The Lost Time Accidents (51 page)

“I know the difference between science and science fiction, Ursula.”

“Do you?” the Kraut said. “Your father seems to think he does, as well. You’re both so sure.”

That surprised me, I have to admit. “Aren’t you?”

“Orson once wrote a story—more of a fable, really—called ‘The Principatrix of Gnawledge.’ Do you remember it?”

I shook my head.

“It’s in the only book of his I brought along,” she said, digging a coverless pulp out of a drawer. “You can read it, if you like, while I make coffee. It’s quite short.”

An itching began in my palms as I reached for the book. The Kraut had never before suggested that I read anything of Orson’s. The story was marked with a postcard of Znojmo, featuring a portly businessman in a bowler hat, riding an enormous green gherkin above the Dyje River.

THE PRINCIPATRIX OF GNAWLEDGE

The Imperator of Omphalos-8, a satellite of Ganymede-12 in the System of Mines, had a proGene, a female, who duly attained to principatrix when she came of age. This principatrix, it is told, was the rarest of beauties: skin the color of subpolar frost, hair luminous as ore from a core-stratum vein. The Imperator doted on her, as fathers will, and built her a stronghouse of chromium and silica by the shore of a quarry on a neighboring moon, far removed from the intrigues of court. There she ripened to the first term of youth, and had no care for the Winter, and no means of influence over the Great Thermodynamic Arc, after the manner of ordinary men.

Now it happened one autumn, as she walked by the quarry, that the principatrix saw an other: a wizened old thrall, humming to herself as she cast cicada shells into the water. The oiled and ore-heavy waves danced about the thrall’s feet, and the leaves rustled about her hunched back, and her mica-colored rags flapped about her gray face in the beating of the ruthless autumn wind.

“Here,” said the principatrix, “is the loneliest thrall betwixt the Seven Poles. What brings you to my quarrylake, old woman?”

“Imperator’s Daughter,” said the thrall, “you live in a stronghouse, and your hair is as ore from a core-stratum vein; but what good does it bring? Duration is brief, and existence is grief—you exist after the manner of ordinary men, with no thought for the Winter, and no influence over the Thermodynamic Arc.”

“Thought for the Winter I do now possess,” said the Imperator’s daughter; “but influence over the Arc, I have not.” And she began to consider.

The thrall cast the last of her shells into the water and laughed.

The light turned, and the air cooled, and the principatrix returned to her stronghouse. When the door had been bolted and the fission-lamps lit, she summoned her governess to her.

“Governess,” said the principatrix, “thought for the Winter has found me, so that I grow out of the manner of ordinary men, like a cicada growing out of its shell. Tell me what I must do to have influence over the Arc.”

Then the governess sighed like the subpolar winds. “Alas!” she said, “that this should come to pass; but the thought has now entered your lymph and your blood, and there is no antidote against thought.”

So the Imperator’s proGene sat in her pressurized chamber in the silica-and-chromium–masoned keep, and gnawed there day and night upon the thought. Ten-and-seven years she was gnawing, and as much time again; and the wind beat against the fastness of the stronghouse, and the stars transcribed their arcs as if to mock her. Her governness fed and clothed and washed her without speaking, and she ate and bathed and slumbered without any thought but one.

Now when thirty and four years were passed away, the principatrix raised herself up slowly to her feet, and she passed from chamber to chamber of her ruined house, and saw that all her thralls and keepers had long left her; her governess remained, but she was stone-faced now and still. The principatrix walked out of the stronghouse, leaving its doors open behind her, and the gate to the garden, and the gate in the fortified field. She walked to that part of the shore where the old thrall had been, and where thought for the Winter had first found her, and there she sat down. And the ore-heavy waves lapped at her feet, and the shells of cicadas rustled at her back, and her mica-colored rags flapped about her in the beating of the wind. And when she lifted her eyes, behold! there was a daughter of an Imperator come up along the shore. Her skin was the color of subpolar frost, and her hair was as luminous as ore from a core-stratum vein; and she had no care for the Winter, and no means of influence over the Great Thermodynamic Arc, after the manner of ordinary men.

“What do you think?” said the Kraut, coming back with the coffee.

“This doesn’t sound like Orson.”

“It’s cribbed from someone better—Stevenson, I think, or Collins. But that’s not why I wanted you to read it.” She set the cup and saucer down. “Of all your father’s fiction, it comes closest to what I consider fact.”

“Fact?” I said. “This seems about as far from
fact
as anything he wrote. There’s no attempt at scientific—”

“Of course not, Waldy.” She shook her head impatiently. “That’s not the kind of fact I’m thinking of.”

Something in her voice made me uneasy. “I’m not sure what other kind of fact there is,” I said.

The expression on her face had settled as I read my father’s story—had grown both milder and more fixed—and I recognized it now for what it was. It was regret.

“It saddens me to hear that, Waldy. More than you can know.”

“For Christ’s sake, Ursula, just tell me what you mean!”

“Only that I look at that little fable from time to time, when I’m in a mood to consider the past. It helps me understand why Orson left. It’s about the lust for influence over the timestream, of course, but more than that: it’s about vanity, and arrogance, and the compulsion to turn inward, in pursuit of some private mystery, at the risk of everything that you hold dear. And if you don’t see your father in that, or your aunts, or your grandfather, or all the rest of that family you’re so obsessed with, then this can only mean one thing—you’ve fallen victim to the mystery yourself.” She knelt beside me now and took my hand. “That was one point your father and I always agreed on, even when things were at their worst. We wanted to keep
you
away from that mystery, Waldy. As far away from it as possible.”

It was clear to me now that she knew why I’d come. More than that: it was clear that she knew—or that she
thought
she knew—how the quest I’d set out on would end. Orson’s parable had been a kind of test—a test I’d evidently passed with flying colors. If I was my great-grandfather’s rightful successor, I was also his doomed and psychopathic son’s. Another willing vessel for the Syndrome.

“Listen to me, Ursula. This isn’t what you think. I’m not my father.”

“That’s right, Waldy. Or
his
father, either.” She let go of my hand. “Or the man you were named for. Please don’t forget that.”

She seemed frail to me suddenly, fragile beyond her years. I resolved to come clean about my hunt for Waldemar, no matter how severely it might shock her. But my chance came and went.

“Two men stopped by this morning. They were looking for you.”

“What kind of men?” I said, thinking right away of Haven’s goons. “Did they look at all Polish?”

“Everyone looks Polish in this city—or Hungarian, or Serbian, or Czech.” She parted the blinds and surveyed the street outside, surreptitious as a gangster in a noir
.
“These men had on trench coats and glasses and black leather gloves. They looked like officers of the Gestapo.”

For an instant I wondered whether the onionlike strata I’d peered into over the past few days had become permeable, allowing Nazis from 1938 to shadow me in the Vienna of the present; then I saw the Kraut smiling at me over her shoulder.

“They didn’t look like Gestapo, Waldy. Not really. Don’t take everything I say so seriously.”

Before I could answer her, Mrs. Haven—not that I had an answer to give—you made your ill-fated debut. You arrived fresh from the Graben boutiques, in a powder-blue trench coat and green loden jodhpurs and lipstick-colored knee-high riding boots. I’d longed for this meeting, as all lovers do, eager for my mother’s bright-eyed blessing; you hadn’t been there more than a minute, however, before I realized how vain my hopes had been. There was nothing I could do, at that point, but watch as you confirmed her worst suspicions.

“What is it you do?” asked the Kraut, after you’d told her how much you admired the carpet. You really were trying your best.

“I’m between jobs at the moment,” you answered. “I guess I’m your son’s bodyguard.”

The Kraut returned your smile gravely. “You’ll want to dress a bit more neutrally for that.”

“Not a Secret Service type of bodyguard,” you told her. “The personal kind. Personal bodyguards can wear anything they want.”

“Is that so?” said the Kraut, looking to me as if for confirmation.

We stayed a remarkably long time, all things considered. You were patient and gracious and friendly and brave. As we were leaving—you were ahead of me, Mrs. Haven, already halfway down the stairs—my mother caught me lightly by the arm.

“Don’t go to Znojmo, Waldy. There’s nothing for you there.”

“I’m not going to Znojmo,” I answered, though of course I was going to Znojmo. Znojmo is where everything begins.

“There’s
nothing
for you there,” she repeated. Then, more quietly: “You can still escape, you know. It’s not too late.”

“Walter?” you called from the courtyard.

My mother and I looked at each other then, full in the face, more frankly than we’d done since I was small. I realized with a jolt that I was taller than she was by at least half a foot. When on earth had that happened? The realization made me want to sit down on the stairs and cry. It seemed to signify something terrible about the world: something that couldn’t—or mustn’t—be put into words. And I could see, looking down into her startled, anxious face, that my mother felt exactly the same way.

“Walter?” you called again.

“Don’t worry about me, Ursula. I’m trying to—”

“I’m going to tell you something, Waldy, and I want you to listen to me closely. I love you with all my heart, and I want you to live a long and happy life.”

“I love you too, Ursula. And I want
you
to know, no matter how I might sometimes act, that I—”

The Kraut shook her head and pressed a finger to my lips. “Watch that woman closely,” she whispered. “Don’t trust her an inch.”

I pushed her hand away. “Please, Ursula—”

“Don’t trust her, Waldy. Do you hear me? She wishes you ill.”

Monday, 09:05 EST

I found Waldemar on the kitchen counter this morning, legs crossed underneath him, humming to himself with a mouth full of sprouts. The sound had invaded a dream I’d been having—my mother singing to me while she iced an enormous jet-black, bell-shaped birthday cake—and I’d awoken with a jerk, slowly gotten my bearings, then noticed that the humming hadn’t stopped. I followed it cautiously out to the kitchen. Any lingering sweetness I might still have felt was expunged by the sight of my great-uncle perched on that counter like an opossum, munching and smacking his lips, with a look of craven pleasure on his face. Here is a man, Mrs. Haven, who can make even vegetarianism seem unwholesome.

“There you are,
Nefflein
. I was hoping I’d wake you.”

“I was dreaming.” I rubbed my eyes, still abstracted with sleep. “I thought you were my mother.”

“I’m flattered by the comparison. Charming woman, Ursula.”

That gave me a turn. “How would
you
know?”

“From your history, of course. Such a diverting read! I liked the honeymoon chapter especially.” He wagged a finger at me. “But you haven’t made the changes that I asked for.”

“There’s a reason for that.”

“Yes?”

“Sonja Silbermann didn’t go home with you that night. That was a lie, Uncle, and an obvious one.”

He stopped chewing long enough to heave a measured sigh. “History belongs to the victors, Waldy, as the saying goes. You’re the historian in this family—not me. I won’t argue the point.” A hard laugh escaped him. “Just think if
I
were to write the story of my life! Do you imagine that the critics would be kind?”

“I don’t imagine they’d be kind at all.”

He shrugged his hunched shoulders. “You ought to know best.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Aren’t you my personal biographer?” He snuffled. “My Boswell? My number one fan?”

“I’m not your goddamn
Boswell
, you lunatic. I’d like nothing better than to erase you—every last trace of you, everything you’ve ever said, or done, or thought—out of existence.”

“I see!” he said, barely containing his mirth. “But if that’s the case,
Nefflein
, why am I still here?”

The violence I’d felt when I first discovered him—how many sleep cycles ago was it?—returned with a roar. I took a step toward him.

“Get down off that counter.”

“Time passes more swiftly at this elevation,” my great-uncle answered, stuffing a fistful of sprouts into his mouth. “The nearer to the surface of the earth one is, the lower the frequency of the light waves; and the lower the frequency of the light waves—”

“The longer it takes time to pass.”

“Well put, Waldy Junior! You sound like a Toula at last.”

“I’m a Tolliver,” I said. “Not the same thing at all.”

Waldemar shrugged again. Something he’d said had gotten under my skin, Mrs. Haven, though it took me a moment to see what it was.

“Time
isn’t
passing,” I told him. “Not here.”

“That’s your game, is it?” He let out a snuffle. “Not to worry! I won’t spoil your fun.”

I took another step forward. He was just out of reach.

“Get down from there, Uncle. Tell me where you’ve been since I last saw you.”