The voice went but, strangely, in going took his anger with it. He did not know, and never would, whether or not Bei Pen could have forced his will if he had chosen to; but he knew with certainty that it was something which would never happen. His freedom of will was as precious to Bei Pen as to himself. This was someone he could trust, now and always. The revelation which followed was a proof of that, trusting him as he trusted. He looked and saw not the Bei Pen he thought he knew, but the real man—old, so old, withered and bent not by decades but by centuries.
He saw something else and cried out: “You’re not Chinese!”
“No,” Bei Pen said. “I was not born in this land, Si Mun. I was born in yours.”
• • •
He had been born in England, in the year 1967 from the founding of Rome. He had grown up in a Christian community and had become a Christian priest. Then, as a young man, he was befriended by the Roman governor of the Britannic Isles, a man who later succeeded to the purple and took him with him to Rome.
It had been a pleasant existence, but gradually he came to find the pleasantness cloying and unsatisfactory. There were questions, about life, about the universe, which he did not find easy to pursue in the complacent flippant atmosphere of the imperial capital. It was then he met a traveller from the east, who told him of the wonders of the Middle Kingdom.
So he left Rome and made the long and difficult journey to the land of the Chinese. There he studied both their new inventions and the wisdom of the sages: Confucius, the Buddha, Lao-tzu. Out of this study, after many years, he formed the Laws.
Brad, who had been listening closely, said: “Did you say 1967 from the founding of the city? In our world, we dated from the birth of Christ, which happened in the Roman year 753. So in our world you would have been born in A.D. 1214. In Somerset, England? Near Ilchester?”
“I do not know how you know it, but yes. Close by the town of Ilchester.”
“So it does fit!”
“Everything fits,” Bei Pen said, “providing one knows the pattern.”
“Fits?” Simon asked. “What fits?”
“The Laws of Bei-Kun and the fireball. They’re part of the same thing.”
“Are you saying the fireball was responsible for Bei-Kun being born in Somerset? That’s crazy.”
Brad’s face had the happy look which came when he had worked out a particularly tough problem.
“He was a genius—you could say, a super genius. They called him Doctor Mirabilis, the Wonderful Teacher. He studied everything: alchemy, mechanics, the black arts. He was said to have made a bronze head, which spoke three times. It said “Time is,” then “Time was,” finally “Time’s past,” and burst into smithereens. That sounds a bit farfetched, but he did leave records suggesting some interesting experiments—filling a balloon made of thin sheet copper with what he called liquid fire so that it would float, for instance; and making a flying machine with flapping wings.
“But he didn’t get on too well with the church authorities. They probably didn’t like the black arts business. He was kept in close confinement for ten years. Then another pope pardoned him, but he’d learned his lesson. He kept a low profile after that.”
Brad looked at Bei Pen. “At least, that’s what happened in our world. But things were different in this one. Here the church didn’t have any power to discipline him. And he found nothing in Rome to sharpen his wits on. So he travelled to China which, in the thirteenth century, was full of ideas and new developments. The combination of that with a Western super-genius produced the Laws. They were called after him. The Laws of Bei-Kun. Bacon—Roger Bacon!”
“That was my name,” Bei Pen said. “It is a long time since I heard it spoken. And it is true that I have learned many things, over many lifetimes. Come, there are things to show you.”
• • •
The portico leading to the pagoda made sense now—an echo of the Roman world that Bei-Kun, Bacon, had abandoned. Inside it was bare and monochrome: ceiling, walls, and floor in shades of blue which deepened in hue from top to bottom. Stairs led both up and down; as they went down, the blue deepened still further. Oil lamps flickered behind blue glass.
The basement was larger in area than the ground floor, with curved outer walls. It was as though the upper part of the building was a flower, and they were inside the bulb. A velvet curtain was so darkly blue that at first it seemed black. Bei Pen parted it and beckoned them to follow him through.
Simon started to move, then stopped, halted by a feeling of dread and awe that was like a heavy weight. The wordless voice spoke—“There is nothing to fear.” Brad, too, had halted. Simon took his arm and led him through the curtain.
They were in a bare blue room, lit by four blue lamps. They squatted on rugs on the polished wooden floor, equidistant from one another on the periphery of a circle, looking inwards. Silence pressed down, and Simon was aware of his own ragged breath. Although nothing had been said, he knew he must not move, not even turn an eye. Out of the stillness and emptiness in front of him, he was aware of something being born.
It came as a kaleidoscope of images, filling the centre of the room but shifting so fast that they were no more than fleeting glimpses in a chaotic blur. Gradually the images became clearer, longer lasting. He was able to distinguish familiar things: landscapes, cities, animals and birds, people. . . . Some scenes came and went, beneath changing skies. He saw a boat very like the Stella Africanus, a bearded face that could be Bos. . . .
Now he was looking into a room. He knew it well—the clock on the wall, the curtains stirring in a breeze, the bronze fox crouching beside the open fire. He had stroked its head when he was scarcely able to walk. There had been a fireguard then, with firelight glowing through it.
And he knew the figure in the Windsor chair, listening to a play on the radio as he had often watched her do. She looked older, more tired, and her hair was whiter. He saw where her gaze rested: on a picture on the mantelshelf in a Victorian silver frame, a photograph of himself.
The scene faded. He wanted to call it back, but the emptiness swallowed it from within. Another scene took shape.
There was no fire in this room. It was barer and larger, and the painting on the wall was a violent abstract which would have made his grandmother shake her head in disapproval. Sunlight flooded in from a verandah, and there was a faraway snore of surf. A deeply tanned man in Bermuda shorts knelt on a Mexican rug. He looked a bit like Brad did when something was absorbing him. He was playing with a child just starting to walk, a boy.
That scene went in turn, and Bei Pen stood up. They followed him through the curtain, up the stairs and out of the pagoda. The wind seemed colder and carried darts of rain.
Standing beneath the portico, Simon said: “More illusions?”
Bei Pen shook his head. “Those places are as real as this.”
“But they’re on the other side of the fireball! So even if they aren’t illusions, they might as well be. Why show them to us?”
“When you found the fireball, you stumbled by accident on a manifestation of something which was unravelled here over long years of study. The universe is infinite, and there is an infinity of universes, existing side by side, like threads in a limitless carpet. Rarely, very rarely, two threads may touch, and fray. The fireball was such a fraying. An accident—if anything in the universe is accidental—and one which would not repeat itself in aeons. If ever. But that does not mean the way back is barred to you. By the power of first mind, which is modelled on the Mind that created and keeps in being everything that is, threads can be brought together. You can be returned to your own world, if that is what you wish.”
Bei Pen left them and went back in to the pagoda. Simon felt dazed. It took time for the realization of what they had been told to penetrate fully, but when it did he had no doubts. Bei Pen would not lie to him or deceive him. They could return to the world on the other side of the fireball. He said to Brad: “He can do it, if he says he can.
I’m sure of it. He’s giving us time to make our minds up, but there’s no need for that, is there? Let’s go right in and tell him yes.”
Brad was staring at the sky above the foothills. When Simon started to speak again, Brad shushed him. He was listening to something, and in a moment Simon picked it out himself: the distant growl of an engine.
Simon said incredulously: “A plane?”
Soon they could see a dot in the sky. Other dots emerged from cloud to join it, and the growling grew louder. Simon counted four, flying in rough line formation. He said: “There are no dragons here, and nowhere they could land. So what’s it in aid of?”
They came on slowly. This world had a long way to go before it reached the stage of Harriers and Phantoms. Slowly, but steadily . . .
The first bomb dropped a long way short, as did the second; but the third and fourth landed near the edge of the plateau. The boys hit the ground and remained there while the brief but violent bombardment lasted. The blast from one impact struck Simon’s back like a giant’s flail. Then the roar of engines dwindled, and they got to their feet and looked around.
The most obvious result of the raid was a crashed plane, forty or fifty yards away. It was still burning fiercely: the scorched figure of the pilot sat upright in a tangle of wires from which the bamboo struts had burnt away. He must have misjudged his altitude.
Looking away, Simon saw a bomb crater in a field, a flattened greenhouse, a wrecked dormitory hut. He said to Brad: “Was it worth it? One plane down, at least—very possibly more. I wouldn’t fancy flying over those mountains on a single engine. In return for trivial damage like this.”
“The amount of damage isn’t important, is it? Getting here was enough—letting loose another raging bull in the gossamer thicket of illusion. Most of the rest of the priests will leave now, maybe all except Bei Pen. And the weather will get worse. We could be knee-deep in snow by tomorrow morning.”
“You think it’s getting near the end?”
“It’s a funny thing, isn’t it?” Brad said. “That there should be such incredible mental power, and that it should be so vulnerable. Yet I suppose it’s all in conformity with the law of suggestion. Maybe the pagoda could hold out for a while—that’s where the power must be strongest—but eventually that will go, too.”
“The important thing is that we can go. And I suggest we don’t waste much time about it.”
There was a pause, before Brad said: “I’m not going back.”
Simon stared at him. “Are you mad? We’re stuck on top of a mountain which you reckon will be hit by blizzards within hours, in the middle of a hostile continent, with complexions that stick out like cream on custard, and with you in particular wanted dead or alive—preferably alive so that Li Mei can take her time over the death bit. . . . You do realize that, don’t you? You’re not still hooked on her?”
Brad said: “I didn’t mean I want to stay here. He told us: there’s an infinity of worlds. If he can put us back in the one we came from, he can put me in some other.”
“Which could be a lot worse than the one we’re in right now. Have sense.”
“I’ll take a chance on it.”
Simon said bitterly: “Just because your dad’s remarried and has another son!”
“Unworthy of you, chum.” Brad’s tone was surprisingly mild, though. “It doesn’t matter. You go back to Gran. I’m moving on.”
• • •
Simon followed Brad, fuming. There was, he knew, no point in pursuing the argument; he had come to know the strength of Brad’s obstinacy during their three years of adventuring. He thought of the night of the Indian feast, just before the Chinese slavers arrived, when he had accused himself of weakness of character for following Brad’s whims. This was one whim he certainly wasn’t going to follow. He had vowed then, not for a moment believing it to be possible, that if they ever got back to their own world, he would cheerfully wave him good-bye. Well, he was ready to wave good-bye right now. He was going to go back, whatever crazy notion Brad might have.
They found Bei Pen in the lower room. He said: “You have decided.”
It wasn’t a question.
Brad said: “Simon’s going back. I’d rather try a different probability world. Can that be done?”
Bei Pen said: “Think of a spinning wheel, with a million times a million spokes. One of them is the place from which you started; if I set you loose from this world, there is that within your soul which will take you to it, as a pigeon, over great distances, returns to its box.”
So that was that, Simon thought with relief. Brad’s latest whim just wouldn’t work.
Bei Pen paused, and went on: “But if, having been loosed, your mind should choose to reject its proper destination, it has the power to do so. You will come to rest in some other plane.”
Brad nodded. “Good.”
“Is it good? There will be no way of directing where you come to rest. The possibilities are infinite. Not just of worlds in which some great person died or did not die. There are worlds in which men are savages still, lacking even such primitive skills as that of making fire—worlds in which man never existed, in which reptiles taller than trees stalk one another—worlds in which life never even began. . . . There is no knowing what you will find. It may well be death.”
Brad gave it perhaps a second’s thought.
“Okay. I’ll take my chances.”
“May the Great Spirit go with you.” Bei Pen turned to Simon. “And you will go home?”
It came to him with the weight almost of a blow that going home meant parting from Bei Pen as well as Brad, but before he had time to think about it, their minds were joined again. In that joining, he was made acquainted with many things: unutterable weariness, a deep longing for rest and peace, and the certainty that peace would not be long delayed. He knew too that though this was the last time their minds would meet, the echo would stay and sustain him.
So he thought instead of pushing open a door to see a table laid for tea, hearing the kettle’s song, smelling bread baking in the kitchen. What a fool Brad was, a stupid and irresponsible fool! He attempted to catch his eye, with one last hope of having him see reason, but Brad refused it.
And what an even bigger fool he was himself.
“No,” he said. “I’ve changed my mind. I’m going with him.”
Turn the page for a peek at another adventure series by John Christopher.
APART FROM THE ONE IN the Church Tower, there were five clocks in the village that kept reasonable time, and my father owned one of them. It stood on the mantelpiece in the parlor, and every night before he went to bed he took the key from a vase, and wound it up. Once a year the clock-man came from Winchester, on an old jogging pack-horse, to clean and oil it and put it right. Afterward he would drink camomile tea with my mother, and tell her the news of the city and what he had learned in the villages through which he had passed. My father, if he were not busy milling, would stalk out at this time, with some contemptuous remark about gossip; but later, in the evening, I would hear my mother passing the stories on to him. He did not show much enthusiasm, but he listened to them.
My father’s great treasure, though, was not the clock, but the Watch. This, a miniature clock with a dial less than an inch across and a circlet permitting it to be worn on the wrist, was kept in a locked drawer of his desk; and only brought out to be worn on ceremonial occasions, like Harvest Festival, or a Capping. The clockman was only allowed to see to it every third year, and at such times my father stood by, watching him as he worked. There was no other Watch in the village, nor in any of the villages round about. The clockman said there were a number in Winchester, but none as fine as this. I wondered if he said it to please my father, who certainly showed pleasure in the hearing, but I believe it truly was of very good workmanship. The body of the Watch was of a steel much superior to anything they could make at the forge in Alton, and the works inside were a wonder of intricacy and skill. On the front was
printed “Anti-magnetique Incabloc,” which we supposed must have been the name of the craftsman who made it in olden times.
The clockman had visited us the week before, and I had been permitted to look on for a time while he cleaned and oiled the Watch. The sight fascinated me, and after he had gone I found my thoughts running continually on this treasure, now locked away again in its drawer. I was, of course, forbidden to touch my father’s desk and the notion of opening a locked drawer in it should have been unthinkable. Nonetheless, the idea persisted. And after a day or two, I admitted to myself that it was only the fear of being caught that prevented me.
On Saturday morning, I found myself alone in the house. My father was in the mill room, grinding, and the servants—even Molly who normally did not leave the house during the day—had been brought in to help. My mother was out visiting old Mrs. Ash, who was sick, and would be gone an hour at least. I had finished my homework, and there was nothing to stop my going out into the bright May morning and finding Jack. But what completely filled my mind was the thought that I had this opportunity to look at the Watch, with small chance of detection.
The key, I had observed, was kept with the other keys in a small box beside my father’s bed. There were four, and the third one opened the drawer. I took out the Watch, and gazed at it. It was not going, but I knew one wound it and set the hands by means of the small knob at one side. If I were to wind it only a couple of turns it would run down quite soon—just in case my father decided to look at it later in the day. I did this, and listened to its quiet rhythmic ticking. Then I set the hands by the clock. After that it only remained for me to slip it on my wrist. Even notched to the first hole, the leather strap was loose; but I was wearing the Watch.
Having achieved what I had thought was an ultimate ambition, I found, as I think is often the case, that there remained something more. To wear it was a triumph, but to be seen wearing it . . . I had told my cousin, Jack Leeper, that I would meet him that morning, in the old ruins at the end of the village. Jack, who was nearly a year older than myself and due to be presented at the next Capping, was the person, next to my parents, that I most admired. To take the Watch out of the house was to add enormity to disobedience, but having already gone so far, it was easier to contemplate it. My mind made up, I was determined to waste none of the precious time I had. I opened the front door, stuck the hand with the Watch deep into my trouser pocket, and ran off down the street.