The Gradual (40 page)

I sent them through the Shelterate building. We then sailed across the bitterly cold waters of the inner harbour, the four of us, crammed together in a tiny boat with an outboard motor. The couple’s luggage was piled high in the bow. When we landed on the far side we led them past the construction site where work was going on, then across a long stretch of broken ground, enclosed by a high fence, that looked as if it too was intended for future development. As we climbed higher the cold became more intense. My loose-fitting robe was completely unsuitable for this, as were Renettia’s light clothes. However, the couple we were saving from the detriment were no better off, struggling with their heavy bags.

I paused to calculate the gradual, then we returned the couple to the harbour by the swiftest possible route. They were not satisfied with what we had done and the man complained bitterly that we had overcharged. They headed for their next ship, which was already waiting at the quay, destined for Muriseay.

Renettia said, ‘I think somewhere warmer next.’

‘Muriseay?’

‘Perhaps not.’

Later, after the ship had slipped away from Nelquay Stream, Renettia and I found a small restaurant and while we were eating Renettia suggested our next destination should be Paneron. She mentioned that it was close to Winho, information that made me say that I would prefer that instead. This was the only island I knew my brother had been to, so long ago, so many years before.

‘Not Winho,’ Renettia said. ‘Paneron. You’ll like Paneron, Violin.’

Paneron was a lushly beautiful island, with high wooded hills and dozens of tiny islets scattered around in the area offshore. It was in a part of the Dream Archipelago known as the Swirl, close to the equator in the southern hemisphere. It was hot. We were suitably dressed once more.

As soon as we arrived in the harbour at Paneron Main, Renettia and I adjusted our staves.

Because Main was a popular tourist resort the Shelterate building was larger than any I had previously seen and three long canopied areas had been set up for the adepts in the adjoining compound. Ships came and went all the time and the port was always crowded. I had never seen so many adepts at work, so much money changing hands. I saw all the familiar faces and perhaps forty or fifty others.

We adepts worked with passengers for the next five days. Because Paneron was a popular island and the Swirl had so many more islands in relatively close proximity most of the people we worked for had accumulated only small increments or detriments. Our average fee was ten thalers or fifteen simoleons, although when two privately owned luxury cruisers docked one day we found that we could charge more than a hundred thalers a time. That became a busy and lucrative day.

Because there was so much traffic, and because the shipping routes were short and well established, the adepts had many regular procedures for adjusting the gradual effects. Most of these involved a short walk in a shady woodland area next to the harbour – several well worn paths ran through the trees. The calculation of the gradual was easy and routine.

On the fifth day, Renettia said to me, ‘Go, Violin.’

‘Go?’

‘You are fully adept. You will work better alone. There is nothing more I can guide you with.’

I had begun to like Renettia after so much time with her, for all her brusque manner. I still knew little about her but I had learned that she came originally from the island of Semell, which was in Archipelagian terms not too far from the Ruller Group. She was once married but her husband had died many years earlier. She had five children, sixteen grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. All but the three youngest were now adults. She would not tell me her age. From occasional remarks about experiences in the past I worked out that she must be at least eighty years old, possibly more. Aside from her distinctive grey hair, her physical appearance was that of a healthy young woman in her late twenties or early thirties.

‘Will I see you again?’ I said.

‘Adepts are everywhere, Violin. Where will you go first?’

‘I haven’t decided yet,’ I said, but that was not true.

We agreed I would set off alone, but not until the next day. Renettia revealed that some of the other adepts had worked out who I was and through her had made a request of me. When I found out what it was I accepted. It pleased and excited me.

The evenings in Paneron were quiet in the harbour because no ships arrived after dark and it was normally deserted, but that evening a crowd of the adepts gathered under their striped canopies.

Playing my violin I walked slowly along the narrow spaces between the three groups of adepts, to and fro, back and forth. I was under the stars. I gave them a few short pieces from the standard repertoire, some of which I had not played for years. Then I played the whole of the allegro maestoso from my violin concerto, a short virtuoso piece that I knew was liked by many people. I finished with the reels and jigs I had learned and played with my brother Jacj, in the social club in Errest. While I fiddled with a rhythmic energy I had not known since I was a teenager some of the adepts came out from under their canopies and began to dance. Someone turned on a floodlight mounted on the side of the Shelterate building – it threw a single beam into the compound. A few more of the adepts emerged shyly into the light and shuffled alone, some others held each other self-consciously, these old-young people jigging in the warm night, clumsy on their feet, laughing at their own mistakes, adept only at time and the gradual.

I played them every dance tune I knew, then played them all again. The insects in the dark surrounding trees were silent, lights from the town shone in the distance, the sea lapped gently against the harbour walls.

In the morning I went to Dianme, the island that had charged my dreams all my life.

Dianme at last! It was the culmination of a lifetime of hopes.

But the harbour in Dianme’s only town, Deep, was on the north side, facing the mainland of Glaund. I was cold and I could smell the polluted air flowing down across the bay. I had arrived in the night. I adjusted my stave.

This change of subjective time – a cancellation of the most recent increment of seventeen hours – moved me back not only to daylight but to a slightly warmer day, with a wind from the south keeping the stench of Glaund temporarily away. It also made my transit to Dianme, in effect, instantaneous.

I had become an adept of time. I travelled free of time. I arrived at the same subjective moment as I left, Paneron to Dianme in an instant, wiping out several weeks of my subjective time.

I went from beautiful Paneron, with its rich clientele, luxury hotels and expensive restaurants to lowly Dianme, blighted by its proximity to Glaund, by its northern position, by its climate.

The journey took me several weeks in subjective time. I knew from the start that there were barely any facilities for passenger ships on Dianme. It was going to be a long and complex trip. Few travellers wished to be on Dianme, or to travel there, or for that matter leave there. The reality of this I had learned during my long voyage northwards, island after island, forced to follow an erratic, diverting course, seeking a combination of routes that would take me eventually to Dianme. In the hotter latitudes no one had even heard of Dianme, so my first task was to travel sufficiently far into the temperate zones that the name was at least discoverable. Then, with my ultimate destination identified, even to recalcitrant shipping lines, I had to develop a strategy of how to get there. Dianme was not a regular port of call for any of the main shipping lines, or indeed of the smaller ones. More devious routes were necessary, unexpected crossings had to be made. I reached my destination finally on a mail boat, one which sailed once a month from an island called Stemp to the three-island group that lay off the coast of Glaund.

I arrived on Dianme in the night.

I adjusted my stave. The long intervening journey disappeared. I was back at the same moment I had left Paneron. I was an adept of time. Provided I could stand the delays and inconvenience and slow journeys of subjective time, the stave allowed me to go anywhere I pleased in a split second.

I was looking good. I felt fit. I was young-old, renewed daily by my adeptness.

Now the reality of Dianme, which was a disappointment, a disillusionment.

The harbour of Dianme Deep was really not much more than a jetty and a harbour wall. Most of the boats were for fishing. No Shelterate office existed. There was a canning and freezing factory next to the port. The town itself was little more than a village. There were no restaurants but there was an inn where I was able to buy a meal. After that I found a place where protective clothes for manual workers were sold, many of them second-hand: thick working trousers, a woollen sweater, a rainproof hat. I put these on over my other clothes, feeling stiff and awkward but warm at last. I had to loosen the straps of my violin case to get it on over my bulkily padded shoulders. I went inland after that, hoping to learn history, hoping for views, scenery, some insight into how the legend of the benign wind-bringing goddess might have arisen.

I found subsistence farms, many hectares of marsh, and on the western side a few beaches. In a warmer climate, similar to those I had seen in the south, such beaches might have drawn the crowds for lazy vacations and other pleasures. On Dianme the beaches were cold, windswept, bleak, and as the day went on and there was a shift in the wind direction, the beaches suffered under the outflow of Glaund’s polluted air.

The place was bereft of music. No sounds or impressions rose around me, I sensed nothing. The island was bare in every way. The island did not speak.

This was the worst discovery of all. My Dianme was not what I thought she was.

I made sure that I was back in Deep’s port in order to the catch the same mail boat on which I had arrived, as I did not want to remain any longer on Dianme.

I was saddened, I felt obscurely betrayed.

But then I went home.

I arrived in Questiur as snow was falling. I adjusted my stave as soon as I was on the concrete apron and away from the ship. For a moment I thought the stave was no longer working, that because I was on the mainland the effect of the gradual was no longer present, because after the adjustment the snow was still falling.

It was another day, another snowstorm. I had arrived in a blizzard of fine, hard snow – after I had adjusted it became fine hard snow free of the effect of wind, falling vertically. The sky was a little lighter, suggesting a break in the snow might come. I had moved back to the day I wished.

This arrival in Questiur was not a matter of chance. I had planned the day because I knew what was going to happen on this day.

All journeys in subjective time were complicated, involving delays, diversions, changes of mind, many transfers in ports and between ships. This journey had been like all the others, but there had been an extra complication. It was not my first return to Questiur, to Glaund City. There was an earlier one, or perhaps it would be better described as a later one. I had increment, future time, I could make use of.

I was becoming adept at adeptness and I landed twice in Questiur.

The first time was at the end of the relatively short voyage from Dianme, in which I deliberately ran up much of the extra increment of time. As soon as I had left the ship I made no adjustment to my stave but went directly to the archive of the newspaper library in Glaund City.

Familiar with the conventions of the search engine I looked for and found the information I wanted, then I returned to the harbour. During my brief visit I noticed nothing unusual in the familiar city, although the newspaper library had been more crowded than I expected. The city itself was battened down for winter in a way I remembered well, the doors and windows closed against the weather, the people hurrying about their lives with their heads down. Until I went to the islands this was the place I knew best in the world. I had not come to explore or rediscover Glaund City, to notice it, to remark on it. I was collecting information that was to me personal and vital.

Back on the harbourside in Questiur I adjusted my stave. All subjective time disappeared and I returned to what I thought of as the present.

I then boarded another ship. On this I travelled away from Glaund, first to the south and west, using up subjective time. Then I returned north and east, using up more subjective time, adjusting my stave, watching and comparing the chronometers,
Mutlaq Vaqt, Kema Vaqt
– absolute time, ship time.

When the last of my ships approached the grimly snowed-in harbour at Questiur I knew not only the absolute time, but also the absolute day. Among many other islands I had visited Petty Serque, Nelquay, Ristor – a circular tour of northern islands in the wintry seas. Subjectively, the hours had dragged by. All I had was my violin.

The last of my several ships docked in Questiur. I landed. I walked across the concrete apron in the teeth of the blizzard. I adjusted my stave. The blizzard turned to a snowfall, with a promise of a break.

I had arrived on the day when I knew exactly what was going to happen.

I walked away from the civilian area of the harbour, to make it happen.

I had to keep my head bowed because of the falling snow but I kept looking up and around me to make sure I was going in the right direction. The docks in Questiur had not changed much since the last time I was here – I passed the entrance to the metro station. Lights were showing from the ticket office within.

I continued on, turned a sharp corner around a blocking warehouse wall, and finally I was rewarded with what I had come to find. A dark ship, black-painted but rusty, was moving towards the quay. Long securing ropes were already attached and winches were slowly tugging the ship to a secure mooring at the shore. The ship carried no identifying marks.

I kept to a rear wall of the dock, not wanting to draw attention to myself, but I had not gone far when I realized that not everything was as I expected. There were no troops waiting, as I had thought there would be, and the identifying battalion colours were not displayed. Suddenly, I was unsure.