by Sylvia Waugh
There was a week to go before the spaceship lodged at the base of the Friese-Greene obelisk would leap from the soil and jet out into space. Steven knew that his decision to remain behind would not be accepted as a fait accompli till the deed was truly done.
After two days of justifiable sulking, he went to the computer room to check the Brick. Curiosity is a strong motivation. It was Tuesday tea time. Jacob had not yet come in from school. So the coast, as Steven saw it, was clear.
He opened the door for the first time that week.
He looked defiantly at the Brick.
What he saw was not quite what he had expected.
The purple button was flashing, not urgently but intermittently like Morse code. It seemed almost gentle, except that machines do not have attitudes. Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you join the dance?
Steven slid into his seat and made his presence known. Immediately the screen unfurled and displayed a terse notice.
COME TO THE SPACESHIP
Then what?
Steven had to think hard what to conceal and what to reveal. He did not want to admit that he had no intention of returning to Ormingat. With only six days to go, it would be a risk to enter the ship and hope to leave, even using deception, which he was not very good at any way.
He decided that to talk to the machine represented a greater hazard than to type in a reply. Carefully he typed the words,
TOO SOON
There was no reply. When Steven’s words scrolled off the screen, they were replaced by the original message:
COME TO THE SPACESHIP
‘Maybe we should go,’ said Jacob.
Steven jumped, startled. He had not heard his son come into the room behind him. ‘Go?’ he said rapidly. ‘Go where?’
‘Go to the spaceship,’ said Jacob. ‘Tell the truth and ask for the ship to remain on Earth, and explain to the Cube that you want to continue your work here.’
‘No,’ said Steven, harshly yanking on the lever to sever communications and sharply scrolling the screen down into place. ‘Leave it.’
‘But–’ began Jacob.
‘No buts,’ said Steven. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘Someone might need you,’ said Jacob, trying another tack.
That was a tempting suggestion. Steven liked to be needed. The new facilitator, whoever that might be, would not be as proficient. If I can prove that I am irreplaceable, concessions will be made.
‘Leave me,’ he said to his son, and then softened enough to say, ‘You are right. I should do some checking. But leave me now. This is the boring bit, and you know it takes a lot of concentration.’
Reluctantly, Jacob left the room, turning as he went to say, ‘That ship is ours, Sterekanda mesht. Make sure they understand.’
In the days that followed, Steven would not meet Jacob’s eye. His whole manner forbade questioning. He mind-fenced the subject to the best of his ability; but his experience with Stella Dalrymple had taught him that a determined personality is not susceptible to mind-fencing, especially when some important concept is at stake. The computer room was kept locked and he decided not to enter it again until the deadline had passed.
Jacob found himself forced into silence, but he knew every twist and turn of his father’s thinking. Clearly, he had failed to put forward a satisfactory argument for continuing his work here on Earth. Now he was determined to block it all out.
A phone call from the insurance company was answered with the excuse that work on their system would have to be suspended for a day or two because the computer terminal was temporarily inaccessible.
‘It is a very small glitch,’ said Steven smoothly. ‘Tell Anton that everything will be back on line next week.’
Wednesday passed, and Thursday. The voice of Ormingat kept on whispering to both its sons. One was determined to shut it out; the other was simply reduced to silent misery.
On Friday night, the whispering increased. Jacob was more disturbed than ever. Floorboards all over the house seemed to be creaking. The central heating took longer than usual to settle down for the night. The curtains at his window shuffled with a draught he had never been aware of before.
Come to the spaceship, said the voice inside his head. Come now. Come quickly.
That was more easily said than done. Come where? Come how? He eventually slept, but fitfully, and his sleep was filled with unruly dreams.
Then, in the middle of the night, he came fully awake and realized that he had forgotten to clean his teeth. The taste in his mouth was unpleasant. He welcomed the excuse to get out of bed, to perform a simple everyday task.
He watched himself in the bathroom mirror, scrubbing his teeth, up and down, backwards and forwards, then up and down again. Come to the spaceship. He rinsed his mouth and put the toothbrush back into the rack.
He walked back to his bedroom, passing his parents’ room on the way, slightly dawdling, hoping that his father would come out and see him there. The bedroom door opened. It was Lydia.
‘I forgot to clean my teeth, Mum,’ said Jacob quickly.
‘So that was the noise I heard,’ said Lydia. ‘Do settle down to sleep now. You don’t want to waken the rest of the house!’
Steven too had unease inside his soul. But he knew how to recognize the silent sound that managed to seem like a great voice calling. It was the voice of Ormingat, using telepathy to speak to its recalcitrant son. You have a debt to Javayl.
On Saturday morning, Lydia rose early, but Steven stayed in bed with the blankets over his ears as if to shut out the sound of the Sirens. The messages that came from Ormingat were sweet and tempting. His human mind might have little recollection of the place to which he truly belonged, but deep inside, he knew. And he cared. He even felt himself assessing the possibilities. He could safely leave the twins to their life on Earth. Much as he loved them, he knew that they would manage without him. He could gladly take Jacob with him into space, and Jacob would be glad to go. But there was no way this side of paradise that he could ever part from Lydia.
‘Kerry says we can have a rabbit, Dad,’ said Josie, ‘to keep in the back garden.’
‘We don’t know anything about keeping a rabbit,’ said Steven. ‘You don’t just feed them, you know. I’m quite sure of that. Would you have to take them to the park for a walk? Do you have to get a rabbit collar and lead?’
Beth was not quite sure whether he meant it or not. She had never seen anyone taking a rabbit for a walk, but it was possible. She looked questioningly at her sister.
‘Of course not,’ said Josie. ‘You just let them have little runs round the yard and the garden. They’re really sweet. And they eat lettuce and carrots.’
‘Where do they – if you will excuse the word – poo?’ said Steven, smiling mischievously. ‘Do they start off in nappies?’
‘Dad,’ said Josie exasperatedly, ‘you know they don’t. You have to get a hutch at the pet shop. And you have to clean up after them. But they’re not very dirty, not like cats and dogs. Their droppings are really quite small, Kerry says.’
‘Ah-hah,’ said their father, ‘so you get this smelly hutch that needs mucking out, like one of the labours of Hercules.’
‘Stop tormenting them,’ said Lydia with a laugh. ‘Your father will go and get you a hutch this afternoon – but you will have to do all the mucking out yourself. And rabbits are not allowed inside the house. If that’s clear, I’m sure we’ll all get along nicely.’
It was Steven who received the hugs and the thanks, but Lydia did not mind.
Jacob stood watching in silence.
On Sunday, while the family were at church, Jacob safely with them, Steven broke his resolve to stay away from the Brick. Alone in the house, he found it difficult to resist checking it just once more. He went into the computer room and unscrolled the screen.
IT IS IMPERATIVE THAT YOU COME NOW
Steven did not sit down at the table. Nor did he pull the lever that wou
ld allow him to speak directly to the Brick. He just leant over the keyboard and typed the words:
WHAT YOU ASK IS IMPOSSIBLE
He left the room again and locked the door.
When the family returned from church, Jacob gave his father a look that clearly expressed suspicion. Steven said nothing and turned towards his daughters, who were in their usual state of high excitement. The hutch was already in the garden, tucked between the shed and the back fence.
‘And today we take delivery of the rabbit,’ he said to the girls. ‘What shall you call her?’
‘It’s a him,’ said Josie.
‘And his name’s Bob,’ said Beth. ‘That’s short for bobtail.’
CHAPTER 39
* * *
Who Goes Home?
Sunday evening was slow.
Despite Lydia’s earlier decree, the hutch and the rabbit were brought into the kitchen because the wind was blowing a gale, and ‘He is such a little rabbit and he’s sure to be frightened.’ So Josie and Beth sat there with him, for company.
Jacob was alone in the dining room, huddled over his history homework, sketching in some detail an early combustion engine. He had a pretty good idea how it worked, which could never be said of the spaceship buried in Highgate Cemetery! He sighed as the thought of the ship pressed on his mind, distracting his attention. Would it really go? Would he never see it again?
Come to the spaceship, Javayl ban.
The voice was more than ever a tiny whisper, unreal but not quite dismissible.
Lydia and Steven were in the front room, deep in armchairs, watching the television in companionable silence. To Steven also the voice was whispering.
Come to the spaceship, breaker of rules. Time is passing. Soon will it be too late.
Steven turned up the sound on the set. It was a programme about pyramids in ancient Egypt.
‘Is that not a bit loud?’ said Lydia, looking up from her sewing.
‘Sorry,’ said Steven, adjusting the sound again. ‘I didn’t mean to turn it up so far.’
‘They can tell you anything, you know,’ said Lydia. ‘The only thing we really know about the pyramids is that they are there. The rest is scholarly speculation.’
Steven smiled. ‘Do you believe in Julius Caesar?’ he said playfully.
‘Probably not,’ said Lydia, making a face at him. ‘Would you like a cup of tea? Than which there is nothing more real!’
To be alone did not suit him at that moment. He followed her into the kitchen and bent down in the corner where the twins were sitting. Then he talked seriously to the rabbit. ‘There is more to life than lettuce, o Bob,’ he said. ‘There are carrots and peas and big broad beans. And, glory of glories, there are also bright red radishes!’
The twins listened to him and giggled.
At eleven-thirty Lydia went up to bed, leaving her husband alone watching the television beside the fire in the dimly lit room.
‘I’ll not be long,’ he said. ‘I’ll just see the end of this, and then there are one or two things I want to do.’
When Lydia left the room, the voice became more insistent, as Steven had known it would.
One hour and the doors will seal. One hour and then nothing more.
Steven turned off the television and went into the kitchen to check that the rabbit was still securely hutched and that all the doors were locked.
Fifty minutes, Sterekanda ban. Bring Javayl. Come now. It is not too late.
The voice was kindly, motherly, friendly. It sounded as if something behind the whispering would deeply care if its instructions were ignored. That was the worst of it. Everyday speech gives a choice of evils: to be caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, a rock and a hard place, Scylla and Charybdis. But Steven’s dilemma was to choose between two goods. The waif-soul had to win, but that did not make the loss of Ormingat any more bearable.
So Steven made up his mind to talk to the Brick, to explain the dilemma. As he passed Jacob’s door he almost knocked and asked him to join him. Then, that seemed unwise. So instead he made one last effort at mind-fencing.
‘Sleep, my son,’ he said. ‘By morning it will all be over.’
When he entered the computer room, all was as it had ever been. The screen was unscrolled and there, frozen, were the words of command:
IT IS IMPERATIVE THAT YOU COME NOW
Steven sat down at the desk and switched on the lever that allowed him to speak.
‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘I am very, very sorry. I must stay here on Earth with my wife who needs me, and whose happiness is mine. I do not know how much of this you can hear and understand. I never realized till now just how little I know. I feel there is love for me in Ormingat, and sadness. Please, you who are sad, forgive me. Please, you who love me, know that I feel and cherish your love.’
He rested his hands on his arms and wept.
The time passed.
Suddenly, Steven was aware that something was happening above his head, on the screen. He looked up and there was, not the scroll, but a view of Highgate Cemetery in lamplit darkness.
He was aware that something had happened but he did not know what it was.
Then, at the bottom of the image of the churchyard, like graffiti on the crumbling bricks, appeared the words:
THE DOORS ARE CLOSED BUT THE SHIP IS NOT EMPTY
Steven gasped. What was happening? What could be happening?
The Gwynns!
Had the Gwynns taken him up on his offer? Were they now inside the spaceship? He had told them enough to make it possible. But that girl of theirs did not want to go. Even her mother had seemed reluctant to consider his suggestion. Had Matthew entered the ship alone?
There was only one thing to do. Watch and wait. In less than two hours the ship would leave the Earth. The Brick was not responding to him as in former days, but there were clearly things it wanted him to know. Perhaps all was not lost. The Brick could be restored to him and he and Jacob could work with it again.
There is another nuance to the meaning of Sterekanda. The rule-breaker was also the one-who-lives-in-hope. Why else would he break the rules?
CHAPTER 40
* * *
The Accidental Traveller
No one noticed the boy in blue pyjamas haring along the roads of North London in the half hour before midnight.
Jacob might have been sleepwalking. There he was, late at night, running as if his life depended upon it. In his hand he was carrying a thin metal coat hanger, the sort that comes from the dry-cleaner’s. There were cars passing, and a few pedestrians; but no one noticed him because no one ever did.
The decision to make one last effort to prevail upon the Cube to allow the spaceship to remain on Earth had come to him so suddenly that there seemed no time to dress or wrap up warm, or do anything but run. He knew, of course, that he would not be noticed. On this occasion, it would work to his advantage.
He did not stop or even pause for breath till he reached precisely the right spot along the railings of Highgate Cemetery.
At this hour the place was silent as the grave. Memorials were dark etched against a lesser darkness. Jacob peered in at the home of the dead but he did not shudder and no ghost, imaginary or real, came between him and his fixed purpose. William, Friese-Greene, master of a different sort of illusion, lay peacefully sleeping, totally unaware of anyone or anything in the world outside.
Jacob painstakingly straightened out the wire of the coat hanger and then pushed up against the railings of the cemetery. In his right hand he held the length of metal. It lacked the rigidity of the folded ruler, but it would be of adequate length. All he needed to do was to put his arm through the railings and hold on to the end of the wire.
It might not work.
He fished around till he could feel the marble of the pediment beneath the obelisk. Then, pulling back an inch or two, he thought he should be in the right place. He had watched very carefully as his father manoeuvred the ruler. He squ
eezed hard against the railing and prodded the wire into the soil. It would not go far, but it did not need to go far. Would it accept Jacob as Ormingatrig? Would it draw him in?
Gladly, willingly, quickly!
The spaceship had been expecting passengers for two days and nights. The final hour was close at hand.
You are late, Javayl, but you are welcome.
These were the first words Jacob heard as he tumbled into the ship. He sat himself upright on the sofa and gazed up at the Cube.
Sterekanda is awaited.
Jacob wondered what to say. Then, remembering what his father had told him of the machine’s oblique manner of communication, he made up his mind to say what he had intended to say before he entered the ship.
‘I have come to beg you to stay on Earth,’ he said. ‘I can never be happy again if you leave. My father will not be coming. But he and I can serve you well, if we are permitted.’
Sterekanda is awaited.
Jacob realized that the Cube was not answering him. He must try another way.
‘Sterekanda will not leave Earth,’ he said.
Time passes. Within minutes it will be too late.
‘Stay here,’ said Jacob. ‘Please, don’t go.’
Time has passed.
‘I shall go to my father now,’ said Jacob, standing up and facing towards the door that must soon eject him. ‘Can I take a message to him?’
The door is sealed. Departure is imminent.
Even now, after such an explicit statement, Jacob did not appreciate the danger he was in. ‘Then I must go,’ he said.
The Cube was silent. The clock on the floor of the ship whirred and then sparked.
‘What is happening?’ said Jacob in sudden panic. ‘Let me go back to my father. Let me tell him whatever it is you want him to do.’
The door is sealed.
‘Unseal it,’ said Jacob, his voice rising. ‘I have to go back home.’
Ormingat is home.
‘Let me out!’ shouted Jacob. ‘Ormingat is home, but not yet, and not without my father.’