The Slanted Worlds

15

Venn has a remarkable physique. He has never been known to be ill and has great endurance. Once, when deep-sea diving off Indonesia for his series on volcanoes, there was a problem and he was underwater too long. Everyone was worried, medics stood by. But when he climbed aboard he was fine.

Later I saw a technician looking at the oxygen equipment, clearly puzzled. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Oh . . . Nothing . . . must be some glitch.” The gauge read Empty. “Unless he can live without air.” The man laughed.

I did not know how to answer that.

Jean Lamartine, The Strange Life of Oberon Venn

PIERS LAY ON his stomach amid a mountain range of crumpled paper.

He had a pen in his mouth, another in each hand, one behind his ear, and more sticking out of every pocket. He was scribbling numbers with startling speed, referring over and over to the Dee manuscript in its plastic protective cover.

Wharton said, “There was nothing there. But I’m sure Jake saw something. What do you think? Who are these weird children and what do they want with us?”

Thunder rumbled outside. Piers raised his head briefly, then went back to the figures. “Replicants almost certainly. Janus has many, according to Sarah. Why not ask her?”

Wharton nodded. “I will. But I’m worried, Piers. I know Jake. There’s something he’s not telling me.”

“Eureka,” Piers said.

“What?”

The small man sat up. “Eureka. Furthermore, hallelujah. Even furthermore: hip, hip bloody hooray with knobs on.” He was quivering with a sudden suppressed exuberance. Then he threw a pencil high into the vaulted ceiling, where it stuck in the damp plaster like a small yellow stalactite. “Yes!”

Wharton jumped up from the bench in the inglenook. “You’ve got something?”

“Words. A few words . . . mirror . . . a dark wood . . . eye . . . But it’s a start!”

He looked so delighted Wharton felt his own shiver of disappointment as rather a betrayal. And when the small man grabbed the papers and said, “Come with me,” and ran, he blew out his cheeks and hurried after him, wondering sourly when he would get any answers in this place.

In the tiled corridor, he glanced out of the window.

It was still raining. Now the lawns were more than saturated; great pools of brown water had spread across them, and the Wood beyond lowered, its dark branches tossing and broken under the drenching downpour.

And from deep below the house he became aware of a sound he realized he had heard all night under his pillow, in his dreams; the roar of the swollen river Wintercombe, in its deep ravine beneath the very cellars.

Hurrying after Piers, he noted rain dripping into more buckets here and there, damp green moldy patches forming on the ceilings. The whole Abbey was leaking and running with water.

In the Monk’s Walk, the stonework was wet under his hand, the gargoyles of lost medieval monsters vomiting rain through their open mouths. He sensed all at once the soft timbers, the creaking gutters, the saturated soil under the foundations, had a sudden nightmarish terror of the great building collapsing, toppling, washing away, becoming the ruin that Sarah had hinted at.

Like the houses in that street in the past.

He shook his head, and hurried on.

In the great cellar that was the labyrinth, things had changed. Coming in, he stood, staring.

Maskelyne had brought the mirror into the center of the room, tethering it to ceiling and floor. The maze of green mesh, Piers’s crazy invention to stop watchers being sucked into the mirror, had been re-aligned, so now it made a strange long funnel, rather like the concoction of some vast spider, leading straight to the glass.

Symmes’s old wiring lay on the floor; Maskelyne stood knee-deep in it, meticulously stripping it down. His head turned, the scar a livid weal in a sudden flicker of lightning.

Seeing Piers’s smug grin, he came quickly over. “What?”

“Only started to make progress on the code.” Piers laid the papers on the table and stood back, ridiculously proud.

“What code?” It was Rebecca, dusty, with her coat and wellies still on. So she was living here as well, Wharton thought. It was getting quite the commune.

Maskelyne ran his delicate fingers over the manuscript, its clotted figures and drawings. For a moment he seemed almost in pain. He said, “Where did you get it?”

Piers tapped his nose. “You’re not the only one with secrets.” His malicious glee against the scarred man made Wharton step in.

“We’re supposed to be working together.”

“You tell him that”—Piers turned, snatching the manuscript back and shoving it into his pocket—“next time he magics me into a china pot.”

“For God’s sake . . . listen, Piers, what about the river? It’s roaring like a wild beast down there. Has this place ever flooded?”

Piers shrugged, uninterested. “Not sure. Probably.”

As he bustled off, Wharton breathed out with exasperation. Maskelyne turned away, the wiring tangled in his hands.

What was it between those two? Were they some sort of enemies? It worried him, but then Rebecca caught his arm and drew him aside.

“Forget the weather,” she said in a low voice. “You’ve got worse things to worry about.”

He frowned at her. “What now?”

“Sarah. She’s got this crazy plan to steal something from Summer. The changeling’s in it with her.”

His heart went to ice. “Steal? Steal what?”

She shrugged. “Some coin.”

Sarah was invisible.

The itch in her skin was getting worse; every time she did this she felt as if she was putting herself back in Janus’s power; in some way going back to the Lab, obeying him, becoming his creature.

Now, as she pulled on boots and coat and slipped out of the bedroom, she let herself remember the day she had woken from the anesthetic in the terrible white clinic and felt it within her, that new, alien coldness lurking in one corner of her mind. How terrified she had been of it spreading, blanking her mind like snow, flooding her own self, her own memories.

She shook her head.

That would never happen.

She would die first.

The Abbey dripped. No one was in the corridors; as she crept along the Long Gallery she heard faint voices down in the Monk’s Walk. The boards creaked as she walked quickly past Jake’s door and then Wharton’s, past the locked room where Venn brooded under the laughing portrait on the wall.

She came down the stairs.

Two of the cats sat at the bottom like silent, disapproving guards. Their green-slit eyes watched her.

Her heart thumped in surprise. They could see her.

Inside the front door she checked the pack on her back. Food, water. A small steel knife.

She undid the bolts, tugged the warped wood open, looked out into the rain.

Then she was gone. Like a whisper.

Like a ghost.

“Behold,” I whispered.

Around the table, a susurration of surprise. The ring of hands clasped tighter.

Within the silver frame, the mirror stood, an enigma of darkness. Figures blurred through it, a voice spoke a phrase and then faded away. Peculiar rooms showed themselves and were gone.

“Is there anyone there?” I murmured, my voice a quaver of fear. “Is there any spirit that wishes to speak?”

The mirror rippled with shadows.

I convulsed. My whole body jerked. I was good at that; I had practiced it a lot. My eyes snapped open; I saw the assembled ring of ladies and a few gentlemen in dark frock coats gazing at me in fascinated awe.

“I am here.” My voice was quite changed. A high piping voice, a child’s voice. “Mother?”

At least half the women cried out. Of course, I knew they had all lost someone. And yes, you might think me cruel, to exploit them in this way. But my justification was that I felt, quite sincerely, that it helped them. That it was a comfort.

“Mother,” I lisped. “This is your own sweet one. I am happy. I watch over you.”

Tears. Sobs of astonishment.

I stared into the darkness of the mirror. I had planned the session to perfection; already I had become a husband lost in the Crimea and the great-great-grandmother whose descendant—a very spendthrift woman—had wanted to ask about a lost diamond necklace. My next spirit would be the recently deceased aunt of a nervous young man who, my maid had discovered, was deeply in debt. Her will had not yet been found.

I opened my mouth to whisper in an old lady’s voice.

And the mirror laughed.

I confess a shudder ran through me.

It was a sound so sinister, so truly dark that it made my imitations sound quite pale and weak.

My clients were utterly still. In the dark room the tiny flames of the candles seemed to dim. In the black glass a shadow moved.

I said, “Who is that? David? Is that you?”

My heart thudded. The fire crackled.

Then he said, quite calmly, “My dear madam. I don’t believe we’ve ever met. My name is Janus.”

Jake paused in the tiny dressing room. It lay between his father’s old room and the locked connecting door to Venn’s. For a moment he had thought he had heard a footstep out there in the corridor, but now as he waited, one hand on the cold marble washstand, there was nothing.

Just the drip of the leaking roof.

He straightened, took another key from the bunch of keys and tried that. He had stolen the keys from the kitchen half an hour ago, when Piers was far too absorbed in his papers to notice.

This one turned, softly.

He gave a grin of satisfaction, turned the handle, and very softly inched the door open.

The bedroom was as spartan as ever.

Venn lay on the bed. He was fully dressed, wrapped in his dark coat, his boots leaving muddy clots on the black-and-white quilt. He slept as if exhausted, a complete sleep, curled up, his breathing regular and shallow.

For a moment Jake watched him. He knew so little about Venn, about who he really was. All the stories of the explorer, the legendary TV series, the terrible solitary descent of Katra Simba . . . all that was the public face, the famous personality.

But who was this, lying here? This worn, changeable, guilty man? Was he mortal? Or was he Shee? Was he some strange forbidden mixture of the two? Because the Shee certainly felt no sorrow. And Jake wasn’t sure if they ever slept.

Venn stirred, murmured. He curled up tighter, rolled over.

Jake forgot everything. Because he could see the bracelet. It was fastened around Venn’s right wrist, and his sleeve had ridden up to expose its amber gleam.

Jake took a tentative step forward. The carpet in the room was thick; it muffled his steps. He reached the side of the bed, then leaned forward carefully.

The bracelet was surprisingly light—he knew that from wearing it himself. His fingers touched the coolness of its silver, the intricate serpent, the finely delicate clasp. With infinite care he crouched closer, using his very fingertips, barely breathing, unfastening the clasp with a smooth movement he could hardly believe himself capable of.

The bracelet opened.

Jake widened the gap, drew it up, over Venn’s bony white wrist.

So softly.

So carefully.

An explosion of knocking at the bedroom door made him leap back in terror.

“Venn! Are you there. VENN?”

Venn woke, rolled, stood.

Jake was already on the floor; he dived under the bed, thick dust in his hair and eyes.

His heart was hammering; he saw Venn’s feet on the carpet, the door opening.

“What? What’s wrong?”

“Sarah’s gone!” Wharton’s voice. Jake grinned. Those ridiculous slippers.

“Gone? Where?”

Wharton’s answer sounded breathless with apprehension. “Rebecca says she’s found out about the coin. I think she may have gone after it. Into the Summerland.”

Under the bed, Jake’s fingers gripped the bracelet tight.

Venn’s fury, when it came, was an animal’s fury.

An animal’s pain.

“Are you sure about this?” Gideon stood at the edge of the Wood, flint knife in his belt, his ragged coat green as lichen, his skin smeared with whorls and patterns of mud. Leaves clotted his pale hair.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m sure. Hurry.”

His eyes were restless, constantly glancing into the rain-swept Wood. She wondered, for a second, if he had betrayed her. But all he said was: “Right. Let’s go.”

The ground was awash, the small streams in the wood bursting their banks. She followed him to the edge, ducking under bare low branches, under the pliant stems of brambles.

Then she paused, tugged up her hood, and looked back.

In the Abbey the lights were lit in Venn’s room. Someone opened the window up there and yelled something, a command of anger and fear.

But the wind snatched the words away.

“That was Venn,” Gideon said. “I think he was calling you.”

She turned her back on the house, quickly, not to hear. “I know,” she said.