It was not the Other. He was thinner, and not quite so tall.
16!
I had come on him so suddenly. I had entered by one of the Western Doors and there he was.
He turned to look at me. He did not move. He said nothing.
I did not run away. Instead I approached him. (Perhaps I was wrong to do this, but it was already too late to hide, too late to keep my promise to the Other.)
I walked slowly round him, taking him in. He was an old man. His skin was dry and papery, and the veins were thick and clotted in his hands. His eyes were large, dark and liquid, with magnificently hooded eyelids and arched eyebrows. His mouth was long and mobile, red and oddly wet. He wore a suit in a Prince of Wales check. He must have been thin for a long time because, although it was an old suit, it fitted him perfectly – which is to say that it was wrinkled and saggy because the fabric was old and worn, not because the cut was wrong.
I felt oddly disappointed; I had imagined that 16 would be young like me.
‘Hello,’ I said. I was curious to hear what his voice sounded like.
‘Good afternoon,’ he said. ‘If, in fact, it is afternoon where we are. I never know.’ He had a haughty, drawling, old-fashioned way of speaking.
‘You are 16,’ I said. ‘You are the Sixteenth Person.’
‘I don’t follow you, young man,’ he said.
‘There exist in the World two Living, thirteen Dead and now you,’ I explained.
‘Thirteen dead? How fascinating! No one ever told me there were human remains here. Who are they, I wonder?’
I described the Biscuit-Box Man, the Fish-Leather Man, the Concealed Person, the People of the Alcove and the Folded-Up Child.
‘You know, it’s the most extraordinary thing,’ he said. ‘But I remember that biscuit box. It used to stand on a little table next to the mugs in the corner of my study at the university. I wonder how it got here? Well, I can tell you this. One of your thirteen dead is almost certainly that dishy young Italian that Stan Ovenden was so keen on. What was his name?’ He looked away, thought for a moment, shrugged. ‘No, it’s gone. And I imagine that another is Ovenden himself. He kept coming here to see the Italian. I told him he was asking for trouble, but he wouldn’t listen. You know, guilt and so forth. And I wouldn’t be surprised if one of the others is Sylvia D’Agostino. I never heard anything of her after the early nineties. As to who I am, young man, I can see how you might conclude that I am “16”. But I am not. Charming as it is here …’ He glanced round. ‘ … I do not intend to stay. I am only passing through. Someone told me you were here. No,’ He checked himself. ‘That is not quite right. Someone told me what they thought had happened to you and I concluded you were here. This person showed me a photograph of you and since you were clearly a bit of a dish, I thought I would come and take a look at you. I’m glad I did. You must have been well worth looking at before, you know … before everything happened. Ah, well! Old age happened to me. And this happened to you. And now look at us! But to return to the matter in hand. You mentioned two people living. I suppose the other one is Ketterley?’
‘Ketterley?’
‘Val Ketterley. Taller than you. Dark hair and eyes. Beard. Dark complexion. His mother was Spanish, you see.’
‘You mean the Other?’ I said.
‘The other what?’
‘The Other. The Not-Me.’
‘Ha! Yes! I see what you mean. What an excellent name for him! The other. No matter what the situation he is only ever “the other”. Someone else always takes precedence. He is always second fiddle. And he knows it. It eats him up. He was one of my students, you know. Oh, yes. Complete charlatan, of course. For all the grand intellectual manner and the dark, penetrating stare, he hasn’t an original thought in his head. All his ideas are second-hand.’ He paused a moment and then added, ‘Actually all his ideas are mine. I was the greatest scholar of my generation. Perhaps of any generation. I theorised that this …’ He opened his hands in a gesture intended to indicate the Hall, the House, Everything. ‘ … existed. And it does. I theorised that there was a way to get here. And there is. And I came here and I sent others here. I kept everything secret. And I swore the others to secrecy too. I’ve never been very interested in what you might call morality, but I drew the line at bringing about the collapse of civilisation. Perhaps that was wrong. I don’t know. I do have a rather sentimental streak.’
He fixed one bright, hooded, malevolent eye on me.
‘We all paid a terrible price in the end. Mine was prison. Oh, yes. That shocks you, I imagine. I wish I could say that it was all due to a misunderstanding, but I did all the things they said I did. To be perfectly honest I did quite a lot more that they never knew about. Although – do you know? – I rather liked prison. One met such fascinating people.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Did Ketterley tell you how this world was made?’ he asked.
‘No, sir.’
‘Would you like to know?’
‘Very much, sir,’ I said.
He looked gratified by my interest. ‘Then I will tell you. It began when I was young, you see. I was always so much more brilliant than my peers. My first great insight happened when I realised how much humankind had lost. Once, men and women were able to turn themselves into eagles and fly immense distances. They communed with rivers and mountains and received wisdom from them. They felt the turning of the stars inside their own minds. My contemporaries did not understand this. They were all enamoured with the idea of progress and believed that whatever was new must be superior to what was old. As if merit was a function of chronology! But it seemed to me that the wisdom of the ancients could not have simply vanished. Nothing simply vanishes. It’s not actually possible. I pictured it as a sort of energy flowing out of the world and I thought that this energy must be going somewhere. That was when I realised that there must be other places, other worlds. And so I set myself to find them.’
‘And did you find any, sir?’ I asked.
‘I did. I found this one. This is what I call a Distributary World – it was created by ideas flowing out of another world. This world could not have existed unless that other world had existed first. Whether this world is still dependent on the continued existence of the first one, I don’t know. It’s all in the book I wrote. I don’t suppose you happen to have read it?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Pity. It’s terribly good. You’d like it.’
All the time that the old man was speaking, I was listening with great attention and trying to understand who he was. He had said that he was not 16, but I was not so naive as to believe him without further evidence. The Other had said that 16 was wicked, so it was possible that 16 would lie about who he was. But as the old man talked, I became more and more certain that he was telling the truth. He was not 16. My reasoning was this: the Other had described 16 as being opposed to Reason and to Scientific Discovery. This description did not fit the old man. The old man was as passionately fond of science as we were. He knew how the World was made and was eager to pass that knowledge on to me.
‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘does Ketterley still think that the wisdom of the ancients is here?’