‘Pasha?’
He opened his eyes. ‘I heard myself saying numbers.’
‘Do you remember them?’
‘It hurt to speak.’
Saskia rolled her sleeve down. ‘You hurt yourself. Don’t touch things you shouldn’t.’
‘There were twenty five in total.’
Coldly, she said, ‘Forget them.’
‘Ms Tucholsky…’
‘I said, “Forget them”.’
Pasha reached out to her. ‘I don’t mean that. It’s your arm. Something is happening to it.’
Saskia looked at the band. It was glowing beneath her night shirt. A new coldness bit into her skin and she gasped, clapping a hand over it. The room seemed to brighten for a moment. In alarm, Pavel Eduardovitch sat upright. His eyes were fixed on the light coming from the band. Then the filaments in Pasha’s bedside light flared and died. The band darkened, too.
The room was utterly dark once more.
‘I can’t see.’
‘It’s all right.’
Saskia stepped back from the reaching hands of the boy. Silently, she walked to the foot of his bed. ‘Good night,’ she said.
‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Tell me what the number represents.’
‘I don’t know what it represents.’
‘That’s a lie. Remember I was honest with you.’
Saskia sighed. She admired his curiosity and felt a duty to cultivate it.
‘It is a secret. Do you agree to tell no-one?’
‘Oh, yes,’ he said brightly.
‘The zeros and ones make a sequence of twenty-five, as you guessed. They describe, I believe, a base-two number system known as binary notation.’
‘Precisely,’ said Pasha. His voice was hurried. ‘It’s of the form invented by Leibniz, yes?’
‘No. The system is the invention of Pingala, an Indian scholar who died several centuries before Christ.’ She paused. ‘If the binary notation is standard, then the number represented is large. I received the first number in the autumn of last year; the second I received slightly afterwards. Those two occasions gave me reason to understand what the large number represents.’
Saskia backed away.
‘What does it represent?’ Pasha stage-whispered.
‘Simply the time, in seconds, until a particular date.’
‘When?’ Pasha asked in Russian. Then, noting Saskia’s silence, he said in English, ‘What will happen?’
‘I have to leave.’
Saskia opened the door.
‘Who sent the message? Where do you need to go?’
‘Shhh,’ she said. ‘Good night.’
‘Good night.’ Pasha lay flat and put his hands against the back of his head. ‘Please, don’t tell Mother about my dream.’
‘Of course, Pavel Eduardovitch. Likewise, don’t tell her about my band, please.’
‘You may call me Pasha.’
She held her arm as she left his room. The band felt cool. She had no idea why it had reacted to the boy. Its influence typically told on systems with chaotic properties. What was different about his brain? Was it linked to his epilepsy? Perhaps it would have reacted in such a way to anybody, had Saskia permitted another person to touch it. But why had she allowed Pasha? As if in answer, she heard, once more, the song. This time it was the idling of her memory.
As she closed Pasha’s door, she heard a squeaking hinge at the end of the corridor. She turned. The door to the master bedroom closed with a gentle click.
She returned to her room and took a heavy blanket from a chest. She threw this across the bed and climbed inside.
Immediately, she knew that there was something in the bed with her. She rolled out, pulled back the bed clothes and pawed once at the switch for the electrified chandelier. The room exploded with light.
She released her breath. There was crumpled note at the base of her pillow.
Ms Tucholsky,
I would be obliged if you were to accompany my son to the Tsar’s Village tomorrow morning for a tour, which forms part of our small efforts in the furtherance of his education. I do, of course, remain,
Chapter Thirteen
The next morning, a maid knocked at the door and entered with brass cans of hot and cold water. Sleepily, Saskia introduced herself, but the maid said little and left. Saskia slid from her bed and performed several sets of push-ups, squats and sit-ups. Then she put her forehead against her shins and slowed her breathing. She wondered if she could avoid taking Pasha to the Summer Palace that morning. She was not safe in St Petersburg and she did not trust the judgement of the Count. However, if the Count’s connections were using him, they would not wish to harm his son.
Saskia stood tall and closed her eyes. The traffic noise was loud. She considered the Monty Hall Problem of counter-intuitive probability, both as a method of emptying her mind and as a mathematics lesson for Pasha should the need arise.
When the maid returned with tea, pancakes, sour cream, hot kasha porridge and the Gazette, Saskia was fully dressed. Her right hand gripped her left wrist within the warmer. She waited for the maid to leave. Then she discarded the warmer to sip the tea. It was black and excellent.
In the Gazette, she could find no mention of Kamo being discovered on the train. Her eyes lingered on the date. The day to come, the 17th May, 1908, might be her last in this time. What would it be like to skip those coming decades? She already knew: physically, it would be as mundane as passing from one room into another. Tomorrow might see her reconnected. The future was home, and that was enough, but Saskia planned to rescue her friend David Proctor from whatever had befallen him. The plan was impossible without paradox, maybe, but she would try.
She looked at herself in the mirror and adjusted her frilly cuffs and collar. The impression of the outfit was appropriate to her role as tutor: a sensible, dark affair with an embroidered blouse. The Countess had provided a choice of three hats, each belonging to a previous tutor. They had been adjusted to accommodate Saskia’s head. She was glad that the fashion for wide, tall hats was fading. She was quite tall enough. She opted for a narrow, flat hat with two trailing ribbons.
Saskia smiled at the woman in the mirror; not her.
The circle is closing.
Saskia and Pasha walked alone towards Tsar’s Village Station. It was mid-morning and some of the urgency had left the streets. The day was light but chill. Pasha, who had wanted to take a coach, was sullen.
‘What happened to your previous tutor?’ asked Saskia, watching a horse bus. ‘Did she resign on account of your extended silences?’
The boy said nothing.
‘Come,’ said Saskia. ‘If you talk to me, I’ll buy you a lollipop.’
‘I’m not a child.’
‘Clearly. A child would lack the energy to keep up such a miserable façade. Your adult qualities are almost fully developed, I’m sorry to say.’
Pasha frowned over her words. ‘“Miserable”?’
‘Убогий.’
‘I’m not miserable. I’m tired.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. We’ve been walking less than ten minutes.’
‘Why are you so fit? Did you used to be an athlete?’
‘Did you use to be.’
‘Use to be.’
‘But, Pavel Eduardovitch, how rude of you to use the past habitual, and with a stative verb, for shame. I’m still an athlete. Present continuous.’