‘Now, let me make everything clear. I am a sort of mathematician, and I got myself into a situation where I had to do many years’ work in a couple of days. The only way of doing that was to step out of time, so to speak. So I came here. I arrived in 1936.’
Rosie seemed to cope with that very well.
‘And now you’re stuck, and want to go home again.’
‘Sort of. I need to make a few modifications before I do. I wanted to discover something fundamental about reality. My boss wanted – or wants – to make lots of money, in ways which I think are dangerous. I have to stop him.’
‘Is it really dangerous?’
‘Yes. It is the most dangerous thing anyone has ever invented. Nuclear bombs can destroy the present. This can destroy the past and the future as well. Which, if you see my point, I think is a bad idea.’
Rosie chewed a piece of chicken. ‘Is it really true that in the future we all have lots of money, and no one works because machines do everything, and everyone is happy? I saw that on the television.’
‘Never underestimate the ability of humanity to mess things up. There are thirty-five billion people in the world, and most live lives which I consider miserable and pointless. Or I used to think that. Now I’m not so sure. Everything is run by a small elite of specially selected experts. Much of the planet is uninhabitable. All animals except us and things we eat have been sent into extinction. Democracy has been abolished as inefficient, everyone is automatically tracked every second of their lives, and dreams have been replaced by advertising. Most people are happy, though. The drugs in their food make certain of that, except for the few people who refuse to take them. They’re really miserable. We call them renegades and lock them up occasionally.’
‘For not being happy?’
‘A crime against Society. They occasionally go on marches shouting slogans like “Glad to be grumpy”. They get locked up or have their brains wiped.’
‘That’s not what we’ve been promised,’ Rosie protested. ‘What were you?’
‘I was one of the elite.’
‘You should be ashamed of yourself, then.’
‘I am increasingly so. It didn’t occur to me that it was anything other than natural at the time, and there was not much I could have done about it in any case. One person cannot change the world. Except, of course, that now I can.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Once my tests are done and I am confident it will work, I think I can alter a few things. Then I can safely go back and take my knowledge with me. Immensely complicated; it’ll take at least another decade.’
‘Won’t you be a bit old by then?’
Angela looked puzzled. ‘I’m good for another eighty years at least,’ she said stiffly, ‘once I take another shot of treatment. I’m only ninety-three.’
‘My grandmother’s ninety-three. You don’t look like her.’
‘I should hope not.’
‘What about Anterwold?’
‘Oh, that’s just to calibrate the machinery.’
‘So what happens to it?’
‘In due course, I will shut it down. I’ll need the machine and there can’t be two universes existing simultaneously for ever.’
‘What about all my friends? Jay, and Pamarchon, and Aliena? What about Lady Catherine and Henary?’
‘They’ll just be as they were before. In a latent state.’
‘They’ll vanish? Be eradicated?’
‘Anterwold only exists inside the confines of the machinery, you know. It’s not real, and it had better not become real, either.’
‘It seems rather nicer than where you come from.’
‘You have seen just a small part of it. I have no idea what it is really like. Not that it matters. There is no chance of it achieving permanence.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because … Because I say so.’
Rosie studied her suspiciously. ‘That’s what my mum says when she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Are you sure you know what you’re doing?’
‘It is a little complicated at the moment. I couldn’t shut it down because you were in it. That locked it into a sort of fake permanence.’
‘Good,’ Rosie said.
‘It wasn’t good, and it was all your fault.’
‘You didn’t put up a sign saying No Entry. What did you think would happen if someone saw a forest in Professor Lytten’s cellar?’
‘I certainly didn’t think anyone would sneak around someone else’s house, look through their possessions, then go and join a party they hadn’t been invited to. It was very nosy of you.’
‘You were careless and now you are proposing to snuff out my friends. I don’t have many.’
‘Please don’t start to be self-pitying. It’s unbecoming. You must have friends here.’
Rosie shook her head. ‘Not really.’
‘I’m clever, but not that clever. If people in Anterwold think you are wonderful, then it must be because you are. Which means that there is no reason why you shouldn’t be pursued as ardently here as Pamarchon was pursuing you there.’
‘He was running away from me. I was pursuing him.’
‘A minor detail.’
‘Listen. Does this place exist or not?’
Angela sighed. ‘That is a meaningless question. As I say, it depends on your viewpoint.’
‘You said you couldn’t switch it off because I was in it.’
‘True.’
‘I’m here now.’
‘True.’
‘When you went into the cellar an hour ago, did you manage to switch it off then?’
Angela looked a bit shifty. ‘No,’ she admitted.
‘Aha!’ Rosie said in triumph.
Angela put down her glass. ‘You’re annoying me.’
‘You don’t know what is going on.’
‘I am going to take you home, settle down to a night’s thinking and find out. In the morning I will go back to Henry’s house and have another go. I’m meant to be going to help him with something anyway.’
*
Once I had taken Rosie back home – and she walked through the door like one of Dante’s sinners heading for punishment – I felt free to get to work. Firstly, of course, I needed all the information I could possibly gather together. I had ideas, my intuition was working just fine; it was the context, the overall framework that was lacking.
I could guess, but I didn’t like doing that for long; it always made me feel a little unbalanced. But all I could do practically at the moment was go back to the machinery and run some tests to get the basic information I needed. Then settle down, figure out what was wrong and work out a way to pull the plug. It was fortunate that I had promised to help Henry out the next day with his translation. What was that about? I did very much hope that he wasn’t frittering away his time on nonsense when he had a fantasy to dream about.
The trouble was, I knew already what was going on. My instincts were good enough for that. There was still a foreign body in Anterwold that had originated here. It had to be that; there could be no other access to it, and no other reason why it was locked into existence. Only the cat and Rosie had been in there, and both had come back, so by a process of elimination there could be only one, bizarre, explanation.
Bizarre but not impossible. Transmission did not mean the actual physical movement of all the molecules and atoms and electrons which constitute matter. It was the transmission of information only, which was used to reorganise ever so slightly the universe at the point of arrival. As anyone who has ever used a computer knows, there are few simpler tasks than copying data. On transmission, the body is converted into information which the machine stores – a very great deal of it, admittedly, but in principle a simple task. This is then projected outwards into the new destination. A copy is kept, however, for the return, as it is simpler and quicker to modify a given set of information than it is to reproduce it entirely. The machine was set up to reject any body of ma
tter which did not have that copy in store, to prevent people from Anterwold coming through to Henry’s cellar. I’d instructed it to ignore clothes and other insubstantial material, otherwise a bit of fluff might have caused problems, but not anything else. What I suspected was that Rosie, on her return, had confused the machinery because of those rings. It rejected her, and kept her in Anterwold, because it did not recognise her. At the same time, it let her through, because it did.
The result had been a duplication. If I was right, there were now two Rosies, and in that case I had one massive headache. I was concerned and, much to my surprise, the main focus of my concern was for Rosie herself. I should have paid more attention to that. I felt protective. I had enjoyed her company, her questions, her cheek and her criticisms. I was far fonder of her than I should have been, considering that I had only known her for a couple of hours and she had already given me grief.
32
Discovering what must have happened to Rosalind after she disappeared was not that difficult; the path led through the decorative woods, tended and trimmed, which formed the outer part of the Willdon gardens. It twisted and turned so that occasionally the walker was presented with a handsome vista, back towards the house or outwards to the hills beyond. It was very pleasing and carefully thought out; indeed, it was part of a much grander plan which encircled the house entirely, each punctuation point of column, fountain or grotto arranged in a symbolic pattern lauding the resilience of the domain and its necessity to the unfolding of the Story.
Not that Jay had any time or patience for such things, even had he noticed them. As far as he was concerned it was a path, no more nor less, which led past a small tumbledown cottage, on the steps of which was an old man sitting slumped over with his head in his hands.
‘Ho there!’ Jay called. ‘Good morning, sir.’
The man slowly lifted his head and looked at Jay with such a pained expression that Jay wondered whether he was a madman. It was customary for great owners to give room to such people; villages did so as well with hermits like Jaqui. The foolish and the weak-headed deserved charity, and it was a goodness to give them care.
‘It is not a good morning to me,’ he said. ‘I have never known a worse.’
‘You are injured! What has happened to you?’
It was true. The old man – not that old, perhaps, but he had such an air of weariness that it was easy to think him ancient – was naturally cadaverous; his hands bony, his hair lank and greasy. His face had the yellow pallor of ill-health and poor eating, and that, more than anything, set off and highlighted the large purple-black bruise on his left cheek, so prominent and striking that it dominated his face entirely.
‘You need assistance,’ Jay said. ‘Tell me where there is some water and a cloth.’
He didn’t reply, but Jay was not to be deflected. He found a cloth and drew some cold fresh water from the well, then settled down to apply it to the man’s cheek. He winced and gritted his teeth at the pressure, but did not complain.
‘I know you!’ Jay said as he worked. ‘I saw you last night in a boat on the lake. Your name is Rambert, no?’
‘That’s right. I was there, listening to that hell-cat of mine murder music in the way only she can manage.’
‘Do you mean Aliena? She was wonderful, I thought.’
‘No doubt. You have the look of stupidity about you.’
‘What was wrong with it?’ Jay asked, determined not to take offence. In truth, Rambert was no worse than some of the teachers he’d had in the past few years.
‘Oh, it was lovely,’ said Rambert bitterly. ‘They adored her, didn’t they? Such soaring tones, such a beautiful voice. So tender and moving. I imagine a few of the weak-minded were almost in tears.’
‘Well … yes.’
‘She can never resist playing to an audience. As if that mattered. She destroys, ignores tradition. She mangles the beauties of the forms, which reflect the heavens and cannot be changed. She is so full of herself she thinks rules are for other people. She, the great Aliena, can do as she pleases. So she makes her cheap effects, and weak, ill-educated people like you applaud and encourage her, and the great fabric of music is shredded. Every time she opens her mouth it becomes a smaller thing, more like peasant entertainment. But all she wants is the applause and the adoration. She doesn’t care what damage she causes to get it.’
He looked at Jay, one eye closed from the pain of his bruise. ‘You’re a student. How do you feel about people changing a story just because the listeners might like it better? Eh? That’s what she does.’
He was so despairing that Jay could not think of anything cheering to say.
‘How did you get that bruise?’
‘I fell.’
‘I don’t think so. Who attacked you?’
‘That I couldn’t say,’ he replied. He seemed hesitant, shifty even. ‘It was dark, and I was very tired.’
‘It must have been a hefty blow,’ Jay observed. ‘Has anything been stolen?’
‘How would I know? I doubt it. I don’t have anything.’
Jay got up from the step and walked into the little cottage, which was dirty and untidy. All around were piles of music and musical instruments – very valuable for those who could play them – but he could see no signs that anything had been taken. The cottage’s main room had a table and some chairs and a large fireplace for heat and cooking. A small cupboard contained such pots and pans as Rambert possessed. Nothing appeared to have been disturbed, although it was so disorganised it was difficult to tell.
A small door led through to a chamber which had on the floor Rambert’s cotton-stuffed mattress. At the foot was another, smaller one which presumably was used by Aliena. Jay felt his skin prickle.
Thrown across the bed was a dress of incomparable beauty and richness, golden blue and glistening in the shards of light cutting through the gaps in the shuttered window. There could be no doubt. It was the dress that Rosalind had worn the night before.
*
The discovery gave the pursuit a sense of urgency, as the circumstances that Jay related suggested she could be in considerable danger. The young man – still afraid of punishment but knowing that he had at least been of some use now – had run to the house carrying the evidence and found Henary and Lady Catherine deep in conversation. He held the dress out before him.
‘Where did you get that?’ Lady Catherine asked.
‘In a cottage in the woods. Rambert lives there. He was attacked there last night. There’s no sign of Rosalind, though. Someone saw her walking into the woods after the man she had partnered.’
Henary and Lady Catherine exchanged glances.
‘This dress was taken off quite roughly,’ Catherine said. ‘See – it’s torn down the side. Not greatly, but it was evidently removed in a hurry. You would expect greater care for something so valuable. Are you sure Rambert was telling the truth? Did he describe his attacker?’
‘He said he didn’t see anyone. I think he was too drunk. As for the dress, he said he had no idea how it got there.’
‘How do you estimate his account?’
‘I didn’t think he was telling me everything,’ Jay said. ‘But he was not obviously lying. He was more interested in his pupil than anyone else. She’s vanished as well.’
Lady Catherine – who had, Jay noted, taken control of the conversation, with Henary standing quietly at the side – pursed her lips. ‘So we either have a mysterious stranger attacking Rambert and perhaps Rosalind, or maybe Rambert attacking her.’
‘Or maybe neither,’ Henary added. ‘All we have is a sequence of events. We know they must be connected, but we do not know how. It is very worrying, nonetheless.’
‘Extremely.’
‘We must move quickly. Now I must recommend a proper search party, and I think it would be best to detain Rambert for a while. I would be distressed indeed if a man of his distinction had committed an abominable crime, but all things are possible.’
‘No. No one must go into the forest for two days except me.’
‘But Lady Catherine …’
‘You know the reason.’
Henary seemed for a moment as though he was about to argue. Then his shoulders sagged a little. ‘I wish we could pursue them further, though.’
‘That is out of my hands. I must go to the Abasement.’
‘But we must do something. She may be in danger,’ Jay said once a very disappointed Henary had left. In truth he did not understand what had happened, but he knew that, for whatever reason, the immediate pursuit of Rosalind had been postponed. ‘The trail is still fresh. If we wait even an hour …’
For the first time, Jay was alone with the Lady of Willdon and his worry overwhelmed his discretion. She was staring out of the window thoughtfully, watching as a small group went around packing away the tables and collecting the bowls and plates and glasses from the night before. Jay knew he had no right to say anything, but he was astonished by the lack of urgency. Lady Catherine regarded him coolly.
‘When I say it is not possible, I mean just that. The matter is closed.’
Jay realised he had overstepped the mark, but still could not restrain himself. ‘Why?’ he said. ‘Surely it is better …’
‘It is the day of Abasement,’ she said. ‘Did you not realise that was the purpose of all the festivities yesterday?’
Jay shook his head. He had not the slightest idea what she was talking about.
‘Walk with me,’ she said, and Jay, knowing a command when he heard one, fell cautiously in line with her as she led him out of the building and towards a little area of fruit trees – damson and peach and plum and apple – with a path that led through into the far garden.
‘I am the Lord and Lady of Willdon. My position is one of high authority and great power. You, for example. You trespassed on my lands. Once you were caught I could have had you declared a slave. I could have flogged you. I could have cut off your hands or your head. I need consult no one for such a decision, and answer to no one after it.’