The navigator (31 page)

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"One thing to remember," Dr. Diamond said. "On no account must you touch the vortex. Remember that."

Owen turned to Cati. She was shivering.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

"The Harsh," she said. "I can feel them. Nearby." Owen touched her forehead. It was icy cold.

They set out on the long climb to the top. The path was old and crumbling, and howling winds generated by the Puissance threatened to sweep them off it. But that was not the worst part. The time flickers increased to such a rate that Owen barely knew where he was or whether he was about to say something or had just said it. Everything was confused, nightmarish, and the sound of the vortex above them became more and more threatening. At one point he slipped and fell. He got up and slipped and fell again, then once more, the flickering of time making him repeat the motion painfully. At the last, he thought he wouldn't get up. He would just lie there. Then he felt his arm being squeezed and looked up and saw Cati smiling a small brave smile at him, and he felt ashamed. He climbed to his feet and went on.

After what might or might not have been a very long time--there was no way of telling anymore--they reached the top and found themselves right beside the Puissance itself, majestic and terrifying beyond all knowing. Owen felt his mouth go dry and his knees go weak. Dr. Diamond took out a notebook but did not write. All of them stared at the black, writhing surface through which they

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could see, like a film moving at incredible speed--flashes of history, yes, but more and more darkness punctuated by the light of a few stars, as though all of the world's history had already been sucked into the hole, and now they were seeing what had gone before, the events that were close to the void.

"Time much ... we haven't much time!" Dr. Diamond shouted.

"Get to one of the entrances!" the Sub-Commandant commanded. Then, without warning, they were under attack. Passionara leapt onto the Sub-Commandant's back and Owen whirled to find himself face to face with Mariacallas.

"Hello, Pretty Rat," he hissed, and Owen suddenly became aware that he was being pickpocketed, the man's hands searching his clothes at incredible speed.

"Is this what you're looking for?" Owen heard Dr. Diamond say. The scientist was holding up his heated ice goggles. Of course, Owen realized, they were looking for the Mortmain but didn't know what it looked like. Greedily, Mariacallas swung round toward Dr. Diamond. To his right, Owen could see the Sub-Commandant struggling with Passionara, who had steely fingers round his throat. Pieta had her whip in her hand but could not get a clear shot.

Mariacallas darted toward Dr. Diamond, but Dr. Diamond backed away again, to the very edge, holding the goggles as high as he could. Mariacallas made one last

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lunge. Swift as lightning, Dr. Diamond threw the goggles off the edge. Mariacallas threw himself after them and disappeared with a despairing cry.

The Sub-Commandant struggled desperately with Passionara. He was too small to shake off the steely-fingered man, but suddenly another small figure flew toward them--and Cati landed on Passionara's back.

"Leave him alone! Leave him alone!" she screamed, pulling at his fingers and, when that did not work, sinking her teeth into his wrist. Passionara cried out and his grip loosened. With one final desperate effort the Sub-Commandant wrenched free. Passionara stumbled backward, still with Cati wrapped around his neck. Dr. Diamond shouted a warning and Owen saw what was happening. Passionara was overbalanced and falling toward the vortex. The Sub-Commandant reacted fastest. With lightning speed he reached for Cati and tore her from Passionara's back. With a wail, Passionara toppled into the vortex and was snatched away. But as he did so, his hand reached from the vortex and grabbed the Sub-Commandant's sleeve. With horror Owen watched as the man's hand was drawn toward the whirling mass, his fingertips just touching it before he pulled away.

There seemed to be silence then, although the flickering and howling did not stop. Cati looked at her father in disbelief. Owen thought that there was something transparent about him.

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"What... what will...," she began, her voice trembling.

"Be still, my child," the Sub-Commandant said in a gentle, sad voice. "It is time for me to go now."

"Go where? Not..."

"No, not death as such, but I have been touched by the Puissance, and I belong to time now. I have to go, otherwise I will die here, in the next few minutes."

"You can't go!"

"You must let him go, Cati," said Dr. Diamond.

The Sub-Commandant put his arms around his daughter and held her. "You will be the Watcher now. Watch well!" he said.

Owen now understood why Cati was treated as special by the others--she was a Watcher too.

"Owen," the small man said urgently, "I have to tell you something. It was me who gave your father the Mortmain. He didn't steal it. I suspected he was a Navigator, so it was his to guard. I also thought we had a traitor and I wanted to protect it. I never thought it could be Chancellor."

Owen said nothing. Cati started to weep. The Sub-Commandant touched her face. "Just as you will watch the world from the shadows of time and look out for danger, I will be watching you too, from the deepest shadows of all, the shadows at the beginning of all things."

The Sub-Commandant turned, and with one last warm smile to Cati, a smile from which it seemed all

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the care had gone, he stepped into the vortex and was gone.

They stood there for a long time, or what seemed like a long time. Dr. Diamond held Cati tight. Owen felt numb. He had not realized how close he had become to the small, serious man. "Somebody a body could respect, somebody a body could respect," Wesley was muttering over and over again, and Owen knew how he felt. Pieta made a choking noise and turned away. Then there was an ominous crackling sound and Owen looked at the Puissance. It was now running all black.

"Better hurry," said Wesley, "or there'll be nothing for Cati to watch over."

"Quickly!" Dr. Diamond exclaimed, leading them to one of the beehive huts. "Just step inside."

Owen watched as Dr. Diamond, Pieta, and Cati ducked through the little door, Cati turning a tearstained face to him as she did so.

"Notice something?" Wesley said as he ducked inside. "I seen the monkeys, but I never seen the organ-grinder."

It was true, Owen realized. They had not seen Johnston. Then he stepped inside and found himself falling through blackness.

They were in a kind of chute, Owen thought, a steep chute, black at first but turning lighter as they fell, lighter and colder. Finally he recognized it as ice. He was aware of the others in the chute with him at first, but just as the chute started to level, he came to a fork. As he slid toward

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the right-hand fork, he caught a glimpse of Cati's foot in the other fork. Desperately he made a grab for the rim of the chute, but it was too late. His fingers clasped the smooth ice momentarily, then lost their grip, and his momentum carried him on. He was on his own. The descent went on for another minute or so. With relief Owen noted that time had stopped flickering. And then, with a heavy thud, he was out of the chute.

He leapt to his feet, fists clenched. But there was no one to be seen. He was in a room filled with extraordinary-looking objects. There were delicate mechanisms shaped like hourglasses, tiny trembling gauges capable of measuring the finest variation, a long metronome consisting of metal so fine it seemed like filigree. The walls were covered with brittle cog mechanisms, all moving. On a fine glass screen, numbers appeared and disappeared as if someone had breathed them onto the glass on a cold day.

Owen stepped forward. The room looked out on something, protected by a glass screen. He crossed the room to the screen and peered through. It was the Puissance, spiraling down through a tunnel, black as jet now. And around it a staircase led down and down. I have to reach that, he thought.

There was a plain wooden door in the wall. Owen opened it and stepped out into a corridor. But this was not like any corridor he had ever seen. It was all white. Like ice, he thought, but not ice. Beautiful objects were set into alcoves along the walls: a delicate ice flower, a

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milky-colored vase with intricate and ancient carvings, rare and beautiful lamps, exquisite porcelains. Like a castle inside, the Long Woman had said.

Owen walked carefully along the corridor. He had never been anywhere so still. Frozen, he thought, although not frozen in the cold sense. Still he walked on and still there was no turning, and then at the end of the corridor he reached a doorway. He put his hand on the doorknob, a wooden doorknob, cool but not cold to the touch. He hesitated, but time was running out. He had no choice. He turned the knob and opened the door, and knew immediately that this was where the Harsh waited for him.

Cati heard Owen call out and realized that he had gone the other way. She was numb with grief and almost paralyzed by the nearness of the Harsh, and she opened her mouth to tell the others, but no sound came. At that moment she was as near to despair as she had ever come. Then she saw in her mind's eye the smile that her father had given her when he stepped into the vortex, a smile no longer weary but full of youth. It seemed to flood her bones with vigor, and she knew that this was his last gift to her. I won't give up, she told herself. They won't freeze me. And then she landed with a bump on something soft.

"Get off me bloody legs," said Wesley. The four of them were standing in a room of ice. There was a slamming

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sound from over their heads. Cari looked up to see that a lid had closed above them.

"Owen went the other way," she said.

"I know," Dr. Diamond replied. "It was a trap."

He walked over to the walls and started to examine them closely. Pieta took one look at the ice and lifted her whip. She lashed it against the wall. The ice melted a little, then froze again. She lashed again and again, but each time the ice refroze.

"It's not ordinary ice, is it?" Cati asked.

"No, it's not," Dr. Diamond said, "and as a trap, it's pretty ingenious. Look." They looked and saw a film forming over the surface of the ice and disappearing. It happened again.

"What is it?" asked Cati.

"It's our breath," Dr. Diamond said. "Each time we breathe out, the moisture from our breath freezes on the ice. Each layer of ice that is added, our cell gets a little smaller. Until eventually, as long as we have breath ..."

"It'll squeeze the rullocks out of us," Wesley said.

"If it is a trap, then they have Owen," Pieta said. "We have to find him."

"Any ideas, doc?" asked Wesley.

Dr. Diamond was fishing around in his pockets. He pulled out what looked like a small gyroscope. "I call this an infinite sonometer," he said proudly.

"Does it work?"

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"I don't know. In fact, I've never tried it."

Wesley sighed heavily and theatrically. Dr. Diamond placed the device on the floor and started it spinning. It gave off a low hum at first. The sound built and built, until first Cati and then the others had to cover their ears. Then the sound stopped.

"Ultrasonic now, you see," Dr. Diamond explained.

"Better work pretty quick, doc," Wesley said. "We're breathing out a fair bit of moisture by the look of them walls."

Owen thought about turning and running, but his legs wouldn't carry him. He was trapped. The Harsh had waited for him, confident that he would come to them. There were eight of them, white shapes sitting in a semicircle. Then he looked again and stifled a gasp of shock. The white shape was merely a kind of white dust--ice, perhaps--that floated in the air around them. The Harsh were people, he realized, and not only that, they were young people, or seemed to be anyway. A little bit older than him, sixteen or seventeen, perhaps. They had brown eyes and high cheekbones and blond hair. And very, very white skin. They looked ...
bored
was the word that sprang to mind. One of the girls, curled up on a chair, yawned and examined her fingernails. Each one of them was beautifully dressed, in pale, cold colors. Then they started to speak.

"That's him. That's the boy who broke our beam." It

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was a boy's voice, low and modulated. It might have been pleasant if it hadn't been for the sneer in it.

"It was a very nice beam," a spoiled, petulant-sounding girl's voice said.

"It was a nice beam," the boy agreed, "but he broke it with his mirror." Owen realized they were talking about the ice beam he had bounced back at them at the Workhouse.

"You were trying to kill us!" Owen said, and immediately regretted it. The Harsh might look like spoiled rich children, but they had great power.

"He singed my hair and my shoes were absolutely ruined!" the smallest girl said. She gave Owen a peevish look and some of the white dust around her billowed toward him. He felt a terrible pain in his chest, as though an icy hand had grasped his heart, and he fell to his knees. The girl tossed her head and returned to examining the ends of her hair. Owen felt the grip relax.

"Now he's going to try to break our Puissance machine," the oldest of the boys said.

"And we worked so hard."

"Soooo hard."

"Well, not all that hard, actually," the little girl said, and they all started to giggle, and for all that they had pleasant voices, there was something grating about the sound.

As they giggled, Owen started to think. They were obviously incredibly powerful and clever. But they were