because humans invented the idea of… of… of ideas, and they think in human shapes —”
“Get back to the ‘and, then again, no’, will you?”
“Your mother is Time.”
“No one knows who my mother is!”
“I could take you to the midwife,” said Susan. “Your father found the best there's ever been. She delivered you. Your mother was Time.”
Lobsang sat with his mouth open.
“It was easier for me,” said Susan. “When I was very small my parents used to let me visit my grandfather. I thought every grandfather had a long black robe and rode a pale horse. And then they decided that maybe that wasn't the right environment for a child. They were worried about how I was going to grow up!” She laughed mirthlessly. “I had a very strange education, you know? Maths, logic, that sort of thing. And then, when I was a bit younger than you, a rat turned up in my room and suddenly everything I thought I knew was wrong.”
“I'm a human! I do human things! I'd know if—”
“You had to live in the world. Otherwise, how could you learn to be human?” said Susan, as kindly as she could.
“And my brother? What about him?”
Here it comes, Susan thought. “He's not your brother,” she said. “I lied a bit. I'm sorry.”
“But you said—”
“I had to lead up to it,” said Susan. “It's one of those things you have to get hold of a bit at a time, I'm afraid. He's not your brother. He's you.”
“Then who am I?”
Susan sighed. “You. Both of you… are you.”
“And there I was, and there she was,” said Mrs Ogg, “and out the baby came, no problem there, but that's always a tryin' moment for the new mum, and there was…” she paused, her eyes peering through the windows of memory, “like… like a feelin' that the world had stuttered, and I was holdin' the baby and I looked down and there was me deliverin' a baby, and I looked at me, and I looked at me, and I remember saying, ‘This is a fine to-do, Mrs Ogg,’ and she, who was me, said, ‘You never said a truer word, Mrs Ogg,’ and then it all went strange and there I was, just one of me, holdin' two babies”.
“Twins,” Susan said.
“You could call them twins, yes, I s'pose you could,” said Mrs Ogg. “But I always thought that twins is two little souls born once, not one born twice.”
Susan waited. Mrs Ogg looked in the mood to talk.
“So I said to the man, I said, ‘What now?’ and he said, ‘Is that any business of yours?’ and I said he could be damn sure it was my business and he could look me in the eye and I'd speak my mind to anyone. But I was thinking, you're in trouble now, my girl, 'cos it'd all gone myffic.”
“Mythic?” said schoolteacher Susan.
“Yep. With extra myff. And you can get into big trouble, with myffic. But the man just smiled and said that he must be brought up human until he's of age and I thought, yep, it's gone myffic all right. I could see he hadn't got a clue about what to do next and it was all going to be down to me.”
Mrs Ogg took a suck at her pipe and her eyes twinkled at Susan through the smoke. “I don't know how much experience you have with this sort of thing, my girl, but sometimes when the high and mighty make big plans they don't always think about the fine detail, right?”
Yes. I'm a fine detail, Susan thought. One day Death took it into his skull to adopt a motherless child, and I'm a fine detail. She nodded.
“I thought, how does this go, in a myffic kind of way?” Mrs Ogg went on. “I mean, technic'ly I could see we're in that area where the prince gets brought up as a swineherd until he manifests his destiny, but there's not that many swineherding jobs around these days, and poking hogs with a stick is not all it's cracked up to be, believe you me. So I said, well, I'd heard the Guilds down in the big cities took in foundlings out of charity, and looked after them well enough, and there's many well set-up men and women who started life that way. There's no shame in it, plus, if the destiny doesn't manifest as per schedule, he'd have set his hands to a good trade, which would be a consolation. Whereas swineherding 's just swineherding. You're giving me a stern look, miss.”
“Well, yes. It was rather a chilly decision, wasn't it?”
“Someone has to make 'em,” said Mrs Ogg sharply. “Besides, I've been around for some time and I've noticed that them as has it in them to shine will shine through six layers of muck, whereas those who ain't shiny won't shine however much you buff 'em. You may think otherwise, but it was me standing there.”
She investigated the bowl of her pipe with a matchstick.
Eventually she went on: “And that was it. I would have stayed, of course, because there wasn't so much as a crib in the place, but the man took me aside and said thank you and that it was time to go. And why would I argue? There was love there. It was in the air. But I won't say that I don't sometimes wonder how it all turned out. I really do.”
There were differences, Susan had to admit. Two different lives had indeed burned their unique tracks on the faces. And the selves had been born a second or so apart, and a lot of the universe can change in a second.
Think of identical twins, she told herself. But they are two different selves occupying bodies that, at least, start out identical. They don't start out as identical selves.
“He looks quite like me,” said Lobsang, and Susan blinked. She leaned closer to the unconscious form of Jeremy.
“Say that again,” she said.
“I said, he looks quite like me,” said Lobsang.
Susan glanced at Lady LeJean, who said, “I saw it too, Susan.”
“Who saw what?” said Lobsang. “What are you hiding from me?”
“His lips move when you speak,” said Susan. “They try to form the same words.”
“He can pick up my thoughts?”
“It's more complicated than that, I think.” Susan picked up a limp hand and gently pinched the web of skin between thumb and forefinger.
Lobsang winced, and glanced at his own hand. A patch of white skin was reddening again.
“Not just thoughts,” said Susan. “This close, you feel his pain. Your speech controls his lips.”
Lobsang stared down at Jeremy.
“Then what will happen,” he said slowly, “when he comes round?”
“I'm wondering the same thing,” said Susan. “Perhaps you shouldn't be here.”
“But this is where I have to be!”
“We at least should not stay here,” said Lady LeJean. “I know my kind. They will have been discussing what to do. The signs will not hold them for ever. And I have run out of soft centres.”
“What are you supposed to do when you are where you're supposed to be?” said Susan.
Lobsang reached down and touched Jeremy's hand with his fingertip.
The world went white.
