Lord Sunday (18 page)

A
rthur was alone in total darkness. In shock, he was unable to comprehend what had happened, so it took him some time to work out that he was still alive. Or something. He was still aware of himself, at least. And he still had the Keys.

“Light,” he whispered, and there was light. A pale radiance surrounded him, though all else remained in darkness.

I am surrounded by Nothing,
thought Arthur.
Yet it has not destroyed me.

No,
came an unexpected answer.

It was the voice of the Will, inside his head again.

You are too strong for Nothing to destroy you, save by your own desire.

Arthur turned round. There, surrounded by a light similar to his own, was Dame Primus. Or not Dame Primus. She…or he…flickered between two forms that were sometimes rather like Dame Primus and sometimes rather like the Old One.

“You are the Architect,” said Arthur.

We are the Architect, at least for a little time longer. Soon we will return to the Nothing from which we came, so long ago.

“Why…why did you destroy the House? Why destroy everything?” burst out Arthur.

More than fifteen billion years ago, as mortals count time, I made the stars and waited while planets were born. I watched as life began. But it was slow, so slow, even for such as I…I thought to intervene, and chose to separate part of my nature, to create a related entity who would oversee this work. So it was I made the Old One from myself. More time passed, and the work went well, most particularly with the advent of you mortals, something I did not anticipate…as I did not anticipate that the Old One would grow apart from me and disagree.
We fought, and my anger grew, till at last I chained him and made him suffer. Yet it was also I who suffered.

“But what has this got to do with why…why you destroyed everything?” whispered Arthur. He still couldn’t believe what had happened. He could still see Leaf’s face and hear her calling out.

Billions of years,
mused the Architect.
Billions of years…You cannot yet comprehend how tired I became, despite all efforts to amuse and distract myself. The House was one such entertainment, inspired by mortals. Our children were another, and they did distract me for a time. But time is a weighty burden and all distractions fade. I grew to wonder what might lie beyond time, what might be found beyond my own existence.

Ten thousand years ago, my anger with the Old One finally cooled and I found that this rage alone had sustained me for that time. I was weary, so weary, and I wished to go beyond.

I decided to give myself to Nothing…but I could not. I was held back, because I was not whole. The Old One anchored me in this Universe, for in my rage I had made his bonds eternal, to last as long as my Creation.

I could not release the Old One and so free myself, without destroying everything I had made, the House
and all the Universe beyond. So I began that process of destruction with the fracture of myself and the making of the Will. It should have been quickly executed, but the Trustees had grown disobedient and they would not perform the actions that would lead to their own demise.

Yet they could not entirely resist the powers of my Will. In time it twisted their natures…and so unwittingly they came to work to my desired end.

“But why me?” asked Arthur. “Why choose me? Couldn’t you just have got a Denizen to do your dirty work?”

No. It had to be a mortal, someone who can create. Denizens were made directly by me and can only copy. I made the basic stuff from which you mortals evolved, Arthur, with some tinkering here and there, but I did not make you directly…and you mortals surpass even Us with your ideas.

“Why do I need to be creative?” asked Arthur bitterly. “I’ve done what you needed, haven’t I? I guess we can both just dissolve into Nothing now!”

Surely you know,
said the Architect.
You are the New Architect.

“What!?” exclaimed Arthur, though it was not really a surprise.

As the old Universe is destroyed, a new one is made. You will make it.

“What if I don’t want to?” asked Arthur quietly. He felt very much a boy again, alone and lost. “I liked the old Universe!”

That is your choice,
said the Architect.
Farewell
.

The Architect shut her eyes and lay back, as if settling down to sleep. Nothing spread across her like a blanket. She smiled and pulled it up over her head, and then there was only Arthur’s light, the only light anywhere in existence.

Arthur looked at his hands.

“How do I make a…a
Universe
?” he shouted.

The Keys answered him. Not in words. He felt their power coursing within him, and something changed in his head.

The boy who had been Arthur, and had become something more, finally completed his transformation.

He was no longer Arthur. He was the New Architect, and now he knew how to use his power, how to shape the stuff of Nothing, how to direct it on a cosmic scale.

He just had to decide
what
he wanted to make. The easiest thing would be to create a raw, new
Universe of simple matter, mostly hydrogen, and set some basic reactions going. In a few billion years there would be suns and planets and perhaps, billions of years after that, the beginnings of organic life.

The New Architect was tempted by this. He could make that Universe, but accelerate things. He wouldn’t make the mistake of the Architect in separating a part of himself to speed things up. He would do it himself. It would be like tending a garden, with steady work in most of it, with special parts that got concentrated attention. It would be fascinating to see what grew, and he could direct it in particular ways…

Deep inside the New Architect, the part of him that was Arthur cried out, a cry of such savage pain and loss that it halted the New Architect’s thoughts of a raw young Universe begun from the beginning.

“No,” said the New Architect to himself, to the Arthur that he had been. “No…you are quite right.”

As he understood everything now, the New Architect knew what the Architect had meant when she had said, “That is your choice.”

He gestured, and a stone formed beside him. A small boulder of pleasantly weathered granite. It was
exactly like the one that had stood near the spring in the Elysium.

The New Architect sat on the stone, reached into his coat and drew out
A Compleat Atlas of the House and Immediate Environs.
He did not open it, but simply knew its contents as soon as he held it in his hand. It contained a complete snapshot of the former Universe, taken a moment before the destruction of the Elysium of the Incomparable Gardens, when the Will had frozen everyone. All the records of the Secondary Realms slavishly made by thousands upon thousands of Denizens were just a small and largely irrelevant part of the true record.

The Old Universe in all its fine detail lay in the palm of his hand.

The New Architect sighed as he thought about the work ahead. He had planned to tweak things here or there, particularly on Earth, but now he knew he could not for that would endlessly complicate his task. If he was to remake the Universe, he would have to do so exactly as it was recorded in the Atlas. That meant the Secondary Realms would be no different, and all that would remain of the House would be the Elysium.

But there was one difference he
would
make. He had dismissed the notion when thinking of a new Universe, but on reflection he had come to decide it would be a good idea. At least it would give him some personal satisfaction, a little counterweight to the sadness that lingered inside him, a legacy of his mortal past.

The New Architect rested his chin on his hand, his elbow on his knee, and began to think.

A
rthur blinked and choked back a surge of nausea. The sun was too bright and his legs felt weak…so weak that they began to crumple underneath him. He quickly sat down on the grass and noticed that not only were his legs not holding him up, they were back to being normal boy-size, and he was wearing jeans. He had a T-shirt on too, a vintage Ratz band T-shirt, and his chest and arms were certainly back to normal as well, and when he ran his hands through his hair, it felt…human.

But a moment ago he had been the New Architect and was recreating the cosmos. Now he was – Arthur looked around – now he was back in the Elysium. An Elysium surrounded by Nothing.

“Arthur,” said a somewhat familiar voice behind him.

Arthur turned round and had to shield his face with his hand. There was a twelve-foot-tall shining winged figure there, a figure almost too bright to look at. But Arthur could make out the shining one’s features – which were a stylised and improved version of his own.

“Are…are you me?” asked Arthur.

“After a fashion,” said the New Architect.

“But…what am I, then?” asked Arthur. Apart from the actual creation of the new Universe, he could still remember everything he’d done, and what he’d become, from that first moment when he’d met Mister Monday and Sneezer.

“You are yourself,” said the New Architect. “As the Old One was a part of the Architect, so you are part of the greater being that we became.”

“But I’m back to being a boy again,” said Arthur, wonderingly. “The real me.”

“Yes,” said the New Architect quietly. “I knew that was what I wanted.”

“Am I mortal?” asked Arthur.

“Yes,” lied the New Architect, for his own good. “But you will not get sick, ever again.”

“I can go back to Earth,” whispered Arthur. He blinked again and casually wiped a tear from his eye, as if it were the New Architect’s brilliance that was making his eyes water. “Uh, I mean…you did remake Earth?”

“Exactly as it was, unfortunately,” said the New Architect. “Arthur…I was not able to remake everything as I…or you…would wish. The Atlas recorded the House only minutes before the end…”

“Yes…” said Arthur. “But Leaf and Suzy, and Fred and Dr Scamandros, they were here, they’ll be—”

“Leaf is here,” said the New Architect. He gestured, and Leaf
was
there, asleep on the grass nearby. “I have not yet decided about the Denizens and the Piper’s children. But all those lost in the greater part of the Gardens, I cannot—”

“Oh,” said Arthur.

Bed 27. Pot 5. A house from Earth, with a woman in it…

Tears streamed down his face now and he made no pretence that it was from the fierceness of the light. “Mother.”

“Yes,” said the New Architect. He hesitated, then said, “I could make her again, solely from our memory, but she would not be exactly right—”

“No!” shuddered Arthur. He took in a deep breath and choked back the tears. “No.”

“I will return you and Leaf to a friendly house, a safe distance from the bombed hospital,” said the New Architect. “It belongs to an old woman called Sylvie. Leaf knows her. She will look after you until Bob comes home.”

Arthur nodded. The notion that someone would be looking after him felt so utterly strange and at the same time so comforting that he almost burst into tears again.

“Bob will need your help too,” said the New Architect. “And our brothers and sisters. It will be difficult.”

“Yes,” whispered Arthur.

“If you want to talk to me,” said the New Architect, “there will be a red lacquer box in your room. A small one. I don’t care for that old phone stuff.”

“Thanks,” said Arthur. He wiped his eyes and nose and took a deep breath. “I guess I’d better get going, then. Um, how…”

The New Architect pointed. Arthur was sure there had been nothing there, or more precisely that there had been Nothing there, but now Seven Dials stood waiting, the grandfather clocks arranged in a circle on the grass.

As he walked over to the clocks, Leaf woke. She sat up and touched her shoulder, seeming surprised by something she felt – or didn’t feel – there. Then she saw Arthur.

“Arthur! Is that really you?”

She ran over and hugged him, before stepping back awkwardly.

“It is me,” said Arthur.

“But how?” asked Leaf. “What happened? One minute the Nothing was coming in, and then I just woke up here, and…Where is everyone else?”

Arthur looked at the New Architect, who was standing in clear view. He inclined his head slightly and pointed at the clocks, which began to strike.

“I’ll explain when we get back,” said Arthur. He took Leaf’s hand and hurried to the centre of the
circle of clocks. “Seven Dials will take us to a friend of yours. Someone called Sylvie.”

“All right!” said Leaf. “Isn’t it amazing, Arthur? You won!”

“Yes,” said Arthur quietly. “I guess we did.”