Arcadia (36 page)

‘No, no. You are quite right. It is I who have been rude. I have been treating you like a silly girl, and you clearly are not. Not any longer, at least. I think a sherry would be a very good idea. And a large gin for me. Very large. I’m so glad they haven’t introduced drink-driving laws yet.’

They drank and conversed of little until the pea soup arrived, ladled into their plates from a grand silver-plated tureen. They got a great deal of attention from the waiter, as they were the only people in the place.

‘Now, which of us is going to start?’ Angela said, once she had tasted the soup, grimaced and then doggedly drunk a small portion of it. ‘Are you going to tell me what happened on the other side of the pergola? Or am I going to tell you what it is? I would prefer the first. Then I can explain the second much better. You must understand that I don’t really know what is there. I give you a solemn promise that I will fulfil my side of the bargain.’

Rosie drank a spoonful of soup. ‘Just answer one question first,’ she said. ‘Is that a time machine?’

‘Good guess,’ Angela said. ‘But not exactly. It moved you somewhere. Relatively past or future I do not know. But not our past or future, I hope.’

‘There are lots of pasts and futures?’

‘No. Only one. That is the problem. One of the two I’ve noticed, at least.’

‘What’s the other one?’

Angela dabbed her lips. ‘Well, you were sticky coming back, you were wearing rings and you saw a shadow.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘I don’t know. I’m working on it; it’s why I am not going to hide anything from you. I need your help. I have to figure out
what has happened. Rather more is at stake than your current status with your parents, serious matter though that is. Besides, it’s not as if you can tell anyone else. So, what were you doing in that cellar? The first time, I mean.’

‘I was looking for Jenkins. I thought he might have got himself stuck there. I pulled back the old curtain in case he was behind it.’

‘I see. Then you went through.’

‘Just for a moment. I saw this boy, and he bowed at me, and then I came back. That was all, really.’

‘This was Jay?’

‘So I discovered later. How did you know that?’

‘Then you went through again. When? On Thursday?’

‘Wednesday. This time I was there until late at night, but I seem to have been away until dawn here.’

‘Ah!’ Angela seemed very interested in that. ‘Go on. What did you see this time?’

‘Wonderful things! Everybody was so nice to me. They acted as if I was terribly important. There was a super party, and I was a sort of guest of honour.’

‘Who was your host?’

‘Lady Catherine. She is the Lady of Willdon, and awfully rich.’ Rosie peered at her over the table. ‘She looked a bit like you, except that she was younger, and wore a wig. She was beautiful.’

‘I’m flattered.’

‘It was odd, though. Everybody made a fuss of her house, but it was really very simple. Pretty and big, but simple. And they were all in awe of things like her cups and glasses, but they were old and scratched and a lot of them looked as though they’d come from Woolworth’s. We’ve got nicer ones at school.’

‘Tell me about the party.’

‘There was food, which they thought was terribly grand but was quite simple as well. And everyone asked why I wasn’t married. I heard some of the oddest music I have ever come across. And I met this really handsome man called Pamarchon.’

‘You’re blushing.’

‘And everyone called me Lady Rosalind and acted as though being able to read and speak English was amazing.’

‘What did they speak?’

‘The ones I talked to most spoke English, although like it was a foreign language. The others … I don’t know. I began to recognise a few words after a while, and even managed to say a few things. It’s quite basic, you know. Not like French or Latin. It sounded a bit like English put through a mangle, if you see what I mean. Or a badly tuned radio where you can almost make out what is being said.’

‘You seem to have had an interesting evening.’

‘It was magical. Wonderful. I danced, and everybody admired me, and it was lovely.’

‘I’m glad you had a good time. I’m surprised you came back.’

‘I was going into the forest after Pamarchon. I’d upset him, although I don’t know how I did it, and I wanted to apologise. I got a bit lost, and then I found Jenkins and saw the light. Saw the light. That sounds silly. But you know what I mean. I thought I’d better take the chance while it was there. Last time it had vanished.’

‘That was my fault. I’m sorry about that. I shut it down to stop anyone going through. I didn’t know you already had. Anyway, you decided to abandon your lover for the sake of your homework. Faithless mistress you are!’

Rosie blushed scarlet. ‘Oh, don’t say that! Please! Whatever will people think? Was that a quotation, by the way?’

‘You sound worried.’

‘They’re always quoting things. It is a bit annoying.’

‘What do they quote?’

‘The Story. It seems to be a bit like a cross between the Bible and the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
. The thing which really worried me is that they call the place Anterwold.’

‘Well, they would.’

‘But that’s what Professor Lytten …’

‘Indeed. I built it out of his head.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Seriously.’

Rosie digested this surprising statement for a few moments. ‘Go on, then. What is that thing? I mean, really?’

‘It is a machine which I invented, designed and built. It is a way of gaining access to a variety of realities. As I say, at the moment it leads to a world created from Henry’s imagination.’

‘Does he know?’

‘No, and I’d prefer it if you didn’t tell him. He might be offended.’

‘What do you mean by variety of realities?’

‘It means that for any given state of the universe, there are an infinite number of other possibilities. For example, we came to this restaurant and you ordered chicken. You could have ordered fish. A universe where you did order fish is a viable alternative to this one. One where you ordered roast Brontosaurus is more distant and more difficult to access.’

Rosie’s eyes narrowed. ‘So?’

‘Anterwold is one of those variants. A very distant one, I hope. To get to it, the number of different events must be gigantic. That was why I chose it. I didn’t want any confusion with the line of events which leads from here to my future. Otherwise it would be difficult to study properly. Are you confused?’

‘Very. Especially the “my future” part. Do you mean that?’

‘Yes. I am born – you notice I don’t say “I will be born”; it is an important distinction – in a little over two hundred years’ time. I do hope you are not going to say that I am mad.’

‘I’ve been into your invention,’ Rosie pointed out. ‘But I don’t rate your chances with anyone else.’

‘You may be correct. That’s why I don’t want you to mention any of this to Henry. Girls’ secret. It will be a lot easier if you simply take my word for it. Just as the future is determined by the past, so the past is determined by the future. Where I come from is the future and I want it to stay like that. What Anterwold is I do not yet know.’

‘So what is now? The present.’

‘Ah,’ said Angela airily, waving her fork in the air. ‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing?’

‘Mathematically speaking. An abstract concept. Now is just what lies between yesterday and today, just as zero lies between minus one and one. From the point of view of the future, the present is the past. From the point of …’

‘Yes. I get the idea,’ Rosie interrupted. ‘But it’s not nothing. It really is now.’

‘So is Monday morning and Saturday evening.’

‘Now I am eating a piece of chicken. Monday morning I overslept, and Saturday evening – heaven knows what I’ll be doing.’

‘You are still doing those things. Unless something changes so that last Monday you do not oversleep and now you are somewhere else. If, for example, you decide not to come back …’

‘But I did.’

‘Yes. You did. But will you?’

‘You’re really annoying, you know.’

‘No. I’m not. Existence is. It’s not my fault.’

Angela poured herself a glass of the not very good red wine she had ordered after her gin and sipped thoughtfully. It was curious talking to this girl. She had, after all, had to keep it to herself for nearly thirty years. Now she was explaining in simple language, the simplest language, to a young girl who listened with great seriousness to what she was saying. The only person in the world she could talk to, because she knew at least that it worked.

‘Now, let me make everything clear. I am a sort of mathematician, and I got myself into a situation where I had to do many years’ work in a couple of days. The only way of doing that was to step out of time, so to speak. So I came here. I arrived in 1936.’

Rosie seemed to cope with that very well.

‘And now you’re stuck, and want to go home again.’

‘Sort of. I need to make a few modifications before I do. I wanted to discover something fundamental about reality. My
boss wanted – or wants – to make lots of money, in ways which I think are dangerous. I have to stop him.’

‘Is it really dangerous?’

‘Yes. It is the most dangerous thing anyone has ever invented. Nuclear bombs can destroy the present. This can destroy the past and the future as well. Which, if you see my point, I think is a bad idea.’

Rosie chewed a piece of chicken. ‘Is it really true that in the future we all have lots of money, and no one works because machines do everything, and everyone is happy? I saw that on the television.’

‘Never underestimate the ability of humanity to mess things up. There are thirty-five billion people in the world, and most live lives which I consider miserable and pointless. Or I used to think that. Now I’m not so sure. Everything is run by a small elite of specially selected experts. Much of the planet is uninhabitable. All animals except us and things we eat have been sent into extinction. Democracy has been abolished as inefficient, everyone is automatically tracked every second of their lives, and dreams have been replaced by advertising. Most people are happy, though. The drugs in their food make certain of that, except for the few people who refuse to take them. They’re really miserable. We call them renegades and lock them up occasionally.’

‘For not being happy?’

‘A crime against Society. They occasionally go on marches shouting slogans like “Glad to be grumpy”. They get locked up or have their brains wiped.’

‘That’s not what we’ve been promised,’ Rosie protested. ‘What were you?’

‘I was one of the elite.’

‘You should be ashamed of yourself, then.’

‘I am increasingly so. It didn’t occur to me that it was anything other than natural at the time, and there was not much I could have done about it in any case. One person cannot change the world. Except, of course, that now I can.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Once my tests are done and I am confident it will work, I think I can alter a few things. Then I can safely go back and take my knowledge with me. Immensely complicated; it’ll take at least another decade.’

‘Won’t you be a bit old by then?’

Angela looked puzzled. ‘I’m good for another eighty years at least,’ she said stiffly, ‘once I take another shot of treatment. I’m only ninety-three.’

‘My grandmother’s ninety-three. You don’t look like her.’

‘I should hope not.’

‘What about Anterwold?’

‘Oh, that’s just to calibrate the machinery.’

‘So what happens to it?’

‘In due course, I will shut it down. I’ll need the machine and there can’t be two universes existing simultaneously for ever.’

‘What about all my friends? Jay, and Pamarchon, and Aliena? What about Lady Catherine and Henary?’

‘They’ll just be as they were before. In a latent state.’

‘They’ll vanish? Be eradicated?’

‘Anterwold only exists inside the confines of the machinery, you know. It’s not real, and it had better not become real, either.’

‘It seems rather nicer than where you come from.’

‘You have seen just a small part of it. I have no idea what it is really like. Not that it matters. There is no chance of it achieving permanence.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because … Because I say so.’

Rosie studied her suspiciously. ‘That’s what my mum says when she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Are you sure you know what you’re doing?’

‘It is a little complicated at the moment. I couldn’t shut it down because you were in it. That locked it into a sort of fake permanence.’

‘Good,’ Rosie said.

‘It wasn’t good, and it was all your fault.’

‘You didn’t put up a sign saying No Entry. What did you think would happen if someone saw a forest in Professor Lytten’s cellar?’

‘I certainly didn’t think anyone would sneak around someone else’s house, look through their possessions, then go and join a party they hadn’t been invited to. It was very nosy of you.’

‘You were careless and now you are proposing to snuff out my friends. I don’t have many.’

‘Please don’t start to be self-pitying. It’s unbecoming. You must have friends here.’

Rosie shook her head. ‘Not really.’

‘I’m clever, but not that clever. If people in Anterwold think you are wonderful, then it must be because you are. Which means that there is no reason why you shouldn’t be pursued as ardently here as Pamarchon was pursuing you there.’

‘He was running away from me. I was pursuing him.’

‘A minor detail.’

‘Listen. Does this place exist or not?’

Angela sighed. ‘That is a meaningless question. As I say, it depends on your viewpoint.’

‘You said you couldn’t switch it off because I was in it.’

‘True.’

‘I’m here now.’

‘True.’

‘When you went into the cellar an hour ago, did you manage to switch it off then?’

Angela looked a bit shifty. ‘No,’ she admitted.

‘Aha!’ Rosie said in triumph.

Angela put down her glass. ‘You’re annoying me.’

‘You don’t know what is going on.’

‘I am going to take you home, settle down to a night’s thinking and find out. In the morning I will go back to Henry’s house and have another go. I’m meant to be going to help him with something anyway.’