‘Including Dalton,’ Caitlin added dryly.
There was a moment when he saw a glimmer of satisfaction in Caitlin’s eyes.
‘And you will be staying with us for a while I think?’ said Alixia, changing the subject. ‘It will be good for you to be around people of your own age. Rufius Westinghouse is a crazy old man who has spent far too long by himself!’
There was a rustling in the bushes behind them. A large bird with short wings and a huge beak burst through the foliage and careered down the walkway, almost knocking Josh over.
‘Lentement! Maximillian! Slowly!’ Alixia chastised, as it disappeared into another bush.
‘Dodo,’ observed Caitlin, ‘stupidest bird that ever lived.’
Josh laughed and so did she. It made her eyes shine.
Alixia produced a thin sliver of fish from a small metal bucket and held it between finger and thumb. ‘Would you feed Max for me, Josh? He’s hiding in that thicket of Rhacophyton.’
Josh nodded, took the fish by the tail and wandered over towards the giant ferns that the dodo had disappeared into.
‘Caitlin, a word,’ Alixia said softly when they were alone.
‘Yes, ma’am?’
‘Aren’t you being a little harsh on the boy?’ Her voice was hard but maternal.
‘But he attacked Dalton.’
‘He failed — this is true. But it was not a fair test. Master Eckhart made it impossible for him to pass, did he not?’
Caitlin shrugged.
‘You will learn that men are simple creatures, my dear. It is unfortunate that we must endure their faults, but he is not such a bad boy and he could be a great man — with the right guidance.’
Alixia kissed Caitlin on the cheek and gave her a hug. ‘Now stop this petulant act and be yourself.’
Josh returned looking pleased with himself and with an obedient dodo chirping merrily behind him.
‘So have you shown Joshua the baths?’ Alixia asked as she began to cut up raw steak and feed it to the largest moth Josh had ever seen.
‘Not yet no,’ Caitlin groaned as if it were the last place she would have thought of taking him.
‘Take him to the baths,’ Alixia said, waving her hand. ‘They are by far my favourite place in this crazy puzzle-house, and where I keep my most interesting specimens,’ she added with a wink.
The baths were down in the basement, a subterranean spa filled with warm blue pools that steamed slightly in the flickering light of the oil lamps.
‘Don’t tell me,’ Josh said as he admired the mosaics of sea horses and nymphs that lined the floor of the nearest pool. ‘Roman?’
‘Close enough — Byzantine,’ Caitlin said with a smile. She apparently enjoyed being the know-it-all.
The cavern was a series of vast brick-lined vaults that seemed to tunnel out in different directions. Every ten metres there was an arch with a sculpture of an aquatic god or leaping dolphin. Along the central chasm, Josh could see a large fountain enshrined in sunlight and spouting giant flumes of water.
‘They certainly knew how to build a swimming pool,’ he observed, thinking how good it would be to swim over to the fountain — if he’d had a swimsuit.
There was a splash behind him, and he turned to see Caitlin in the water — naked.
‘So. You coming in?’ she asked, and there was that smile again.
‘I don’t have a costume!’ he protested.
‘Really? Didn’t have you pegged as such a wuss! Don’t worry no one’s watching.’ She dived under the water.
He turned his back to her and threw off the robes. The air was cool on his skin and he jumped in before he could check whether she had kept her end of the agreement.
‘Nice abs,’ she said, swimming away from him giggling.
Josh dived down into the deep blue water. The floor fell away sharply, and Josh could make out vague structures deep below him that looked like old buildings. A large shadow moved between them, and he came back up to the surface with a gasp.
‘What’s down there?’ he asked, trying not to sound too concerned.
‘Oh, fish mostly — Alixia has been known to keep aquatic mammals in here sometimes. They’re usually harmless.’
‘Like whales?’
She had swum off, and he couldn’t hear her reply. He ducked his head back in to check there wasn’t a prehistoric shark or something equally nasty coming to get him and then swam off towards the fountain.
The water was clearer and cleaner than any swimming pool he’d ever been to. There were no chemicals to sting his eyes and the temperature was warm and soothing, like a bath. Josh stopped after twenty metres so he could take in the view. The walls were decorated with the mythology of an ancient culture: warriors with tridents were defending yellow-haired maidens from sea dragons.
‘Classic story: girl meets dragon, boy kills dragon — not much has changed in a thousand years.’ Caitlin’s laughter echoed off the walls like silver bells.
As they swam towards the fountain, Sim’s brother and his sister surfaced. Josh couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed at finding they had company.
‘Hi, Cat,’ Lyra purred.
‘Lyra, Phileas, meet Josh.’ Caitlin moved aside to give them a better view of Josh who was still a good ten metres behind her.
‘He’s cute. Which guild does he belong too?’ Lyra giggled.
‘Shhh,’ Phileas chastised his younger sister, ‘he’s still a novice.’
Lyra dived under the surface.
‘No!’ shouted Caitlin and Phileas in unison, but it was too late. Lyra was on an intercept course and was by far the fastest swimmer.
The first Josh knew of Lyra was when he felt something tugging at his ankle. At first, he thought it was one of Alixia’s pets, then he caught sight of her yellow hair as she pulled him down into the deeper, colder waters. She was strong and fast. He’d never been that interested in swimming, other than to stop himself from drowning, and as he watched the surface disappear above him, he began to wish he’d paid more attention.
Lyra’s face appeared in front of him like a beautiful water nymph, her hair framed by blonde tentacle-like tresses that drew him in. She placed her hands on either side of his face and kissed him hard on the mouth.
He felt the world turn as they moved through time. He felt her body close to his, warm in the deep, colder waters. There were memories moving between them, parts of his past were being unearthed and discarded as she dug through his timeline.
And then suddenly it stopped, and he was being pulled to the surface.
He broke through the water and sucked in air. It was as though he had forgotten he’d needed to breathe.
Caitlin was next to him trying to say something, but his ears were full of water so it was too muffled to make any sense. He held his nose and tried to equalise the pressure.
‘. . . she’s a bloody nightmare. Sorry,’ was all he caught of Caitlin’s apology. Phileas was reprimanding his sister on the far side of the fountain.
It took a few minutes for him to get his breath back enough to speak. ‘Was she trying to kill me?’
‘Hardly,’ Caitlin said calmly. ‘Lyra’s a seer.’
‘Which involves drowning people?’
‘No, let’s get out and I’ll explain.’ Caitlin started swimming towards the entrance.
‘Seers are usually a bit eccentric,’ Caitlin began. ‘They’re special, they can read people — their timelines I mean.’ She was sitting by the fire drying her hair in one of the ‘caldariums’, a kind of sauna that the waters of the baths passed through on the way to the main pool. Both of them were wearing towelling robes and drinking something intoxicating that Caitlin had poured from a stone jar.
‘So she was reading my life story?’
‘Basically. She was a little over-enthusiastic in her methods, though. Lyra is very impulsive — she’s mostly just hormones.’
‘So how do you know if you’re a seer?’
‘You would know
. It’s something that happens very rarely and very early. Dalton is one too. The Order treat them as if they were blessed. Virtually every one I have ever met has been an arrogant asshole or a bit bonkers. We are trying to stop Lyra from being either.’
Josh laughed. ‘Dalton is a dick.’
She smiled. ‘But a powerful one all the same. He’s ambitious, and his mother is the Chief Inquisitor for the Protectorate.’
‘The secret police?’
‘The most powerful group in our Order. They enforce the laws and govern us by them. They only report to the founder — Lord Dee.’
‘And they can send you to Bedlam?’
Caitlin looked at him quizzically, ‘what do you know about Bedlam?’
‘Not much. The colonel mentioned it the other day.’
‘The colonel?’
Josh smiled. ‘A nickname the kids use for Rufius.’
Caitlin thought for a moment. ‘Yeah, that kind of fits.’
‘Have you known him long?’
‘Uncle Rufius has looked after me since I was ten.’ Her expression hardened a little. ‘As for Bedlam, it’s been a prison and a hospital — for the insane mostly. Depending on what you have done you can get sent to a different period of its history. There are quite a few seers in residence as well as a number of radical Chaosticians.’
Josh had never heard the colonel talk of anyone other than the group that sent him messages through his almanac. ‘Are they like the Copernicans?’ he asked, trying to sound like he knew something.
‘Copernicans! No,’ she exclaimed. ‘Radical Chaosticians are those that take direct action on the past, without permission or consequence protocols. Copernicans are the opposite, most are interfering old coin flippers. Did Rufius tell you about them?’
‘A bit. He said they try to predict the future?’
She shook her hair and then wrapped it in a towel. ‘That’s the general idea. There is a joke that goes something like “How many Copernicans does it take to change a lightbulb?” ’
‘How the hell should I know?’
‘Exactly!’ she laughed.
Josh couldn’t see what was so funny, but Caitlin was too busy giggling to notice.
‘I should warn you that Sim is an Actuary. That’s what they call you when you first join the Copernicans,’ she added once she realised that he hadn’t got the joke. ‘They spend most of their time staring at statistical analyses and risk factors. It takes them forever to make a decision about anything and even when they do they talk about probability rather than actual actions.’
‘Why did he join them? He’s more of a geek.’
‘Oh, Sim loves tech — the Copernicans have some of the most amazing computers.’
‘I thought you couldn’t take technology back into the past.’
She was impressed. ‘You can’t, but I didn’t say these were like present day PCs — these things are massive, like cathedral-size mechanical analytical engines. You have to see one to believe it.’
‘So did they predict that I was coming to the Library?’
Her cheeks flushed a little. ‘There was a sixty-three-point-two per cent chance that someone like you would be there, yes.’
‘How did they know?’
‘Because of the Watzenrode hypothesis. The change you made to history was predicted hundreds of years ago. It was one of two theoretical directions for the end of the Second World War and was debated for many years. There was a Copernican Master by the name of Lucas Watzenrode who was convinced that it was the correct course, but many others disagreed, and so it was never acted upon.’
Josh couldn’t conceive how anyone would have thought of something that far ahead — he had trouble deciding what to have for dinner tomorrow.
‘So this Whatshisface predicted that I would be in the library last Saturday?’ It was then that he realised it had only been a week since he’d stolen the medal. Elapsed time was hard to keep track of when you weren’t always in the same century for more than a day.
‘No, a difference engine and a whole floor full of actuaries probably did that, but they predicted it with a high probability.’
‘Sixty-three per cent isn’t that high,’ he objected.
‘It is for a Copernican. Most of their calculations never give you better than a fifty-fifty probability.’
‘So why didn’t the colonel just put it back the way it was?’
‘Because he was told not to.’
‘By the Copernicans?
‘Probably the founder. Uncle Rufius is a Watchman — his orders can be overridden by the Council.’
Josh’s head was full of questions, and every answer seemed to lead to new ones.
‘Why did Lyra kiss me?’
‘Seers need physical contact to make the connection. She is a little wild, likes to shock — it’s nothing personal. Unless of course you want it to be?’
Josh blushed a little and shook his head. ‘She’s a bit young for me!’
Caitlin smiled. ‘Don’t be distracted by her appearance. She’s over a hundred, which is young for us, but not for you.’
‘What were those marks on her arm?’
Caitlin sucked breath through her teeth. ‘Ah. Yes, those.’
Josh realised then that Lyra’s scars and wounds were obviously from self-harming and that he’d touched on a sensitive subject.
‘Seers tend to become obsessed with trying to understand the ways of the universe. They are a bit like poets, pondering the imponderable — the total opposite of the Copernicans with their logical minds.’ She stared into the fire as she continued. ‘Anyway, some of them become very interested in what happens at the point of death, how our timelines end and what occurs after...’
Josh could see the pain on her face even though she’d turned away. She was playing with something on her necklace.
‘Lyra used to try to take herself to the edge to see for herself. It’s called Reaving, and there are quite a few seers who have died or gone completely mad chasing the reaver.’
The moment was interrupted by Phileas walking in. He sat down next to Josh with a wet thud.
‘Sorry about that, Josh. My sister is a complete tart.’
They laughed, and Caitlin poured out some more Byzantine brandy.
30
Library
‘The first order of business,’ Methuselah announced over a lavish breakfast the next day, ‘is to complete the assessment of Josh’s range.’
They would begin each morning with a mission briefing in the Library, which had been annexed to the house and was only accessible via a portal at the back of the garden shed.
‘Why the shed?’ Josh asked Phileas as they walked down the garden path.
Phileas had been late down to breakfast and was holding half a bacon sandwich in one hand and a mug of tea in the other, alternating between the two as he tottered along the brick pathway. He was a couple of years older than Josh, who was sure he caught the distinctive whiff of booze on his breath.
‘It’s not really a shed,’ Phileas said before cramming in the last of the sandwich. ‘He calls it that to make it sound normal for the neighbours.’
From the outside, it looked every bit the kind of wooden shed that could be found at the bottom of any garden in England. Someone had chalked up some cricket stumps on one side of it, and there was the rusted iron ring of a netball hoop hanging redundantly above the door.
Methuselah, Caitlin and Lyra had already disappeared inside when Phileas and Josh reached it. The musty smell of oil and old grass cuttings engulfed Josh as he entered the dimly lit clutter.
‘Smells like a shed to me,’ Josh said to himself. He’d seen quite a few in his time.
‘Keep going,’ urged Phileas as he repositioned a hoe that had fallen from its peg.
Josh soon discovered that it was more like the entrance to a warehouse, albeit a long, thin corridor with what seemed an infinite number of shelves and cupboards. Along each side were hung every kind of garden tool
imaginable, carefully placed on wooden pegs. They dated back hundreds of years. Josh picked up a scythe and examined the well-oiled blade.
‘Dad can’t help himself,’ Phileas said, taking the scythe back and hanging it on the wall. ‘Everyone in the Order is a bit of a collector — they tend to have their own personal storehouses.’
‘Why not just add the library to the house as another floor?’
‘It used to be. Mum had him move it out here a few years ago. She doesn’t like guests turning up unannounced and the library is a nexus for the Order; so any entrance to it is also an exit. She likes to know who’s coming.’ He pointed ahead of them. ‘Now here’s the portal.’
The door looked as if it has once been part of a castle. It was constructed from a grid of small wooden panels, metal studs had been driven through it at the cross sections to add strength. The lock was heavy, black iron with a brass key protruding from it.
‘Why does everything have to be so Gothic with you guys? And where exactly is this library?’ Josh asked when he realised the door was only leaning up against the wall rather than being part of it.
Phileas put his tea down on a bench cluttered with mugs, placed his hand on the key and grabbed Josh’s robe. ‘I think you meant when is it?’ he smirked as he turned the key and the world twisted away.
The library was an immense cathedral of knowledge.
Towering columns of ancient books disappeared into an unseen ceiling far above him. It was as if someone had taken every book that had ever existed and built a Babylonian ziggurat around them.
As Josh’s eyes adjusted to the gloom he could make out a network of metal gantries and walkways stretching across the faces of the shelves; tiny figures moved across them on wired harnesses like trapeze artists. He looked back the way they had come and saw the small shed door propped against the wall — for some reason it reassured him.
‘Please take your seats!’ Methuselah’s voice rang out from somewhere up ahead. Josh and Phileas quickened their step towards it.
The Infinity Engines Books 1-3 Page 18
