How many times have I warned you against the slowtime?’
‘There were many bad moments,’ I said. ‘I had to think like light, as you say. If I hadn’t used slowtime, I’d be dead.’
‘The accelerations have wasted your body.’
‘I’ll spend the rest of the season skating, then. And eating. My body will recover.’
‘I’m thinking of your mind, not your body,’ he said. He made a fist and massaged the knuckles. ‘So, your mind, your brain, is five years older.’
‘Cells can always be made young again,’ I said.
‘You think so?’
I did not want to argue the effects of the manifold’s time distortions with him so I fidgeted in my hard chair and said, ‘Well, it’s good to be home.’
He rubbed his wrinkled neck and said, ‘I’m proud of you, Mallory. You’re famous now, eh? Your career is made. There’s talk of making you a master pilot, did you know that?’
In truth, my fellow pilots such as Bardo and the Sonderval had talked of little else since my return. Even Lionel, who had once despised my impulsive bragging, confided to me that my elevation to the College of Masters was almost certain.
‘A great discovery,’ the Timekeeper said. He ran his fingers back through his thick white hair. ‘I’m very pleased.’
In truth, I did not think he was pleased at all. Oh, perhaps he was pleased to see me again, to rumple my hair as he had when I was a boy, but I did not think he was at all pleased with my sudden fame and popularity. He was a jealous man, a man who would suffer no challenge to his preeminence among the women and men of our Order.
‘Without your book of poems,’ I said, ‘I would be worse than dead.’ I told him, then, everything that had happened to me on my journey. He did not seem at all impressed with the powers of the Entity.
‘So, the poems. You learned them well?’
‘Yes, Timekeeper.’
‘Ahhh.’ He smiled, resting his scarred hand on my shoulder. His face was fierce, hard to read. He seemed at once kindly and aggrieved, as if he could not decide whether giving me the book of poems had been the right thing to do.
He stood above me and I looked at my reflection in his black eyes. I asked the question burning in my mind. ‘How could you know the Entity would ask me to recite the poems? And the poems She asked – two of them were poems you had recited to me!’
He grimaced and said, ‘So, I couldn’t know. I guessed.’
‘But you must have known the Entity plays riddle games with ancient poetry. How could you possibly know that?’
He squeezed my shoulder hard; his fingers were like clutching, wooden roots. ‘Don’t question me, damn you! Have you forgotten your manners?’
‘I’m not the only one who has questions. The akashics and others, everyone will wonder how you knew.’
‘Let them wonder.’
Once, when I was twelve years old, the Timekeeper had taught me that secret knowledge is power. He was a man who kept secrets. During the hours of our talk, he secretively moved about the room giving me no opportunity to ask him questions about his past or anything else. He ordered coffee and drank it standing as he shifted from foot to foot. Frequently, he would pace to the window and stare out at the buildings of the Academy, all the while shaking his head and clenching his jaws. Perhaps he longed to confide his secrets with me (or with anybody) – I do not know. He looked like a strong, vital animal confined within a trap. Indeed, there were some who said that he never left his Tower because he feared the world of rocketing sleds and fast ice and murderous men. But I did not believe this. I had heard other gossip: a drunken horologe who claimed the Timekeeper kept a double to attend to the affairs of the Order while he took to the streets at night, hunting like a lone wolf down the glissades for anyone so foolish as to plot against him. It was even rumoured that he left the City for long periods of time; some said he kept his own lightship hidden within the Caverns. Had he duplicated my discoveries a lifetime ago and kept the secrets to himself? I thought it was possible. He was a fearless man too full of life not to have needed fresh wind against his face, the glittering crystals of the number storm, the cold, stark beauty of the stars at midnight. He, a lover of life, had once told me that the moments of a man’s life were too precious to waste sleeping. Thus he practised his discipline of sleeplessness, and he paced as his muscles knotted and relaxed, knotted and relaxed; he paced during the bright hours of the day, and he paced all the long night driven by adrenalin and caffeinated blood and by his need to see and hear and be.
I felt a rare pang of pity for him (and for myself for having to endure his petty inquisitions), and I said, ‘You look worried.’
It was the wrong thing to say. The Timekeeper hated pity, and more, he despised pitiers, especially when they pitied themselves. ‘Worry! What do you know of worry! After you’ve listened to the mechanics petition me to send an expedition into the Entity’s nebula, then you may speak to me of worry, damn you!’
‘What do you mean?’
‘So, I mean Marta Rutherford and her faction would have me mount a major expedition! She wants me to send a deepship into the Entity! As if I can afford to lose a deepship and a thousand professionals! They think that because you were lucky, they’ll be, too. And already, the eschatologists are demanding that if there is an expedition, they should lead it.’
I squeezed the arms of the chair and said, ‘I’m sorry my discovery has caused so many problems.’ I was not sorry at all, really. I was delighted that my discovery – along with Soli’s – had provoked the usually staid professionals of our Order into action.
‘Discovery?’ he growled out. ‘What discovery?’ He walked over to the window and silently shook his fist at the grey storm clouds drifting over the City from the south. He didn’t like the cold, I remembered, and he hated snow.
‘The Entity … She said the secret of life –’
‘The secret of life! You believe the lying words of that lying mainbrain? Gobbledygook! There’s no secret to be found in “man’s oldest DNA,” whatever that might be. There’s no secret, do you understand? The secret of life is life: It goes on and on, and that’s all there is.’
As if to punctuate his pessimism, just then the low, hollow bell of one of his clocks chimed, and he said, ‘It’s New Year on Urradeth. They’ll be killing all the marrowsick babies born this past year, and they’ll drink, and they’ll couple all day and all night until the wombs of all the women are full again. On and on it goes, on and on.’
I told him I thought the Entity had spoken the truth.
He laughed harshly, causing the weathered skin around his eyes to crack like sheets of broken ice. ‘Struth!’ he said bitterly, a word I took to be one of his archaisms. ‘A god’s truth, a god’s lies – what’s the difference?’
I told him I had a plan to discover man’s oldest DNA.
He laughed again; he laughed so hard his lips pulled back over his long white teeth and tears flowed from his eyes. ‘So, a plan. Even as a boy, you always had plans. Do you remember when I taught you slowtime? When I said that one must be patient and wait for the first waves of adagio to overtake the mind, you told me there had to be a way to slow time by skipping the normal sequence of attitudes. You even had a plan to enter slowtime without the aid of your ship-computer! And why? You had a problem with patience. And you still do. Can’t you wait to see if the splicers and imprimaturs – or the eschatologists, historians or cetics – can discover this oldest DNA? Isn’t it enough you’ll probably be made a master pilot?’
I rubbed the side of my nose and said, ‘If I petition you to mount a small expedition of my own, would you approve it?’
‘Petition me?’ he asked.