The End Of Mr. Y (52 page)

We only have to get back to the early 1890s to find Lumas, and we’re already in 1900. We cross from Massachusetts into New York via a travelling salesman, and then we find a newspaper editor whose grandfather still lives in England. Once we’re in his mind, we don’t have to make too many more jumps to get to London in 1894, a year after
The End of Mr. Y
was published. We make the

next jumps quite steadily. First we cover most of the time, and then we do the last of the distance, working our way across London until we are standing outside Lumas’s publishing house. And the person whose mind we are inside is a Mr. Henry Bellington, age twenty-two. He is holding a thick manuscript under his arm.

We’ve agreed not to talk when we are inside people’s minds, so I am left to make my own impressions of the things around me. The first thing I notice about Victorian London is how wonderfully quiet it is. Mr. Bellington doesn’t agree. He finds it chokingly oppressive, with the beggars and thieves and all the thick black smoke. But then he isn’t used to a world of air traffic, car engines, mobile phones and the constant thick drone of electricity in the background.

Bellington is shown into the publishing house.

And then it’s only two jumps into the mind of Lumas’s editor. I only need his address. Do I know it from memory? Yes, I do.

And then it’s out of the building via a pigeon on a window ledge, and then into a hansom cab with a young accountant, and then off again once we’re on The Strand. And then I simply hop from person to person until I’m standing outside Lumas’s front door. But the people whose minds I am inside don’t want to stop, and after I’ve jumped a couple of times simply with the purpose of standing still, I choose Quit in the console and end up on the Troposphere again with Adam.

‘That was good,’ he says.

I look around. My mind has done something odd – and rather tacky – to this part of the Troposphere. Although it still feels like a futuristic city, this district is like the set for a Hollywood film that needs to briefly depict 1890s London. Everything seems to have the volume turned up.

Abandoned hansom cabs lie everywhere, just as in Burlem’s version of the Troposphere, but these seem hastily drawn, as if I want them here but don’t really know what they look like. There’s a Dickensian fog everywhere, although I’ve never properly read Dickens, so it only seems to half- heartedly hang over everything, set in an uncertain state somewhere between actual fog and coal dust and the smoke from all the London chimneys. There’s also a penny-farthing leaning against some wrought-iron railings.

The street is cobbled and all the buildings are made out of red brick. There are lots of shops here, all with ornately designed frontispieces. On one side of the street they seem more familiar than on the other. There’s something called the Musical Bank, and a vegetarian restaurant, among various other things. I recognise these buildings: they’re from stories and novels I’ve read. The Musical Bank shouldn’t be in London, though: it’s from Erewhon. But the vegetarian restaurant is from Conan Doyle’s ‘The Red-Headed League’. The other side of the street has shops with just as extravagantly designed signs, but these are places I don’t recognise. There’s an ironmonger, a jeweller, a bank, a tobacconist and a bookshop. Further down on the fictional side of the road is a pub that’s glowing in the console in the same way that Apollo Smintheus’s mouse-holes glow, and all the various coffee shops. I’ve never seen a pub on the Troposphere before.

I point it out to Adam.

‘Shall we take a break before doing Lumas?’ I say. He shrugs. ‘OK.’

But I’m stalling for a reason, and I think he knows what that reason is. Once I convince Lumas not to write
The End of Mr. Y
, everything is going to change. And I’m not even sure I want to change Lumas’s mind.

The pub doesn’t look that different inside from the dives I used to drink in when I was a student in Oxford, or even from places I’ve gone on a Sunday afternoon in London. The place is done out in bottle green and brown, with a long curved wooden bar and plush green seats. All the fixtures and fittings seem to be familiar, except that there are oil lamps instead of electric lights, and the tables

seem more polished. There is no one behind the bar, and there are no customers, although there are half-finished drinks on one of the tables, along with a book of matches, a packet of playing cards and what looks like a manuscript for a book. What’s that all about?

Adam and I sit down at a table in the corner.

‘If we think of alcohol, do you think some will appear?’ Adam asks.

‘Let’s try it,’ I say.

A couple of minutes later we have a small glass bottle of vodka and two glasses.

‘Were you thinking of vodka?’ Adam asks.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘How about you?’ ‘Yes. It’s my “trauma” drink.’

I laugh. ‘Mine, too. I thought yours would be Communion wine.’

‘No. I’ve discovered vodka since then. It’s the only thing my father refused to drink, which gives it a special sort of appeal.’

‘Yeah.’ I nod and look down onto the table.

‘I’ll open it, then,’ he says. He picks up the bottle. ‘Ow, it’s cold.’ ‘Good,’ I say.

He pours a glass for each of us. And when I put mine to my lips, I find it smells of bison grass: my favourite sort of vodka. I knock it back in one gulp. I’m trying to drink away the mice, and I’m trying to drink away what’s happened to Adam, and most of all I’m trying to drink away the responsibility of being here, and being able to change things. But I’m not sure that Troposphere alcohol actually gets you pissed. Mind you, I do feel a little more relaxed. I pour another glass and drink it slowly while Adam keeps sipping his first one.

‘I can’t stand this,’ I say.

‘Ariel?’ he says. He reaches for my hand across the table. ‘What is it?’ I sigh, as though all the air is leaving my body. ‘Can’t you see it?’

‘See what?’

‘The mice … What we’ve just done for those mice. We should do that for everything. We could go and prevent the holocaust. We could stop the atom bomb from being invented. We could –’

‘Ariel.’

‘What?’

‘We can’t edit the world. We can’t just go and rewrite it, as if it was just a draft of a book we weren’t happy with.’

‘Why not?’

‘Well, aren’t you here to stop the possibility of that? Lura and Burlem sent you back here to take the book away so that people wouldn’t even have the option of doing that. It’s important. It’s important that people can’t change history.’

‘I know. That’s why I’m not sure about changing Lumas’s mind,’ I say, drinking more of the vodka. Amazingly, it is working, and the syrupy feeling intensifies the more of it I drink. ‘I mean, who made me God? I shouldn’t get to decide any of this. But since I have been put in this position, and I do get to decide, I want to go and erase Hitler.’

‘But you know you can’t.’ ‘Do I?’

‘Yes. Think about it. If Hitler were in your position, he’d erase something else. If the Pope were in your position, he’d edit the world differently again. You’ve got to close the loophole that lets people do this.’

‘What if I know I’m right?’

‘Come on. I know your mind. You can never know you’re right.’

‘Hitler thought he was right,’ I say. ‘But everyone agrees that he wasn’t.’

‘Of course he wasn’t right,’ Adam says. ‘I’m not just saying that every opinion is as valid as every other …’

‘Moral relativism,’ I say. ‘It’s a trap.’

‘Yes, but you must still realise that you can’t decide. We can’t decide. It’s not up to us. History has to make itself. And it probably will anyway, whatever we do. In erasing Hitler, we could just open the door for someone worse. I’m not even sure that what we’ve already done will have actually changed anything. Abbie Lathrop could decide to just get some more mice. If she doesn’t, someone else will. We’ve helped those mice, but not all mice.’

I drink more vodka. ‘I’m glad you’re here,’ I say. Then I realise what I’ve just said. ‘I mean with me. I’m not glad you’re here in the way you are.’ I put my glass down. ‘Adam?’

‘What?’

‘What do you think will happen to the Troposphere once I’ve been into Lumas’s mind and stopped him from writing the book?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I don’t want you to disappear.’ ‘Even if I do, it’s worth it.’

‘Is it?’

‘Yes. Now, we should hurry up and do this. You’ll need to get back.’ I don’t say anything.

‘Ariel?’

‘Yes, I know. I just want to…’ I get up.

‘Where are you going?’ ‘Just over here.’

I walk over to the table and look at the manuscript on the other table. Just as I thought, the title on the front is handwritten, and it says
The End of Mr. Y
. I turn away and walk out through the doors, with Adam following me.

‘Will you come in with me?’ I ask him.

‘Of course,’ he says.

That way, I think, there’s less possibility of him disappearing once I’ve done what I have to do. We walk to the book shop down the street, and I look in the window. There are various Samuel Butler novels there, as well as
Zoonomia
. I know who is behind the door, I just have to actually

open it. I can’t think about it any more. I’m here now, and I know I’m not going to decide not to do this, so I may as well just do it now. I kiss Adam before we walk to the door and I open it and go in.
You now have one choice
.

You
…
I
… We are sitting at the old desk in the draughty sitting room, writing, as usual. This book … I have to write it; I have to finish it. Is it possible that people who do not write can ever understand quite how this feels? I have set poor Mr. Y going like a top, and now I have to keep him spinning until he reaches his end. And then I have to stop him spinning and put him back in the toy chest, limp with death. Oh, what a cruel God I would make! Can I have him live? No, don’t be ridiculous, Tom. To have him live would break all the rules of tragedy, and more than that: it would not be the truth. So Mr. Y will die, and he will die by my hand. And then … And then.

My hand trembles when I think of that. And then, of course, I must die as well.

I have made the most solemn oath, with myself as a witness, that I will not visit the Troposphere again until this novel is completed. But when I go back, I am never coming out again. This cough will be the end of me otherwise; I understand what the doctor told me. As well as that – I want to be free of my right leg and these eyes. Of course, I am also cursed to suffer the most grievous

impecuniosity, and I have known for many years that I shall never fuck again. Oh, when will this book end! Each time I dip my pen into this ink bottle (the sixth this month), I wonder if this will be the last bottle of ink I shall use, and if this will be the last pen nib I wear out, and if so – in both cases – I wonder if I should frame the damn things or burn them. I am now obsessed with endings: the ending of this novel, and the ending of my own life. Can I be content now that I have a title?

Perhaps.
The End of Mr. Y
has a pleasing double meaning, although I am convinced that most reviewers will be far too dull to notice anything like meaning and, if they review my book at all, will simply reference that awful business with Darwin.

Oh, I feel weary. This lamp oil smells toxic.

Perhaps I should just toss the whole book in the fire. What am I thinking?

I can hear the coarse clip-clop of hooves outside, as men younger than I take to the clubs for an evening of entertainment and cunt-sucking. But mine is a more lofty purpose. Oh, it is so very cold in here, and I have only a little more coal.

When I began this long, arduous composition, I admit that I was seeking revenge. I desired that every man should hold the knowledge that I had been given. For I am Mr. Y – in spirit, if not in precise detail, and I, too, paid all the money I had in the world for another taste of this medicine that has since become my most demanding mistress. The man who sold it to me will have nothing of value once I have completed my book. This is what I shall tell the publisher, anyway. It will perhaps give the novel greater authority, although only I will ever know the real truth.

And then I will end my life, just after I have ended the life of Mr. Y.

Something tugs at my memory, like a child pulling at a sleeve. But I will not think of it.

And … What thoughts are these? Am I now to have a crisis of conscience? Am I now, when the whole novel is more than seven-eighths complete, to wonder what the results of its publication will be? Oh, curse these introspective nights. But now that I can see the narrative taking shape on the page, I wonder: will others try the recipe? And how many will die that I may achieve my end? And … No! This is an absurd thought. But it insists on petitioning me, anyway. What would happen if those who read my book not only discover the Troposphere, but find some way to alter it?

I will burn the book. No! No … Not my book.

My hands are someone else’s as they grasp my most precious manuscript and, with me as their unwilling assistant, toss the pages into the fire. The warmth is brief but intense, as all two hundred pages crackle and pop. The fire cares not what is ink and what is white space. The book is gone.

What have I done? What have I done?

I fall to my knees and begin to weep.

Quit
.

Back in the Troposphere, it has started to rain.

‘I wanted to spend so much more time with him,’ I say to Adam.

‘No. Look at the weather. You need to get to the station.’

The night sky looks smeared, as if it were a windscreen with all the night and all the rain happening behind it.

Adam calls up the console.

‘There’s a train station just around this corner,’ he says. ‘Hurry.’ But I am not moving. I am not following him as he starts walking. ‘Adam,’ I say to his back.

‘Come on.’

‘Adam.’

He turns to face me, water dripping down his face. ‘What?’ ‘I’m not going back.’

‘Ariel …’

‘There’s nothing you can say to change my mind. I don’t want to go back.’

‘But you’ve got your life to live. You heard what Lura said – you’ve got the potential to become the kind of thinker who can change the world. You could be the next Derrida, or … anything you want.’ ‘But I know what I want.’