The Slanted Worlds

3

I paced all night, as I believe one is supposed to, up and down the corridor of the infirmary, smoking cigars until the air was a fog of blue. Even Moll’s antics, even the search for the snake bracelet, faded from my mind.

Then, just as the sky brightened and the gas-lamps were put out, there came a great eerie cry, as if the whole world wailed.

The nurse came out, wiping her hands. “It’s a girl,” she said.

And I found myself the most astonished of fathers.

Journal of John Harcourt Symmes

THERE WAS SOMETHING sinister about the three children. They didn’t smile. The lenses of their glasses were shiny and hid their eyes. Even in this terrible time of fear and sudden death, their faces were too pale under the dirt.

Jake said, “How the hell does everyone here know my name?”

“Not everyone, just us.” The boy to the right, his small face serious.

“Remember us. Remember what we say.” Was it the left-hand one now? Their voices were as identical as their faces.

The middle boy took a worn wooden yo-yo out of his pocket and let it run expertly down and up its grubby string. “We’ll be back. Soon.”

“Just hang on.” Jake took a hasty step toward them. “What do you mean? What black fox? What box? Are you Shee? Do you know Summer? Do you know Venn?”

They turned away. Linking hands, they walked into the crowd on the platform.

“Listen to me!” Jake dived after them, but tripped over a man wrapped in blankets, curled in sleep. A storm of swearing emerged; Jake backed, staggered against a pram; a baby screamed. A women yelled, “Watch what you’re doing, stupid!”

“Sorry. Sorry.” He scrambled away, trying to edge his way along the platform. Where were they? For a moment he thought he saw them, a little farther on, near the tunnel entrance, but when he climbed over the crowded refugees to get there, the only children were sleeping ones, their weary mothers gazing suspiciously at him.

He stopped, staring around.

Had they vanished? Or had he just lost them in the hundreds, maybe thousands, of people camped down here? Had they been Shee? Those cold faces. That dead stare. It was possible. For the Shee, all times were alike.

Suddenly he was too tired to think anymore.

He had to get some rest.

It took half an hour to find a corner of space against a damp wall. As he lay curled there on the hard platform, his head pillowed on borrowed newspapers, his coat for a blanket, he worried about his predicament. He was in the wrong time, and the only way back was through the mirror. He had to find it. However long it took. He quashed the secret fear that it might take him weeks. Months. The newspaper under his ear was dated June 1940. The height of the London Blitz. He’d studied it last year in the module on the Second World War, but he had no idea how long the bombardment lasted.

If he was killed . . .

But he couldn’t be, because then . . .

Paradoxes swam wearily through his brain.

And those children . . . those weird kids . . .

Thinking of them, he fell asleep.

He must have slept for several hours, despite the distant crashes of anti-aircraft guns, the heavy thuds that shook dust from the ceiling. Because when he woke, things had changed. There were a lot less people; those left were packing up, folding blankets, heaving bags and small children onto their backs.

Jake groaned. He was so stiff his joints cracked as he stretched; one arm was numb from his weight on it.

He mumbled, “What time is it?”

“Eight o’clock, love. The all-clear has sounded.” The woman next to him swept a blanket into a suitcase quickly.

“Where’s everyone going?”

She stared. “Work, mostly. Or to see if their houses are still standing.”

He thought of the collapsed street, the weak whisper of a voice in the wreckage. That woman . . . Alicia. She was dead now.

He sat up slowly, pushed back his hair and rubbed his face with both dirty hands. He should find the mirror.

Then he reached into his pocket, pulled out the luggage ticket, and looked at it.

He had promised her, and she was dead now.

Above ground, London lowered in a dark, rainy dawn.

He walked on the streaming pavements, collar up, soaked. Workers and women, cars, buses, and army trucks hurried past. The past was a place of strange illusions; at one corner he could almost believe he had never even journeyed, because the doorways and alleyways were so ordinary and familiar. And then a huge advertisement board for Pond’s Cream, or Bovril Meat Extract confronted him like a stark reminder of some alternative reality. Gradually, street by street, he saw how the shops were different—smaller, their fronts shaded by dripping awnings, their windows crisscrossed with protective tape. Sandbags were heaped in great walls down the road. Barriers—were they tank traps?—blocked every junction. There were no traffic lights, no automatic crossings, none of the normal paraphernalia of the city he knew. And then he turned a corner and muttered in surprise, because a whole landscape of rubble lay cold under the rain, and in the middle of it, completely undamaged, one small barber shop flaunted its striped red-and-white pole defiantly, and a few men queued to be shaved in makeshift seats in the debris.

There were other queues. Even this early, patient lines of people had formed outside nearly all the shops. At a baker’s, the smell of hot fresh bread made his hunger painful. He had a purse full of pre-decimal coins—part of Piers’s safety protocol—heavy in his pocket. He joined the queue.

Ten minutes later he reached the counter.

“Ration book?”

Jake said, “Sorry?”

“Your ration book, son.”

“I . . . forgot it.”

The baker stared at him in disbelief. “You what?”

“I just want . . .”

“Whatever you want, there’s no chance. Go home and get it. Next, please.”

Jake stalked out in cold fury, but there was nothing he could do. This was a different world to his, a world where he barely existed, and he had to get used to it. A few streets on, he managed to buy a small dried-up apple from a street stall, and chewed it sourly as he hurried on through the rainy dawn.

Tottenham Court Road was quieter than in his time; the cars and trucks strangely cube-like and slower, the exhaust fumes smokier, making him cough.

There were no signposts, no street names; not wanting to talk to anyone, he summoned up a hazy map of London from his memory and headed north, working his way to the grimy thoroughfare of Euston Road and trudging along it, head down, rain-blinded and cold.

He had been to St. Pancras before, to catch the Eurostar to Zurich—he remembered a huge Victorian station, beautifully renovated. Now it loomed up before him, soot-blackened and oddly shrunken by the barrage balloon tethered above. Crowds of soberly dressed men and women surged out of it, many in uniform.

Inside the vast arrivals hall, at least it was dry. He shook his wet hair and looked around. Trains, people, porters. Echoing voices. The roar of engines.

Near the refreshment room was a window in the wall, the sign LEFT LUGGAGE painted above it in dark green letters.

He walked quickly over.

No queue. Amazing.

He glanced carefully around. A few naval officers sat laughing at a round table; a soldier and his girl embraced over a pile of suitcases. No one took any notice of Jake.

He took the ticket out and went up to the window.

Behind it was a wooden counter, and behind that a keen thin man in a railway uniform who said, “Yes?”

“Come to collect this.” Jake pushed the ticket across.

The man read it. “Six fifteen. Did you deposit it yourself?”

“No. It’s . . . for my aunt.”

“Right.” The man looked even more keen, all at once. “Just wait there, please.”

He went into the depths of the room. Jake saw hanging coats, boxes, piled trunks, a stack of corded parcels. Behind him a train came in, and he turned in delight at the vast eruption of steam, the hissing brakes of the engine.

“Sign here, please.” A small brown suitcase was slid over the counter at him; he turned and scrawled the name J. Wilde on the sheet, pulled the case from the man’s hand, and walked hurriedly away.

His heart was pounding; he felt as if everyone was watching him, but a quick glance reassured him. Even the keen official was already talking to another customer. Jake walked quickly along the platform to an empty bench at the far end, sat down, and took a silent breath.

So now he was a time traveler and a thief.

No. Because Alicia had insisted. Demanded, with her last breath, that he take it . . .

He lifted the case onto the bench and clicked the fastenings; they weren’t locked, and the lid opened easily.

He gazed at the contents, oddly disappointed.

Papers. Letters. Account books. A birth certificate. A red leather photo album. He picked that up at random and opened it. Stiff Victorian portraits, a family group on the grass outside a prosperous-looking rectory. A little girl with a parasol and a tiny dog. Was this Alicia as a child?

He put the album down and rummaged further. Long white evening gloves. A box of chess pieces. A fan, a tiny container with scissors and nail-things. Then jewelry, plenty of it, wrapped in twists of white tissue paper. He opened one; saw a gold ring, obviously expensive. The sad detritus of a dead woman’s whole life. He twisted the paper back around the ring and put it away. None of it was any use to him.

As he went to shut the case, something in the bottom slid slightly. He pulled it out.

A black velvet bag tied with cords. At the end of each cord was a tassel of gold threads. He tugged the cords open. Inside was a metal container, circular, a dull gray. He tugged the lid off and saw to his surprise a roll of ancient film, its edges perforated, its frames small and dark. He pulled out a section and held it up but could make out nothing in the dull smoky light. He rolled it back, closed the container, slipped it in, and turned the bag over.

A few letters were embroidered elegantly on the back.

J.H.S.

He stared at them for a second of frozen disbelief, then dived back to the suitcase and scrabbled through the papers, finding the birth certificate and unfolding it with shaky fingers.

It was worn thin, the folds broken through.

He read her name ALICIA MARY. And her father’s name.

JOHN HARCOURT SYMMES.

“Symmes had a daughter!” He said it aloud in his astonishment; Symmes, who had stolen the obsidian mirror and got it to work, the man he and Venn had confronted in the smogs of Victorian London. That woman had been his daughter?

Then the mirror would have been in her house.

He hissed with frustration; some papers fell to the floor. He leaned after them but a hand in a brown leather glove got to them first.

Jake looked up.

The man was thin, average height, his face refined, his eyes dark with intelligence. He wore a long, loose brown coat and a hat Jake thought might be a fedora.

He was obviously, and without question, the police.

“These are yours?” he said.

“Er . . . Yes.” Jake flicked a glance sideways. Two uniformed constables waited a few feet down the platform. With them was the keen man from the left luggage office, who said “That’s him” with irritating smugness.

The police officer nodded. “What’s your name?”

“Jake Wilde.” He didn’t know what else to say.

“Identity card? Ration book?”

“I . . . don’t have them with me.”

“Don’t you now. Address?”

“Wintercombe Abbey. It’s not in London, it’s in the West Country. I’m staying there with my godfather.” It seemed the time to make an impression. Jake stood and drew himself up. “Look here, I simply don’t see—”

“Don’t pull the public schoolboy cant with me, son.” The man’s voice was soft and calmly authoritative. “Don’t tell me Daddy is a magistrate. Don’t tell me Ma Symmes really was your aged auntie. Just step away from the bench.”

Jake didn’t move. “And you are?”

“I’m Scotland Yard, son. Like I said, away from the bench. Now.”

Jake nodded. He shut the lid of the suitcase and with one quick, fluid action, flung it in the policeman’s face.

Papers flew out in a cloud; the jewelry clattered like rain, but Jake was already running; fleeing down the platform at top speed, leaping baggage, ducking a trolley piled with milk churns.

Yells rang out behind him; he sensed the policemen after him, but he was fast; he could outpace them.

Steam gushed, a fog of hot air. The locomotive beyond was preparing to move, carriage doors already being closed. He flung himself forward, grabbed one, hauled it open.

Leaping in, he slammed it behind him, gasping, then brushed his hair back and walked firmly along the corridor into a first-class compartment, sat down, and smiled breathlessly out of the window.

The train shuddered, shunted, stopped. A whistle blew.

Trying to appear calm, Jake craned his neck to see out. Only steam swirled on the platform.

Then with a crash, the compartment door slammed open.

A red-faced sergeant burst in, grabbed him, and forced him up. “You’re a bleedin’ tricky little beggar, and no mistake.”

“Let go of me. You can’t do this!” Jake struggled fiercely, but the man’s grip was iron. He was swung quickly around.

Standing in the compartment doorway, the man from Scotland Yard looked hardly out of breath. His glare, though, was steely.

“My name is Inspector Allenby. I think you’ll be coming to the station to answer a few questions, Mr. Jake Wilde.”

“For what? What have I done?”

Allenby shrugged. “Attempting to travel without due and proper identity, obtaining goods under false pretenses, resisting arrest, and very possibly, high treason. Take your pick. You’re in a heap of trouble, son.”

He stepped up to Jake and he held the luggage room ticket in his face, the number 615 clear. “I’ve been waiting weeks for someone to come for this. It seems the old lady was running a bigger network than we thought.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Furious, Jake held himself still.

“Save it. Take him to the van, Joe.”

The red-faced sergeant twisted Jake’s arm expertly behind his back. “With pleasure. You are going to bleedin’ regret making me get all hot and bothered.” He jerked and Jake gasped.

“You can’t do that! I have rights!” he yelled.

“Oh really,” the sergeant growled. “You can tell me all about them. At the Yard.”