Tanglewreck

by Jeanette Winterson

  ‘God has decreed the hours and the days,’ he said. ‘We have evidence that you do not follow our new calendar.’

  ‘Not so,’ said Maria Prophetessa. ‘Much of magic was worked in the ten days that you took away. We call them now our secret days – locked out of Time, but powerful still.’

  ‘You will be burned for this,’ said the Pope.

  He was about to call for the guards, but his gaze fell on the strange beauty of the clock, and he felt himself compelled to know more of it. He tapped his long hawk nose with his fingers.

  ‘What do you say is the purpose of this clock, this Timekeeper?’

  Maria Prophetessa paused as the evening shadows fell in bars across the window, and then she began to speak.

  ‘Long ago on the banks of the Nile, the holy priests of the great god Ra ordained that there should be twelve hours of daytime and twelve hours of night.

  ‘Ra, falcon-headed, Ruler of the Sun, punted his boat across the sky every day, and at night sailed through the Underworld, until it was time for him to be reborn at daybreak.

  ‘The worshippers of Ra understood the ancient mysteries of the Universe, and to them was revealed a prophecy that the dying god would be reborn at the End of Time.

  ‘This god would be the new ruler of the Universe.

  ‘The great dynasties of Egypt passed into the Sands of Time, and the sphinx’s head was buried in the dust. Moses, the Israelite, brought a new god out of Egypt, made not of gold, nor in the image of an animal, but in the image of Man. This God Yahweh had a son, Jesus, whose birth we saw in a star.

  ‘The pattern of the Heavens is clear. Twenty-four centuries will pass until the End of Time.’

  ‘And then?’ said the Pope, watching her.

  ‘The god will be reborn and Time will belong to him.’

  ‘But you say that Time will no longer exist.’

  ‘Time will exist no more as we have known it.’

  ‘This is a mystery,’ said the Pope.

  Maria Prophetessa inclined her head.

  ‘And the child? Who is the child in the twenty-fourth symbol?’ said the Pope.

  ‘She is the Child with the Golden Face,’ said Maria Prophetessa.

  ‘And what is the meaning of that?’ asked the Pope.

  ‘I do not know. Not all can be revealed.’

  ‘You do not know, or you will not say?’

  ‘The child is a mystery, like the clock,’ said Maria Prophetessa.

  The Pope said, ‘You are not a believer.’

  ‘I do not believe what you believe, that is all the difference between us, but I am a believer.’

  ‘You are a heretic.’ The Pope banged his fist on the table.

  ‘I do not believe what you believe,’ she said again.

  ‘You have been arrested on suspicion of sorcery and heresy, and in your defence, you offer me a clock?’ The Pope was snarling like a wolf.

  ‘I am offering you the secret of Time!’

  ‘How did you come by this clock?’ demanded the Pope.

  Maria Prophetessa was silent.

  Then the Pope did a terrible thing. He took the clock and hurled it at the wall, where it broke into pieces.

  ‘Curses on you to the limits of the Heavens!’ shouted Maria Prophetessa, on her hands and knees trying to capture the beheaded angels, pendulum rods, tiny cogs, jewelled numbers.

  The Pope laughed at her. ‘I care nothing for your sorcery, woman, and I care nothing for your toys. The clock is destroyed, and your raving prophecies with it. The Church of God will last until the End of Time and the End of Time will be that day when God takes His flock to His Heaven, and Hell is shut for ever on your weeping.’

  Maria Prophetessa lunged forward to grab at the wounded fragments of the clock, and, as she reached past the Pope’s chair, she looked out on to the balcony and into the faces of Silver and Gabriel.

  There was a second’s pause, and then she twisted a vial from round her neck and flung it straight at them, crying, ‘Away with you, away with you, it is not the time!’

  The Pope looked round, surprised, but saw nothing, because Silver and Gabriel had vanished.

  He rang the bell, and the guards came and dragged away Maria Prophetessa, screaming oaths and curses as she went.

  Then the Pope bent down and carefully collected all the pieces of the clock and put them into the bag and put the bag into his drawer, and locked it.

  Abel Darkwater was leaning forward, watching the Pope intently. He had half-hypnotised him, and his memories were cast behind him on the wall.

  As the Pope returned to full consciousness, Darkwater was saying, ‘You failed. You did not destroy the Timekeeper.’

  ‘The pieces were stolen from me.’

  ‘And taken to Peru, where a new emerald was cut, to replace the one you kept to wear in your ring.’

  The Pope shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘And it came by way of a pirate ship to England in the reign of Elizabeth the First.’

  ‘She was a heretic,’ said the Pope. ‘We excommunicated her.’

  ‘And then its history is hidden until it was found again in Jamaica in 1762 by an apprentice to a clockmaker called Harrison.’

  ‘And where is it now?’

  ‘That is the question,’ said Abel Darkwater.

  For many minutes the Pope and Darkwater were silent. A serving nun came and brought them wine.

  ‘All could be altered, oh yes, if I had the Timekeeper again. If I had it, we could thread our way fine as a needle back through the fabric of Time, and what has happened need not happen.’

  ‘What has happened has happened,’ said the Pope.

  ‘Indeed it has, oh yes, but it need not.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘I am saying,’ said Abel Darkwater patiently, ‘that the last of the hours of the clock are the ones that matter to us. In the twenty-first century, where I am living at present, there begins for the first time in Time, if you will pardon the expression, disturbances, rents, tears, in Time’s fabric, which, if properly understood, allow us a moment to change history, I mean, to choose our future. Your old enemy is your enemy still. Would you be defeated by her?’

  ‘Maria Prophetessa?’

  ‘How she winds through Time!’ said Abel Darkwater. ‘Her name now is Regalia Mason, and it is she, oh yes, it is she, who stands at the head of the company called Quanta, which, if we do nothing …’

  ‘Will become the Quantum,’ said the Pope, his eyes flashing like his emerald ring.

  ‘The Quantum,’ repeated Abel Darkwater. ‘Ruler of the Universe, a new god indeed.’

  ‘And if we act now?’ said the Pope.

  ‘Victory will be ours.’

  ‘And Maria Prophetessa?’

  ‘She will be destroyed.’

  The two men smiled at one another – the smile of a crocodile and the smile of a wolf.

  Big Red Bus

  For the second time in how many minutes, hours, days, months, years, were Silver and Gabriel lying face down in the dust?

  They had no idea how much time had passed or where they were now.

  ‘She threw something at us,’ said Silver, trying to get up. ‘The something she threw, threw us,’ said Gabriel, rubbing his bruises. ‘Be you hurt?’

  Silver shook her head and looked round. ‘Gabriel! We must be back on Philippi, there are three moons!’

  ‘This be a wasteland,’ said Gabriel, slowly looking around.

  They were at the edge of a scrubby field piled high with scrap metal: cars, washing machines, cookers, filing cabinets and bikes with their wheels off. As they walked through the heaps, some smouldering, some cold, Gabriel was filling the baggy pockets of his blue coat with hooks and nuts, wires and clips.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked Silver.

  ‘Throwbacks put to use all that we find,’ he said simply.

  ‘Did you understand what Regalia Mason, I mean Maria Prophetessa, was saying?’

  �
��Yea,’ said Gabriel.

  ‘So, what was she saying? And anyway, the Pope broke the clock.’

  ‘She spake all of the prophecy and the clock,’ said Gabriel. ‘I do not think the clock is broke for ever. Remember Micah my father found it many years after, in Jamaica.’

  ‘But it was broken then,’ said Silver.

  ‘It may be that you will mend it,’ said Gabriel.

  He did not say more. What he had seen and heard had frightened him, not for himself but for Silver, and he had made a silent vow that he would protect her at any cost, even his own life. While he was thinking these thoughts, Silver took his hand.

  ‘Look,’ said Silver. ‘That’s weird, that’s really weird.’

  About half a mile away, but clearly visible in the distance, was a big red London bus. Small figures were running round it. As Gabriel and Silver stood still, watching, they didn’t see a group of four men closing in on them. The men wore long coats and bobble hats and their faces were rough and unshaven. Two of them carried baseball bats. Suddenly Gabriel sensed them and he grabbed Silver’s hand.

  ‘Run Silver, run!’

  They ran towards the bus, the men following. Gabriel and Silver ran as fast as they could – or as fast as Silver could – but the men were faster, and they were catching up.

  ‘Help!’ shouted Silver. ‘Help!’

  The figures at the bus heard and turned, and with a great roar one of them started running straight towards Silver and Gabriel and the men. The men slowed, hesitated, then jogged to a halt, swinging their bats from hand to hand. Stones started showering over Silver’s head. The kids from the bus were hurling stones at the men.

  ‘GET LOST YOU LOT, YEAH?’ the boy at the head of the kids was yelling at the men. Then he waved at Silver and Gabriel. ‘Come on, come on! Faster, man!’

  The men slowly turned tail, mocking the kids, and threatening them, but at last heading back to the scrapheaps, while the black boy stood his ground. The kids surrounded Silver and Gabriel.

  ‘Thanks!’ said Silver. ‘Who are they?’

  ‘Scrappers,’ said the boy. ‘Real evil. Lives on the heaps, yeah? They always out on the rob.’

  The young black boy was looking curiously at Gabriel: his ears, his face, his clothes, his hands.

  ‘Do you laugh at me?’ said Gabriel.

  ‘No, man, no, no way!’ said the boy, losing his swagger. The boy wasn’t scared of the Scrappers, but he was a bit scared of Gabriel. He smiled and opened his arms to move everyone forward.

  Silver and Gabriel began to walk towards the bus with the kids. All the kids were wearing tattered and patched school uniform, except for a pair of twins who hadn’t joined in with the others, and were swinging on the pole on the open deck of the bus. They were both wearing identical white dresses, so clean they shone. Silver wondered how anyone could keep so clean out here in all the dust and scrap.

  ‘Where you from? asked the tall black boy, obviously the leader.

  ‘London,’ said Silver.

  ‘Yeah, like us. We was on that bus. We was goin’ to school and then we was here. Just like POW! There in London. Then here …’

  ‘You’re the kids on the bus!’ said Silver excitedly. ‘You came in the first Time Tornado! You were on the telly – well you weren’t, cos you had all disappeared, but everyone heard about it.’

  ‘Cool, we were on telly!’ said one of the girls.

  ‘Oh don’t be stupid about stupid telly, I want to go home. I want my dog.’ The girl next to her started crying.

  Another went to comfort her, saying to Silver, ‘We get food and stuff, it’s all right, but we don’t know what’s happening – are there aliens on Earth?’

  ‘No,’ said Silver. ‘There are Time Tornadoes.’

  And she told the kids everything that had happened.

  While they were all talking, a bell rang, and a woman came out from a far building.

  ‘Sally and Kelly! Inside now, please!’

  The twins in the white dresses broke away from the group, and, holding hands, walked across the scrubby back lot towards the steel buildings at the other side. The buildings looked like the small low huts you got in car parks and places, but they were made of steel.

  ‘What’s happening?’ asked Silver.

  ‘Dunno.’ The boy shook his head. ‘Every day the twins go to the hospital for check-ups or something, and they have to wear those white nano-dresses.’

  ‘What’s a nano-dress?’ said Silver.

  ‘It don’t get dirty whateva you do, and it keeps you warm whateva the wevva. The people who lives here wears nanosuits and dresses all the time – they don’t have to wash ’em ’n’ stuff. They got nano-chips in the material. Like smart cards ’n’ computer chips, but real tiny, yeah?’

  ‘We don’t know anything about this place,’ said Silver. ‘Will you take us round with you?

  ‘Yeah, we can show you all the stuff – like the Vatican, which is dead stupid cos it’s full of Popes.’

  ‘I’m a Catholic, so shut up,’ said one of the girls.

  ‘Yeah, but you only supposed to get one Pope at a time, right? This place has all of ’em. Everywhere you look, like wow, another Pope.’

  ‘Be we on Philippi?’ said Gabriel.

  ‘Yeah, Einstein Line, Checkpoint Zero.’

  ‘Then we be back where we were.’

  ‘Why, where you been?’

  ‘Rome, I think,’ said Silver.

  ‘In 1582,’ said Gabriel.

  ‘Cool!’ said the boy. ‘My name’s Toby.’

  ‘Gabriel,’ said Gabriel, making a little half bow.

  ‘Silver,’ said Silver, smiling.

  Toby shared out the day’s food the kids had been given, so that there was enough for Silver and Gabriel. They had sausages and hard-boiled eggs and apple pie and orange juice.

  Toby said he would show them round. ‘It’s a bit like Disneyland here. Kind of a theme park? I’ll show you.’

  Silver and Gabriel and the kids set off in a noisy tribe to walk round the streets, which weren’t really streets, but were groups of buildings, and squares, and then empty open spaces with rubbish all over them.

  Ragged men were sorting through the rubbish.

  ‘More Scrappers,’ said Toby. ‘Like dossers in London, no job or any stuff. They sells scrap. These ones is OK, not so savage like, yeah, but them wild ones out on the rubbish dumps, you gotta be real watchful.’

  ‘What’s that doing here?’ said Silver, staring up at a tall tower.

  ‘Yeah, Leaning Tower of Pizza.’

  ‘Not Pizza – Pisa,’ said Silver, who wasn’t as bad at geography as she thought.

  Around the base of the tower was an assortment of vintage cars: MG, Pontiac, Rolls-Royce, Model T Ford, Thunderbird, Big Healy, Bugatti, Porsche, all with FOR SALE signs propped on the windscreens.

  ‘If we could hotwire one, we could escape,’ said Toby.

  Gabriel was very interested in the cars. He told Toby about the Enfields.

  ‘Cool!’ said Toby. ‘Can you wire one of these up to go?’

  Gabriel nodded. He could make anything go.

  ‘Tonight, then!’ said Toby, who had decided to forget about Gabriel’s funny ears and strange clothes. Maybe this wasn’t the place to behave like anything was strange.

  ‘How do these petrol wagons come here?’ asked Gabriel.

  ‘Huh? You mean the cars? It all come here first, man – the Scrappers told me,’ said Toby. ‘You know like how stuff and kids disappear and nobody knows where they gone, or why they never comin’ back? Yeah, right, well, is because they get time-warped and they come here. Whateva it is from the past or the future comes down the Star Road and it gets ticketed at Checkpoint Zero. Then it goes off for sale some place else. All the dealers come here to get stuff cheap. We sold our satchels and Walkmans and mobile phones, even our money. They got a coin shop, the lot.’

  ‘What about people? What happens to the people who come here?’ said Silv
er.

  ‘Dunno, really. We just waitin’ to be Deported, but we in a queue or whateva.’

  They had come round a corner to a neat Parisian apartment block, with a big neon sign on the roof that said POL. The other half of the POL had broken off.

  ‘Parrots, maybe,’ said Toby. ‘My grandma in Barbados had a parrot called Pol, or Polly. Or maybe Pol is Police, dunno. Here’s like the posh part of town. The police chief lives here and the scientists. This building just dropped in from Paris one day, the Scrappers said.’

  ‘It must have been a Time Tornado,’ said Silver.

  Silver wondered if Regalia Mason had an apartment in the Pol. She described her to Toby. Had he ever seen her? He shook his head. He hadn’t seen anyone like that.

  A fat concierge came out of the main door of the Pol and shouted at the kids to go away. ‘Allez! Dépêchez-vous! Je travaille! Je déteste les jeunes!’ Then she started mopping down the marble steps.

  ‘She speaks that Frog stuff so we don’t get it,’ said Toby. ‘I think she came here with the building.’

  They went on, past small neat rows of terraced houses, and wooden clapboard buildings from the American Mid West, and a disused factory that said SUNLIGHT SOAP.

  In a siding, on tracks going nowhere, were locomotive trains, steam trains and diesel trains, their abandoned carriages home to refugees, who stood outside, cooking and staring.

  ‘You gotta be careful here,’ said Toby. ‘Kids go missin’. Kids get sold. These can’t hurt us cos we’ve been tagged – yeah,’ and he showed them his orange triangle, ‘but you not been tagged yet. How come?’

  ‘We’ll be tagged later,’ said Silver warily. ‘There’s a queue. We only came last night.’

  Toby nodded. He seemed satisfied. The other kids straggling around weren’t interested. Toby was the leader.

  Right in front of them was a big white stone building with columns and fountains and a paved area with benches and guards with guns walking up and down, but not threatening anyone who was just sitting or eating their lunch. A couple of the Popes in robes and hats were chatting to a man in a white coat so white that it reflected the morning light. Silver screwed up her eyes.

  ‘What’s this place then, Toby?’

  ‘The hospital. Bethlehem Hospital.’