by Jan Siegel
‘The girl knows more than she’s saying,’ Pobjoy insisted. ‘She hinted Mrs Carlow was killed in the attic and dumped in the river later. If I had a forensic team to go over the place with a fine-tooth comb …’
‘Sorry. We can’t spare any more resources on this one. The robbery at Haverleigh Hall is a bigger priority. They took half a million in Georgian silver and antique jewellery, and a load of paintings including a Constable and a dubious Titian. Probably a commission, and from the way they knocked out the alarm system they’re very professional.’
‘Sir Richard Wykeham, isn’t it?’ said Pobjoy. ‘Knighted two years ago for services to the country – that is, getting very rich. Arms, wasn’t it?’
‘I see you’ve already done your homework,’ the ACC said dryly. ‘Wykeham’s an important man. I personally don’t like him – don’t know anyone who does – but he has a lot of influence. With a capital I.’
‘Which makes him much more important than some nameless old lady from an obscure village who had nothing,’ Pobjoy commented.
‘You know the realities,’ the ACC said. ‘It’s not as though you’re getting anywhere. Even if you get a statement out of the girl pointing the finger at one of her parents, the evidence of minors never holds up well in court. Look at the Damilola Taylor fiasco. And I can’t really see any kid being prepared to convict her mum or dad.’
Pobjoy nearly said: ‘Your boys not yet in their teens, sir?’ but refrained.
‘Get onto the Haverleigh Hall case,’ the ACC concluded. ‘We won’t get Sir Richard’s stuff back for him but at least we can nab the boys who did it, preferably before they clean out anyone else. Yes, I know you want to stick with your potential murder but you’ll have to drop it. Money talks, we both know that.’
‘Does its evidence stand up in court?’ Pobjoy inquired.
‘Oh yes,’ sighed the ACC. ‘Usually wearing a wig and gown.’
Since Hazel and George hadn’t broken up yet, the beginning of the holidays found Nathan left much to his own devices. He caught the bus into Chizzledown and went to see Eric, who was still working for Rowena Thorn. They walked to the foot of the down which gave the village its name and picnicked on sandwiches provided by Annie. On the slope above them was a huge symbol carved into the chalk, less famous than the horses and giants seen elsewhere since it was simply a pattern and no one knew what it was meant to signify. It consisted of a line bisected by an arc and set within a circle. ‘In my world,’ Eric said unexpectedly, ‘is ancient symbol of great magic.’
‘What does it mean?’ Nathan demanded excitedly.
Eric achieved one of his magnificent shrugs. ‘Who knows? Is deep mystery.’
Nathan’s brief excitement waned. ‘It could be a coincidence,’ he said. What with Star Wars, and the force, and the spellpower of poetry, he felt that almost everything meant something special to Eric.
‘What is – coincidence?’ the exile asked.
When that had been explained, with difficulty and at length, Nathan told him about his latest dream: the cave, the desert, the monster, the unsuccessful tomb raiders and the wild xaurians. Eric was both enthused and disturbed. ‘Is right place,’ he decided. ‘Must be. Sangreal, sword, crown hide there. You not see?’
‘It was pitch-dark in the cave,’ Nathan said. ‘I couldn’t see anything. Do you know who the raiders were?’
Eric hesitated. ‘Maybe just thieves,’ he said at last. ‘But – maybe not. There is a group – you would say, revolters? – they say Grandir will do nothing to save us, let all die except few who are chosen, keep spell of first Grandir till end. Revolters might try to steal treasures, to do spell.’
Nathan said: ‘Could they?’
‘No. Nobody can do spell. Secret is lost. But maybe they guess. Is illegal, but I think many will try, if they have opportunity.’
Nathan mmmed an affirmation. ‘What have they got to lose?’
‘Law is strict,’ Eric offered. ‘Many put in prison.’
Nathan gave him another sandwich, and they moved on to the subject of the xaurians. ‘Their skin very tough,’ Eric explained. ‘Protect against sundeath. Also special lid over eye, always closed but – invisible …’
‘Transparent?’ Nathan deduced.
‘They see through it. Transparent. I will remember.’ He always did, Nathan noticed. Any new word had to be committed to memory only once. ‘Long ago, men catch wild xaurians, change genes, make them bigger, stronger, but to obey. Some wild ones still there, though many die. Not lots of animals for them to hunt now.’
‘Why would the wild ones help men?’ Nathan asked.
‘Very intelligent,’ Eric suggested doubtfully. ‘Like dolphin here.’
Nathan wondered how he had heard about dolphins. ‘Is helping men a sign of intelligence?’ he said. Of course, dolphins had been known to rescue drowning sailors, so maybe it was a good analogy.
They finished their lunch, and Nathan made his way back to Eade. In the shop he found Michael, who asked him if he would like to come out on the boat one day – ‘Yes, please!’ – and then left him to his mother’s company. ‘What were you and Uncle Barty up to last night?’ Nathan inquired, as innocently as he could manage. He didn’t want to deceive her, nor did he want her to deceive him. He had felt guilty about sneaking out to spy on her the previous evening, but with the dreams increasingly taking over his life he thought he needed to know everything – especially those things adults didn’t want him to know.
‘Just supper,’ Annie said, equally ill-at-ease with deceit. ‘And talk.’
‘About me?’
‘No.’ After all, that was mostly true. ‘You are not the only subject of discussion in my life, you know. We talked of – money matters. The running of the shop. That sort of thing.’
‘You’ve never had private meetings about that before,’ said Nathan.
‘I expect we did. You just didn’t notice.’
She isn’t going to tell me, he thought. I need to know – but she won’t tell. Should I say I was there?
I wonder if I ought to tell him? Annie agonized. He’s involved in all this. But he’s so young, so young … I want to keep him out, keep him safe, at least until he’s older. The more he knows, the more he’ll want to know – until in the end he’ll ask about his father …
She said nothing.
So did he.
That night, he knew he would dream. Not the idle dreams of the roving mind but the dreams of the soul, dreams of the other world. This time, he was aware of things before the dream started – a stomach-churning sensation of falling, plunging into a tunnel of black whirling space. Clouds of dark matter spun around him, stars that seemed tiny (but somehow he knew they were huge) streamed past, shattering into firedust on the invisible shoals of Time. Every so often planets heaved into his orbit, bellying with oceans and continents, wreathed in weather-systems.
When he emerged from the tunnel there was a blinding light, a vast sun out dazzling the lesser stars. He shut his eyes. Then he was on solid ground, and he opened them, to find himself staring at the rim of a desk-top. The Grandir’s desk in the semicircular office. He was crouching behind it, conspicuously solid, while a few feet away the Grandir stood with his back to him, receiving a report from a figure in hologram form.
The holocast (he was sure that was the correct term) wore a curious flat-topped head-dress and its black mask had bubbles of yellow glass over the eye-slits, giving it an evil look. Its coverall outfit was also black, made of some sleek, glossy material rather like leather, with padded gauntlets banded with metal on the knuckles and what might have been a weapon strapped to the shoulder. Its stance was rigid, clearly military.
‘He came originally from Ingorut,’ the holocast was saying. ‘He gives his name as Derzhin Zamork, which checks out on the computer, but our records were scrambled after that last piece of sabotage and the genoprint could be faked. Since the continent was cut off, we have no way of checking.’
‘It do
esn’t matter,’ said the Grandir. ‘His name is not important. He is a neo-salvationist: that’s all we need to know. What information has he given you about the organization?’
‘Not much, sir. These people work in cells, virtually isolated from other operatives, to protect the group in this very eventuality. He doesn’t even know who supplied him with data and gave him orders.’
‘Standard procedure.’ The tone was indifferent. ‘I would have done it that way myself, when I was young and imaginative. These people are moderately intelligent. Did you find the implant?’
There was a pause – a hesitation – as if the holocast had been taken by surprise. ‘I – yes, sir. It was on the spinal cord, at the base of the skull. But –’
The Grandir didn’t repeat the but to urge the holocast on. He merely waited.
‘We are unable to process it. Sir. It has been designed to activate only when surrounded by living tissue – his tissue. If we had a telepathic scanner –’
‘We do not. Such equipment is rare, as you well know. The last one was on Quorus: it was lost when the planet was cut off. What dosage of truth serum have you been using?’
‘Up to point seven, sir. His body seems to have a natural resistance, possibly induced by an activating spell.’ This time, the pause stretched out much longer. ‘Would you like to interrogate him yourself, sir?’
‘No. What about the woman?’
‘She has been – more difficult. Her resistance level is even higher, and there are the same problems with an implant. She wouldn’t even tell us her name, though we were able to obtain that from Zamork. He calls her Kwanji Ley. He says she was trained as a third level practor.’
‘That explains much. She could have learned the location of the cave by magic. The knowledge is shielded, but such spells can be unravelled. Very well. No further questioning is needed. They have been careful to know nothing of their manipulators. Place them in Deep Confinement.’
‘For how long?’ asked the holocast.
‘Indefinitely.’
It’s the two I saw in the desert, Nathan thought. That’s who they’re talking about. They escaped the monster but were arrested back in Arkatron.
The holocast was fading and he closed his eyes, willing himself to accompany it, focusing on his memory of the two raiders. For a few moments that seemed interminable, nothing happened. He heard the footsteps of the Grandir moving away, and opened his eyes again to see the ruler standing by the window, gazing out of the gap between two screens. In a second he’ll turn round, Nathan thought. He’ll come back to the desk. There’s no other cover here and I can’t get out. He’ll find me …
Darkness took him so swiftly he wasn’t aware of it. Yet once again the emerging was slow, though without the cosmic effects. He was struggling against a muffling blanket of oblivion, fighting for consciousness, for sensation, for self. Every time he thought he was waking another layer of sleep would engulf him, pressing him back down into the abyss. At last after a final effort he broke through the veil, thin as a shadow, and found himself in the light.
Not the dazzling light of the Eosian sun but a soft pallor which seemed at first to have no source, no boundaries, no form. Gradually his surroundings acquired definition, and he saw he was in a cylindrical room without windows or doors, the curving walls and circular floor all of a matt, creamy-white smoothness. The height of the chamber was more than twice its diameter, and the ceiling appeared to be made of opaque glass, with a broad pillar descending from the centre, glossy as marble, and black. He was sitting with his back to it. He heard a voice somewhere behind him, the voice of the yellow-eyed holocast. ‘You are now in Deep Confinement, in Pit S00437C. The period of your incarceration has not been determined. That is all.’
There was the sound of a step, the faint swoosh of a sliding door. The pillar lifted off the floor and retreated upwards, vanishing through an aperture in the glass ceiling, which then closed. Nathan turned round.
The woman was there, leaning against the wall, one leg bent, the other stretched out in front of her. His first thought was how relaxed she looked. She had risked mortal danger to obtain the secrets of the cave, had failed and all but died, and now she was thrown into prison for an unspecified term – yet she looked at ease. It was warm in the Pit and her sleeveless, coat-like garment hung open; she wore nothing else. Her body was lean and very muscular for a woman. It did not curve in and out like the women of his own world: her hips, as far as he could judge, were very straight and her breasts barely swelled from her chest. She could see him – in that space, there was nowhere to hide – but she appeared untroubled by either his presence or her near-nakedness. Her face was not beautiful, he was sure, even by the standards of Eos: it was all curves and angles, lines and bones, with a purple lustre in the eyes that reminded him of Eric, only his were far lighter, the colour of amethyst. It was a face that seemed to be designed for quickness of expression, for eagerness and fire, but now her inward dial was set for repose, and she studied him without a flicker of curiosity or a flutter of emotion.
She said: ‘I thought I would be alone here. I was told, you are always alone in the Pits. Forever alone: wasn’t that the idea? Are you an illusion they have sent me – a holocast – or the result of that last injection?’
‘No one sent me,’ he said. ‘I’m real. At least, I think I am. I’m real in my world; I might not be real here.’
She didn’t try to make sense of this. He realized later, thinking of what she must have endured, that she was beyond sense: the most she could manage was being calm. She was determined to have no hope, no fear, no weakness that her gaolers could take hold of.
‘You are very small,’ she said presently.
‘I’m thirteen. I haven’t finished growing.’
There was a long, long pause.
‘You’re a child? I thought – there were no more children. I have never seen a child. Why did they send you to me?’
‘I told you, no one sent me,’ he reiterated. This was his first conversation with anyone in his dreams, he thought, and she didn’t believe in him. Well, that was fair enough. ‘I dreamed myself here. It’s something I can do; I don’t know how or why. I come from another world.’
‘All the worlds are gone,’ she said. ‘Unvarhu-sag.’
‘No: I mean, another universe. Beyond the Gate.’ He didn’t know if this concept would have any meaning for her. ‘I saw you in the desert, when you escaped the lizard-monster. I was watching from the cave. What did you go to find there? Was it the Sangreal?’
‘Questions,’ she sighed. ‘I knew there would be questions. For an illusion, you know, you really are very good. The fine detail is quite perfect. I can’t imagine you’ll tell me how they do it?’
‘Nobody did it,’ he persisted. ‘I was just born, the normal way: I was born and I grew. Please try to believe me. Look, the cup isn’t in the cave: that’s a blind. It’s in my world. Someone put it there, probably for safekeeping, though we’re not sure. Why were you after it? If you’d managed to get it, what would you have done with it? If the cup is part of a spell to save your world, we need to know how it works. Please –’
She didn’t answer. Her mouth was very serious, a sombre line, but the trace of a smile lifted the corners. ‘If you are real,’ she said, ‘show me. Touch me.’
He hadn’t thought of that, and it was so simple. He came over to her, reached his hand out toward hers. ‘May I?’ It seemed important to ask, in this world of masks and coweralls, where he had never seen people touch one another. Eric, he recalled, was always diffident about physical contact.
Kwanji Ley nodded.
He laid his hand over hers. There was a quiver in her fingers – he felt it – like an electrical response. She said: ‘They cannot do this.’ And then: ‘They have scrambled my mind. It must be a spell. The Grandir is very powerful – more powerful than we had guessed. I have protection, but it isn’t strong enough. I am not strong enough …’ Her voice failed, dwindling to
a whisper, terrible in one formerly so composed. He didn’t know if she was talking to herself or to him.
‘You are strong,’ he told her, horrified by the change in her. ‘I can see that. You’re very strong. There’s really nothing wrong with you: it’s me. I’m – I don’t know, a freak I suppose. I fall asleep, and dream, and I’m here. At first, I was just thought, invisible, but now I get more solid all the time. Please tell me about the cup. I’ll wake up soon, and then I’ll be gone, so –’
‘If you’re real,’ she said, ‘you can’t possibly go. We’re in Deep Confinement. There is no way out. Nobody has ever escaped from the Pits.’
‘You still don’t understand. For me, this is a dream. I’ll just – vanish …’
Suddenly, Kwanji seized his arm – her other hand brushed over his face, exploring his features like a blind woman. ‘You feel too solid to vanish,’ she said, ‘or my touch lies. You are no were creature: your eyes are human. Magic cannot do this. Who is controlling you?’
‘No one.’ He was vehement, desperate. He could feel the darkness rushing towards him, tingling in his feet, rising in his mind. At any moment, it would reclaim him.
‘I think you believe it,’ she said. ‘They have fooled you too. There is always someone in control …’
And then it was over. He had a last vision of her face, lips parting in astonishment, before it faded – broke up – and he was wrenched away, out of light, out of thought, out of that whole world …
He woke in his bed at home, cold with sweat, starting up to see the beginning of dawn lightening the curtains. He was saying her name – Kwanji – urging, pleading with the empty room.
‘The Grail is coming home,’ Bartlemy said. ‘On Saturday, to be precise. I gather our friend Julian Epstein is not happy. It will be transported in a sealed van, with guards –’
‘Armed?’ Nathan asked eagerly. They were sitting in the bookshop, Bartlemy and Annie on the available chairs, Nathan perched on the edge of the table.