The Arrival of Missives (12 page)

He clenches his fists. Have I pushed him too far? He is transparent to me; I can see him weighing his options. Eventually, he decides to bargain with me.

'If I do this,' he says, 'you must destroy the letters. I want your word on it. Your solemn word. I should not have written them if I had known you to be so devious in nature.'

But I did not start that way; deviousness is learned. It has become easier and easier to lie, lately. I could kiss the bible in church and swear and not blush. Perhaps this is the greatest lesson Mr Tiller has taught me.

'Very well,' I say. 'I will do so.'

He takes off his waistcoat, and arranges it over the back of the chair. Then he sits and removes his collar stud and cufflinks, and then begins upon his buttons.

The first glimpse of the rock makes me shudder. The skin of his chest rises up around it in a pattern of scars. With the undoing of the next button comes sight of the first vein of glittering silver, and then he undoes the rest of the buttons with quick fingers and pulls back the material so I can look freely upon what was once a stomach, muscles, a man.

'Your face,' says Mr Tiller, softly. 'Did you imagine that you dreamed it?'

'I never thought that.' Not once. I have always believed what I saw. This thought gives me the strength I need to go on. 'I will touch it.'

'Very well.'

The streaks of silver catch the lamplight. It is as if his head is separate from his body. How can his mouth move, his eyes focus upon me, while he is rock within his core? It triggers revulsion in me, but I must touch it. I must have my answer.

I shift my weight to the edge of my chair, and lean across the table to him. There is the smallest of smiles on his face, and I know why. He thinks the rock will not communicate with me – and if it does not? Why, then, it is all within his head, he is mad, and I have been the biggest fool in a hundred miles or more, manipulated on the whim of a lunatic.

I stretch out, and put my hands upon the rock.

Mr Tiller sucks in a breath.

The surface is cool, the texture grainy under my palms. Here is my answer, if I can only find a way to wrest it from the—

The kitchen, the lamp, the quiet of the cottage, are gone. Mr Tiller is gone. Everything is white; no, it is clear. It has a clarity of image, of thought, that surpasses colour. I am in a place I cannot name. It has the height and breadth of a great cathedral, and the closeness of a blanket around me. Before me at a distance I cannot evaluate are three men. They are pale, and bearded. They do not look at me with surprise, or with any discernible emotion.

All is new, utterly so, and yet it reminds me of the meeting in Taunton. In that place I had so many words to say, though none of them mattered. The men in that room made their judgements anyway.

I feel – I feel knowledge, entering my mind, seeping inside.

I am not learning, but having thoughts – thoughts that belong to the men – pushed into me. It is their vision of the future, and it is plain that they know so very much. I glimpse their own thoughts, and feel a depth and breadth of information that is astonishing, but the knowledge they are imparting to me is of a certain type of life, of time, of place. It starts with fire.

I see fire in my mind's eye. Not fire that burns within a grate, tamed by man, but an explosion of such force that it sends a pointed craft of metal up, up, up from the ground and beyond, into the sky, and then on a trajectory that leads through the great blackness of night, past stars and planets of such huge, luminous beauty, with so many spinning colours, and time and distance are incalculable until the craft arrives upon – another Earth. A planet so much like what the Bible would have us consider to be Eden itself that when dishevelled, sleepy men emerge from the craft they look about them and smile. Birds, insects, animals and plants, in such numbers, and in such strange accord. There is no death or danger here. They proclaim it their new home. Here, in fresh soil, they begin again.

Generations are made and lost; my mind cannot keep up with the spreading seeds of men upon the planet. So many intertwining strands of life form a pattern, woven and twisted, of such density and detail that I realise I did ask the impossible of Mr Tiller when I asked him to describe it to me. No sense can be made of how humanity remakes itself, over and over through birth and death. To see this pattern in its fullness would be more than I could stand, it would forever more ruin me. I try to pull back from the knowledge of its existence, but the three old men are near. I sense them behind me, and they stand firm and demand I bear witness.

And so, against my will and in fear of my sanity, I see the pattern of life upon the second Earth grow outwards and I would scream at it if I could, for it is terrifying in perfection. This was why the craft was landed there, the old men tell me in thought. This is the culmination of their plans upon a different world. It is a marvel that brings agony to my mind.

But – wait.

In time, in space, in meaning, there is a flaw. A fleck of emptiness in the woven pattern of humanity; a stitch in which the raw material is fraying. Then I spy another. And another. The frayed stitches are spreading, and the beauty is spoiling. They grow, and grow, and slowly the picture is altered. I am no longer looking at perfection. I am looking at a war.

The old men show me a terrible war, and it is beyond anything I could have imagined in scope, in sheer cruelty. Beams of bright light cut through swathes of men on second Earth, with all nature destroyed upon it; great bombs, not of metal but of disease and decay, are unleashed. They blister and burst. Everywhere the pale men fight until the beautiful pattern is obliterated. I would weep for it and never stop, if I had form in this place. At the end of time, there is no pattern left. Humanity thrives in the chaos it has created. When the war is over, billions live on without knowing how close they came to perfection.

The old men do not let me languish in that knowledge. They take me back to the former glory of the pattern, and it hangs before me like a tapestry. They offer it to me, and I realise I can control it with my thoughts. I can move within the generations, the strands, and pick out those early flaws one by one, to examine them in detail. Each and every flaw that spreads starts with one union. One coupling which creates one family line that grows. Just one union that creates the children that kill the beautiful future.

As I concentrate, another layer is added: a map of Earth, my Earth, laid over the pattern at the point of the first flaws. I recognise my country, my county, my village. Here is a union that chills me with recognition.

Redmore.

Daniel Redmore and Phyllis Clemens, at the beginning of May 1920, combine their strands to form another – a strand that winds its path along to a descendant who will eventually board a craft, and beget more children upon a second Earth. Children who will dissent from the project to create perfection, and will instigate a terrible war.

But the time for that union has passed.

Have I helped to save the pattern? Have I prevented a war?

The vision of the map and the pattern fades, and I return to the white room. The three old, pale men stand before me. They have one last thing that they wish me to understand.

Rocks.

They open their hands to me, and I see upon their palms small rocks, streaked with silver thread into which they have woven their message. The rocks rise from their grasp and levitate above them; they contain so much information: trajectory, the power to embed within human flesh, to heal and to keep alive for many decades, so that the cry for help is inescapable. The rocks are not natural, but a creation of these men, disguised and then impregnated with their desperate plea to end the war before it can ever begin.

As I watch, the rocks are thrown by an invisible force, so fast that they speed through space and escape time itself, to land all over the world in different countries and different eras. The old men cannot go back in time, but the rocks can.

And the men are done. Everything is explained, and now it is my task to help them.

But I have questions, many questions, that I cannot ask. I have no mouth in this place with which to speak. I try thinking hard, shouting within my head:

If that is the future of second Earth, what becomes of my planet?

Why did you leave so many of us behind? Who chose who would stay and who would go upon the metal craft?

And this is the question I must have answered above all others:

How can I understand all of these things when you only give me the information you choose to share?

They tell me nothing further. They close their eyes, and lower their heads, and the meeting is over.

That is when I realise I am not in a meeting. I am witnessing a recording. This is a missive, a letter that reads itself whenever Mr Tiller's rock is touched. The old men are not in a conversation with me. They decide long into the future what is important, and expect me to be content with that.

But I am not. And I must find my answers within the scraps of knowledge they are throwing to me. Mr Tiller wrote in his own letters that he could control the vision, at least to the extent of repeating the parts of the pattern that he desired to see. I concentrate hard, asking over and over, and yes – here is the metal craft once more, before me. Here are those who board the craft.

I watch them enter the body of the huge metal bullet that will explode into the stars and carry them away; there is no indication as to why they are leaving, or what they are leaving behind.

My only clue lies in the fact that they have one thing in common. They are all pale old men.

I watch it again.

Yes, they are all pale old men, white-haired. Is it just the nature of the image? I cannot tell. Perhaps it is a representation of the event, for how can there be no people of China, or the East Indies? No youths? No women, no women at all? How is that possible?

I move forward in time, to the arrival upon second Earth, and then the patterns thicken with brand new strands, like an injection of life. So many births – births of women, upon that pristine soil. But not births of a kind I recognise, amounting from the intertwining of two strands. These women come from nowhere.

The pale old men did not take women on their journey. When they reached their destination they made them.

Everyone who did not belong to their kind was left behind. To face what, I cannot tell, for this recording will not show me.

How can the final pattern be so beautiful when it discards so many threads? But, of course, nature is not beautiful. It is not meant to form a pattern woven to perfection. I think of the battles I see every day around me: spider and flies, foxes and rabbits. The land and the sea, the night and the day, the old and the young. I think of how it was under the bridge, with Daniel, when we pitched our bodies against each other in an age-old struggle in which we were born to fight. It was not beautiful, but it was glorious. And there was never meant to be a victor.

This is the truth of our Earth.

I pull my mind away. I have seen all I need to see. The vision dissipates, and the emptied kitchen returns to my view. I cannot tell how much time has passed, but the lamp burns on, and my hands are still upon the rock. Mr Tiller's arms are around me; he has moved closer, and he is tender in the way he holds me upright, for I realise I am not supporting my own weight. I pull myself up, and away from him.

'So now you see,' he says. 'My dear girl, now you see. They showed you.'

He is not mad. He is brave, and determined. He is utterly mistaken in his loyalty. He has taken the vision as undisputed knowledge rather than a point of view. He does not see that this future is not his fight.

'You are leaving to find others,' I say. 'Is that not true? You mean to find the other families that mar the pattern, and stamp them out.'

'You know I must.' He buttons his shirt, and covers the rock from my sight.

'No. No. You must not. And I cannot marry Daniel.'

In all of our time spent together, I do not think I have ever said anything that surprised him as much. 'But it is arranged. The future is not safe until it is done. What if Master Redmore returns to Miss Clemens with his broken heart, and she comforts him? We cannot guarantee the situation.'

'It is not my duty to safeguard the vision within that rock,' I state. I know it, completely, deep within myself. This is not my fight.

'It is everyone's duty! Including yours. That is why I – why you will marry Daniel Redmore and I will go forth into the world to stop others. Did you not see the pattern? Did you not see the perfection of it?'

How can I begin to explain it? We have shared the same vision, and yet will never come to the same conclusion. We stand on opposite sides.

'You must not,' I repeat. 'The future is not meant to be the way it is presented here. Can't you see it is not real?'

I have chosen the wrong word. I know it as soon as it leaves my lips. All tenderness, all confusion is gone from him in a moment. He pushes back his chair, the legs scraping along the floor with a squeal, and stands tall. 'Ha! Well, then it suits me, does it not? As I am not a real man, according to the world. I am part of the rock now, and it is part of me, and I will do as it asks of me.'