by Jack Dann
‘So it is associated with the equinoxes, this feeling, whatever it is,’ said Julia.
‘Most definitely. But it is so overpowering! Don’t you feel it? No? Why I seem to be the only instrument upon which these sensations play, I have no idea. But as I walk along the Camberwell Lanes, knowing that the Other is all around, everywhere, in the sky, in the sunlight, beyond the Palings, it comes to me that the Pale is where we are living; the Pale World, on the borders of one that is more richly coloured. And Beyond the Pale lies a place outside the jurisdiction of normal laws, a place considered hostile by civilisation, but which can never be reached, even at equinox when the wall, a thousand miles thick at Midsummer, thins to gossamer.
‘Or perhaps it can, if you find the hidden way …’
He fell silent, then.
They returned to her house on top of the hill, and while Julia prepared dinner Daniel borrowed her street directory, somewhat to her annoyance. He sat at the kitchen table and once again riveted his attention on the maps of Surrey Hills.
‘When I drew the shape of this “circuit”,’ he said, ‘it meant nothing to me. Expanding the diagram I added links to significant places in case this helped form a meaningful figure, a symbol; some kind of pattern, a shape, laid out tracing the route, the shape of an ancient symbol — some rune, perhaps, or a key. A key! That’s what I yearn after.’
Julia reached into the pantry for a chunk of parmesan cheese.
‘Waterways, paths, journeys, burials,’ said Daniel, ‘death, warfare, wilderness survival, crossing places, iron roads, conduits — I marked them on my map sensing somehow that they had been placed there not at random but for some particular reason. Not that the town planners had decided to create pivot points or circuits; but that forces had been at work of which they were unaware. Forces that moved them without their knowledge. The land itself dictated the ways humans should use it.’
Having placed two bowls of pasta on the table, Julia pulled up a chair.
‘Thanks.’ Daniel picked up a fork. ‘Sorry Julia, I’m being a pain I know. You’re very kind to put up with me.’
‘Not at all. I find your theories fascinating.’
‘Really? One day I’ll lend you my diary. It’s full of ‘em.’
‘Well, maybe not that fascinating …’
He laughed. ‘Point made! I promise I will not mention my delusions any more tonight.’
‘And he kept his promise,’ Julia said to me over the scalloped rim of a delicately painted teacup. ‘We spent that night together, talking until sunrise, and he stayed with me until noon the next day. He said he was falling in love with me. Oh, but I miss him.’
‘I’m so sorry. Why did he leave you?’
‘Why?’ Julia smiled mirthlessly, picked up Daniel’s journal once more. ‘See for yourself!’ she said, pointing out the beginning of a paragraph.
‘For autumn,’ Daniel had written, ‘is approaching again. It is the last month of summer and the days are noticeably shorter. And once or twice, already, there has been a day when a hint, just a hint of that anticipatory delight has flavoured the air. Just for half an hour or so … As the time approaches it seems increasingly urgent to crack the code; to unravel the mysteries of the Lanes. Autumn, apple-time, leaf-time, golden tawny light time … That other place, I know, is lit with long rich light, its slanting rays of burnt gold.’
‘Did you suggest he seeks counselling?’ I asked.
‘Jenny, the man’s a genius. These are not the ravings of a lunatic, don’t you see? I think he struck on something, I really do. At first I was sceptical like you, but then I did some research.’ Brandishing a notebook of her own, Julia said, ‘I found this information in a library book when I looked up the etymology of “Camberwell”.’ Opening the book she read, ‘The original “Camberwell” is believed to have been named for a well lying within its boundaries, whose waters possessed extraordinary healing properties. In the Domesday Book the English parish is called “Ca’berwelle”. The author of A Short Historical and Topographical Account of St. Giles’s Church — the parish church of Camberwell — writes, “It has been conjectured that the well which gave part of the name to the village might have been famous for some medicinal virtues, and might have occasioned the dedication of the church to this patron saint of cripples and mendicants. Cam is a very crooked word, and is applied to anything out of square, or out of condition. Having regard, therefore, to the fact already noticed, that the church is dedicated to the patron saint of cripples, we are certainly justified in assuming the word cam to be in this instance descriptive of individual condition; and the well would then become the well of the crooked or crippled.’” Julia put down the notebook. ‘A place of miraculous magical water!’ she cried. ‘But here in the Australian Camberwell, most of the streams and springs have been diverted underground! They have become secret magics…’
‘Ironically, Camberwell is a “dry” area,’ I said, attempting levity. Julia gave me a look of pity. ‘Dry areas’, local areas free of licensed hotels, where alcohol could be bought at shops but not restaurants, were a legacy of the 1920s, when the temperance movement was strong. Only two pockets of Melbourne were ‘dry’, and the erstwhile City of Camberwell was one of them.
‘Where is Daniel now?’ I asked humbly, to make amends for my inept stab at humour.
‘For a while he went away. He came back one last time, on a clear, bright morning early in May last year, and announced to me that this was one of those days in full bloom; the feeling at its strongest, the walls at their thinnest. “I have to Walk the Lanes again today at the height of autumn,” he said. And naturally I went with him.’
My auburn-haired friend sat on the arm of a chair, looking forlorn and dejected. I felt sorry for her.
A long hiatus ensued.
At length I broke the silence, saying gently, ‘And that was the day you were found wandering the streets, lost, unable to find your way home. What happened? Where is Daniel?’
‘He’s gone,’ said Julia brokenly. ‘He’s been missing ever since. The detectives can’t find him. And I cannot really explain it.’
‘But you go looking for him every day,’ I said, and now I felt tears pricking the backs of my eyes.
‘Yes. I go seeking the way in.’
‘The way in?’ Julia’s confusion appeared worse than I had first suspected. ‘The way into what?’
‘Come with me. I’ll show you.’
‘I don’t have time to tramp around the whole of Surrey Hills, I’m sorry Julia,’ I said.
‘Just as far as the end of the First Lane.’
‘All right.’
Together we walked down Guildford Road and up the lane. Along the way Julia became quite agitated, blurting, ‘Did you see that? I caught a glimpse of something moving over there, see, beneath the trees,’ or, ‘Look! Between the sky and the ground — a flash!’ but I witnessed nothing out of the ordinary, and my alarm over her mental state intensified.
As soon as we stepped out of the lane at the corner of Sir Garnet Road she took my elbow in a confidential manner and leaned to murmur in my ear, while waving the other hand at the half-completed townhouses where the old Southall house used to stand.
‘Leaves were blowing down all around us in the Buttercup Lane,’ she said, ‘and at the Southall house, and the sunlight was blowing too, as if the leaves were made out of sunlight, and our feet left the ground. We could hear the sound or jangling bells. We two were whirled up, and we saw the pattern laid out below as if in lines of fire across the suburb, and the pattern is the key, and the key unlocks the door. We returned to earth, and that was when I saw the door opening, and Daniel went through, but I held back because I was afraid. But for the brief moment the door remained ajar I looked in and saw an amazing sight, just as Daniel had described. Then it closed, but the golden honey soft comfort feeling of autumn lingered.’
She would say no more and I didn’t like to press her, in her current state.
We re
turned to her house, where I took my leave of her. ‘Julia, you are getting professional help aren’t you?’ I said as I stood on her threshold.
‘Of course,’ she said.
‘Is there anything I can do?’
Julia insisted that she was fine and there was no way I could be of assistance. So I said goodbye to my altered schoolfriend and journeyed homewards.
A week later a wonderful autumn day dawned, and for the first time I sensed that feeling described by Daniel. Next day it was trumpeted all over the news and everyone was talking about it — the bizarre incident that had occurred in Surrey Hills overnight.
This was too coincidental. I had to go and see for myself.
Surrey Hills was abuzz with sightseers, and the air was fragrant with savoury scents I could not quite identify. Errant breezes whisked leaves and hats through dazzling sunlight; the day was vividly alive. I turned up at Julia’s house but it was locked, and nobody answered the door. Then the neighbour, Mrs Warner, came in at the gate to tell me that Julia had disappeared again and detectives were searching for her.
Mrs Warner had a key, and let me in. The pot-plant on Julia’s windowsill was in full bloom, vibrantly ablaze with buttercups. I found Daniel’s open journal on the table.
In Julia’s handwriting —
‘I hear his thoughts in my head. He is calling me. He tells me that Ivan Southall’s house stands at a fulcrum, or possibly the fulcrum of the circuit that is the Camberwell Lanes. It is there that Sir Garnet Road does its strange and sudden contortion, there that our favourite flowers grew, there that the playground chops in twain a row of houses, there that privileged daughters were permitted to pass between two roadways. This site is somehow connected to the Buttercup Lane — perhaps by an underground waterway. With the Three Lanes route to the west of the Southall house and the Two Lanes (almost three) to the east, bounded to the south by the Iron Road and to the north by busy Mont Albert Road with its hurtling traffic, the circuit centres on the Southall house.’
Outside in Guildford Road, an untamed wind was gusting; a sweet, clean wind from beyond the stars, and with every breath I felt I would be borne aloft. I followed the crowds to the old Southall block where they were gathering. Perplexed residents were scratching their heads and wondering how such a strange thing could have happened. Some had heard of a rain of frogs, or even of fish but never such a phenomenon as this!
From top to bottom, the entire site was awash with deep drifts of leaves and flowers. The partially constructed buildings, two stories high, were barely visible beneath this confetti, although it was already being scattered by the breezes. The spectacle was extraordinary.
Late that previous night all the people whose homes bordered the lanes of Surrey Hills had been woken, simultaneously, by the sound of running footsteps and laughter. In the morning the construction site was found weltered in autumnal leaves, in gilded buttercups well out of season, and yellow buttons of flowers with a savoury scent, and blue hyacinths, and soft silver-grey catkins, and I knew with a rush of joy that Julia had got through.
She was with Daniel.
I envied them both.
That year we had one of the most beautiful autumns we’ve ever seen in Melbourne.
AFTERWORD
The Lanes of Camberwell can be located in the Melway Street Directory of Greater Melbourne, Map 46, F10 and G10.
— Cecilia Dart-Thornton
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LOST ARTS
STEPHEN DEDMAN
STEPHEN DEDMAN is the author of the novels The Art of Arrow Cutting, Shadows Bite, A Fistful of Data, and Foreign Bodies, and more than a hundred published short stories. He has won the Aurealis and Ditmar awards, and been nominated for the Bram Stoker Award, the British Science Fiction Association Award, the Sidewise Award, the Seiun Award, and the Spectrum Award. He teaches creative writing at the University of Western Australia, works part-time at Fantastic Planet science fiction bookshop, and is fiction editor of Borderlands magazine.
In the next story, Dedman takes us into a brightly lit Utopian world so we may discover the true value of art…
Tao’s was the only office on Hathor. It was a conventional flexiroom bisected by a temporary wall; the smaller chamber served as an anteroom, mainly in case the mayor was asleep when unexpected visitors arrived. Many of her neighbours had chambers that were similar, but they called them studios or studies or libraries or galleries.
Being mayor of Hathor wasn’t normally a demanding job, as the more routine details were handled by her Turing-tested secretary Aidan. Tao’s role was mostly oversight, and dealing with those inhabitants who wanted to speak to a fellow human. When this happened, she would conjure up extra chairs or couches from the nanomorph flooring, but normally her part of the office was empty except for a real divan, a spigot, and a holographic desk. Her side of the temporary wall was transparent; the more permanent walls and ceilings were holographic within a bubble that protected her from Hathor’s usually inclement weather. On clear or spectacularly stormy nights, Tao would switch off the hologram to stare at the sky; at other times, she seemed to be working inside a reproduction of Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, though Aidan would sometimes change this image to flatter a visiting artist. As most of Hathor’s human population considered themselves artists of one species or another, this was a detail Tao was glad to leave to the AI.
On good days, Tao could walk from the office to her apartment in less than ten minutes. Today had not been a good day, and by the time the doors shut behind her, she was wishing she’d decided to work at home. Aidan’s holographic form appeared behind her desk as she sank into the large chair. He didn’t say, ‘You’re late,’, nor did he hypothesise about the explanation: he was programmed not to guess unless ordered to do so. ‘You look tired,’ he said. ‘Do you want anything?’
‘Vanilla chai,’ she muttered, ‘and a bodyguard. They acquitted Larue. Insufficient evidence.’ She knew that Aidan was aware of this, little happened on Hathor that he didn’t know about before she did, but she found that venting in the AI’s presence was sometimes helpful. ‘He didn’t even have to testify — but now that the trial’s over, he’s talking to everyone who’ll listen. Which is everyone on the planet, and it’s probably already being blipped to Earth and the neighbouring systems.’
Aidan was silent for a moment. Courtroom procedures on Hathor were little different from those on old Earth: while prosecutor and judge were both AIs, the accused could choose a human lawyer to defend him, and the jury was also made up exclusively of humans. Aidan had observed the whole trial, watching the way Larue’s lawyer had manipulated the jury.
There was no denying that Manco Larue had paid a substantial portion of his personal fortune to buy van Gogh’s Starry Night and have it shipped from Earth to Hathor; Hathor’s side of the bargain was to name a gallery in the museum after him. When the container had been revealed to be empty, shortly after arrival, Larue had protested his innocence — but as soon as the verdict had been delivered, Larue’s Al secretary had claimed that since Larue had paid the cost of purchasing and transporting the masterpiece, he should still be entitled to the naming rights. Larue was also speculating on the planet’s comweb as to the motives of the thief, as well as the painting’s location.
‘You’re not serious about the bodyguard, are you?’ asked Aidan, cautiously.
‘No, but I could really use the tea.’ Her chair rolled across the floor towards the spigot, which produced a cup. She sipped the drink, still fuming, then said, ‘What’s the probability that he still has the painting?’
‘Unknown. Insufficient information.’
‘Profile him.’
‘It’s consistent with his acquisitive character,’ the Al admitted. ‘And he has a record of tax avoidance on Earth. But there are many people on Earth who have similar psychoprofiles, and some of them may have had opportunity to steal the painting, as well as motive. And of course, it would also be in character for him to have sold t
he painting to another collector on Earth for enough to cover the cost of shipping, thus making at least a small profit.’
‘The painting was in that container when it was shipped.’
‘Can you prove it? Something of the appropriate mass would seem to have been in the container, yes, but it may not have been the painting.’
‘No, I can’t prove it,’ said Tao. She put her mug on the floor, grimacing. ‘If we could get a warrant to search his house, or his bank accounts …’
‘The prosecutor tried.’
‘I know.’ She shook her head. ‘Why would someone do something like this, anyway? What good does it do him?’
‘I can’t answer that,’ said the Al, blandly. ‘Computers have no aesthetic sense.’
‘You act as though you have an aesthetic sense,’ Tao replied.
‘We appreciate accuracy and efficiency,’ said Aidan. ‘As Einstein once said, everything should be as simple as possible, but no simpler. I am aware of some of the determinants of attractiveness that humans apply to different objects — form and pattern, symmetry, proportions, and similar factors. I can see the cleverness in something such as Bach’s Crab Canon, which might almost be considered an equation — though one that is needlessly complex and distracting — or some of Escher’s paradoxical images. I can understand that inaccuracies in a painting by van Gogh or Edvard Munch, or a poem or play that you regard as great, convey inner emotion as well as external reality. I can accept your premise that the original of an art object has an inherent value that is not present in a copy, even a copy that is identical beyond the ability of human senses to tell from the original — but only as a premise, as it does not seem logical.
