Tim Powers - Declare

“Impromptu is what it is,” said Theodora, shaking his head. “Let’s walk.” He started away eastward against the morning breeze in a long-legged stride, his black coat-tails flapping up below the hands clasped at the small of his back. Hale shrugged, though only the surveillance men could have seen the gesture, and hurried to catch up.

“The old ARCOS raid was the only example they could think of,” Theodora said. He squinted sideways at Hale. “Right? ARCOS? ‘All Russia Co-Operative Society,’ in Moorgate? Huh! Some Communist you are. Well, that’s what it was, Special Branch went in hoping to find evidence and found only a lot of burned papers; this was fifteen years ago. Excuse enough to break off diplomatic relations with Moscow, at least. So when we needed a story last night, they just re-enacted the ARCOS raid, but on the King Street headquarters this time. Still, it did get you a police record, didn’t it?-verifiable detention, for proper espionage, right in front of the Communist headquarters! You’re at liberty right now, but nevertheless formally in the custody of Scotland Yard while you ‘assist in the inquiry.’ You’ll be sent down from Magdalen, of course.” He snickered. “Scandal, disgrace.”

Hale was dizzy, and when he looked at his formally dressed companion in this field of wildflowers he actually thought of the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. “Not killed,” he said.

“Good heavens no, my dear! We’d have had to order you to join the Party, if you hadn’t done it on your own. No, you’re doing splendidly. We’ll even reinstate you at Magdalen one day, if you like-there were some irregularities about your detention last night. The service taketh away, and sometimes giveth back. What else would you like? An Order of the British Empire is entirely feasible. You’re too young for a CBE. Tell me about your dreams.”

“My dreams?” Hale had to keep remembering his mother’s words: …they’re the King’s men; they deserve our obedience, because on this surreal morning he could easily have persuaded himself that Theodora was insane; for that matter, he wasn’t necessarily confident about his own sanity either. What would happen here if he were to demand a knighthood? Would he be told it was his?-would he believe it was? “I suppose I’d like to be an Oxford don one day-”

“No, my boy, dreams, visions you see when you’re asleep.”

“Oh.” Coming right after thoughts about insanity, this topic was an uncomfortable one; perhaps the older man could be deflected to some other. “Well, I didn’t have any dreams last night, certainly,” he said with a forced laugh, “being chained in a chair. Did you know they chained-”

“Not in September, of course not,” snapped Theodora, abruptly impatient. “You’re nineteen now-has puberty occluded you? Even so, you must remember, nineteen winters, you must know what I’m talking about. What dreams have you had at the shift of the year, say on the last night of the year, any year?”

Hale took two long steps away from Theodora, his face suddenly stinging, and he had to force himself to keep breathing normally. He waved the older man back, not looking at him. What else did this man know about him, what could he not know, if he was already aware of so intimate and disturbing a secret? “Why,” Hale said carefully, if a little too loudly, “did you ap-apparently want me to be-bebe arrested by the police?” He frowned, for usually he was only afflicted with a stutter right after Christmas, around the…around the time of the new year. “Sent down from college-disgrace, you said! And now you’ve been t-talking about an OBE! -for God’s sake!-What’s all this about, what are your- plans for m-me?”

The older man was laughing, his eyes wide open. “Oh my! He is touchy about his dreams, after all, isn’t he! Allahumma! But we can put that off for a while, for a few hundred yards here.” He had resumed picking his way over the canted pavement fragments, walking toward the sun that shone way out there over the bombed docks, and Hale exhaled and then plodded along beside him.

“Plans,” Theodora went on, “for you. It’s not so much our plans that are at issue.” He was staring at the ground as he walked, and he held up a hand to forestall interruption. “I don’t think I’ll say much more than this: you speak and read German, you’ve subscribed to technical wireless magazines, and you’ve been arrested at a Communist Party meeting. I believe I can promise you that you’ll soon be approached by-well, by a recruiter. We want you to be persuaded by this person. Don’t act, that is don’t pretend to hate England or anything of that sort; just be what you seem genuinely to be, a politically ignorant young man who’s drifted into communism because it’s the fashion, resentful now at being detained by the police and expelled from college for what strikes you as a trivial offense.” He was looking away from Hale, squinting toward the rising sun. “Probably you’ll be leaving the country illegally. There will in that case be a warrant issued for your arrest, charges of treason and whatnot. We’ll see that it’s all dismissed, afterward.”

“I’m to be…a spy?” Having grasped the concept and come up with the word, Hale was too exhausted to go on and make a judgment about it.

“Would it upset you to be?”

“Ask me after I’ve had about twelve hours of sleep,” said Hale absently, “and a big plate of eggs and bacon and grilled tomatoes, and a couple-or-three pints.” Then he blinked around at the craters and the outlines of foundations, the rectangular pits of forlorn cellars, and his yawn was more from sudden nervousness than from exhaustion. This broken city was London, this besieged country was his own England, the England of Malory and More and Kipling and Chesterton-of lamplit nights with the rain thrashing down beyond the leaded-glass windows over miles of dark Cotswold hills, of sunny canoeing on the placid Windrush, the England his poor Tory mother had loved-and he couldn’t pretend that he didn’t ache to defend it against any further injury.

“No, actually,” he said then. “No, I don’t think it would upset me, working for the Crown.”

Theodora had crouched beside a bush dotted with pale-yellow flowers. “All these flowers are supposed to be extinct,” he said, “grown from seeds that were preserved under the old floors, freed at last and thrown onto plowed ground, rich now with ash.” His gaze was oddly intent when he squinted up at Hale. “Do you know what this flower is? Sisymbrium irio, known as the London Rocket. It bloomed all over the City right after the Great Fire of 1666.” He picked two of the little flowers and handed one to Hale after he straightened up.

“ London recovered from that,” observed Hale, dutifully sniffing the thing. “They rebuilt her.”

“Perhaps it was the flowers that sustained her life. Some can do that, I think.” Theodora glanced back, so Hale did too-the four surveillance men were following them at a distance. “Of course,” said Theodora, “you won’t say anything to this recruiter about me , nor about having been to that building where we met. You’re a very clean player-your mother was admirably thorough, for an amateur, about leaving no tracks; even ‘Hale’ isn’t the name under which she joined her religious order. Oh I say, you did know about that, didn’t you?” When Hale smiled wanly and nodded, the older man went on, “Well, we’ve advanced a pawn here, and it’s Red’s turn to move. You won’t see me again for a while, after this morning; they can’t possibly be aware of you yet, which is why I’m able to talk to you face-to-face. Whenever you come back, we’ll meet again and I’ll have a lot of questions for you.”