The Prophecy Machine

Finn didn't answer. He didn't care to get into such a thing at the time.

“I think I saw that awful old man standing on the roof. I think he held Calabus in his arms. I think they were both on fire. Could that be, Finn?”

“Why, I guess,” Finn said, “anything could be …”

“Finn, look right at me.” She drew away a bit and searched his eyes. “There's more you've got to tell. Don't try and protect me, dear, that doesn't help at all.”

Finn let out a breath. “No, I guess it doesn't. Someone else perhaps, but not you. Both of us nearly died in there, but not how you think, Letitia. This is hard to fathom, which is why I didn't want to tell you now. I didn't believe in Calabus' Prophecy Machine. I didn't, but things-happened down there. Sabatino didn't die. He left, but he wasn't exactly dead.”

Finn paused, trying to get the words right. “I said this was hard to credit, and it is. Sabatino got caught up in something down there. Something, in that device, that twisted Time inside out. I believe he went into the past, I think he made a great fortune with his knowledge of the future, and returned to Makasar. He built the Nucci house. He married, or got someone with child. That child was Calabus …”

“What?” Letitia's eyes went wide. “Finn, you can't mean what I think you mean. You've got the names wrong.”

“I do mean it, though, as wondrous as it seems. Sabatino was the Grandfather too, dear. It was he who invented the machine, not his son. Or maybe he remembered it somehow, from the past. But if he did, where's the start of the thing, does it have a beginning or not? I don't want to think about that.

“At any rate, I feel he was mad, nearly from the start. I think it likely that the cruel dilation of Time has an undesirable effect on the mind.

“Did he know what had happened to him? Did he know who he'd been, what he'd become? Perhaps, but I think not for long. I think the shock of falling through the years brought on the madness at once.

“I believe the seer told me true, Letitia, as far as she could know. There was indeed a spell that protected that horrid device. Only, she couldn't understand it wasn't a sorcerer's spell at all. The spell was the great distortion of Time itself, an awesome bit of magic for sure, but one we never dreamed of before.”

“Finn …” Letitia closed her eyes and frowned. “What you say just couldn't be. Sabatino and the old man-his grandfather-they were both here. How could-how could two of the same person be in the same place at one time?”

“How can magic be? How can you and I, and everything on earth, possibly exist? I don't pretend to know the logic or the reason, what kind of rules Time follows, if it follows any at all. But I saw the men together. I made no connection at the time, of course, but, Letitia-they were the same.

“I know this is so, but I can't explain why. I'm a maker of lizards. I'm not a magician, and I don't wish to travel through Time. As a fact, I wholly agree with you. I don't wish to go anywhere at all. Are you coming down, now? You need to get all the rest you can.”

“In a while, love. I want to watch the sea. I doubt that I can sleep with all this in my head …”

“You told her that, but nothing more, then. I hope she'll be satisfied. Letitia has a curiosity that's most unnerving at times.”

“Why wouldn't she?” Finn said. “What could be more awesome than what she knows now?”

He sat in the dimly lit cabin watching an ill-formed lizard perched atop his bunk. He tried not to look too hard, for she knew her condition, and resented any glance at all.

“She remembers nothing, and I pray she never does. I would do most anything to keep that horror from coming to mind again. This is a truth Letitia must never see. I saw it happen with my eyes, or I surely wouldn't credit it myself.

“When Letitia was caught in the grip of Time, it wrenched her back to what she'd been, split every spark, every nit, every cosmic mite that makes us what we are. Shattered her into a horde of those creatures and tossed them to the winds of Time.”

“The same winds, I gather, that caught Sabatino as well.”

Finn shook his head. “I don't know that. I can't say when or how the myce appeared. But they were there in the house Sabatino built. Did his transition bring them there? I don't suppose they have to wait in the hall, so to speak, until the proper time, which isn't even there.

“All I can say is that Sabatino, in his madness, invented, created, conjured up the Prophecy Machine. Because his other self remembered it was there-or because some fixed, rigid rule of the cosmos says it happens, so it does?

“What's clear is he used those poor, primal creatures, used their hunger perhaps, and their fear, to race about their wild and twisting paths, to drive the gears and wheels of that horrid thing, to tap some incredible force that spews out an endless, ceaseless record of the future, the past, every day gone, and all that's to come. One that, doubtless, even a madman cannot understand.

“And that, Julia, is a thing Letitia must never, ever know. I only hope her dreams will treat her kindly, and leave her nights in peace.”

“All will be well, I'm sure,” said Julia Jessica Slagg. “Letitia is stronger than you think, and wiser, too. She puts up with you, we must consider that.”

“Thanks for the encouragement and help. I am greatly relieved now.”

“I will be greatly relieved when I'm put together right again. When do you imagine that will be?”

“There are two factors here. One has to do with the time it takes this vessel to wend us home. The second, the greater factor, depends upon a remarkable transition, a breakthrough, a true conversion as it were, a change in attitude. Dwell upon that, if you will …”

He watched her awhile before he moved to join her, watched her standing at the rail, the wind pressing strands of ashen hair against her cheek.

While he watched, he thought of many things. He thought about TAVERN and BAR, he thought about Bowsers and the Dobbin he'd met, and how he wished they'd had a chance to speak.

He thought about the seer, and wished, for an instant, he had seen her in the light, though dreams imagined were often better in the dark. She could never be as lovely as Letitia, he told himself at once, that was surely not the point. But Mycer ladies ever touched his heart.

He wondered if Squeen would find work somewhere, and wished him well. He had to fare better this time. How could he do any worse?

He wondered, then, if Captain Pynch would return to Ulster-East. If they might meet again on Garpenny Street, when the Coldtown shades came about.

One thing he knew and understood well: he didn't need an invention of any sort to tell him where his future lay. His future, just then, turned from the rail and showed him a gentle smile.

“Besides my understanding of love, and what it's all about,” he said to himself, “I know mixing spells with a noisome device is a foolish thing at best. I know, from the frightful venture just past, that magic is one thing, and machinery is ever something else …”