It would be so easy to allow them to become one. What was the Presence but the logical end point of a union like this? She pulled him closer and ground her luz against him. Her fingers melted into aetheric tendrils that flowed down his back. For a moment, it was excruciating to close himself to her. There, in his arms, was a cure to his solitude, an opportunity to share himself fully with another being. As for Astrid, she yearned for his memories of the flesh, of the living world, of all the things she had lost. And he could not give them to her.
He could only take.
While Astrid clung to him, lost in passion, he focused on his luz inside her, reached through it for the Registry index that filled her mind like sawdust packed inside a toy. He whispered the word CAMLANN, and suddenly a Hinton Cube blazed in his mind, leaping up from Astrid’s vast memory.
He continued to caress her for a few minutes, but with less enthusiasm. Astrid grew increasingly frustrated and finally pulled away.
‘I’m sorry,’ Peter said. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me. This isn’t right, we shouldn’t—’
Astrid’s egg-smooth face betrayed no emotion but her voice was cold.
‘It is perfectly all right, Mr Bloom,’ she said. ‘You did say you had a headache from your medium. It must be nice for you boys, being able to visit the living. I thought I could help you grow up a little, but I see I was mistaken.’
Peter blushed. Astrid gathered her flowing form into her previous prim self-image.
‘I’m sure you can find your own way back.’
The aetheric current from her sudden departure sent the pages of the file flying all over the tesseract.
Peter gathered the sheets of the Spanish file from the floor. Then he focused on the Hinton Cube from Astrid’s mind and thought-travelled. The tesseracts and files blurred. There were cross references, several streams of thought that pulled him in different directions. Lacking the archivist’s instinctive skill, he concentrated on the strongest one, holding on to the image of the Cube like a swimmer to a branch in a current.
Then he was in front of a shelf full of files. There: the pull of the Cube guided his hand to a folder with a green cover. He took out the sheaf of contents and put the empty cover back on the shelf.
For a moment, he thought about the texture of the paper between his fingers. Even now, the Empire’s aetheric technology clung desperately to the conventions of the living.
Of course, nothing was what it seemed. Somewhere within the files was a luz fragment, the ultimate result of Fading, an ancient soul-remnant brought up from the mines in the kata depths and put to use as a scaffold to hold together a bit of aether that thought it was a piece of paper and ink. Did a glimmer of the original consciousness remain? Did the old soul within feel anything when the file was read?
Too bad souls that were still human did not have their thoughts and desires spelled out so clearly.
Peter concentrated. The stack of sheets curled up as if burned by an invisible flame. It became a glowing bubble of aether around the luz shard, an apple of light and air in his hand.
He swallowed it. The tiny luz shard nestled into an orbit around his own soul-stone. Suddenly, crystalline information filled his memory: photographs, reports, transcripts. It was too much to process all at once. He would have to examine it carefully later.
At least he would carry this one Faded soul with him to join the Presence.
* * *
When Peter returned to the Reading Room, he felt thin and hollow, frayed at the edges. Obtaining more vim had to wait, however. It would not do to leave just yet. He avoided looking at Astrid, found an empty desk and made a show of reading BRIAR’s report.
It pulled his thoughts away from the tantalising weight of the CAMLANN file in his mind and back to the situation in Spain. Besides Inez, he had been running two other agents, a secretary in the POUM party and an Anarchist barber with an influential and loose-tongued clientele. Handing them over to someone else felt like a betrayal.
Peter knew his guilt was completely irrational. Shpiegelglass was undoubtedly going to try to liquidate Dzhugashvili using the information Peter had provided. That was the first step in bringing the Republic under the Presence’s influence. And surely, that was the only way to end the needless fighting in Spain.
Or was it?
‘Hullo, Blooms, old boy!’
Peter lifted his gaze and looked right into the eyes of Noel Symonds.
Noel grinned. He was lean and slight with an impish face framed by unruly curls. In death, he did not look much different from their night-climbing days together in Cambridge. Although, of course, he now worked in Section A of the Summer Court, specialising in Counter-intelligence.
‘I have been looking for you all over,’ Noel said. ‘Would you be so good as to come with me, please? We’ll get you a cup of vim on the way.’
He clapped Peter on the shoulder.
‘You look like you could use it.’
* * *
Noel’s office was in the upper floors of the Summer Court headquarters, in the warren of corridors that indicated prestige by their proximity to C’s office. It was small but tidy and decorated with colourful old adverts for Symonds Soups, Noel’s father’s company.
Peter was tense when he sat down. Noel leaned on the windowsill and looked out at the view to Albert Park.
Noel was the one they would send, Peter knew. He thought about escape. He had an emergency Hinton Cube address that he could thought-travel to, given to him by George in case he needed extraction. But he was dangerously low on vim for thought-travel, and if this was going to be where they took him, there would be expert spirit Watchers everywhere, able to track him anywhere with hypersight.
He pretended it was a logic problem. Had they known he was going to use Astrid? Was it possible that West himself had set a trap for him? It seemed absurd, but not completely impossible. The CAMLANN file burned in his mind.
‘How are you, old boy?’ Noel asked.
Peter sighed. ‘Worn out. C is sulking, and now I have to hand my entire operation over to the grubby hands of the Winter Court, gift-wrapped with a bow on top. I don’t even want to know how badly they are going to bungle it.’
‘Well, Harriet is bringing you some vim to perk you up. How’s the love life?’
‘Drier than a desert, I’m afraid.’
‘I know what you mean.’ Noel sighed wistfully. ‘It’s a complete monkey show here, and Father is trying to pull me back into the soup business, would you believe it? I thought I left it all behind. People say some things you can’t escape even in death, but I didn’t think soup was one of them.’
‘How about your writing?’
‘Oh, I tried to get that book of photographs published but it didn’t work out. The editor was worried that encouraging Cambridge students to do things like climb on rooftops at night was not kosher. I may just put it out with my own money in the end.’
‘I’d love to see it. For old times’ sake.’
Noel smiled. ‘You’ll be the first one I’ll call when it’s done.’
He turned his back to the window, leaned against the glass and folded his arms.
He is about to lie politely, or get to the real business now, Peter thought.
‘Listen, there is something I would like to run past you. There is a young chap at Blenheim who occasionally tells me things, on the q.t., you know.’ Noel tapped the side of his nose. ‘So, a month back, the Winter Court catch themselves a big fish and forget to tell us about it. A defector does a walk-in. It’s all kept very hush-hush, only Section heads and the deputy director involved, and a couple of Watchers. Except it doesn’t work out. The man just tells them things they already know, strings them along for weeks.’
Peter laughed, masking his relief. ‘That sounds like business as usual at the good old Water Closet.’
‘Indeed. In any case, they are getting ready to throw the fish to the cousins for some chickenfeed, and suddenly the defector decid
es to off himself in his hotel. Just like that. Doesn’t have a Ticket. Disappears like a fart. The cousins get angry. Heads roll. It’s a terrible mess.’
George had killed himself? Peter reeled. He really had not known the man at all.
‘Does C know?’ he managed. ‘We should take this to the PM, to argue he can’t give our Spanish operation to these bunglers.’
‘We should! But here’s the rub. My man told me something else. Apparently the last thing the defector said was that somebody over here is playing for the wrong team. What do you think about that, old boy?’
12
THE NIGHT-CLIMBERS OF CAMBRIDGE, 14TH NOVEMBER 1938
Peter and Noel Symonds became friends seven years ago, on the same day he had attended Unschlicht’s lecture.
He spent the evening wandering around town in shock, trying to gather his thoughts. It was late when he returned and he had to pay the porters some gate money to get in.
As he stomped across the grounds towards the corner staircase where his small room was located, he heard a rasp from above. He looked up, expecting to see one of the black squirrels that lived in the college grounds.
A young man in a Trinity Hall scarf and a suit hung suspended between two thick pillars that bulged from the brick wall. It appeared he had been shimmying up the groove between them, with his back against one pillar and his feet against the other. But now he was stuck halfway up.
‘Ho, there,’ Peter whispered. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Nothing,’ came a pained response.
‘You had better not be trying to get into my room. I will call the porters.’
‘I’m not, honest! I’m just climbing.’
‘You don’t appear to be going upwards at the moment.’
‘That’s a good point.’
‘It’s Noel, right? Noel Symonds?’ Noel had borrowed Peter’s notes once after missing a class, for ‘an important engagement,’ he’d said. Peter now suspected it had involved scaling vertical surfaces.
Noel grimaced. ‘Hullo, Blooms. Say, do you see a coil of rope there, on the ground? I don’t suppose you could be a nice chap, take it up to that window, tie one end somewhere and toss the other end to me? I don’t think I can hold on much longer.’
His legs were shaking now, and he was quite high up.
‘All right,’ Peter said. ‘But then we are both going to the roof.’
* * *
‘Like this?’ Peter asked and leaned against the rope.
He was trying to get around a statue of a saint protruding from the wall. He was high up, nearly thirty feet from the ground. He was sweating and his arms ached, but it did not seem to matter. It was all so irrational that it was as if he was outside his body, weightless.
‘Yes. No. Move your feet to that ledge. There is a drainpipe next to you, grab it with your other hand. Now let go of the rope and take my hand. Don’t worry, I’ll catch you. One, two, three—’
Peter released the rope and reached for Noel. For a terrifying moment, he clung to the wall by his toes and the drainpipe. Then their palms smacked together and Noel gripped his hand firmly. Balancing on the ledge, Peter let go of the drainpipe and caught the roof’s edge with his other hand. He pulled himself up while Noel strained under his weight, red-faced. Finally, Peter got one of his feet onto the roof, squirmed over the edge and collapsed next to Noel. A tile slid off and fell to the courtyard below with a terrific clatter. They both froze and held their breath for a moment. When no porters appeared, Noel grinned at Peter.
‘That was not bad for a first timer,’ he said appreciatively. ‘We usually do it like this, in twos, but Bunny, that bounder, thought he saw the porter coming and bolted.’
They leaned their backs against a large chimney. It was silent and the air was cool, and the lights of Cambridge shone all around.
‘So how do you get started?’ Peter asked.
‘You need to have proper gear. A smooth, good quality jacket is a must—it won’t get caught on things. And rubber-soled shoes, if you want to be serious.’
‘My God, you do this it a lot, don’t you?’
‘Nearly every night. I’m even writing a book about it.’ Noel grinned. ‘It may be the high point of my life.’
Noel was the unofficial chief of a dozen climbers who, between them, had scaled every building of note in Cambridge. Peter listened to his stories with wry amusement.
‘Why do you do it? Isn’t all this stupidly dangerous?’
‘Of course it is! But, you know, it’s not like we have that much to look forward to. I’m going to end up running a soup business, can you imagine that? I’ve been trying to write poetry, but let’s be honest, I’m no good. There’s always politics, but that sounds like an awful bore. I am, however, pretty good at climbing, in spite of the state you caught me in. It is nice to be good at something.’
Noel looked at the city lights thoughtfully. ‘You know, they say that the state you are in when you die affects what happens to you in Summerland. Sometimes I imagine it would be nice to fall, hit the ground and just keep falling, straight through the Earth. I could spend eternity trying to climb back up. That would not be so bad.’
He grinned. ‘And climbing makes it easy to impress girls, of course.’
‘Really?’
‘Not really. In fact, I have yet to encounter any lady climbers, and most members of the fairer sex tend to regard our obsession with tall, pointed objects as being rather unhealthy and something Doctor Freud would have some thoughts about.’
Peter laughed.
‘What about you?’ Noel asked. ‘Why did you climb up here? I’m sorry to be forward, but a person who takes such meticulous notes as you does not strike me as someone who suddenly has an urge to sit on a rooftop.’
‘You wouldn’t understand.’
‘Try me.’
‘It’s silly. I was at this lecture earlier today and something Doctor Unschlicht said upset me.’
‘Really? I usually have trouble even staying awake at lectures, let alone getting upset.’
‘It’s just that…’ Peter waved his hands in the air in frustration, looking for words. ‘He was saying that mathematics does not mean anything, that it’s just a language game, that there is no truth behind it. I thought he was wrong, but it was so hard to argue with him. I wanted to be a mathematician, but now I don’t know what to believe.’
Noel looked at him curiously. ‘A mathematician? You know, a lot of the climbers are doing the Tripos. I think you lot use your brain so hard that night air does you good. Why don’t you try it?’
‘Climbing?’
‘Yes, why not? You definitely have what it takes. We’ve written a manual of sorts—I’ll bring it to you tomorrow and you can have a look.’
Noel’s teeth flashed in the dark.
‘Of course, there is one thing that every beginner has to do for themselves. An initiation ritual, if you like.’
‘What is that?’
Noel got up, gathered the rope and tied it around his waist. Then he walked to the roof edge, leaned over, grabbed a drainpipe and started climbing down as nimbly as a monkey. He paused and peeked over the edge, eyes full of mischief.
‘Getting down,’ he said. ‘Good luck!’
And then he was gone.
* * *
Sitting in Noel’s office seven years later, Peter remembered that feeling, being left on the roof all by himself. It had been a test, of course. He had got down, in the end, after crawling around the pitch-back roof on all fours for a while.
Noel liked tests. But if this was one, passing it required more than shimmying down ornamental stonework and a broken fingernail.
‘One of us playing both sides?’ Peter said finally. ‘That sounds unlikely to me. Are you sure that was not just some Russian ploy?’
‘That’s what the Winter Court bigwigs are saying, too. I just wanted to know what you think.’
‘Why me?’
‘You were always the clever one, old
boy. And Spain is where we’ve been having the most trouble of late. Anybody in your Section we should be worried about?’
Peter looked at Noel. He had that same confident, carefree look as when he was making his way up the Old Library chimney all those years ago. That meant he did not entirely know what he was doing but thought he was on the right track.
‘This source was sure that the mole is in the Summer Court?’
‘I think so—why do you ask?’
‘Well, to be honest, I have been wondering about BRIAR. There is a strong NKVD presence in Madrid, and he is in a Communist volunteer unit. The Winter Court could be wanting to put the blame on us when the fox is in their own henhouse.’
‘Good point. I am going to press my source on that. Anybody else?’
‘Not that I can think of.’
‘All right, then. I just thought you should know, in case a witch hunt is imminent. We have been in this together for so long that I wanted to come to you first.’
Noel’s face was unreadable. It would be very like him to give a warning even if he suspected Peter. Or was he offering Peter a chance to come clean?
‘Does C know?’ he asked.
‘Not yet. I want to keep it that way until I have something more solid. It may turn out to be nothing.’
When their Director of Studies, Mr Jepson, had recruited Noel for the Service in their third year at Cambridge, Noel had finally found something more thrilling than night-climbing. Peter had followed him soon after.
Not for the first time, he wished things had been otherwise. Noel’s friendship was the one thing he had not wanted to sacrifice on the altar of the Presence. George had advised him to continue the camaraderie, keep as close to Noel as possible, as if nothing had changed. He had been unable to do it. Noel had felt some unspoken thing between them, a stone in the current of their friendship, and it had pushed them apart.
The irony was that it had been the night-climbing and their friend Cedric that set Peter on the path that finally led him to the Presence.
* * *