found David’s tear drop, preserved and made whole by the energy condensed and captured inside it: the glowing white flame of a firebird.
12
Mr Henry carried David inside to a roomthat Rosa had never seen before. There
were books in there, of course, but not nearly as many, and they were all surprisingly tidy. None lay on the floor or in piles, for instance. And although there were gaps to be filled on the shelves, there was a certain neatness about their
arrangement, which suggested that someone (Mr Henry, she supposed) had gathered them together with care, with love.
But for once, books didn’t dominate theroom. Over by the window, bathed in aslanting cone of light, was a proper singlebed. Rosa hummed in envy when she saw
it. She and David normally slept in hammocks or on the floor (or occasionally on a shelf if they were very tired). Mr Henry laid David down on the mattress, supporting the boy’s head with a shallow pillow. To Rosa’s surprise the curator imagineered a blanket, which he flowed across David’s body. A glass of water appeared beside the boy as well. And a small lamp. Rosa gulped and put her hands behind her back. For Mr Henry to be using his fain, the situation, she guessed, was serious.
“Is he going to die?” She was standing in the centre of the room looking on. Her auma was overflowing with guilt.
The curator slid back one of David’s
eyelids. Despite the brilliance of the firebird’s flame, the pupils were
massively swollen. “His breathing is normal but his auma is in stasis. It’s
impossible to say if the effect is permanent. I will need to seek advice. I’m going to my office to make a v:com. I may have to leave the building for a time.” He parted David’s fringe and stood up to leave. “Stay with him, child. You are excused your duties in the librarium today.”
Rosa looked at David’s body and shivered. “But… what should I do?”
The curator paused and took something from his waistcoat pocket. Rosa’s pupils almost grew to the size of David’s. Mr Henry owned a
watch
. A ticking thing, with (what were they called?), oh yes, hands. She’d never seen one before, not even imagineered, but knew what they
were from books she’d come across on the subject. (Timepieces. What a quaint idea.) Mr Henry looked at the watch, pouted his lips and snapped it shut. “Read to him, Rosa. That’s all you have to do.”
“Even if he can’t hear?”
“He can hear,” said Mr Henry. And in three quick strides he was out of the room.
So Rosa went to the shelves in search
of something. Though what was suitable in these circumstances wasn’t really clear. Instinct, as always, would have to be her guide. The librarium, she told herself, would not let her down.
The first titles she examined, however,were dull to the point of knuckle-gnawingblandness. Who else but Mr Henry wouldkeep a whole shelf of books… aboutbooks? Most were to do with the layout of
librariums, though the buildings were referred to by another name: ‘libraries’. Rosa could not understand this. The pictures of the ‘libraries’ were much like her present surroundings (internally, at least), though the Bushley librarium, as far as she knew, did not possess moveable shelves (called ‘trolleys’) – an intriguing idea which she thought she would take up with Mr Henry when the curator next invited them into his study.
Things did not improve on the next shelf along. Here she found a whole collection of books that appeared to be just about the use of words. ‘Dictionaries’, they were called. They varied in thickness and density of writing, but all had one thing in common. The entries, in bold type, were in perfect alph order. She tingled with
envy to see such a thing and felt inspired to rush back to her work right away. A slight groan from David’s lips reminded her that her duty – this day – was to him.
She slid the dictionary back onto its shelf. Fascinating as David would undoubtably find it, it didn’t lend itself to fluid reading. She glanced across the room. On the shelves opposite were several rows of books with jazzy spines. She yanked one out. It was about something called ‘snooker’.
Rosa drew her head back, as if she had just smelled something unsavoury. She opened the book with one finger. The pages were old and brown and wavy. They made a slight crackling sound as they parted. The book fell open at a picture of a well-dressed man with neatly-combed
hair, bending across a high green table, pointing a long thin stick at a cluster of coloured balls.
What on Co:pern:ica…?
Another groan from David brought her to attention. Whatever this snooker thing was, it was going to have to do. She plonked herself down on the bed beside the boy. His eyelids were flickering, but firmly closed. Rosa gulped and re-opened the book, somewhere in the middle, at a section called ‘Tech:nique’.
“‘The striking of the cue ball,’”
she read aloud, “‘
is what determines good positional play. It is not just a question of studying angles. Knowing where to hit the white, and with what degree of pressure or follow-through, is what separates the professional player from
the amateur.’
”
That was as far as her reading got. She was about to close the book and look for something a little less dreary, when she glanced down and noticed the daisy chain was missing from David’s wrist. She gasped and jumped up. He must have lost it outside, during the attack. Anxious not to leave him, she headed for the window, hoping she could lean out and spot it. She was just a few paces from the light when there came a heavy fluttering of wings and the recess was occupied by the silhouette of a firebird.
“MR HENRY!” Rosa screamed for the curator at the top of her voice. But the old man did not come running and the firebird by now had swooped inside to perch squarely on the headboard, right above
David’s pillow. It was the same red birdthat had flamed the boy earlier. It stareddown at him and twisted its prominentbeak.
“Get away!” Rosa yelled, and hurled the snooker book.
She missed – practically by the width of the bed – but the firebird had set its sights away from David anyway and was already flying towards the nearest shelf of books.
Unbalanced by her throw, Rosa lostsight of the creature for a moment. Theclattering sound of books raining downupon the floor quickly identified itswhereabouts. To her astonishment, thebird was going along the uppermostshelves, clawing the contents off them asif it intended to destroy the whole
collection. It was certainly disrupting the order Mr Henry had so fondly created. Rosa leapt to her feet and stormed across the floor, balling her fists, her boot laces trailing.
“What are you
doing
?” she screamed. “What’s
wrong
with you? Stop it! Stop it!
You
horrible
thing. What have we done todeserve
this
?”
Then, the most extraordinary thinghappened. The firebird did stop throwingdown the books and hovered by one inparticular. A glowing white light emergedfrom its eyes and strobed the spine for acouple of moments. Then it stretched itshooked claws forward and appeared to
select
the book from the shelf. It flew backwith it towards the bed and dropped it,with reasonable care, on David’s chest.
Rrrh
, it went. Grumpy, but mildlyapologetic. It tapped the book twice withits beak, then flew for the window and
was gone.
Rosa stumbled across the floor. Her
thoughts, like her hair, were in total disarray. She lifted the book off David’s chest. On its cover was a picture of a flaming firebird, though it looked like no variant of one she’d ever seen. Fearsome. Wild-eyed. Terrifying. And
scaly
. Her auma struggled to cope with the image. She switched her gaze to the titling instead and read the three words across the top of the cover,
Creatures of Mythology
. The one word across the bottom she spoke aloud. It was unfamiliar to her and the pronunciation, she would later come to learn, was incorrect: “Drar… gones,” she
breathed.
Dragons
.
13
Just seven days after her dramatic visit tothe Merrimans’ home, Aunt Gwynethreturned to take Eliza away. Seven dayswas the standard time allotted for couplesto resolve their commingled auma in theknowledge of an enforced separation. Even so, when the moment came, Harlanstruggled to physically let go of his wifeand had to be admonished again by the Aunt. Such outrageous displays ofemotion, she snapped, would see
him
condemned to a counsellor as well. He
would then be on file. And what would
that do for his future with Eliza?
“How exasperating,” Bernard
Brotherton said, when Harlan told the
tech:nician about it the next morning. “To be chosen as an Aunt is a great honour, but the timing is dreadful for both of you. How long will she be away?”
“Who can say?” said Harlan, looking distant, looking lost. Some aspirants were taken for three or four months; some for as long as Co:pern:ica took to complete a full spin. He sighed and smoothed his fingers round the contours of his face. “Any progress on Project 42?”
Bernard swung round and faced his com:puter. “Well, there the news will be more to your liking. It’s been a challenge, but I have achieved a breakthrough. Those co:ordinates you gave me are like nothing I’ve ever seen before. I had to recalibrate
SETH to accept them. You were right,they do describe a time horizon, but it’s a
far more complex event than the shimmer we saw on the film. Macro 42,” he said to the machine. The com:puter quickly uploaded a series of routines, then paused, awaiting further input. Bernard’s fingers hovered over the neural control pad. “I ordered SETH to run a simulation of the
rift that appeared during David’s sleep, based on the data sets from Strømberg’s recording. The results are quite impressive. I’ve slowed the sim down substantially to give you an impression of its physical composition.” He tapped the pad. The com:puter screen quickly drew a vertical ‘rip’, which appeared to be made up of a limitless number of helical strands, orbiting around a common core.
Harlan sat forward, his steepled fingers pressed up against his mouth. “Excellent,”
he muttered. “Did you do the 3D?”
“Mmm.” Bernard’s fingers flowed across the pad. The screen responded by turning the simulation on its end. At first the two scientists seemed to be looking at a solid hexagonal structure. But as Bernard zoomed in, the screen became filled with a series of fuzzy dots, indicating there were spaces between the individual strands.
Harlan put on a pair of spex. “What’s the resolution of this?”
“Sub-atomic. Notice anything?”
Harlan studied the image and shrugged. “The strands are shimmering, but there’s bound to be a high degree of electro:magnetic force between them.”
“Oh, it’s far better than that,” said Bernard. “Watch what happens if I apply a
single colour to a small group of strands.” His hands moved over the pad again. He paused the simulation and pointed to a region of red dots at the top left of the structure. “This is a still, of course. But look at the red in active mode.” He ran the program again. Instead of staying where they were, the red dots began to flash in different areas of the rift.
Harlan Merriman breathed in sharply.
“Thought that would excite you,” Bernard said. “The sim always maintainsits structure. But when you run a fine traceon the strand trajectories you discover thatindividual strands are popping in and outat light speed – but they never come backin the same locations. They’re moving, Prof. Swapping places. What you’relooking at there is not one rip—”
“But an infinite number of possible rips,” Harlan said quietly.
Bernard nodded. “I’ve revised my previous opinion, by the way. Even if David is ec:centric, I don’t believe that anyone on Co:pern:ica could imagineer something of this complexity.”
“Then what does that say about the firebirds? How could they
possibly
be involved in this?”
Bernard parted his hands. “How are they able to pass through our constructs? How did they evolve on Co:pern:ica in the first place? Where do the feathery little wotsits go at night? I don’t know. Let’s stick with the phys:ics for now. Do you want to see the really spooky bit?” Harlan switched his gaze sideways. The tech:nician was chewing his lip. “Here’s a
full-colour sim from the normal view.” Without waiting for permission, he uploaded another series of routines. Immediately, the rift was fizzing with
energy, almost sparkling around its perimeter and tips. Every third sec or so, as if a small current had been passed along its length, a changing gradient of colour rolled from top to bottom, then bounced back again.
“It’s beautiful,” Harlan said. “Can we go into it?”
Bernard nodded again. “It’s fractal, but it doesn’t obey any of the known systems or processes. Watch what happens if I push into the core.” Using the pad, he sent a small cursor into the pattern. The rift responded as if it had been punched. There was a blooming of colour in all