The Navigator by Eoin McNamee Page A

tone.
    “I agree with Contessa,” the Sub-Commandant said.
    “I agree,” Pieta said quietly.
    Samual shook his head and said nothing.
    “I agree also,” Rutgar boomed.
    Chancellor looked at the floor as if he might find wisdom there. After a long time he lifted his head and spoke. “It seems as if I too have to agree.”
    “You haven’t seen the forces I have gathered,” Johnston said in a menacing voice. “The largest and strongest I have ever had, and if I am not mistaken, you are weaker than ever. Your little incursion across the river the other night will not have seen any of our strength. If that was the reason for it.” He looked at the Sub-Commandant with a raised eyebrow, then gazed about the hall.
    Although Owen and Cati knew that he could not see them, they both shrank back into the shadows, and Cati whimpered as if she could feel the cold again. Owen put out his hand to touch hers. Her skin was cold to the touch, very cold, and he remembered what Contessa had said about the effects of the Harsh being permanent.
    “It is time for you to leave now,” the Sub-Commandant said. His voice was quiet but there was steel in his tone.
    “Fair enough,” Johnston said, “but we won’t be seeing each other again, Sub-Commandant. This is the last time.”
    There seemed to be sorrow in his voice, but his eyes were glinting under their heavy brows. Johnston turned and strode from the hall, Rutgar keeping pace close behind. Even from a height, Owen could feel the tension drain from the hall. He saw Contessa go over to Pieta and put an arm around her shoulder, whispering to her gently.
    “What's wrong with Pieta?” Owen said.
    “Her children sleep and do not wake,” Cati said. “Every night she sits over them and calls their names and still they do not wake.”
    Owen said nothing. He thought about Pieta standingover a child in the Starry, calling and calling, and suddenly the fierce warrior seemed smaller and less fierce. He could see her loneliness and sorrow in the slump of her shoulders until suddenly she shrugged Contessa off, almost in anger. She walked swiftly from the hall. Contessa reached out a hand to touch her as she stalked past.

T here was a final flurry of defense building by the river and then everything seemed to slow down. Nothing happened for two weeks, or what felt like two weeks, for Owen was increasingly uncertain about time and the way it worked. He decided to draw a rough calendar on the wall of his Den, where he marked in sunrises and sunsets, for at least that happened in the normal way.
    He went up to the Nab to see Dr. Diamond again. The scientist and philosopher showed him the complicated clock with five faces, each one with a single hand, and told him that it was measuring the speed at which time was going backward.
    “The five faces measure the five different kinds oftime,” Dr. Diamond said. When he saw the look on Owen's face, he went on hastily, “But we only have to concern ourselves with the big face, which is time as we commonly know it.”
    Owen could see that the single hand of the clock was going backward, opposite to the normal way. It was also moving very slowly.
    “That's because time is going backward very slowly at the moment. It doesn’t always go at the same speed, you see,” Dr. Diamond said. “Sometimes even the Harsh have difficulty in keeping the speed up. And sometimes they manipulate the speed to their own purposes.”
    “What way does time move at the Workhouse?”
    “That's this clock,” Dr. Diamond said, tapping the smallest dial. “We’re on what you’ve heard people call an island in time. Not exactly accurate, but near enough. Most other time flows round us. Kind of sloshes backward and forward, in fact. There are plenty of islands in time, but most are tiny, maybe one or two people on them, being born and living and dying, and an hour is an hour and a minute is a minute the same as it always was, even when they step outside the