Steven and Jacob worked all through the night. Steven tried to send his son to bed, but Jacob refused point-blank to go.
‘I want to see everything. You said I could. And it’s Saturday tomorrow; I can sleep late.’
‘Your mother–’ Steven began, but Jacob interrupted him.
‘My mother won’t even know, unless you tell her,’ he said. ‘We’ve had our supper. She knows you’re working – but she’ll think I’m already in bed by now.’
‘Well sit down,’ said Steven, ‘but stay out of the way. I haven’t time to argue.’
Jacob brought the stool as close as he dared to the desk. He watched as Steven looked into the archives that the Brick – or perhaps one should say ‘the protection module’ – carried under the control of the blue button. His father soon found all he wanted to know about Vateelin.
The script on screen was even smaller than usual. Or maybe Steven had thrown some sort of haze around it. However hard he tried, Jacob could not make out the words. All he knew was that Steven nodded his head from time to time as if it all made sense to him.
Vateelin was, as Steven had suspected, an observer working in isolation, not only from other observers but also from the home planet. He had brought with him his young son, a boy called Tonitheen. Their Earth names were Patrick and Thomas Derwent. What was the purpose of their time on Earth? It was unusual, unheard of, to fetch along a child. It appeared to be some sort of experiment. Thomas Tonitheen, unlike Javayl, had been born on Ormingat and had left there with his father at the age of three. By the time they reached Earth, the child was six years old. Now he would be eleven.
Steven quickly consulted the archive’s calendar. The deadline for the Derwents’ spaceship to leave Earth was midnight on Saturday, the twenty-sixth of December. Then their ship would leave, with or without its passengers. That was how the system worked. No allowance was made for failure: no failure had ever occurred and so none was ever expected.
‘Hard,’ said Steven musingly to himself. Then, as he thought of where the spaceship was, he sighed and murmured, ‘Practically impossible. What have I done to deserve this?’ For he knew, only too well he knew, that the whole job was his, whether he liked it or not.
He found himself wondering if this experiment had anything to do with his own unheard-of effort – entwining an Earthborn child, of mixed origin, with Ormingat. It would go some way towards explaining why he had never been informed of their presence.
The only other Ormingatrig child Steven knew of was a girl in York whose parents were both from Ormingat. Steven had been notified when she was born. It was a unique event, which had to be entered on his records because it was in his area.
The accident in Casselton, it soon appeared, was in no way caused by any carelessness on Vateelin’s part – he had been the victim of a runaway beer tanker whose brakes had failed on a steep hill. It was a horrific thing to happen, and it could have happened to anybody.
‘Well,’ said Jacob impatiently, ‘are you going to tell me anything?’
Steven paused in his work and told his son all about the accident. It would not do to say too much about Tonitheen, and to mention the girl in York was out of the question.
‘Now,’ he said in conclusion, ‘we can get on with the real work.’
He pushed a yellow button and this produced a map of the North of England. A green button homed in on the very car in Morpeth that had provided Vateelin with a landing place. Then the screen changed from map to picture. Steven could see the car, but wondered if it were at all possible to zoom in enough to find the man he was searching for.
‘We’ll never find him,’ said Jacob. ‘He’ll be much too small.’
‘Be quiet,’ said his father, frowning.
Working very, very slowly, he zoomed towards the windscreen and as he got there he perceived a movement, as if some insect were crawling over the bonnet. In further, in further, and there he was, a tiny creature in the shape of a man.
‘Wow!’ said Jacob. ‘What is he doing? Where is he going?’
In his hands the tiny man was holding some sort of thread and he was inching towards the side of the bonnet. Steven quickly split the screen so that he could see what was happening in two different dimensions. Then it became clear. Vateelin was trying to lower himself to the ground!
Suddenly he let go of the thread, which did not reach the ground, and went hurtling down into the gutter. Hastily, Steven pushed the scarlet button, the most important button on the Brick. In time to keep breath in the tiny body, but not to save that body from pain, the scarlet button surrounded him with a protective shield. It wafted him away from a grating that could have been the end of him: it would have been impossible to retrieve such a small being from a deep drain.
‘See what I saved him from?’ said Steven to Jacob. ‘A split-second slower, and our man would have been a goner. It’s all skill, you know. Nothing’s done by magic. I don’t pull rabbits out of hats!’
He looked at Jacob ruefully. ‘I’ve got to admit a bit of magic would come in handy right now. We’ve got to find some way to get that speck all the way to Edinburgh.’
‘Why Edinburgh?’ asked Jacob. ‘Isn’t that miles away from Morpeth?’
‘For someone his size, the other side of the road is miles away. But he has to be in Edinburgh because that is where his spaceship is. Bad navigation – even worse than mine. At least our ship is reasonably close to home!’
‘So what do we do now?’ said Jacob.
‘We watch and we study,’ said Steven, ‘and we tell ourselves that it can be done!’
Vateelin at this point began to make his way to the rear of the car.
‘Stay still,’ snapped Steven, as if the manikin could hear him. ‘Stay still and let me think, can’t you?’
Jacob looked at his father a little dubiously but concluded that he was not talking to him.
Vateelin paused to rest and Steven was relieved. He turned his attention to the Brick itself – to each of its buttons. The grey HELP button seemed the best option. Unfortunately its index did not include instructions on how to return a diminished being to his normal size for the space he is occupying.
Morning came and they were no further forward. During the night, for at least two hours Steven, Jacob and Vateelin had all slept. Jacob had retired to the armchair when it was clear that there was nothing to see or do.
He woke up with a start and went over to the desk where his father was lying slumped in his chair. ‘Dad,’ he said accusingly. ‘You haven’t been watching.’
Steven pulled himself back to the upright and said sharply, ‘If there had been anything to see, I would have seen it.’
Then they both turned to the screen.
They gasped at what they saw there. Vateelin was climbing up on to the pavement. Then they saw him jump on to a child’s shoe, clinging to the laces. What was he trying to do?
Steven thought rapidly. In his position, what would I be trying to do?
Find my way to Edinburgh.
Can’t walk all that way.
Go to a station. Get on a train.
Jacob watched. His eyes went from one view to the other. The telemicroscope picture gave an excellent view of Vateelin himself, but was inadequate for any interpretation of his environs. The larger view lost the figure of the man but made it possible to understand just where he was and what he might be trying to do.
Vateelin jumped from the child’s shoe and stood at the side of the road. Steven gently manoeuvred the equipment to keep him in the centre – not easy when Vateelin leapt on to the pedal of a bicycle. Dizzying to watch him as the pedal sped round and around. It stopped. Vateelin jumped off.
Then came a dreadful moment. Jacob grasped his father’s shirtsleeve, bunching it in the palm of his hand. Steven’s own hands shook as he furiously directed the shield to envelop his charge.
What had they seen to cause such panic?
There was a dog, a huge lollopy dog, tongue out ready to lick at the patch where Vateelin was standing.
Steven drew breath sharply.
As he paused, Jacob leant right over him and pressed the scarlet button with such force that it screeched.
Vateelin himself must have seen the dog that was menacing him: he suddenly leapt to one side. At that very instant, a nanosecond flash of scarlet swept over him and he became the size of an ordinary human being.
‘It worked!’ said Steven loudly. ‘God knows how, but it worked!’
It was only after this first reaction that he glared at Jacob. ‘You had no need to interfere,’ he said. ‘I would have managed it myself.’
‘You weren’t fast enough,’ said Jacob. ‘Like you said, a split-second slower and he’d have been a goner.’
The scarlet button looked slightly lopsided.
‘I think you might have broken it,’ said Steven icily. ‘I hope it can be mended.’
With exaggerated gentleness, he pressed a pink slot and the word REPAIR appeared on the screen. The scarlet button wobbled back to normal and Steven gave a sigh of relief.
‘So what do we do next?’ said Jacob.
‘Your favourite question!’ said Steven wryly, but he gave his son a friendlier look now that the crisis was over. ‘We do nothing. He’ll manage on his own now. He’s big enough.’
They watched Vateelin walk off down the busy street. They saw people step aside to let him pass. Then they went down to breakfast.
‘You work too hard,’ said Lydia to her husband as she poured out the tea. It did not occur to her that Jacob had been ‘working’ too.
‘Only when I have to,’ said Steven. ‘Not always. Most of the time, I’m a pretty lazy fellow.’
Lydia smiled and shook her head.
It was only much later in the day that Steven thought of the boy, the one who was suffering from shock somewhere. Where was Patrick/Vateelin’s son now? Why have I not been asked to care for him?