The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August

Chapter 24

The Cronus Club.

You and I, we have fought such battles over this.

No one knows who founded it.

Or rather, that is to say, no one knows who has the first idea.

It is usually founded in Babylon around about 3000 BCE. We know this because the founders tend to raise an obelisk in the desert, in a valley with no particular name, on which they write their names and often a message for the future generation. This message is sometimes sincere advice–

–and material of that sort. Occasionally, if the founders are feeling rather less reverent towards their future readership, they leave a dirty joke. The obelisk itself has become something of an object of fun. One generation of the Cronus Club will often have it moved and hidden in a new place, challenging future descendants to find it. The obelisk remains hidden in this manner for hundreds of years until at last enterprising archaeologists stumble upon it and on its ancient carved stone they too leave their messages, ranging from

through to the rather more mundane

The obelisk itself is never quite the same from one generation to another: it was destroyed in the 1800s by zealous Victorians for being just a little too overtly phallic in its design, another sank to the bottom of the sea while being transported to America. Whatever its purpose, it remains a declaration from the past to all future members of the Cronus Club, that they, the kalachakra of 3000 BCE, were here first and are here to stay.

The rumour goes, however, that the first ever founder of the Cronus Club was not from the deep past at all, but was instead a lady by the name of Sarah Sioban Grey, born some time in the 1740s. A kalachakra, she was one of the first pioneers to actively seek others of her kin, accumulating over many hundreds of years and dozens of deaths a picture of who else within her home town of Boston might be of a similar nature. Kalachakra generally occur at a rate of one in every half million of the population, so her success at finding even a few dozen cannot be underestimated.

And of these few dozen, it quickly occurred to Sarah Sioban Grey that they represented not merely a fellowship in the now, but also a fellowship of the yet to come and what had been. She looked at her colleagues and perceived that where the oldest was nearly ninety years old, this would make him a child at the turn of the century, which she was too young to experience; and where the youngest was merely ten, this made him a grandfather by the time of the American Civil War, and thus a visitor to a future she could never know. To the old man from the past she said, “Here is my knowledge of future events–now go forth and make gold,” and indeed, when she was born again in the 1740s, the old man was already knocking at her door saying, “Hello, young Sarah Sioban Grey. I took your advice and made gold, and now you, little girl, need never work again.” She then returned the favour to the child who would live to see the Civil War, saying, “Here is gold which I will invest. By the time you are grown up and old, it will be a fortune and you need never work again. All I ask in return for this investment is that you pass the favour on to any others of our kin you may meet in the future, that they too are safe and comfortable in this difficult world.” And so the Cronus Club spread, each generation investing for the future. And as it spread forwards in time, so it also spread backwards, the children of now speaking to the grandfathers of yesterday and saying, “The Cronus Club is a fellowship of men–go find for yourself the grandfathers of your youth and as a child say to them, ‘This thing is good.’” So each generation set out to find more of its kind, and within just a few cycles of birth and death, the Club had spread not only through space, but also time, propagating itself forwards into the twentieth century and back into the Middle Ages, the death of each member spreading the word of what it was to the very extremes of the times in which they lived.

Of course, it is more than possible that the story of Sarah Sioban Grey is a myth, since it was so long ago that none of the Boston Club members can even remember, and she long since disappeared. It was, however, the story that Virginia told me as she sat me down in a blue armchair beneath the portrait of a long-dead member in what was known as the red room of the London branch of the Cronus Club, and if nothing else, she clearly enjoyed the telling.

As the Cronus Clubs are hardly fixed in time, so they are rarely fixed in space. The London branch was no exception.

“We’ve been in St James’s for a few hundred years,” explained Virginia, pouring another glass of finest black-market brandy. “Sometimes we end up in Westminster though, occasionally Soho. It’s the 1820s steering committee! They get so bored being in the same place, they move buildings, and we’re just left staggering around trying to work out where the Club has gone.”

Where the Club was now was a few streets north of St James’s Park, south of Piccadilly, tucked in between bespoke tailors and mansions for the declining rich, a single brass plaque on its door declaring, TIME FLIES. NO TRADESMEN PLEASE.

“It’s a joke,” she explained when I asked. “That’s the 1780s bunch. Everyone’s always leaving each other little notes for posterity. I buried a time capsule in 1925 once with a vital message for the Club five hundred years from now.”

“What’s in the capsule?” I asked.

“A recipe for proper lemon sherbet.” She saw my face and spread her arms expansively. “No one said it was easy being on the end of linear temporal events!”

I drank brandy and looked around the room again. Like so many giant properties in the wealthy parts of London, it was a throwback to a time when colours were rich, tastes were prim and mantelpieces had to be made of marble. Portraits of men and women dressed smartly in the garments of their time–“Apparently they’ll be worth something one day. Damned if I know why and I’ve snogged Picasso!”–lined the walls like memorials to the departed in a crematorium. The furniture was plush and rather dusty, the giraffe-built windows were criss-crossed with tape, “To appease the locals, darling. Nothing’s going to get hit round here but the wardens kick up such a fuss.”

The halls were silent. Crystal chandeliers tinkled gently when planes went overhead, the lights burned low in a few rooms behind the blackout blinds, and no one was to be seen.

“Countryside,” explained Virginia brightly. “Most of them pack out by July ’39. It’s not so much the bombing, you see, as the ghastly sense of oppression. Our members have been through it so many times before that really they can’t be buggered, so they ship off to somewhere nicer, brighter, with good ventilation and none of this tedious war business to bother them. A lot go to Canada, especially from the rather more oppressive clubs–Warsaw, Berlin, Hanover, St Petersburg, all that crowd. One or two stick around for the excitement but I can’t be bothered.”

Then why was she here?

“Keeping the ship afloat, dear boy! It’s my turn, you see, to keep an eye out for our freshest members. That’s you, by the way–you are our first new member in six hundred years. But there’s also several members being born about now–their mothers take such a sentimental view of their boys departing to conflict that, what can I say, discretions are brought into question. One has to stick around to make sure their childhoods aren’t too rough. A lot of the time money solves things, but sometimes–” she took a careful sip from the glass “–one has to arrange things. Evacuation and that sort of business. Parents can be such a bore.”

“Is that what you do?” I asked. “You… cater for the childhood period?”

“It’s one of our primary roles,” she replied airily. “Childhood is the most taxing time of our lives, unless of course you’re genetically predisposed towards a ghastly death or some sort of inherited disease. We have all the knowledge and experience of a dozen lives, and yet if we tell some boring linear adult that they really should invest in rubber as it’s going to be the most marvellous thing, we just get a pat on the head and a cry of ‘There there, Harry, go back to your choo choo set’ or whatnot. A lot of our members are also born rather poor, so it helps to know that there is a society of mutually understanding individuals who can see that you get a decent pair of socks to wear and ensure that you don’t have to waste several tedious years of your life, every life, learning your ABC. It’s not just the money,” she concluded with a flare of satisfaction, “it’s the companionship.”

I had a hundred questions, a thousand, all reeling round inside my head, but I couldn’t pin any of them down so fell back weakly on, “Are there any rules I should know about?”

“Don’t bugger about with temporal events!” she replied firmly. “You did cause us a bit of embarrassment in your last life, Harry–not your fault of course, not at all; we’ve all been in difficult situations–but Phearson had enough information to change the course of the future, and we really can’t have that. It’s not that we aren’t concerned, it’s that these things can never be fully predicted.”

“Anything else?”

“Don’t harm another kalachakra. We really couldn’t care what you do to everyone else as long as it’s not particularly obscene and doesn’t bring attention to us, but we remember, and it’s just not on. Be good!”

“You mentioned contributions…”

“Yes, if you do get a chance to make a massive, obscene amount of money, please do put some aside for our childhood benevolent fund. The future generations are so appreciative.”

Was that it?

No, not quite.

“Not so much a rule, Harry darling,” she explained, “as good advice. Don’t tell anyone where or when you’re from. Not in so much detail.”

“Why?”

“Because they might kill you with it,” she replied brightly. “Of course I’m sure they won’t–you seem like a charming young man–but there’s been a few, and so you see it’s not considered good form. Don’t ask, don’t tell–that’s the policy round here.”

And she explained.