Steven was determined to make things right with his son. To Lydia’s surprise, he spent more and more time talking to him, explaining about computers, even playing family games he had formerly disdained – ‘old-fashioned’ games like Scrabble and Monopoly. The girls joined in, of course, and found it fun.
But when Steven took Jacob to work in the computer room, the others were not invited. That was accepted by everyone. It was as if Jacob had started on an apprenticeship, ready to take over the family business.
The early days were the best. Everything was so amazing. Jacob watched with wonder as his father set the Brick to work. Steven always worked from instructions, like a job-sheet. He used his special skills to do what others told him needed to be done. If some operative from Ormingat required special protection of the type the Brick could provide, Steven would find him or her on the map, would study the circumstances, and then would do what was required. The Brick was able to search, to find and then, on Steven’s considered decision, to protect from notice.
At the touch of a button, a screen would roll upwards on a frame to a vertical position above the Brick. It was the size of a sheet of A4 paper, laid horizontally. Steven could produce on the screen the map of any area in Europe. He could home in on a single house in a single street. Then the Brick’s viewer could enter the house and focus on any object in any room. The Ormingatrig observers were here on Earth in a variety of places with a variety of persona. Some had an easy time of it; others found themselves in situations where the power of the Brick was often a dire necessity.
‘Harsheelin needs our assistance,’ said Steven as he focussed on a little shop in Amsterdam where something decidedly strange was made to happen to an exceptionally fine diamond. It was in its velvet tray on a glass counter. Two thieves entered the shop as Harsheelin stood by, helpless. In his Earth persona, Harsheelin was a diamond merchant dealing in fine stones. It was his mission to learn about and report upon what this world most valued.
In came the thieves, both masked and armed. Harsheelin froze. The two men looked round vaguely, and then walked out again without seeing either the man or the stone.
Jacob watched them wandering in and then out of the shop like drunken sailors, and gave a laugh.
‘There now,’ said Steven. ‘Our man is well-protected. Those two will be well and truly bewildered when they make their getaway!’
‘You did that?’ said Jacob. ‘That was sensational!’
‘That was easy,’ said Steven. ‘It isn’t always as easy as that. We have to be put on the right track. Other Ormingatriga have to supply the information, which is relayed to me. I never meet them or talk to them. That’s the rule. I have not yet found it necessary to break it!’
Jacob’s cleverness stopped short of understanding his father’s humour. When Steven’s lips curled in a smile and his eyes twinkled, it was a mixture of self-mockery and impudence. His name, after all, was Sterekanda, which in his own tongue meant rule-breaker, the name playfully but prophetically given to him by his parents in his infancy.
‘It is the Brick that protects me, isn’t it?’ said Jacob one day, when he had had time to assimilate all that was happening.
Steven nodded.
‘Withdraw the protection,’ said Jacob. ‘I don’t need it any more.’
Steven had just enough sensitivity to look regretful.
‘It’s too late. You have been surrounded by the shield for so long that I don’t know what would happen if I attempted to withdraw it.’
Jacob clenched his fists, but said no more. His own self-knowledge made him accept that what his father said was true, however much he might hate it.
Steven still kept secrets from his son. At no time did Jacob ask about his father’s return to Ormingat. At no time did he ever ask anything about the great disc that ticked like a dock on the spaceship’s floor. The questions were fenced off from him. He was never permitted to wonder about them. That was part of his father’s power: the ability to deflect attention. The Brick provided total cover from a distance, in limited situations. Steven’s own mesmeric capability was more intimate, depending upon dose contact, but every bit as powerful.
By the time Jacob reached his fourteenth birthday, at the end of the following October, visits to the computer room had become routine. There had been fewer visits to the spaceship – fewer were called for – but Jacob was by now less in awe of it. The isolation that continued to surround him in the outside world now became a positive asset. There was no friend with whom he would be tempted to share his great secret, or even regret being unable to share. No one knew what he did, and no one cared.
Then, shortly before Christmas, things began to happen that were more than usually interesting.
They first heard the news of it not through the usual channel, a small purple button flashing swiftly in the lower right-hand corner of the Brick, but on terrestrial television. An item at the end of the news told briefly of a strange accident that had happened earlier that day, somewhere in the North of England, leaving a mysterious aftermath. At first, the family were so little interested in it that not even the exact location registered. Casselton – wasn’t that some place in Scotland?
If they had listened properly they would have known that it was a town in the North of England where a beer tanker had crashed into a post office van. The two men in the tanker sustained injuries that needed hospital treatment but were not life threatening. The driver of the post office van was badly injured and in the same hospital. A fourth casualty was a boy who was suffering from shock and could not be persuaded to talk.
What drew Steven’s attention was the mystery of the disappearing victim. Apparently both men in the tanker were convinced that a pedestrian had been crushed between the tanker and the van. But there was no trace of any body, not even the fragment of a corpse. And the shocked boy’s father was, for the moment at least, a missing piece in this odd jigsaw.
Steven felt a shiver run through him. He could not have defined exactly why, but somehow he felt connected to this accident. He came from a world where illusion was part of the system. The apparent disappearance of an accident victim was, for him, within the realms of possibility.
He stretched his arms, stood up and said casually, ‘Work to do. Care to join me, Jacob?’
Lydia gave him a curious look.
‘I thought you were finished for the day,’ she said.
‘Something I just thought of,’ said Steven. ‘Jacob might be interested.’
Jacob got up from his armchair, smiled at his mother, and shrugged his shoulders, much as to say, You know what he’s like, Mum!
Beth and Josie were sitting at the dining table, looking at catalogues of Christmas gifts, wondering what the big day would bring for them. There was just a week to go till Christmas. They were taking no notice of the television and were so used to Jacob and his father working together that their exit did not even break their concentration.
Jacob followed his father up to the computer room. ‘What is it?’ he said as his father opened the door with his key: this room had to be kept locked at all times.
‘Something, maybe,’ said Steven. ‘Maybe nothing.’
But when they went into the darkened room, the purple button on the Brick was flashing furiously.
Steven pressed the button anxiously and pulled the switch that made the screen unfold. On it were just three words:
GO TO SPACESHIP
No more were needed. Clearly the communicator wanted to convey something that would require more discussion or more information than was usually displayed on the screen.
Jacob looked eagerly at his father. ‘Do we go now?’ he said.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Steven. ‘When our little friend there says that we must go to see our big friend, he means now, this minute! Get your coat.’
‘It’s awful weather,’ said Jacob. ‘Mum won’t like us going out in it, just for a walk like that. I mean, we can’t tell her anything, can we?’
Steven smiled. ‘Sometimes I think your mother knows more than any of us and just keeps quiet!’
‘It’s not very nice out there,’ said Lydia when they looked into the living room all ready to go.
‘We won’t be long,’ said Steven, pulling on his gloves, ‘and we’re well wrapped up.’
‘But where are you going?’ said Lydia.
‘No further than the top of the hill,’ said Steven. ‘It’s just a simple experiment.’
‘That I wouldn’t understand?’ said Lydia.
‘I wouldn’t say that,’ said Steven quickly. ‘If you were interested, I am sure you would understand, but communications and such are not really your thing, are they?’
‘I suppose not,’ said Lydia, clearly deciding to make no further attempt to communicate.
‘There,’ said Steven as they closed the door behind them, ‘not so bad, was it? Your mother has tact beyond average!’
‘She might worry,’ said Jacob, still uncertain. He was still close enough to childhood to know how much trouble Lydia took to ensure that her children were always safe and clean and fed.
‘She won’t,’ said Steven, believing what he wanted to believe. ‘Your mother knows me better than to worry.’