Steven’s revelations left Lydia stunned. He had told her absolutely everything. Together they checked Jacob’s room, ransacked it almost, and came to the conclusion that he must indeed have gone out clad only in his pyjamas.
‘He could be sleepwalking,’ said Lydia. ‘We should go out and look for him.’
‘We know he is not sleepwalking,’ said Steven gently. ‘Neither is he lost. He is in a spaceship travelling out of this solar system into another. We know that.’
‘You know that,’ said Lydia, but her protest had no strength in it.
‘We know that,’ said Steven.
She could not contradict him.
The story Steven had just told her had begun with the mativil and how it had saved Jacob’s life. There had been something very decisive about that. It now seemed to her that her son had been hers ‘on loan’. It was as if the earthly Jacob had died all those years ago, and she had been given some sort of changeling. He is not flesh of my flesh. Yet nothing in the whole of creation could alter the fact that she was his mother and had reared him from babyhood.
They went silently down to the sitting room, where they sat together on the settee. The room was in semi-darkness, lit only by the table lamp. Upstairs, the twins would be sleeping.
‘I want to see the Brick,’ said Lydia. ‘I do believe you – why would you want to lie to me? – but I must see the Brick at work.’
‘I don’t know if it will work for you – I mean, in your presence. It can be temperamental at the best of times,’ said Steven doubtfully. He was reluctant to make the attempt. He was not sure whether the protection module would know that there was an illegal observer watching the screen.
‘I won’t speak,’ said Lydia, knowing the thoughts her husband had not put into words. ‘I’ll sneak in quietly and won’t even move till you have done all that needs to be done.’
They walked furtively up the two flights of stairs, trying their best to let no stair creak. It was important not to wake the twins.
Steven opened the door to the computer room and sat Lydia down in the armchair, turning it very carefully so that it would face the screen. The only light would be the lamp on the desk, so she would be hidden in shadow.
He sat down in front of the Brick, unscrolled the screen, pressed the buttons to give him a visual image, and waited. At first the screen was entirely blank and he half expected to see no more than a farewell message, if that.
Then suddenly, there was a picture of the inside of the spaceship. All was still. On the sofa. Jacob was lying curled up and fast asleep.
Lydia craned forward and gasped involuntarily. Steven turned towards her for a second, no more, and put one finger to his lips. When he turned back, the screen was blank again. Fiercely he pulled the lever that would allow him to speak to the module.
‘What happened to the picture?’ he said. ‘I want to see my son.’
OUT OF RANGE
‘What do you mean?’ said Steven. ‘We have just seen him.’
‘You have seen him,’ said Steven rapidly. ‘I have seen him. You and I are “we”.’
Lydia shrank back into the cushions of the armchair, realizing that it was very important that the machine should be totally unaware of her presence.
OUT OF RANGE NOW. NO MORE WE CAN SEE HIM
‘Is he really safe? Will he be happy?’ said Steven. These questions were specifically to elicit an answer for Lydia.
JAVAYL IS SAFER THAN ON EARTH. HE WILL BE HAPPIER THAN HE EVER WAS IN HIS LONELY LIFE ON THAT PLANET
Steven unscrolled the screen and switched the protection module to its rest position. Now it was safe for him to speak to Lydia. He turned on the light to check the room before leaving.
‘I’ll try again later,’ he said feebly, knowing that later would be worse rather than better. Out of range now would be well and truly out of range later.
Lydia gave him a wan smile. There were so many things she knew without being told.
‘We could be given more information,’ said Steven, understanding her cynicism. ‘They might still want me to work for them.’
He opened the door and turned to switch off the light. He and Lydia together looked across at the Brick. What they saw told them all they would ever know.
On the shelf, where the Brick had been, was an ordinary builder’s brick, orange and porous, with not a button in sight.
Steven dashed over to it, searched behind it for the screen and its frame. There was nothing there.
‘LAMBERT BRICK CO.’ were the words embossed within the brick’s borders. Steven picked it up in his hands, turned it round and round, and was about to fling it to the floor when he remembered the sleepers in the room below. Lydia took it from him and put it back on the table.
‘You know now,’ said Steven. ‘You know all there is to know.’
‘I know,’ said Lydia. ‘I do know now. But that does not make it any less terrible.’
Steven grasped her arm in an attempt to comfort. ‘We won’t be alone,’ he said. ‘My people are not cruel and, though they lack the ability to return our son to us, there are other ways in which they will help.’
Lydia was puzzled. ‘We’ll see them?’ she said. ‘I don’t follow.’
‘We’ll not see them or know them, but they will do everything to protect us and to ease the pain. The Brick was a protection module. There are other protection modules. I know we will not be left entirely alone,’ said Steven.
They returned to the sitting room and, for some time, sat in silence.
‘I used to think it was my fault,’ said Lydia. The skin seemed stretched tight across her face and her lips were bloodless.
‘What was your fault?’ said Steven, not sure what this remark might mean.
‘I used to think it was from me that Jacob inherited his loneliness,’ she said. ‘You called me a waif-soul. I thought my son was just such another, and that the fault was mine.’
‘Life’s not as simple as that,’ said Steven. ‘That is an Earth way of looking at things – heredity, environment. They are valid up to a point, but every soul in the universe – and God alone knows how many or how scattered they might be – is an individual. We are not peas in a pod.’
Then Lydia thought of Jacob, her own very individual son, and for the first time since all this was sprung upon her she began to weep and weep as if she would never stop.
Steven put his arms around her and he too sobbed quietly.
Where was Ormingat protection from such sorrow?
There is an answer: sometimes the only thing left to do is to weep.
‘He’s not dead, you know,’ said Steven at last, in a voice hoarse with emotion. ‘And he will be happy. Just think that he has grown up a little faster. It is as if he had emigrated.’
True comfort came much, much later.
To Lydia was vouchsafed one brief, bright vision of Jacob’s arrival on a planet faraway. She lit just one candle on her son’s seventeenth birthday. She watched it burn, and in its flame she saw the joy of Ormingat.