Page 117 of The Lost Future of Pepperharrow

‘Electric torch, sir?’ someone said cheerfully, clicking the light on and off to show how it worked. It made Mori jump. There were people everywhere, calling and setting off unexpected noises. Someone had made a whole host of electric flying things that could lift themselves about three feet into the air and then down again, and then up, never stopping. They made a locust buzzing. Someone else had a whole stall of electric watches under a sign that said never wind your watch again!!

‘Well, that’s the first omen of the apocalypse,’ Mori muttered.

There were ordinary stalls too, and someone was selling newspapers. Thaniel stopped when he saw the headline. The Russian fleet, or a portion of it, had been sighted just off Yokohama. He looked south. It was only fifteen miles away. Mori had seen too, and turned still.

‘It’ll be all right,’ Thaniel said. ‘You wouldn’t have set up a war.’

He could see that Mori didn’t believe a word.

Once Thaniel had fetched Willis to look at Vaulker, he went to the translation office to explain to the juniors what had happened, and found that they were all busy with the telegraphs; the electricity had waned enough for everything to work again, and now there was a rush of messages crackling through the office as everyone scrambled to confirm exactly where the Russians were, and where the British Navy was, and what the hell everyone was meant to do next. It felt bizarre to walk into a room where, quite rightly, no one cared about what had just happened at the tribunal.

‘I don’t know how to get hold of the Admiralty, sir,’ Pringle said when he came in. A few days ago, he would have been panicking, but he said it quite calmly.

‘I’ll do it,’ Thaniel promised, and started the hunt through the huge telegraph directories.

From somewhere very close, one of the other legations, a bell started to ring, loud and urgent. Others joined it, and then a weird, keening siren, electric-sounding, just like the klaxon at the fence in Aokigahara.

Pringle stood up and pointed out the window. Everyone looked. It was just possible to see the sparkle of Tokyo Bay in the distance. Over the water now, there were smoke columns.

Thaniel found the Admiralty codes and yanked a telegraph closer.

Brit. legation in Tokyo here. Reports of Russian fleet firing shots. Can anyone confirm?

There was a long pause. Outside, the sirens howled on. Vaulker ran up from the surgery and everyone explained at once that they were trying to talk to the Navy.

‘Quiet, quiet,’ Thaniel said urgently, because there was no paper feed in the telegraph, only the dits and dahs of the code.

Then: Tokyo, this is the HMS Valiance, accompanying the new Japanese fleet out of Liverpool. Russians fired because they saw us. They’re trying to stop us getting into Tokyo harbour. Give us twenty minutes.

They all waited around the telegraph. A couple of diplomats from the Dutch legation leaned in, then from the Chinese, and the American, until the little room was full, and there were murmurs everywhere in four languages. Pringle pushed the window open. Someone had a pair of binoculars and there was a yelp from that direction when a flurry of smoke plumes went up. In the grounds, the people in the pop-up electric market were silent, watching too. That was what stuck with Thaniel later, that no one ran or tried to hide. So much of Tokyo had been in electrical chaos for so long that not many people could have been convinced there was anywhere safe anymore.

‘What’s better when one’s being invaded; to stay put and rely on the fact that this is English soil or to get out?’ Vaulker asked softly. He was asking Mori, who had been waiting in silence by Thaniel’s chair. ‘Can their guns reach this far inland?’

Mori nodded once. ‘Easily.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I was in Canton when the British started shelling.’

‘Oh.’

The telegraph rattled. Thaniel translated the code aloud as it came through.

Safely into port. Russians are backing off. No casualties.

Relieved laughter rippled round the room. After a couple of minutes, the sirens stopped. Thaniel twisted back to look up at Mori.

‘See? I told you.’

Mori punched him on the arm, very softly. Thaniel caught his fist and dragged him close, just for a second.

It was almost warm, and with one of those strange unspoken group decisions, everyone spilled outside to buy tea and wine from the little stalls on the lawn. The schoolmistress must have given up on doing anything useful, because the children were out too. As Thaniel bought some wine, he saw Six pause, check them both over for any obvious signs of distress, then bob away again once she’d decided they were all right. Mori was waiting at a makeshift table built from old shipping crates, and he smiled when Thaniel gave him the cup. His expressions were coming differently now, more easily, like he didn’t have to concentrate to do it. Thaniel had been worried before that Mori would be a different person without that overriding thing that had made him remarkable. But he was exactly the same person, one who had just been allowed to put down a very heavy pack.

The silence unwound, but he still didn’t know what to say. Not far away, Six was showing Katsu to the other children. Little electric toys hummed in the stalls. Owlbert, looking bewildered, was hurrying after an electric mouse. Thaniel scanned the grass for the burned place where Takiko had fallen, but it was hidden now under the newspaper stand. Some of the headlines there boasted of a huge naval victory off the northern coast of Hokkaido. The Russians had actually landed troops ashore at a place called Abashiri, only to be repulsed first by thousands of furious labour camp prisoners, some of whom had stolen Russian boats, and then routed by some of the oldest ships in the Japanese fleet, sent there just in time. Abashiri; naturally.

‘Is it still February?’ Mori said finally.

Thaniel looked up. ‘Nearly March.’