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Metheglin drew a hand across his face. ‘Thank goodness!’ he said. ‘Sense at last!’ And he pulled a remote from his robes and entered some numbers.

  ‘What are they on about?’ Cam whispered to Kate. ‘They keep video records or something?’

  Kate shook her head. ‘They don’t,’ she whispered. ‘The room does.’

  ‘WHAT?!’

  Kate just smiled.

  ‘You’ll see…’

  The three exchanged puzzled glances, and then squealed in unison as the room darkened and began to spin.

  7

  Instant (sort of) Replay

  The spinning stopped. They were still in the room – they could still see each other – but overlying the Present was the room in a Past. It was dimly lit and mysterious.

  ‘Wow!’ murmured Cam, but its voice felt woolly and muffled.

  In the centre of the room, five ornately carved chairs had been arranged in a circle, in a pool of slightly lighter dusk. A chill wind sighed along the floor, then died away.

  A black-robed figure, hooded and tall, prowled around the circle. He observed the layout of the furniture intently, went over to one of the chairs and adjusted its position a little. There was another pause and the sound of an irritated tapping foot.

  ‘Something is… missing,’ the figure murmured. ‘It needs…’

  He made a small gesture and at once the air was flavoured with an indeterminate damp smell, hard to pin down, that nevertheless whispered the word ‘Gothic’.

  ‘Ahhh,’ he purred. ‘Perfect.’ He placed one finger lightly to his temple. ‘I sense the others. They are coming…’

  The robed man – it was Lord Metheglin – held his dramatic pose, smiling slightly, until –

  ‘Blast and damnation!’ Lady Vera’s bosomy voice swore somewhere in the dark. ‘Thirty shades of blood! I’ll have to go back for my reading glasses – this murk is impossible…’

  A crash from the other side of the room heralded the arrival of somebody else.

  ‘What idiot put a table here? Who turned out the lights?’ It was Lord Bullvador. No one else could have produced quite that volume and bass-ness.

  Lady Mary came in behind him, looking… different.

  ‘Oh dear,’ murmured Lady Mary in the Present. ‘I knew I’d regret that hair colour.’ She looked reproachfully at the others. ‘Someone might have said…’

  ‘With your permission,’ said the Present Lord Metheglin hurriedly, ‘I’ll fast-forward…’

  It was weird how they could still see what was happening – Metheglin looking pained and the others gesticulating and flashing in and out and getting in more lights – weird and headache-inducing.

  ‘About… here, I think,’ said Lord Metheglin, and the Flashback slowed to normal speed.

  The five Prelates were at last assembled. Metheglin’s Flashback self also held a remote. As he thumbed it, a hologram of the solar system appeared in the air before them. It was a lovely thing, detailed and exact, and one planet especially had the most dazzlingly rich colours. He pointed to it.

  ‘The Three Worlds exist simultaneously in the same place, perfectly centred on a single, orbiting point. The balance of cosmic energy required to keep them that way has held steady for as long as records have existed. Minor adjustments, of course, have always been required and these fall to us. By dint of vigilance and hard work, the London House has kept the balance. Nothing short of a cataclysmic disruption in the Space-Time Continuum could possibly alter it.’

  ‘Or so we thought,’ murmured Lady Mary.

  Metheglin bowed solemnly in her direction.

  ‘Or so we thought,’ he agreed.

  The hologram began to change. The three overlapping Worlds were dividing out from each other, their colours beginning to bleed away as they watched. The members of the Council shifted uneasily, but no one spoke.

  ‘Pause, perhaps, Meth?’ rumbled Lord Bullvador in the Present. ‘To make sure we haven’t lost anyone…?’

  Lord Metheglin thumbed, leaving the Flashback Council with unflattering, uncomfortable expressions frozen on their faces. The looks on the faces of the three children were not much better.

  ‘Well… dears.’ Lady Mary decided to have a go. ‘I’m sure you understood all that, but just to recap… simply put, there are Three Worlds – your three Worlds – that exist, at the same time, in the same place. That’s what we call Synchronicity. To hold the Three Worlds in Synchronicity requires a great deal of power. But someone, or something, has gained access to that power potential and is draining it, a little at a time. Like a slow leak.’

  ‘I had a bicycle once that had a slow leak,’ said Lady Beatitude dreamily ‘I never rode it. The servants could never find the pump.’

  There was a polite pause, while everyone waited to see if there was more, but Lady Bea just smiled in her vague way and was silent.

  ‘Yes, well,’ said Lady Mary with a cough. ‘As the power potential has lessened, the focus of the Worlds has begun to blur.’

  There was a pause, in which the churning of challenged brains could be heard.

  ‘They are not as reliably simultaneous as they were,’ offered Lord Metheglin helpfully.

  Around the room, the desire to appear bright and engaged was now resulting in a variety of pained expressions.

  Four members of the Council sighed as one. The fifth member appeared to be counting her fingers.

  ‘Perhaps if we continue…?’

  ‘If you think it’ll help

  ‘And now…’ said the Flashback Metheglin, ‘this is what we may reasonably expect in the future, based on seventeen independent Forward Projection programmes and three Prophetic Spells.’

  There was a profound silence in the room as the hologram changed for the last time. The three Worlds continued to separate out from one another, the overlapping areas becoming thinner and thinner slivers of colour in an increasing greyness. Then, they were completely apart. For a brief moment they moved on around the sun, perfectly parallel until, without a sound, they disintegrated, streaming out along the paths of their orbits in smaller and smaller pieces.

  Then they were gone.

  The Flashback Metheglin thumbed his remote and the rest of the hologram faded away.

  ‘The three Worlds have enjoyed millennia of perfect concentricity,’ he said. ‘Now they are threatened. An energy leak of unknown origin has weakened the necessary stasis. We have each tried to find the source, or sources, of the leak, without success. We have each explored all the obvious technical solutions to the imbalance, also without success. Time is running out. I suggest we now consider the less obvious options.’

  ‘I see little point in bemusing our, er, young friends with information other than that which directly concerns them,’ the Present Lady Vera interrupted – and again the room fast-forwarded. The Council engaged in a series of high-speed pantomimes suggesting all sorts of incomprehensible, intriguing ideas, returning to normal to the sound of Lord Bullvador’s booming voice saying, ‘– excluding, of course, the use of butter.’

  The others nodded sagely.

  ‘And then there is always the Traditional Option,’ said Lord Metheglin.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Lady Mary. ‘We mustn’t forget that. A Quest. Of course. With a Hero? Or a Heroine?’

  ‘The Traditional Option would require a Quest, and, of course, a Questor,’ agreed Lord Bullvador. ‘But I don’t think we need be too exercised over gender.’ He stroked his chin. ‘The perfect candidate would simply have to be someone who represented in himself or herself the strengths of the Worlds.’ He shrugged. ‘Then I imagine it’ll be a question of three significant magical objects to be retrieved, one from each World, probably, and brought together in a prepared place, so that their combined power may be used to seal the breach and draw the Worlds back together again. That sort of thing anyway.’

  ‘A Quest. A Questor. A Question,’ put in Lady Beatitude suddenly, and stopped.

  ‘So,’ said Vera, ‘someone with the
best qualities of all the Worlds?’ She snorted. ‘That’s quite a tall order. Who would you say we have – actually available, I mean – who fits the bill? I can’t think of anybody!’

  Apparently neither could anyone else.

  The Council had at its disposal a substantial network of Agents, Couriers and Trainees. Their abilities, weaknesses and activities were known to every member of the Council capable of comprehending them, and there was no one person currently on the books who came at all near to meeting a Quest’s requirements.

  There was a long, dark pause. Then, ‘Well… perhaps we might consider a little DIY?’ suggested Lady Mary brightly. ‘I mean, if we haven’t got what we want, why don’t we make what we want?’

  The members of the Council stared at her in horror.

  ‘Oh, I wasn’t suggesting us. Not us personally,’ she burbled, embarrassed. ‘But, well, selective breeding has been very successful with, um, dogs… well, some dogs… not bassets of course, but…’ Her voice trailed off into silence, but it was a busy silence now. The Prelates looked at each other speculatively.

  ‘How many generations –’ began Lady Vera, but Lord Bullvador interrupted her.

  ‘There’s just no time,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘The kind of, er, controlled evolution we’re talking about here, to manufacture the perfect Questor, would take more time than we have left, if the projections are even remotely accurate.’

  ‘All right, then,’ said Lord Metheglin slowly. ‘But what if we don’t try to manufacture just one? What if we breed three…’

  ‘Three perfect Questors?’ blared Vera. ‘How would that help?’

  Metheglin shook his head. ‘Not three who are completely perfect,’ he said, his voice growing in confidence. ‘Three Heroes or Heroines, with each one manifesting the strengths of one World each. Not the strengths of all three, in one. Are you following me here?’

  ‘A team…!’ breathed Mary. ‘We haven’t done that since… oh, it must be since Jason! That was quite a large group, as I remember. But you think three would be a viable size this time?’

  ‘Three,’ said Metheglin firmly. ‘To match the number of Worlds. Representatives…’

  Lady Mary gave a little nod. She opened her handbag, brought out a small palmtop and began poking at it with her discreetly pink lacquered nails.

  ‘Don’t you see – together they would make up the perfect composite Questor,’ continued Metheglin. ‘And they could be produced in a single generation! We have enough time for that. We’d have to choose the parents with great care, of course, to get the best possible genetic material.’

  ‘Three pairs of men and women, the cream of their Worlds, willing to be mated by request and then to give up the resulting child to the Council.’ Lord Bullvador shook his head anxiously. ‘It’s asking a lot. Not everyone would be happy to be manipulated like that. Not everybody is as biddable as our Agents, you know.’

  ‘Use Agents, then,’ said Lady Vera brusquely. ‘Pick the best, and tell’em to get cracking. It’s their job to serve the Council – at least, it was when I last checked.’

  ‘Yes, but this… it’s a bit personal, don’t you think?’ protested Bullvador. ‘I mean, an Agent’s usual orders don’t include, er…’

  ‘These are not usual times,’ said Lord Metheglin pompously, to which Lady Beatitude added, ‘Fish do it underwater,’ and shut her eyes. (Lady Beatitude in the Present promptly shut her eyes as well.)

  ‘Still…’ said Bullvador. ‘Six pairs of Agents… And do we really want to spread this around quite so much? I mean, how in the Worlds are we going to keep something like that a secret?’

  There was another, anxious pause. Questions of security loomed large in the Council’s minds.

  ‘Well,’ suggested Metheglin hesitantly, ‘could we manage it with, maybe, one Agent who, er, engaged in three separate, um, encounters, with the best individuals the Worlds have to offer at the time…?’

  The Prelates looked at each other speculatively.

  ‘You know, that might just work,’ said Lady Vera.

  ‘It would certainly help with security,’ agreed Lord Bullvador reluctantly.

  ‘How old would you say the Questors would need to be?’ asked Mary. ‘I mean, how much time do we have?’

  ‘Oh, we’d want them fully adult,’ said Vera. ‘If we go with Meth’s suggestion, I’d think we’d need the eldest to be at least twenty-five, and the others a minimum number of years younger, in order to accommodate things such as, hmm, gestation, a brief courtship and so on. We’re all right for twenty-five years anyway, wouldn’t you say?’ She looked around at her colleagues.

  ‘I’m sure we’re safe for that long,’ said Metheglin. ‘All the Predictors are in agreement – there isn’t such a rush.’

  ‘So, Vera, could you take –’ began Lady Mary, but they didn’t hear what else she was about to say.

  This was because, in the Present, several things happened more or less at once. Lady Beatitude, who had been sitting perfectly upright with a look of rapt attention on her face (although with eyes still shut), suddenly began to snore. Madlen, out of sheer nerves, giggled loudly. And a man the three had never seen before walked through a Flashback chair and the figure of Lord Metheglin, causing both to flicker madly.

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ the stranger said. ‘I had not realized the Council was engaged.’

  Present and Flashback froze for a moment, then the Present reasserted itself.

  ‘Well, really, Cordell!’ huffed Lord Metheglin, but Lady Mary shushed him.

  ‘It’s all right, you know. There’s nothing more they really need to see,’ she said soothingly.

  At which point, another man rushed in. It was the Agent they’d seen yesterday in the kitchen. He was out of breath.

  ‘Apologies,’ he gasped. ‘This couldn’t wait.’ He noticed Cordell and paused in surprise. ‘Oh! There you are! Where’ve…?’ He shook himself and turned back to the Council members. ‘More tremors – projected in Tantalan, any moment now. They just showed up – on the scans – out of the blue…’

  ‘Vera?’ said Lord Bullvador, pushing back his chair.

  Lady Vera nodded and looked at Kate. ‘Get them out of here,’ she ordered. ‘Finish the briefing.’

  ‘Right, come on,’ said Kate, and Bryn and Madlen got up out of their chairs. Cam didn’t move. It seemed stunned. Then it seemed even more shocked, as the chair it was sitting on disappeared and it landed on the floor.

  ‘Tantalan’s in Dalrodia!’ it wailed.

  Kate dragged Cam up and hustled them all out of the door. Bryn looked back and saw the five members of the Council moving purposefully to different points in the chamber. The room was otherwise suddenly empty. It was unrecognizable, as were the Prelates themselves. They seemed taller, larger, more intense – even Lady Beatitude had completely changed. Before it was just five old sillies, he thought, and now…

  The door shut, and he caught the man Ben watching him.

  ‘Disconcerting, isn’t it,’ the Agent said, still panting a little. ‘They seem so… senile, don’t they, in so many ways. And then you realize they’re holding three entire Worlds together for breakfast, and juggling Space and Time for tea.’

  ‘But… but…’ stuttered Bryn. ‘That Beatitude woman – you wouldn’t think she even knew her own name before!’

  ‘Yeah… there was some kind of accident…’ Ben shook his head. ‘It must have been something unbelievably powerful. Before my time, of course, but some of the older Agents were there, and they say it was phenomenal, watching the rest of them rebuilding her afterwards.’

  ‘What are we talking here – guts in the chandeliers, or what?’ interrupted Bryn uneasily.

  ‘No. No, her body was still there. It was more a kind of search for all the other bits of her. She was convalescent for ages. And it must have been exhausting being one down all that time for Council work – but they never gave up on her. And then, one day she was back on duty, pretty much as yo
u see her now. Batty as a cave. When it comes to the work, though, she’s there with the best of them.’

  Ben noticed Bryn’s expression and grinned. ‘Welcome to the London House, kid!’

  ‘Come on, Bryn,’ Kate called.

  ‘Off you go,’ said the Agent, and then, very softly, he added, ‘Lucky lad.’

  ‘Yeah…’ said Bryn. He ran to catch up with the others. When he glanced back, Ben was still watching, but this time it wasn’t any of the children he was looking at.

  Hmmm, thought Bryn to himself, I wonder if I could catch that look in a drawing? Then he thought, I wonder if Kate knows…

  8

  What the Council Didn’t See

  In another dimension, so as not to interfere with the Prelates, the room rewound itself to the Present. Much that was wonderful and strange but, in fact, bog ordinary to the workings of the Council flashed by. As Metheglin had said, little related to the Questors. But one scene was of interest. One scene that, had the room’s memory been allowed to play on, undisturbed, only a little longer, might have surprised everyone who saw it.

  Or perhaps not everyone…

  The selection process was over. The flowery sofas and chairs were gone, and only a faint odour of pot-pourri remained of Lady Mary’s turn at setting up. There was an unsourced, ambient light (for reasons of cosmology, the room never became completely dark). And into this default dimness came a man.

  Anyone in the organization would have recognized him at once. He was called Alpine Cordell, and his job was to act as Private Secretary to the Prelates. He was as essential to them as the air they breathed, and as noticed. He was weedy, and colourless, and apparently humourless, and had a name that begged to be made fun of. And yet, somehow, nobody, not even the youngest Trainee, ever did.

  Now he stood in the silence, perfectly still, perfectly alone.

  But not for long. A figure, hooded and robed, was suddenly standing directly behind him. Its arrival had made no sound. Perhaps it was only by a displacement of the air that the man had sensed its presence at all.

  ‘Preceptor,’ said Cordell.