Octavio glares at her. ‘And I’m coming too, Sexta.’
‘You most certainly are not! You’re only…’ She stops, and gazes at him in wonder and irritation.
‘A child?’ the boy offers. He glares at her. ‘You’ve not changed, Sexta!’
The Tribune blushes. ‘I am not who I was, Octavio.’
The boy holds her gaze. ‘Neither am I!’
Septima appears behind her mother, and surprises her with a kiss on the cheek. ‘Mama, we’ve all been together for a long time now, in weather foul and fair: you will want to hear what each of us has to say.’
Sexta softens, caresses her daughter’s cheek, kisses her on the lips. ‘Of course, sweetheart.’
Cherenkov stands his ground when the Tribune approaches. She kisses him on both cheeks. ‘Consort Apparent.’ She kisses Octavio on the forehead. ‘Brother.’
Her face assumes a serene air. ‘You are, of course, all welcome to my house.’
❖
‘What was it that I was supposed to get from the Old Man?’ asks Septima.
They are all seated. The story of the voyage to the sargasso has been told and that of finding Octavio there, and the boy has been allowed to tell his story.
The Tribune gives an elegant shrug and her fists open like buds. ‘The Old Man is whoever you want him to be. The primary goal was to realign your time with ours.’
‘This business of time,’ says Cherenkov, ‘I can’t pretend I understand it –’
‘Neither do we,’ says Heinrich. ‘But no one can deny that, in this realm, it affects us whether we will it or not.’
Cherenkov gaze lingers on the Consort’s gaunt, wizened face. ‘No, I can’t deny it.’
Septima regards him with a peculiar intensity.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s worse even than you know.’
Cherenkov jumps up. ‘How could it possibly be worse?’
The Tribune stares at him and at her daughter. ‘You have not told him?’
Cherenkov pales. ‘Told me what?’
Septima looks sick. ‘Once you came here with me, there was never any chance of you going back.’
He looks from daughter to mother. ‘But you promised me…’
‘You won’t want to go back,’ says Septima.
‘Why the hell not?’
As Septima avoids his gaze, Cherenkov groans. She looks up. ‘Time not only passes more slowly for the Neanderthal, relative to us here, but it also passes more slowly here relative to the world you came from. You have now been away from there for…’ She looks to her mother.
Keeping her face turned to him, the Tribune glances towards the doors ‘Something like seventy of your years.’
Cherenkov flops into a chair, and chuckles. He gazes at their faces one at a time. They gaze back. The Consort frowns and reaches out to take Cherenkov’s shoulder. ‘My dear fellow…’
Cherenkov knocks his hand away. ‘You all knew!’
None save Octavio hold his gaze.
Cherenkov grimaces, chuckles again. ‘I don’t believe you. I simply don’t, cannot, believe any of this, this… Shit!’
‘Shall I show you?’
Cherenkov stares at the Tribune. ‘Show me?’
She lifts a shallow metal box from table and offers it to him. He takes it and finds it to be surprisingly heavy, and warm to the touch. On one edge winks a pinprick of white light. He looks up. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Neither do I, Mama,’ says Septima.
‘Put it on your knees, Herr Cherenkov,’ says Consort Heinrich, in a low voice.
Cherenkov does as he is told.
‘May I?’
Cherenkov nods and Heinrich leans over. ‘It opens like this.’ The Consort flicks the lid of the box open with his finger. Cherenkov stares into it: light comes through the underside of the lid as if it were a stained glass window. He turns the box around and taps on the back of the window. The floor of the open box is inset with rows of flat typewriter keys.
Heinrich touches his finger to a square below the keyboard, moves his finger about, pushes several times. The patterns on the stained glass window change. Squares move and grow larger. In one of these squares there is a mass of frantic movement.
Cherenkov peers at it. ‘It’s like a film reel!’
Septima and Octavio are at his shoulders and gaze at the frantic movement open-mouthed.
‘That window…’ says the Tribune.
Heinrich points at the frantic square.
‘Is showing you what is going on in Venice at this very moment.’
The background could indeed be a canal in Venice. Clouds speed across the tiny scene. ‘Some kind of movie camera?’
‘Rather like one,’ says the Consort.
Cherenkov lifts the box, turns it in his hands. ‘I don’t understand.’
Heinrich smiles. ‘Neither do we really; we’ve only recently had the wire run in from the outer world.’
Septima stares at her mother, who raises her hands. ‘I know it is contrary to tradition. But we couldn’t wait for you to return. While you’ve been away, things have changed so rapidly out there.’
‘Wire?’ says Octavio. ‘I see no wire.’
Heinrich points at the box and flutters his hands around his head. ‘It connects to the wire through the air.’
Septima frowns. ‘Do you mean something like radio waves, Papa?’
Heinrich shrugs and smiles. ‘It’s all quite beyond me, my dear.’
Cherenkov settles the metal box back on his lap and returns to staring at the square; the live view of Venice. Octavio peers closer. ‘All that crazy scurrying is people?’
❖
‘Do you now believe that you are adrift in time?’
Cherenkov stares at the screen. He looks at the Tribune. ‘Nevertheless, I want to go home.’
She subsides into a chair, and gazes at her daughter. ‘Who will be your consort? How is the succession to be assured?’
Septima sinks to the floor beside her mother’s chair. ‘Perhaps I could wed someone here?’
Her mother glares at her. ‘An Eborean? Impossible! It would be fatal to thus favour one of the long families.’
Heinrich smiles wanly. ‘Do we not have a more pressing concern, my dears?’
Mother and daughter stare at each other. ‘The ball!’
‘What ball?’ says Cherenkov.
Heinrich’s face wrinkles apologetically. ‘My dear fellow, it is traditional to celebrate the return of the Heir Apparent with a great ball; thus is inaugurated the new epoch over which, in time, she is to rule.’
The Tribune frowns. ‘The invitations have already been sent. If we were to cancel it now…’
Septima looks as glum as her mother: ‘…would be to provoke a crisis.’
‘I want to leave with Cherenkov,’ says Octavio.
All eyes turn to him.
‘I’m as adrift in time as he is. If I can go with him, I can return when I have caught up with you.’
Octavio looks at his sister. ‘If only, on the island, you had waited for me a little longer, Sexta.’
The Tribune looks as if she might cry. ‘We searched for three days. Each of those days cost Heinrich and me a whole year!’
Septima rises, approaches Cherenkov and touches his arm. ‘Would you be prepared to take him with you?’
The boy looks at him expectantly.
Cherenkov nods. ‘Okay.’
Octavio rewards him with a wide grin.
Septima turns to her mother. ‘Highness?’
‘Very well,’ says the Tribune.
Septima’s hand tightens upon Cherenkov’s arm. ‘Cherenkov, though there is no reason why you should accede to any of our… of my requests… I would ask you, please… I would beg you: please grant me one last favour.’
Cherenkov regards her coldly. ‘You lied to me again.’
Tears come into her eyes. ‘What little courage I had left failed me.’
She re
turns to her chair. Her father glances at her with concern, and crouches before Cherenkov.
‘My dear, dear fellow, better than anyone here I understand something of your predicament. I can’t say that I understand much else.’ He looks with love at his daughter. ‘Of late it has become possible to keep a closer eye on what transpires beyond our gate. The world outside grows increasingly strange to us. We have no right to ask anything of you. You have been treated shabbily. But I beg you, please help us preserve our little hidden world.’
Cherenkov grimaces. ‘You want me to stay for this ball?’ He sees pleading in Heinrich’s eyes. ‘It would be a sham.’
‘We need time to navigate a way out of this difficulty.’
‘When is this ball to be held?’
‘In eight days’ time, sir.’
‘How much time will pass there?’ he says, pointing at the metal box that lies closed upon the table.
‘Sixty-four days,’ says Sexta.
He looks at each of them in turn. ‘If I agree to this, have I your solemn vows that, on the day following the ball, you will let me return to my own world?’
‘They will let us both leave together!’ says Octavio.
The Tribune steeples her hands and she, her Consort and her daughter say, in unison: ‘We so vow.’
Septima holds her breath. He nods heavily.
❖
Octavio grabs Cherenkov’s hand. ‘Thanks for adopting me.’
Cherenkov frowns, opens his mouth to object, but Octavio’s grin makes him laugh. ‘I’d make a lousy father.’
The boy glances towards the door through which the others left. ‘Even before, when my sister was a child like me, we didn’t get on. Now she’s grown, I don’t care for her at all: and it’s obvious she doesn’t like me.’
‘She seems angry about a lot of things.’
‘If Mama were alive she’d sort everything out.’ Octavio glares at the room. ‘I’ve only been gone some thirty days and yet this no longer feels like home.’ He looks at Cherenkov. ‘And now this stranger, Septima, is going to bring in a ‘new epoch’, and so what little remains of the way things were will be swept away.’ The boy looks scared. ‘The life I might have had here is gone for ever.’ His eyes brighten and he pushes his chest out. ‘I won’t live here with the ghost of that never-life. Out there,’ he points vaguely with his chin, ‘I can find a new life, and if I ever return here it’ll be on my own terms.’
‘You’ve not mentioned your father.’
The boy wilts. ‘He didn’t seem any happier to see me than my sister.’
Cherenkov grips his shoulder. ‘He thought you dead long ago and you have returned not as the man you should have grown up to be, but as the boy he lost.’
Octavio’s head dips. When he raises it he forces a smile and says, too loudly: ‘You must be looking forward to going home.’
‘Well.’ Cherenkov makes a face. ‘To be honest, Octavio – no. Like you I no longer have a home. Everything and everyone I knew has gone.’ He delivers a light punch to the boy’s jaw. ‘We’re both in the same boat. And I’ll tell you what I am looking forward to, and that’s the adventure!’
Octavio beams. ‘Yes, it will be an adventure.’
❖
Cherenkov is glad when he finds Consort Heinrich alone. ‘Sir, I was wondering…?’
‘Yes,’ says the man, his face honest and open. ‘How can I help you, my dear fellow?’
‘The world I knew is gone.’
Heinrich nods sadly. ‘Yes, everything changes, though mostly so slowly we are carried along hardly noticing. Of course, from our little vantage point here, beyond our gate time flows in a torrent.’ He smiles at his metaphor. He frowns: ‘Though it seems that change is occurring there at an ever more furious pace.’
He focuses on Cherenkov. ‘But you were wondering, Herr Cherenkov…?’
‘I was wondering if the strange typewriter –’
‘It’s called a “computer”.’
‘Is it? Hardly an appropriate name.’
Heinrich throws his hands up. ‘There seems to be no end to what that miraculous device is capable of. However, one thing it also does is to compute.’ He laughs as if he has made some penetrating joke.
‘Well, I was wondering if I might be permitted to use the computer to find out what’s happened since I left.’
Heinrich leans back eyes wide. ‘The computer can show you anything you wish.’
‘Anything?’
‘It is indeed like some sorcerous window through which the whole world, both God’s and Man’s, can be scried.’ He taps the side of his nose. ‘Of course, it is merely a mechanism and is not unlike a sophisticated clock.’
‘Indeed.’
‘My dear fellow, you are most welcome to peer through its window whenever you wish.’
Heinrich crosses the room to an oriental looking cabinet and fetches out of it something wrapped in velvet. He places this on a table and unwraps it to reveal the silver box.
‘For your eyes only.’
‘Of course,’ says Cherenkov.
‘It wouldn’t do for anyone here to look upon the world beyond our own.
Heinrich opens the computer. ‘Bizarrely, it seems to respond better in your language than any other.’ He demonstrates how moving his finger on the lower part of the computer is ghosted by an arrow on the upper, stained glass part; and that taps on the metal square causes actions to occur within the computer. Heinrich produces a narrow slit on the window of the computer and uses the keyboard to type “Venice” into it. He presses another key and, miraculously, pictures of Venice form in a mosaic all across the window.
They type more words, several at Cherenkov’s suggestion. The computer instantly responds to each. Under Heinrich’s supervision, Cherenkov tries a few on his own.
Heinrich claps his hands. ‘I believe that you have it!’
‘I believe I do,’ says Cherenkov, unable to take his eyes off the screen.
‘I shall leave you to it.’
Cherenkov turns to him. ‘Before you go, sir, may I ask you something that you may feel is none of my business?’
Heinrich looks at him down his nose. ‘Ask away, dear fellow.’
‘How is the Lord Anzolo?’
Heinrich’s face crumples. ‘The unlooked for reappearance of his son has led to a crisis that our doctors do not judge Lord Anzolo is likely to recover from.’
‘Has Octavio been told?’
Heinrich grimaces. ‘The Tribune does not wish the Lord Octavio to see her father.’
‘Why not?’
‘It is certainly not because she is cruel!’
‘I didn’t mean –’
‘Alas, Lord Anzolo is convinced Octavio is a ghost.’
‘Meaning no offence, sir, but if that’s what Lord Anzolo thinks, wouldn’t seeing Octavio, touching him, be the best way to show him that he is real?’
Heinrich squeezes his arm. ‘For now there is nothing to be done, not while the Tribune believes that seeing Octavio might precipitate her father’s death.’
❖
When Octavio comes upon him sat staring into the computer, Cherenkov snaps its lid shut. ‘I’ve just been finding out what happened after the war ended – the war I fought in.’
Octavio does not even glance at the computer. ‘She won’t let me see him!’
Cherenkov nods grimly.
‘Talk to her, please, Cherenkov: force her to let me see Papa.’
‘Heinrich told me she won’t budge.’
As Octavio’s face flushes, Cherenkov puts a hand up. ‘She’s far more likely to listen to Septima.’
The boy closes his mouth. He gazes at his feet. Nods. He takes a step towards the door, and turns. ‘What were you really doing with that metal box? You’re always peering into it.’
‘I’ve told you.’
‘Later, will you show me how it works?’
‘Okay.’
When the boy has gone, Cherenkov opens the lid o
f the computer and gazes with bleak eyes: on the screen is a black and white image of a mound of skeletal corpses being bulldozed into a trench.
❖
Cherenkov looks up when Octavio erupts into the room. The boy is crying. He crashes into Cherenkov and embraces him. Cherenkov strokes his head. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘He’s dying and she says I’m to blame.’
Gently, Cherenkov pushes the boy away. ‘I’m sure your sister’s just upset, as you are.’
The boy licks tears from his lip. ‘He doesn’t believe I’m real.’
He hunches and sobs. Cherenkov draws him back into a hug and holds him until the rhythm of the sobs slows. Octavio pulls away, shakes his head. ‘He’s not the father I remember.’ His lower lip quivers. ‘And now he’s going to die.’
They stand a little apart. ‘Come on, wipe your tears and I’ll show you what I’ve discovered.’
Octavio rubs his eyes on his sleeve, and sniffs. Cherenkov opens the computer, and the boy’s face lights up at its brilliant colours. Cherenkov taps keys, and pictures, sounds, even moving images appear – all amazing. Octavio wipes his nose with his knuckles. Soon he is asking questions, and Cherenkov makes the computer answer them.
Octavio becomes impatient with having to work the computer through Cherenkov.
Cherenkov suppresses a smile. ‘Do it yourself, if you think I’m so slow.’
He lets the boy take his place. Octavio soon gets the hang of it and flashes from one query to another, gasps as things appear, chuckles; his eyes reflect the fury of images that cross the screen.
❖
The next day Cherenkov can find no one from the family in any of the rooms he has access to. At last he finds a servant who tells him, in hushed conspiratorial tones: ‘Lord Anzolo has passed into the world in which there are no shadows.’
❖
‘I know you,’ says Cherenkov.
The valet smiles, ‘I dressed sir some years back.’
‘How many years?’
The valet kneads his chin, looks up. ‘Nine?’
Cherenkov’s face falls.
The valet grimaces. ‘It could have been eight, sir.’
Cherenkov indicates the clothes laid out on his bed: a simple dark suit from his own time. ‘Different clothes?’
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