“I’m beginning to wonder, after all this, why centaurs don’t rule the multiverse!” I said.
“Well, they can’t live for long in half of it,” Stan pointed out. “They need magic to survive. But mostly, they just don’t go in for ruling. It doesn’t strike them as sensible.”
“I thought that too,” I said. “But it’s odd. The next thing I want to ask you is, would a centaur ever want to be Emperor? There’s nothing in the laws of Koryfos to prevent it, as far as I can see.”
“Only if that centaur didn’t mind being on his own apart from all other centaurs anywhere,” Stan declared. “The strict ones would disapprove of him and the others would laugh and call him mad. They’d only obey him if he had their personal loyalty for family reasons.”
I thought of Knarros, who certainly seemed to be isolated from most other centaurs and who had, equally certainly, bent the truth to me, and I wondered. But Knarros was dead now. And I was fairly sure that Knarros had been loyal to the Emperor and then to the Emperor’s assassins for other reasons than the obvious human ones. One reason had to be that they all worshipped the same dreary bush-goddess. I must ask Stan about that. But the other reason was more pressing.
“Stan, can centaurs interbreed with humans at all?”
As I said this, I thought I heard a faint gasp from Nick – unless it was another murmur from Maree.
“That’s not thought terribly decent,” Stan said, “but it can happen. You get physical problems with it, of course. Most crossbreeds die stillborn, and you’d never get a human mother getting that far with a centaur’s child. They mostly miscarry fairly early on. If they do go to term, the foal’s too large, you see. But the other way round, human father, centaur mother: that does get to happen occasionally. I met the odd one or two. They tend to be a bit small. And the thoroughbred centaurs are painfully nice to them. Fall over backwards to make clear it’s not the foal’s fault – you know.”
That was it, I thought. We’re dealing with centaur sisters’ sons here. And their cousins, of course. “Thanks, Stan,” I said. “Nick.” Nick gave a startled, guilty movement beside me. “Nick, what’s your actual full name?”
“Nicholas,” Nick said. “Mallory.”
“Oh?” I said. “Not, for instance, Nickledes Timos something else?”
“Nichothodes,” Nick said irritably. “Actually.”
I nearly laughed. Everyone always hated you to get their name wrong. Stan did chuckle a bit as I asked, “And Maree’s?”
“She wouldn’t ever tell me properly,” Nick said sulkily, wretchedly. “But I know Maree’s short for Marina.”
Sempronia Marina Timosa, I thought, on a bloodstained handwritten scrap of a document clutched in a centaur’s hand. I wouldn’t have liked to admit to Sempronia either. “And what else?” I said.
“What do you mean what else?” Nick answered. “Nothing else.”
“Well for instance,” I said, “how you came to know about stripping people. You told me, quite accurately, that Maree had been stripped, but you didn’t get the word for it from me. I remember exactly what I said about cross-world transit to you, when I was trying to persuade you it was dangerous, and I know I never once used that term.”
No reply. Nick sat hunched forward, staring into the sodium gloom, to where the railings were now perceptibly growing thinner and beginning to lean outwards.
“For instance again,” I said, “I would very much like to know if you were really in the hedge, or whether you helped with the stripping.”
That galvanised him. He bounced round to face me, and his voice began booming, squeaking and blaring out of control as he shouted, “I did not! I was in the hedge! And I wouldn’t know how you strip someone anyway! I feel guilty as hell about it, damn you! But it all happened so quickly!” This last word, almost inevitably, came out as a high squeak. I could see Nick hear how silly he sounded and saw him try to get a grip on himself. He had my sympathy there. I hate being ridiculous too. “If you must know,” he said, in a careful monotone, “I was up on the other side of that hedge, like that soldier who came and talked to you was. We were arguing. I didn’t want to leave. It was all so interesting – those landcruisers, or whatever they were, and Jeffros had this assistant who showed us round, and he had wings. Honestly. And I wanted to know more. I was arguing with Maree about staying nearly all the time we were coming down the lane. And Maree said we’d been arrested once, and it was pretty clear we weren’t going to be able to go up the hill because something on the path stopped you. So she said we ought to go before someone told you we were here. And I said that Jeffros and his people had been perfectly nice to us… Anyway, I got into that vinefield and said I wasn’t coming, if you must know. And Maree said in that case I’d have to ask you for a lift home, and she hoped you tore lumps off me, and she stormed off down the lane to her car, waving her car keys. I sort of went along on the other side of the hedge, not saying anything and hoping she’d change her mind. But then – then Mum and Gram White suddenly came out round the car and Mum said something about ‘So you turned up at last, Maree!’ and they – they never even looked up at me. I don’t think they knew I was there. Honestly.”
“Yes,” I said. “I think I believe you. Getting into a hedge is the sort of damn fool thing one does when arguing with one’s elders. But what about all the rest?”
“We were lucky about the dust,” Nick said. “We nearly broke our necks getting to the car when we saw you were going in yours and Maree said you were bound to have seen us if you hadn’t been raising a duststorm behind you. When you turned towards the carriers, we sort of peeled off down another lane.”
“But what else?” I said.
“After we tried to go up the path on the hill and couldn’t, we walked to the carriers and soldiers came out and arrested us almost at once and—”
“No,” I said. “I mean all the rest.”
“What rest? Oh, you mean the centaur—” he began. I cut him off.
“Nice tries. No, I do not mean the centaur. I mean all the rest of your young life. I mean what sort of stuff has your mother been feeding you all these years?”
“I— Not for at least two years now,” Nick said, aggrieved and defensive. “Not since I told her I didn’t believe a word of it. I mean, it was so peculiar that I used a lot of it for my Bristolia game.”
He broke off on a rising intonation and turned to look at me hopefully. Was he, I wondered, totally selfish, or simply just young? Whichever he was, bribery might help. “All right,” I said, sighing slightly. “If you tell me what you’ve been told, I’ll take a look at your Bristolia game and see if it has possibilities. That do? I can’t promise more than that.”
I could see in the orange light that Nick’s face was vividly flushed. The light made him pale indigo briefly. “I didn’t mean— It’s just that I do mind about— Oh shit. Thanks. All right, but it’s not much really. Ever since I can remember Mum’s told me Ted Mallory isn’t really my father, and about two years ago I got fed up with that idea and decided I’d adopt Dad anyway because I quite like him, and Mum never would tell me who my real father was. All she ever said was that he was terribly important and I’d be important too one day when I got my inheritance. That’s not a nice feeling. I mean, he could be anybody, and it makes you feel snooty, and then you turn round and think, Why am I feeling so snooty about someone who may be horrible and may be a pack of nonsense anyway? But you can’t sort of shake it off. I’d rather be you. You’ve got real secrets to be snooty about.”
Stan smothered a chuckle. I said, “She must have told you more than that.”
“Most of it was about things like stripping and that there were hundreds of other universes and lots more magic in half of them,” Nick said dismissively. “Stuff about magic gives her a buzz. She was on a high Friday night about things Gram White had been telling her and she kept wanting to tell me until I said it was all boring nonsense and went away.”
Ruthless child. I was al
most tempted to feel sorry for Janine, murderess though she was. Still, I remembered being like this myself at Nick’s age. My own mother survived it. “Has she known Gram White for long?”
Nick frowned. “I – think so. It was funny – I thought I’d never seen him before when we all went to supper on Friday, but halfway through, he said something and put his head sideways, and I realised I had seen him, quite often, when I was small. He didn’t have a beard then. He used to come to our house a lot. But I don’t think Dad liked him, and he stopped coming.”
“Did he – Gram White – tell you the same sort of things as your mother?” I asked and then held my breath. Rather a lot of my ideas hung on Nick’s answer to this one.
Nick frowned again. “I – I don’t remember. But I do remember Mum talking like that in front of him – how I was going to be important and about magic and so on – and he never stopped her, or told her it was nonsense like most people would. I think. But I was very young then.”
“And Maree,” I asked. “How much of this did Maree—?”
Stan interrupted me. “Rupert, I’m afraid this girl’s not on the way out quite yet. She keeps moving about. And I think she’s even trying to say something.”
That lost me Nick’s attention completely. He scrambled round to kneel on his seat and stare anxiously over its back at Maree. I adjusted the rear-view mirror so that I could see her too. My stomach kicked and sank at the sight. My inspirational workings just now had definitely affected her. She was shifting about, tiny, fretful movements of her hands, head and hips. Behind the blank moon-circles of her glasses, her eyes seemed to be half open, pallid as the rest of her, and small murmurs came from her colourless lips. I watched, wretchedly wondering how much I had prolonged this semi-life of hers. A few hours? A day? More?
“Say that again,” Nick said, bending down to her.
It was unkind of me, but while his attention was elsewhere I tried him with another question that seemed important. People will answer absent-mindedly, with things they might otherwise not say, when their emotions are concentrated on something else. “Nick, did your mother ever tell you why Earth was codenamed Babylon?”
“Someone with a name like Chorus or something got stripped here. She laughs about it. She says he was trying to conquer Earth and made the Tower of Babel instead,” Nick replied. He was thinking almost purely of Maree. He leant down across her and said, slowly and clearly, “No, it’s all right. He’s not giving it until tomorrow afternoon. You haven’t missed it.”
So that was all right. The codename was nothing to do with deep secrets. It was one of the versions of the death of Koryfos. There was some evidence that he had tried to conquer Earth before he died. “What is she saying?” I asked Nick.
“She says she’s promised to go and listen to Dad give his Guest of Honour speech,” Nick said. He scrambled round to face me, a different boy, galvanised with hope. “She’s going to be all right, isn’t she? She’s going to grow her other half back!”
I stared at him, wondering how to say it. I was astonished at how much I hurt. Feelings I had been carefully trying not to admit to blocked my throat and tore at my chest. It was a dry, strong, physical ache, as if someone had forced me full of little broken pieces of concrete. I was not sure I could speak through it.
To my intense gratitude, Stan answered for me. “No, lad. It doesn’t work that way. The most that happens is that the strong ones, the ones with the big personality, can carry on a bit like this. Your sister’s one of the strong ones, that’s all.”
“Not sister – cousin,” Nick said. “How long?”
“I won’t kid you,” Stan said gently. “Sometimes they can drag on for years.”
With another scramble, Nick was glaring into my face. The orange lights of the empty bus station caught the darkness of his eyes so that they shone into mine like spots of red agony. It was like having my own pain glare into me. “You said there was another way!” he blared at me. “What are you waiting for? Do it – do it now!”
“I’m not sure I… it’s a deep secret,” I said wretchedly.
“I won’t say a word,” Nick said. “Just do it!”
“It isn’t that,” I protested. “It takes quite a time. It might not work. I’ve never done it. It needs at least one other Magid and someone to go with her, and I’m not sure we’ve got—”
“You don’t understand!” Nick roared in my face. “I wasn’t alive until Maree came to live with us! She makes that kind of difference – she’s that kind of person!”
“I know she is,” I said. “But we may not have—”
“Rupert,” said Stan, “the lad’s right. Use the Babylon secret. You have to get this girl back because the more I see, the more I think she’s Intended to be your new Magid.”
How was I to tell him that I was hesitating mostly because I wanted so badly to do it myself? Half the way I hurt was because I wanted to use Babylon. You are not supposed to use a deep secret if you think you are only doing it because you want to. And the thought of using it and getting it wrong was unbearable, almost as bad as the thought that I might be doing wrong because I wanted Maree so much. I took some of my feelings out by shouting at Stan. “Intended! Then why have they gone through all this trouble if it was what they Intended anyway? Why bring me into it at all?”
“You know they can’t work directly,” Stan said reproachfully. “It’s not allowed. You can have my verse when you want it. It won’t be the same as yours.”
“I hope you realise just what you’re asking, both of you!” I said. I think my voice cracked like Nick’s. “You’re asking me to do a risky major working, a working that can kill, in a place where I’ve got another major working already set up, and a wounded centaur to hide from two murderers, one of whom keeps tampering with the node. And the node’s so strong that, even with Will to help, I’m not sure I can do all the rest and keep the road open and look after Maree on the way—”
“I’ll look after Maree,” Nick put in. “I’m the one doing that.”
“…and then there’s Andrew as well as everything else!” I finished. “Yes, I think you’ll have to, Nick. I can’t do it all!”
“You’re forgetting what I always used to tell you, Rupert,” Stan said. “Take things one by one, as they come. There’s no need to load yourself with the lot. You just get your knickers in a twist.”
“I’ll do everything I can to help,” Nick said. “Anything. I promise.”
“All right,” I said. “All right.” I sat back, feeling a clean blast of relief. “As soon as we get loose from this bloody bus shelter then.”
We waited. It was not really long. Once anything is growing, it doubles in size steadily. The metal rails had taken on the segmented look of bamboos and were spreading, gracefully, out and up, carrying the fluted, leaf-like plastic canopy with them. This had turned darker and buds in it were thrusting long, half transparent fronds up. We could hear them rattle in the slight wind. The shelter was quite quickly taking on the aspect of an arcade of interlaced trees. My hands shook on the steering wheel while I waited for it to finish growing. Nick truly did not know what he was asking, of himself or me. But Stan did. The fact that I had wanted Stan to ask it only made me all the more nervous.
“About ready to go?” Stan suggested at length.
I turned on my headlights again and restarted the engine. The shelter was suddenly green, and not only green overhead. Spear-shaped green plastic leaves were actually beginning to sprout from the joints in the rails, translucent in the headlights. The whole growth rustled and creaked and swayed as the car crawled along inside it. I was rather impressed. The whole thing was so graceful that I felt quite regretful, when we came sliding out through the end of it with long shining leaves brushing the windows, because I then had to turn and suggest to the shelter that it went back to its former shape. I had to suggest with precision and concentration in order to leave Maree out of this part.
“Pity,” Stan remarked as the
green foliage began to wilt. “I’d love to have seen their faces when they found it.”
“Are you going to do the working now?” Nick asked.
“In the hotel, in my room,” I promised him. “I need to talk to Will first.”
I drove to the hotel as fast as the one-way system would let me. My poor car rattled and seemed to limp a little, with a clank underneath in the chassis somewhere. As we rattled into the market street, Nick said, “They keep a wheelchair behind the reception desk. Shall I get it?”
We stopped outside the main entrance for Nick to do that. His door would not open. I had to do a small working to spring the lock, and after that the door would not shut. We limped into the staff car park with the offside door swinging and stopped beside Will’s pseudo Land Rover. I was heartily glad to see it there. I needed Will. I could not even express to Stan how much. I sent off a strong call to Will to meet me by the lifts and then set about forcing the other doors open.
“You need my verse?” Stan asked.
“Please,” I said, with one foot up on the driver’s door. It took a severe kick to open it.
“Here it is then,” Stan said. His creacking voice recited:
“How do I go to Babylon?
Outside of here and there.
Am I crossing a bridge or climbing a hill?
Yes, both before you’re there.
If you follow outside of day and night
You can be there by candle-light.
“There,” he said. “Does that make any sense with what you’ve got?”
“Quite a lot,” I said. “My verse suggests it’s like that too, but mine’s got a warning in it as well. I’m hoping Will’s verse is going to be the missing link.”
I had just wrenched the rear door open (bent, dented and scratched) when Nick arrived with the wheelchair. Together we manoeuvred Maree out of the back seat and sat her in it. I could tell that my accidental working was still operating on her. She seemed heavier than she had been. She sat slumped in the chair, looking very small, waving her hands and muttering. I made Nick walk ahead in case she fell out, waved to Stan, and wheeled her cautiously and carefully into the hotel.