The Indigo King - James A. Owen [121]
None of the companions broached the topic again to ask what Bert meant by this, and Hugo and Rose seemed to be more interested in ordering dinner than in more debates about Archipelago business.
They ordered some food, and more drinks (noting that Burton had left a sizeable tab), and ruminated on what had happened just a few days earlier. One thing was clear—their adversaries were more aware of them than they had been. And they’d been much more active. And that would have to change, John promised himself. It was no longer good enough to simply react.
“So everything Burton did was predicated on the belief Charles would be walking in the park with us Saturday night?” said Jack. “What a stroke of luck that you were detained in Paris!”
“Not luck, but Jules Verne,” said Bert, “and the power of cause and effect.” He turned to Charles. “Jules deliberately had you detained so that you wouldn’t be at risk, then sent the Grail book to Jack.”
“But Hugo’s warning was incomplete,” Jack stammered. “How did that help anything? Why couldn’t Jules simply warn us outright?”
“Cause and effect,” Bert repeated. “By the time he stopped Charles, he discovered Hugo had to go, and in fact, had already gone.”
“This is very confusing,” said Hugo.
Bert nodded in understanding. “It gets worse. He got the first inklings of what was going on when Hank Morgan showed up at Sam Clemens’s house carrying the dragon watch. He told us where and when you were, and Jules began to prepare the room on Sanctuary with the Lanterna Magica. Jules arranged for Pellinor—who was meant to be the first Green Knight, incidentally—to be at the river where Hugo would appear, and persuaded him to take you to Camelot by promising him a chance to battle his ‘Questing Beast.’ You botched that up, Hugo, when you stabbed Merlin. Our concerns were realized and verified later, when Hank sent us a message that he’d indeed met Hugo Dyson.”
“That was the message you got fourteen years ago, when you came back to London to find us,” said Jack. “But you—the you in Albion—told us that you’d been trapped there and had to wait for us. How is it you’re here now ali—unharmed and whole?”
“That was the risk we took,” said Bert, “that you would change what had happened. And you did.”
“I’d like to meet Verne for one reason more than any other,” put in Jack.
“What’s that?” said Bert.
“I want to show him his own skull,” Jack said as he took a drink of ale. “It’s on the desk in my study.”
“It just occurred to me,” John said. “Did anyone ever get Pellinor out of the tree?”
Bert pulled a copy of the Little Whatsit out of his bag and thumbed through to one of the back pages. “Ah, no,” he replied with a smirk. “They didn’t.”
“We’re going to need to spend some time at the Great Whatsit on Paralon,” said Jack. “We have a lot of history that we’ll have to unlearn, beginning with the chronicles of Arthur, as the Cartographer was suggesting. We need to know what’s changed as a result of this little adventure, and what hasn’t.”
“Jules has already begun tracking the changes,” said Bert. “There have been some discrepancies found here and there in the Histories. One in particular came to our attention fourteen years ago, as Jules began keeping a Chronologue of the various jaunts through time.”
“Discrepancies?” said John. “With what?”
“Oh, nothing attached to you, dear boy,” Bert said, turning to Jack with a Cheshire grin. “But you, lad, are another matter entirely.”
“Me?” Jack exclaimed. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
“Then how do you explain the apparently nonfictional, absolutely true, two-thousand-year-old tale that begat the story of Jack the Giant Killer?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” said Jack. “Not all stories are true, are they? Not all of them really happened.” He paused. “Or did they?”
“Time will tell, my boy,” said Bert. “Time will tell.”
Epilogue
Chancellor Murdoch entered the small room where the leaders