“What are we doing here?” Willow whispered.
Boy shook his head.
“I don’t know. He’s just got a habit of finding unpleasant places to be.”
“Boy,” said Willow, “if you don’t ask him, I will.”
Boy looked at her, wondering if she’d learnt nothing from her recent experience of Valerian’s moods.
Valerian stood a few paces away, trying to get his bearings in the endless death-field.
“I mean it,” Willow said.
“All right!” he said. “All right.”
Boy approached slowly. Gingerly he tugged at the tall man’s sleeve.
“Valerian,” he said.
“Ah! Boy!” Valerian said. “Good. Now, take these.”
He pulled two candles from his pocket and couple of large matches.
“There’s not too much wind-we won’t need lamps. I can almost smell it now! This must be the one.”
“Valerian.” Boy was firmer this time.
Valerian looked down at him distractedly.
“Yes, Boy, what is it?”
“What are we doing here?”
A shadow swept across Valerian’s face, a flicker of rage.
“I don’t have time to debate it, Boy! Don’t you understand? Time is running out. Today is the twenty-eighth. Don’t you understand?”
“No, I don’t understand,” shouted Boy, “because you never tell me anything!”
Valerian clapped his hand across Boy’s mouth and held it there.
Willow ran over, then stopped, seeing that Boy was not actually being harmed.
“How many times do I-” Valerian hissed. Willow stared at him. She saw the anger slip from his face.
“No,” he said quietly, and took his hand from Boy’s mouth. Willow stepped to Boy’s side and held his arm.
“No,” said Valerian again. “You are right, Boy. I should tell you.”
Boy looked at him intently, waiting.
“I will tell you, but not now. No time now. First we must find it.”
“But what?” asked Boy.
“The grave. The grave of Gad Beebe. Isn’t that obvious?”
No, it isn’t, Boy thought, but he nodded. He smiled.
“That was what the music box told us?” asked Willow. “To come here?”
“Yes,” said Valerian. “Well, no, not exactly. I was looking for a grave, and now I have a name. We are looking for the grave of Gad Beebe, and this is the biggest cemetery in the City. We have to start somewhere!”
“And what then? When we find it? Why is it so important?”
“Later. We’re running out of time. We’ll find the grave first and then-Damn!”
“What?” asked Boy.
“A spade. I forgot to bring a spade.”
Valerian stamped his foot and swore at the sky.
“Why do we need a spade?” asked Willow, but she and Boy had a terrible feeling they knew why.
“To dig up his grave, of course. Never mind, there must be a sexton’s hut here somewhere. The first thing is to find it. Now, let’s get these candles alight…”
A succession of thoughts swept through Boy’s mind, all of them ghastly. The news that was rife in the City about the Phantom and grave-robbers sprang to his mind. He looked at Valerian. Was it possible that he was the one who had been breaking into people’s graves? Could Valerian be capable of such a thing?
Of course he could.
“No,” Boy said, “I won’t do it!”
Willow looked at Boy, surprised. Valerian too.
“What now?” he asked. “Can’t you see we must get on?”
“You can get on without me,” said Boy. “I won’t do it. I’ve done a lot of terrible things for you, but I won’t do this.”
“Do what?” asked Valerian, the beginnings of a smile on his face.
“I won’t steal people’s bodies. People’s… dead bodies.”
Valerian gave a short bark of a laugh. Then he shot a glance around him, and was silent.
“But, Boy”-he smiled-“we’re not looking for a body! We’re looking for a book.”
4
“Right. To save time, we’ll split up. Here, take a candle, each of you. Now, Boy, you go along this wall and work inward, row by row. Work systematically and do not miss one out. Not one. You, Girl-”
“My name’s Willow,” she said, then remembered that terrible look he had given her, “sir.”
But Valerian was too busy thinking to care.
“Willow, go along the other wall. Do the same as Boy. Do not miss one out. I will go up this central avenue and work outward. It’s nearly the third hour after midnight. Meet back here in an hour. And remember-Gad Beebe. Inside his grave we will find the book, and then…”
His voice tailed off. He pulled a third candle from his pocket, and as much to amuse himself as to impress Boy and Willow, he pulled it out already alight.
“Can you teach me to do that?” asked Willow, but Valerian did not bother to reply.
Valerian went up the stony path that led into the dark heart of the cemetery, his small candle flickering in his hand, casting weak but unnerving shadows on the stones around him.
Boy and Willow looked at each other, then looked down the separate routes they were supposed to take, leading off into the pitch-black night.
“Book?” asked Willow. “What’s so important about a book?”
Boy shrugged. “He’s always going on about books, how important they are and why I have to learn to read better.”
“Maybe, but that’s not enough of a reason to dig them up from graves, is it?”
“I don’t know,” he said, “but then I never do. I just do what Valerian tells me. Life’s easier that way.”
Willow looked at him sadly; then she glanced down the rows of elaborate, ornamented graves, and shivered.
“Supposing,” said Boy, “we do half an hour my way and then half an hour your way? That would be about the same thing, wouldn’t it?”
No, thought Willow, it wouldn’t.
“Near enough,” she said, trying to sound bright. “Anyway, if one of us holds the candles and the other does the reading, we’ll be faster.”
“Yes,” said Boy. “Especially if you do the reading,” he added, shuffling slightly where he stood.
Willow smiled.
“Which way first?” she said.
Boy looked at the options.
“This way,” he said.
“Why?”
“No idea. Willow?”
“What?”
“How will we know when an hour has passed?”
“It’s about as long as one of Madame’s performances and one of Valerian’s put together, but you know how time moves differently when you’re doing… difficult things.”
“Yes,” agreed Boy.
He had a feeling this was going to be a very long hour.
Elsewhere in the cemetery, Valerian was thinking about time too. In his eyes, time was speeding up, every day, every hour. It seemed to him that every second lasted half as long as the one before, as if time was accelerating toward the end of the year. The end of the year, and the end…
He pushed the thought from his mind as he bent down to peer at the seventy-third gravestone he had looked at.
Trying to stay calm, he noted the name. Gad Beebe? No.
Gad Beebe? What kind of name was that? An important one. For Valerian it was a very important one.
What was today?
The twenty-eighth. Just three days left after today. Three days to find an answer, and so much depended on Kepler. Once, many years ago, he had trusted him completely, but things had changed. But he had always respected his learning, and now-now he needed all the help he could get.