Page 90 of The Lost Future of Pepperharrow

THIRTY-FIVE

Yokohama, 15th February 1889

The tiredness caught up with Thaniel on the last leg of the long stagecoach run. The journey back had been much more crowded than the way out, so he was propped against the window in order to give a lady with her baby and two chickens space on his right. Despite the cramped awkwardness, he fell asleep against the glass and woke, disorientated, to the comb pattern his hair had made in the condensation. The lady prodded him and said they were at Yokohama.

There was a rope barring the gates at Yoruji. On it was a sign that said Home Ministry: No Entry. Danger of Death. A policeman clipped over and told him to move along. Thaniel knocked him out, put him under a hedge, and ducked the cordon.

The path up to the house was a ribbon of undisturbed snow. Pheasants ducked about under the trees, tail feathers trailing blue fire. It was eerie quiet, because any seagulls that might have cried over the sea had long since flown away or flown into something. The snow was packed and slippery where the way was steep. There was no sign of anybody, or any attempt to keep the paths open. Just a spade leaning against a tree, four inches of snow piled up on the handle. The wind ruffled the graveyard bells. Nothing else. The Ministry must have sent the servants away.

He stopped dead when he reached the top of the hill. It should have had a view of the whole of Yoruji, all its roofs and balconies. But the house was gone. Instead there was a blasted black mess, with snow dusted over ruined, warped crossbeams and the charred husks of fallen gantries. It was gone.

THIRTY-SIX

Abashiri, 20th January 1889

The warden’s secretary, Mr Nakamura, had become steadily more ill since Takiko had first met him. She found him one afternoon not long after Horikawa had been killed by an angry Ainu man who had finally decided to shoot back. Nakamura was just outside the warden’s door, coughing into his sleeve. He lifted his eyes apologetically. He had a scarf tucked under the collar of his kimono jacket and his hair stuffed up in a rag, even scruffier than it had been last week.

‘He says I have to cough outside,’ he explained, and motioned at the door with his elbow. ‘He says he can’t cope with his headaches and me making disgusting noises.’

‘Can’t you go home?’ Takiko said. Her voice was starting to come out strained. She still hadn’t found out how to get into the tower. The handwriting on the paper crane had stuck with her in a way the frozen bodies in the woods hadn’t. Mori could have been dying up there from something they hadn’t done to him yet; it would be wholly counterintuitive for anyone talking to him, or at least, anyone who didn’t know him. If she could just get up there and make sure he was still in one piece – temporally, physically, whatever – then the painful tightness right in her chest would ease. She had not – had not – signed up to hurt him.

In her head, a wry voice that sounded an awful lot like Ayame’s wanted to know just what she thought she’d been doing.

‘No,’ Nakamura said miserably. ‘The electrical readout has to be inputted constantly.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know, I’m only paid twenty sen a day.’ He broke off coughing again and looked significantly at the door. He smelled of damp and unwashed clothes when he leaned nearer to her. ‘It’s for a lock,’ he whispered. ‘A special new kind. Super-secure. The combinations change randomly. Something to do with the numbers on the readouts.’

‘You go home,’ she said. ‘I can do it. It’s just numbers, isn’t it? Even I can do numbers.’

‘You would? Really?’

‘Go, go. Do first, apologise later.’

‘Bless you, miss,’ he said, heartfelt, and went downstairs still coughing.

Takiko thought the warden would need some persuading, but in fact he was slumped over his desk with a migraine and only waved vaguely to her to get on with it.

‘Type the values from the graph into the typewriter there. New graphs come down into that little postbox next to you. You can read numbers? Get going. I couldn’t be more delighted to explain it to you in more detail but the room is literally splitting in two,’ he said into his arms.

She lifted her eyebrows and sifted across the cluttered desk. It was full of photograph after photograph, all showing the same thing: a grey background with two strange, waving white lines, mirror images. Each photograph had been printed onto paper with the axes of a graph already marked onto it, and so the waving white lines made coordinate points with their peaks and troughs. Now that she was listening for it, she could hear a scritch somewhere above them. It would be the electrograph, ticking.

‘Which line should I—’

‘Either, don’t care.’

While she was still looking at one, another slid into the letterbox built into the wall beside her. It had a glass compartment you could draw down with a lever. She took it out, and held it with her left hand while she typed coordinates from the top line with her right. As she did, something deep inside the wall began to click. When she paused, it stopped. When she found a rhythm and went faster, it whirred. It sounded like clockwork.

The warden waved at her vaguely. ‘Never stop for more than ten minutes. Got it?’

‘Why, sir?’

‘Just say you understand.’

‘I understand, sir.’

‘There’s a good girl. Excuse me while I die,’ he said, and curled up in a ball under his desk.