CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

It took Canny a further half-hour to escape from the garden, and even longer to escape the drawing-room, but in the end he was able to seize an opportunity to go to the library.

Lissa was waiting for him in the outer room, sitting in an armchair reading The Personal and Historical Implications of the Oedipus Effect by Martin Ellison.

“Quite a coincidence,” she observed, as she rose to her feet, “his turning up at the funeral like that.”

“A coincidence is what it was,” he said. “I’d no idea he was married to a local girl.”

“A pretty thing,” said Lissa, in a dismissively disdainful fashion. “She seems to like you.”

“She wants something—access to the library, it seems. I’ll have to be careful about that one. Anyway, they all like me, even if they do make disapproving remarks about my imagined lifestyle. I’ve always been popular in the village, ever since I gave up playing for the cricket team. How was Venezuela?”

“Replete with tar sands and illicit loggers, reportedly. A speculator’s dream and an environmentalist’s nightmare. From where I was standing, though, it was just one more unit in the global village. How does one address the Earl of Credesdale, by the way? Sire? My lord?”

“As you’re obviously still convinced that it’s safe for us to be in the same room,” he said, as he unlocked the door to the inner sanctum, “you might as well stick to Canny—although I’m not at all sure that there’s anything canny about my letting you in. Are you staying over? I ought to tell Bentley to have a room made up if you are.”

“I can’t. I have to be in London by six a.m. I shouldn’t really be here, but when I bumped into Stevie and he told me the news, it seemed only right.”

“You brought Stevie along because you knew that it would give the paparazzi something to get their teeth into, didn’t you?” Canny said. “He’s a smokescreen.”

“He was all in favor of putting in an appearance,” she said. “It has a certain symmetry, don’t you think? The three of us all bet on that zero, when you said goodbye to your old life. Fate bound us together that night, didn’t it?”

“You seem to have persuaded Stevie of that, too,” Canny observed.

“I was surprised to see everybody standing around a grave,” she said, blithely changing the subject. “I thought English lords were buried in crypts—in fact, after seeing your house the other day I was rather expecting a Gothic mausoleum.”

“We Credesdales have always been buried in the churchyard, in graves marked with discreet stones, without so much as a cross or a stone angel. Tradition, you see.”

“The church isn’t small, though. The bell-tower’s quite impressive.”

“So’s the organ—but the choir isn’t what it used to be. There’s always a very good turn-out at mass, but the church isn’t the heart of the community any more. Changing times.”

“But you don’t go to mass yourself,” she said, presumably implying that he didn’t take communion, or go to confession.

“No,” he said. “Neither did Daddy—although Father Quimper came out on Daddy’s last day to administer extreme unction, apparently. Just in case, I guess—his motto, if not the family motto. Mummy let him in and out while I was in the library. I don’t know why they were so secretive about it; it’s not as if I’d have had any objection. You haven’t mentioned meeting a male streaker to your mother, I suppose?”

“Do you think I’m mad?” she said. “She doesn’t suspect a thing. So far as she knows, I’m just attending a funeral, out of politeness. It’s my business, not hers.”

“I told Daddy,” he confessed.

“That doesn’t matter,” she said. “Not any more. What did he tell you to do—never let me darken your doorstep again?”

“Pretty much.”

He closed both of the inner doors carefully behind them, making certain that they would be undisturbed. The chair she’d brought into the inner sanctum on her previous visit was still there; she sat down in it as if it were her own, and made herself comfortable. She still had Martin Ellison’s book in her hand, but she closed it now and set it down on his desk.

“You’re not taking his advice,” she observed.

“I haven’t quite decided,” he said. “You’re sure that it’s safe for you to be here, are you?”

“Of course I’m not sure,” she told him. “I’ve decided that I’ll take the risk—just as you have. The fact that we haven’t a clue what the risk is, or how freakishly it might express itself if it ever does, makes it all the more piquant, don’t you think?”

“Since Daddy died, my lucky streak is supposedly dormant,” Canny told her, knowing that he wasn’t giving anything away. “I’m normal now, almost. I thought when I saw you last that the loss of my luck might put me at a disadvantage, if it really does happen, and make me more vulnerable than I’d otherwise be, but it might have the opposite effect, mightn’t it? It might make it safe for us to meet.”

“Perhaps it will,” she agreed. “Is that what you want to be—safe?”

“I’m talking to you,” he pointed out. “I’m alone with you in the inner sanctum of Credesdale House. That’s not what Daddy would have considered safe. Your mother would presumably take the same view.”

She didn’t smile at that. Her mood seemed to have became more serious, and he regretted making the reference to her mother. Outside, in the sunlit churchyard, she had seemed to be taking everything lightly, but now they were in the gloomiest part of the library she was becoming taut and stiff—which was the opposite of what he wanted, especially if they were going to talk about safety and risk.

“I think we’re probably safe enough,” he reassured her, “unless and until I decide to renew the Kilcannon lucky streak.”

“Unless?” she queried.

“It has occurred to me,” he admitted, “that I don’t actually need any more unusual luck. I could live quite comfortably on my accumulated capital.”

“Are you saying that you’d give it all up for me?” she said. Outside, she’d probably have said it with a broad smile, but there was a hesitation in her teasing now. “After thirty generations and more, you’d stop? Because of me?” She knew that the world was full of men who would make or break a deal with the devil at her request—but that wasn’t what she was getting at.

“Maybe not,” Canny said, trying to sound casual. “After all, if I weren’t a streaker you’d never have glanced at me twice, would you? If I were the kind of person who could contemplate letting it go, I might not be interesting any longer.”

The bantering tone didn’t evoke a response. Lissa had decided that it was time to approach the problem in earnest. Canny decided that he had better be earnest too.

“It really might be safer if I didn’t try to renew the streak, at least for a while,” he said. “If you and I are going to put our heads together, and try to figure out how it really works, it might be best if one of us were...de-activated. And if you look at it from an objective point of view, I really do have enough.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, dismissively. “How could you ever have enough? Are you really saying that if your ability to deconstruct the moment were still active—as it might be, for all you know—you’d avoid me? Knowing what I am, could you simply turn your back on me and forget that I exist?”

She was obviously asking him questions she’d already asked herself.

“I don’t know,” he confessed. “Probably not. How about you?”

“I’m not sure that I could ever have enough, if I didn’t try to follow this through,” she said, flatly.

“And what would following it through involve, exactly?” he asked

“Well,” she said, “we both know what view our parents would take—but that’s not our style, is it? My mother’s right when she says that one shouldn’t tempt fate, of course, but there are some temptations that are simply irresistible, aren’t there?”

The way she was adding rhetorical questions to her statements told him that she was still uncertain, still fearful, still searching for an endorsement of her boldness.

“I suppose there are,” he agreed.

“Do you mind telling me how, exactly, you’re supposed to renew the family luck, according to tradition?” she asked. “You confirmed that it worked according to much the same pattern as the one I’m supposed to follow, but you were understandably vague about the details.”

“Fortunately,” Canny said, thinking that it might be wise to lighten the mood again, “it doesn’t involve human sacrifice beneath the stony gaze of the Great Skull. It’s as simple as you suggested, apart from a few recitations and trivial ceremonies that probably don’t have anything to do with the actual effect. It’s basically just a matter of siring a male child on a good Yorkshirewoman. When the child begins to be lucky, there are other ceremonies, which....” He trailed off, unwilling to say too much.

Lissa completed the sentence for him, but she didn’t pick up his attempt to lighten the tone. “Which permit the parent to claw back a portion of the child’s burgeoning magic,” she said, evenly, “provided that the parent is neither too greedy nor too self-restrained.”

“That’s about it,” Canny confirmed, although he would never have used the phrase claw back, no matter how conducive to festering resentment the situation he’d described might be.

“I won’t ask for any more details,” she said. “We have our rules of secrecy too. But I’ll compensate you for your hazardous honesty, if you like, by telling you how I think it works.”

“Please,” Canny said.

“I agree with you that there must be a genetic component to the hereditary process,” Lissa said, smoothly, “and that we have to look at it more scientifically than our ancestors could. Our tradition has always placed far more importance on the existential and psychological significance of mother-daughter bonds than on mere biology, so we see the hereditary aspect more as a matter of personal contact or learning—passing on a very particular kind of accumulated wealth—but that’s just a cultural bias. The biology has to be the bottom line. As to what the genes actually do—I think it has to involve the physics of uncertainty. I’m not good with the mathematics, so I’m strictly an amateur, but it seems to me that if observers really do have a crucial role to play in bringing actuality from a probabilistic blur of potentiality, then it stands to reason that some observers must be more privileged than others. The margin might—indeed, must—be very tiny, but it’s enough, in certain kinds of situations...or uncertain kinds of situations...to tip the balance of probabilities in favor of a preferred outcome. However we inherited the privilege, and however we contrive to maintain it, you and I are better observers than our fellow men—not in the sense that we notice more, but in the sense that our needs outweigh theirs by a slight but vital margin.”

“Our needs?” Canny echoed. “Isn’t it more a matter of our desires?”

“That’s a rather masculine distinction,” Lissa told him. “Our needs shape our desires, and remain implicit within them—although, if your family is like mine, there’s a strong tradition of careful restraint.”

“Don’t howl for the moon,” Canny quoted.

“I was thinking more along the lines of be careful what you wish for, you might get it.”

“You can’t always get what you want,” Canny quoted, whimsically, “but if you try sometimes, you might just get what you need. Actually, that’s the Rolling Stones—but I always did wonder about Mick Jagger. I often do wonder about anyone touched by glory, even though keeping a low profile has always been the Kilcannon way. If it is a gene, though, or more than one, there might be lots of people carrying them unawares, who break the rules without ever suspecting that there are any. They presumably have meteoric careers...and then the phenomenon presumably becomes dormant again, for a few generations. What really sets us apart is knowing what we’ve got, and being able to manage it—to preserve our status as privileged observers, if you’re right about the uncertainty business.”

“Exactly,” she agreed. “What sets us apart is knowing what we’ve got—and being determined to make the most of it.”

Except, Canny thought, that being determined to make the most of it isn’t at all the same thing as being able to manage it...and might turn out to be its opposite.

“I’ve thought a lot about what you said the other night,” Lissa went on, “and it does make sense. Especially the bit about your family having one gene, and mine having another. But even if it weren’t genetic—even if it were magic...our meeting still raises interesting possibilities, don’t you think?”

“I’ve done little else but think, these last few days,” Canny admitted. “What are you proposing, Lissa? How do you think we ought to approach the investigation?”

The model hesitated for a moment, but only for a moment. “You’re still thinking in masculine terms. I don’t think we should approach the investigation at all; I think we should cut to the chase. What if your gene and my gene—or your magic and my magic—came together? Perhaps, as you say, it’s safer for us to be in one another’s company while your luck is reduced, awaiting renewal—but if it’s a gene, you’re still carrying it, and if it’s magic, you still have the potential. The only way we can really find out what’s possible is to have a child. That would fit in with your desires, wouldn’t it? The trial, if not the child.”

His own hesitation was far more deliberate, and far more extended. “Is that a proposal of marriage?” he asked, eventually, as casually as he could.

“I don’t think we need to go to that extreme,” she said, with a calculated coolness that must have been as false as his own laconism. “It’s an experiment, not a love-match.”

For you, maybe, he thought. “Were you thinking of a male or female child?” was what he said aloud, trying hard not to feel offended or hurt by her immediate rejection of the possibility of marriage. He was trying to maintain a flippant tone, but he knew that the artificiality of the flippancy must be obvious to her.

“It would be interesting to discover what chance would decide, wouldn’t it?” Lissa said, her voice carefully neutral. “That’s partly what the experiment would be about, after all.”

Just because we aren’t both male, Canny thought, it doesn’t mean we’re not in competition.

“One doesn’t have to leave such matters to chance, nowadays,” he observed, aloud. “If it’s just an experiment, pipettes and Petri dishes might be the way to go. Perhaps we ought to aim for one of each: non-identical twins.”

“It’s not a joke, Canny,” she told him, unnecessarily. “I’m serious about this. I’ve thought about it a great deal.”

“Were you thinking of hopping into bed with me right now?” Canny said, with an edge in his voice that certainly wasn’t humor. “If we hurry, you’ll still have time to get to London by six?”

“Not right now,” Lissa said, defensively. She paused before adding: “I’ll have to clear a space in my schedule to accommodate a pregnancy. I have obligations.”

The conversation didn’t seem to be going quite as well as Canny had hoped when he first came into the library, in spite of the fact that she was offering him exactly what he’d thought he wanted, if not quite on the terms he’d wanted it. Be careful what you wish for, she had said, you might get it. She hadn’t been trying to warn him against her—not consciously, at least—but it had been a warning nevertheless.

Lissa Lo’s coolness and stylishness had seemed exciting before, but now the coolness seemed to be escalating into coldness and the stylishness was becoming rather mechanical. Canny knew that she wasn’t really as unemotional as she was trying to seem—she was hiding her own uncertainty and trepidation—but that didn’t make the awkwardness any easier to bear.

“So what kind of schedule did you have in mind?” he asked, quietly. “And what do you want from me in the meantime?”

Lissa stood up, not because she’d said what she’d come to say—although she had—but because she was as acutely conscious of the tension inherent in the moment as he was.

“Don’t be in too much of a hurry to get engaged to be married, Canny, no matter what your family tradition dictates,” she said. “I’m not asking you to wait forever, but I’d like you to give the idea serious consideration. If you decide that it’s an experiment worth trying, I’ll need a few weeks, perhaps months, to...put my affairs in order. I can’t give you a date right now. We both know that it would be a risk—but it seems to me that the potential rewards outweigh the danger. You don’t have to give me an answer now. You can think it over, and do whatever you want in the meantime—but I’ll come back when I can, to ask the question again. Think about it.”

Her stance left no further doubt as to the fact that she had said what she had come to say—and was sufficiently fearful of his reply to leave the matter undecided while she beat a hasty retreat.

Canny could understand well enough why Lissa might be afraid—but he wasn’t certain which of the various possible reasons was the most powerful. Was she afraid that she’d simply gone too far—that the black lightning might have been hunting her down even she spoke? Or was she afraid of his response? Was she worried that he might turn her down, given that he had far more at stake than any other man she’d ever teased and tempted, and that the rejection might hurt?

She knew that the world was full of men who’d make or break a deal with the devil at her request—but she might not be sure, as yet, that he was one of them. And she had to know, given that she’d thought about it so intently, that he would be taking a greater risk than she in several different ways...and that he would be able to see those additional risks quite clearly, no matter how his desires might blind him.

Given that he wasn’t sure himself whether he might be capable of rejecting her, if he persuaded himself that the risks were too great, her uncertainty was understandable.

“There might be a case for taking things more slowly,” he said, mildly. “there are other co-operative ventures that we might try, to begin with.”

“There might,” she answered, her tone making it perfectly clear that she didn’t believe it, “but I’m not a dabbler by nature. When I make a decision, I don’t like to procrastinate.”

“I can understand that,” Canny said, wondering—a trifle optimistically—whether he might be reading too much into the situation. She had known since their first conversation in the library—and must have assumed, even before then, that the rules pertaining to his gift were likely to be similar to those pertaining to hers—that his luck was supposed to run low when his father died, while hers would remain strong for as long as her mother lived. For the moment, her luck allegedly outweighed his, and in any competition he was likely to come off worse. If they were to have a child now, rather than waiting until he had renewed his own luck, and were content to leave such matters as its sex to the dictates of “chance”, it was far more likely to work out to her advantage than his...or so she must be calculating.

On the other hand, given that the only way to renew his own streak was to marry, and father a child, what was there for him to gain by procrastination but a tangled mess of complications? And given the nature of his desire, the pressure of his need....

Canny rose to his feet without saying another word. He went to open the door, and politely stood aside to let Lissa Lo precede him. Then he opened the two outer doors that let them out of the library.

It wasn’t until Bentley had brought Lissa’s coat and summoned her minders from the gate, while Canny escorted her to the door of her hire-car, that he gave her anything resembling an answer to the question she’d posed. “I’ll think about it very seriously indeed,” he promised. “How shall I contact you when I have an answer?”

“Don’t try,” she said. “I’ll come to you, when I can.”

“Fine,” he said. “If I’m not here, I’ll be at the flat in London. This is the address.” He handed her a business card as he pronounced the last sentence

She put it away without glancing at it. “I’ll find you,” she said, with the total confidence of someone well used to finding her way wherever she wanted to go. “I know that I can count on you, Canny. I’m sorry for your loss, but I know that things will get better. There’s a whole world of opportunity out there, waiting to be seen by the right observers.”

“Thanks,” he said. “I’m sure you’re right.”