Nature's Shift. Brian Stableford

curiously.

      What do you think she wants, you silly old fool? I didn’t reply. Aloud, and meekly, all I said was: “I expect she wants to ask me about Rowland. She probably imagines that we’re still in touch. She wants to ask me why he’s not here—she probably thinks he told me that he wasn’t going to come, and left it to me to explain why.”

      “I was surprised when he didn’t come in with the rest of the family,” the professor observed, although he’d already expressed his surprise more eloquently than any mere report could contrive. Reaching for even deeper levels of banality, he added: “A pity, that—I was hoping to see him. Surely he must have warned his mother that he wasn’t going to be here, though?”

      I shouldn’t have come, I thought. “Actually,” I said, “Rowland being Rowland, I’d have been surprised if he had given Rosalind prior notice of his absence. But I’m genuinely surprised that he isn’t here. I expected him to be here. I suppose I’m not surprised that he didn’t warn me either—but I wish he had.”

      “Rather bad form, in my opinion,” Professor Crowthorne continued. “I mean, there’s nothing unusual about boys falling out with their mothers, especially when their mothers are as…forceful…as Ms. Usher—but missing your own sister’s funeral! And the closest sister of them all! I know they weren’t really twins, in the sense that they shared a womb, but they were the same age.”

      Rowland and Magdalen had been incubated ectogenetically, and they were the produce of different sperm-donors, but they had, indeed, been born within a few hours of one another, having always been envisaged as a pair: a dedicated symbiotic unit.

      “How old are you and Rowland now?” the professor went on, when I didn’t step in to fill his pause. “Thirty-six? Thirty-seven? Too old to be nursing adolescent grudges, that’s for sure. This could have been a golden opportunity to build bridges, mend fences, heal wounds. Rowland should have been here, for his own sake as well as his mother’s.”

      And mine, I thought. “It’s not that easy,” I said, weakly. “We’re in a brave new world now. The old clichés don’t apply any more.”

      “Are you quoting Shakespeare or Huxley?” he asked, although the obvious answer was both. “Either way, you’re wrong. The whole point of the Usher family’s endeavors has been to save and preserve the civilization we took thousands of years to build, and they succeeded. They weren’t alone, of course, but there was no one more committed than they were to the cause. The old norms still apply—and so they should, since we had to fight so hard to preserve them. Rowland should have been here.”

      Obviously, I wasn’t the only one who felt resentful that my hopes and expectations had been dashed. I’d moved on from there, though. The fact that my hopes of seeing Rowland had been relegated to the dead past was now a mere matter of circumstance. What was occupying my mind at present was the fact that Rosalind wanted to see me. She had fixed a rendezvous for four o’clock, at the Pyramid—although she naturally reserved the right to be late, if more pressing matters of duty intervened.

      She undoubtedly wanted to ask me about Rowland—and I didn’t have anything to tell her. If there was one prospect in the world more terrifying than being summoned into the imperial presence to bear witness, it was that of being summoned into the presence knowing in advance that I was not in a position to satisfy her desire. I had nothing to tell her, and I knew that telling her nothing, however honest and accurate it might be, was not going to satisfy her.

      “I wish I could keep you company,” Professor Crowthorne said, perhaps sincerely. “I’d quite like to take a look around the Palaces, and I’m sure that you could give me the next best thing to a family-guided tour, but I’m at the mercy of the train timetable, and I have to get back to the Great Wen tonight. I’ll have to walk to the station—there’s no prospect of a taxi, given the size of the crowd.”

      I wondered whether he knew where the custom of referring to London as “the Great Wen” had originated, but I wasn’t about to ask him, or attempt any kind of discussion about the Romantic response to the Industrial Revolution, and I certainly wasn’t about to make any observation about Hell being a city much like London. He was right about the impossibility of getting a cab, though. There was already a considerable outflow through the gate, and the vehicles lying in wait had already been commandeered. We were in rural Devon, after all—the local taxi, while not exactly an endangered species, was something of a rara avis. At least half of the invitees were evidently familiar with Eden, and had no need to take advantage of Rosalind’s invitation to look around, so there was something of a mass exodus in progress..

      “That’s all right,” I said. “I’ll walk with you, if you like—I’ll have plenty of time to get back here again before four, even if your train’s late.”

      I meant no more than I said, but my mind was still a little numb. Was I secretly harboring an intention to hop on the London train with him, in order to pick up a northbound connection from Bristol before nightfall?—so secretly that I dared not even confess it to myself. Perhaps. After all, I had the same excuse as he did. By the time I had seen Rosalind at four, it wouldn’t be possible for me to get all the way back to Lancaster by train; I’d have to stay overnight, in Bristol or Birmingham if not in Exeter. I too was at the mercy of the timetable—but there had been no possibility of saying that to Rosalind’s face while I was in a handshaking queue, so the only possibility I had of acting on temptation was to slip away quietly, and simply not turn up to the abruptly-scheduled meeting. Rosalind could hardly deem that a terrible sin, given that her own son had failed to turn up to his twin sister’s funeral, of which he must have been given adequate notice.

      The professor was obviously not averse to the idea having company on the walk, we set off together—but as we approached the gate, I saw the security men exchange glances. They were inside the gates, now, bidding polite farewells to the exiting crowd. In imitation of their employer, they did indeed bid Professor Crowthorne a polite farewell, and thanked him warmly for coming. To me, however, the man in charge said: “Rosalind would prefer it if you would remain in the grounds, Mr. Bell.”

      Even her Praetorian Guard referred to her by her given name, and not as “Ms. Usher.”

      That was all that was said—there was no vestige of a threat. I could not imagine that any of the burly men would physically retrain me if I insisted on leaving, even if I didn’t tell them that I intended to come straight back after seeing the professor off. The simple fact was, however, that “Rosalind would prefer it if I would remain in the grounds,” and they could not imagine that anyone in the world would not want to comply with Rosalind’s preferences, today of all days.

      The professor certainly couldn’t imagine it. “It’s perfectly all right, Peter,” he assured me. “I really don’t mind walking on my own. It was good to see you again. We really must make more effort to keep in touch. Occasions like this serve as a salutary reminder of the need to maintain contacts, don’t you think?”

      “Yes,” I said, “they certainly do.”

      I let him walk away, while I turned back, a prisoner of my error. I shouldn’t have come—but I had, and now I was trapped. Now I had to face up to Rosalind, unarmed.