too much style for that. The silence only lasted three minutes before the moment of suspension was officially ended, and Rosalind slipped into a new style of discourse to thank us all for coming.
She didn’t apologize for the fact that no refreshments had been laid on, and that there was no be no “wake,” but she did invite everyone to explore Eden at their leisure. She didn’t say so, but the implication was that breathing the atmosphere of that sacred place was bound to reward the soul more lavishly than any supply of food and alcohol. As for filling the stomach—well, that was a vulgar business best left to the hidden recesses of the New Privacy.
The family then began to filter out as they had filtered in—except for Rosalind, who marched along the aisle to the main entrance, and stationed herself on the threshold in order to shake the hand of everyone in the audience, and thank them for coming.
That took a long time. Because Professor Crowthorne and I were a lot closer to the back than the front, we could have made a dash for it and got out into the open, sweet-scented air in less than five minutes, but neither of us was in a mood for dashing, and neither of us was in a hurry to look into Rosalind’s eyes. A full fifteen minutes of awkward silence had elapsed before we were impelled forward by the ebb tide of the multitude and found ourselves on the threshold.
I let the professor go first.
“Professor Crowthorne,” said Rosalind, who might have needed a subtle earpiece to remind her who some of our fellow mourners were, but gave every indication of recognizing Magdalen’s former tutor at first glance. “Thank you for coming. Magdalen always spoke very highly of your enthusiasm as an educator, and the support you gave her when she first left home.”
Apart from the “always,” I figured that it might almost have been true. The professor did have enthusiasm as an educator; he might be a poor communicator in other respects, but when it came to waxing lyrical about his subject, he was a human dynamo. It went with the territory; I was in a position to understand that now. He would also have done his utmost to lend Magdalen moral support when she found herself in a strange institution, far from home—even though she already had the support of her loving brother.
“Peter,” said Rosalind, moving on before I was quite ready. She seized the hand that I held out reflexively, but instead of the curt and tokenistic pressure she’d afforded to the professor, she actually hung on to mine. “Thank you for coming. I need to talk to you. I’m busy just now, as you can see, but if you wouldn’t mind waiting—please take a look around the Palaces for an hour or two, and go up to the Pyramid whenever you please. I’ll try to be there by four o’clock, but I’m sure you’ll understand if I’m a little late.”
I opened my mouth as if to reply, but she had released my hand as soon as she reached the end of her sentence, and I knew that she neither wanted nor expected a reply—not even the merest sign of assent. The Queen had spoken; I, her subject, had only to obey. Still in the grip of the current that was flowing onwards and outwards, I found myself outside, in the soft spring sunlight, amid the sweet scents and the black butterflies. Was it only an illusion that the latter now seemed more abundant?
Helplessly, I checked my watch. It was ten past one; the ceremony had begun at noon. Rosalind expected me to kick my heels for the best part of three hours—and then to forgive her if she was “a little late.”
“Well,” said Professor Crowthorne, “that’s quite a privilege.”
“Is it?” replied, automatically. My voice was a trifle hoarse, so the acid sarcasm didn’t quite come out as intended.
“What do you suppose she wants?” the professor asked, 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
