The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August(29)

“You mentioned contributions…”

“Yes, if you do get a chance to make a massive, obscene amount of money, please do put some aside for our childhood benevolent fund. The future generations are so appreciative.”

Was that it?

No, not quite.

“Not so much a rule, Harry darling,” she explained, “as good advice. Don’t tell anyone where or when you’re from. Not in so much detail.”

“Why?”

“Because they might kill you with it,” she replied brightly. “Of course I’m sure they won’t–you seem like a charming young man–but there’s been a few, and so you see it’s not considered good form. Don’t ask, don’t tell–that’s the policy round here.”

And she explained.





Chapter 25


The first cataclysm began in 1642, in Paris.

The man who brought about the cataclysm was an unassuming gentleman by the name of Victor Hoeness. An ouroboran, he went through the usual traumatic first phases of life before the local Cronus Club found him, calmed him down and explained that actually he was neither possessed nor damned, as far as anyone could tell. The son of a gunsmith, he saw the very worst of the Thirty Years War, a conflict which embraced all the usual early-modern socio-economic causes of war, and then turned it into a crusade. In the name of one, men are permitted to kill; in the name of the other, they are commanded to destroy. Needless to say, most Cronus Club members during the conflict like to move to less fraught areas of the world, such as into the rather more stable heartland of the Ottoman empire, where, while the sultans may be mad during this time, at least their mothers are not. Victor Hoeness, however, refused, insisting that he remain in the Holy Roman Empire. He was counselled against interfering and swore that he was merely acting as a passive observer, documenting all that he saw. Indeed, for several lifetimes the notes of Victor Hoeness provided an excellent historical source, with several kalachakra themselves failing to realise that it was the careful documentation of one of their own kind that had produced such sterling primary evidence. Other members of the Cronus Club were concerned: it wasn’t that Hoeness was unstable; rather, if anything, he was too calm, too collected. He moved through suffering, destruction and dismay, documenting all he saw, like a mist through the forest. He sought no companionship, took no sides, made no acquaintances, removed himself from personal danger where permissible, and even the few deaths he suffered during the war–for no one could fully predict the wild bitterness of those times–he took with a calm grace and resignation, proclaiming afterwards that he wished he had bribed the executioner to put gunpowder into the flames that burned him, or remarking that being impaled on a spear was a far quicker demise if they could just slice open the liver entirely, instead of merely puncturing the gut. His colleagues found themselves in a rather difficult position, for how can you express to a man that his apparent stability and self-control are, quite possibly, irrational, inhuman and the symptom of some deeper ill, when all your evidence for the disease is that it is not there? Over time, Hoeness’s remarkable utility as a primary historical source led him into correspondence with future Cronus Club members. Questions would be posed from the early 1800s or twentieth century, relayed back down through time from the child of the 1850s to the grandfather who would be a child again by 1780, who could then pass it back to the grandparent of the 1710s and so on and so forth until, with as few generations as possible to corrupt the message, one of his own time could put the question to Hoeness directly. He would then inscribe his reply on some well-lasting material and leave it with the Cronus Club to deliver to its future correspondent, and posterity. Many of us who have dabbled in academia have used this technique. Often it is abused for academic advantage as, if we lack a source for a particular time, with some polite enquiry and a little persuasion amplified down the generations, not only may an answer be found, but it can be acquired through genuine documents of the time itself which can withstand the scrutiny of our less imaginative peers. Assuming, of course, you’re still interested several lives later, when the message may finally arrive.

For Hoeness, however, his price for delivering such excellent documentary evidence was to begin to ask questions himself. Notes were sent forward through time or, if it was felt that paper might not survive the journey, stones inscribed with his message and left at pre-agreed stations where war, urban expansion and agricultural revolution were judged likely to leave it untouched. So he began to enquire about the future, and again the Chinese whispers sent back their vague replies. He learned of the siege of Vienna, the decline of the Ottoman empire, the War of the Spanish Succession, revolution in France, revolution in America, and even distant whisperings of events further on–pogroms become massacres and a world where freedom was wealth and God was a name used to frighten children.

He accepted these musings with the same cool nothing with which he could see children butchered before their mothers’ eyes and lines of men stand not forty yards apart blasting at each other with lead while their commanders cheered them on. People considered it strange–remarkable even–but by now all attempts to understand the mind of Victor Hoeness had deteriorated into the tired apathy that is the curse of so many of our kin.

Then, one day, he went to Paris. He took with him very little but his words, and with the simple power of these inveigled himself into the court of the French king.