The River of No Return (33 page)

“Well.” He stretched his legs out and put his arms behind his head. “I came to set up a mistress, and I leave with one of the hounds of hell. Does the servant come with the dog? Because I’m sure I don’t know who in my household will be willing to deal with her.”

“You didn’t come to set up a mistress,” Alva said. “You came to learn about the Ofan.”

Nick stayed in his relaxed position, but every sense was on the alert. And so it was beginning.

Alva folded her hands in her lap. “What do you want to know?”

“You admit it, straight out? Don’t you understand that I am a member of the Guild? That they are out to uproot and perhaps even kill you?”

“I understand that very well, Nick. But do you
understand it? Are you working for the Guild and against me?”

He didn’t know what to say to that, so he straightened his cuffs. The gesture lost some of its brio when his fingers encountered the still-damp dog blood. “Damn.”

Alva took a handkerchief from her bodice and handed it to him. “This is all so hard to talk about,” she said as he wiped his fingers. “And I can’t even properly see your face. Do you mind if I put on my glasses? Since we’re discussing realities and not playing games?”

“Be my guest.”

Alva reached into her bosom again and extracted a pair of red plastic cat’s-eye glasses, wiped them unceremoniously with a fold of dress fabric, and propped them on her nose. She blinked at him a couple of times and then sighed. “That’s so much better.”

He had to laugh. “You are a woman of contradictions, Alva.”

“How?”

“Oh, I don’t know. The medieval peasant costume, the ridiculous dog, the beets, the quick change into demure fashion, the 1960s spectacles stored in your bodice . . . add to that your profession, your modern slang, and the mystery of your Ofanicness. . . .”

The violet eyes blinked. “I am not a contradiction to myself, Nick.”

“Why are you a courtesan?”

Alva’s smile turned upside down. It was not an unhappy or an offended frown, but it was thoughtful. “Why are you a womanizer?”

“I’m not a womanizer.”

“All right,” she said. “What do you call it?”

“Call what?”

“Your many lovers, Nick. Your trail of broken hearts.”

She wasn’t merely contradictory and remarkable—she was disconcerting in the extreme.

“I haven’t broken any hearts,” Nick said, sullen.

“Aren’t you a Casanova? A rake? A rogue? Come on, Nick. Please. Can we not just speak candidly with each other?”

“Oh, for the love of God. First the Guild and now you. Why do you all seem to know everything about my sex life?”

Alva peeked at him over her glasses. She looked more like a librarian by the second. “The Guild knows about you because they researched you. You probably have quite the fat file in the archives in Milton Keynes. They needed to know you would be interested in an assignment with a sexual element. Namely, their cockamamie plan whereby you would become my lover in order to gain entrée into the Ofan.”

“Not so cockamamie . . . you seemed to be agreeable at their ball.”

“Well, yes. But as we both know, you have refused to fall into my willing, or at least purchasable, arms.” She tilted her head. “Which is curious.”

“I didn’t intend to offend you,” Nick said. “It isn’t that you aren’t desirable. . . .”

“I’m not offended.” She righted her head, then tipped it to the other side. “You have made things easier. Now I can go ahead and tell you everything without the added step of taking you to bed.”

Nick laughed. “And that’s it? You’re just going to spill. Upon no knowledge of me whatsoever.”

“But of course! Why else do you suppose I showed up at that ridiculous party?” She held out her hand to him. “Come. Wouldn’t you like to see my catacombs?”

A
lva led the way down to the cellars. An open door revealed the kitchens, where Solvig, her foot bandaged, lay sleeping, a sonorous snore rattling the pots and pans that hung in gleaming copper glory from the thick, smoke-blackened beams. Alva stooped, lifted a small stone slab from the floor, and extracted an ancient-looking key and a blue plastic flashlight from the hole beneath it. She replaced the stone, fitted the key into the lock of a smaller door opposite the kitchens, and pushed it open on creaking hinges into a black hole from which cool, clean-smelling air wafted. She ducked her head to enter. “The catacombs,” she said, motioning for Nick to follow. “Please close the door behind you and lock it.” She handed him the key.

She held the light as he turned the key in the lock. “Don’t lose that,” she said. “We’ll need it to get back.”

Nick tucked the key into his pocket to make friends with the acorn and followed her. “Where are we going?”

“Under Soho Square,” she said. “You’ll see.” She turned and shone her light on what looked like pantry shelves. “My pickling,” she said of the rows of jars. Then she set off, and quickly enough the shelves of pickles petered out. The white beam picked out rough, arched stone walls and a flagstone floor.

“Who built this?”

“Romans. Extended at various points across the Middle Ages. It is perfectly safe. Look here.” Alva lifted her bean up high, and Nick saw that a stone shelf running all along the corridor up near the ceiling was lined with carefully stacked bones, each topped with a skull that grinned down at them. “We took these catacombs over in 1320, but we didn’t feel that we could remove the bodies, so the silent majority are tucked away everywhere.”

“Creepy.”

“Some of them are Ofan, actually. People who wanted to stay here. Personally, I want a glass coffin like Sleeping Beauty.”

“That’s even creepier.”

“Different strokes for different folks!” Alva lowered her flashlight and trotted on.

After a few yards, wooden built-in bookshelves began appearing along the lower walls, crammed with leather-bound books and rolled-up scrolls, most of them looking much the worse for wear. “Skulls and books,” Nick said. “Nice.”

“Clear eyes, full hearts.”

“You’re sick.”

“Probably.” Alva stopped and shone the flashlight on another door. It was massive and perfectly round. It looked as if it were a cross-section of a single, enormous tree, and indeed, now Nick could see the hundreds of diminishing rings. In the very center was a big, black door knocker, its black patina rubbed to shiny brass where generations of hands had grasped it.

Alva banged the knocker against the wood three times, but nothing happened.

“Damn it.” She banged it again, more loudly. Nothing.

“Peter is supposed to be on duty,” she said. “But I’m sure she’s off somewhere, bumming cigarettes or boring someone with her latest obsession.”

“Peter is a woman?”

“Hopefully someday,” Alva said. “She’s fifteen, going on nine.” She lifted the knocker a third time and set up a continuous banging for at least thirty seconds.

Finally they heard the sound of a heavy piece of wood being lifted away from the door on the other side, and a series of muffled curses, then the door began to swing inward silently.

An older, South Asian woman in jeans and a ratty Aran sweater stood there, one fist firmly planted on a hip, the other lifting a hurricane lamp.

“Hello, Archana,” Alva said. “Sorry to trouble you. It’s just me.”

Archana turned without a word and marched away, her light disappearing as she turned left.

“She’s mad at Peter, not at us,” Alva said blithely. “Will you help me get this thing closed again?”

Nick lifted the heavy wooden board and slotted it into place. “Not very advanced technology,” he said, remembering the gleaming metal door of Bertrand Penture’s inner sanctum. “The Guild has a much fancier system for keeping out intruders.”

“Yes, well, they like to feel important. Now then. Follow me.”

The corridor now ran at a slant, deeper under the earth, and it was fully lined with shelves to about chest level, and then with glass-fronted cabinets, topped with the ubiquitous bones. The shelves and cabinets bulged with books and papers, interspersed with musical instruments, rusty clockworks, toys, piles of empty picture frames, dusty bottles, swords, a kettle, and here and there a misplaced femur. A corridor branched off to the left, which Alva ignored, then quickly another went to the right. Alva flicked a switch and, down the length of the corridor, eight or ten dim electric lightbulbs flickered to life.

“Electricity? How is that possible?”

“Generator,” Alva said, switching off her flashlight. “It’s only strong enough to light a few bulbs at a time, so hopefully no one will turn a switch on elsewhere.” This corridor was like the others, arched, with messy shelves and cabinets, but these were interspersed with low wooden doorways, five on each side. “These are our offices,” Alva said. “Everyone who is located primarily in this time gets one. Mine is the third on the right. But I barely use it. In fact, it’s full of Peter’s spillover right now and I might just let her keep it.”

“There are only ten of you?”

“Yes, give or take. Others travel through. We can’t really support more than ten right now in this location. But we’re hoping to expand. We have our eyes on a couple of properties. . . .” She reached to turn the light off, but they went out with a pop before her fingers touched the switch. “Crap.” She turned her flashlight back on. “I’m not even in favor of the generator. It’s Archana’s pet project. But it’s funny how you’ll use things if they’re there.”

Nick’s head was reeling. “What is this place? What are you all doing here?”

Alva held the flashlight under her chin, turning her face into a ghoulish parody of her beautiful features. “Destroying the future,” she said in sepulchral tones. “Ruining it for everyone!”

“Yeah,” Nick said. “So they told me.”

“I bet they did. Come along.” Alva sped away like the White Rabbit, trotting past the ubiquitous shelving. “These all lead into libraries,” she said, flinging a hand toward a series of low, wooden doors on the right.

“Libraries? So what are all the books along the corridors?”

“Overflow. None of it’s really well organized, to be honest—even in the libraries. We haven’t had an archivist in a generation or two. Ah.” She pointed to a door with a thread of electric light spilling out from underneath. “That’s Archana’s lab,” she said. “If she was in a better mood I’d introduce you, but I don’t think it’s a good idea just now.”

“How can she bear to work in a hole in the ground?”

“Don’t assume that because this is a hole, it is damp and cold like a grave! Archana’s lab is warm and full of light.”

“Okay, but . . . this
is
a graveyard. I’m just saying.”

“Technicalities!”

They passed by.

“All right, here we are. The transporter.” Alva touched the handle of a square door. “Someone dubbed it the transporter because this is where we enter and leave from other times. It’s like in
Star Wars,
you know. ‘Beam me up, Scotty.’”

“That’s
Star Trek,
not
Star Wars
.”

“Oh, they’re different? Someone watched a lot of TV in Chile.”

“It was practically all they had us do.”

Alva sighed. “Lucky. I adore TV. But I jumped to 1790. I was illiterate, I only spoke Swedish, and all I knew how to do was tote water and grow beets and pray. The Guild locked me up in the most dreary castle in Scotland with a redheaded stepchild from Azerbaijan and a sex fiend from Alsace-Lorraine. I learned to read with the
New England Primer,
which is enough to drive anyone mad, and then advanced to an endless course of David Hume. . . . But, enough of that.” She threw open the door to the transporter. “Nice, isn’t it?”

Nick stepped inside. “But it’s a pub!” And it was. At first glance it was like the perfect country inn from his own time. Beautifully cozy, with low-beamed ceilings, fires crackling in the fireplaces, and big comfortable chairs set by the hearths. There were solid oak tables laid for eating, and candles flickering here and there in wall sconces. But on second glance, there was a pinball machine in a corner, a dartboard on one wall, and a mantelpiece piled high with paperback novels, a skull teetering on top. In another corner a wind-up Victrola opened its enormous red mouth into the room, and against a wall by the bar there stood a yellow upright piano with an intricate symbol painted above the keys: a many-spoked wheel, surrounded by eyes. A tuba and a trombone were crammed on top of the piano, and a banjo lay on its bench. A dusty disco ball hung off to the right.

Nick turned around, taking it all in. “What’s the idea?”

Alva leaned in the doorway, her arms crossed. “This is where we gather most nights. The Ofan who are visiting and those of us who are making our homes here. We hang out, drink, talk, make music, dance—fight, laugh, fall in love, break up—we argue about who the Ofan were and who we are and what we should aim to become. It’s a place of community, I suppose. It’s been here forever, and it’s got such a strong feeling to it, such a powerful sense of place and belonging and purpose, such a constant flow of feeling outward in every direction, that it’s very easy to jump to. People come and go from here as easily as hopping on and off a bar stool. And for those of us who gather here of an evening—well, we know we’re feeding the atmosphere, keeping it going.” She smiled at him. “Make sense?”

Nick nodded. “It does. I can almost feel it.”

Alva put her hand on his arm. “Don’t. Not yet. But . . .” She stepped into the room. “Would you like a beer? I know it’s early. . . .”

Another morning beer with another powerful time-traveling woman who was about to blow his mind. Nick opened his hands. “How could I possibly refuse?”

Alva went behind the bar and pulled them each a silver tankard of beer. Nick hooked his leg over a bar stool and watched. “Where does the smoke from the fireplaces go? I don’t remember chimneys sticking up out of Soho Square.”

She pushed his tapered mug across to him. “We’re not under the square anymore. Our catacombs extend under the surrounding streets. These chimneys are connected to a house up top.” Alva sipped her beer. Behind the bar, with her glasses perched on her nose and her careful coif beginning to slip, she looked, Nick thought, less and less real and more and more like a creature from a dream. She ought to have cat’s whiskers, or wings.

“What is the Guild?” She asked it as if she didn’t know, as if she were the most innocent of children.

“Is that a rhetorical question?” He curved his hand around the tankard. It wasn’t silver, he realized. It was pewter. Nick hoped it was twenty-first century pewter and that the Ofan knew about lead poisoning. He lifted it and drank, and enjoyed how gentle the alloy felt against the teeth, how the beer flowing from it tasted smoother. Another set of sensations he’d forgotten.

Alva propped her elbows on the bar, made a cradle of her interlaced fingers, and rested her chin in it. “I’m waiting for your answer.”

“The Guild is an organization,” Nick said. “A corporation. A government.”

“Yes . . . it’s all of those things. But what else?”

“Alice Gacoki—she is the Alderwoman in the early twenty-first century—”

“I know who she is.”

“She said the Guild is gearing up to be at war with the Ofan. So I suppose the Guild is also an army.”

“War . . .” Alva sighed and all the magic went out of her face. She looked like what she really was—a woman with cares and frustrations. “She used the word
war,
did she?”

“Yes.”

“Alice can be so blind!”

“She says the same about you, you know. And the rest of them seemed to agree about the coming war. Penture and Ahn and Arkady and the cheese inspector—”

“The what?”

Nick held up a hand. “You don’t want to know.”

“From the look on your face I’m fairly sure I do want to know!”

“Her name is Marjory Northway.”

Alva made a sour-milk expression. “She’s a real . . . well. Let’s just say she isn’t nearly warm enough to be the thing I was about to call her.”

Nick raised his eyebrows. “Wow. You really don’t like her.”

“That’s an understatement. I’m surprised you do.”

“I don’t.”

“But you slept with her.”

“Oh, my God.” Nick scraped his bar stool back and stood. “You know that, too?”

Alva laughed and clapped her hands. “I didn’t! I guessed! And you fell into my trap!”

“You are all crazy. All of you. Guild, Ofan . . . total nutters.” He drank.

“Yes, probably. But we are crazy in different ways. Shall we sit?” She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose, picked up her tankard, came round to his side of the bar, and pulled out a chair at a small table.

Nick took a seat across from her. The tabletop was quarter-sawn oak, and the tiger stripes of the grain shimmered in the firelight. The warmth from the crackling flames enveloped Nick. He could feel the currents and eddies of time all around him, gentle, inviting. “I like it here,” he said, stretching his legs under the table. “If this is insanity, it feels good.”

“Yes, and we want it to last. It used to last. Before everything changed.” She propped her elbows on the table and leaned toward him. “Have they told you?”

“About the Pale?”

“Yes. About the Pale, and the Talisman, and all of it.”

Nick laced his hands behind his head and leaned back. “I doubt they’ve told me all of it, Alva. The Guild is stingy with its information. But yes. When you say ‘Pale’ and ‘Talisman’ I understand you. I’m supposed to get you to tell me what the Talisman is and where it is. Perhaps you keep it in your bodice with your glasses.”

She gave his sally a perfunctory smile, but it died immediately. “I do not hold out much hope that a magical object will save us from the Pale. But we get ahead of ourselves. You were answering my question. The Guild is a corporation, a government, I think you said? And according to Alice et al. it is now also an army preparing for war.”