“Yes, I see,” I said. “And I’m almost impressed with that kid Grundo. He must be the only person in the multiverse who’s more selfish than I am. But don’t you think you might have liked him anyhow?”
She said, in a creaking, hysterical voice, “I don’t know!”
“Well, look at it this way,” I said. I was a bit flurried because she looked to me as if she was about to go really off the deep end. “It can’t have been necessarily a bad thing, you being made to care about Grundo. Like symbiosis—you know, cats and dogs and humans—”
“And elephants,” Mini put in.
“And elephants,” I said. “You and Grundo both sound to have been pretty lonely and miserable at Court, but if you were looking after him, okay, he was all right, but you had someone to be fond of, too. And you strike me as being a pretty nice person. So maybe you’d have looked after him anyway. It’s a shame he didn’t trust you to try it on your own, that’s all.”
Roddy put her fists up to her face. “Oh, go away, Nick! I really do need to be alone. Anyway, you have to go back inside and explain to Romanov about the conspiracy. I can’t trust Grundo to explain properly.” There was a slightly horrible silence, then she said angrily, “I can’t trust Grundo for anything now!” and burst into hard, hacking sobs, more like coughing than crying.
I put my arms round her. For just a mere, single instant I had a real, heavy body in my arms and a moist face against my cheek, with a real, difficult personality to go with them. It was a fairly astonishing feeling. Then Roddy fiercely shook me off and went running away to the other side of the island.
I said to Mini, “You keep an eye on her,” and went back into the house, hoping Romanov wouldn’t think I’d given up too easily. But I was blowed if I was going to run after Roddy all over the island. That would really have irritated her.
Actually, when I went into the kitchen, Grundo was making a pretty good job of explaining the part he knew. As I came through the door, Romanov turned the razor edge of his profile against my soul and asked, “What do you know about the Merlin’s part in all this?”
“I don’t,” I said. “I never met him. Maxwell Hyde might know. All I know is that there’s a lot of nasty types in Blest collecting salamanders for some sort of power push. And I saw Gwyn ap Nud carry Maxwell Hyde off. Roddy thinks he did that on the Merlin’s orders. Or this woman Sybil’s.”
Romanov’s razor profile raised an eyebrow at me, and he said, “This woman who kidnaps a Magid, using the Merlin and the Lord of the Dead—there are going to be disturbances in a lot of worlds over this.” He turned to Grundo. “Who did you say your mother is?”
“Her name’s Sybil Temple,” Grundo said.
A very strange look came over the slice of Romanov’s face that I could see. It was as if he didn’t know whether to feel angry, surprised, contemptuous, anxious, or sorry for someone—and probably more things I couldn’t quite understand. “And I’m willing to bet she hasn’t a notion what she’s doing,” he said at length. “She always was a greedy fool, my ex-wife, Sybil.”
“Oh,” said Grundo.
“Yes,” said Romanov. “Oh.”
Things clunked about in my head, like slowly meshing gears. Then I said, “Oh,” too. Romanov’s face came round to mine so quickly that I went backward a step. “It could be my fault she did this,” I said. “She phoned while you were ill—er, ten years ago? And I got fed up with hearing her and tuned her out of your life. She was shouting threats about doing really big magic when I turned her off.”
Romanov thought about this. His mouth pulled into a long, thin line in a way that quite scared me. “Water under the bridge,” he said finally. “She was always making threats. I used to provoke her. No time to share out blame now— Has anyone done anything about the balance of magic?”
I said I didn’t think so. Grundo said, “Nobody believed Roddy when she said there was a plot. One of the Little People told her to raise the land.”
“Well? Did she?” Romanov snapped.
We stared at him, even the Izzys, impressed and alarmed at how urgent and dangerous he sounded. Grundo said, “We didn’t know how to.”
Romanov jumped up from his seat at the table. “Oh, of all the—! When one of the Little People gives advice like that, you take it! I’ll tell her …” He looked at the door as if he expected to drag Roddy back through it, just by looking. “One of you go and find her. You, Toby. The rest of you give me the names of all the missing people that you know. I’d better find what’s happened to them before I go to Blest.”
THREE RODDY
No, I still feel awful when I think how I felt about Grundo—as if my whole mind were like one of those floating islands we crossed. Nothing to support it, dipping sickeningly about, and nothing but emptiness all round. I don’t want to write about this anymore. I know Nick will have plenty to say about Romanov.
FOUR NICK
Roddy looked like death when Toby came back with her.
By that time Romanov had gone away to his workroom. Such a strong gush of magic came from there that Grundo and I broke out in a sweat and the Izzys went on about the way the hair on their arms was standing up. A right song and dance they made about it, too. They were such irritating kids.
Romanov shot back into the kitchen, saw Roddy, and said, “Good. Come with me,” and he led her away into the living room, saying, “I can only explain what you’d be trying to do and the way I’d set about it myself. You’ll have to find your own means....”
That was all I heard before the door shut, but when Roddy came back, she looked as if she had slightly more interest in life. She said Romanov was in his workroom again. The Izzys wailed. But it wasn’t long before the gush of magic stopped, thank goodness! Romanov came into the kitchen slowly, looking puzzled.
“I think I know where they all are,” he said, “but it makes me wonder just what is going on. Have you all finished eating? Good. We’ll go and collect the missing persons before I take you all back to Blest.”
Romanov came to a decision and then did what he’d decided so quickly that it made you feel left behind and breathless. He led us outside, and there was Mini, waltzing toward the house, looking very pleased with herself. She had a long double seat strapped to her back, with space for at least three people sitting back to back on either side. I’d ridden on a seat like that in a zoo once. This one was sky blue.
“You look smart!” I said.
“I do, don’t I?” she said. “I do love going on expeditions. I’ve been on a lot now, but I never stop feeling excited.”
“Are you sure you can carry all seven of us?” Romanov asked her.
She snorted through her trunk. “Easy. I’m a big elephant.”
A sort of platform had appeared out of nowhere beside the house, with a ladder up to it, so that we could climb into the seat. Romanov warned us to arrange ourselves so that our weights balanced and, while Toby, Roddy, and one Izzy were climbing up onto Mini’s right side, he shot off to have a look at Helga. By the time Mini had turned herself round and Grundo and the other Izzy and I were getting into the left-hand side of the seat, Romanov was back. He was grinning in a sharp slash across his face.
“Is Helga all right?” Toby called out anxiously.
“Fine. She’s got two kids, a nanny and a billy,” Romanov told him. Toby was glad, but he was upset, too. He said we shouldn’t have made Helga bring us here when she was so near to having kids. And the Izzys began squalling that they had to get down and see the new kids. Romanov stared at the nearest Izzy, enough to shut one of them up at least, and then looked up at me in a way that was almost like one normal person confiding in another. “One of each sex,” he said. “That’s a balance. Let’s hope it’s some kind of omen.” Then he came up the steps and hopped across Mini’s neck in front of the seat, where he sat sort of scrunched down like a mahout. “Right, Mini,” he said. “Off you go. North quadrant.”
Mini surged into a walk, round the end of the house, dow
n the grassy bank, and—with great sucking, sloshing noises—straight out into the marshy water there. The seat swayed about on her back. By the time we were a hundred yards out from the island, with a mild wind tossing our hair about and mosquitoes beginning to home in on us, I was trying not to feel seasick. Part of it was because I was riding sideways. In order to see where we were going, I had to look across Grundo and an Izzy and over Romanov’s head. But most of my unhappiness was due to the swaying and the steady sloshing of Mini’s feet. I kept looking down nervously to make sure she was not out of her depth. But the water must have been very shallow all the way. She just churned up marshy stinks and set big brown bubbles popping for ten feet all around.
I could really have done without those Izzys whining that it was not fair, they wanted to see the baby goats. Roddy snapped at them, but it made no difference. I just tuned them out in the end. By the time we were right out into the great sheet of water and the island was out of sight behind us, I simply was not hearing them.
Soon after this there was vague, misty shore ahead, rocky and pinkish. Mini heaved up onto it, sliding the Izzy into Grundo and Grundo into me, and marched on, stump, stump, stump, through what seemed to be rocky desert. There was nasty, steamy heat. Everything was sort of misty. The Izzys forgot the goats and whinged about the heat for a while, until Mini’s mud-crusted feet began padding along a proper pavement, where we came under a high roof of some kind, and it was cooler.
I didn’t realize where we were for a moment. I just knew it smelled familiar, in a way that made me faintly alarmed. Then I noticed that there were shops all along the side of the tunnel that I was facing. I craned round behind myself and saw a parapet, a cliff of shops and houses in the distance opposite, and bridges spanning in between. When we went swaying past a huge hoist, I was sure. We were in Loggia City.
But it looked quite a bit different. The pavement Mini’s feet were on had hollow, worn places. There was litter blowing everywhere, and the paint on the hoist was peeling. None of the shops at the back of the arcade appeared to be at all prosperous. Some were boarded up. The rest had desperate-looking notices in the windows, saying 90% OFF!! and EVERYTHING MUST GO!, and they didn’t seem to have much for sale inside except for shoddy-looking rolls of plain cloth. Nobody was in there buying anything either.
“What’s happened here?” I called over to Romanov.
“The workers on the top terrace left,” he called back. “Someone told them they were producing works of art that people would pay a great deal for. They concentrated on tapestry after that. I helped them migrate to another world some years ago now. They’re doing very well there.”
I found I was crouching down in my end of the seat, trying to hide my hot face. Who would have thought it? I casually tell an old man that his tapestry was fabulous, and ten years later the whole economy of a city is grinding to a halt. Who would have thought it?
Somebody shouted, “Hey, you! Halt!”
Mini’s pacing feet faltered. “Keep going,” Romanov said.
Her feet picked up their pace again. The person shouting got out of the way in a hasty scamper of yellow uniform, but he kept on shouting. “No animals on this level! What do you think you’re doing?”
I looked down at his angry face as we slid swaying past him. And I knew him. He was the Important Policeman, evidently still on the job. But he had a seedy, down-on-his-luck look these days, as well as looking older and wrinkled and anxious. His yellow uniform was saggy around him, with darns in it, and he had lost weight. His mustache was still just as bushy, though.
He looked up at me as I looked down. An expression came over his face of Where-have-I-seen-that-boy-before? Then he got it. His finger came up and pointed. “Hey, you! You’re Nick Mallory! You skipped factory duty ten years ago. We want you!”
But Mini went imperturbably marching on. Important slid away behind. The great pillars of the stairway slid past, and a notice saying LIFTS OUT OF ORDER, and then we were out on a different and much more ruinous section of the arcade, where the sun came blinding down in long lines through gaps in the roof.
I looked back, and Important was gone. Behind Mini, there were still houses in the walls of the great canyon, but they were ruins, with empty black spaces for windows, and half the bridges were down.
“What’s happened?” Toby asked.
“This is the next world on,” Romanov said. “The people we’re looking for are one world along from this one, but the sun is pretty harmful in all these canyon worlds, so I’m taking a route that keeps us in shade as much as possible.”
Mini marched on, from arcade to empty arcade, always curving to the right out of the direct glare of the sun, until we went under the ruin of what looked like a factory and came out on the bare tops of the canyons. I think the canyons were not so deep in that world. At any rate, I could see them curving and branching in all directions around us, like the twigs and branches of a tree, as if the empty desert had cracked from the heat. At the end of the largest dark crack was something that glimmered.
“The people we want are in that xanadu there,” Romanov said, pointing to the glimmer. “It’s fairly well defended. I’m going to try to get us in underneath.” It was pretty extraordinary. He had taken us from world to world so smoothly that I never noticed us go. Or Mini had. Come to think of it, Mini must have had a gift for it. I envied her.
“Down you go, Mini,” Romanov said to her. And we set off down a long slope where houses had dissolved away to rubble and formed a sort of ramp into the bottom of the chasm.
FIVE RODDY
It was peculiar but practical, I suppose, of Romanov to load us all on his elephant. Romanov is one of the most practical people I have met, and so full of energy he made me feel tired. But the thought of his once being married to Sybil still amazes me. It is odder even than Grandad Hyde marrying Heppy. Still, it does explain where Grundo and Alicia get their noses from.
Toward the end of our journey I began to feel better, though I was still feeling odd. Every time the elephant seat lurched, I looked anxiously round at Grundo and then felt embarrassed at being anxious. It was habit, I suppose. Grundo was all right anyway. He was watching the walls of the gorge as we went down a sort of ramp into it and pointing out to Nick that the earliest of the ruined houses, on the ledges near the bottom, were carved straight out of the rock. Both of them were highly interested.
I was ashamed to see that Grundo nearly always was all right. Things that bothered me, like people being foul to him, just roll off Grundo’s mind. He takes no notice because he is interested in things instead. Nick is the same. I felt very stupid not to have realized what Grundo was like before this.
The lurching was much less when we reached the bottom of the chasm. It was quite cold and dank there because the sun never shone on it directly. There was a trickle of river running through the middle, but nothing grew there but green slime. The elephant picked her way along the edge of the river, between lumps of fallen house as big as she was, until the walls of the chasm seemed to meet together overhead and we were crunching along inside a huge, arched cave.
“Oh, my dear!” squealed one of the Izzys. “Bats!”
“Darkness,” wailed the other one. “I’m frightened!”
I don’t think they were frightened in the least. They were enjoying themselves. Their voices echoed and reechoed in the cave, shriek upon shriek. And as soon as they heard the echoes, they made more noise than ever.
“Coo-eee!”
“Hall—oh—ho!”
Romanov turned round. “Be quiet,” he said.
The Izzys stopped, just like that. I don’t think Romanov used a spell on them. He just had the most forceful personality in many universes. Soon after that he made a light. It was not the small blue flame our teachers had shown us how to make, but a soft, spreading glow that seemed to come from the elephant’s forehead. She seemed to appreciate it. She walked much faster. And the chain of caves we were going through sprang into life a
s we passed, quite astonishingly. Things like stone curtains hung from the arched roofs, folded and draped and banded with colors, reds, white, yellows—even greenish—and were reflected upside down in the black, shiny waters of the river. Nick remarked that they looked like streaky bacon—well, he would!—which made Toby give a yelp of laughter.
Romanov said, “Quiet!” all sharp and tense, and after that none of us dared make a sound.
It was quite difficult not to exclaim because we passed through archways with shell pink drapes where we all had to duck, and a hall where ivory fingers were pointing down from the vault, each one glittering with water, and along lacy terraces, and arcades of red pillars, where it was very hard not to call out at the strangeness. Once the light swung across a high wall of jumbled red and black formations that shaped themselves into such a hideous glaring face that the Izzys were not the only ones who half screamed.
Luckily the river was noisy by then. Wherever we came round a corner and met it again, it was tumbling in higher waterfalls. Probably it covered the noises we made at the hideous face and again when a wall seemed to put out a huge clutching hand. By then we were climbing steadily. The poor elephant was going slowly. I could hear her puffing amid the noisy water, and I could feel Romanov encouraging her.
At last he said, “This will do, Mini. It’s only twenty feet up from here.”
The elephant turned head-on to the nearest yellowish rock wall, and we assumed she was going to stop. Instead she went on walking. My hands clapped themselves over my mouth. Someone else squeaked. We were all sure we were going to crash into the rock. But the wall just didn’t seem to be there, even though we could see it, and the elephant simply went on trudging upward through it. There was rock right up against my face. I could see it and smell it, even taste it, but I couldn’t feel a thing. And after an eternal twenty feet or so we came up into daylight inside a giant dome.
The Merlin Conspiracy Page 33