Downtime - Marc Platt [56]
Sunday dinner with boiled leg of mutton and caper sauce.
Stewed greengages with egg custard. Cook in a fluster when Disraeli the spaniel stole the vanilla blancmange. Mother taking camomile medicine for her poorly stomach.
It always ended in sadness.
Suppose they had fled the house near Canterbury? She and her father. Away from the horror and cruelty of the Daleks who imprisoned her there. Brutal monstrosities, forever screaming orders at her and pushing her to and fro while they engaged in their horrible experiments.
Where would they have gone? Back to London? Or even Oxford? Would she have married? Would she be running her own household, bearing a baker’s dozen of children and having two dozen more grandchildren playing around her skirts? Would that be fulfilling enough?
The modern world had become almost unrecognizable.
Moral codes that had been strictly dictated by Victorian society were now more and more in the domain of the individual. Even so, her students were devoted to their studies.
Perhaps too much. There was little of the wildness that seemed to dominate society at large. She was almost glad when one of them did rebel a little. That was why Daniel Hinton must be cared for.
The world still frightened her by the speed with which it changed. She was forced to rely on Christopher for guidance.
She didn’t like him, but he was single-mindedly brilliant at organizing and promoting the university. Even if the results were strange, she trusted him because the Chancellor said he was the best man for the job. In modern terms, Christopher had the twentieth century sussed and she was left on a shelf in the antiques market. If only he didn’t lunch quite so often.
Her privilege was to liaise with the Chancellor. Her task was to find the thing he craved, the vital Locus that had been missing for over twenty-five years. His voice had lately grown more fierce, his endless demands more wearying. The staring white eye of the monitor, his blind eye, burned out at her as his harsh whisper echoed into the shadowy office. The voice dislodged other sounds that scattered around it as he tore angrily at the injustice of the sacrifice he had made. The suffering was great for those who sought Enlightenment. Only she could offer consolation.
‘The Locus must be recovered now!’
He was bad today. Ranting accusations at her. It was as much as she could do to stay calm. She was on a knife-edge. ‘I gave you my word. Soon.’
On an impulse, she reached for the box on her desk. It was a surprise and a relief to see that the silvered globe was back in its place, although she could not remember how it had returned.
The voice gave an almost inhuman groan of pain. ‘You know nothing of this blind, empty outer darkness where I am bound... It is unendurable!’
Victoria closed her eyes and said quietly, ‘I do not belong in this world. My family and friends are all lost in time.’
There seemed to be something there that he understood. His rage subsided. He sounded broken and alone. ‘We are both outcast, Victoria.’
‘That’s why we work together. I built you this place with the money my dear father invested one hundred and thirty years ago. In return, you promised us the Light of Truth.’
There was a burst of hollow laughter. ‘There is no Light.’
Again the voice settled, but there was a threat behind it. ‘I trust you, Victoria.’
She rose from her place and walked to the window.
Daylight was seeping in from a gap at the edge of the blind.
‘And I trust you,’ she said.
The monitor eye was suddenly aware that she had moved.
The terminal began to turn back and forth, searching blindly for her. ‘One Locus still binds my... power. The others were dealt with long ago. The last one must, will, be ready for my return.’
She blanched as the glare swept over and past her. At last, the screen