West pursed his lips and carefully picked up a single fallen soldier. Then he stood, walked around the room once with hands behind his back in an old man’s waddle, locked the door and returned to his chair.
‘How is your mother?’ he asked.
‘We have not spoken for a while,’ Peter said. ‘I believe she is still with the Labour Ministry.’
‘Actually, I did know that. That is too bad. She would love to hear from you, I think.’
Peter said nothing.
‘So, what can I do for you, Peter? You have a message for me from Mansfeld, your C, I believe?’
Peter stared at the game pieces on the table. He remembered the first game with West, the one the old man let him win. This felt the same, and all his carefully planned hints and allusions melted away before the prime minister’s silver gaze.
‘It is not just that,’ he said slowly. ‘You know I have never told anyone about you and my mother,’ he said.
‘I know. We are so good at the unspoken things.’
‘There is something I need for my work. If you give it to me, I will remain silent on the … things we cannot speak of.’
West sighed. ‘I was afraid this might happen,’ he said. ‘You are angry with me.’
‘No.’ He just hated the secrets and the lies.
The prime minister leaned back. ‘I completely understand if you are. I did not treat your mother well. I have had some success with love and remain on friendly terms with most of those I have loved. But with your mother, it was a delicate time, with the Dimensionism just getting started, you understand. It probably makes little difference to you. Still, I tried to make up for it, in some small way. I have done things for you over the years, eased your path a little.’ His face darkened. ‘I never wanted the Summer Court to take you. That was a mistake. Someone thought it would please me, and it did not.’
Peter flinched. No wonder penetrating the Court had seemed easy. He had chalked it up to the SIS officers’ incompetence and the Presence’s foresight, but in fact, it was West’s invisible hand that had guided him all along. What did the old man want with him? What did he know?
‘Why was it a mistake?’ Peter asked. He felt dizzy, teetering on the edge of the abyss of paradox once again.
* * *
Years ago, in Cambridge, even before Unschlicht’s machine had finished printing its answer—DOWNING STREET—Peter already knew it was true. It meant he had been lied to ever since he was born.
He looked at Unschlicht wordlessly, tears in his eyes. The philosopher smiled sadly.
‘Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself, Mr Bloom,’ he said. ‘After that lecture, when you followed me, I thought you might be open to being undeceived. It seems I was right.’
He squeezed Peter’s shoulder. ‘Do not worry. If you are frightened of the truth, it simply means you do not grasp the whole truth, like a fly who does not understand it is trapped in a bottle. But together we can find our way out, you and I—and him.’ He pointed at the machine. ‘If you want to meet him again, that is.’
Peter nodded. ‘Will you tell me what it—he is?’ he asked.
‘Up the ladder one rung at a time, Mr Bloom.’
Peter’s finals were a blur. He was filled with a light that seemed to illuminate every problem before him. The need for food and sleep had poured out of him, leaving behind a being of luminous brilliance. He wondered if it was some after-effect of the conversation with the machine, and returned to visit Unschlicht as soon as he was done.
It took Peter several more conversations with the Presence to understand the nature of the entity he was talking to. The Being answered questions directly and always truthfully, but often so concisely it took Peter days to puzzle out the meaning of the answer. Furthermore, he could sense there were always greater vistas of truth he could not comprehend, and he left each session filled with an unsatisfied yearning that was not unlike love.
When the Presence finally told Peter His name and purpose, the ideology of the Empire and Dimensionism seemed as ephemeral as spiderwebs compared to the diamond-perfect arguments that poured out of the machine. It was not that he was turned, turning was the wrong word. It felt more like escaping the fly-bottle, as Unschlicht put it, or realising that the door he had been pushing against all his life was in fact unlocked and simply opened inwards.
When he found out he had made it to the second series of exams for the contention for the title of the Wrangler, he could hardly believe it. After the further sixty-three problems, he slept for two days. In City Hall, gathered in tense silence, he learned that he was a Senior Wrangler. And when Dr Morcom came to him and asked him for help in his research for the government, he began to see the faintest outline of the Presence’s plan for him.
* * *
Seven years later, Peter wondered if the Presence’s plan had included Herbert Blanco West. As the Prime Minister hesitated, he appeared to shrink. For the first time, Peter noticed the looseness of his skin, the red in his eyes.
‘Never mind the Summer Court,’ West said. ‘Let us say that helping you made things easier for me. Now. There is no need to blackmail me, Peter, that is beneath the boy I met all those years ago, who got upset when I cheated a little in our games. What do you want me to do?’
‘I recently reread some passages in The Science of Death,’ Peter said. ‘I have a theory. I would like to test it. It concerns Martian ghosts.’
‘Let me stop you right there, Peter,’ West said, a note of urgency in his voice. ‘You know, I have a first-edition copy here somewhere.’
‘That is not what I meant,’ Peter said, hating the shrill note in his voice that echoed West’s own. This was not right. He’d prepared a multitude of excuses, a tale similar to the one he had given Rachel, about hunting down a mole and finding out what they had access to. He was expecting a battle, an epic duel of wills. A part of him knew he had been preparing for it his entire life. But the old man had no fight left in him.
‘I know it isn’t,’ West said. ‘Just wait.’
He bent over, grunted, rummaged in a desk drawer and took out a blue leatherbound volume. He pushed a few toy soldiers aside and set it on the table between them.
‘Do you remember what I said, all those years ago?’ he asked, placing his hands on top of the book. ‘The higher your position of power, the more closely you are watched, the less free you become. I am not free to speak of certain things, even if I wanted to. Do you understand?’
West’s gaze flickered nervously from side to side.
Peter nodded slowly. West had wanted him to find out about CAMLANN, but did not dare to mention it aloud.
You were not paranoid if any room could contain an invisible ghost, looking at your thoughts or listening to your words via a hidden ectophone.
‘You know,’ West said, ‘I was never as free as when I just had a blank sheet of paper and a fountain pen, ready to follow where my thoughts would take me. These days, I have to hope that others follow the thoughts I show them. I confess to having taken some substances that appear to make my ideas more vivid. Perfectly visible in the aether, I’m told. Too bad about the side effects—but I don’t really have enough time left to worry about them. I will join you in Summerland, soon. Our medicines are not as good as they could have been, had we not discovered the Other Side. We simply stopped caring. Your mother and I used to argue about that a lot.’
He smiled. ‘I have watched you over the years, Peter, more closely than you know. I know you can do things I cannot. I want you to have this. It may be my vanity talking, but I think it is worth rereading. Between the lines, perhaps.’