He flattered himself that he was in some small part responsible for such blissful bizarrities, given that over the years he’d brought all manner of influences through from the Succulent Rock. There was always a hunger for newspapers and magazines (usually preferred to books) and he’d heard of baptizers in Patashoqua who named children by stabbing a copy of the London Times with a pin and bequeathing the first three words they pricked upon the infant, however unmusical the combination. But he was not the only influence. He hadn’t brought the crocodile, or the zebra, or the dog (though he would lay claim to the parrot). No, there had always been routes through from Earth into the Dominions, other than that at the Retreat. Some, no doubt, had been opened by Maestros and esoterics, in all manner of cultures, for the express purpose of their passing to and fro between worlds. Others were conceivably opened by accident, and perhaps remained open, marking the sites as haunted or sacred, shunned or obsessively protected. Yet others, these in the smallest number, had been created by the sciences of the other Dominions, as a means of gaining access to the heaven of the Succulent Rock.
In such a place, this near the walls of the Iahmandhas in the Third Dominion, Godolphin had acquired his most sacred possession: a Boston Bowl, complete with its forty-one coloured stones. Though he’d never used it, the Bowl was reputedly the most accurate prophetic tool known in the worlds, and now - sitting amid his treasures, with a sense growing in him that events on Earth in the last few days were leading to some matter of moment - he brought the Bowl down from its place on the highest shelf, unwrapped it, and set it on the table. Then he took the stones from their pouch and laid them at the bottom of the Bowl. Truth to tell, the arrangement didn’t look particularly promising: the Bowl resembled something for kitchen use, plain fired ceramic, large enough to whip eggs for a couple of soufflés. The stones were more colourful, varying in size and shape from tiny, flat pebbles to perfect spheres the size of an eyeball.
Having set them out, Godolphin had second thoughts. Did he even believe in prophecy? And if he did, was it wise to know the future? Probably not. Death was bound to be in there somewhere, sooner or later. Only Maestros and deities lived forever, and a man might sour the balance of his span knowing when it was going to end. But then, suppose he found in this Bowl some indication as to how the Society might be handled? That would be no small weight off his shoulders.
‘Be brave,’ he told himself, and laid the middle finger of each hand upon the rim, as Peccable, who’d once owned such a Bowl and had it smashed by his wife in a domestic row, had instructed.
Nothing happened at first, but Peccable had warned him the Bowls usually took some time to start from cold. He waited, and waited. The first sight of activation was a rattling from the bottom of the Bowl as the stones began to move against each other, the second, a distinctly acidic odour rising to jab at his sinuses, the third, and most startling, the sudden ricocheting of one pebble, then two, then a dozen, across the Bowl and back, several skipping higher than the rim. Their ambition increased by the movement, until all forty-one were in violent motion, so violent that the Bowl began to move across the table, and Oscar had to take a firm hold of it to keep it from turning over. The stones struck his fingers and knuckles with stinging force, but the pain made sweeter the success that now followed, as the speed and motion of the multifarious shapes and colours began to describe images in the air above the Bowl.
Like all prophecy, the signs were in the eye of the beholder, and perhaps another witness would have seen quite different forms in the blur. But what Godolphin saw seemed quite plain to him. The Retreat for one, half-hidden in the copse. Then himself, standing in the middle of the mosaic, either coming back from Yzordderrex or preparing to depart. The images lingered for only a brief time before changing, the Retreat demolished in the storm of stones and a new structure raised in the whirl: the Tower of the Tabula Rasa. He fixed his eyes on the prophecy with fresh deliberation, denying himself the comfort of blinking to be certain he missed nothing. The Tower as seen from the street gave way to its interior. Here they were, the wise ones, sitting around the table contemplating their divine duty. They were navel-defluffers and snot-rollers to a man. Not one of them would be capable of surviving an hour in the alleyways of East Yzordderrex, he thought, down by the harbour where even the cats had pimps. Now he saw himself step into the picture, and something he was doing or saying made the men and women before him jump from their seats, even Lionel.
‘What’s this?’ Oscar murmured.
They had wild expressions on their faces, every one. Were they laughing? What had he done? Cracked a joke? Passed wind? He studied the prophecy more closely. No, it wasn’t humour on their faces. It was horror.
‘Sir?’
Dowd’s voice from outside the door broke his concentration. He looked away from the Bowl for a few seconds to snap: ‘Go away.’
But Dowd had urgent news. ‘McGann’s on the telephone,’ he said.
‘Tell him you don’t know where I am,’ Oscar snorted, returning his gaze to the Bowl.
Something terrible had happened in the time between his looking away and looking back. The horror remained on their faces, but for some reason he’d disappeared from the scene. Had they dispatched him summarily? God, was he dead on the floor? Maybe. There was something glistening on the table, like spilled blood.
‘Sir!’
‘Fuck off, Dowdy.’
‘They know you’re here, sir.’
They knew; they knew. The house was being watched, and they knew.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Tell him I’ll be down in a moment.’
‘What did you say, sir?’
Oscar raised his voice over the din of the stones, looking away again, this time more willingly: ‘Get his whereabouts. I’ll call him back.’
Again, he returned his gaze to the Bowl, but his concentration had faltered, and he could no longer interpret the images concealed in the motion of the stones. Except for one. As the speed of the display slowed he seemed to catch - oh so fleetingly - a woman’s face in the mêlée. His replacement at the Society’s table, perhaps; or his dispatcher.
2
He needed a drink before he spoke to McGann, and Dowd, ever the anticipator, had already mixed him a whisky and soda, but he forsook it for fear it would loosen his tongue. Paradoxically, what had been half-revealed by the Boston Bowl helped him in his exchange. In extreme circumstances he responded with almost pathological detachment: it was one of his most English traits. He had thus seldom been cooler or more controlled than now, as he told McGann that yes indeed he had been travelling, and no, it was none of the Society’s business where or about what pursuit. He would of course be delighted to attend a gathering at the Tower the following day, but was McGann aware (indeed did he care?) that tomorrow was Christmas Eve?
‘I never miss Midnight Mass at St Martin’s-in-the-Field,’ Oscar told him, ‘so I’d appreciate it greatly if the meeting could be concluded quickly enough to allow me time to get there and find a pew with a good view.’
He delivered all of this without a tremor in his voice. McGann attempted to press him as to his whereabouts in the last few days, to which Oscar asked why the hell it mattered.
‘I don’t ask about your private affairs, now do I?’ he said, in a mildly affronted tone. ‘Nor, by the way, do I spy on your comings and goings. Don’t splutter, McGann. You don’t trust me and I don’t trust you. I will take tomorrow’s meeting as a forum to debate the privacy of the Society’s members, and a chance to remind the gathering that the name of Godolphin is one of the cornerstones of the Society.’