The Door in the Moon (6 page)

But Summer's smile was brittle. “Not him.”

“What?”

“Dear George stays here with me.”

Venn came back. His eyes were blue and curious. In the heat he seemed to shimmer, his pale coat dusted with damsel flies. “Why?”

“Because I am in love with dear George.” She pouted at Wharton. “Because I would love to show him all the delights of the Summerland. And because you still have my pretty changeling.”

Venn nodded, grim. “Gideon! I knew you'd get to him sooner or later. Well, he's not my prisoner, Summer, and he could come here anytime, but he won't. He's had enough of you. ”

She smiled, showing small white teeth. “He's afraid. He took that girl into my very house and stole . . . Well, never mind what he stole. Until he comes back, dear George stays here with me.” She turned to Wharton with an amused glance. “Look at him. He loves the idea.”

Wharton was exercising every ounce of self-restraint he possessed. He'd faced down enemies and sorted hundreds of school brawls, knew how to quell uproar in a classroom with one glance. One small woman, however powerful, would not intimidate him.

But as Summer's tiny fingers closed over his, he felt only a shiver of complete fear.

He looked at Venn. He wanted to shout,
“Don't leave me here.”
Instead he said, “It's quite all right. I'll be fine. Jake is what matters now. Get back there and find Jake.”

He made himself stand tall.

Venn watched him a moment, then quietly nodded. He turned to the gap in the hedge and walked quickly through, then turned and looked back.

“You're a brave man, teacher,” he said.

And was gone.

Wharton cleared his throat. Summer stood on tiptoes, reached up and kissed him on the cheek.

“You won't regret it,” she whispered.

He had never been so scared.

Jake put down the wineglass slowly.

The figure moved forward. He saw, with a shiver of disappointment, that it was too small for his father, but still he dared not stand, as if sitting still kept that hope alive.

Then she said, “Not your dad, cully. Just me. Watch and learn, Jake, luv. Watch and learn.”

Astonished, he jumped up, knocking the chair over with a smack.

“Moll?”

Moll's diary.

JHS has tort me to read. I catch on fast, he says. He don't no the harf. So I'm starting a diary too, Jake, all for you, and locking it in my room so that snivelfacd creep Hassan can't read it and split on me.

Been a year now in this posh crib. Good dresses, a coat, boots withaht holes. No rozzers after me, no punks pinching my stuff. Warm bed, food, plenty of it. JHS likes his grub.

Working every day with the mirror. But you no what? No braslet, so nothing works . . .

Jake said he'd cum back for me. Swore he wood.

Cum on, Jake. Hurry up and get me.

I'm waiting, Jake.

Moll's diary. 6 months later.

Today JHS nearly exploded with excitement. He's been writing to some scolar who says he knows where there's a bracelet just like the one we need. The letter came at breakfast; JHS came bursting into the kitchen (because I have to eat there with Hassan and Mrs. C since he met the LOVE OF HIS BLOODY LIFE).

“My coat, Moll!” he says. “Quick!” His face was as red as a turkey-cock's comb.

Mrs. C rolled her eyes. She thinks JHS is for the Bedlam over the mirror. She hates it, won't even dust it. Says it's a black eye watching her and she might fall into it and go down and down and down, skirts over her head, still holding the feather duster.

Anyway, I grab his coat and we (me and JHS) jump in a cab.

“Where are we going?”

“The Ash Moleyan,” he says.

“What's that?”

“What's that, sir. Why do I keep having to remind you of your manners, Moll!” He gets tetchy over that. Remember your place, girl, I thought. I kept shtum.

Till he says, “That's a museum, in Oxford. I've been corresponding with them, about the bracelet, and they've got one, Moll! They've got one!”

“Just like Jake's?” I say, all quiet.

“From the description here it sounds absolutely identical! Silver snake swallowing its tail, the amber stone in the center . . .” He couldn't sit still he was so took up. “Just think, Moll, if it's what I've been searching for for years! As things stand, I dare not use the mirror myself until I'm sure I can return. But both Venn and David Wilde had such a bracelet; they were a pair, and a pair must exist in our time too, somewhere. They simply must!”

He went off into a mumble and then a dream and I let him, Jake, because I like looking out at the streets, all them crossing-sweepers and peelers I used to know. We drove past Hayes, the butchers what set his dog on me once and he saw me and stared and I waved like the Queen. Then stuck my tongue at him.

It's hard to get used to, being upper clars.

And why did the bracelets have to exist in our time? What if there was only one pair and they were the same ones all through . . . but then it all got too complicated and my brain went giddy.

You'd know, Jake, I'll bet . . .

At the station we got the 9:30 train for Oxford. I sat opposite JHS in First. A woman got into our compartment and looked at me through her specs like I was an ant with measles.

JHS read the letter over and over and then fell asleep with it on his lap. It fell off and I picked it up and read it. Lots of guff, lots of long words. But the bracelet sounds the same.

Won't let myself get all excited, though.

Won't let myself think about you, Jake.

At Oxford we got out. Gave the old biddy the finger. Doubt she even knew what it meant.

The Ashmolean is a big museum full of all sorts of junk, and Bill the Brick (they called him that because he could smash one with his fist), who used to fence my stuff, would pop his eyeballs at some of it. JHS made a fuss in the entrance hall and they got a little foreign-looking cully with glasses that made his eyes wide as an owl's, to come down.

“Mr. Harcourt Symmes? Good morning, sir. I have to say we weren't expecting you quite so soon.”

Symmes shoved the letter in his face. “I came at once. This bracelet. It's exactly as you describe it?”

“I assure you—”

“Then let me see it, man, immediately. I can't tell you how much this could mean to the scientific research I am in the process of . . .” Blah, blah, blather, blather.

The long and short of it is I'm dragged after them through endless rooms of rust and dust and broken pots. Once I got a big shock and screeched and they both stopped and stared at me.

“What?” Symmes asked.

Couldn't they see? I pointed at the dead geezer in the painted coffin. Talk about a stiff.

“Oh for heaven's sake, Moll.” JHS caught my arm and whisked me on. “It's ancient Egyptian. It's not going to hurt you.”

He smiled a sort of ghastly grin at the other man. “My niece. I'm bringing her up, having rescued her from . . . a very difficult childhood.”

Owl-Eyes stared at me, his lips as tight as a mouse's arse.

We got into a big gallery. Owl-Eyes switched the gas on and I saw long glass cases packed full of serious tin—silver, gold, diamonds.

He took out a small key and unlocked a case and lifted out a bracelet.

Me and JHS stared at it.

The silver creature crawled round and swallowed its own tail. An amber crystal glowed in its heart.

I would have recognized it anywhere, even though I really only saw it for a few minutes, when you showed me after we got it back from the thieves at Skimble's.

Those were the days, eh Jake?

JHS cleared his throat and shook his big shiny head and made a big effort. “Ah. How unfortunate. It is not at all the same. Quite unlike. The whole design is . . . er totally different. Isn't that so, Moll?”

I nodded, deadpan. “Nothink like it, Uncle John, Your Honor, sir. Nothink like it at all.”

Oberon Venn stood before the obsidian mirror.

In it he could see his own reflection, his face all angles, a pale glimmer in the depths of the dark glass.

For a moment he could not recognize himself. The mirror showed him something insubstantial, wavering, a being caught halfway between existing and not existing. He wondered if it could see into his soul, into the fluttering indecisive thing he had become. That Summer had made of him.

Maskelyne and Gideon watched, the changeling standing, arms folded, in the heart of the malachite web, the scarred man seated at the control panel. The baby, Lorenzo, crawled unnoticed on the dirty floor.

Venn said, “And you're sure Sarah went after them unseen?”

“Piers says the cat says so.”

Venn nodded, reluctant. “That girl . . . She really is a true Venn.”

He came forward and gripped the silver frame, its unknown letters. As he closed his fingers around it, the mirror gave the smallest shiver; only Maskelyne sensed it, and he looked up and saw that Venn, as always now, was wearing the remaining bracelet locked tight around his wrist.

“Step back,” he said quietly. “The mirror knows you're there.”

“Does it?” Venn stared into his own cold eyes. “Does it know what I want? Does it know where they all are, the lost ones, Leah, David, Jake?”

Piers came running in, breathless. The little man wore his white lab coat, the pockets stuffed with papers and wires. In his arms he carried a tall pile of books with the marmoset balanced precariously on top of it. Seeing Venn, his gaze widened with alarm.

“Be careful, Excellency.”

Venn was still, as if by his own despair he could conjure something, anything, from those black, heartless depths. When at last he did step back, his face was gaunt.

He turned to Gideon.

“Summer is holding Wharton. As a hostage for you.”

Gideon folded his arms over his patchwork coat. The news was a shock, but he managed to keep his voice steady. “Then I truly feel sorry for him.”

“The fool thought he had some sort of choice, thought he was being heroic, giving himself up.” Venn's ice-blue gaze held the changeling in contempt. “I won't force you to go back. But don't you think you should . . .”

Gideon shrugged, calm. “No, I don't. Summer doesn't keep bargains. The Shee don't understand fair or unfair. If I went back, she'd still torment him and probably imprison both of us in some dungeon in the Summerland. It's a pity about him. But I'm more use to you here.”

Venn nodded. “A cool judgment. You've grown very like them.”

Annoyed, Gideon paled. “I don't think so.”

“No? If Jake was in your place, he wouldn't hesitate. He'd be furious, reckless. He'd be storming into the Wood to save Wharton right now.”

That was true; Gideon knew it. He felt the familiar stirring of self-hatred, of shame, but Venn turned away abruptly, and said nothing more.

Gideon breathed out. Then, seeing Piers's bright eye on him, he growled, “Keep your opinions to yourself, little man. You wouldn't go.”

“Well no,” Piers said, “I don't suppose I would. But then I'm not a mortal. I don't have to be brave and stupid.”

He turned to Venn. “Excellency, this is what you asked for. Like I told you, I found it under a floorboard in Sarah's room—she had a stash of stuff there. She must have had the hiding place in the future time, when the house is ruined. If that makes sense.” He fished a small gray notebook out of the pile and laid it on the workbench. “And this.”

A black pen, with a capital
Z
on its cap.

Venn picked the notebook up and opened it.

He flicked through the messages she had written, and Janus's mocking answers. One of them caught his eye.

DO I HAVE TO SEND MORE OF MY TIME WOLVES AFTER YOU, DEAR SARAH? DO I HAVE TO HUNT YOU DOWN TO STOP YOU DESTROYING THE MIRROR?

NO, I DON'T. I CAN SIT BACK AND SMILE. VENN WILL DO MY JOB FOR ME. VENN WILL PROTECT THE CHRONOPTIKA BECAUSE VENN IS THE MOST SELFISH OF BEINGS. HE WOULD SACRIFICE THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD FOR HIS OWN HAPPINESS. AND SO HE WILL ENABLE MY TYRANNY TO BEGIN.

It stabbed him like a thin blade of fear in his heart, a sliver of ice. It was clever and mocking and it would have hurt her all the more because she would have thought it was true.

Bitter, he looked up. “Why did she communicate with him like this?”

“
Know your enemy,
they say.” Maskelyne came and picked up the pen. “This is interesting. The notebook is just ordinary paper. The pen, however, is the device that coveys the message. It is some creation of the future. She must have brought it with her.”

Venn took it from him and looked at the letter
Z
on the cap. Then he said, “It makes me think. What if it was Janus who took Jake? What if Sarah guessed that when she went after them? Who else can send Replicants across time?”

“We won't know, unless—”

“Unless we ask him.”

Venn took the black pen and strode to the mirror. In huge, angry letters he scrawled a message over the black glass.

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH JAKE
?