He discovered that Queen Victoria was already dead, that Sir Winston Churchill had never been her Prime Minister, that the Second World War had already ended, that London should be a vast, thriving city containing millions of people. There was no mention of the exploration of the moon, or the American expedition to Mars, or force fields to protect capital cities, or even the Overman legend.
Michael’s mind was reeling. He was living in a city that certainly did not contain millions—perhaps not even thousands—of people; he was living through a war that had already finished; and there was a queen on the throne who had died long before that war had even begun.
What to believe? The apparent reality of the world in which he lived or the world described in two astounding books? At times, torn by uncertainty, he began to think that Mother and Father might be right. The truth—the truth about anything—might be too terrible, too dangerous for fragiles to face. Perhaps the drybones really were protecting all fragiles—protecting them from realities too horrible to contemplate.
But then he would turn to A Short History of the World or A History of England; and the direct statements, the matching of information, would convince him that truth lay more in those printed words than in the apparent realities that surrounded him.
Michael had not had nightmares for some time; but now they came back. One night he woke up screaming, and Mother tried to comfort him as she had done when he was a small child. But there was no comfort in her arms, only an intensified horror of contact with a drybone. After that Michael took to sleeping with his head under the bedclothes or under the pillow so that the sound would be muffled if he screamed again. He nearly suffocated himself.
Father said he looked ill and asked what was worrying him. For a dreadful moment, Michael had an impulse to confess all. Even the act of confession might ease the pressure, reduce the tension, no matter what Father said or did. But Michael squashed the impulse, squashed it forever.
Somehow he knew that the authors of the books he had been reading were his own kind, fragiles. Somehow, he knew that their world was real and his was not. Somehow, he knew that Mother and Father and all the other drybones were jailers—jailers for a small group of fragiles whose only hope of survival lay in finding reality and accepting it.
So he said nothing. He locked himself in with his books, struggling to separate fantasy from fact in a tiny steam-filled room. He forced himself to believe that he was sane and that truth should be pursued for its own sake. He tried to act normally and to do the things that were expected of him. Above all, he was determined to conceal his newfound knowledge from everyone but the Family. His reading revealed that books had once been considered dangerous weapons, that they had been burned or destroyed, and that their writers and readers had been persecuted. Perhaps he was living now in a world where books were still dangerous weapons. If so, he would arm himself. He would arm himself with ideas.
One evening, Michael went to the bathroom and locked himself in as usual. He turned the bath taps on and unscrewed the panel. The books had gone.
For a moment or two he was stunned. Then he carefully replaced the panel and sat on the side of the bath to think.
So they had known. They had known all the time. He felt stupid and childish, and his cheeks burned with humiliation. They had demonstrated that he was still a child and they were still the masters. Briefly, he wanted to die.
But then…. But then he found some bitter consolation. They could not know how much he already knew or suspected. Even if they contrived to remove all the books from London Library, they still could not remove the knowledge already stored in his head. That was something.
Michael did not mention the books to Mother and Father. They did not mention the books to him. He determined to visit the library again as soon as possible.
18
On Saturday evening, Ernest and Michael stole two bicycles from a number that were racked in the bicycle stands outside the Odeon cinema in Leicester Square. They took the bicycles to the stands outside Westminster Abbey and left them there. Early on Sunday morning they met at the Abbey, each with enough food for the day. It was to be a day of mechanized exploration.
They had taught themselves to ride secretly. For some time Father had promised that it would not be long before Michael would be allowed to use a bicycle. But, as usual, there were always good reasons why it could not be now; and Michael soon realized that he would have to do something about it himself. Ernest had also suffered the delay treatment. Bicycles were precious because there was a war on, and they should only be used by responsible adults.
So Ernest and Michael had taught themselves to ride on the few occasions when a bicycle was available and no drybone owner was in sight.
Sunday morning was cold but fine. The rendezvous at Westminster Abbey took place before the first service. Michael realized that he and Ernest would be very conspicuous; but he thought they had a good chance of getting out of central London without being recognized by anyone who knew them.
They were both excited. Ernest was convinced that, like the Thames, all the roads apparently leading out of London would bend back upon themselves. Michael was not so sure. He thought there must be some way of getting completely out of London.
They cycled over Westminster Bridge, meeting no one. In fact they met no one all day—which was, as Ernest put it, statistically absurd.
The first spell of riding, which gave them an appetite for breakfast, took them well away from the parts of London they knew. The road was lined with houses, shops, cafes, gardens. It crossed other, similar roads. But nowhere were there any signs of drybones or fragiles. Michael was reminded of the ghost towns he had seen in Westerns. There was only a great sense of emptiness.
They stopped for breakfast at a coffeehouse. The door was open but the coffeehouse was empty. There was dust everywhere. It looked as if it had not been used for years.
“We are still in the country of the mad,” observed Ernest grimly. “And I feel crazy enough to be sane. Let us go through the whole place and see if we can find anything.”
They found two empty rooms upstairs—empty even of furniture—and a high-walled overgrown garden at the back. They sat in the garden, eating bread and cheese and talking. They talked about what they had learned from the books they had found.
“That other Ernest Rutherford was a very brilliant man,” said Ernest. “Without his work in atomic physics, nuclear energy could never have been achieved.”
Michael looked at him blankly. “Atomic physics? Nuclear energy? What is it all about?”
Ernest sighed. “I hardly know myself. Except that they are real. They can’t be anything else but real. The experiments he carried out, the results he achieved are too—too elegant for invention.”
“Elegance!” Michael laughed harshly. “I have some elegant notions for you. This vast, empty London that we live in contains millions of people. The books say so. Queen Victoria died long before the war we are now having—which also ended some time ago—began. The books say so. London was bombed frequently. Lots of people were killed and many buildings were destroyed. The books say so.”
Ernest was silent for a time. Then he said: “We are real, the facts in the books are real. The London we live in is real. But….”
“But this London is not the London,” said Michael. “This Queen Victoria—a drybone, no doubt—is not the Queen Victoria…. It is all—all a bad model.”