It is not the loudness of the voice. Voices can speak in a faint whisper and still insist upon being heard.
There was a week to go before the spaceship lodged at the base of the Friese-Greene obelisk would leap from the soil and jet out into space. Steven knew that his decision to remain behind would not be accepted as a fait accompli till the deed was truly done.
After two days of justifiable sulking, he went to the computer room to check the Brick. Curiosity is a strong motivation. It was Tuesday tea time. Jacob had not yet come in from school. So the coast, as Steven saw it, was clear.
He opened the door for the first time that week.
He looked defiantly at the Brick.
What he saw was not quite what he had expected.
The purple button was flashing, not urgently but intermittently like Morse code. It seemed almost gentle, except that machines do not have attitudes. Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you join the dance?
Steven slid into his seat and made his presence known. Immediately the screen unfurled and displayed a terse notice.
COME TO THE SPACESHIP
Steven had to think hard what to conceal and what to reveal. He did not want to admit that he had no intention of returning to Ormingat. With only six days to go, it would be a risk to enter the ship and hope to leave, even using deception, which he was not very good at any way.
He decided that to talk to the machine represented a greater hazard than to type in a reply. Carefully he typed the words,
TOO SOON
There was no reply. When Steven’s words scrolled off the screen, they were replaced by the original message:
COME TO THE SPACESHIP
‘Maybe we should go,’ said Jacob.
Steven jumped, startled. He had not heard his son come into the room behind him. ‘Go?’ he said rapidly. ‘Go where?’
‘Go to the spaceship,’ said Jacob. ‘Tell the truth and ask for the ship to remain on Earth, and explain to the Cube that you want to continue your work here.’
‘No,’ said Steven, harshly yanking on the lever to sever communications and sharply scrolling the screen down into place. ‘Leave it.’
‘But–’ began Jacob.
‘No buts,’ said Steven. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘Someone might need you,’ said Jacob, trying another tack.
That was a tempting suggestion. Steven liked to be needed. The new facilitator, whoever that might be, would not be as proficient. If I can prove that I am irreplaceable, concessions will be made.
‘Leave me,’ he said to his son, and then softened enough to say, ‘You are right. I should do some checking. But leave me now. This is the boring bit, and you know it takes a lot of concentration.’
Reluctantly, Jacob left the room, turning as he went to say, ‘That ship is ours, Sterekanda mesht. Make sure they understand.’
In the days that followed, Steven would not meet Jacob’s eye. His whole manner forbade questioning. He mind-fenced the subject to the best of his ability; but his experience with Stella Dalrymple had taught him that a determined personality is not susceptible to mind-fencing, especially when some important concept is at stake. The computer room was kept locked and he decided not to enter it again until the deadline had passed.
Jacob found himself forced into silence, but he knew every twist and turn of his father’s thinking. Clearly, he had failed to put forward a satisfactory argument for continuing his work here on Earth. Now he was determined to block it all out.
A phone call from the insurance company was answered with the excuse that work on their system would have to be suspended for a day or two because the computer terminal was temporarily inaccessible.
‘It is a very small glitch,’ said Steven smoothly. ‘Tell Anton that everything will be back on line next week.’
Wednesday passed, and Thursday. The voice of Ormingat kept on whispering to both its sons. One was determined to shut it out; the other was simply reduced to silent misery.
On Friday night, the whispering increased. Jacob was more disturbed than ever. Floorboards all over the house seemed to be creaking. The central heating took longer than usual to settle down for the night. The curtains at his window shuffled with a draught he had never been aware of before.
Come to the spaceship, said the voice inside his head. Come now. Come quickly.
That was more easily said than done. Come where? Come how? He eventually slept, but fitfully, and his sleep was filled with unruly dreams.
Then, in the middle of the night, he came fully awake and realized that he had forgotten to clean his teeth. The taste in his mouth was unpleasant. He welcomed the excuse to get out of bed, to perform a simple everyday task.
He watched himself in the bathroom mirror, scrubbing his teeth, up and down, backwards and forwards, then up and down again. Come to the spaceship. He rinsed his mouth and put the toothbrush back into the rack.
He walked back to his bedroom, passing his parents’ room on the way, slightly dawdling, hoping that his father would come out and see him there. The bedroom door opened. It was Lydia.
‘I forgot to clean my teeth, Mum,’ said Jacob quickly.
‘So that was the noise I heard,’ said Lydia. ‘Do settle down to sleep now. You don’t want to waken the rest of the house!’
Steven too had unease inside his soul. But he knew how to recognize the silent sound that managed to seem like a great voice calling. It was the voice of Ormingat, using telepathy to speak to its recalcitrant son. You have a debt to Javayl.
On Saturday morning, Lydia rose early, but Steven stayed in bed with the blankets over his ears as if to shut out the sound of the Sirens. The messages that came from Ormingat were sweet and tempting. His human mind might have little recollection of the place to which he truly belonged, but deep inside, he knew. And he cared. He even felt himself assessing the possibilities. He could safely leave the twins to their life on Earth. Much as he loved them, he knew that they would manage without him. He could gladly take Jacob with him into space, and Jacob would be glad to go. But there was no way this side of paradise that he could ever part from Lydia.
‘Kerry says we can have a rabbit, Dad,’ said Josie, ‘to keep in the back garden.’
‘We don’t know anything about keeping a rabbit,’ said Steven. ‘You don’t just feed them, you know. I’m quite sure of that. Would you have to take them to the park for a walk? Do you have to get a rabbit collar and lead?’
Beth was not quite sure whether he meant it or not. She had never seen anyone taking a rabbit for a walk, but it was possible. She looked questioningly at her sister.
‘Of course not,’ said Josie. ‘You just let them have little runs round the yard and the garden. They’re really sweet. And they eat lettuce and carrots.’
‘Where do they – if you will excuse the word – poo?’ said Steven, smiling mischievously. ‘Do they start off in nappies?’
‘Dad,’ said Josie exasperatedly, ‘you know they don’t. You have to get a hutch at the pet shop. And you have to clean up after them. But they’re not very dirty, not like cats and dogs. Their droppings are really quite small, Kerry says.’
‘Ah-hah,’ said their father, ‘so you get this smelly hutch that needs mucking out, like one of the labours of Hercules.’
‘Stop tormenting them,’ said Lydia with a laugh. ‘Your father will go and get you a hutch this afternoon – but you will have to do all the mucking out yourself. And rabbits are not allowed inside the house. If that’s clear, I’m sure we’ll all get along nicely.’
It was Steven who received the hugs and the thanks, but Lydia did not mind.
Jacob stood watching in silence.
On Sunday, while the family were at church, Jacob safely with them, Steven broke his resolve to stay away from the Brick. Alone in the house, he found it difficult to resist checking it just once more. He went into the computer room and unscrolled the screen.
IT IS IMPERATIVE THAT YOU COME NOW
Steven did not sit down at the table. Nor did he pull the lever that would allow him to speak directly to the Brick. He just leant over the keyboard and typed the words:
WHAT YOU ASK IS IMPOSSIBLE
He left the room again and locked the door.
When the family returned from church, Jacob gave his father a look that clearly expressed suspicion. Steven said nothing and turned towards his daughters, who were in their usual state of high excitement. The hutch was already in the garden, tucked between the shed and the back fence.
‘And today we take delivery of the rabbit,’ he said to the girls. ‘What shall you call her?’
‘It’s a him,’ said Josie.
‘And his name’s Bob,’ said Beth. ‘That’s short for bobtail.’