“OK,” David muttered, blowing with relief. He had no idea why the bird had let him go. But it had, and he needed to be out of there – fast. He crouched down and
touched what was left of the
Kinge
, to offer it what little compassion he could. Reminded that he still had the strange
Alicia
, he glanced at the cover again. For the first time in months (spins, even?) he extended his auma and let it commingle with the auma of the book. To his
amazement, it seemed to reach right into him. It was ready to forgive. And it wanted to be read. So definite. Almost
like a dying request. He slipped it into his jacket pocket then tip-toed to the end of the lane and looked around the shelves for signs of more firebirds – or Rosa. Why, he wondered, had she not come to his aid?
Maybe she was lost? Or hidingsomewhere? He called her name. It
floated like a living thing amongst the shelves. When he followed it, it brought him back to the doorway and Floor 42.
Closing the door, he hurried through the known part of the librarium, asking it to take him straight to Rosa. Four connecting rooms later, he arrived at the threshold of Mr Henry’s study.
Rosa was there, kneeling beside Mr Henry’s swivel chair. The curator himself was sitting in the chair, with his head lolling forward onto his chest.
“Rosa?” David said. She looked up as he stepped in.
She was weeping, and looked as if she had been for a while. Only now did David see that she was clutching one of Mr
Henry’s hands. His other hand washanging limply from his chair. “He’sdead,” she sobbed. “He aged as well. Ifound him like this. He’s gone, David.”
“I’m so sorry,” said a voice from thedoor.
David whipped around.
Harlan Merriman stepped into the light. “I came here immediately, to make sureyou were safe.” He placed a hand on hisson’s face, running his thumb along theperfect cheek bone. “Oh, David. Whathave I done to you… ?”
“You know about the time quake?” David asked.
Harlan looked bleakly at Mr Henry. “Icaused it,” he said. “A failed experiment.”
“Can it be reversed?” Rosa said
tearfully.
Harlan shook his head.
“There must be
something
you can do?”
she begged.
“There is,” said Harlan, his expression fixed. “I can give myself up to the Higher.”
4
“No, this can’t be happening,” Rosa said. She sat back against the swivel chair, burying her face.
Harlan looked at David and said, “You should leave here. And take Rosa with
you. It won’t be long before Mr Henry’s death is noticed. Any diminution in the universal auma triggers the inception of the Re:movers – programmed constructs who deal with death and bodies, and criminals. They don’t ask questions, David.”
“I’m not leaving here,” Rosa said.
Harlan bit his lip. “The Aunts will
come as well.”
“Aunts?” David queried. He, of course,
had no experience of them.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Harlan, gripping his son’s arm and drawing him a step or two away from Rosa. “There isn’t much time. And I must speak to you – privately.”
“What happened?” Rosa growled. “What did you
do
?”
“David?” Harlan said quietly to him.
David looked into his father’s eyes. “I’m staying with Rosa. This is where we belong. Anything you say, you say to both of us, Dad.”
Harlan ran his gaze around the study walls. “Very well,” he sighed, rubbing his hand across his mouth. “You’ve both been affected by the time shift. It’s only right that you should both know why.” He walked across to Rosa and touched her
shoulder. “I really am genuinely sorry.”
Shuddering, she drew her knees up to her chin. And though she couldn’t bring herself to look at Harlan’s face, she nodded gently to acknowledge his
remorse.
“I was running an experiment in my lab,” he said, “trying to recreate a peculiar rift in the fabric of space that had been observed during your dreams.”
“My dreams?” said David.
Rosa put her hair behind her ears and listened closely.
Perching on the corner of Mr Henry’s desk, Harlan went on, “It showed up on a film Counsellor Strømberg made of you sleeping. You were never able to recall what you’d dreamt about, remember? Rifts like that are not supposed to happen, not in
a carefully-controlled world like Co:pern:ica. So you were confined here by Strømberg while we tried to work out whether you were the cause of it. You suffer from a condition called
ec:centricity, David. It means that you can imagineer outside the limits of the Grand Design, even though you may not be aware of it. The librarium is considered a neutral
environment. The plan was to keep you here to calm you down, so you wouldn’t draw unnecessary attention to yourself while we carried out our investigations.”
“And what did you find?” Rosa asked bitterly. “It had better be important ’cos it’s just killed Mr Henry.”
Harlan nodded. “The rift came from another dimension.”
“What?” said David.
“I was looking for the source of it,” Harlan said, “because I wanted to protect you – and, who knows, the rest of Co:pern:ica, too. Unfortunately, we generated a temporal distortion and this is the result: everyone connected to the project has aged. Fascinating for you, myself and Rosa. Tragic for poor Mr Henry.”
“Taxicar,” David said, glancing through the window. Four men in black suits had
just stepped out of it.
Rosa scrambled to her feet and looked
out. “We could hide,” she said. “We know lots of places. And we can get into the upper floors.”
“I can’t hide,” said Harlan. “I have to take responsibility for what happened here.”
“What will they do to you?” David
asked.
“I’ll be banished – to the Dead Lands. They’ll send me somewhere I can’t be found.”
“But that will mean… ”
“That this will be the last time we’ll
see each other, yes.”
“They’re coming in,” reported Rosa.
“Dad, let us hide you.”
“No,” said Harlan. “That would make you culpable – both of you. They’ll track me down eventually, wherever I go.”
“What about the rift? Tell me what else
you found.”
“I hear footsteps,” said Rosa. She went and stood by Mr Henry, and turned to face the door.
“Dad, the rift,” David said, with more
urgency now. “What else did you discover? If I didn’t cause it, what did?”
Harlan stepped forward and pressed a micro:pen into David’s palm. “Something stronger than you,” he whispered. And he threw his arms around his son and hugged him tightly, just as the first of the suits walked in.
“Stand away,” said the man. “You will separate. Now.”
“Oh… They’re like…
machines
,” Rosa whispered, reading them. David left his father and went to stand beside her. The
knuckles of her free hand brushed against his. He gripped her hand lightly, never taking his eyes off the four Re:movers. Rosa was right: they had the same kind of auma readings as machines: low, with no emotional oscillation. They were perfect
clones of each other, right down to the level of the hair on their foreheads. The
only way they could be told apart was by the patterns on their ties. Cross-hatched. Pin-striped. Plain black. And spotted.
Spotted (the Re:mover that had spoken) walked across to Mr Henry. He passed a hand-held scanner over the body. It responded with a terminal-sounding beep. “Death, by natural causes,” he said.
“Not quite,” said a new and more cynical voice.
To Rosa’s horror, Aunt Gwyneth sailed into the room.
The Re:movers, David noticed,immediately stood aside, apparentlyawaiting orders from this woman. “Whoare you?” he said coldly.
Aunt Gwyneth saw Rosa’s hand in his.
“Oh, your charming… companion will bring you up to speed eventually, David. For now, you will be silent while I do my work. This room is overcrowded,” she snapped at the Re:movers. “Take the body to the taxicar.”
In one fluid movement, Spotted tie lifted Mr Henry from his chair, threw the curator over his shoulder and carried him
out of the room.
Rosa covered her mouth.
“As for this one.” Aunt Gwyneth turned to Harlan. “He has been keeping secrets from us.” She put a jet black fingernail on Harlan’s cheek, drawing it down his neck and shoulder as she slowly circled behind him. “Where is Thorren Strømberg, Professor?”
“I don’t know,” he said, trying not to
gulp.
“We have the tech:nician, Brotherton.” She dragged the fingernail again, pressing it into the soft pit of flesh behind Harlan’s right ear. (David saw his father wince.) “Please, don’t make this difficult. I don’t want to humiliate you in front of your son. I ask you again, where is Strømberg?”
“I don’t know,” Harlan repeated
quietly.
Aunt Gwyneth stepped away from him and set her spine straight. “Check the boy’s palms.”
“What?” said Rosa. Why the sudden interest in David?
The pin-striped Re:mover stepped in front of him. “You will show me your hands.”
“He’s innocent,” snapped Harlan.
“Leave him alone.”
“Do it,” Aunt Gwyneth said, rounding on David. “Your father passed you something before I came in. It’s written all over his neural pathways.”
The Re:mover raised his scanner in a threatening gesture.
David had no choice but to open his hands. In the palm where his father had placed a micro:pen, was a golden ring. “My father knew his fate,” David said to the Aunt. “So he wanted me to have this… ongoing symbol of love for my mother.” He saw his father give the faintest of nods.
“Please, Aunt Gwyneth, don’t take it,” Harlan pleaded. “Let Eliza have something to remember me by.”
Aunt Gwyneth breathed in sharply. “Arrest him,” she said, sweeping a hand
towards Harlan.
David closed his hand around the ring
once more.
Plain tie stepped forward. He scanned Harlan’s eyes. “You are identified as Harlan Arthur Merriman. Arrested on theauthority of an Aunt. Have you anything tosay?”
Harlan stared deep into the oldwoman’s eyes. She
was
somewhat olderthan the last time they’d met. And thattroubled him deeply. Whatever theoutcome of this, she was going to besomewhere at the heart of it. Why, hewished, thinking about Mr Henry, couldthis dreadful woman not have died
instead?
“Have you anything to say?” the
Re:mover repeated.
Aunt Gwyneth put her mouth within aspit of Harlan’s ear. “What a pity,” shewhispered, with cruel intent writtenthrough her auma, “that you will neverhave a chance to see your charmingdaughter.”
“My… ? How? What have you done?” Harlan floundered.
“Take him,” Aunt Gwyneth
commanded.
“Dad? What’s the matter? What did she say to you?” David stepped forward, only for Cross-hatched and Pin-striped to move to intercept. With a shock of pain, Pinstriped placed a hand on David’s chest to restrain him.
In an instant, David imagineered the
Re:mover across the far side of the room.
The man-machine flew across Mr Henry’s
desk, knocking over a globe and a small com:screen before crashing into the shelving behind it. Cross-hatched was about to go the same way when Aunt Gwyneth cried, “Enough!” and turned her powerful eyes on David. He sank to his knees in agony. The throbbing inside his head was horrendous, as if she had put a fork into his brain and twisted it twice
before pinning him down. “Very impressive,” she growled. “Use your fain like that once more and I will have you de:constructed, very slowly.” She scowled at Pin-striped, who was getting to his feet (readjusting his tie). “You will be committed for re-programming. Now, take this criminal away.”
And with that, Harlan Merriman was hauled from the room.
As though to add insult to injury, Aunt Gwyneth cracked her knuckles (a quitehideous sound) then came around the studydesk and sat in the curator’s green swivelchair. She rocked it back and forth with
very little relish. One by one, she opened the drawers of the desk and closed them
without disturbing the contents. She picked up a book of something called ‘Crosswords’ and dropped it into the waste bin in disgust. At last, she spoke. “Rosanna – so much more elegant than ‘Rosa’, don’t you think? You don’t mind me using it, do you?”
It was a question intended to be answered, but Rosa preferred to keep her silence.