Jacob left his father sitting in the bar of the hotel, talking to another computer buff who had come all the way from Scotland for a conference, and would be at the show next day.
‘Synchronization’s the thing,’ the man was saying. Jacob hadn’t a clue what they were talking about and was glad to go to his own room to settle down for the night.
He drew the curtains to shut out the dark. The room was rather bare, with walls painted an uncomfortable shade of yellow. It was at the back of the building. Outside there was a metal fire escape leading down to a dimly lit courtyard. Nothing to see, nothing to do. There was a TV set in the corner of the room opposite his bed, but Jacob chose not to watch it. Last night he had retired much later, after a nightcap in his father’s room and a long, if somewhat empty talk about the Gwynns. Steven was expert at evading unwelcome questions without even seeming to do so.
Tonight Jacob’s one idea was to get straight to sleep, to make morning come more quickly. He skipped a shower, cleaned his teeth, got into his pyjamas, and said his prayers: ‘. . . as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.’ The church at home might seem like a club to which he did not quite belong, but that special prayer could encompass everything, even Ormingat. So it seemed to Jacob.
He lay on his side, curled up and ready for sleep. But sleep would not come. He had made every effort to relax. He had deliberately missed out on the shower in case it woke him up too much. He should have been tired. But sleep refused to come.
The pillow was too hard.
He thumped it and plumped it but to no avail.
The room was too dark.
He switched on the bedside lamp.
Then the room was too light.
So he turned on to his back, stretched out, put his hands behind his head and surrendered to the thoughts that came crowding in . . .
For a year and a half, Javayl the outsider, child of the broken word, had himself belonged to a very exclusive club. There were just four members: Javayl, Sterekonda, the Brick and the Cube. Their clubhouse was a spaceship buried in a grave in Highgate Cemetery. It had been the most wonderful time of his life.
For Jacob, losing the spaceship was not a matter of losing the choice of flying to a faraway planet. It was simply losing the spaceship, having his clubhouse pulled down about his ears. This was the dreadful thought that kept sleep at bay. If the Gwynns, by any chance, took their place in the spaceship, it would feel as if they had stolen it. The long-ago entwining had placed something in Jacob’s heart that would not go away. Everything else in his life went out of focus. His mother and sisters were blurred and distant. A deep yearning for a faraway place he had never seen, or could even envisage, overwhelmed him. I love Ormingat.
It was after midnight when Steven retired to bed. His room was larger than Jacob’s and faced the street, three floors above the ground. From his window he could see a large, railed garden with ornamental trees, leafless for winter. A few cars were still going up and down the hill. But, on the whole, the world was quiet. Steven dosed the curtains and prepared for bed.
Last night he had slept from sheer exhaustion. The interview with the Gwynns had taken its toll. The time he had spent parrying all those questions Jacob kept firing at him had demanded too much effort for the time of night. He had been glad to see his son go off to his own room and leave him in peace.
Tonight was different.
He could not sleep at all.
‘I always stay here when I’m in York,’ the man in the bar had said. ‘The beds are about as comfortable as you’ll find anywhere – even at home!’
Tonight the bed in Steven’s room felt hard and unyielding. The pillow was too flat. The wool blanket itched through the sheet. Nothing felt right.
At one o’clock he was still awake – awake and worrying.
How was he going to approach Stella Dalrymple?
How would he go about dealing with her?
How would he even get to talk to her?
He could just imagine himself and Jacob knocking at her door. She would open it just a little. What would she see? A man and a teenaged boy whom she had never met and knew nothing about. She would hardly be likely to invite them in. They could be anyone, thieves or murderers. She had closed the door on the reporter. She had said just two words and then closed the door.
If we get in, we’re all right, Steven thought, over and over again, but we might not even get across the doorstep.
At breakfast next morning, Jacob and his father were both very tired. They helped themselves to juice and cereal, and then sat at a table by the window.
‘I couldn’t sleep last night,’ said Jacob. ‘I kept worrying about the spaceship.’
‘Hmm,’ said Steven, and quickly gestured to his son to be silent as the waiter approached with the coffee pot.
‘There’s nothing to worry about,’ he went on after the intruder had moved off to another table. ‘The spaceship will leave in the early hours of the first of March and we shall never see it again.’
‘That is what I am worried about,’ said Jacob. ‘I don’t want never to see it again. It’s our spaceship. Can we not just keep it and stop it from flying anywhere?’
‘You know we can’t,’ said Steven. ‘I’ve already explained that to you.’
‘You could make some sort of arrangement with the Cube,’ said Jacob. ‘I know the Brick can be a bit shirty, but the Cube sometimes seems quite friendly. It might understand.’
Steven put down his spoon and drops of milk spurted on to the table. ‘Jacob Bradwell,’ he said quietly but with deep irritation, ‘how can you be so – so anthropomorphic? The Brick is a protection module. The cube is a communicator. They do not possess attitudes!’
‘Toast?’ said the waiter. ‘Brown or white?’
‘Anything,’ said Steven impatiently. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
The waiter placed a rack with two rounds of each in it on their table and quickly moved away.
‘I have my worries too,’ said Steven. ‘I don’t really know how we are going to deal with Mrs Dalrymple. So now you know.’
Jacob shuddered at the thought of dealing with this woman. He did not know what his father meant. But for the moment he was too tired to ask. There would be time on the train going north.
They helped themselves to cheese and meats and finished breakfast in silence. It was not an ominous silence. It was not even a thoughtful silence. It was, purely and simply, two men too tired to sing a tired song.
‘I think we’ll skip the computer show,’ said Steven, ‘and get an earlier train north. We both need a rest.’