Nowhere Near Milkwood (23 page)

In the comfort of my own home I experiment with the pyramid. All it will take for me to have more power than anyone before me is to work out how to operate its quantum properties. I perch on the apex and shake the reins I have looped about it. Mouse and hattock away! One evening I will ride back into the distant past to arrest my very first ancestor. I hold him responsible for all my subsequent troubles, the misery of my life. In the end I will be avenged on myself. Women — you too have betrayed me! I want nothing more to do with any of you, nothing more to do with beauty. Leave me now, you cruel soft-bodied devils! Oh, Animula! If only you had acted your slipper-size instead of your age!

Titian Grundy here, long chin of the law, reporting direct from the swirling mists of the chronoflow. My mission: to seek out and arrest my first ancestor. Balanced precariously on a green pyramid, a time machine which is a tomb for centuries — watch how it gobbles up the past as my heels scrape a hold on its smooth sides! I can't say this is a pleasant mode of transport; I much prefer my winged chariot launched by monkeys. But nothing in my career is ever comfortable, save the ample charms of Lola Halogen, which are inert and noble, and therefore beyond the reach of
this
chin.

In a pocket of my waistcoat I keep a watch captive. It once solicited an hour in an alleyway, and employed many cogs to do so, some of them underage, with copper teeth instead of bronze. I hesitated less than a single tick before taking it in. "We'll see how you like to tock in the cooler!" cried I, as I sealed it in ice. But friction from the unrepentant escapement melted it free. There was only one place secure enough for a nefarious timepiece: inside a vest woven from the sound of closing doors. "Into the slammer with you!" roared I, and that's where it has resided ever since, in solitary refinement, without visitors: a terrible fate for a neighbourhood watch.

Now as I raced to the source of the chronoflow, I felt the hour hand spinning backward like a dish of cats on the stick of an ailurophobic juggler. The dial stimulated my left nipple as it did so, and I blushed with shame at this betrayal of my true love, my micro-darling, Animula. The minute hand, of course, was travelling so rapidly that it was a stationary wheel and did not inflame my amours, which is just as well, because I don't like sixty lovers in an hour, or a lover who asks for sixty seconds to be complete.

The problem with this asymmetrical nipple caress was that it tended to pull me to one side of the chronoflow, rather than keep me steady in the middle of the stream. The currents of time flow truest in the centre; near the banks of the present they are disrupted by shoals of amnesia and eddies of
what if?
It is easy to drift off course and become grounded in alternative history. I realised this was happening and sought to rebalance my craft by manually pleasuring my other nipple. Unfortunately I love myself too much — now I lurched to the right, violently, like the President when confronted with the results of a plebiscite. No slur on the lovable autocrat!

Without warning, my pyramid struck an analogy reef and capsized. I closed my eyes and plugged my ears with my toes as I tumbled — my position was unnatural and indefensible. Liquid time washed over me, tasting like an immature yesterday — a combination of scrambled eggs and abbey pepper. Then I was on the very edge of the chronoflow, on the verge of re-entering conventional time. I grasped the current with my large hands, but to no avail; off I slipped and landed on wood. What happened to the pyramid I cannot say: perhaps it continued without me back to the singularity which birthed the cosmos. Or maybe it veered off at some other antique location; a desert land whose architects would borrow inspiration from its tapering sides.

Who knows? And
whoa nose!
For my proboscis seemed intent on burrowing into roughly-hewn planks like a navvy worm. My fingers, which due to my desperate scrabble at the chronoflow had been last to depart the stream, and were therefore older and wiser than the rest of me, came together to extract the organ from a knothole of its own sneezing, and to lend my dripping nostrils their sleeves. Then they scratched my brow, but the mind behind was still young enough to absolve, rather than solve, all riddles — forgiving them for being cryptic, provided they left town and didn't return until the statue of limitations was up, and that's one statue I've never seen up, or down, because it hasn't yet been sculpted by Rodin Guignol, our greatest chiseller, who has
no
limitations, though he made a hash of two of my renowned predecessors — Charlton Radish and Nitrogen Parsley — when he should have made a crumble.

Anyway, I had no idea where I was. But slowly I began to learn, which is always the way, isn't it? Weird coincidence, that: how
every
time you arrive in a new place, provided you don't already know, you instantly start working out where it is! I was in a room without a carpet. A cold hearth did not blaze in merry cheer to one side; this was no Festive Season. The wall was festooned with ultra-modern contrivances — flintlock pistols, chamberpots, thumbscrews. There was a window overlooking a mountainous vista, and between the serrated peaks, a sea. Above my head swung an iron chandelier. See how acute my powers of undue suspicion are? Evening all.

I stood slowly and blinked. "well Titian, here's a sherry affair, for a rum business would be darker. Anybody at home?"

A door opened and a melancholy figure entered the room. He was a sartorial glum, all done up in satin and velvet, with a drooping flower on a wide cap tickling his cheek. In one hand he clutched a bottle of Oloroso, and he bared his teeth on seeing me, crying in an incomprehensible stutter:
"Bishy, bashy, jibber, jabber!"

"I think not, ancient felon," returned I, "nor do I approve of your eyelids, which are heavy and suggest a life spent toiling in basements with forger's apparatus. Hold still and desist from gesturing at sundry ornaments scattered about the place."

"Hexas hoxas, hijy abago bijy hago?"

"This is your last warning. Speakish properly or you will be held in tongue-irons under Section 2æ of the Diphthong & Grammar Act. Ignorance and past ages are no defence — the law is retroactive, like a fever in reverse!"

The fellow came closer and took my arm, as if we were old friends, or confederates in a failed plot. Then he poured two glasses of Oloroso and we sat by the dead fire, sipping the liquid and murmuring appreciatively. Strangely, I also felt that I knew him. Later, when the sky grew dark, he stood and guided me into a room, before stomping off down a draughty passage. I entered and found a bed, which greeted me like a sprung simile. The pillow smelled of pterosaur sweat. Had I travelled back to the Cretaceous era? Best to sleep on it. No: under it, so that the moisture evaporated away from my nose toward the cracked plaster of the lofty ceiling.

The following morning I was woken by a pounding on the door. My host opened it and thrust in a silver tray of cakes. They were unsweetened and I scowled. When I had finished, I rejoined him by the fireplace.
"Combo oostead?"
Although his language was still illegal, I felt it was making some effort to reform — the vowels, I could tell, genuinely wanted to be law-abiding sounds. I turned a deaf ear, still rank with toe-cheese, to his vocal misdemeanours. We would see how his mouth morals developed; at the first hint of recidivism, I would lock up his consonants behind the bars of his teeth, drilling a lock in one of his incisors and fashioning a key from
my
tongue. Because I am not an actor, tailor or poet, the fitting of key into tumblers would thus be a remote possibility.

I made for the seat by the hearth, where I had drunk his wine the previous day, but he gripped my elbow and made plain by a combination of smiles, frowns and grimaces that I was expected to work. He was engaged in tying together various items from his shelves and mantelpiece — figurines, jugs, a globe with too many continents, a rusty gauntlet, a curved dagger, lanterns, a book with undulating covers, powder horns, a telescope and tripod. Although I had no clue as to what I was doing, my older, wiser fingers seemed relaxed enough. They helped fix the objects one to another, with bootlaces and liquorice.

We paused for lunch and I stood at the window and peered down into the chasm. It was evident I was in a castle on an exceedingly rugged island. Before I could fully digest the view, my host tapped my shoulder impatiently and we returned to our labour. He was satisfied with my progress, although I could not say whether I was working efficiently or not, for I still was ignorant of the point and dimensions of whatever it was we were constructing. Occasionally, my new colleague would look up and make a comment in what I assumed was an approving tone.
"Boowhen, grassy is!"

Shortly before dusk — it was difficult to be sure of the precise time because the only hourglass in the room lay at the base of our bizarre contraption — he stretched and yawned and clapped his palms. I understood this to indicate the end of the working day. Again we sat by the chilly hearth and drank Oloroso. And then we retired to our respective beds. As he departed down the corridor, little bells hidden in the walls chimed softly. I had not noticed these the night before, being too overwhelmed by the total swish of my environment.

I slept badly, dreaming of leathery wings and drooling beak. Breakfast consisted of the same unsweetened cakes, and the rest of the day of the same peculiar work. I found myself growing accustomed to his language, as if I was remembering something I had already learned but forgotten. It became possible to communicate after a fashion — a rather ungainly fashion, I must admit, with starched ruff and slashed doublet, not to mention three places to wear a sock: left foot, right foot, codpiece. This time we connected candles, tablecloths, paintings in oil, cutlery, pokers, creaking greaves, spittoons, mandolins and amber jewellery. Then digestion of Oloroso, and bed.

This routine continued for a week. At the end of this span, the room was empty of all furnishings, save a pistol above the hearth which my host seemed to regard with a special fondness. By now, his words had completely reformed and made legal, as well as syntactic, sense.

"Look here, fellow," said I, at the close of this seventh day. "Much as I value your Oloroso and cheese, I really must protest — now I am able to do so and be understood — at this tying together of your possessions. They have been connected with no thought as to the niceties of aesthetics. Why, here is a rotten old scissors adjoined to a cousin-of-pearl snuff box! What is the exact meaning of such seemingly revolutionary juxtaposition? And hurry with the answer, because I am from the future and mustn't wait too long for the past to justify itself — every second approaches my jurisdiction and the feasibility of me summoning reinforcements to club you senseless!"

"It's ready, of course," he responded, pointing at the pile of interlaced junk which covered the floor. "Now hand me your watch!"

"Ah, so you seek to liberate a fellow criminal and conceal him in a selection of other intricate objects d'art? Clever indeed, Mr Antique, but futile. I have been known to find a single stalk of hay in a stack of needles. The famous detectives of the past — your future — are as nothing compared to me! Dupin was a lupin; Holmes was a hovel! Thus your dastardly scheme is foiled even before it is implemented!"

Taking the pistol from the wall, priming it and aiming the barrel at my head, he sighed and added: "Don't mess around, Señor Grundy. Give it to me!"

I pretended to be frightened and complied with his demands. "But how do you know my name? Am I famous before my birth?"

"Don't be foolish," he replied, as he took the watch. "We are colleagues and this is our great invention — the time machine!"

I gazed dubiously at the pyramid of knick-knacks. "But who are you?"

"Humberto von Gibbon, of course, at your service. Or rather, receiving your service. As I have already explained, I am a prisoner in this castle. There is no way down onto the rest of the island. For years I have attempted to escape, but all my efforts came to naught. The scoundrel who trapped me here — Ugolino Cadiz — was very careful to ensure none of the furnishings could be used to flee my confines."

"Well I am sorry for you, but I fail to see how my watch might be of help."

Rolling his eyes, Humberto beckoned for me to climb on top of the mound of ornaments. I had no wish to die, so I did. Barometers crunched underfoot as I scrambled to the miscellaneous summit. To my surprise, my host scaled the other side, until we were perched face to face near the fragmented ceiling. Then he flipped open the lid of the watch and sprinkled the contents over the assorted junk.

These contents proved not to be cogs, as I had expected, but drops of the chronoflow! I held on tightly as the entire mass suddenly shifted from orthogonal time into the chaotic currents which made a delta of futures, presents, pasts and elsewheres. Unlike my green pyramid, this structure was ponderous and unstable. Humberto noted my nervous expression and sought to distract me with an improbable yarn.

"I was on the point of believing I would never escape when you appeared from nowhere and broke a floorboard with your nose. Were you an agent working for Ugolino? No, it was plain you were too ugly and silly for that. And you did not speak Spanish. As the days went by, we began to learn a little of each other's language. You informed me that you had arrived in my time on a green pyramid, or rather had been cast off from it. I wondered if it might be possible to reconstruct such a device here, but although you knew the shape of the contraption, you had no idea how it was powered."