The navigator (11 page)

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felt that there was respect mixed with loathing in his tone--"how long have we Watched each other over the centuries, not growing old, but growing weary? You alone of these people know me and know when I am speaking the truth, so listen to me now. The other choice is dying here, for we intend to annihilate you and all of your works. But if you let me put you to sleep, then at least you are alive and have--not hope, for there is no hope, but the illusion of hope that a new day might come and you might wake again."

"It is an offer we must consider," Samual said.

"Consider nothing!"

A voice cut across the debate like a whiplash. It was Contessa's, Owen was surprised to notice. She strode across the room until she was standing eye to eye with Johnston.

"You think he would put us to sleep? Maybe he would. And the next thing would be a blade in the throat, or carried out into the everlasting cold and frozen to death. What he is offering is not a choice."

"I would certainly keep you awake a little longer than the others," Johnston said in a musing tone.

"I agree with Contessa," the Sub-Commandant said.

"I agree," Pieta said quietly.

Samual shook his head and said nothing.

"I agree also," Rutgar boomed.

Chancellor looked at the floor as if he might find wisdom there. After a long time he lifted his head and spoke. "It seems as if I too have to agree."

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"You haven't seen the forces I have gathered," Johnston said in a menacing voice. "The largest and strongest I have ever had, and if I am not mistaken, you are weaker than ever. Your little incursion across the river the other night will not have seen any of our strength. If that was the reason for it." He looked at the Sub-Commandant with a raised eyebrow, then gazed about the hall.

Although Owen and Cati knew that he could not see them, they both shrank back into the shadows, and Cati whimpered as if she could feel the cold again. Owen put out his hand to touch hers. Her skin was cold to the touch, very cold, and he remembered what Contessa had said about the effects of the Harsh being permanent.

"It is time for you to leave now," the Sub-Commandant said. His voice was quiet but there was steel in his tone.

"Fair enough," Johnston said, "but we won't be seeing each other again, Sub-Commandant. This is the last time."

There seemed to be sorrow in his voice, but his eyes were glinting under their heavy brows. Johnston turned and strode from the hall, Rutgar keeping pace close behind. Even from a height, Owen could feel the tension drain from the hall. He saw Contessa go over to Pieta and put an arm around her shoulder, whispering to her gently.

"What's wrong with Pieta?" Owen said.

"Her children sleep and do not wake," Cati said. "Every night she sits over them and calls their names and still they do not wake."

Owen said nothing. He thought about Pieta standing

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over a child in the Starry, calling and calling, and suddenly the fierce warrior seemed smaller and less fierce. He could see her loneliness and sorrow in the slump of her shoulders until suddenly she shrugged Contessa off, almost in anger. She walked swiftly from the hall. Contessa reached out a hand to touch her as she stalked past.

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There was a final flurry of defense building by the river and then everything seemed to slow down. Nothing happened for two weeks, or what felt like two weeks, for Owen was increasingly uncertain about time and the way it worked. He decided to draw a rough calendar on the wall of his Den, where he marked in sunrises and sunsets, for at least that happened in the normal way.

He went up to the Nab to see Dr. Diamond again. The scientist and philosopher showed him the complicated clock with five faces, each one with a single hand, and told him that it was measuring the speed at which time was going backward.

"The five faces measure the five different kinds of

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time," Dr. Diamond said. When he saw the look on Owen's face, he went on hastily, "But we only have to concern ourselves with the big face, which is time as we commonly know it."

Owen could see that the single hand of the clock was going backward, opposite to the normal way. It was also moving very slowly.

"That's because time is going backward very slowly at the moment. It doesn't always go at the same speed, you see," Dr. Diamond said. "Sometimes even the Harsh have difficulty in keeping the speed up. And sometimes they manipulate the speed to their own purposes."

"What way does time move at the Workhouse?"

"That's this clock," Dr. Diamond said, tapping the smallest dial. "We're on what you've heard people call an island in time. Not exactly accurate, but near enough. Most other time flows round us. Kind of sloshes backward and forward, in fact. There are plenty of islands in time, but most are tiny, maybe one or two people on them, being born and living and dying, and an hour is an hour and a minute is a minute the same as it always was, even when they step outside the island."

"I think I get it," Owen said slowly, "but what I still don't understand is, where are all the people? I mean, the whole town, for all I know the whole country, even the whole world ... where did all the other people go?"

"That is complicated," Dr. Diamond said. "The Harsh long for emptiness, for cold nothingness. A time before

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people. Before history. That is the reason they have turned time backward--to get back to that place. It seems that their Great Machine does away not only with time but also with the idea of human life itself."

"So they've already done away with life?"

"It seems so. Nobody has died; they have just never been."

"So they got rid of life and now they're getting rid of time. Kind of a mopping-up operation."

"I wouldn't have put it like that. But yes, essentially you're correct." Dr. Diamond knelt down in front of Owen, his eyes examining the boy's face. "I know you didn't give the right answer to Samual when he asked you about Gobillard." He put up a hand to stop Owen from speaking. "Your instinct was, I think, correct. There is dangerous knowledge involved, however I--"

The door opened behind them. It was Samual. His face darkened at the sight of Owen.

"Time to go, Owen," Dr. Diamond said swiftly, standing up.

Owen slipped by Samual without meeting his eyes. Whatever Dr. Diamond had to tell him would have to wait.

The Sub-Commandant and the others were busy and preoccupied, so Owen was grateful for the company of Wesley and Cati. Much of the countryside was wooded now and there were mushrooms to be picked in the

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morning, and wild berries and fruit, and hazelnuts on the banks. The weather felt like autumn, with dew in the morning and cold, crisp days. There seemed to be a mellowness in the air. Sometimes the wind would blow hard, but it never reached the strength of the storm that had trapped Owen in the warehouses. Wesley brought fish and prawns from the harbor. At night they would build a fire in front of the Den and cook fish or rabbit stew, and eat it with potatoes that grew wild in forest clearings.

Owen slept deep, dreamless sleeps, and when he woke in the morning the cold nipped at his hands and face until he had lit a fire. He had a good stock of tea bags, but he knew they might be his last, so he was miserly with them. Wesley and Cati tasted the tea and made faces. They drank only water, or thin wine, or a warm drink that tasted of honey. Owen was surprised at how quickly the Den became a home and how much he liked to lie dozing and listening to the sound of the wind swaying the trees. He missed his home and his room, and he missed his mother, but he did not miss the miserable tension that had seemed to lurk in every corner and crevice of the house.

He realized too that he felt fitter than ever before. One day, as they raced down the forest paths, he was surprised to find himself pulling easily away from Cati. And when he looked in the mirror of the old dressing table he saw a fuller, more cheerful face looking back at him.

At night they sat round the fire after they had eaten,

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the flames casting shadows about them. Sometimes they sat in companionable silence and sometimes they talked quietly, Owen telling them about his life and the town, and Cati and Wesley talking about the Resisters. Owen started to understand that the Resisters had emerged many, many times to battle the Harsh, but of those battles he learned little. Cati had only a dim memory, for she had been born on the island in time and was growing up among them as any child would. However, Wesley had stumbled into the Resisters in much the same way as Owen. He had fought on several occasions, but he did not like to talk about it and would fall silent if pressed.

Sometimes Owen saw the Sub-Commandant and Chancellor in the distance. Both men seemed strained. In the evening the Sub-Commandant would stand on the roof of the Workhouse, shading his eyes and staring across to the other side of the river as if to penetrate the white mist, which grew ever more ominous.

Wesley liked to go down and look at the defenses that had been thrown up along the river. " 'Specting the troops," he called it. Owen went with him and was amazed at the small, stone-buttressed forts that stood every hundred meters or so. Rutgar's soldiers had built them. Good with their hands, Wesley said with respect, although it didn't stop him from pointing out imaginary flaws in the stonework within earshot of the bearded men, who grinned and threw friendly insults at the two boys. There were no friendly insults from Samual's soldiers, though. The brightly dressed men and women

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patrolled in grim silence, passing Rutgar's men without a greeting or even a sideways glance.

From what Owen could see, these troops lived a hard life. When they were not patrolling they were working in the fields they had carved out for themselves on the slope behind the Workhouse. The fields were well kept and crops were already starting to appear, even though they had not been planted for long, and despite the autumnal weather. But every morning the forest had encroached on the fields during the night, and teams of men and women had to be set to slashing and burning round the margins. There didn't seem to be much laughter among them.

In contrast, Rutgar's men had set up a row of small gardens right up against the wall of the Workhouse. They would work in them in the evenings, or sit talking, wrapped in coats against the evening chill.

One morning toward the end of the second week, Owen got up and lit the fire. He boiled water and made some tea. He took a hunk of bread that had been given to him by Contessa and smeared honey on it. He heard a movement on the path, then Cati's head appeared in the opening. Without saying anything she sat down and helped herself to some of the bread and honey. As she started to eat, they heard a noise, a faint droning.

"What's that?" asked Cati through a mouthful of bread. They got to their feet and went out to the path.

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Looking up through the canopy of trees they could see, high in the sky, a single Planeman, wheeling in lazy circles above the Workhouse.

"He's out of range," Cati said. "I never saw one fly so high before." They watched the spindly craft in silence, the bread forgotten in their hands.

Later that morning, Owen looked out to see Rutgar walking down the path toward the Den. He held one of the metal tubes with the glass end that the fighters carried. His smile when he saw Owen was friendly enough, but he looked tired, Owen thought.

"I brought you something to defend yourself with," he said. "It looks as if you're going to need it, although if I judge you right, fighting will not be your main part in all of this. Don't misjudge what I'm saying," he added, seeing Owen's expression. "I know you're brave. It's just that fighting alone won't defeat the Harsh."

He thrust the metal tube into Owen's hands. It was lighter than it looked. Owen examined it. There was what appeared to be a pair of sights at one end and some kind of a trigger mechanism, shaped like a crooked finger, at the other.

"Put it to your shoulder," Rutgar said, "and aim at something."

As Owen did so, he could feel the interior of the tube warm up and the weapon began to emit a low humming noise. A dangerous sound, Owen thought, like something woken from sleep that should have been left alone.

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He sighted along the tube and almost pulled the trigger in surprise. Instead of the bare metal sights, a square grid with a small dot in the middle had formed itself out of magno.

"Line the mark up with a rock," said Rutgar. Owen moved the weapon until the dot was centered on a rock.

"Now move it away," Rutgar said. Owen moved the weapon, but the dot stayed centered on the rock. "You have to move the whole square off the rock to change your aim."

Owen did so and the dot repositioned itself in the center of the grid. He aimed the gun at a tree. The dot lined itself up again. He moved the barrel, but the dot stayed fixed on the tree. He wondered what would happen if he pulled the trigger. For the first time since he had come here, he felt powerful. He could see the spiteful face of Samual in his mind's eye and for a moment he could hear the cold and grim summons of the Harsh. Rutgar spoke again but Owen did not hear. His finger tightened on the trigger. The metal tube seemed to sear his cheek, so he jerked it away, and a bolt of blue light shot from the glass end of the gun and struck the tree. The tree seemed to vibrate for a moment, then, with an earsplitting crackling and popping sound, it fell in upon itself and collapsed to the ground.

Owen stared at the weapon in his hand. It was almost too hot to touch now. Rutgar leaned over and removed it from his grasp.