Johnny Mackintosh and the Spirit of London (17 page)

The Emperor turned to Johnny and raised one eyebrow. “Well, Johnny?”

“Well … well what, Your … Bram?” asked Johnny, worrying that Bram could see right inside him and may very soon realize he was nothing special at all and had no idea what he was doing here.

“Well surely you have a million questions—maybe more,” said the Emperor, smiling kindly. Johnny nodded. “Fire away—I shall do my best to answer them all.”

Johnny didn't really know where to start. There was just so much he wanted to know, but he didn't want to look stupid.

“I'll begin then shall I?” said Bram. “And let us walk while we chat. There is a beautiful park a little way away where the kanefor trees have fruit sweeter than any you have ever tasted. I would like you to try it.” Emperor Khari began to walk, with Johnny by his side. “I had waited a long time for your arrival here,” Bram continued. “So long, I wasn't sure I would last, though of course I knew I must. Then, when you appeared so suddenly yesterday, I was taken by surprise—I had become too used to waiting. I'm sorry I wasn't there to meet you.”

“But why?” Johnny asked. “Surely you weren't expecting me.”

“Oh but I was,” said Bram. “We have met before. And given the circumstances it was inevitable we would meet again.”

“Are you sure you've not got me mixed up?” Johnny asked. “I'm just a boy, from planet Earth … I mean Terra, who always wanted to go into space, but I never thought I would.”

“I am sure,” said Bram. “Tell me, how is Earth?”

“You know it?” Johnny asked. Bram nodded. Johnny thought he could see something sparkling, almost like stardust, falling out of the Emperor's hair as he moved his head up and down. Johnny found it hard to believe, but asked, “You've really been to Earth?”

“I have indeed,” said Bram. “Several times in fact. It was pivotal in me becoming Emperor.”

“Really?” asked Johnny, amazed. “But how?”

“Part of me wishes I could tell you,” said the Emperor. “I remember it so clearly it is incredible to me that you do not.”

“But I wasn't there,” said Johnny. “It must have been ages ago … wasn't it?”

Bram laughed. “Of course you're right. It was millennia ago—long before you were born. Oh, here we are …” He stopped and reached up toward a purple fruit, that looked like a satsuma, hanging on the branch of a tree in front of him. As he did so, the branch moved away. “One of those days,” said Bram, wearily. “Lovely fruit but very temperamental trees.” Johnny laughed. “Why don't you come here and stroke its trunk?” said the Emperor. “If it likes you I'm sure it will let you have a taste.” Johnny stepped forward a little nervously. He felt a bit silly, but started rubbing his fingers along the bark of the tree trunk. Very soon a branch swayed across to him so that the purple fruit was right next to his face. “Well done, well done,” said Bram. “I had a feeling it would take to you. Try it … go on.”

Johnny reached up and picked the fruit, which came away easily in his hand. He gave the tree a quick hug and then stood back and took a bite. It tasted like coffee ice cream at exactly the right temperature. It smelled a lot like coffee too, the freshly
ground sort, not instant, thought Johnny. “Lush,” he said to the Emperor. “It's delicious.”

“It is, isn't it?” said Bram. A branch swayed across to him now. He tapped it gently as a thank you and picked a fruit of his own. “Now where was I?” asked Bram. “Yes … Earth, of course. What is happening there nowadays?”

Over the next few days Johnny and Clara fell in love with the Imperial Palace. Alf brought them delicious breakfasts of anything they asked for (Johnny hadn't yet requested fish and chips as even he thought it wasn't really meant for first thing in the morning, but he was certain Alf would prepare it if he did) before leaving them to explore the grounds in the permanent sunshine. The android rejoined them for the afternoons, which were mostly spent on the outer shore of the second circle of the palace. There, beautiful white stone buildings perched on top of a low-lying archipelago, surrounded by dazzling white sandy beaches and crystal clear turquoise waters, made up the Imperial University. It smelt of age, but also of neglect—it had been closed to students for nearly a century, since the Emperor had withdrawn from Melanian life. Even so, it had everything Alf needed to teach Johnny and Clara about the wonders of the galaxy—school had never been so interesting.

Johnny loved the abandoned lecture theater where Alf took them on their very first day there. It housed a giant revolving model of the Milky Way suspended in mid-air. Alf used different colors, filters and zooms to show them how civilization had evolved, from the initial galactic paradise of Lysentia all the way through to the present. When Johnny pointed out that there couldn't be any such thing as “the present” because of Einstein's Relativity Theory, Alf became especially excited and went on to
show that the galaxy was very much divided between the faster than light or FTL civilizations who could fold, and so traveled
outside
normal space, and others who remained
within
it—for whom the word “now” didn't really apply.

He told them to imagine the fastest spaceship there was (a Telamine Starfighter) racing a beam of light, say over a hundred meters. However quick the starfighter was, it would always lose if the race was within normal space. The trick was to reduce the distance between the start and finish line so the spaceship had less far to travel. By folding the space between them so small that they were less than a nanometre apart, an FTL spaceship was able to beat the light beam that had to travel the full distance.

By the end of this, Johnny wasn't at all sure he understood and even Clara had become very much more interested in the pictures in her locket than in the lesson, so Alf changed tack and instead told them about the current war with the Andromeda Galaxy. At first no one had bothered much about it because intergalactic distances were thought too vast to cross, even for plicans—it was crazy to think one galaxy could invade another—but with the Emperor passing control to the Regent and the new Andromedan general, Nymac, causing havoc, things had taken a turn for the worse.

Clara's favorite lessons were the unlikely combination of space–time geometry and cosmic cuisine. Johnny much preferred it when Alf brought them their food in the evenings, but Clara sometimes insisted on preparing special treats for them that always ended up a little too blue to be appetizing. It was also in the evenings that Clara would document everything they'd done that day in the diary she'd started keeping, and she and Johnny talked about their growing up, far, far away on Earth. The same picture of their parents was in both of their lockets. Johnny found himself staring at it more and more and he told Clara
everything he could remember about them, and also about Nicky who'd died. And how he still found it hard to believe their mum and dad could have murdered him. And he talked about Bentley who had been in the family since before he was born and how he'd give anything not to have left him behind. After that he tried to cheer them both up by making fun of Mr. Wilkins's cooking.

Clara's growing up had been the opposite of Halader House. Her earliest memories were of living with the Twyfords, a well-to-do family with a huge house in Mayfair. One day, when she was seven, she'd received a mysterious letter. There was no clue who sent it, but it claimed her real name wasn't Twyford but Mackintosh. Puzzled, she showed it to the people she believed were her parents.

They seemed scared and upset and locked Clara away in her room for two whole days. Through the door she could hear the Twyfords arguing constantly about what to do with her and it became clear they weren't her real mum and dad. On the third day, desperate for food and drink, she'd somehow managed to get outside her bedroom window onto the roof, from where she climbed down and ran away.

She lasted for five days, scavenging food thrown out by the posh hotels and restaurants nearby, and hiding away in the secret places only she knew. She was caught when she traveled further afield to find a place called Somerset House, but got lost on the way.

She'd been sent away to boarding school and didn't see the Twyfords again. As soon as she seemed to make friends she got moved to another school. She'd always done well in class but was also particularly good at tennis and loved a sport called lacrosse that Johnny had never heard of. Then, about a year ago, she'd been sent to the Proteus Institute. It was much tougher than her other schools and sometimes she felt they were studying her rather than letting her study. Only those who
passed the monthly tests stayed there, and not many did. She was told the others were sent on to easier schools and she never saw them again. At least that was what the Protectors told them, and she'd believed them until Johnny had come and she'd seen that boy floating in the tank.

Both of them had paid particular attention when Alf had talked about the krun, who lived in colonies like insects and had, academics suspected, something called a “hive” mind. For the viasynth, the creatures on board Cheybora with triangular white faces, this was seen as a great advantage. Each of them knew instantly what was happening anywhere on the vessel, making them ideal crew members for any spaceship. For the krun it was seen as something terrible. There were relatively few spacefarers from the outer rim of the galaxy which was why not too much was known about them, but everyone agreed they were evil space pirates, abducting creatures from more primitive planets and selling them into slavery, or even to the Andromedans.

But what Johnny found most interesting of all wasn't the actual lessons but the time they spent with the Emperor. On one occasion a “musician” came to play for them. Instead of sounds, when the hairless creature waved its eight arms over a complicated instrument it generated electric fields that Bram said was the sweetest music in all the galaxy. Clara screwed her face up and concentrated really hard but couldn't sense anything. Johnny, on the other hand, had actually “heard” it. A little at first, but once he knew what to listen for it all became much clearer. When he closed his eyes and opened his mind, swirls of light and color and sound had whizzed around inside his head. Bram was right—it was beautiful.

Today had been another of those days with the Emperor. Clara had asked if she could go to the Hall of Plicans in the
third circle of the palace as soon as she'd discovered there was such a place. Bram had smiled and agreed, so she'd rushed off excitedly. Johnny had seen the musician approaching them and wondered if that was the real reason Clara wanted to go. The instrument had been set up and the musician performed again for a little while, with Johnny tuning in to the sounds much more easily. Then Johnny and the Emperor had returned to the place where they'd first walked together. The Emperor was trying to get Johnny to work out what language he was actually speaking in. “English?” said Johnny, guessing again. He was sitting with Bram Khari under a kanefor tree, tickling it intermittently in the hope of being offered one of its wonderfully tasty coffee-flavored fruits.

“You're guessing, Johnny,” said Bram. “Listen again.”

Johnny sat on the immaculate lawn trying very hard to concentrate while the Emperor explained about the cornicula worm—his method of instant communication across the galaxy. The worm always spawned in the same place. Take one to Betelgeuse and release it and it would burrow back through the space–time continuum to Melania, leaving an open wormhole through which a signal could travel. Bram was also switching languages every so often, hoping that Johnny might pick up the nuances and be able to train the tiny speck of the hundra inside him. It wasn't working. Bram reached to his side where there was a doughnut-shaped container. Through the translucent blue shell, Johnny could see a brilliant light, about ten centimeters long, moving around the outside. Encased in the center of the container were five twinkling circles. Bram handed the blue shell to him.

“One worm for you to release when you're on Earth, so we can always be in contact. Plus some eggs to hatch when you're home so those conrniculae always return there,” said the Emperor.

“I did say I'd go with Captain Valdour,” Johnny told the Emperor. “He asked me to join his ship, Cheybora.”

“Ah,” said Bram. “Join the navy—see the galaxy. I'm afraid I've got other plans for you, Johnny. But I think you'll like them.”

“But what if Cheybora leaves?” Johnny asked. “How would I get to Earth then? I can't contact her on my games console—I've been trying in the evenings. Maybe she already has?”

“Indeed she has,” said the Emperor. “Cheybora's a good ship and Valdour's a fine captain—one of the best. I had to send them on an urgent mission.”

“But …”