Dowd had stayed out of the Retreat all the time he’d waited for Godolphin (a wearisome three days) even though it would have given him some measure of protection against the bitter cold. Not that his system was susceptible to such discomforts, but he fancied himself an empathic soul, and his time on Earth had taught him to feel cold as an intellectual concept, if not a physical one, and he might have wished to take shelter. Anywhere other than the Retreat. Not only had many esoterics died there (and he didn’t enjoy the proximity of death unless he’d been its bringer), but the Retreat was a passing place between the Fifth Dominion and the other four, including, of course, the home from which he was in permanent exile. To be so close to the door through which his home lay, and be prevented by the conjurations of his first keeper, Joshua Godolphin, from opening that door, was painful. The cold was preferable.
He stepped inside now, however, having no choice in the matter. The Retreat had been built in neo-classical style: twelve marble pillars rising to support a dome that called for decoration, but had none. The plainness of the whole lent it gravity, and a certain functionalism which was not inappropriate. It was, after all, no more than a station, built to serve countless passengers and now used by only one. On the floor, set in the middle of the elaborate mosaic that appeared to be the building’s sole concession to prettification but was in fact the evidence of its true purpose, were the bundles of artifacts Godolphin brought back from his travels, neatly tied up by Hoi-Polloi Nuits-St-Georges, the knots encrusted with scarlet sealing wax. It was her present delight, this business with the wax, and Dowd cursed it, given that it fell to him to unpack these treasures. He crossed to the centre of the mosaic, light on his heels. This was tremulous terrain, and he didn’t trust it. But moments later, he emerged with his freight, to find that Godolphin was already marching out of the copse that screened the Retreat from both the house (empty, of course; in ruins) and any casual spy who peered over the wall. He took a deep breath and went after his master, knowing the explanation ahead would not be easy.
2
‘So they’ve summoned me, have they?’ Oscar said, as they drove back into London, the traffic thickening with the dusk. ‘Well, let them wait.’
‘You’re not going to tell them you’re here?’
‘In my time, not in theirs. This is a mess, Dowdy. A wretched mess.’
‘You told me to help Estabrook if he needed it.’
‘Helping him hire an assassin isn’t what I had in mind.’
‘Chant was very discreet.’
‘Death makes you that way, I find. You really have made a pig’s ear of the whole thing.’
‘I protest,’ said Dowd. ‘What else was I supposed to do? You knew he wanted the woman dead, and you washed your hands of it.’
‘All true,’ said Godolphin. ‘She is dead, I assume?’
‘I don’t think so. I’ve been scouring the papers, and there’s no mention.’
‘So why did you have Chant killed?’
Here Dowd was more cautious in his account. If he said too little, Godolphin would suspect him of concealment. Too much, and the larger picture might become apparent. The longer his employer stayed in ignorance of the scale of the stakes, the better. He proffered two explanations, both ready and waiting:
‘For one thing, the man was more unreliable than I‘d thought. Drunk and maudlin half the time. And I think he knew more than was good for either you or your brother. He might have ended up finding out about your travels.’
‘Instead it’s the Society that’s suspicious.’
‘It’s unfortunate the way these things turn out.’
‘Unfortunate, my arse. It’s a total balls-up is what it is.’
‘I’m very sorry.’
‘I know you are, Dowdy,’ Oscar said. ‘The point is, where do we find a scapegoat?’
‘Your brother?’
‘Perhaps,’ Godolphin replied, cannily concealing the degree to which this suggestion found favour.
‘When should I tell them that you’ve come back?’ Dowd asked.
‘When I’ve made up a lie I can believe in,’ came the reply.
Back in the house in Regent’s Park Road, Oscar took some time to study the newspaper reports of Chant’s death before retiring to his treasure house on the third floor with both his new artifacts and a good deal to think about. There was a sizeable part of him that wanted to exit this Dominion once and for all. Take himself off to Yzordderrex and set up business with Peccable; marry Hoi-Polloi despite her crossed eyes; have a litter of kids and retire to the Hills of the Conscious Cloud, in the Third, and raise parrots. But he knew he’d yearn for England sooner or later, and a yearning man could be cruel. He’d end up beating his wife, bullying his kids and eating the parrots. So, given that he’d always have to keep a foot in England, if only during the cricket season, and given that as long as he kept a presence here he would be answerable to the Society, he had to face them.
He locked the door of his treasure room, sat down amongst his collection, and waited for inspiration. The shelves around him, which were built to the ceiling, were bowed beneath the weight of his trove. Here were items gathered from the edge of the Second Dominion to the limits of the Fourth. He had only to pick one of them up to be transported back to the time and place of its acquisition. The Statue of the Etook Ha’chiit he’d bartered for in a little town called Slew, which was now. regrettably, a blasted spot, its citizens the victims of a purge visited upon them for the crime of a song, written in the dialect of their community, suggesting that the Autarch of Yzordderrex lacked testicles.
Another of his treasures, the seventh volume of Gaud Maybellome’s Encyclopaedia of Heavenly Signs, originally written in the language of Third Dominion academics but widely translated for the delectation of the proletariat, he’d bought from a woman in the city of Jassick, who’d approached him in a gaming room where he was attempting to explain cricket to a group of the locals, and said she recognized him from stories her husband (who was in the Autarch’s army in Yzordderrex) had told.
‘You’re the English male,’ she’d said, which didn’t seem worth denying.
Then she’d shown him the book: a very rare volume indeed. He’d never ceased to find fascination within its pages, for it was Maybellome’s intention to make an encyclopaedia listing all the flora, fauna, languages, sciences, ideas, moral perspectives - in short, anything that occurred to her - that had found their way from the Fifth Dominion, the Place of the Succulent Rock, through to the other worlds. It was a Herculean task, and she’d died just as she was beginning the nineteenth volume, with no end in sight, but even the one book in Godolphin’s possession was enough to guarantee that he would search for the others until his dying day. It was a bizarre, almost surreal volume. Even if only half the entries were true, or nearly true, Earth had influenced just about every aspect of the worlds from which it was divided. Fauna, for instance. There were countless animals listed in the volume which Maybellome claimed to be invaders from the other world. Some clearly were: the zebra, the crocodile, the dog. Others were a mixture of genetic strands, part terrestrial, part non. But many of these species (pictured in the book like fugitives from a mediaeval bestiary) were so outlandish he doubted their very existence. Here, for instance, were hand-sized wolves, with the wings of canaries. Here was an elephant that lived in an enormous conch. Here was a literate worm that wrote omens with its thread-fine, half-mile body. Wonderment upon wonderment. Godolphin only had to pick up the encyclopaedia and he was ready to put on his boots and set off for the Dominions again.
What was self-evident from even a casual perusal of the book was how extensively the unreconciled Dominion had influenced the others. The