The Slanted Worlds (13 page)

The cat stared back over her shoulder.

Sarah followed, thoughtful.

The seed had been planted.

It would have to be enough for now.

Piers had set up the ancient film projector in the drawing room, and had cleared the wall of its paintings to use as a screen. He wound the restored film reel in expertly, humming, his red brocade waistcoat a cheery brilliance under the dirty lab coat.

Venn paced. “Ready?”

“Almost, Excellency.”

Wharton was sitting on the leather sofa, feet up on the coffee table. “Like a Saturday matinee, this. Should have some popcorn, Piers.”

As the two girls came in, he nodded at Rebecca in surprise. “Hi.”

“Hi,” she muttered.

He also saw how Sarah had what he had come to call her “plotting” face on—he raised his eyebrows at her now and she smiled quietly, sarcastically back.

“I don't remember inviting guests,” Venn said.

Ignoring him, Rebecca went straight to Maskelyne. The scarred man stood near the window, his dark eyes on the silver bracelet Venn wore around his wrist.

Quietly to Rebecca he said, “You should be in Exeter.”

“Not when I don't know what's going on.”

“Nothing is going on. Except that my magic game worked.”

She nodded, dumping her wet coat. “And you were too busy even to tell me.”

“Right.” Piers flexed his fingers. “Are we all ready?”

“Where's Jake?” Sarah said.

“Here.” He came in with the marmoset on his shoulder; it leaped to the curtain and raced up.

To Sarah Jake looked tired, and strangely older, as if time in the past had moved differently, as if he had lived longer than the few days he had been there. But he wore his expensive clothes carelessly, and threw himself down next to Wharton.

“Right.” Venn turned. “Get on with it.”

Piers clicked the projector on, and the reels began to whirr. “Just to say this was almost impossible to get back. Corroded almost to nothing in places.”

The room was dim; rain patterns moved on the windows. On the wall, shadows began to blur; Piers muttered and played with the focus, producing a rapidly shrinking fuzziness that made Wharton say, “What
is
that?”

“People.” Jake watched, intent.

“One person.” Venn came forward, his eyes fixed on the screen. “Sort it, Piers.”

“Doing my best. Like I said, it's in bits . . . How about . . . that.”

With an abruptness that silenced them all, a man loomed from out of the darkness and was there looking out at them. A man in a dark place, wearing some sort of brown ragged robe.

His outline flickered, vanishing briefly, reappearing with a jerky flicker slightly off center.

Wharton sat up. Sarah stared.

Rebecca looked around, wondering why they were all so silent.

“Who is that?” she muttered.

Rain pattered on the window.

No one answered.

Until Maskelyne said in his husky voice, “That's Jake's father.”

Janus has everything. We have nothing.

He has spent years perfecting his knowledge of the Chronoptika—his hunger for its secrets is destroying us all. We believe that seconds before the final catastrophe he will enter the mirror and journey to a refuge he has carefully prepared. He will live on, safe in the past.

Only we can break this cycle of despair. If we destroy the mirror, we destroy Janus.

Illegal ZEUS transmission

I
T WAS DAVID'S
idea to make the film.

It might have been on our third time of speaking—or channeling, as I was delighted to call it.

He insisted that he was no ghost, and I have to admit a slight sinking of the heart about that, because, after all, dreams are dreams. But when he explained to me that he was a man from the future, a man who had traveled in time, and had even once worked with my dear father, I was more than mollified.

I was thrilled!

“How is that possible?” I breathed.

He shrugged. He always seemed to stand very close to the glass, to be almost able to reach out through it, but when I touched the obsidian surface it was hard and smooth as ever.

“The mirror makes it possible,” he said. There was an anger in his voice. “If it wants to.”

“Then . . . might I also journey?”

“You don't have this.” He raised his arm and I saw he wore a silver bracelet, curiously carved and worked, with an amber stone embedded in it. “It was what your father never had.”

“But . . . you do. And you must have this mirror . . . so therefore . . .”

The logic bewildered me. Was he gazing into the very same mirror as I was, but in some other age?

He nodded. “Yes. I found the mirror again here, in Italy. Three journeys after I left your father. Three journeys the wrong way. Always backward. Always further in time from everything I loved. I dare not try again. And yet . . . I dare not stay here!”

A ghost should not be anguished. But there was such pain in him that I felt as if the mirror somehow amplified his sorrow and his fear.

“And . . . how is it you can talk to me?”

“I don't know.” He turned and paced, restless within that dark, curtained room. “Perhaps because I worked on the mirror
with Symmes. Perhaps because you're a medium, or some sort of sensitive. It's crazy. In my own time I would have laughed at such things.”

My heart swelled with pride. I had told him of my séances, though not of my deceptions. And yet surely—surely!—this proved I was indeed a true clairvoyant, a seer of spirits!

Seconds after that, as he was about to speak again, his image faded. It left a mark in the mirror that I saw for days, a faint dissolving smudge in the glass.

I sat on my divan that day and the next, watching the black enigmatic mirror, ignoring my clients, hoping and praying that he would come back, that it had not all been some illusion of my brain.

But nothing happened.

Gradually, I came to wonder if indeed I had ever seen him. To doubt myself. Until, two weeks later, on a rainy afternoon I came in from the theater, took off my hat and mackintosh, said, “Tea please, Edith,” and turned my head.

There he was. As if he had never been gone.

Perhaps, for him, there had been no gap. No interval of time. Because he spoke as if we had never ceased the conversation. He said, “I have a son, Alicia. A son called Jake, who will be searching for me. There is also a man, Oberon Venn, who needs me. So this is what I want you to do.”

“Turn the volume up,” Venn growled. “Jake, sit down.”

He couldn't. He was standing close, his silhouette black against the flickering indistinct image. “How can it be him?
How can it?
”

Wharton's hand tugged him gently back. “Sit down, Jake. Let Piers get it right.”

The image had frozen; now in the attentive, silent room it jerked to life again, became Dr. David Wilde, looking tired and haggard, unshaven, his eyes red-rimmed, his clothes a dirty surcoat of brown.

And then he spoke.

“Are you ready, Alicia?”

Jake swallowed. The voice was a shiver of memory.

Then a reply, faint on the soundtrack.

“Quite ready, David. The machine is operating now, though I have no idea if I'm doing it right. Cinematographs are such new, awkward things, and this great contraption clatters so . . .”

Jake drew in a sharp breath. Even at this distance, through the hiss and static, he knew her voice.

The woman in the rubble had sounded just as quavering, just as self-assured.

Piers said, “This is the very best I can do. The film is grainy and the sound quality—well, I have no idea what she was using or where she got it, but these were extremely early days for sound recording. It's not synchronized—I can't do anything about that.”

Sarah glanced at Jake. He was transfixed, his eyes never leaving his father's face. Venn too stared with a grim intensity.

The man in the mirror stood looking out. When he spoke again, his voice was a whisper of static.

“Are you there, Venn? Are you seeing this? I have to assume you are. I wish I could see you. You and Jake. Hi Jake . . . I wish I could be there with you, back at the Abbey, if that's where you are.” He stepped closer, his voice coming seconds after his lips formed the words.

“Is it winter there? God, I'd love to see some snow! Or just good British rain.” He lifted a hand, as if to the glass. “Just to walk across the moor again and breathe the fresh sea air! Instead of the endless scorching heat here, the humidity, the filthy mosquitoes that breed fevers and . . .”

He stopped. Lifting his chin, he smiled, but it was a weak attempt. “Sorry. Getting maudlin. Talk to myself too much these days. You need facts, so I'll get on.”

“And the tape is running out so quickly!” Alicia muttered, louder on the soundtrack.

“He looks ill,” Jake whispered.

More than that, Sarah thought. He looked like a jaded, worn, weary man.

“Venn, listen to me.” David came and gripped the frame of the mirror, looking through it with a determined stare. “After I left Symmes I
journeyed.
Three times. Each time I found the mirror, adjusted the bracelet, was as sure as I could be that I was doing everything right. Each time I ended up going backward.” He shivered. “A rat-infested tavern—sometime in the Civil War. I was arrested as soon as they saw me, because I appeared out of the air in a crowded place. They had me down for a sorcerer and a witch . . . Haven't time to explain how I got away. I managed to bribe the magistrate, get to the mirror, and just
journey,
fast . . . I found myself in York, about ten years before that date . . .” He shrugged. “God, I wish I could see you.”

Jake folded his arms about himself, tight. His eyes gleamed wet. “So do I, Dad,” he breathed.

“The third jump brought me here. It's Florence, the year is 1347-ish. I can't tell you what . . . how it is here. Fascinating, yes, but the heat, the squalor, the casual violence! Life is so short, so . . . hard.

“I thought . . . I decided . . . not to
journey
again. There's no point flitting through time—you'll never find me. The plan was to stay here, to wait for you. To find a way of contacting you. I've got the mirror—at least I have access to it. It's in the palazzo of the warlord I've had to pledge myself to serve.”

He grinned. “I'm his doctor. He's vicious and dangerous, but while he lives, I'm safe. I even pull his teeth. I'll bet you find that funny, Jake.”

No one laughed.

“I've been here three years, local time. Tried over and over to contact you. Spells and scrying and anything I can think of, but I have to be so careful! They burn witches here.” He looked away, then back. “All that time I saw nothing in the Chronoptika but my own warped reflection—and then, God knows how, a woman. Alicia. She's Symmes's daughter. She's recording this and that's crazy
 . . .
”

“It's brilliant,” Venn breathed.

“
. . .
but it's all I can think of to do. You have to find this tape! You have to find me!”

He came close to the glass again, and the whisper of his words jarred against the hurried movement of his lips. “It's plague, Venn!
The Black Death
. I've been waiting for it; now I've seen two cases and I know the signs. This is the year it swept over Europe like fire. Two in every three people died. Realistically my chances are zero. If you don't find me I'll have to
j . . .
”

The film juddered and stopped, the screen startlingly black. The reel flapped and rattled.

Piers switched it off into an appalled silence.

For a moment only the rain pattered. Then Jake turned on Sarah, his face white as paper.

“So what happens? Does he die there? Because you're from the future, you should know!”

Wharton murmured, “Jake
 . . .
”

“But she should! She should know the answers to this nightmare.” He stepped close to her. “Does my father ever come back?”

“I don't know.” Sarah kept her voice calm. They were all looking at her, Maskelyne curious, Venn's eyes blue as ice. “If I did, I would tell you, Jake, I swear
 . . .
But I'd never heard of David Wilde before I came here. Please believe me.”

He turned on Venn. “We have to go for him! Right now!”

“No.” Venn's voice was low. “Not until Maskelyne is sure . . .”

“Give me the bracelet. Let me try! If—”

“Jake.” Wharton came up to him. “Think. We can't risk it. As soon as we're ready
 . . .
”

“You too?” He stared around at them all. “Look at you! All of you! Paralyzed by fear! And my father might be dying back there. But you don't care about him, do you, you just care about Leah, who's dead, and you, Sarah, about a future that hasn't even happened yet! I loathe and detest the lot of you! And if I have to, I'll get him on my own!”

He slammed out of the door.

Wharton sighed. “Sorry, everyone. Sorry, Sarah. He's just . . .”

“I know.” She went and stood in front of the dark and silent mirror. “I'd be just the same if it was my father. But believe me, I don't have the answers.”

Piers cleared his throat. “Well. Do you want me to run it again?”

“Once was enough.” Venn went to the fire and thrust another log on, gazing down at the resin bubbling and crackling through the gray ashes.

He stood there, thinking for a moment, then said, “At least we know exactly where David is. If we could be certain of configuring the mirror accurately, of being as exact as we were with the Blitz, we could get in there and pick him up as easily as we did Jake.”

He turned on Maskelyne. “You're the expert. What do you think?”

The scarred man had turned and was standing silently by the window, his dark eyes fixed intently on the rain-beaten lawns and the dark tossing trees of the Wood. Now he said quietly, “It's not that easy. Accuracy decreases exponentially as you go back. 1940 was recent enough to be sure we would arrive within days, at least, of Jake's whereabouts. A date seven hundred years before, that is almost impossible to hit. A journeyman might arrive years later or before, and the difficulty of retrieval is . . .”

“I don't want the problems,” Venn growled, “I want the solutions.”

Maskelyne gazed out at the rain through the reflection of the lit room. Then he turned and faced them. “These are my conditions. I have completely free access to the mirror. I have a room here in the house, and I work without any hindrance or interference from anyone.”

Venn's eyes narrowed. “Not the bracelet. That stays with me.”