“Only one?” quipped Tony, trying to lighten the mood. “I’m still struggling with ley lines, multidimensional space, alternative time—the whole enchilada. What is your riddle?”
“Why is it that no one ever travels to the future?”
“Oh boy,” sighed Tony. “By future, I assume you mean the absolute future—not the relative future—because, obviously, some travellers could conceivably journey to places where times were in advance of their own. That is, they would experience a time in advance of their own, yet still somewhat removed from the absolute future of the cosmos.”
“Quite right,” Brendan confirmed. “Sir Henry Fayth, for example, came here on many occasions. For him, a man born in 1620-something, this was the future, but not for me. I was born in 1958. For me—as for you—this”—Brendan waved a hand at their surroundings—“this is the past. But why am I unable to travel to the future of my own world?”
Tony considered this for a moment, then offered, “Presumably because the future has not happened yet.”
Brendan steepled his fingers beneath his chin and gazed down at the darkness pooling around his feet. “That, or some slight variation of it, has always been our official interpretation,” he said slowly. “You cannot reach a destination by train unless the rails have been laid to take you there—that is what we have always told ourselves. Even so, that description has never satisfied, and many of our members have tried to find a better, more rewarding explanation. None have ever succeeded.”
“Your lack of success in finding a better explanation may be due to a faulty hypothesis,” observed Tony. “It is a well-known bane of science.”
“Meaning if we adjusted our assumptions about the future the facts might fit better?”
“Adjusting your assumptions not only about the future but about time itself. For example, you assume that time has a flow—moving from past through the present to the future, which is how it looks and feels to us in our normal, everyday experience. But what if time’s flow actually moves the other way? What if it moves from a very fluid future into a much less malleable present before hardening into a solid-set past?” He glanced at his companion to see if he was following and saw a broad grin on his face. “What?” He stopped. “What have I said? Why are you smiling?”
“I am just happy you suggested this alternative view yourself without prompting from me,” Brendan told him, “because it will make what I have to say that much easier.”
“Go on, then. Hit me—I’m a physicist, I can take it.”
“Suppose that time flows from the future towards the past,” replied Brendan. He turned down another street; Tony fell into step beside him. “If so, then it would follow that anything—I repeat anything—that threatens the future inevitably endangers the present as well, and the present is where life as we know it is lived.”
“True. I see that,” Tony replied. “What I do not see is what this has to do with ley lines and multiple dimensions that we were talking about earlier.”
“It is my belief that the future is even now under threat,” declared Brendan in a solemn tone. “The knock-on effect of that threat, if allowed to continue, will cause the expansion of the universe to slow and ultimately reverse . . .”
“Resulting in a chain reaction that will bring about the annihilation of life, the universe, and everything,” concluded Tony, once again sinking beneath a sense of utter calamity. “It would be as if absolutely nothing had ever existed.” He glanced at Brendan, silent beside him. “You do realise what you’re saying?”
“How long would it take to reach the end?” asked Brendan. “How much time would we have before the final cataclysm overtook us?”
Tony turned his gaze to the sky where the first stars were shining as dim pinpoints in a clean, cloudless expanse. He saw only a blot of blackness spreading like an ink stain over the heavens as he made rough calculations in his head, checked them, and then at last announced, “Depending on when the reversal actually began, such a scenario would unfold in a matter of months. Annihilation would be complete within a year—two at most.”
“That soon?” Brendan cast a hand towards the heavens where Tony’s gaze was directed. “Considering that it has taken the universe so many billions of years to expand to the present size, I would have thought that reversing it—”
“Would take a similar amount of time?” Tony finished the thought. “If only that were the case.” He shook his head. “No. You seem to have forgotten the increased mass and its effect on momentum. See, the megaverse is so very much larger now. And once all that mass begins moving backwards, so to speak, the speed of that reversal will increase exponentially—much, much faster than the initial acceleration. It would all come crashing down very, very quickly indeed. Months, not years. I’d need instrumentation to be more precise, but there it is.”
Brendan gave him a grim smile. “I knew you’d understand.”
They turned down another street. The lights of a tiny café spilled out onto the cobbled stones in a splash of liquid gold. Laughter erupted from the men gathered around the boxy radio in the corner.
Tony noticed none of this. His mind was churning with possibilities, all of them dire. “Let us accept, for the sake of argument, that this threat is real,” continued the physicist. “To what do you attribute this threat? What form does it take? Where is it? More to the point—can we test it? Can we prove it?”
“It is my belief—my hypothesis, if you like—that the Great Reversal, as I think of it, is linked in some way to the very mechanisms we’ve been discussing.”
“By that you mean consciousness and its interaction with electromagnetic forces?”
“Those very mechanisms, yes. I believe something has happened, or is happening now, to render that interaction unstable. It is this instability that poses the threat to the ongoing function of the universe.”
Tony nodded thoughtfully. “Any idea what has caused the system to become unstable?”
Brendan drew a deep breath and then blew it out. “Not really, no—nothing concrete. Only a wild speculation.”
“Often the best kind,” said Tony. “Go ahead, speculate away.”
“I suspect that it has to do with the map,” replied Brendan, directing his feet onto another darkened byway. “Perhaps a better way to say it is that once we have discovered the secret of the map, we will better understand the source and nature of the threat.”
“Whoa! Hold on. What map are we talking about?”
Brendan glanced around. “The Skin Map.”
Tony returned a blank stare. “Pardon?”
“Sorry, I thought you knew,” said Brendan, who then explained, “The Skin Map is a chart of the routes and destinations of various ley lines scattered throughout the cosmos. It belonged to a ley explorer named Arthur Flinders-Petrie. In fact, it was a man named Arthur Flinders-Petrie.”
Brendan went on to describe the map, how it was made and where, and what it was thought to contain—a treasure of unrivalled significance. He gave a curious little laugh. “To tell the truth, we’re still a bit hazy about that. We don’t really know what old Arthur found.”
“Best guess?”
“There are those among us who believe that what Flinders-Petrie found is none other than the legendary Well of Souls or, as we call it, the Spirit Well.”
“Now, that at least I have heard about,” said Tony. “It is a common Middle Eastern myth, if I remember from my school days.” He glanced at Brendan to gauge his reaction. “Are you telling me you believe the Spirit Well is an actual, physical place?”
“We have good reason to believe it exists, yes. Our genizah contains all sorts of wonders. After dinner, if you’re interested—”
“Consider me interested,” said Tony. “I’d very much like to see this Skin Map you mentioned too.”
“Ah, well,” said Brendan. “There’s the rub. We don’t have the map in our possession. At some point in the past it was divided up into four or five sections. Those pieces were hidden in pl
aces scattered far and wide through time and space. For over two hundred years it has been the work of our society to find the missing pieces and put them back together. All we have is a poorly rendered copy made by an artist who knew very little of the map’s true significance. He thought it a map of the Faery Realms.”
They had retraced their steps to the Zetetic Society headquarters. Brendan drew out his keys, and Tony glanced up at the night sky and the faint sprinkling of stars. “Thanks for the walk, Brendan,” he said. “It was . . . harrowing.”
Brendan gave a sympathetic laugh; he opened the black door and ushered in his guest. “Perhaps if you are not too very harrowed, you wouldn’t mind continuing our discussion after dinner? Talking things out helps me crystallise my thoughts.”
Tony stepped into the cosy book-lined reception room—light-years away from the doom-laden multiverse they had so recently envisioned. It took him a moment to realise that Mrs. Peelstick was there, and she was welcoming two newly arrived visitors—a young couple whose backs were to him.
“Oh, here you are!” she called as the returning men came through the door. “We were just talking about you, Dr. Clarke.”
“About me? Well, I—” He halted as the young couple turned to meet him. “Cassie!”
“Hello, Daddy,” she said, holding out her arms for a hug. “Fancy meeting you here.”
CHAPTER 31
In Which a Question of Payment Arises
Burleigh walked from the coffeehouse casually but with purpose as the three guardsmen pounded towards him across the square towards the Grand Imperial Kaffeehaus. One of the soldiers glanced at him as they passed, but ran on. Quickening his pace, the earl made directly for the inn, where he quickly changed into his tall boots and put on his greatcoat. He lingered long enough to gather the designs for the new ley detectors he had been intending to commission from the palace alchemists. Regrettably, that would have to wait until the next visit. Then, pausing to swallow down a fortifying bolt of brandy from the decanter on his table, he grabbed his hat and took a last glance around the room. Silent as a shadow, he slipped into the corridor, down the stairs, and out of the building unseen.
With the brisk, efficient strides of a man in a hurry, heels tapping the paving stones in quick staccato, the earl made his way along darkened streets towards the city gates. Avoiding the main square took a little longer, but it would be, he thought, better to avoid any awkward confrontations with pike-wielding guardsmen.
Despite his many visits, Burleigh did not know the old city as well as he might have liked, and his already convoluted route became even more so when he took a wrong turn; he realised his mistake only after the street ended in a tiny plaza fronted by a church. Retracing his steps took him some time, and it was a relief when he at last entered a darkened lane and the city gates loomed into view. Torches had been lit on either side of the entrance and outside the gatehouse—shining like beacons to guide him to his destination. One of the imposing iron-banded doors was already shut for the night, but the other was still open to allow any late-arriving travellers through. He steamed ahead, slowing his pace only slightly as he approached the yet-open doorway, glancing around for his men. Where were they? Tav and Dex should have been there waiting for him. Con and Mal—where were they? Perhaps, owing to Baby’s increasingly problematic presence—the bigger it grew, the more difficult the Stone Age beast was to control—his men had already slipped through and were waiting for him outside the walls.
That oversized cat has become more of a burden than an asset, he thought, stepping into the wavering circle of torchlight. Perhaps it is time to set the creature free.
Burleigh passed the gatehouse and caught a movement out of the corner of his eye. Two guards in helmets and breastplates appeared in the doorway. One of them called to him. “Halten, Sie!”
Pretending not to have heard, Burleigh continued towards the open gate. The guard put up his hand and shouted again, a little louder, “Sie da! Halt!”
Burleigh half turned to look behind him; he slowed his pace but kept walking. “Problem?” he asked, forcing a smile.
“Halt!” The two guards hurried after him—drawing their short-bladed swords as they came. “Ihr Name, bitte?”
“My name?” he repeated in German. “I am Lord Burleigh, Earl of Sutherland and friend of the royal court.”
The foremost guard appeared unimpressed. “You must come with us,” he said.
“I do not understand,” replied Burleigh. Still smiling. Still edging towards the open gate. “Is there some difficulty? I have important business elsewhere tonight.”
“That is him!” The voice came from the guardhouse, and the figure of Jakub Arnostovi burst from the guardhouse onto the steps. He thrust a finger at Burleigh. “That is the man who attacked Herr Stiffelbeam. Seize him!”
“You are arrested.” The guard swung his sword up to Burleigh’s chest. His companion lowered his pike. “You will please come with us.”
“You have made a mistake,” protested Burleigh, estimating the distance to the gate. If he could make it through the door, he could call on Tav and Dex to release the cat. Baby would keep the guards busy long enough to get away. “I do not understand . . .” He edged closer to the open gate and to freedom. “I am a friend of the court. I have the freedom of the city.”
“Your days of freedom are finished, rogue,” shouted Arnostovi hotly. To the guards, he urged, “Seize him at once! See that he does not get away!”
The guards stepped forward. Burleigh put up a hand to halt them and called over his shoulder for help. “Tav! Dex!” he cried, shouting behind him. “Hurry!”
There was a shuffle of movement beyond the gate. Burleigh took another step towards the door and the blackness beyond. “Release Baby! Release her now—” he cried. The words died in his throat as four more armed guards appeared, shoving Tav and Dex before them. Mal and Con, looking raw and unhappy and much the worse for wear, shuffled after.
Baby was nowhere to be seen.
“Sorry, Boss,” muttered Tav grimly. “We’re nicked.”
“Well done, Captain,” crowed Arnostovi, fairly dancing with triumph. “The city council will hear a glowing report of your bravery and resourcefulness.”
Burleigh spun back to his accusers. “This is intolerable! I demand to speak to the emperor!”
“Be quiet,” said the captain of the town guard. “You will have your chance to speak before the magistrate.”
The nearest guard put a rough hand to Burleigh’s shoulder and gave him a push. “Get moving.”
“I will see you flogged in the square for what you did to Engelbert,” sneered Arnostovi.
“You snivelling little man,” snarled Burleigh as he passed, his face a rictus of frozen rage and frustration. “You think you can stop me? Nobody crosses Archelaeus Burleigh. There will be hell to pay!”
“We will see who pays,” replied Arnostovi. He made an airy flick of his hand. “Take them away.”
Fuming with frustration and indignation, Lord Burleigh and his men were led away under armed guard. As it was late and the magistrate’s offices were closed for the night, they were taken directly to the gaol and locked up until formal charges could be made and the case placed before the court. Until then, they would remain in Prague’s mouldering dungeon in the lower depths of the Rathaus.
CHAPTER 32
In Which Time Is of the Essence
Distinguished members of the Zetetic Society, welcome to the Seventy-Second All-Society Convocation,” announced Mrs. Peelstick, taking her place at the tabletop podium. “As moderator of tonight’s session, I want to thank you all for coming on such short notice. Please know that we would not have summoned you so urgently if need had not dictated haste.”
Her tone, softened by the beguiling lilt of her Scottish accent, gave no hint of the crisis that had brought the Zetetics together—eighteen venerable members assembled from places and times representing fifteen different world realms, or dimensions. Kit
was still trying to get his head around that as he passed his gaze over the audience gathered in the genizah; the large upper room had been prepared for the special meeting, its centre cleared of books and manuscripts, and a double ring of chairs set up around an octagonal table; sharing the table with the podium were four unlit candles, a Bible, and a speaker’s gavel. Kit could not imagine that tempers ever became so elevated that the wooden hammer was required to quiet things down; judging from the advanced age of most of the participants, he would have been surprised if they could raise anything more strenuous than geraniums.
He and Cass had been in Damascus five days, during which time he had got to know Brendan, Mrs. Peelstick, and Cass’ father, Tony Clarke. They had been joined two days ago by Gianni and Wilhelmina who, having finished their work in Rome, had then made their way to Damascus. Kit had noticed a change in the normally sanguine priest’s demeanour. “What happened in Rome?” Kit asked Wilhelmina when, after their initial greetings, Gianni had excused himself and made a beeline for Tony Clarke.
“I wouldn’t call it a complete waste of time,” Mina had reported. “The Vatican lab was very helpful and we learned a few things—Gianni especially—but we didn’t get a definitive analysis of the rare earth. We still don’t know what fuels the shadow lamps.”
“So what’s with our friend?” wondered Kit. “The poor guy looks like he’s carrying the weight of the world.”
“I’m not sure. Whatever it is, it’s something he heard from his buddies at the observatory. I’ve never seen him so upset.”
The introduction of Gianni and Tony—like flame meeting fuse—touched off a series of sombre and anxious closed-door discussions. The others did not know what they discussed, but whatever it was must have been worrying enough to warrant Brendan’s sudden decision to convene an all-society gathering—a convergence of minds, as he put it. “We cannot do this alone,” Brendan had been heard to say. “We need the support of our members.”