The Slanted Worlds

13

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

IT 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.”

“Agreed, for now. Piers gets me what I need. And when I succeed, and we get David Wilde back, and your wife, I take both of the bracelets and the mirror as my reward. I take them, I go, and you never see me or them again. That is my price.”

Wharton pulled a face. Sarah scowled.

It was Rebecca who said: “Sounds fair to me.”

Venn snorted. “Does it.” He tipped his head and gazed at Maskelyne with cold curiosity. “You think the mirror will respond to you, more than anyone else? That it recognizes you?”

The scarred man laughed, a light, soft sound in the dim room. “I know it does.”

“Then you’d better get on with it.” Venn turned.

“My conditions . . .”

Venn spun back and glared at him with cold fury “If you can get David and Leah back alive, then as far as I’m concerned, you can have the whole damned estate and the souls of everyone in it! But if you’re lying to me . . .” He stepped forward. “If you’re wasting my time for your own selfish—”

An enormous clang made them all jump.

Piers had dropped the film reel onto the floorboards. “Oops,” he said, deadpan.

Venn gave him a venomous glare. “Have you got something to say?”

“Just . . . well, let’s not get hasty. Remember the Dee page, Excellency. I’ve been working on it and I think there may be things to help us there. Mortimer Dee may not have invented the Chronoptika, but he knew many strange things about it.”

Maskelyne’s whole body seemed to be shocked into sudden movement; he came straight from the window in two steps. “Dee? You’ve found his papers?”

“Sarah found them,” Wharton said, thinking that would please her.

It didn’t seem to; she glared at him. Then she said, “One page of unreadable mess. Scribbles and drawings.”

“That might be just what I need! Where is it?”

Piers raised an eyebrow at Venn. “In the safe. But . . .”

“Give him a copy.” Venn watched as Maskelyne made eagerly for the door. And as the scarred man reached it, Venn said icily, “But the bracelet stays with me, and if you fail, I’ll throw you to the Shee and let them torment you for all eternity.”

Maskelyne paused. Then he went out.

“Oh goody,” said Piers, picking up one of the cats. “And now lunch, I think?”

Wharton went to find Jake.

He was in the cloister, the monkey clutching around his neck. It was chattering right into his face, but he was taking no notice of it at all.

Wharton took one look, then flung him his coat. “Forget Piers’s cottage pie. We’re going to the pub.”

Jake didn’t move. “The Black Death,” he said.

He was white and still with fear.

Wharton, his arm halfway down a sleeve, paused. Then he pulled the duffel coat roughly on and did the toggles up, concentrating on them too carefully. “Don’t give up, Jake.”

“I’m scared. Is that so strange?”

“No. Not strange at all. But you’re Jake Wilde. You’re the crazy kid who stabbed Patten in the wrist just to get out of the school. You don’t give up. That’s why you’re such a pain. And that’s why you’ll succeed. We’ve got Maskelyne on our side now. He’s a strange man—I don’t know what to make of him. But he knows about the mirror. Let me tell you about the deal he’s made with Venn.”

Jake nodded, barely listening. Then he stood, and Horatio screeched and swung upside down in relief. “All right. Let’s get out of here. I need to think.”

Sarah watched the car start and judder into gear and slur down the flooded avenue. She sat knees up on the broad sill of the study window, until the bare black branches of the elms hid it from sight. For a moment a flicker of pain went through her. They hadn’t even asked her to come.

Jake’s outburst had hurt. He was such a spoiled kid! He had no idea of what she had seen, of what lay in the dark future, and she couldn’t even tell him, not about Janus’s terrible experiments, or the secrets of the ZEUS organization. He only thought about his own problems. And Venn was just as bad.

She shook her head, finished tying the laces of the walking boots Piers had given her, and pulled on the red raincoat, a little too big, that he had found. Forget them. The coin. That’s what she should concentrate on. Getting the coin.

She slipped out of the house by the side door to the sunken garden, closing it carefully so that the row of metal shears and bars hanging from it clinked only softly. Piers had a camera here, but she knew he was too busy cooking to be checking it now, and she ran quickly along the gravel path, around to the back of the house.

Wintercombe Abbey led into a tangle of courtyards and outbuildings. In her time, most of them were ruined, but now they still had roofs and odd oriel windows. One, which Piers called the Abbot’s kitchen, was an octagonal gothic structure with a vast central chimney, where the long-dead cooks of the medieval abbots had no doubt concocted great feasts at Christmas and Easter.

It stood deep in nettles, its walls smothered in ivy, thick twisted bines loaded with glossy leaves.

She ducked under them, hands feeling for the wall. The stone was wet and crumbling, rain cascading off the leaves onto her hair, down her neck.

She shivered, groped farther, found emptiness, and slipped under a pointed arch, crawling through the leaves, breathing hard.

Then she stood up, in a shower of drops.

The interior was a damp green space, gloomy with filtered light. Her breath smoked, she glanced around and then up into the cavernous hollow of the roof, where a pigeon fluttered.

“Where are you?”

He didn’t answer, but she could hear his breathing.

She took out the flashlight, switched it on, and flashed it around.

Gideon was a dark shape under the hanging ivy that infested the ancient stone chimney. He crouched, sullen in the ruined hearth, and as she stepped closer, he looked up. She gasped.

His face was streaked with blood, his eyes red-rimmed.

The sleeves of his green coat were in rags.

And his fingers were raw.

“What the hell happened to you?” she whispered.

He glared at her as if he hated her. “I was the wren,” he said. “They hunted me.”