Link Arms with Toads! (19 page)

“
But 40,000 years ago!” whimpered Jules. “What if another nostalgia storm takes us even further back? We might end up in the time of the dinosaurs and be eaten completely raw, without flavourings of any kind. Have you considered that scenario?”

Celia shook her head. “We’ve gone back to the limits of nostalgia. Storm eyes can’t survive here. Nostalgia is only possible when social change is apparent. During this particular era the relevant changes that occur are so gradual they aren’t noticeable. Society will remain pretty much the same over a lifetime. To put it more simply, nostalgia does not exist at the present time!”

“
There is nothing to feel nostalgic for,” agreed Big Boss Barium, “because everything remains the same.”

“
By the same token, the effects can’t wear off,” she confirmed. “We are stuck here permanently. Feelings of nostalgia can’t disperse when they aren’t there in the first place!”

“
I’m scared,
mon cheri
. Don’t you have any pity for me?”

Celia laughed. “As you well know, the Style Council only employs agents who don’t have normal emotional responses to changing events. I have never felt nostalgia. That’s why it’s safe for me to tackle storm eyes. I’m immune to the effects.”

“
I wonder how the Style Gurus will cope as hunter-gatherers?”

“
Anything can become fashionable,” Celia replied.

Big Boss Barium raised a fat finger to his lips. “Hush! Someone’s coming. It might be the cannibals!”

Two figures bounded into the cave. They were dressed in strips of bark and badly cured fish skins.

“
Mr and Mrs Diode!” exclaimed Celia.

The female figure pressed something into Celia’s hand. Celia looked down and saw cowrie shells. “Get yourself some Mammoth lard and Teratornis eggs,” came the whisper. “I know you’ll keep quiet about this. Go on, take them, love.”

Celia sighed. “I’m tempted to resign my job.”

“
You can’t do that!” protested Big Boss Barium. “You’re our finest agent, certainly the most emotionally stunted!”

“
Back in the future I was special,” she pointed out. “One of the privileged few never to feel any sense of yearning. But here I’m just like everybody else, because nobody feels nostalgia now. I don’t think the Style Council needs me anymore.”

“
You can’t resign!” repeated Big Boss Barium.

A sudden roar from outside the cave distracted them all. They went out into the light, blinking at the object that was descending from the sky. It resembled a child’s drawing of a rocket, a flared cylinder with fins and a single engine. It landed unsteadily on three spindly legs. An automatic ramp extended and an utterly absurd robot glided down. It had a perfectly square head and square body and its legs were shiny metal tentacles. It undulated back and forth in front of the cave shouting out a single phrase in a grating voice:

“
Take me to your leader! Take me to your leader!”

“
What a time to be visited by extra terrestrials!” moaned Jules. He raised his hands in abject surrender.

The robot ignored him and continued screeching its demand. Celia eyed the slowly unwinding clockwork key protruding from its back. “I can guess what’s happened. This spacecraft was originally the product of a very advanced alien species. But as it passed through the atmosphere of our planet it encountered all the accumulated clouds of rogue style. Thus it has regressed with its occupants to a time that I judge to be the early 1940s.”

“
Shall we take him to the President?” asked Jules.

“
You can do what you like,” sniffed Celia. “I’m not doing anything at all. Apart from resigning.”

Big Boss Barium opened his mouth to speak again but Celia suddenly frowned and added, “You know something, I think I am feeling a twinge of nostalgia after all. Nostalgia for a time when the worst I had to deal with were storm eyes and terrorists!”

“
That changes everything!” Big Boss Barium cried.

“
Will we become unstuck,
mon cheri
?”

“
Take me to your leader! Take me to your leader!”

Celia felt herself choking and reached up a hand. She was wearing a ruff and a complicated dress. Jules was covered in lace and sequins and his long hair fell in ringlets over his shoulders. Big Boss Barium wore vast yellow trousers and a shirt with slashed sleeves. Mr and Mrs Diode were less elaborately attired, sporting black clothes and tall hats that symbolised a strict form of purity.

Dogs and rats capered in the narrow streets. The houses were wooden and squat with overhanging eaves and signs that swung in the malodorous breeze. A window above opened and a pan of something foul was hurled on them, apparently without malice.

“
Well, we’re not back to our original age,” croaked Big Boss Barium, “but you’ve done a fine job of piling on the centuries. Does anyone else feel nostalgia for anything?”

There was a general silence. He gazed at Celia.

“
It’s up to you again.”

She shook her head. “I’m still resigning,” she said.

(2006)

Castle Cesare

Possibly I am the only man alive with two different ages. I am both 28 and 9,731,065 years old. My skeleton, flesh and thoughts are defined by the first figure and thus I am no more special than any other youthful baron in this century of ours, inheritor of a venerable estate, sole occupier of the glowering castle which presently encloses me, less like a tomb than a universe, for my destiny has been peculiar. But my eyes have witnessed seasons that total in the millions and I have slept through almost as many. I refuse to accept this as normal.

How may these numbers be reconciled? First allow me to introduce myself with more dignity. I am the last scion of a remarkable family settled in these lands long before the Lombards invaded from the north. My ancestors maintained control of their estates through a combination of bribery and unobtrusiveness. Rarely did they resort to horror. As the centuries passed, they grew more isolated and introverted, withdrawing from political life and concentrating on unlocking the mysteries of the cosmos, encouraging each subsequent generation to dip ever deeper into the bottomless pot of academic truth.

Thus I enjoyed a rigorous and somewhat abstract childhood, knowing little of simple pastimes but learning much in the way of philosophy, mathematics and logic. Yet it was in the realms of the empirical sciences that we ventured furthest, astronomy and mechanics being the disciplines in which we took the greatest pleasure and pride. From the balconies of our highest turrets the entire firmament was accessible to our curiosity and in the extensive cellars winding deep into the rock of the crag that held aloft our brooding residence existed facilities for the manufacture of those magnifying lenses which guaranteed the superiority of our researches over our unknown rivals.

Dimly I recall the inscrutable visitor who knocked on our gates one late afternoon to offer his services. He was a wandering maker of clocks who wanted to know if we had any timepieces in need of repair. We had none but there was other work for him. He was an inhabitant of the country of the Bulgars and gave his name as Sneakios, which even to my immature ears sounded implausible. My father commissioned him to design a machine known as an
orrery
, a model of the solar system with moving planets powered by clockwork, a task the fellow accepted with relish.

He remained with us for many months. The sounds of construction next to my bedroom kept me awake during the long nights and my health suffered. Not once did I directly converse with Sneakios. One morning his assigned project was finished and he left us. I was taken to view his creation in the immense hall at the centre of the castle. The
orrery
filled the room entire, each world a different colour and size but made of the same strange material, a highly adhesive resin which one of our ancestors had invented in a previous century. I was particularly astonished by the representation of the Earth, viewed as if from outer space.

Not only were all the continents and mountain ranges carved on its surface with superb attention to detail but the miniature oceans between the landmasses consisted of liquid water. For an
orrery
this was unprecedented and thrilled me even more than the sheer scale of the device. Why these oceans simply did not pour off the sphere onto the floor below was a riddle never explained to me, nor have I yet solved it, but they remained in place, defying the laws of gravity as surely as my upbringing had contravened the rules of innocence. I wondered at the skill of Sneakios and perhaps also trembled a little.

The machine was not in motion, for first the giant spring that gave it energy had to be fully wound, a process apparently requiring years. A donkey was ushered in from one of our fields and harnessed to a windlass and the laborious task of turning the heavy key a sufficient number of times was commenced. I often visited the hall to view the motionless orbs. At night my smoky torch filled the role of a passing star as I circled the apparatus, casting the distorted shadows of many frozen moons onto the surfaces of planets, cursing them with plagues of bad omens, for I have heard that eclipses are unlucky.

My nocturnal explorations of the machine were eventually curtailed by the growing responsibilities of manhood. Although essentially reclusive, the Cesare family could not afford to wholly ignore the political demands of the time. Every son was required to leave the castle and fight in a distant war. He was also expected to return with a bride. Accordingly, on my eighteenth birthday I rode out into the Puglian dawn, olives in my saddlebag, arquebus over my shoulder, to lend my services to the Prince of Táranto in one of his murky struggles. I was loath to leave my home and the shelter of the forest, but I understood my duties and took them seriously enough. I was ready to be hated and loved.

As events transpired, I found combat but no suitable wife, and after half a year I returned to my castle with a fractured skull and the gloomy prospect of having to conquer our traditional horror of inbreeding and marry one of my cousins. A sword cut had given me a fever and I became more delirious as I crossed into the promontory of the Gargano, the region of Puglia we have made our own, and headed northward into the thick woods and high citrus groves so unique in atmosphere to the Cesare estates. At last I approached the castle itself but discovered I was too weak to call out a greeting.

The heavy iron door was open and there seemed to be great activity within as I dismounted and stumbled over the threshold, but I glimpsed no figures and only heard the familiar voices issuing from adjacent chambers. An irresistible fatigue overwhelmed me and I felt unable to present myself with any dignity, so I painfully climbed the stairs to my bedroom and fell down on the soft mattress, still clutching my arquebus and praying that the anvils of sleep that fell upon the lids of my eyes would not prove to be stepping stones to death. Beneath me as I lost consciousness the sounds of bustle continued.

How long I lay there, I know not, but it was clearly more than one night, perhaps longer than a week or even two, for when my fever broke and I regained my senses I found the castle completely deserted. I was ravenous but not thirsty and abominable tongue tracks on the damp walls revealed how in my delirium I had obtained moisture. The taste of condensation was unpleasant in my mouth as I wandered the passages and halls shouting out the names of family members and our retainers. In the kitchens I found stale bread and old cheese and made a sorry meal in the gloomy light that reluctantly penetrated the narrow windows.

The castle had been deliberately evacuated, that much was certain, for the valuables in all the secret places were gone but there were no signs of wanton destruction and I did not believe that a raid had been made on our estates. It occurred to me that an outbreak of the plague might reasonably explain the situation and I imagined that my parents and servants had fled to Naples or some other suitably distant city until it was deemed safe to return. When night fell I lit candles and brooded among dancing shadows.

I grew agitated and desired activity and eventually I rose from the stool in the kitchen, brushed the crumbs from my clothes, and set forth in search of a telescope. On our highest roof I might perch and scan the horizon for lights in the dark, evidence that our neighbours in their own castles were still in residence. If I perceived no twinkle in my lens the indication would be that the Cesare predicament was not unique and thus my plague theory would become more plausible.

I selected a telescope almost as long as my arquebus and climbed the spiral stairs of the oldest tower, reaching a narrow fissure at the very top, a gap in the crumbling stone walls through which I had often squeezed as a boy, delighting to run over the slippery tiles. It was no longer an easy matter to pass between the edges of jagged granite and I was lacerated and bruised by the time I emerged in the cool night on the other side. So too was I less sure of foot than in the years of my childhood and I picked my way with unmanly caution to my former vantage point at the very edge of the roof. Far below and all around lay a darkness that was more purple than black, the wild forests of the Gargano, dense and peaceful.

As I lifted the telescope to my right eye a moment of vertigo threatened to topple me but I breathed deeply and widened my stance. The stars glimmered faintly on the leaves of the tallest trees but no other traces of illumination could be discerned. I scanned slowly, lingering for many minutes whenever I reached a point where I believed a neighbouring castle stood. My task was disturbed by an ominous sound from behind. Gently I tucked the telescope into my belt, unslung the arquebus from my shoulder and lit the fuse. Then I turned to confront whatever was stalking me. There was nothing there, but the threatening growl was repeated.