“I’m not sure that I could ever have enough, if I didn’t try to follow this through,” she said, flatly.
“And what would following it through involve, exactly?” he asked
“Well,” she said, “we both know what view our parents would take—but that’s not our style, is it? My mother’s right when she says that one shouldn’t tempt fate, of course, but there are some temptations that are simply irresistible, aren’t there?”
The way she was adding rhetorical questions to her statements told him that she was still uncertain, still fearful, still searching for an endorsement of her boldness.
“I suppose there are,” he agreed.
“Do you mind telling me how, exactly, you’re supposed to renew the family luck, according to tradition?” she asked. “You confirmed that it worked according to much the same pattern as the one I’m supposed to follow, but you were understandably vague about the details.”
“Fortunately,” Canny said, thinking that it might be wise to lighten the mood again, “it doesn’t involve human sacrifice beneath the stony gaze of the Great Skull. It’s as simple as you suggested, apart from a few recitations and trivial ceremonies that probably don’t have anything to do with the actual effect. It’s basically just a matter of siring a male child on a good Yorkshirewoman. When the child begins to be lucky, there are other ceremonies, which....” He trailed off, unwilling to say too much.
Lissa completed the sentence for him, but she didn’t pick up his attempt to lighten the tone. “Which permit the parent to claw back a portion of the child’s burgeoning magic,” she said, evenly, “provided that the parent is neither too greedy nor too self-restrained.”
“That’s about it,” Canny confirmed, although he would never have used the phrase claw back, no matter how conducive to festering resentment the situation he’d described might be.
“I won’t ask for any more details,” she said. “We have our rules of secrecy too. But I’ll compensate you for your hazardous honesty, if you like, by telling you how I think it works.”
“Please,” Canny said.
“I agree with you that there must be a genetic component to the hereditary process,” Lissa said, smoothly, “and that we have to look at it more scientifically than our ancestors could. Our tradition has always placed far more importance on the existential and psychological significance of mother-daughter bonds than on mere biology, so we see the hereditary aspect more as a matter of personal contact or learning—passing on a very particular kind of accumulated wealth—but that’s just a cultural bias. The biology has to be the bottom line. As to what the genes actually do—I think it has to involve the physics of uncertainty. I’m not good with the mathematics, so I’m strictly an amateur, but it seems to me that if observers really do have a crucial role to play in bringing actuality from a probabilistic blur of potentiality, then it stands to reason that some observers must be more privileged than others. The margin might—indeed, must—be very tiny, but it’s enough, in certain kinds of situations...or uncertain kinds of situations...to tip the balance of probabilities in favor of a preferred outcome. However we inherited the privilege, and however we contrive to maintain it, you and I are better observers than our fellow men—not in the sense that we notice more, but in the sense that our needs outweigh theirs by a slight but vital margin.”
“Our needs?” Canny echoed. “Isn’t it more a matter of our desires?”
“That’s a rather masculine distinction,” Lissa told him. “Our needs shape our desires, and remain implicit within them—although, if your family is like mine, there’s a strong tradition of careful restraint.”
“Don’t howl for the moon,” Canny quoted.
“I was thinking more along the lines of be careful what you wish for, you might get it.”
“You can’t always get what you want,” Canny quoted, whimsically, “but if you try sometimes, you might just get what you need. Actually, that’s the Rolling Stones—but I always did wonder about Mick Jagger. I often do wonder about anyone touched by glory, even though keeping a low profile has always been the Kilcannon way. If it is a gene, though, or more than one, there might be lots of people carrying them unawares, who break the rules without ever suspecting that there are any. They presumably have meteoric careers...and then the phenomenon presumably becomes dormant again, for a few generations. What really sets us apart is knowing what we’ve got, and being able to manage it—to preserve our status as privileged observers, if you’re right about the uncertainty business.”
“Exactly,” she agreed. “What sets us apart is knowing what we’ve got—and being determined to make the most of it.”
Except, Canny thought, that being determined to make the most of it isn’t at all the same thing as being able to manage it...and might turn out to be its opposite.
“I’ve thought a lot about what you said the other night,” Lissa went on, “and it does make sense. Especially the bit about your family having one gene, and mine having another. But even if it weren’t genetic—even if it were magic...our meeting still raises interesting possibilities, don’t you think?”
“I’ve done little else but think, these last few days,” Canny admitted. “What are you proposing, Lissa? How do you think we ought to approach the investigation?”
The model hesitated for a moment, but only for a moment. “You’re still thinking in masculine terms. I don’t think we should approach the investigation at all; I think we should cut to the chase. What if your gene and my gene—or your magic and my magic—came together? Perhaps, as you say, it’s safer for us to be in one another’s company while your luck is reduced, awaiting renewal—but if it’s a gene, you’re still carrying it, and if it’s magic, you still have the potential. The only way we can really find out what’s possible is to have a child. That would fit in with your desires, wouldn’t it? The trial, if not the child.”
His own hesitation was far more deliberate, and far more extended. “Is that a proposal of marriage?” he asked, eventually, as casually as he could.
“I don’t think we need to go to that extreme,” she said, with a calculated coolness that must have been as false as his own laconism. “It’s an experiment, not a love-match.”
For you, maybe, he thought. “Were you thinking of a male or female child?” was what he said aloud, trying hard not to feel offended or hurt by her immediate rejection of the possibility of marriage. He was trying to maintain a flippant tone, but he knew that the artificiality of the flippancy must be obvious to her.
“It would be interesting to discover what chance would decide, wouldn’t it?” Lissa said, her voice carefully neutral. “That’s partly what the experiment would be about, after all.”
Just because we aren’t both male, Canny thought, it doesn’t mean we’re not in competition.
“One doesn’t have to leave such matters to chance, nowadays,” he observed, aloud. “If it’s just an experiment, pipettes and Petri dishes might be the way to go. Perhaps we ought to aim for one of each: non-identical twins.”
“It’s not a joke, Canny,” she told him, unnecessarily. “I’m serious about this. I’ve thought about it a great deal.”
“Were you thinking of hopping into bed with me right now?” Canny said, with an edge in his voice that certainly wasn’t humor. “If we hurry, you’ll still have time to get to London by six?”
“Not right now,” Lissa said, defensively. She paused before adding: “I’ll have to clear a space in my schedule to accommodate a pregnancy. I have obligations.”
The conversation didn’t seem to be going quite as well as Canny had hoped when he first came into the library, in spite of the fact that she was offering him exactly what he’d thought he wanted, if not quite on the terms he’d wanted it. Be careful what you wish for, she had said, you might get it. She hadn’t been trying to warn him against her—not consciously, at least—but it had been a warning nevertheless.
Lissa Lo’s coolness and stylishness had se
emed exciting before, but now the coolness seemed to be escalating into coldness and the stylishness was becoming rather mechanical. Canny knew that she wasn’t really as unemotional as she was trying to seem—she was hiding her own uncertainty and trepidation—but that didn’t make the awkwardness any easier to bear.
“So what kind of schedule did you have in mind?” he asked, quietly. “And what do you want from me in the meantime?”
Lissa stood up, not because she’d said what she’d come to say—although she had—but because she was as acutely conscious of the tension inherent in the moment as he was.
“Don’t be in too much of a hurry to get engaged to be married, Canny, no matter what your family tradition dictates,” she said. “I’m not asking you to wait forever, but I’d like you to give the idea serious consideration. If you decide that it’s an experiment worth trying, I’ll need a few weeks, perhaps months, to...put my affairs in order. I can’t give you a date right now. We both know that it would be a risk—but it seems to me that the potential rewards outweigh the danger. You don’t have to give me an answer now. You can think it over, and do whatever you want in the meantime—but I’ll come back when I can, to ask the question again. Think about it.”
Her stance left no further doubt as to the fact that she had said what she had come to say—and was sufficiently fearful of his reply to leave the matter undecided while she beat a hasty retreat.
Canny could understand well enough why Lissa might be afraid—but he wasn’t certain which of the various possible reasons was the most powerful. Was she afraid that she’d simply gone too far—that the black lightning might have been hunting her down even she spoke? Or was she afraid of his response? Was she worried that he might turn her down, given that he had far more at stake than any other man she’d ever teased and tempted, and that the rejection might hurt?
She knew that the world was full of men who’d make or break a deal with the devil at her request—but she might not be sure, as yet, that he was one of them. And she had to know, given that she’d thought about it so intently, that he would be taking a greater risk than she in several different ways...and that he would be able to see those additional risks quite clearly, no matter how his desires might blind him.
Given that he wasn’t sure himself whether he might be capable of rejecting her, if he persuaded himself that the risks were too great, her uncertainty was understandable.
“There might be a case for taking things more slowly,” he said, mildly. “there are other co-operative ventures that we might try, to begin with.”
“There might,” she answered, her tone making it perfectly clear that she didn’t believe it, “but I’m not a dabbler by nature. When I make a decision, I don’t like to procrastinate.”
“I can understand that,” Canny said, wondering—a trifle optimistically—whether he might be reading too much into the situation. She had known since their first conversation in the library—and must have assumed, even before then, that the rules pertaining to his gift were likely to be similar to those pertaining to hers—that his luck was supposed to run low when his father died, while hers would remain strong for as long as her mother lived. For the moment, her luck allegedly outweighed his, and in any competition he was likely to come off worse. If they were to have a child now, rather than waiting until he had renewed his own luck, and were content to leave such matters as its sex to the dictates of “chance”, it was far more likely to work out to her advantage than his...or so she must be calculating.
On the other hand, given that the only way to renew his own streak was to marry, and father a child, what was there for him to gain by procrastination but a tangled mess of complications? And given the nature of his desire, the pressure of his need....
Canny rose to his feet without saying another word. He went to open the door, and politely stood aside to let Lissa Lo precede him. Then he opened the two outer doors that let them out of the library.
It wasn’t until Bentley had brought Lissa’s coat and summoned her minders from the gate, while Canny escorted her to the door of her hire-car, that he gave her anything resembling an answer to the question she’d posed. “I’ll think about it very seriously indeed,” he promised. “How shall I contact you when I have an answer?”
“Don’t try,” she said. “I’ll come to you, when I can.”
“Fine,” he said. “If I’m not here, I’ll be at the flat in London. This is the address.” He handed her a business card as he pronounced the last sentence
She put it away without glancing at it. “I’ll find you,” she said, with the total confidence of someone well used to finding her way wherever she wanted to go. “I know that I can count on you, Canny. I’m sorry for your loss, but I know that things will get better. There’s a whole world of opportunity out there, waiting to be seen by the right observers.”
“Thanks,” he said. “I’m sure you’re right.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
When Lissa had driven away into the gathering night, Canny decided to walk down to the village—to clear his head rather than to survey his domain. As he walked, he wondered what the consequences might be of accepting Lissa’s offer. In the worst-case scenario, it seemed to him, she would walk away with the reward: a doubly-blessed child, available for her exploitation and hers alone. Was that possible, given that it contravened the rules by means of which her family streak had been cultivated? Was it what she intended, even if it were possible? Would it matter, even if it were to happen, even if the transgression were to cost him any chance of renewing his own streak? Hadn’t he spoken the truth when he said that he had enough to get by, even if he never enjoyed another stroke of exceptional good luck as long as he lived? And what if her intentions were not entirely cynical—or, even if they were, that they might be modified by time and experience? What if they were to form a new collective, unlike any that their ancestors had ever known: an authentic triad, all equally able to share in the superabundant luck of their miracle child, whether it turned out to be a boy or a girl?
There might, as Lissa had said, be a world full of opportunities out there, waiting to be opened up. Perhaps she was sincere. Perhaps, after all, she might learn to love him.
Next time, he thought, I really must show her the rest of my little fiefdom, so that she can measure me for what I am, rather than what I seemed to be in Monte Carlo.
It was easy enough to imagine that she was beside him as he walked beside the Crede, and what he might he have said to her as they approached and entered the village.
“The Industrialist earl wasn’t the first, of course,” he might have said. “The situation of the mill having been dictated by the flow of the Crede, he needed to house his workers, so terraces of houses had to be built one way or another. Utopian fantasies were in vogue, and Titus Salt was already hard at work in Shipley, building Saltaire. The old Industrialist introduced a few wrinkles of his own, though. From the very beginning, he planned to keep much tighter control over his property and his people. He instituted—and all his successors retained—a policy of letting the accommodation at rates below the market price, and instituting a system of variable rebates that made the accommodation even cheaper to everyone who was seen to be making a positive contribution to the local economy or the provision of local amenities—which is why there’s still a butcher’s shop in Cockayne, and a baker’s, and a carpenter’s shop—not to mention a good primary school and an excellent library.”
How could she fail to be impressed?
“It hasn’t been easy, of course,” he might have told her, proudly, if only she’d given him the time. “Salt’s Mill is a museum now, and so is Saltaire. Shipley’s other mill was demolished long since. Daddy used to tell me that when he was a boy he could sit on top of the Great Skull and see the tops of a hundred factory chimneys surrounding him, in the distance, all belching smoke into the air to create a haze that never really cleared, all the way from Bingley in the far east to Rotherham in the far south. They
’re all gone now, including ours—but when our chimney was toppled, the Mill kept going. It’s always been busy, no matter how many economic metamorphoses it’s had to undergo. It was a munitions factory during World War II, a plastics factory in the fifties and sixties, and then got broken up into smaller units specializing in various kinds of technological enterprise—plastic components for aircraft, cars and domestic machinery; switches for telephone systems; optical fibers...I haven’t kept up, I’m afraid, although I’ll have to start. I think we’ve even diversified into software and ceramics—individual projects have folded by the score, but we’ve always been lucky in cutting them off at the right moment and replacing them with something new, always maintaining our elasticity. We’ve never been conspicuously innovative, but we’ve never been far behind the times either. We’ve always valued long-term stability over the short-term escalation of profit, never sought outside finance...and it’s paid off—not spectacularly, but inexorably.
“In the meantime, we’ve fostered the old Industrialist’s quasi-Utopian ideals in the institution of a highly idiosyncratic form of local democracy. It conflicts to some extent with the demands made of us by local and national government, but we’ve always managed to compromise, thanks to good representation on the county council and family influence. The village elders have gladly collaborated with the family in conserving the valley, and they take great pride in what they’ve done now that their age-old habits have become fashionable. We don’t have a supermarket, a cinema or a railway-station, but we do have a village green with a cricket square, a thriving marketplace, a local slaughterhouse and the Spread Eagle. The old ranks of outside toilets were converted into garages during the great renovation of the fifties, but private cars are still a relative rarity—the vehicles they house are mostly commercial.”
“And it’s all yours, now,” she would surely have said.
He would have feigned pride, even though none of it had had attracted any significant fraction of his attention—but he was a changed man, now. He intended to make up for lost time as quickly as he could. so that he could take his father’s place as the chief architect of Cockayne’s future. It was all his now—not just the property and the income, but the responsibility to decide which aspects of its commerce and environment should hasten into the twenty-first century with all possible progressive determination, and which vestiges of the nineteenth century should be jealousy preserved and hoarded.
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