The Second Forever (6 page)

‘
C
an we go outside now?' asked Festival the next morning. ‘We still have days to wait until the full moon.'

‘Yes,' said Peter. ‘We'll go to the botanic gardens. It used to be the only outside place that came anywhere near being as wonderful as here.'

Before the drought it only took an hour or so to reach the gardens, but since the rains had failed, everything had been slowed down to conserve energy and water. Private cars were almost unknown now. They lay unused in driveways and gardens. The air was so thick with dust that their engines would choke to a standstill in less than a
kilometre.

Only the network of electric trains that criss-crossed the city were still in regular service. They had been half-empty before the drought, but now there were queues all day long. With the trains running at half-speed and the overcrowded carriages, daily life was no longer running at the pace it had been before.

There were thousands of people who thought this wasn't a bad thing. The world had seemed to be running faster and faster for no good reason at all, and it didn't necessarily make them any happier. Quite the opposite, in fact. More and more people had felt under ever-increasing pressure without even a moment to stop and ask why.

Of course, the drought had brought a wealth of other problems, so the new slower pace of life wasn't actually making people any more content. It was just introducing different problems. Some people handled the new situation better, so they were naturally happier. Others didn't and kept wishing for the good old days, but then humans had always done that, rain, shine, drought or blizzard.

Festival had never seen Peter's world any other way, so everything was wonderful and fascinating. Simply going under the ground into a station and riding on a train was new and exciting.

They changed trains and left the tunnels, riding
the last seven stations above ground through clouds of frantic dust. Then they were there, along suburban streets and across a wide road to the four-metre high wall that stretched away in both directions.

‘My mum used to bring me here all the time when I was little,' said Peter. ‘Apart from the museum, I think it's the most spectacular place in the world. When I was ten, she let me go without her and sometimes I came more than twice a week. A few times I even hid and stayed all night. Mum didn't mind. She always knew where I was and that I'd be safe there. I know all the big trees and plenty of people who work here.'

They walked along until they came to an iron gate, but it was closed shut with a heavy padlock and chain. So was the next gate and the next, until they reached the main entrance. That was locked too, but there was someone inside who saw the children and approached them.

‘Hello, Peter,' he said. ‘I haven't seen you for a while.'

‘I know,' said Peter. ‘I've wanted to come, but you know how it is.'

‘Incredibly sad, that's how it is,' said the man at the gate. ‘Plants are dying every day.' He unlocked the gate and beckoned the two children in, then locked it again. ‘We've closed,' he said. ‘No one really wants
to come here now, and we thought that without any visitors tramping about disturbing the dust, it might give the plants that little extra chance. Half our staff have gone, too.

‘When you're ready, just come to the office over there and I'll let you out,' the man added.

That was happening everywhere. Tens of thousands of people were being thrown out of work as the world slowly died. Peter could see it in the museum. There were very few visitors now, and most of them would find a quiet corner to sit for a few hours until it was time to leave.

The gardens looked desperate. The grass had long gone, suffocated by the dust. The lakes, which had been home to exotic birds from all around the world, were empty and only differed from the surrounding lawns by being dents in the ground. Most of the great glass houses were deserted and choked up too.

Only the Great Palm House was still alive. Every single resource the gardens could lay its hands on was focused on keeping it this way. Huge screens and filters had been built in front of the remaining door that still opened to keep out the slaughtering drought, and there was a line of ladders leaning against the tall glass walls. There were people at the top of three of the ladders, brushing the dust from the huge curved roof.

‘Oh, Peter,' a young woman said as she led Peter
and Festival through the dust barriers, ‘if we lose this, I think it will be the end of everything.'

Peter had known the young woman, Susan, since his grandfather had first brought him to the gardens when he had been seven. Over the years they had become friends and even talked about Peter going to work there when he was old enough.

The place was practically empty inside. The botanic gardens had kept the Great Palm House a secret.

‘Can you imagine what people would do if they knew it was still alive like this?' said Susan. ‘They'd destroy it in less than a day just to get the water or simply out of spite.'

‘Water?' said Peter. ‘There's water?'

Susan nodded.

There were sparrows living in the tops of the trees, and some of the more exotic ducks from the dried-up lakes had been brought inside and were paddling about in the small ponds. The ponds were joined together by narrow streams that ran under old iron grating let into the tiled paths between the beds of plants that came from every corner of the world. At one end of the huge glasshouse was an enormous rock smothered in lush moss and ferns. The water that fed the ponds came out of these ferns, and as it reached the end of the last pond it fell over a smooth wide rock and vanished beneath a confusion of leaves.
There were flashes of gold in the water as carp swam between the water lilies.

Festival was speechless. There was nothing like this in her world. Apart from the overgrown wilderness of the island, which she has only visited the one time with Peter, there were very few trees in her world and certainly no orchids and lilies like there were here.

‘Was your entire world like this?' she asked. ‘Before it stopped raining?'

‘Our world?' said Susan. ‘What do you mean “our world”?'

‘Oh, she comes from Australia,' Peter said. ‘From the outback, where it's practically a desert.'

‘Yes,' said Festival.

‘Some bits of the world were like this,' said Peter. ‘And some bits were like your outback.'

‘And lots of other places were sort of in between,' added the young woman. ‘It all depended on the climate. To get plants like this, you need to be in the tropics.'

Festival hadn't the faintest idea what the tropics were. She wanted to ask, but realised she couldn't without giving away where she came from.

The air was heavy and damp like a forest after rain, like the jungles of the world had once been. The feeling of the rich air reaching down into the Peter's
lungs took away any doubt he might have had about re-creating the book.

‘I'd forgotten what it was like,' he said as he felt his eyes fill with tears.

‘I know,' said Susan. ‘We all took it for granted. We never thought things would change.'

Peter sat down on a low wall that surrounded a bed of great tree ferns and pushed his fingers into the wet earth. ‘I wish we could stay here forever,' he said.

‘This place certainly makes you feel that way,' said Susan.

‘Yes,' said Peter. ‘Whenever my grandfather used to
bring me here before the drought, I used to pretend this was where I lived. I always thought that, even when I got older, and now it's even worse. I really do want to stay here forever.'

Festival sat down beside Peter and put her hand on his shoulder. ‘Don't worry,' she said. ‘We'll make it right again.'

They remained in the Great Palm House until dusk and then walked to the station to catch the last train back to the museum.

‘The Great Palm House is a bit like my world,' said Festival, ‘only much smaller. You can stand anywhere and see the boundaries. It is wonderful.'

‘I suppose it is,' said Peter. ‘Except your world doesn't have a door that lets you go in and out whenever you like.'

‘Not that we know about,' said Festival.

It was dark when they returned to the museum and Peter's father was waiting anxiously inside the locked gates, the keys in his hand. ‘I was getting worried,' he said.

‘I told Mum we were going to the botanic gardens,' Peter said.

‘I know, but we thought you'd be back before it got dark.'

‘Sorry,' said Peter. ‘We just got talking to someone who works there and forgot the time.' He remem
bered that Susan had made them promise not to tell anyone about the Great Palm House. ‘Not even your parents,' she had said.

‘And how are the gardens?' said Peter's father as they entered the museum.

‘The same as everywhere else,' said Peter. ‘Dying.'

‘Even the big greenhouses,' Festival added.

The next morning while it was still dark, Peter was shaken awake by his grandfather.

‘We have had a visitor,' he whispered. ‘Come with me.'

The main fossil gallery was completely wrecked. Every case was smashed, every door torn off its hinges and every drawer thrown upside down to the floor and shattered. Papers were ripped to shreds, the models re-created from the fossilised skeletons were all broken to pieces; armatures, feathers, fur and papier-mâché skin ripped apart.

‘See?' said the old man. ‘We're being listened to.'

The gallery looked as if it had been devastated by
war. Nothing had been left untouched, not even the ancient panelling, which had been smashed to pieces, revealing the granite walls behind it that would not have seen the light of day since the museum had been built over two hundred and fifty years earlier.

But of all the destruction, none was more detailed and total than the annihilation of the giant bat. It had been torn apart over and over again until nothing larger than a fingernail was left. This had not been the work of someone just searching for the book. This had been a deliberate massacre. This had been done to make sure that Peter and Festival would never be able to return to Festival's world.

‘Or,' said Peter's grandfather, ‘to make sure that if you did find some way back there, you would not be able to come back here. Look.' He bent down and picked up a handful of tiny bronze shards from among the debris that littered the floor. ‘They didn't need to obliterate the bat,' he said. ‘They had already shattered the Journey Bell.'

Peter's grandfather picked up a notebook and a pencil from his bedside table and wrote:
Or so they think.

Peter then took the pencil and notebook from his grandfather and wrote:
Do you think there is anywhere in the museum where we're not being bugged?

The old man shook his head before writing:
Though things that may seem bad can often be used to one's advantage.

He beckoned them to follow him and they left the museum. A mile or so away was a park, which, since the drought, had become completely empty. The three of them went out into the middle of a large empty space that had once been grass on which people had walked and played and picnicked and sat down.

‘We are safe here,' said Peter's grandfather.

‘Take this,' he continued, and handed Peter a tiny music player. ‘On here is a recording of the Journey Bell. I could be wrong, but I think if you play it during the full moon, all the pieces of the great bat, even down to the last hair, will be put together again and the bat will come to you. It's not as though it's “alive” in the normal sense of the word.'

‘So I can still go home?' said Festival.

‘Not with the bat,' said the old man. ‘You need to leave now, before the full moon. If you wait for Darkwood, who probably knows how you got back here, he will come before then and force you to give him the book.'

‘But why?' said Peter. ‘Why would he want to stop us fixing the drought and the flood?'

‘Revenge,' said the old man.

‘Revenge?'

‘Yes, I think knowing he can never die and living
with the guilt of what he created has worn away at his heart and destroyed his soul, and now he hates everything,' said the old man. ‘I believe he thinks that if he can't find peace and die, then he wants to make the rest of mankind suffer as much as he can. Thousands will drown and those in our world will die of drought. Eventually, there will only be him and the Ancient Child left on earth.'

‘But he was the one who made the book in the first place,' said Festival. ‘He can't blame everyone else.'

‘No, but he does.'

The old man explained that the Ancient Child had been born with a terrible incurable disease that meant he would slowly waste away in excruciating pain by the time he was ten years old. Every day of those ten years would be unrelenting suffering, no days or even hours of respite, no relief with any known treatment.

‘That was why Darkwood created the book, to save the life of his child,' said Peter's grandfather. ‘And who could blame him? What parent wouldn't have done the same thing if they could? Of course his child was a baby when all this happened, so he knew nothing about it until years later.'

‘But how will we get back without the bat?' said Peter.

‘Through the wall,' said the old man.

‘Wall?'

‘Oh, come on. Did you really think I didn't know about the space behind the wall in the cat mummy's room?' said Peter's grandfather. ‘Archimedes told me. He was Darkwood's cat.'

The old man continued, ‘Archimedes was sitting on Darkwood's lap when he read his baby son the book, but unlike the Ancient Child, when you destroyed the book, he was freed. Still, he left another to look out for you. You have met her, haven't you?'

‘Yes,' said Festival. ‘Peter has called her Syracuse.'

‘Of course,' said the old man. ‘That's her name.'

‘
Her
name?' asked Peter. ‘I thought . . .'

‘. . . Syracuse was a boy,' finished Festival.

‘Why did you think that?'

‘I don't know,' said Peter. ‘I just kind of assumed.'

‘No, Syracuse is most definitely not a boy,' said the old man with a grin.

As they walked back to the museum, he made it clear that Peter and Festival had to leave that very night. They knew he was right, but the thought of climbing through the hole in the wall was frightening.

‘It will be fine,' said the old man to Peter. ‘You will carry the book.

‘And you will carry Syracuse,' he added, turning to Festival.

‘But . . .' Peter began.

‘There is no but. You have no choice,' said his grandfather. ‘Now, we must not talk about it anymore. I will meet you in the little room at eleven o'clock, when your parents are asleep. I will bring the book and Syracuse. We will not speak a single word.'

‘Eleven o'clock?' said Festival. ‘Why then?'

‘Extra insurance,' said the old man. ‘I suspect that Darkwood will have people watching in case you somehow arrive before the full moon, and secret journeys traditionally happen at midnight. If you go an hour earlier, you will have time to get to safety.'

‘People watching?' said Peter. ‘Has Darkwood got spies?'

‘Of course. People like him always do,' said his
grandfather. ‘Even people as solitary and evil as Darkwood can find someone to serve them, but whoever and wherever they are, he keeps them well hidden.' The old man stopped opposite the museum gates and, before crossing the road, he put a hand on each child's shoulder. ‘Don't worry. Everything will work out for the best, and by the next full moon you will be back in time to see the rain return.'

They crossed the road, walked through the gates and up the steps back into the museum.

‘I think you are right, Peter,' said the old man in a loud clear voice. ‘The dust is beginning to clear.'

‘I am sure it is, Grandfather,' said Peter.

‘Well, why don't we measure it again tomorrow?' said Festival. ‘We should go to the same place every day until the next full moon and take samples.'

‘I agree,' said Peter. ‘It will help pass the time for the next two weeks.'