Jake shook his head, then stood and paced restlessly to the window. “You don’t know that. It could have been anyone there. My aunt was just an old woman who thought she could talk to the dead.”
“You believe that?”
Jake remembered the word from the rubble. David. “Of course not. But she did.”
“No. She was a deliberate con artist. She took money from gullible people—well, I don’t blame her for that. But treason is another matter.”
He was watching Jake with professional calm. When he said, “Sit back down,” his authority was complete.
Jake frowned. And sat.
“We searched the suitcase. Then we put it back. We were waiting for you to collect it.”
“Me?”
“Someone. Her contact.”
“Don’t be ridiculous . . .”
“You had the ticket. You knew the code name.”
“She gave me the ticket! Passed it to me, through the rubble, in the air raid.”
“You said she was your aunt.”
Jake thought fast, cursing his own stupidity. “All right. All right, you want the truth? I’ll give you the truth. I lied. She wasn’t my aunt. I’d never met the woman. I just chanced along the street, right? And this ARP warden made me help him. We tried to dig her out, but there was no way. She was trapped, she knew she was dying. So she gave it to me—that ticket.” He rubbed his dirty face with a dirtier hand. “I was going to throw it away. But then I thought . . . there might be something valuable. Not that I’m a thief . . . I was . . . just curious.”
Was he saying too much? He had to sound scared and confused, as if he was breaking down. After all, it was pretty much the truth.
Allenby sat back. His brown eyes studied Jake with an inscrutable stare.
“Not so cocky now, are we.”
Jake shrugged. “It was stupid. I’m sorry.”
“So you never met her?”
“No.”
“Never even heard of her.”
“Before today, no. I swear.”
Allenby put his fingertips together and gazed at his yellow-stained nails.
“I want to believe you.”
That was unexpected. Jake sat up.
“Can I go then? You’ve got no reason to keep me here. I’ve got rights.”
“So you keep telling me. But this is war, Jake. Life and death, for millions of people. And you need to explain something to me.”
“What? I don’t . . .”
“You need to explain why, when she left the suitcase, three days ago, dear old batty Alicia said to the office-boy My nephew will call for this. His name is Jake Wilde.”
Oh God.
Jake stared.
And understanding crashed through him like the bomb through the houses.
He must already have met her—no, he would meet her. In his future, and her past. That’s how she knew his name, who he was, that he would be there.
“So you see,” Allenby said calmly, taking out another cigarette, “that you are in it up to your neck, Mr. Jake Wilde. Of course, you could come clean. Tell us who you work for, how they get the information out, where the transmitter is. Spill the beans on the whole network. I’d advise you to do it, because if you don’t, our orders are to hand you over to the military. They have a few unpleasant little methods to get their information. And that’s before they hang you.”
Jake rubbed a hand over his face and closed his eyes. A click on the desk made him open them quickly—
The bracelet lay there.
“Look, Jake. I like you. Talk to me.” Allenby put the cigarette down and pulled his chair closer with a scrape along the floor. Suddenly he was animated, his lean face alight. “This bracelet. Not the sort a thing a lad like you should have. Silver. Heavy. Old. And then, these.”
He fished out a few coins from the purse and slid them over.
Jake stared at them. A shilling, a sixpenny piece. Piers had made sure they were all safely . . .
He closed his eyes again . . . Oh hell hell hell. Pre-1960!
The sixpence, close to his hand, was dated 1957. The young Queen Elizabeth’s face looked at him sideways.
“Where do you come from, Jake?” Allenby tapped the coin. “This is the one thing I don’t understand. They sent you out all prepared, but with coins dated fourteen years in the future. That’s one big mistake. It’s almost as if . . .”
A rap on the door interrupted him. He frowned, scraped the chair back, and went over. Jake saw the burly sergeant framed in the doorway, murmuring, sounding anxious. Allenby glanced over. Then they both went out.
Jake leaned back and groaned aloud. How on God’s earth had he gotten into a mess like this?
He couldn’t sit still; he got up and slammed around the bare brick walls in fury.
It wasn’t like the interview rooms on police TV shows—no two-way mirror, no recording device, no responsible adult. But surely he must be entitled to a solicitor? Or had the war changed all that too?
Hang.
That was the word that already was choking him. Sticking in his throat. For a moment he couldn’t swallow, coughed in stupid panic.
Get a grip.
Get . . .
He turned, instantly. The bracelet lay on the table. He picked it up and shoved it on his wrist, clicking it shut and pushing it well up under his sleeve. They’d find out, but . . .
Voices.
He jumped back, stood by the chair.
The door slammed open; Allenby came in with the sergeant behind him. They both looked fraught.
“Sorry, Jake. Too late. The military police are here.” Jake backed away. “What?”
“They’re taking you now. Nothing I can do about it, I’m afraid. Sergeant!”
The big man tugged a pair of steel handcuffs from his pocket. “Come on, son.”
“No way!” Jake backed against the wall. He balled his fists.
“Forget it laddy, I’ve cuffed more prisoners than you’ve had hot dinners. You wouldn’t know what hit you, and I won’t even break sweat.”
Jake felt the damp bricks at his back. He flung a despairing look at Allenby. “You can’t let them take me like this.”
“Nothing I can do about it.”
“I’ll talk. I’ll tell you everything. The whole thing. But I won’t talk to them. No one else. Just you.”
The sergeant stopped.
He looked at Allenby. Quietly the inspector said, “You might just be bluffing.”
Jake forced himself to stand up straight. He unrolled his fists and spread his hands wide. “Let me go and you’ll never know. I’ll make a deal. Don’t let them take me, and I’ll spill.”
Allenby’s scrutiny was intense. “If you try . . .”
“I won’t try anything. What can I do?” He stepped forward. “I’m trapped and I know it. I’ll give you the biggest spy network in this country. The whole thing. Names, dates, sabotage plans. On a plate.”
They looked at each other.
Silent, Jake prayed. Surely he couldn’t resist.
Then Allenby shrugged. “All right. This may cost me some groveling. Sergeant, take him to the holding cell. Get this stuff locked up. No one to know about the suitcase but us, understand.”
As he spoke, a distant drone rose up through the walls and roof, a hollow whine that made Jake stare until he realized it was an air-raid siren.
“Oh Gawd. Here the beggars come again,” the sergeant muttered.
“Get him downstairs.” Allenby hurried out.
“No cuffs,” Jake said.
“You think something of yourself, don’t you.” The sergeant sucked his teeth. “I could take you blindfolded.”
Jake was hauled up and shoved out into the dingy corridor, down damp stone steps, down and down past a f
ew guttering lamps. Outside, the sirens stopped abruptly. There was a moment of almost breathless silence. Then, far off, a low pounding.
“Bloody East End copping it again.” The sergeant grabbed him. “Here.” He tugged out a key and unlocked the cell door. “Inside.”
Before Jake knew it, he was through the dark slot and slipping on the wet stone floor, the familiar stink of urine and mold around him.
He dived back to the door, pushed his face against the grilled opening. “What if we get bombed?”
“Pray you don’t, son. After all, they’re your lot.”
The grille was slammed shut.
He turned, and stared into the gloom. At least he was still close to the mirror. He wasn’t on his way to some military prison the other side of England. And he had the bracelet.
Then he saw the other prisoner.
A tramp maybe. A shadowy figure anyway, lying on the bench against the wall, legs stretched out, wrapped in a coat of muddy grays and greens.
Jake slid down and sat on the filthy floor, knees up. He could just sleep now.
Sleep for hours.
But the figure said, “Not even pleased to see me then, Jake.”
He didn’t move for a second. Then he raised his head and stared.
Gideon lounged on the bench, back against the wall. His ivory skin was dark with smeared soot. His long hair tangled in the collar of his pied coat.
Jake was too astonished to move. “Where the hell did you come from? How did you get here?”
“Through the Summerland.” Gideon stretched his legs out. “And believe me, it wasn’t easy.”
“But . . . how did you find me?”
“I searched. There are ways.”
“Searched? It must have taken you . . .”
“No time at all.” Gideon shook his head. His green eyes narrowed in amusement. “You still don’t get it, do you. In Summer’s land there is no time. No time.”
He scrambled up. “Venn sent you? But . . . she . . . Summer . . . my God, what did he have to promise her?”
Gideon looked at the floor. “Summer doesn’t know anything about it. It was Sarah’s idea.”
For the first time in a long time a flicker of hope warmed Jake like a shaft of light. As a bomb fell streets away, shuddering dust down from the ceiling, he grinned.
“So Sarah’s back,” he said.
As if that could make everything all right.
If you can look into the seeds of time . . .
6
Where Janus obtained the mirror is uncertain. It is thought that among his earliest advisers was a man brought in great secrecy from a high security unit in the environs of what had once been Tokyo. ZEUS has no records of this man, and no images. But with him were transported various objects carefully packaged. The guards who accompanied him were never seen again. The consignment appeared on no flight details and was never reported in any customs document.
The package was delivered to London Central.
Immediately after this the tremors and earthquakes began.
Illegal ZEUS transmission; biography of Janus
SARAH WOKE very slowly.
For a long moment she lay curled among the white sheets, trying to hold on to the flavor of her dream, but already it had dissolved to frail, wispy remnants.
Of kneeling here, in this room. In her own time, with the sky raining on her through the charred rafters, and ivy smothering every wall with its glossy leaves. She had been hiding treasures in the small space under the floorboards—a seashell, a doll, a child’s drawing of a red house and a yellow sun crayoned with spikes of light.
She sat up in the bed and gazed around.
In that End Time, over a hundred years from now, the Abbey would be a burned-out ruin, oaks growing through its tiled hall and up the broken staircase. She and her parents had lived—no, would live!—in a small cottage of salvaged stone and charred timbers, built into one of the corners of the cloister.
It was a bitter memory. It hurt her. She swung her feet out of the bedclothes and dangled them over the side. The room was dim; she slipped down and padded to the window, tugging back the heavy velvet curtains, wanting light, and air.
The morning was still.
The storm Summer had created had raged all night. The bright spring was shattered. Bluebells lay broken, new buds and catkins torn down by her spite. The morning was dark with cold rain, the trees gloomy through the drizzle, boughs tossing in the wind. Sarah saw again how the Abbey was a tiny sanctuary in the heart of the deep Wood; how the oaks and beeches rose up on each side, so that only from up here, high in the attic, could you glimpse the hills beyond, and Dartmoor, a gray shadow in the north.
She took down the old red dressing gown Piers had lent her and tugged it around herself. Then she climbed on the window seat and opened the casement. Cold wind gusted in, rippling the curtains with its salt tang of the distant sea.
She allowed herself a wry smile.
She was glad to be back. Because after all, she was a Venn; this was her country.
This was her house.
Under her foot the floorboard creaked. She looked down at it, and another fragment of the dream broke in her memory. Her mother cooking. Her father outside, chopping wood. And then Janus’s voice had come suddenly from the old wind-up radio, breaking the music. He had said “I own the world now. I am the world now” and her mother had turned it off with a shudder, saying “No! Never!” but that hadn’t stopped him; he had crawled and squeezed out of the radio as it had transformed into Wharton’s small red car, and there he had stood in the kitchen, a lank-haired man in blue spectacles, his uniform dark and neat.
“I’m afraid the time has come,” he’d said.
And the last few trucks in the world had roared up the drive, a convoy of them.
She always woke up then. It was as if her mind wouldn’t let her see the horror that followed. Her mother being dragged away, her screams. Dad running full pelt round the corner of the house with the axe still in his hand, face-first into the stun blast that sent him crashing.
The bruising thud of his body onto the mud.
And the careless way they had carried him, one arm dangling down.
She set her lips firmly and turned away from the window. This wasn’t helping. Her parents were alive, would always be alive, somewhere in that distant future. And only she could help them.
She bent quickly, before she lost courage, and opened the hiding place under the boards. There was the small black pen she had brought from the future, and the gray notebook. These and the diamond brooch she had given Venn and the half of the Greek coin Summer had taken were all that remained of that world. She took the pen out.
On its cap was the enigmatic letter Z. The members of ZEUS had used these for their secret correspondence, but no one was left to answer her.
None of her friends.
She uncapped the pen. For a long moment her hand hesitated; then she wrote quickly, savagely.
Is anyone there?
Janus’s reply was so prompt she drew in a sharp breath.
I WAS HOPING YOU WOULD BE BACK SOON, SARAH. I’VE BEEN WAITING SO PATIENTLY.
She loathed this. It felt like betrayal. But she had to know.
What’s happening there? The black mirror.
. . . HAS NOT YET DESTROYED THE WORLD! AFTER ALL, YOU HAVE BEEN GONE ONLY A FEW MOMENTS, SARAH.
She stared at the scrawled lines on the paper.
Another appeared, swiftly unraveling.
I DON’T WANT YOU TO BE LONELY IN THAT PAST LAND. ALL BY YOURSELF. SO I HAVE SENT YOU MY CHILDREN.
“Sarah!” Wharton’s knock made her drop the pen with a start. “Are you up? Piers says breakfast.”
“Fine. Be there now.”
His footsteps creaked away along the corridor.
WHY DON’T YOU LOOK AND SEE.
A sudden gust of wind rippled the pages and made the casement bang open.
She leaned out and grabbed it, and then stopped, astonished.
On the lawn, just at the edge of the Wood, three children were playing. Three small boys, dressed in old-fashioned school uniforms, their faces identical. Triplets. As she stared, one bent down, the others leapfrogging his back. Then they all stood and looked up at the window, a silent threesome.
“Who are you?” she said. “Where . . .”
They turned, as one. Even as she called “Wait” they were gone, walking calmly into the Wood, though the last one turned back as he ducked under the dark branches.
And waved.
“Stand back!” The sergeant’s key turned quickly in the lock. “And stop that bleedin’ racket!”
As he burst in, another bomb hit so close that the walls shuddered. Dust and plaster crashed from the ceiling.
“Right Wilde, move. All prisoners evacuated.”
The cell was dim.
A flicker in the corner of his eye. He turned, and swore. Because there was the boy spy. And next to him, like his shadow, a spirit so pale and thin the sergeant thought at once of his own dear dead brother, Albert, glimpsed years ago cold as marble in the narrow bed.
Then they were on him. He opened his mouth to yell—a filthy gag was shoved in. He fought furiously but the beggars were fast—and the spy knew a few fiendish Eastern tricks too, because his feet were knocked from under him by a savage kick, and his arms whipped back and bound even as he struggled.
They trussed him tight.
Then Jake sat on his chest and said, “Keep still. And listen.”
The Slanted Worlds Page 5