‘So what happens next?’ asked Jacob on Wednesday evening as they sat once more in the computer room.
Steven was puzzled for an instant. Life had contained a whole day of varied activity. The observer in Marseilles had needed attention yet again – a minor problem but quite time-consuming; the insurance company had phoned twice about their digitization; the twins had needed help with their maths homework; and dinner had been an exceptionally nice spaghetti bolognese.
‘Happens next?’ he said. ‘Oh – in York, d’you mean?’
‘Yes, Dad, where else?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Steven. ‘At least, I don’t know what is happening now or will happen in the next few days. It is no concern of mine. A week come Saturday I shall, purely as a matter of interest, set the observation module ready to watch the Gwynns’ departure and, as it were, to close the book on it.’
‘Like we did with Vateelin and Tonitheen?’
Steven smiled, proud of his son’s ability to remember and pronounce the names so correctly. ‘You might be Ormingat born and bred to hear you, Javayl ban,’ he said affectionately.
‘But I’m not, am I?’ said Jacob in a sharp tone that his father failed to understand. I want to be one thing, he thought bitterly, not a mixture.
‘What will they think about returning to Ormingat?’ he went on, before his father could think of any follow on to the rhetorical question. ‘I mean, will they want to go?’
‘Yes,’ said Steven, weighing his words carefully. ‘Any of us without ties on Earth would be delighted to leave early. Earth duty is interesting and important, but – and I know you won’t understand this – it is somehow divorced from reality. Ormingat for Ormingatriga is always the real world.’
‘What about Nesta?’ said Jacob harshly. ‘She was born here in this second-class world.’
‘I didn’t say that,’ said Steven hastily. ‘Earth is not second class. It is just different, and some of the differences are not good. You should know that. God forbid that I should not know how lucky I am. To be married to your mother is a privilege. To be father to such a wonderful Earth family makes up for any sense of loss. That’s what I mean about “ties on Earth”.’
‘But what about Nesta?’ persisted Jacob. He remembered so well the girl he had seen through the window. He had looked into her eyes, and for just a moment she, he was sure, had looked into his. In that brief second she had noticed him, and he was oh so used to being unnoticed.
‘She will know of her Ormingat lineage. She will have learnt of it gradually from infancy. She too will be ready and eager to leave,’ said Steven.
‘I learnt nothing of my Ormingat lineage, as you call it, till I was thirteen,’ said Jacob. ‘How do you know that her parents don’t have as little sense as you did in this matter?’
‘That,’ said Steven indignantly, ‘is a completely different situation. You are Lydia’s son as well as mine.’
There it rested for another couple of days. But Jacob brooded on it and kept seeing the eyes of the girl at the window. He longed to see her again and to know if she would show any sign of recognition. It was a tantalizing thought.
On Friday afternoon he came home from school and went straight to the computer room, where Steven was engaged in producing some complicated graph on his ordinary Earth computer.
‘One minute,’ he said, not looking away from the screen. ‘Just got to work this out.’
Jacob sat down on the stool and waited impatiently.
‘Well,’ said Steven at last, ‘what is it?’
‘I think we should check on the family in York,’ said Jacob. ‘I have a hunch that something could go wrong. I’ve been thinking about it all day.’
Steven sighed. ‘Waste of time,’ he said. ‘Nothing can go wrong. Matthew knows what he’s doing. He and Alison need no further help from me. They have never needed my help in all the time they have been here.’
‘Look anyway,’ said Jacob, ‘just to satisfy me.’
Steven moved over to the Brick, drew out its keyboard and unfurled its screen.
‘Just a short look,’ he said, ‘but I’m telling you now, all we’ll see is a twilit garden and that ugly great frog. I can’t and won’t probe inside the house. It is none of my business. It is against all etiquette, if you understand what I mean.’
What they saw was not what Steven had expected. For a start the twilit garden was partly illuminated by the porch light. Coming out of the porch were Nesta and her mother; Matthew was ahead of them. Then all three surrounded the frog in the pond.
‘They’re moving the frog,’ whispered Jacob, almost as if he feared they might hear him.
‘They must have to enter the ship for some reason,’ said Steven, ‘although this is a few days earlier than I would have expected.’
Then it became clearer to him. They were not all entering the ship. Just one. Just Matthew. With breathtaking speed he disappeared into the centre of the pond – he simply vanished.
Jacob had seen this sort of thing happen before: with Vateelin and his son outside the hospital. He had experienced it himself several times in the cemetery at Highgate. But the wonder of it never decreased. On this occasion, the event was so unexpected that Jacob blinked hard. His eyelids clenched out the scene just long enough for him to miss Nesta’s startling reaction.
‘She’s collapsed,’ cried Steven in alarm. ‘She’s gone into a dead faint.’
Jacob jumped. He looked at the screen and saw that Nesta’s mother was struggling to support her daughter and was half-carrying her towards the house.
‘What a stupid way to let her know!’ said Steven in anger.
‘What do you mean, Dad?’ said Jacob anxiously. He wanted to follow Nesta into the house. He wanted to know that she was recovering.
‘I’ll tell you what I mean,’ said Steven angrily. ‘Those two paragons in York have failed to tell their daughter anything till now. And they have demonstrated diminishing to a total innocent.’
‘You demonstrated diminishing to me,’ said Jacob resentfully. ‘So what’s the difference?’
‘I guided you through the experience,’ said Steven self-righteously. ‘I didn’t just diminish before your eyes and leave you to stand watching. It was utter folly. I don’t envy them the next few hours.’
‘So what happens next?’ said Jacob for the second time that week.
‘I don’t know,’ said Steven tersely. ‘I don’t care. And it’s not my job. Let them get on with it.’
As he spoke, he made the screen go dead and furled it back into the Brick.