I can see I do not possess the family touch.
Anyway, back to the reason I dragged you out of the cobweb pile, self-odyssey.
Today I got a letter.
It's an airmail letter.
A sheet of onionskin paper, with a heavily embossed coat of arms. Ah so, phoenix on flamebed and NON OMNIS MORIAR in gothic type underneath. I shall not all die?
Mr (sic) K. Holmes,
The Tower, Taiaroa PB,
Whangaroa, Wetland (Sic),
New Zealand.
Sir,
I am directed by His Lordship, the Earl of Conderry, to acknowledge the receipt by him of your letter dated April 30th. I am to inform you that, if the ring is genuine, and not a copy, then it belonged to
His Lordship's younger grandson. This person, about whom His Lordship has no wish to know anything more whatsoever (underline, I underline) was disinherited for disgraceful propensities four years ago. He is known to have resided in your country during his worldly {peregrinations. His Lordship wishes you to understand clearly that he has nothing further to say on this subject, and asks that you refrain from entering into further correspondence with him on this, or any I other matter. He will not reply to any such correspondence.
I am, Sir,
Yours faithfully, scrawl.
Apparently one Gabriel Semnet, Secretary to His Lordship the Earl of Conderry. Isn't that luverly? Can't you hear aristocratic nerves jangling all the way round the world? Sucks to his ancient overbearingness… though I do like that bit about disgraceful propensities. Wonder what they were? However, assuming this isn't a wild goose chase, I think I have a peer's remittance man to track down in his haunts of vice in this lowly colony of NZ.
I have a purpose in life again!
But I've also discovered I'm a snob. For my first thought on discovering there was a possible though improbable connection between Simon P and decayed Irish nobility, (bastardy? greatgrandsonship? the tenuous link of gifts?) was:
Ah hell, urchin, it doesn't matter, you can't help who your forbears were, and I realised as I thunk it, that I was revelling in the knowledge of my whakapapa and solid Lancashire and Hebridean ancestry. Stout commoners on the left side, and real rangatira on the right distant side. A New Zealander through and through. Moanawhenua bones and heart and blood and brain. None of your (retch) import Poms or whatevers.
This is getting boring, ghost, I'm gonna immure you again. See you in another six years. snapping the book shut.
"Did you know your son might have Irish connections?"
Joe sputters.
"The IRA? Yeah, I'd believe…"
"No, you silly bastard. Look at this."
He reads the letter, frowning.
Where on earth did you come by this? I didn't know anything about it-"
"I did the obvious thing. Went to the library and checked through the reference books until I found a coat of arms that matched that ring. You know, on his rosary. Then I wrote to the bod concerned
and asked whether he had any antipodean relations who might be sporting such a thing, and that's the answer. I wish I could get a photograph of the old bugger. There might be family resemblances or something. To wit, Sim's split chin. Or the eyes. Or something. D'you reckon he looks Irish?"
Joe's still reading.
"Jesus," he says in a worried way, "what does he mean by disgraceful propensities?"
"Weelll, I should imagine in that ingrown aristocracy it could mean anything from an improper preference for Scotch whisky, to a practised predilection for raping the cat."
He chokes on his coffee.
There's a full moon up, and the growing night is cold, silver, serene.
Kerewin sits patiently, chin cupped in her hands, watching the suneater flicker, miss a beat, die.
It's run for quite a while after the sun went down. 18.55.25 she notes, stopping the watch, and entering the time. She adds another dot to the graph — yep, the gradual decline, an inverse phi curve. Strange that the suneater's curve keeps pace with some of her own.
She had begun a book of biorhythmic cycles for herself a long time ago, and when she first began to explore the little machines, she had been curious to find out whether they might reflect cycles too. The suneater's chart has been going for sixteen months: her set, for five years, six years o God this December. And I thought a year would be enough to discover the rhythms of my body and mind… I'll finish it this year. The thing's become an obsession.
For what does five years of accumulating snippets of wisdom add up to? Knowledge that I'm a changeable sort of person-
O well.
She flicks the crystal casing of the suneater. Pretty toy. Pastime. As useful as all my other toys and time-passers. As useful and pointed as myself.
Joe, coming through the library circle doorway next night.
"Himi said you were up this… holy God, what is that?"
A blob of shining light, making butterfly oscillations.
It came from a mirror focused on a crystal to which was attached many fine copper wires. The crystal was set between two magnets, and it was turning blurringly fast.
"O that? One of my little um concoctions? Conundrums, anyway."
He came across and peered at it.
"It's a motor?"
"It might be if I could rig the thing up in some fashion to a driveshaft or belt. But the damn thing just goes phhfft! if you start hooking
other bits to it. So I keep it like that, purring nicely along eating sunlight."
Eating sunlight… he winces.
"How did you make such a thing?"
Horror in his voice and eyes.
"You really wanna know?" She exudes fake eagerness to tell. "Well, I have a grasshopper and haphazard mind y'know, a brain that listens to all sorts of things as well as itself." Patter, patter. "Annnd, one day this idea plopped into my mind that mirrors and sunlight and crystals and magnets and whatnots should… anyway, my gut tingled the right way. So I made it." She flipped a hand at it. "Kerewin's little toy, mark 18."
"But how?"
"I dunno. I've made a lot of the little beasties. One works off 'steam produced by strong sunlight. Very sporadic. Not satisfactory. Another one that I really like works off goodtempered humans. At least, it only goes if you touch it, and only if you're happy. You sulk, it sulks… o, they're fascinating wee things but not useful, if you get what I mean?"
Joe shudders slightly.
"I haven't the faintest idea why they work. Or even how," she adds.
"You give me the cold bloody horrors sometimes, Kerewin."
She smiles, her smile full of fangs.
He thinks,
Sometimes she seems ordinary. She is lonely. She drinks like I do, to keep away the ghosts. She's an outsider, like me. And then sometimes, she seems inhuman… like this Tower is inhuman. Comfortable to be in, pleasant, if you ignore the toadstools in the walls, and the little trees and glowworms in holes by the stairs, and the fact that nobody else in New Zealand lives in a Tower… maybe I've got it all wrong-
He had thought, from Kerewin's guarded talk over the past month
hat she had broken up with her family over a relationship they
didn't approve of. She didn't approve of? That her loneliness, being
apart from her family, had driven her to this part of the country
where none of them lived. He could understand that.
He shakes his head.
Don't worry your heart, Ngakau. Just like her.
He says to Kerewin's grin,
"If I had that thing in my house, I wouldn't sleep until I knew what made it work." She picks it up. "Here you are then."
It burrs on, quivering with light, whining with energy, unholy, in her hand.