitcase was slid over the counter at him; he turned and scrawled the name J. Wilde on the sheet, pulled the case from the man’s hand, and walked hurriedly away.
His heart was pounding; he felt as if everyone was watching him, but a quick glance reassured him. Even the keen official was already talking to another customer. Jake walked quickly along the platform to an empty bench at the far end, sat down, and took a silent breath.
So now he was a time traveler and a thief.
No. Because Alicia had insisted. Demanded, with her last breath, that he take it . . .
He lifted the case onto the bench and clicked the fastenings; they weren’t locked, and the lid opened easily.
He gazed at the contents, oddly disappointed.
Papers. Letters. Account books. A birth certificate. A red leather photo album. He picked that up at random and opened it. Stiff Victorian portraits, a family group on the grass outside a prosperous-looking rectory. A little girl with a parasol and a tiny dog. Was this Alicia as a child?
He put the album down and rummaged further. Long white evening gloves. A box of chess pieces. A fan, a tiny container with scissors and nail-things. Then jewelry, plenty of it, wrapped in twists of white tissue paper. He opened one; saw a gold ring, obviously expensive. The sad detritus of a dead woman’s whole life. He twisted the paper back around the ring and put it away. None of it was any use to him.
As he went to shut the case, something in the bottom slid slightly. He pulled it out.
A black velvet bag tied with cords. At the end of each cord was a tassel of gold threads. He tugged the cords open. Inside was a metal container, circular, a dull gray. He tugged the lid off and saw to his surprise a roll of ancient film, its edges perforated, its frames small and dark. He pulled out a section and held it up but could make out nothing in the dull smoky light. He rolled it back, closed the container, slipped it in, and turned the bag over.
A few letters were embroidered elegantly on the back.
J.H.S.
He stared at them for a second of frozen disbelief, then dived back to the suitcase and scrabbled through the papers, finding the birth certificate and unfolding it with shaky fingers.
It was worn thin, the folds broken through.
He read her name ALICIA MARY. And her father’s name.
JOHN HARCOURT SYMMES.
“Symmes had a daughter!” He said it aloud in his astonishment; Symmes, who had stolen the obsidian mirror and got it to work, the man he and Venn had confronted in the smogs of Victorian
London. That woman had been his daughter?
Then the mirror would have been in her house.
He hissed with frustration; some papers fell to the floor. He leaned after them but a hand in a brown leather glove got to them first.
Jake looked up.
The man was thin, average height, his face refined, his eyes dark with intelligence. He wore a long, loose brown coat and a hat Jake thought might be a fedora.
He was obviously, and without question, the police.
“These are yours?” he said.
“Er . . . Yes.” Jake flicked a glance sideways. Two uniformed constables waited a few feet down the platform. With them was the keen man from the left luggage office, who said “That’s him” with irritating smugness.
The police officer nodded. “What’s your name?”
“Jake Wilde.” He didn’t know what else to say.
“Identity card? Ration book?”
“I . . . don’t have them with me.”
“Don’t you now. Address?”
“Wintercombe Abbey. It’s not in London, it’s in the West Country. I’m staying there with my godfather.” It seemed the time to make an impression. Jake stood and drew himself up. “Look here, I simply don’t see—”
“Don’t pull the public schoolboy cant with me, son.” The man’s voice was soft and calmly authoritative. “Don’t tell me Daddy is a magistrate. Don’t tell me Ma Symmes really was your aged auntie. Just step away from the bench.”
Jake didn’t move. “And you are?”
“I’m Scotland Yard, son. Like I said, away from the bench. Now.”
Jake nodded. He shut the lid of the suitcase and with one quick, fluid action, flung it in the policeman’s face.
Papers flew out in a cloud; the jewelry clattered like rain, but Jake was already running; fleeing down the platform at top speed, leaping baggage, ducking a trolley piled with milk churns.
Yells rang out behind him; he sensed the policemen after him, but he was fast; he could outpace them.
Steam gushed, a fog of hot air. The locomotive beyond was preparing to move, carriage doors already being closed. He flung himself forward, grabbed one, hauled it open.
Leaping in, he slammed it behind him, gasping, then brushed his hair back and walked firmly along the corridor into a first-class compartment, sat down, and smiled breathlessly out of the window.
The train shuddered, shunted, stopped. A whistle blew.
Trying to appear calm, Jake craned his neck to see out. Only steam swirled on the platform.
Then with a crash, the compartment door slammed open.
A red-faced sergeant burst in, grabbed him, and forced him up. “You’re a bleedin’ tricky little beggar, and no mistake.”
“Let go of me. You can’t do this!” Jake struggled fiercely, but the man’s grip was iron. He was swung quickly around.
Standing in the compartment doorway, the man from Scotland Yard looked hardly out of breath. His glare, though, was steely.
“My name is Inspector Allenby. I think you’ll be coming to the station to answer a few questions, Mr. Jake Wilde.”
“For what? What have I done?”
Allenby shrugged. “Attempting to travel without due and proper identity, obtaining goods under false pretenses, resisting arrest, and very possibly, high treason. Take your pick. You’re in a heap of trouble, son.”
He stepped up to Jake and he held the luggage room ticket in his face, the number 615 clear. “I’ve been waiting weeks for someone to come for this. It seems the old lady was running a bigger network than we thought.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Furious, Jake held himself still.
“Save it. Take him to the van, Joe.”
The red-faced sergeant twisted Jake’s arm expertly behind his back. “With pleasure. You are going to bleedin’ regret making me get all hot and bothered.” He jerked and Jake gasped.
“You can’t do that! I have rights!” he yelled.
“Oh really,” the sergeant growled. “You can tell me all about them. At the Yard.”
4
Five men were in the final ascent party on Katra Simba.
There are many rumors about what happened on those terrible slopes, but as only Venn returned, only he knows the truth. He has never discussed it publicly, though he did meet with the families of each of the dead climbers.
If, as is thought, Morris and James plummeted into the crevasse, Venn would have tried anything to save them.
His courage is not in doubt.
Jean Lamartine, The Strange Life of Oberon Venn
SARAH SPENT THE long drive to Devon gazing out at the green woods and the moors.
It was April, and she realized with surprise that the spring was well under way. Hidden in London, she had missed its coming; now she stared with delight at the lambs skittishly running from the motorway’s roar, and the white umbels of cow-parsley in the hedges. Every wood had its swathe of bluebells, every tree its small unfolding leaves. Small black horses nibbled the corners of fields.
She knew this country. As the twilight gathered, Dartmoor began to loom on the horizon, purple-gray receding folds of moorland under the darkening sky. Sleepily she felt the old desire to climb up there, breathe that wild air again, as she used to do with her father and the three dogs. Before Janus came, and unmade the world.
Wharton let her dream. He drove carefully with only the swiftest of glances at her. By Exeter, darkness was closing in. If Sarah hadn’t opened her eyes by chance and glimpsed the road sign to Princeton, they would have sped on unknowing into the night. Wharton slammed on the brakes, shunted back, and turned into the lanes, grateful there was no one behind. “Nice one, Sarah. Of course, I was just checking you were awake.”
“Right.” She wrapped her coat around her, shivering.
“Do you want to stop? Or there’s some water and fruit in the back.”
“Keep going.” She squirmed around to find it. “We need to get there before he does anything stupid.”
Urgency seemed to grow in the car as darkness fell. She bit into an apple, gazing out at the black landscape. “So, George. Did you ever get home? To Shepton Mallet?”
“Not yet. I will.”
“Then why the car?”
“Had to get something. You know how the Abbey is miles from anywhere.” He turned at a crossroads, knowing she was ready to ask the question he had been waiting for.
“What’s it been like?” she said quietly.
Wharton changed gear. He glanced out at the passing small squares of light that were cottage windows, the sudden flicker of a pub sign.
“Like? Sarah, it’s been like living in a besieged castle, with the enemy all around. For a start, the Shee. You can’t see them, can’t hear them, but you know they’re out there somewhere. Every time you go near the Wood you feel watched. Not only that, the defenders inside with you are silent, preoccupied, and feverishly working at a bizarre and broken machine. I never thought I’d say this, but I’m the only sane man among lunatics. It’s as bad as being back at the wretched school.”
She couldn’t help grinning. “Surely Piers . . .”
“Piers is hardly normal. Besides, Venn works the man like a slave.”
She said, “And how is my . . . how is Venn?”
“Obsessed. Sleepless. He scares me. And it’s worse, since Jake went.”
“Tell me about that,” she said.
As he drove deep into the dark land, he was glad to; glad to finally get the story out, to speak it aloud to someone, as if doing that would dissipate it like breath, release the tight hard ball of terror it had become inside him.
“Three weeks ago—on the Wednesday, it must have been—Piers came hurtling into the kitchen where Jake and I were working. As you know, that’s the only warm room in the p
lace. He was yelling, tremendously excited. Come at once, come now, His Excellency says! Why he gives Venn that ridiculous title . . . Anyway, we ran. Jake first, of course. Turns out they had made some breakthrough—the mirror was suddenly, inexplicably active. They were prepared, though, I’ll give them that. The plan had been formed for months—to journey to the 1960s—and Piers was so confident they could do it. Jake scrambled into a suit of clothes that was utterly nondescript—it was designed to be unnoticeable for almost any era, and was packed with everything he might need—money, a med kit, a souped-up phone-thing that Piers hoped might be able to communicate with him. And a weapon.”
“A gun?”
“I insisted, Sarah. Of course I didn’t want him to go, but you know Jake. He put me firmly in my place, the arrogant little sod . . . and then Venn made it clear my opinion counted for less than the dirt on his shoe.”
“So Jake put the bracelet on.”
The car splashed down toward the Abbey, the headlights picking out ghostly trees, a field gate, a spindly signpost pointing into the dark.
“And?” she said gently, because he was so silent.
“You know better than anyone. It worked all right. The mirror’s huge energies erupted, that dragging, terrible pressure, the implosion that seems to suck all your life—your spirit—right out of you. When I staggered up, Jake was gone. Simply no longer there.” He changed gear, his voice harsh. “We waited. Time went by so slowly. Time, Venn’s archenemy, seeming to mock him, and us. An hour, then two. The night. The next day. Venn just sat there, slumped in a chair, watching the mirror, watching his own dark reflection till he seemed to harden into its black stone. I have never seen a man so sunk in despair. Finally I couldn’t bear it anymore. I went up to my room and fell asleep from sheer exhaustion, and because I knew—knew, Sarah—that they had lost him, just as they lost his father. And of course, the bracelet with him.”