Читать книгу City of Time - Eoin McNamee, Eoin McNamee - Страница 6

Owen didn’t know what woke him. A gust of wind, he thought, or a dog barking? As his eyes got used to the dark he lifted his head from the pillow. Everything in his room was the same as before. His guitar propped against the wall, the model plane hanging from the ceiling, the old chest under the window. Outside the wind stirred the trees. That was it, he thought, the wind.

He allowed his head to fall back on to the pillow. It was cold and he gathered the blankets around him. He was about to close his eyes when he noticed something odd. He sat up. The air in the middle of the room looked strange. It was shimmering slightly. He rubbed his eyes, but when he looked again, there was still something different. The room looked distorted, like looking through old glass. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise as he sensed a presence in the room, and his heart started to beat faster.

Then he thought he heard a sound, a voice. There was somebody else in the room.

Without knowing how, he was out of bed. The shimmering air was between him and the door. He started to edge around it. He heard the sound again, like a voice, but far, far away, as if in a cave or down a well. The words were mournful and distorted. He tried to squeeze between the wall and the shimmer, but it moved towards him.

Owen stepped back, stumbling over his trainers, and instinctively put out an arm to save himself. The arm touched the moving air and to his amazement it felt warm and solid, like a living thing.

He jerked his arm away and backed towards the bed. Something was resolving itself in the middle of the room. Suddenly there was a large flicker and he realised that it was a person, someone he recognised, a clever girl’s face with dark, curly hair, then a body wearing a faded uniform with epaulettes on the shoulders. His heart leaped.

“Cati!” he gasped. He could see her lips moving, but could not understand the words that still sounded distant. He grabbed her arm. Immediately he could hear her voice. It had been a year since she had disappeared back into the mists of time, but if he thought that she was going to exchange memories with him like two old comrades, he was sadly mistaken.

“Hold on to me, you idiot,” she hissed. “It’s the only way I can stay stable in your time.” Owen grasped her with both hands. The flickering stopped and at last she was standing in his room, flesh and blood. Her expression was serious, but as always, there was a mocking look in her strange green eyes.

“Cati,” he said again. “I missed—”

“Never mind that,” she said. “There isn’t time. I need you to come down to the Workhouse and meet me.”

“What’s happening? Is it the Harsh?”

“Come to the Workhouse and I’ll explain. It’s easier to stay stable there.” As she spoke, Cati began to flicker again. One moment Owen had hold of solid flesh, the next there was nothing. But just before she faded completely, he saw a cheeky, lopsided grin on her face and thought he heard the words, “Missed you too …”

Hastily, Owen pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt and fumbled for his trainers. Then he opened the door into the hallway. It was flooded with moonlight. From the room at the end he heard his mother’s soft breathing. As quietly as possible, he crept along the landing and down the stairs.

Outside it was chilly and he was glad he’d grabbed his jacket. Everything was quiet and still and he could hear the sound his trainers made on the grass. He ran lightly across the two fields which separated his house from the river and from the dense shadow of the Workhouse. Its crumbling brickwork and dark, empty windows were forbidding enough to send a shiver down his spine. Owen remembered being inside and seeing cold, ghostly shapes moving through the field as the Harsh attacked. He remembered Johnston’s men attacking the Workhouse defences.

When he reached the riverbank he leaped lightly on to the fallen tree. He ran across and jumped down on the other side. It was darker here and hard to see where he was going. He should have brought a torch.

“Cati?” he called out, his voice sounding a bit weak and scared in the darkness. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Cati?” In the darkness something rustled. He ran to the Workhouse door.

“Cati,” he hissed, “is that you?” There was a scrabbling sound from inside, like stones and rubble falling. In the darkness he could see the staircase, almost blocked with rocks, then a small figure dashed around the bend in the stairs carrying a strangely-shaped magno gun in one hand.

She slid to the ground in front of Owen. “I nearly shot your silly head off,” she said, starting to brush dust off her trousers.

“I wouldn’t have put it up if I’d known you were armed,” he said. “What’s going on anyway?”

“I don’t know,” she said, looking troubled. “If only the Sub-Commandant was here …”

But Owen knew that the Sub-Commandant, Cati’s father, would never be there again. In the final battle with the Harsh, he had been sucked into the time vortex they called the Puissance and been lost, leaving Cati to inherit his role as Watcher.

Cati turned her face aside and passed her sleeve over her eyes. “You miss him too?” she said, her voice almost pleading. Owen nodded. The small, stern man had believed in Owen when everyone else seemed against him.

“Anyway,” Cati said with an effort, “let’s get inside somewhere where we can talk.”

“What about the Den?”

“All right,” she said. “Let’s go.”

They walked along the riverbank, then dived through the bushes into the Den. Inside Owen took the piece of magno from its box and placed it on the table. The blue light illuminated the room.

Cati threw herself wearily down on the old sofa. Owen went to the little box where he kept food and took out teabags and a packet of biscuits. He had added a camping stove to the Den and Cati watched with interest as he lit it. Owen made the tea and waited until she had drunk half of it before he spoke.

“So what is it, Cati?” he said. “Why did you come looking for me?”

She rubbed a hand wearily over her face and he saw the dark shadows under her eyes. “I didn’t know what else to do,” she said slowly. Then she told him about the flight of geese and how they had turned into skeletons and then dust.

“That’s like what happened to me!” Owen said. “A girl in school. Freya Revell. I was talking to her and for a moment she turned really old. I mean, her face looked ancient.”

“So I didn’t dream it!” Cati exclaimed. “It must have happened!”

“I think so,” Owen said. “It sounds as if it’s something to do with time going wrong. You should wake the others …”

Cati shook her head. “I tried, but I can’t. There’s something wrong.”

Owen’s heart went out to his tired-looking friend. “Maybe I can …” he began. Cati looked up at him hopefully. He knew that he possessed a strange power to awake those who were in the long sleep, although he didn’t understand it.

Cati nodded. “That is why I called you. I don’t know if it’s wrong or not. There may be consequences. But when I couldn’t wake them I didn’t know what else to do.”

“You did the right thing,” Owen said, hoping it was true.

“Do you think you can wake them?” Cati asked eagerly.

“I can try,” Owen said, frowning. He had awakened people before, but it had felt like an accident. He didn’t know if he could wake the whole Starry.

“Come on then,” Cati said, jumping to her feet, her tiredness forgotten.

Owen barely had time to put the cup back on the table before she had hauled him through the gap in the bushes and out on to the path. Within minutes they were standing before a wall of rock. Cati put her hands against it and the outline of a massive door appeared, delicately carved with small, ancient looking figures and decorations. Cati produced a tiny key and inserted it into an almost invisible lock. Silently, the massive door swung open.

Owen stared at the sleeping people. Part of him thought of the Resisters as a dream, but now he saw them, memories came flooding back.

“Come on,” Cati said. “We’ll try to wake Dr Diamond.”

Owen nodded approvingly. If anyone would know what to do, then it would be the scientist and philosopher. They slipped between the rows of sleeping people and he recognised many of them. Here and there, one of the simple beds was empty. Defending time was a dangerous business.

Finally they came to Dr Diamond’s bed. The scientist’s chest rose and fell gently as he slept, and there was an expression on his face somewhere between a smile and a frown, as though he was on the verge of solving a particularly tricky problem that had cropped up in a dream. The pockets of his faded blue overalls bulged with mysterious objects.

“Will you try?” Cati whispered. Owen nodded.

He gently placed his hand on the man’s forehead. There was a faint tingling in Owen’s fingers, but nothing more. He straightened up. A simple touch had worked before, even when he didn’t know he had the power. He tried again, with the same result.

“Call him,” Cati said. “Call out his name in your mind.”

Owen bent forward again. This time he put both hands on the man’s forehead and closed his eyes. “Dr Diamond,” he whispered, then formed the words in his mind. Dr Diamond, Dr Diamond. Suddenly he felt as if he was sinking in a deep well, going down into the darkness.

“Dr Diamond,” he whispered again. Something was wrong. He felt staleness in the air around him and in the spaces his mind reached out to. The Starry felt airless and Owen found himself gasping. It was as if all the air had been sucked out of the room. He tried to detach his mind. Then, in the distance, he felt another presence. A warm presence, calling his name, groping its way towards him in the darkness.

Owen had the feeling that another mind gripped his like two strong hands and propelled him upwards, out of the darkness and into the light.

“Owen! Owen!” It was Cati’s voice. Owen came to and found himself on the floor of the Starry. He sat up and shook his head, feeling groggy and disoriented. Cati’s face swam into focus. She looked both anxious and relieved.

“What happened?” he asked. “I was calling Dr Diamond …”

“And I heard you,” a voice said.

Owen looked up. Dr Diamond was sitting on the edge of his bed, looking down at him. There was a half-smile on his face.

“Then that was you …?” Owen said.

“Who came and joined my mind to yours? Yes, indeed. I don’t think either of us could have awoken on our own.”

“We’d better get out of here,” Cati said, her eyes heavy. “Before the Starry sends us all to sleep.”

“Yes,” agreed the doctor, stretching. “It gets very musty in here after a year or so.”

More than musty this time, Owen thought. He watched Dr Diamond looking carefully around the Starry, as though there was something wrong that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. He was definitely worried.

Ten minutes later they were sitting on the sofa in the Den with Dr Diamond examining the camping stove. “Ingenious,” he said. “Now, Cati, tell me everything that has happened in the past year.”

Cati went quiet. How could she explain how it had felt, autumn stretching into winter. Standing under the trees as they changed, then lying awake at night listening to the wind howling through the Workhouse battlements. How could she tell him about the time it had snowed, and how in the stillness she could hear the voices of children playing? How there was no one to talk to when she was worried or scared?

“Nothing much happened,” she said finally. “It was just … a little bit lonely sometimes.” Owen reached out and touched her hand.

They both know what loneliness is, Dr Diamond thought. That is why their friendship will endure.

“And what happened then?” he said eventually, his eyes shrewd and penetrating. “What happened that you reached out of the shadows to contact Owen? Is time under threat?”

“I was watching on the battlements,” Cati said. “There was a flight of geese that turned to skeletons and then to dust.” She looked defiantly at Dr Diamond as though he might disbelieve her.

“I saw something the same,” Owen said. He told Dr Diamond about the girl in school who had changed in front of his eyes.

“I tried to wake the Resisters, but when I touched them it was as if my fingers were hurting them,” Cati continued. “I didn’t know what to do, so I called Owen.”

Dr Diamond looked grave. “You did the right thing,” he said. “Something or someone is interfering with time. That is why you saw what you did and why the sleepers could not be woken.”

The scientist looked at Owen and Cati over the top of his glasses. “I don’t know what is happening yet, but I do know one thing, my two young friends. There is a mystery here. And where there is mystery there is an adventure. Now, where is my pencil?”

“I think it’s behind your ear,” Cati said, exchanging a smile with Owen. Dr Diamond produced a notebook from his overalls, licked the tip of the pencil, then started to write at lightning speed. This action had a strangely soothing effect and Owen and Cati both felt their eyelids grow heavy. Within minutes they had both fallen asleep, as Dr Diamond had intended they should.

The doctor got up, lifted their feet on to the sofa and covered them with sleeping bags. Then he sat down with his notebook again.

“Night good,” he said, speaking backwards as he tended to do when distracted. He bent his head to his notebook and began to write.