‘Who forbids it? Is it God?’ asked Silver.
‘God does not exist any more. The Quantum controls Time.’
‘Well, what is the Quantum?’ asked Silver stubbornly.
‘That will be too hard for you to understand; you are only young, and you live in the past. In your world there are Governments, Parliaments, the Central Bank, the Law, the Military, Presidents, even Kings and Queens, even God. In the future, all those things, all those institutions, are taken over by the Quantum. It’s much simpler for everyone.’
Silver was thinking hard. At Greenwich, hidden behind the fireplace, she had heard Regalia Mason talk about her company in America called Quanta – so what did Quanta have to do with the Quantum?
‘It’s very kind of you to take us home,’ said Silver, ‘but can’t we stay for a few days and look around, as we’ve come so far? The policemen said there were some sands just down the road. Can we go there?’
Regalia Mason’s eyes flashed cold fire. ‘I am sorry to disappoint you, but you see you cannot go anywhere from here. You have not been through Quarantine.’
‘Quarantine? What, like a dog when you come back from abroad?’
‘More or less,’ said Regalia Mason. ‘In the future all diseases from the past have been wiped out. Think how awful it would be if some of those diseases were to return.’
‘I haven’t got any diseases! I haven’t even sneezed since last September.’
‘We mustn’t take any chances, must we? Now wait here while I organise things. I’ll send in some lemonade and chocolate cake.’
Regalia Mason smiled her white-and-snow smile and left the room.
Silver wondered if all not-to-be-trusted grown-ups handed out lemonade and chocolate cake? It was what Abel Darkwater had given her. Well, she wasn’t going to make the same mistake as Tinkerbell.
‘Don’t eat whatever she gives us!’ she said to Gabriel, as a guard came in with a tray.
Gabriel sniffed the food. He had a nose as keen as a mole’s.
‘It be drug food,’ he said. ‘I smell it on the cake.’
‘We’ve got to escape before she comes back,’ said Silver. ‘Do something, Gabriel!’
‘Me?’
‘Can’t you dig a hole or something?’
As Regalia Mason walked tall above the milling crowds at Checkpoint Zero, only one thing preoccupied her; the future is not fixed. Time forks. Every possibility is always present, though only one outcome is chosen. But Regalia Mason was a Time traveller. She had visited the future, and she knew that the Quantum controlled the Universe. All she was doing now was making sure that the future happened as it should.
Abel Darkwater she did not consider a threat, although she knew full well what he wanted. He was not a danger, but he was capable of slowing things down. It was unlikely that he could alter the course of events, but his meddling might cause a hesitation in Time, and that might be enough to upset Regalia Mason’s plans in the twenty-first century. It was essential that the Time Tornadoes be frightening enough to persuade all Western governments to cooperate with her company, Quanta. Once Quanta began to take control of Time – at the world’s request, of course – the future was history.
Foolish to let a little child get in the way …
Preoccupied as she was with these thoughts, she failed to notice the arrival of Abel Darkwater at Checkpoint Zero. She was not the only one who failed to notice; he walked straight through the police and their dogs, invisible in his woollen cloak, and went towards St Peter’s, where he knew one of the Popes personally.
He was just in time for Mass.
Preoccupied as she was, she did not realise that Gabriel had noticed a trapdoor in the floor of the backroom where they were waiting for Regalia Mason to return.
‘It be a drop and a tunnel, but narrow as hope.’ He lowered his small strong body down. ‘Will you come after me, and follow me, and I will make it open?’
Silver peered down. It was worm-size. Weren’t there things in space called worm-holes? Holes that connected one part of Time to another? Where would they end up?
‘I’m scared, Gabriel,’ she said. ‘Maybe we should just let her send us home. You’re not meant to be here, anyway. We’re only kids – everyone here is eight feet tall. And now she’s here as well, I bet Abel Darkwater is on his way. We should go home.’
Silver went to the window; it was barred. She went to the door and opened it slightly; a guard stood on the outside, gun over his shoulder. Oh, why had she ever got herself into this? She wished she was back at Tanglewreck. She even wished she was back at Tanglewreck with Mrs Rokabye.
As she stood, hesitating and miserable, Gabriel said quietly, ‘Remember what you have come to do.’
Suddenly, in her mind, like she was watching a video, she saw an image of Abel Darkwater, and how he had clubbed Micah with his truncheon, and how Gabriel had leapt off the bridge to save her, when he could have left her on her own for ever.
They could all have left her alone for ever. They didn’t even know her but they had cared about her. Her eyes filled with tears.
She didn’t understand a thing about the Timekeeper, but she couldn’t give up now – for Gabriel and for Micah, and for Eden, and the Throwbacks, she had to try her best. And for her father too … they had all tried their best for her.
She stood up straight, took a deep breath, and turned round to Gabriel …
Who
had
gone
down
a hole.
The bright lights and fresh air were making him feel ill, though he had not said anything to Silver. He was determined to take his chance underground, and to Silver’s astonishment he began to do something she had never seen him do before.
He was standing in the hole, his shoulders and head at floor level. He clasped his hands across his chest, so that his elbows stuck out on either side, and he started to turn, slowly at first, then faster and faster. He was making himself into a human corkscrew.
Earth came flying out of the hole round Silver’s feet as Gabriel drilled himself deeper and deeper. She heard him calling her, and then she heard Regalia Mason’s voice, flirting with the guards.
She jumped after Gabriel, holding her nose.
No way out but through …
Audience with the Pope
Abel Darkwater was talking to Pope Gregory XIII. ‘Ah, how long is it since we saw each other last?’
‘My son, there is no Time here, and no clock to measure it by. We are in Eternity now.’
Abel Darkwater knew that they were at Checkpoint Zero on the Einstein Line, but he knew too that the Popes liked to believe in Eternity.
And this particular Pope had no regard for Time – in 1582 he had chopped ten days out of the calendar in order to align the all-important feast of Easter with its appointed date. The Papal Bull read, ‘Let it be done that after the fourth of October, the following day shall be the fifteenth. Amen.’
Anyone who refused to follow this new calendar was branded a heretic. For a long time – in fact, 170 years – this included every person in England.
Abel Darkwater knew that a man like this, who wanted Time on his own terms, was a man he could make a bargain with.
‘We may be in Eternity,’ began Abel Darkwater, ‘but Time is still moving forward in the rest of the Universe, and many things have happened to displease you. There is no God and there is no Church.’
‘I could have you burned at the stake for saying such things, Son of Satan.’
‘I have been burned at the stake,’ said Abel Darkwater mildly. ‘It was unpleasant but I am prepared to forget about it today.’
‘What do you want, foolish man?’
‘If I said to you that we could reverse Time, that we could plan a Universe where the Church was again all-powerful, and the Pope as the Head of the Church, the most powerful man of them all, what would you say to me?’
The Pope looked round out of his hooded eyes. There was no one li
stening.
‘I know enough to know that in the twenty-fourth century the Holy Roman Church collapses and the Vatican becomes a Museum.’
‘And do you know that what you describe begins in the twenty-first century when a company called Quanta learns how to control Time?’ said Abel Darkwater.
‘Quanta? You are talking about the Quantum?’ asked the Pope.
‘As it is called now and afterwards, oh yes, but the Quantum is all-powerful. Quanta was not all-powerful. Quanta was a multi-national corporation, an important bully, but not all-powerful, oh no.’
‘What are you offering me, son of man?’ said the Pope in a whisper.
‘A chance to turn back the clock!’ replied Darkwater triumphantly.
‘How?
‘There is only one way to turn back the clock, and that is by finding the clock itself – the Timekeeper. Oh yes, surely you remember the Timekeeper?’
The Pope leaned back in his purple chair, his long nose resting against his long ringed fingers. Abel Darkwater’s round eyes were like two dark-lit orbs hypnotising him. His mind was moving back through red robes and purple corridors. Yes, he remembered, yes, he remembered, he remembered, and his memories swirled like smoke across a mirror …
Ficino, a boy with burning eyes running through the streets of Rome.
Heretical talk of an after-life without Heaven or Hell.
A green lion with its paws cut off.
A wolf caught in a jar.
The arrest of Maria Prophetessa.
The torture chamber. The rack. The pin and screw.
His private chambers at the Vatican. The heavy dark furniture, the fruit on the table, the long windows open to the evening, the faint sound of the choirboys singing a Te Deum. A new machine for smashing a man’s hand under torture. His prayer book, jewelled and worn. A decanter of wine.
The smoky memories cleared. He was through the mirror now. He was back in his own past.
He poured the wine. He drank. He was waiting.
Gabriel and Silver came choking up out of the well, and lay down flat on their faces. As Silver opened her eyes, she saw an orange rolling towards her. She put out her hand, took it, pulled off the peel, and gave half to Gabriel.
The sun was shining. The day was boiling hot. They were in a walled courtyard garden where beautiful fruit trees, oranges and lemons, were growing in pots. They could hear a choir singing a little way off. Above them was a wide stone window opening on to a small balcony. The window was open. The voices of two men could be heard coming from the room.
‘Where are we?’ whispered Silver.
‘I know not,’ said Gabriel. ‘I digged and digged and then I felt me pulled as if by a wind, it was like a wind.’
Hungry and thirsty and dusty, they ate two more oranges each, and looked around. The garden had peaches growing against the wall, and a winged cherub spouted water in a raised lead fountain. The garden was beautiful and deserted.
‘There’s a ladder,’ said Silver. ‘We could climb over the wall.’
There was a gardener’s ladder with a wide bottom and a triangle top for propping into the fruit trees. Gabriel went to drag it over to the wall, when Silver heard a commotion and beckoned him back to hide.
Through the little door into the garden came two men dressed in strange uniforms. A woman walked proudly between them.
‘It’s her!’ gasped Silver.
It was, unmistakably her, though very different. Regalia Mason, her hair as black as it would be blonde. Her eyes with their same fierce and proud stare.
She spoke haughtily in a language Silver didn’t understand.
‘’Tis Italian,’ said Gabriel. ‘My mother Eden be Italian, you do recall. These men be leading the woman to the Pope!’
‘The Pope!’ said Silver. ‘Then this must be the Vatican, like on the Einstein Line, but we’ve gone back in Time. Miles back in Time! Look at their shoes and clothes and stuff. They look like some of the people in the paintings on the wall at Tanglewreck. What shall we do?’
‘I know not. Wait – see what they do.’
One of the guards took out a horn and blew it. A face appeared at the open window. It was a man dressed in red; red robes and a red skullcap, with a big silver cross hanging round his neck.
‘A cardinal!’ whispered Gabriel.
‘Let the captive be brought forward. His Holiness commands it.’
The guards took Regalia Mason through a tiny locked door. Silver and Gabriel heard them lock it noisily again on the inside.
Gabriel looked round quickly, then darted over to the ladder. He propped the ladder against the wall, climbed up it, and over on to the balcony.
No! thought Silver, longing to call him back and knowing she couldn’t. There was only one thing she could do, and so she ran across the flagstones, and climbed up after him.
Kneeling side by side, they peered in.
The room was dark, even though the day was bright and the sun was hot.
They were directly behind the massy carved chair of the Pope himself. On the wall opposite him was a mirror flanked with gold candlesticks. The candles were lit, in spite of the sun. They could see the shadowed face of the Pope in the mirror, which meant that if they were not careful …
Suddenly the door opened, and in came Regalia Mason, her wrists bound behind her back. The Pope raised his hand. She was released. He raised his hand again, and the guards left the room, bowing and walking backwards. The red cardinal sat in a corner ready to take notes.
The Pope spoke. ‘So, Maria Prophetessa. We find that you still pursue your sorcery.’
‘I am an alchemist, not a street magician.’
The Pope nodded, his fingers tapping his lips. ‘What marvel have you brought me to buy your freedom?’
‘I have brought you Time itself.’
He watched her open the bag. He half expected the Universe would fall out, rolled up like a ball, hidden in its own thoughts. Had not St Augustine said that before Time began, the Universe had hidden in its own thoughts, waiting?
He understood that; each of us is a tiny universe, waiting.
He waited. From the bag she drew out a timepiece, bigger than a table clock but less grand than a papal clock. Angels decorated its double face. The twenty-four segments of the hours were etched with pictures. She said that each segment was an hour and that each hour was a century. The clock began with the birth of Christ, and it would run until the End of Time.
On the stroke of midnight on the last day of the twenty- fourth century, so the prophecy ran, Time would cease for ever.
The clock now stood in the sixteenth century, at 1582. Pope Gregory turned it over in his hands while she talked.
He smiled when he saw the pictures; he knew what they were, invented over two hundred years earlier for family friends of his, the Visconti of Milano. They were known as the Tarot cards. Some called them a harmless card game, some said they were much more; something occult and forbidden.
The zero hour showed the picture of a carnival Fool in tattered clothes, his little dog jumping beside him, as he stepped cheerfully off the edge of a cliff.
The first hour showed the Magician, Lord of the Universe.
The second hour showed the High Priestess, sitting between her pillars, Keeper of the Mysteries.
The third hour showed the Empress, Mother of the World.
The fourth hour showed the Emperor, worldly ruler of this realm.
The fifth hour showed the Pope himself, hooded and veiled, all-powerful between Heaven and Earth.
The sixth hour showed the Lovers – three of them. He sometimes called this picture the Eternal Triangle.
The seventh hour showed the Chariot Driver driving his Chariot, pulled by black and white sphinxes; worldly success and secret knowledge.
The eighth hour showed a woman taming a lion.
The ninth hour showed the Hermit, lantern in hand.
The tenth hour showed Dame Fortune turning her wheel.
&nbs
p; The eleventh hour showed Justice, sword and scales hanging by her.
The twelfth hour, which was the zero hour, returned to the Fool.
The Pope turned the clock to its reverse face and scrutinised what he saw.
At the thirteenth hour was a man dangled upside down, one leg crossed over the other.
The fourteenth hour showed an angel, one foot on sea and one on shore, pouring green liquid from one gold cup to another.
The fifteenth hour showed the Devil.
At the sixteenth hour, a tower struck by lightning exploded.
The seventeenth hour showed a naked star-maiden by her pool pouring golden water.
The eighteenth hour bayed the Moon, silver and mysterious over a deep pool.
The nineteenth hour showed the Sun.
The twentieth hour showed Judgement: an angel with a trumpet.
The twenty-first hour showed the World, spinning and glorious, and complete.
And here the Pope frowned and paused, because his cards were only twenty-two – three rows of seven according to the sacred numbers, and the zero of the Fool. What were these other images he saw now? These final two?
Maria Prophetessa was smiling.
Cut in silver and gold were two images of the future. One was a road winding through the stars. The other was a child holding a clock.
Out on the balcony, Silver felt for the bag with the two pictures in it. Yes, it was still there, but how could they be in two places at the same time? But this isn’t the same Time, she thought to herself.
Pope Gregory looked carefully at the picture of the child and the clock. The clock was the clock he held in his hands. And the child?
‘The Timekeeper,’ said Maria Prophetessa.
The Pope poured them both wine. He reminded the woman he could have her burned and tortured.
‘For keeping a clock?’ She smiled again, her smile cold in the heat of the Italian summer evening. She was not afraid of him. He was slightly afraid of her, even though she was a woman and therefore inferior.