‘Then I thought I had it, I thought it was mine, but two of the original pictures were missing, the most important pictures of all. The pictures of the prophecy.’
Abel Darkwater came forward, his face pushed up against the glass of the alembic. ‘Do you have those pictures, Silver? Do you? Do you?’
Silver was listening through the fever of the heat. Her hand went slowly towards the jute bag – why not just give him the pictures now? She was delirious with the fire and her slow suffocation. Yes, she should give him what he wanted, then she would be free, then she would go home.
She tapped feebly on the glass. Abel Darkwater looked triumphant. Then, not knowing where she found the strength to fight him, she shook her head.
‘Burn, then!’ said Darkwater. ‘I shall melt you like a candle over a fire.’
The Pope had taken out his hourglass and was computing the allotted hour of torture.
As he toyed with it, a strong arm slammed itself like a lever under his throat and, as he choked and fainted, Abel Darkwater turned round to see Gabriel running towards the alembic.
‘Stand still, you mongrel,’ shouted Darkwater, and Gabriel’s whole body jerked to a stop. Rooted to the spot by magic, he was unable to move his arms or legs. He turned his eyes desperately to Silver, who was now too weak with heat to make any sign.
Abel Darkwater took a rope from his pack and bound Gabriel tightly.
‘You fool! As low and stupid as your father Micah. Shall I tell you something? If she dies, it is your father Micah’s doing. He will be her murderer, not I. If he had sold me the Timekeeper in 1762, how many centuries of waiting could have been erased! How many lives might have been spared!’
He turned back to Silver. ‘You are the child of the prophecy. You are the child, you must be sacrificed. You will tell me where the Timekeeper is, and even if you do not, your blood will lead me to it. I will draw your blood and divine you, as I did the falcons of the Nile.’ Abel Darkwater pressed his face against the steaming jar. ‘You will tell me or your blood will tell me.’
‘She cannot tell you because she does not know.’
There was Regalia Mason, tall and magnificent in the entrance to the chamber. ‘I am the one who knows.’
Abel Darkwater’s face was filled with rage. ‘You! Always you! And yet this child’s own father was bringing the watch to me. I drew it to me with centuries of patience. The Timekeeper was about to be mine!’
Regalia Mason stepped forward. ‘I could not help thinking that was a mistake.’
The Swerve
The Rivers had set off on the 8:05 to London. They had Abel Darkwater’s address: Tempus Fugit, 3 Fournier Street, Spitalfields, London E1. He had sent them tickets for the train and a fifty-pound note for expenses.
Soon after their daughter Silver was born, Roger and Ruth River had received a letter from Abel Darkwater asking them about a clock called the Timekeeper. It had come to his attention, he said, that they had recently discovered this family heirloom. Could he come and see it? Would they like to sell it?
Silver’s father had been very clear; the answer was no, and no. He knew the story of the clock, though not its power, and not the prophecy, but he was determined to keep it where it had been left for safekeeping all those years ago.
‘Not everything in this life is for sale,’ he said to his wife Ruth. ‘There are things that matter more than money. Our family was given this clock in trust. In a way, it’s not really ours.’
Every year Abel Darkwater wrote again, and every year the answer was the same – no, and no.
Then one year Abel Darkwater wrote and asked if they would simply bring the clock to London so that he could show it to certain eminent collectors, and perhaps make some drawings of its workings, and take some photographs. He might even repair it for them; he understood it was no longer working.
He offered them the sum of £10,000.
‘Ten thousand pounds!’ Roger River said to his wife. ‘We can repair the roof, fix the gutters, and have the windows painted. That would be marvellous! Poor old house is falling to pieces.’
‘What if he doesn’t give us the clock back?’ said Ruth.
‘Of course he will give it back! He is a reputable dealer. I checked up on him. And he’s given us insurance – and I rang the insurance this morning. It’s all above board. We need the money, Ruth.’
‘I know we do. I just feel uneasy.’
‘Don’t worry. We’ll never sell him the clock. Never.’
The train was comfortable, warm and quiet. They were sitting in First Class reading the papers and drinking coffee.
The train slowed down. The train stopped. There were no announcements. Roger got up to see what was happening. Funny, but there was no one else in the carriage now. He walked on through the buffet. Empty. He walked into the Standard Class carriages. Empty. He looked out of the window. He couldn’t see anything because there was a mist.
He began to feel uneasy himself. He took out his phone. There was no signal. He walked quickly back to where he had left Ruth. She was gone. In her place was a very beautiful, rather frightening woman who smiled at him as if she knew him.
‘I’m afraid there has been a change of plan,’ said Regalia Mason.
The Timekeeper
There is no need to boil her alive,’ said Regalia Mason.
‘She is in league with you!’ said Abel Darkwater. ‘I will not spare her.’
‘I am in league with no one,’ replied Regalia Mason. ‘The Quantum is itself.’
‘Only God is Himself,’ shouted the Pope.
‘Go back to the Vatican,’ said Regalia Mason. ‘We built it for you.’
She went to the alembic and passed her hand through the green flames that flickered beneath it. Instantly they died down. ‘I remember a few of our old tricks,’ she said, smiling her cold smile at Abel Darkwater. ‘You remained as you were, I changed; that is the difference between us.’
‘You abandoned the Way.’
‘I abandoned magic for science, yes, and for so many years you were able to achieve by magic what science could only dream of – but now, now what do you say?’
Abel Darkwater said nothing. Cold green flames were twisting round his body.
Regalia Mason continued to speak. ‘Time travel, infinite life, the secrets of the Universe, all the things that you sought, that we sought together, through the dark material of the Arcana, have become real through the ambition of science.’
Abel Darkwater answered her in tongues of flame. ‘You cannot control Time without the Timekeeper.’
Regalia Mason laughed. ‘Shall I tell you something, Abel Darkwater? You still believe in the world as an object. Look at you, muttering over the alembic, coaxing molten metals, liquefying fixed bodies, juggling with all the pots and pans of a Universe that is solid. But the Universe is not solid. The Universe is energy and information. Solid objects are only representations and manifestations, of information and energy. Master that and you have mastered everything.’
‘I can appear and disappear as well as you can,’ said Abel Darkwater, ‘and I know how to transform one substance into another, but the prophecy is clear: only the Timekeeper can control Time.’
‘I am controlling Time already,’ said Regalia Mason, ‘and without any magical device. What are the Time Tornadoes?’
‘They are the beginning of the prophecy fulfilled,’ said Abel Darkwater. ‘They are the beginnings of the End of Time, when Time as we have known it for so many centuries will roll up like a ball, and a new god will appear. A new Lord of the Universe.’ His eyes rolled like round moons.
Regalia Mason smiled her cold smile. ‘In a way what you say is true. For the Quantum to assume complete control by the beginning of the twenty-fourth century, it is necessary to destabilise Time well in advance. It is an interesting trick, don’t you think, to affect the past so that the future can happen?’
‘Impossible without the Timekeeper!’
‘Impossible
for you without the Timekeeper.’
‘Do you tell me that it is you, Maria Prophetessa, who is causing these rips in the Universe? Do you tell me that it is you who is the Wind that blows through the End of Time?’
She smiled. ‘Your magic still has poetry, but no power. Yes, I am she who has torn the Veil. I am she who is the Wind.’
And just for a second, she changed. She was not Regalia Mason, cold and beautiful; she was Maria Prophetessa, dark and hooded, twisting and black. Gabriel looked away in fear. Abel Darkwater nodded slowly, as if he understood.
‘I will prevent you!’ he said. ‘I have prevented you before.’
‘It is too late,’ answered Regalia Mason.
‘You are not the child of the prophecy!’ said Darkwater.
‘I am not. She is here. What good has it done you to half kill her in a bottle? She has not led you to the Timekeeper.’
‘I will find it if it takes me the rest of eternity,’ said Abel Darkwater.
‘That will not be necessary, because I am going to tell you where it is,’ smiled Regalia Mason.
‘WHAT?’ shouted Abel Darkwater.
‘Nothing that you do now will make any difference. The Time Tornadoes have begun. In a few hours – yes, this morning – Quanta will be the official research partner of every Western government. Science has won the day, not magic, though for an advanced civilisation such as Quanta will make possible, science is indistinguishable from magic.’
Before Abel Darkwater could reply, there was a terrible rumbling and grinding overhead. Great cascades of sand poured into the temple. The walls began to shake and crumble. Regalia Mason and Abel Darkwater were choked with falling sand, and Gabriel chose that moment to leap up from where he had quietly and thoroughly been wriggling out of his bonds. He ran to the alembic. With all his strength he tried to push it over, but it was too heavy for him. Then, through the sand and dust, he heard Toby’s voice.
‘Wazappinin? Bus is up to its armpits in sand out there. Whazzilver doin’ in that jar? Come on, kids!’
The children rushed at the alembic and knocked it to the ground. It didn’t shatter, but Silver had already recovered enough from the cooling of the fire to get out her double-headed axe and smash through the lead seal.
Toby and Gabriel pulled her out as Abel Darkwater came forward, his body glowing like a green fire. ‘STAND STILL, ALL OF YOU!’
This time the command didn’t work.
‘You have interrupted the Opus!’ he shouted.
‘Wot?’ said Toby. ‘You better shut up!’
Abel Darkwater grabbed Silver by the back of the neck, as if she were a rabbit. Small as he was, he lifted her clean off the ground.
‘Tell me now!’ he commanded, his hands and face scaly, his eyes unblinking.
‘I don’t know where it is!’ said Silver, wriggling round in his grasp, and facing Abel Darkwater, as he blazed at her in his cold flames.
‘Of course you do,’ said Regalia Mason, ‘I no longer wish you to forget.’
It was the day her parents had gone to London. Some friends of theirs were looking after Silver, but they were busy in the kitchen, and Silver, who was seven, was playing a game in the garden when a beautiful woman had appeared before her.
‘Hello,’ said Silver. ‘Who are you?’
‘I am bringing back something that belongs to you,’ the beautiful woman had said. ‘You will never need it, and you will never find it, but nevertheless it is yours.’ She had taken a wrapped bundle and put it carefully under the …
And suddenly, thinking back to this moment, Silver understood why she had that strange fuzzy feeling in her head whenever she saw Regalia Mason. It was Regalia Mason who had blocked her memory, just as she had blocked Micah’s memory so many years ago. Through Time, she had been the one in control, controlling everything, until the day when she would discover how to control Time itself.
‘It’s at Tanglewreck!’ said Silver, hearing the words come out of her mouth as though someone else was speaking them. ‘Gabriel, it’s at Tanglewreck.’
‘And so I have always believed,’ said Abel Darkwater, dropping her to the floor, ‘if it hadn’t been for that fool Mrs Rokabye …’
‘I may be a fool,’ said a familiar voice like glass breaking, ‘but I have the Hand of the Timekeeper, and I want my share of the money!’
And there she was, Sniveller by her side, holding up the glittering jewelled hand.
‘You stole it from me!’ shouted Silver.
‘How can you steal from a thief?’ asked Mrs Rokabye. ‘This is no more yours than it is mine.’
‘You are wrong there,’ said Regalia Mason, but Mrs Rokabye was taking no notice. She looked round, dusting the sand from her mac.
‘So where is it? The Timekeeper.’
‘It’s at Tanglewreck,’ said Silver.
There was a long pause, while Mrs Rokabye digested this information.
‘I hope you are not going to tell me that I have been all the way to London, and then most unpleasantly down the Walworth Hole to a ridiculous shanty town called Philippi, which is full of scrapyards and Popes, and now here to this awful place called the Sands of Time, with not a stick of rock or a donkey in sight, and for no reason at all?’
‘Yes,’ said Silver.
Mrs Rokabye rounded on Sniveller like one of the Furies. ‘You told me this Hand would lead us to the Timekeeper!’
‘It has done so,’ said Regalia Mason. ‘Look.’
The Hand was dragging Mrs Rokabye across the chamber towards Silver. To Mrs Rokabye’s horror, Silver took the Hand from her, and there was nothing Mrs Rokabye could do to resist. Silver dropped the shining diamond back into her duffle-coat pocket.
Regalia Mason turned to Abel Darkwater. ‘There is an object called the Timekeeper. I know it well and so do you. Yet its power is linked to one person – the child of the prophecy – she of the Golden Face. You see, Silver herself is the Timekeeper.’
‘Silver!’ exclaimed Mrs Rokabye.
‘There are Lighthousekeepers and Lock Keepers, and Housekeepers, such as yourself, Mrs Rokabye, and there are Timekeepers. I was one myself, once upon a time, but that is another story. Enough to say that on the day Silver was born, she became the Timekeeper, and the clock, emblem of her office, was discovered again that day, after its long hiding.’
‘But whoever controls the Timekeeper controls Time!’ shouted Abel Darkwater.
‘Objects – always objects – didn’t I warn you not to put too much faith in objects? Without this child, you can do nothing.’
‘I can kill her!’ said Abel Darkwater, stepping forward.
‘Useless, all useless. Only the child can wind the clock, and unless the clock is ticking, it has no power.’
‘But you said you don’t need the clock,’ said Silver to Regalia Mason.
‘I don’t need it. Shall we go?’
‘Go where?’ said Abel Darkwater.
Regalia Mason took her computer out of her backpack and began rapidly locating points on a three-dimensional map of the Milky Way. As she tapped in the coordinates, a familiar picture began to form on the rock walls of the temple. Silver could hear birdsong and the sound of water. Gabriel could hear voices.
Toby, the kids, Mrs Rokabye, Abel Darkwater, they were disappearing and re-forming somewhere else.
‘Is it real?’ asked Silver.
Regalia Mason didn’t answer. Silver felt herself flowing outwards as she had done on the Star Road. She was disappearing. She was returning. She was at Tanglewreck.
Tanglewreck
The wide lawn. The ha-ha. The bowling green.
The hedges in the shapes of foxes and bears. The fountain. The sundial. The black and white timbered house. The oak front door. Her father’s bicycle leaning against the rail.
Her father.
What?
Her mother.
How?
Coming down the path to greet her now, arms open, faces amazed, and her sister Buddleia
with them too. This is not a mirage, this is not a dream. Is this how it ends?
‘Not quite,’ said Regalia Mason.
This was Tanglewreck. These were their lives, but slipped sideways. In the multi-universe, the multiverse, every possibility exists but none overlap.
‘Think of the cat,’ said Regalia Mason. ‘Science calls it Decoherence. All possible states exist. The cat, I admit, is rather eccentric after years of being the most famous animal experiment in physics.’
Silver wasn’t listening. She had her arms round her parents and Buddleia. Gabriel was hanging back shyly, not knowing what to say.
‘We can’t understand what has happened,’ said her father. ‘The house isn’t falling apart and we have plenty of money from a family trust. I am still an astronomer at Jodrell Bank, but we only have one child. We have Buddleia, but we don’t have you!’
‘You would not usually be aware of another life with different circumstances to the one you so powerfully remember,’ said Regalia Mason, ‘but the circumstances of the Timekeeper have made your situation rather unusual.’
‘We got off the train,’ said Roger, ‘and we were back here but without you. I can’t believe that you’re here again, and four years older! Look at you!’
‘I thought you were dead!’ said Silver, hugging him as tight as she could. ‘I’ve had to live with your horrible sister Mrs Rokabye and her evil rabbit.’
‘I don’t have a sister,’ said Roger, perplexed. ‘Not in any world! Who on earth is Mrs Rokabye?’
‘She turned up and said she was your sister! My aunt! Look, she’s over there. The one in the mac wearing a miner’s helmet and eating sardines out of a tin.’
Mrs Rokabye waved sheepishly.
‘We’ll soon see about that!’ said Roger, getting up and ready for a fight, but Ruth pulled him back.
‘Roger, it doesn’t matter. This is our world now, and we’re all together.’
‘My leg’s better,’ said Buddleia. ‘Watch!’
And she jumped and ran and was free.