The Prophecy Machine

52

The sea looked grand, a bright, azure blue that mirrored the cloudless sky. The ship, a lean square-rigger, had braved a summer squall the night before. Now she lay in the calm of the harbor, her sails hung out to dry. Her name was Anna Call, rather catchy, Finn thought, the sort of thing you'd call a ship as trim and neat as that.

There was not a single Yowlie in her crew and her captain seemed reasonably sane, or as sane as a captain might be.

Finn had sent Letitia aboard as quickly as he could, anxious to get her far from that misbegotten shore. Julia was with her, patched, mended, somewhat out of sorts until Finn could get her home among his proper tools. Not the beauty she had been, as far as lizards go, but her temper and her tongue seemed perfectly intact.

“I regret you've not seen the best of our land in your stay,” Dr. Nicoretti said. “I fear you'll take a poor impression back home, and encourage others to stay away.”

“With all due respect,” Finn told him, “I doubt I'll discuss my trip at all.”

“Don't guess I can blame you for that. This has been a most upsetting time for everyone, and you and the Newlie, I suppose, have suffered more than most.”

Finn saw no way to respond in a civilized manner, no way at all short of physical assault.

He looked past the doctor, past the wharf itself, empty now, except for a seabird pecking about. The town looked as dismal as ever. Between the sea and the village, there was scarcely anyone around. In a field of dead grass, the Crimson Lancers Volunteers (still with no lances in sight) attempted to form a straight line. Past them, down the dirt road, he imagined he could see a faint smudge, a darkening of the land where the ghastly charred remains of the Nuccis' former home would be.

“I should tell you things before you leave,” Dr. Nicoretti said. “Though you haven't been open with me, I see no reason to sink to your level, there's little honor in that. In truth, I did have some interaction with the Foxers. I told you I didn't, but I did.”

“I suspected as much,” Finn said. “I told you so at the time.”

“Well, I did, and I don't apologize, for I did the right thing.”

“I'm afraid to ask.”

“I merely told them-not long before you came, as a fact-I told them that the Nuccis were responsible for the abduction and murder of many of their kind. Abductions which happened after my sister Ingretta married Calabus and moved into that dreadful house.”

“You told them that,” Finn said, showing the man a wary look, “and you know that for a fact?”

“Not really, no, but I think it's likely so.”

“You think?”

“Yes, I surely do. When you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. Ingretta had friends among the Foxers, below her class, of course. When she came into wealth as the bride of Calabus, she often hired Foxers to work around the house. Retainers, gardeners, house maids and such. Calabus and his father couldn't abide the lot. They cut Ingretta off from everyone. They would not allow her to have any friends, servants or not. That included me, her brother, of course.”

“And you think the Nuccis killed them. That's why the Foxers took their revenge.”

“Oh yes, I'm sure it is.”

“This is why they killed the old man and burned his house down.”

“I believe it is, yes.”

“And why did they wait all these years, Doctor, to get around to that? What took them so long?”

“I can't imagine why.”

“I can,” Finn said. “They didn't know about it till you put the idea in their heads.”

“Ridiculous.” Nicoretti made a face. “Everyone in town knew the Nuccis and the Foxers were at odds. You'll find a lot of folks think the same as me.”

“Rocks and Socks, you think-you believe, but you don't know if any of this is true.”

“It very likely is.”

“But you don't know that. The Nuccis are dead because you guess they maybe did the Foxers in. Sometime. Long ago. Or maybe not. And, a great many Foxers are dead now too.”

Nicoretti muttered under his breath. “You don't mind asking me a lot, but you won't give anything back. You never said what Calabus was up to down there. I've got a right to know that.”

“I don't see you do at all.”

“Damn you, boy-”

“Clocks.”

“What's that?”

“Clocks. Your brother-in-law was making clocks. Small, delicately crafted clocks. Clocks impossibly intricate and fine. Clocks smaller than a mustard seed, smaller than a gnat. Finally, clocks no larger than a mote, a dot, no larger than a speck. This is the obsession that finally drove him mad-or madder than he might have been before. There came a time when he couldn't even see his clocks. He'd breathe and they were gone. Sent him over the edge, poor man.”

Nicoretti looked slightly annoyed. “A bunch of little clocks made all that racket up there, sent awesome tremors through the ground?”

“They were little, sure, but there were a hell of a lot of them, I think I mentioned that.”

Nicoretti showed Finn an arrogant grin, a sly and cunning old man grin, a grin full of old man guile.

“I'll get a straight answer, boy, but it won't come from you. I don't expect manners from one of your kind. Have a nice trip, Master Finn. And give that pretty a feel for me.”

“You'd best quit right there,” Finn said, “while you're barely still ahead …”

At the end of the wharf where the skiff and the loaders and the other small craft came in, Finn found a Bullie and a cart. On the cart was a most familiar chair. Standing by the cart was Master of Chairs, Dalto Frick.

“You bought a chair,” Frick said, “now take it out of here.”

“No thank you,” Finn said, “I don't need a chair.”

“You bought a chair, mister. Why'd you buy it if you don't need a chair?”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time. Have a pleasant day, I've got to run now.”

“Damn tourist,” Frick shouted after Finn. “You don't know the rules here, you don't know the customs of the land!”

“I can't argue with that,” Finn said to no one at all, picked up his pace, and hurried to the skiff.

“It's a beautiful evening,” Letitia said. “I never imagined I'd be so happy to be on a ship again. Still, I hope I never see another after this.”

“You don't feel bad, about missing Antoline Isle?”

“You know better than that,” she said, coming close under his arm, resting her head on his chest. “I don't want to go anywhere but home.”

Finn breathed in the salt air, squinted at a weary amber sun dropping behind a purple cloud.

“I don't know if I can talk about this,” Letitia said, “but if I don't, I'm sure I'll never get a night's sleep again.”

“You know about as much as I. There's little more to tell.”

“There is, too. I don't recall a thing, except getting lost from you and waking up outside with an awful pain in my head.”

“It's just as I told you,” Finn said, looking anywhere but in Letitia's eyes. “The Foxers killed Calabus and set the house afire. I doubt we'll ever truly know why. I'll tell you what Nicoretti said, once I've thought about it some. Sabatino didn't make it either. We talked about that.”

Letitia shuddered, but not from the pleasant night air.

“I don't know why, but I feel sorry for the man. I don't think he could help it, being what he was. I think we all maybe have to be what we are, don't you?”

Finn didn't answer. He didn't care to get into such a thing at the time.

“I think I saw that awful old man standing on the roof. I think he held Calabus in his arms. I think they were both on fire. Could that be, Finn?”

“Why, I guess,” Finn said, “anything could be …”

“Finn, look right at me.” She drew away a bit and searched his eyes. “There's more you've got to tell. Don't try and protect me, dear, that doesn't help at all.”

Finn let out a breath. “No, I guess it doesn't. Someone else perhaps, but not you. Both of us nearly died in there, but not how you think, Letitia. This is hard to fathom, which is why I didn't want to tell you now. I didn't believe in Calabus' Prophecy Machine. I didn't, but things-happened down there. Sabatino didn't die. He left, but he wasn't exactly dead.”

Finn paused, trying to get the words right. “I said this was hard to credit, and it is. Sabatino got caught up in something down there. Something, in that device, that twisted Time inside out. I believe he went into the past, I think he made a great fortune with his knowledge of the future, and returned to Makasar. He built the Nucci house. He married, or got someone with child. That child was Calabus …”

“What?” Letitia's eyes went wide. “Finn, you can't mean what I think you mean. You've got the names wrong.”

“I do mean it, though, as wondrous as it seems. Sabatino was the Grandfather too, dear. It was he who invented the machine, not his son. Or maybe he remembered it somehow, from the past. But if he did, where's the start of the thing, does it have a beginning or not? I don't want to think about that.

“At any rate, I feel he was mad, nearly from the start. I think it likely that the cruel dilation of Time has an undesirable effect on the mind.

“Did he know what had happened to him? Did he know who he'd been, what he'd become? Perhaps, but I think not for long. I think the shock of falling through the years brought on the madness at once.

“I believe the seer told me true, Letitia, as far as she could know. There was indeed a spell that protected that horrid device. Only, she couldn't understand it wasn't a sorcerer's spell at all. The spell was the great distortion of Time itself, an awesome bit of magic for sure, but one we never dreamed of before.”

“Finn …” Letitia closed her eyes and frowned. “What you say just couldn't be. Sabatino and the old man-his grandfather-they were both here. How could-how could two of the same person be in the same place at one time?”

“How can magic be? How can you and I, and everything on earth, possibly exist? I don't pretend to know the logic or the reason, what kind of rules Time follows, if it follows any at all. But I saw the men together. I made no connection at the time, of course, but, Letitia-they were the same.

“I know this is so, but I can't explain why. I'm a maker of lizards. I'm not a magician, and I don't wish to travel through Time. As a fact, I wholly agree with you. I don't wish to go anywhere at all. Are you coming down, now? You need to get all the rest you can.”

“In a while, love. I want to watch the sea. I doubt that I can sleep with all this in my head …”

“You told her that, but nothing more, then. I hope she'll be satisfied. Letitia has a curiosity that's most unnerving at times.”

“Why wouldn't she?” Finn said. “What could be more awesome than what she knows now?”

He sat in the dimly lit cabin watching an ill-formed lizard perched atop his bunk. He tried not to look too hard, for she knew her condition, and resented any glance at all.

“She remembers nothing, and I pray she never does. I would do most anything to keep that horror from coming to mind again. This is a truth Letitia must never see. I saw it happen with my eyes, or I surely wouldn't credit it myself.

“When Letitia was caught in the grip of Time, it wrenched her back to what she'd been, split every spark, every nit, every cosmic mite that makes us what we are. Shattered her into a horde of those creatures and tossed them to the winds of Time.”

“The same winds, I gather, that caught Sabatino as well.”

Finn shook his head. “I don't know that. I can't say when or how the myce appeared. But they were there in the house Sabatino built. Did his transition bring them there? I don't suppose they have to wait in the hall, so to speak, until the proper time, which isn't even there.

“All I can say is that Sabatino, in his madness, invented, created, conjured up the Prophecy Machine. Because his other self remembered it was there-or because some fixed, rigid rule of the cosmos says it happens, so it does?

“What's clear is he used those poor, primal creatures, used their hunger perhaps, and their fear, to race about their wild and twisting paths, to drive the gears and wheels of that horrid thing, to tap some incredible force that spews out an endless, ceaseless record of the future, the past, every day gone, and all that's to come. One that, doubtless, even a madman cannot understand.

“And that, Julia, is a thing Letitia must never, ever know. I only hope her dreams will treat her kindly, and leave her nights in peace.”

“All will be well, I'm sure,” said Julia Jessica Slagg. “Letitia is stronger than you think, and wiser, too. She puts up with you, we must consider that.”

“Thanks for the encouragement and help. I am greatly relieved now.”

“I will be greatly relieved when I'm put together right again. When do you imagine that will be?”

“There are two factors here. One has to do with the time it takes this vessel to wend us home. The second, the greater factor, depends upon a remarkable transition, a breakthrough, a true conversion as it were, a change in attitude. Dwell upon that, if you will …”

He watched her awhile before he moved to join her, watched her standing at the rail, the wind pressing strands of ashen hair against her cheek.

While he watched, he thought of many things. He thought about TAVERN and BAR, he thought about Bowsers and the Dobbin he'd met, and how he wished they'd had a chance to speak.

He thought about the seer, and wished, for an instant, he had seen her in the light, though dreams imagined were often better in the dark. She could never be as lovely as Letitia, he told himself at once, that was surely not the point. But Mycer ladies ever touched his heart.

He wondered if Squeen would find work somewhere, and wished him well. He had to fare better this time. How could he do any worse?

He wondered, then, if Captain Pynch would return to Ulster-East. If they might meet again on Garpenny Street, when the Coldtown shades came about.

One thing he knew and understood well: he didn't need an invention of any sort to tell him where his future lay. His future, just then, turned from the rail and showed him a gentle smile.

“Besides my understanding of love, and what it's all about,” he said to himself, “I know mixing spells with a noisome device is a foolish thing at best. I know, from the frightful venture just past, that magic is one thing, and machinery is ever something else …”