Regalia Mason smiled to herself. She never chatted and she never ate biscuits.
She waited to be introduced. She waited to hear the facts she already knew about the Time Tornadoes and yesterday’s perplexing events. Some of the physicists thought that Time had ripped – that a hole had appeared in the fabric of Time, rather like the hole in the ozone layer.
The geophysicists, who studied the impact of volcanoes and earthquakes on the spin of the Earth, were asked if the tsunami in Thailand had anything to do with the strange behaviour of Time. Everyone agreed that after that disaster the Earth had shifted about one millimetre on its axis, but no one could agree that such a thing could make a difference to Time.
The sinister man from MI5 wanted to know if human activity could affect Time, just as human activity had affected climate change.
Regalia Mason could see the impatience on the faces of the scientists. They wanted equations, calculations, not James Bond-style plots.
Regalia Mason spoke. ‘I think it highly likely that human beings have affected Time.’
There was a pause in the room.
‘Is it not strange that the faster we have learned to go, the less time we seem to have? The whole of the Western world is in a hurry, and the developing world is racing to catch up.’
‘I said all this was something to do with China,’ said the sinister man from MI5.
‘I do not believe it is anything to do with China,’ said Regalia Mason.
‘Well, Pakistan, then.’
She ignored him. ‘Which of you here has not said, this week, that you are running out of time, that you have no time, that time is short, or how time flies?’
‘Those are merely figures of speech,’ said Sir Bertie, adjusting his red silk white-spotted tie with irritated fingers.
‘I disagree,’ said Regalia Mason. ‘I believe they are clues.’
Stephen Hawking tapped a single sentence into his voice computer.
‘Einstein and the clock in the city square?’
‘Of course, of course,’ Regalia Mason nodded.
‘What’s that story? I don’t follow,’ said the sinister man from MI5. Regalia Mason smiled at him. He had the vague idea that this was frightening, but he didn’t know why. She was such a beautiful woman. She began to explain, as though talking to a rather nice child she might eat afterwards.
‘Einstein’s Theories of Relativity always began with simple pictures in his mind. As a boy, he wondered what it would be like to race alongside a light-beam. Later, he imagined himself zooming away at the speed of light from the big clock in his city square. As he looked back, he realised that the hands on the clock were standing still. This is because when we travel at the speed of light, Time seems to stand still. Travelling faster than the speed of light, Time would appear to go backwards.’
‘Could you just remind me what is the speed of light?’ said Sir Bertie.
‘300,000 kilometres per second,’ the whole room answered at once.
‘That’s quick,’ said the man from MI5.
‘Indeed it is quick,’ agreed Regalia Mason, ‘and it is a paradox that at the speed of light Time slows almost to a stop, but at lower speeds, our speeds here on Earth, we seem to be forcing Time to move faster.’
‘You’re saying that our planes, our computers, are speeding up Time?’ said Sir Bertie.
‘I am saying that Time is distorting. We have evidence of that. I am saying that people commonly perceive Time differently than they once did. We feel that our days are not long enough. Well, perhaps they are not.’
‘What Dr Mason says about perception is absolutely right,’ said Susan Greenfield. ‘The human brain is highly subjective.’
‘But Time is not subjective!’ said one of the men. ‘There is such a thing as Time, and it passes! However we perceive it, it exists outside of ourselves.’
‘I am not sure of that,’ said Regalia Mason simply.
‘The human race has only a fifty-fifty chance of survival,’ said Sir Martin Rees. ‘Perhaps we will never reach the future, however much time we have, or however we perceive it.’
‘That would be a pity,’ said Regalia Mason. ‘A future where we could control Time would be a future worth having.’
‘If we could control Time – we could travel in Time,’ said the man from MI5, ‘and this isn’t Doctor Who, you know, this is real life.’
Stephen Hawking was nodding. He reminded everyone of what he had often said – that if Time travel were possible in the future, we would have visitors from the future, visiting us, now, in our present and their past. As there were no visitors from the future, there could be no Time travel happening in the future.
‘That’s right!’ said the man from MI5.
‘That’s not quite right …’ said Regalia Mason.
As the scientists fell to arguing, Regalia Mason smiled to herself and looked at her watch. There would be another Time Tornado this evening, and then the arguments would stop. They would come to her, to Quanta, for help.
Deep underground, Silver and Micah and Gabriel had crawled along the tunnels and under the river. Micah’s spies had found out about the meeting, and Micah had told Silver that they might discover some clue that would help them. He had been particularly interested in one of the advisors to the Committee who had been flown in from America. More he would not say.
The three had crept inside a secret passage that Micah said had been built for the first Astronomer Royal to use to visit his mistress on the other side of the River Thames.
‘What’s a mistress?’ asked Silver.
Micah hesitated. ‘A mistress be the woman you love even though you not be married to her … The whole of London be digged with such Lady Lanes, so that a man may travel in secret to his mistress. Some be deep, some be shallow, some be creeping for miles through the gloom of the pit, some be connecting two houses that rubs next to one another, and all lit by love.’
There was a crash above them as Sir Bertie dropped his coffee cup on to the floor.
In the confusion in the room of I’msosorry … letmehelpyou … slippedthroughmyfingers … sokindthankyou … dearme Micah hastened Silver and Gabriel to a wide opening in the room itself. Silver realised they had come up inside the fireplace.
‘Many believed Sir John Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal, be an alchemist,’ said Micah, ‘and that he could disappear into the fire. In truth he disappeared into the fireplace.’
Micah and Gabriel were further back than Silver. They could hear but not see what was happening. Silver was able to peep through the ornamental guard that sat in front of the fireplace that nobody used nowadays, either because of central heating or because the Astronomer Royal no longer kept a mistress.
‘Your proposal startled me,’ Sir Bertie was saying, still mopping up the coffee from his papers.
‘My proposal is a practical one. That old saying Time is Money is true enough. I am here to buy Time. If Quanta invests the necessary billions in the research your scientists need to stabilise time, Quanta will want a return on that investment. Any “discoveries” will belong to us. Any surplus Time will belong to us. If I am buying Time today, I want to be able to sell it tomorrow – if you understand me.’
‘I do not,’ said Sir Bertie.
‘Then I will be plain. I believe that what is happening to Time gives us a unique opportunity to control Time. We will be the ones who decide on the lengths of the seasons – if we want summer all year, we shall have summer all year; if we prefer our enemies to live in winter all year, they shall. If some countries are short of Time – if some people are short of Time – we will sell them Time from people who have too much Time on their hands. But all this trade in Time must be controlled by Quanta.’
‘You cannot trade in Time,’ said Sir Bertie.
‘Why not?’ smiled Regalia Mason. ‘We trade in everything else.’
Silver leaned back into the fireplace and whispered to Micah, ‘Who is she?’
‘I f
ear I do know,’ said Micah, ‘but I cannot be sure until I see her face.’
At that moment Regalia Mason got up from the table and walked towards the fireplace. Silver thought she would die of fright, but she kept absolutely still. At the very second when Regalia Mason would have been looking straight at her, a voice called from the room.
‘Dr Mason – a word in private, please.’
Regalia Mason turned round. Silver shrank into the depths of the fireplace. Micah had glimpsed the woman he thought he knew. His face was serious.
‘If he be the devil, she be the serpent.’
‘What? Who?’
‘If Abel Darkwater be the devil, then she be the serpent. Her true name is Maria Prophetessa – One becomes Two, Two becomes Three, and out of the Three comes the Four that is One.’
‘What?’ said Silver.
‘That woman be in Jamaica, when I be in Jamaica, and they say her voodoo magic comes from the pyramids of Egypt. And when I boarded ship homewards, she be there, kept to herself in a closed cabin, and I seen her visit Abel Darkwater in Bedlam many times. She it was who began the Experiments.’
‘What experiments?’ said Silver, whose head was spinning, either from too much information or not enough air.
‘Come,’ said Micah urgently. ‘If you fear him, fear her more. Come away!’
Time Passes
Silver and Gabriel were friends.
Back in the Chamber, Micah let them run and play as much as they wanted, and he did not ask Gabriel to find food or help with the daily jobs.
He had not said to Gabriel how disturbed he was by their visit to Abel Darkwater’s house, and then to the meeting in Greenwich. He wanted to protect Silver but he could not allow Abel Darkwater and Regalia Mason to destroy the safe home of the Throwbacks, and he feared for his clan and his kind, as well as for Silver.
But if Abel Darkwater found the Timekeeper …
Deep in his thoughts, Micah hardly spoke to Silver, trusting Gabriel to take care of her.
Gabriel began to teach Silver how to find her way through the labyrinths, and where to come Upground. They told each other stories about their lives, and Silver promised Gabriel that whatever happened, one day she would take him to Tanglewreck.
‘I should be glad to see the place that you love,’ said Gabriel. ‘Nothing matters but those things that matter, Micah says.’
And Silver thought she understood.
In the timeless, ageless space of the Throwbacks, Silver felt happy again, happier than she had been for years. She remembered that with her parents and Buddleia at Tanglewreck, every day had stretched into every day, and she had been free, just like this. She started to sleep on her back, instead of curled up in a ball. She had no sense of how much time was passing – perhaps all of it. Perhaps none.
One day, finding Micah on his own in the Chamber, smoking his pipe, she asked him what he had meant by the ‘Experiments’. His face grew dark.
‘They be alchemists – him and Maria Prophetessa.’
‘That’s the beautiful woman called Regalia Mason?’
‘Yea.’
‘Is an alchemist a sort of magician?’
‘Yea, in sort.’
And Micah explained how hundreds of years ago, science and magic were nearly the same thing. Nobody studied physics or chemistry, they studied mathematics, or astronomy, and they studied alchemy. Astronomers were also astrologers, who predicted what would happen by measuring the movement of the stars. Even Isaac Newton, who studied mathematics, and discovered gravity, was an astrologer.
‘And Isaac Newton, he be a member of a secret society called Tempus Fugit.’
‘Time Flies!’ said Silver. ‘Abel Darkwater’s shop!’
‘Yea,’ said Micah. ‘Many of the alchemists spent all their lives labouring to turn metal into gold, but some, like Isaac Newton, and Abel Darkwater, and Maria Prophetessa, and a very powerful magician called John Dee, they laboured to make Time.’
‘You can’t make Time,’ said Silver, thinking, even as she said it, how grown-ups were always saying they had to make time, usually for their children.
‘’Tis why he be alive and not dead in the earth,’ said Micah.
‘But you are all alive too,’ said Silver.
‘Yea,’ said Micah. ‘He experimented on us in the lunatic asylum in ways that would curdle your heart, but when we escaped we discovered that we be not dying as Updwellers do. Have you not noticed something about Abel Darkwater?’
Silver thought about his marble eyes, his round body, his shadowy face …
‘He be like us who don’t want the light. If our kind do go in the light, as Updwellers do, we die. Abel Darkwater is cleverer than we; he don’t die in the light, but he can’t be in the light for long. The dark slows death down, like hibernation. Like animals who sleep all winter.’
‘What else slows it down?’ asked Silver.
‘Cold,’ said Micah. ‘You put a piece of meat in your cold safes – fridges, you call them. Yea, in the cold safe it does not decay. In the sun it decays.’
‘Dark and cold,’ said Silver.
‘Yea,’ said Micah. ‘Dark and cold. Come.’
Micah hoisted Silver up on to the warm shaggy back of a bog pony, and led her through a short maze of tunnels.
Silver hung on to the pony’s thick mane, and felt his warmth on her fingers. Now she understood why Abel Darkwater’s house was so cold. It wasn’t because it was an old house like Tanglewreck; it was to keep him alive. That was why he had no electric lights, and that was why Mrs Rokabye had been complaining so much about the cold – she had complained a lot, even for her. Silver didn’t feel the cold much. They had hardly any heat or electricity at Tanglewreck because their parents couldn’t afford it. Only Mrs Rokabye had electric fires and electric blankets, and even an electric headscarf that she wore in the winter.
‘Behold!’ said Micah.
They had come to a round corral where half a dozen cattle were contentedly munching hay. The temperature was freezing, and a haze of cold hung over the cows.
Silver shivered and wrapped her legs round the pony. She looked up and saw that the opaque natural light and the steaming cold were coming from a perfectly round sheet of what looked like frosted glass. But it was perhaps fifty metres in diameter.
‘In thine own world that be an ice-skating pond,’ said Micah. ‘A great marvel, for it remains frozen the whole of the year, and through your four seasons.’
‘It’s an ice-rink,’ said Silver.
‘We depend on it for our cattle. These cattle be bred by Abel Darkwater in 1805. We keep them in calf for milk, and we eat the calves for meat.’
‘When will they die?’ asked Silver.
‘I know not. None of us knows when we shall die. But that is true of thine own world too.’
Silver and Micah made their way back to the Chamber.
‘Why are you still afraid of Abel Darkwater?’ said Silver.
‘For the chains and the beatings and the blood-lettings and the faintings, and the dissections and anatomies he performed, and the great cold he kept us in, and the darkness where we dwelled before we be made different by him and her, and that he was my Master. He could destroy us still. He does not destroy us for reasons of his own, but I know them not.’
‘Why does he want the Timekeeper?’
Micah stopped as he was walking. ‘Abel Darkwater never must find the Timekeeper. If truly you know where it be …’
‘I don’t know where it be, I mean, where it is,’ said Silver.
‘He must not become Lord of the Universe, for that is his wish and his many lifetimes’ work,’ said Micah, his face grave.
‘How can we stop him?’ asked Silver.
‘He cannot do it without the clock.’
‘But he says I will lead him to the clock!’
Micah was silent. ‘It may be that you must dwell with us for the remainder of your days.’
Silver gasped at this. ‘What, and never
see Tanglewreck again?’
‘It may be. If you be the Keeper of the Clock, it be your duty to keep it safe.’
‘But I DON’T KNOW WHERE IT IS!’
‘That may be the means of keeping it safe,’ said Micah.
Micah was troubled. He had been in close council with Eden and Balthazar, but none could decide whether Silver should stay or go. Finally Micah had decided that Eden must cast the Oracle and read the runes.
‘She learned it from a witch imprisoned in Bedlam – a true witch of ancient line. The Oracle will speak.’
‘When?’ asked Silver.
‘This day,’ said Micah.
That day, if day it was, and impossible to tell, Silver thought about everything Micah had said. What if she had to stay here with the Throwbacks? Live underground for the rest of her life? But the house had promised her that she would return. Yes, but one day, and one day might be a very long time away. And what would happen to Tanglewreck if she never went back? Would Mrs Rokabye inherit it if Silver just disappeared? Mrs Rokabye would never love it. She didn’t even dust it.
But if she didn’t stay, then she would have to confront Abel Darkwater again, and she was frightened of him, and Sniveller, and what they might do.
All these thoughts and more were crowding in Silver’s head when Gabriel appeared with a sack in his hand. She suddenly wondered how old he was. He looked about thirteen.
But Gabriel didn’t know how old he was. The Throwbacks never celebrated birthdays, nor did they follow a calendar or a clock, like Updwellers. Gabriel had been born underground, he knew that, and he was not old enough to have children of his own.
‘Don’t you remember anything from when you were a baby?’ asked Silver.
‘Yea, I remember great horses with manes round their feet, pulling wagons.’
‘And what about cars and stuff?’
‘Nay, not till I was grown nearly as high as a barrel.’
‘Well, what did people wear when you were a baby?’
‘They wore black clothes and tall hats and the ladies wore skirts like bells.’
Silver thought about this. Gabriel was just a boy, like she was just a girl, but he was talking about a hundred years ago, or maybe more. She had seen pictures of Queen Victoria and people in the nineteenth century, but it was impossible for Gabriel to be so old and so young.
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