David Llewellyn - Trace Memory

'But what's so urgent?' asked Michael, and then, with vague disdain, 'You said we were just looking at beautiful things.'

'True,' said Jack. 'But I also said we had questions that need answering. Who said we couldn't do both?'

They walked through gallery after gallery, past gaggles of schoolchildren listening attentively to prim and proper tour guides, and Michael looked at the paintings and wondered whether there would come a day when all of them would be gone for ever; burnt or buried like the pictures that had decorated his house when he was a child. Some of the paintings, so Jack told him, were centuries old; they had survived wars and plagues; but surely something as flimsy as canvas wouldn't last for eternity.

When he told Jack this, Jack felt a sudden stab of sadness. Michael had a point. Jack was beginning to realise that there was a very good chance he'd outlast every painting in the museum.

They'd walked through several of the larger galleries, when Jack said, 'There he is.'

'Who?' asked Michael.

'Sam,' said Jack, gesturing towards an old man with a mottled grey beard.

'And who's Sam?'

'He's the knower of all things,' said Jack. 'Like a kind of sage…'

'Like sage and onion?'

Jack laughed. 'No. Like a wise man. A magus. He's a friend, or as close to a friend as I've got most of the time.'

Michael looked at the old man and frowned. He didn't look all that special. In fact, he looked more like a tramp — sitting on one of the leather viewing couches with his shoulders slumped, his hands resting on a wooden walking stick, and an old and battered satchel at his feet.

On seeing Jack, the old man broke into a near-toothless grin. 'Jack!' he said.

Jack led Michael across the gallery to where Sam still sat. 'Sam, this is…'

'Michael,' said Sam. 'I won't get up, if you don't mind. Old bones. Can't get up and down too many times these days.'

His voice was deep, a soft growl like the voice Michael imagined an ageing lion might have if it could speak.

'It's been a while,' said Jack. 'How are you?'

'Oh, so, so,' said Sam. 'You know how it is. Never getting any younger. To what do I owe this pleasure?'

'I need a little information,' said Jack. About some names.'

Sam nodded and rested his chin on the top of his walking stick.

'I'll see what I can do, Jack,' he said. 'I'm not as sharp as I used to be. Things get cloudier the older you get.'

'I'm being followed,' said Jack. 'Any idea who it might be?'

The old man pursed his lips and glanced up at the ceiling, as if the answer might be floating somewhere in mid air.

'Yes,' he said. 'You're quite right, of course. But who? There's a warehouse. Near water. But it's not what it looks like, Jack. Inside… so many people. And so many rooms, and corridors. Oh, I'm sorry, Jack. Ten years ago, I'd have been able to walk you there myself, but now… What use ami?'

'It's OK,' said Jack, patting the old man's shoulder. 'It's fine. What about the name Hugo? Does that mean anything to you?'

Sam sucked air through his few remaining teeth and then smiled.

'Hugo Faulkner,' he said, nodding and drumming both hands on the walking stick. 'Posh lad? Talks like he's got a mouth full of plums?'

Jack laughed. 'That's him.'

'There's clouds there, Jack. Like storm clouds. But he's not the one you're afraid of…'

Jack shrugged this off and laughed through his nose. 'Afraid? I'm hardly a-'

'It's OK, Jack. You don't have to play the Humphrey Bogart act with me. How long have I known you?'

Michael looked at Jack and was surprised to see him blushing.

'OK,' said Jack. 'But can you see anything else? About Hugo?'

'Yes. He's not the one you're afraid of, but he doesn't know what he's doing. The man's as much of a fool as you think he is. There's a meeting? At the seaside?'

'Yes.'

'You want answers? Answers I can't give?'

Jack nodded.

'You'll go,' said Sam. 'To this meeting, I mean. And you'll get answers. They just might not be the answers to the questions you ask.'

Jack sighed. 'OK,' he said, 'I think I understand.'

'Oh, I doubt it,' said Sam, bursting into a hacking fit of laughter before covering his mouth with his fist. 'So,' he said, when he'd recovered, 'what about your young friend here?'

Jack put one arm around Michael's shoulder.

'He's like us,' said Jack. 'He doesn't really belong here.'

'Oh,' said Sam scowling, 'here?

I belong here.

Can't think where else I'd go. I'm ninety-six years old. Four more years and I'll get a telegram off the Queen. My pension just about pays for my tobacco and my bus fare in the mornings, and if I'm lucky I'll have enough left over for some liver and onions come teatime. Where else am I gonna go, Jack?'

Jack nodded.

Sam turned to Michael. 'You know,' he said, his watery blue eyes twinkling in the soft lights of the gallery, 'when I first met Jack, I was… how old was I, Jack?'

'You were thirty-one,' said Jack, smiling.

'Thirty-one,' said the old man, chuckling to himself. 'Thirty-one, indeed. I'd just come back from the Boer War, and I was just as lost as you are now, I'll wager. Now look at us. You'd reckon he was my grandson.' Sam looked down at his liver-spotted hands. 'It's a funny old thing, getting old. For those of us who do, that is.' And now he shot a smile at Jack and winked. 'Handsome devil, isn't he?' he said to Michael. 'Bit of a charmer too. Never went on in my day, of course…' And he winked again.

'OK,' said Jack. 'We need to go. But thanks. I'll see you around some time.'

Sam looked up towards the ceiling once more, his brow furrowed, and then back at Jack.

'Yes,' he said. 'You most certainly will.'

As they were about to leave him, Sam reached out and held Michael's hand.

'So lost,' he said, his face crumpling into a sad smile. 'But so brave. Safe travels, my friend.'

They were walking down the steps of the museum before Michael spoke again.

'What did he mean?' he asked. 'And how does he do that? How does he know things?'

'Because he's Sam,' said Jack. 'And sometimes it's best not to ask. Sometimes you just have to accept things as they are.'

Once they'd left the museum, they walked for a while around a nearby park, enjoying the last of summer, and Jack told Michael about the things that would happen in the world.

Two years from now,' he said, 'man walks on the moon for the very first time.'

'The moon?' said Michael. 'Now I know you're making it up. The moon?'

Jack nodded. 'Uh-huh. He flies all the way to the moon. It takes them three days just to fly there, travelling faster than any car or plane ever did, on top of a giant rocket, and when he gets there, do you know what he finds?'

'Aliens?' asked Michael.

'No,' said Jack, laughing. 'He finds nothing. Just rocks, and a big black sky. You know, the moon is so small that when the first men are just standing there they can see its curvature, so that everywhere they look, it's curved, like they're just standing on this cold ball of rock in the middle of a black void. But do you know what else they can see?'

Michael shook his head.

'They can see the Earth,' said Jack. 'They can look up at the sky, and they can see the Earth, and they can blot it out with their thumb. Everything they know, every country, every single human being alive except themselves, and it can be blotted out with their thumb. But other than that, all they can see is black sky and that cold little rock.'

'So what's the point?' asked Michael. 'I mean, if there's nothing else up there. Why go?'

'Because they don't stop there. In a couple of hundred years there are ships, like the ships that you saw in the docks, only bigger, floating through the black sky, finding other places, and those places are much more interesting. Believe me… Boy, some of them are very interesting.'