Tomorrow's Guardian

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN – THE TWISTED REALITY

  As he left the dining room, Tom heard Charlie tell Mary to, “Give the lad a few minutes alone.” But Tom had no intention of being alone: he wanted answers and was going to see the man who could give them to him.

  He strode up to the Professor’s door and hammered on it. The eternally agitated Mr Phelps glanced up irritated from his desk, took in Tom with an imperious glance that swept down onto the diary open on his desk and ‘tutted’.

  “The Professor has you down for 10 a.m., Master Oakely. It is only 9.28.”

  Taking a deep breath Tom was about to explode with just about every swear word he knew, when the door opened and the Professor was standing there.

  “It is quite alright, Mr Phelps, I am free now.”

  Mr Phelps looked slightly affronted, but merely ticked off the appointment and turned back to his other work.

  “Did you sleep and eat well?” The Professor asked ushering Tom into his study and closing the door behind him.

  “Yes, thank you. But where is Septimus?”

  “Sorry, Thomas – he has not returned.”

  Tom scowled. “What is he up to, do you think?”

  “I really don’t know. Once I find out anything, you will be the first to know.”

  “Thank you, Tom nodded, barely pausing for breath, his words tumbling out like water from a burst dam. “Yesterday you said you would answer my questions. Just what is going on? Who is Captain Redfeld? What is that Office place and what will you do about my parents?”

  The old man said nothing, but turned to look out at the garden where the bright morning light blazed through the French windows. The clock on the mantelpiece chimed the half hour and he took out a fob watch from his waistcoat and flipped it open to check the time before giving the winder a few turns. Finally, he shut the watch with a loud snap and then looked back at Tom.

  “I will tell you what you want to know, but it is a long story.”

  “That’s fine. Right now, I don’t belong anywhere, so I’m in no hurry,” Tom said, tersely.

  “The first thing you must know is that Captain Redfeld is not from our world. He is from a parallel world – a world where history played out in a different way.”

  Tom stared at the Professor in disbelief. Before that dream in Hyde Park he would have dismissed the statement as plainly ridiculous. But, after what Redfeld and the Custodian had said about Redfeld’s reality being different from Tom’s own, he was not so sure.

  “Are you are telling me that Redfeld is not human?”

  “Oh, he is human alright: as human as you and I.”

  “Sorry, Professor, but you’re going to have to explain it to me.”

  “Well then. To begin with, what do you know of Quantum Theory?” the old man asked. Tom blinked.

  “Only what you get from Star Trek. I am only twelve, you know.”

  “Quite, quite. Well: you need to know a little. There is a concept called the Quantum Theory of multiple worlds. The idea is that there are an infinite number of alternative Earths, indeed an infinite number of alternative universes. Effectively, for every choice made in the universe a new universe is created. Say you are in a restaurant and you order hamburger and French fries in our universe. However, there is a universe where you ordered bangers and mash and another where you had pasta and so on. The number of possible alternative universes is literally infinite. But all that does not really affect us because there is no way of getting to those universes and no way of them affecting ours.”

  His eyes widening at the image of hundreds of replicas of himself each eating a different plate of food, Tom frowned, “Then if that is so, how did Captain Redfeld get here?”

  “Because when his reality split from our reality it was not the same way that it usually happens. Something different occurred. We call it ‘The Event’. His reality and our reality did not simply diverge because of a decision being different here to there. If that had happened then each reality would be distinct and separate. But that is not true. Both realities occupy the same place or, if you like, the same quantum address. They struggle against each other to be the survivor and in so doing overlap, with occasionally bits of his reality merging with parts of ours and vice versa.”

  “Why don’t we see parts of his world then?” Tom objected.

  “Well, because most of us would reject them as unbelievable and deny it even if we did see it. That subconscious denial creates powerful barriers to any crossing–over between there and here. The realties mostly touch and show themselves when our defences are low and we can’t easily deny it: in our dreams or when we are ill. It may be that near death, when people talk of out–of–body experiences, they are in fact experiencing something of that other reality,” the Professor answered and stopped speaking, staring into space for a while pondering all this.

  Tom was silent, trying to grasp the concept; it was staggeringly complex and yet at the same time so simple an explanation that he wondered why he had not thought of it before.

  “Indeed,” the Professor went on as if he had not stopped speaking, “not so much dreams, as nightmares. For Redfeld’s reality is a nightmare. Our world might look bad, but in that place the worst of what happened here occurred there too, and then even more terrible events. We call it The Twisted Reality.” With a sigh the Professor walked slowly to the desk and sat down.

  “You see, Tom, in his reality the Second World War panned out in quite a different way to here. Britain lost the Battle of Britain and surrendered. With no war in the West to distract him, the Hitler of that reality was able to throw all his weight into the invasion of Russia. Moscow fell in the winter of ‘41 and the rest of Russia surrendered when the German tanks reached the Urals in 1942. With Europe at his feet, Germany helped Japan defeat America before the United States could develop the atom bomb.”

  “How do you know all this?” Tom asked.

  “Oh, we have captured some Walkers from Redfeld’s world in the past and questioned them. What is more, I have seen it myself. I have been to Redfeld’s world and seen its horrors. As for ‘The Event’ – the moment when the realities split? Well let’s just say it’s something of a specialist subject of mine. I am a Professor, after all, Thomas!”

  For the first time that morning, Tom almost smiled at the old man’s wry humour. “Next question,” he said. “What is the Office and who is the Custodian?”

  “The Office dates back to the Event, as does the Custodian and the rest of the Directorate. To put it simply, they try to balance our reality with the Twisted Reality. They take it very seriously because if they ever failed to keep that balance, the worlds could simply obliterate each other.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Indeed, ouch!”

  Tom wanted to know more about the Office and the Event but he also wanted to know about Redfeld. “What does he want me for? He knew me. It seems he was searching for me.”

  “I think he wanted you, Thomas, because he knows, as I do, that you are one of the most powerful Walkers ever. You might be able to do many amazing things with time. You may be able to help Redfeld and his master – his ‘Führer ’ – achieve their objective,” the old man replied. “I only wish I knew what that was.”

  “Well, if he wanted my help, he’s rather blown it now. I mean he took my family away and I could have been wiped from existence! In the first place that hardly makes me likely to want to help him and in the second place it’s only by chance that I still exist. So, is it just that he has a bad temper or is the man incompetent?” Tom asked then noticed the old man’s frown. “What is it?”

  “It just occurred to me that the degree of interference between realities exercised by Redfeld in destroying your family would not usually be permitted by the Directorate. That is why Redfeld had to go and see the Custodian and try to persuade him to allow it. The Custodian was already anxious about you and your potential to disturb his precious balance so it was probably easy enough for Redfeld to win that argumen
t.”

  Deep in thought, the Professor absent–mindedly removed his spectacles and polished them on his handkerchief before replacing them on his nose. Tom waited for him to continue.

  “It might have suited the Custodian to obliterate you, Thomas, but I am sure Redfeld has something far bigger in mind than protecting his world from you; something that he may not have divulged to the Head of the Directorate. He seems to be nurturing you, preparing you for using your talents in some way. But for what? If we could find out more about their agreement, it would help. Let us think a moment about the dream in the Office when the Custodian and the others seemed to agree a deal concerning you. That third man at the window: could that have been ...”

  Tom had been wondering about that too. He had been thinking about how oddly Septimus had acted when the Office was discussed; how he had left without explanation and how he was still to return. “Septimus! It must be Septimus.”

  The Professor nodded, “Then it is to Septimus we must speak. If he is the third man, if he has done some deal with Redfeld and this ‘man in the suit’ then he knows a lot about all that is going on.”

  Suddenly the old man stood up. “There is also another way to find out about the agreement and I am sorry, but I can only do this alone. I am starting to fear that the dangers are far greater than I at first suspected. I must go at once.”

  Tom stared at him. “What? Are you leaving me, too?”

  “Sorry, Thomas, but I really must go for a short while.”

  “What? Hang on a minute: that’s not fair. All we’ve done is talk for two days. You still have not said what you are going to do about my parents?”

  “I must ask you to trust me, Thomas,” the Professor said simply.

  “Why should I?” Tom felt his anger return.

  “I don’t have time to explain – a lot might be at stake beyond just your family.”

  “Just my family!”

  “Tom you are overreacting!”

  “Overreacting ... aaaaghh!” Tom screamed and waved his hands about.

  The Professor rang the bell on his desk. Mr Phelps emerged and before he had a chance to speak further, Tom found himself outside the Professor’s rooms and pushed into the hall. He turned back to talk to Neoptolemas again, but found the door shut and Mr Phelps wearing an expression that reminded Tom of his science teacher, Mr Beaufin, in an angry mood, so he backed off a few steps.

  Fuming, he stomped off down the hallway. He almost opened the dining room door, but then he heard Charlie laugh and Mary giggle and feeling that he could not face them all right now, he went through to the library and drifted about the room, scanning the spines of books vaguely, while he tried to think.

  The Professor had a large collection of books on more or less every subject, yet here, just like in his office, the emphasis was on history, maps and politics. It appeared the Institute needed its Walkers to have access to as much accurate information as possible on all the times and places they might have to visit. Idly, Tom wondered what happened if history was changed. Would the contents of the books change? He supposed they must do; unless a Walker was carrying the book back in time whilst the effect of changing time occurred. That is what had happened to Tom, of course. What had Septimus called him? An anomaly, a paradox? Something that could not exist and yet did. Septimus had explained that time travel had funny peculiarities, that when a Walker travels from one moment to another, the two moments become linked in some way.

  Thinking about that, Tom realised it meant that whoever killed his parents must have travelled from the present day back in time in order to do it. Someone had gone back from the present and started the fire that killed his parents before he was born. But whoever it was had miscalculated, not realising that Tom was off with Septimus in that alternate Isandlwana that Redfeld had created, and so he continued to exist. Tom frowned, or had it happened when he was dreaming about the Office? Redfeld had started to talk to the man in the suit about Tom’s parents. Had that been it then? Maybe he did not just dream, but actually Walked whilst he was sleeping. Tom almost laughed at that: it gave a whole new meaning to ‘sleep walking’.

  So then, Tom thought, one way or another he must have been absent from the world of his present reality at the moment in time when his parents’ murderers travelled back, and so he was protected from the effect of his parents being killed before he was born and thus he continued to exist: an anomaly.

  If that was so, could Tom travel back to the same day that he and Septimus had arrived at the burned out house and follow whoever the murderer was back to the moment the fire was set? Or maybe, he could even stop the murderer going back in the first place. If only he knew who it was it would be a lot simpler.

  Then, another thought occurred to Tom. What if he did go back to the day of the fire and either stopped the fire occurring or managed to get his parents out of the way, somehow? What might happen? The Professor had told him to be careful, but the Professor had disappeared. He should really wait and tell either the Professor or Septimus when they returned. But damn it, where were they both?

  Now he started to think about when he had spoken of the dream in the Office and how Septimus had become very nervous. The Welshman had got out of the Professor’s room as fast as he could. As for the Professor, he had calmly listened to all Tom had to say and then suddenly, without explanation or any indication of when he would be back, he had gone too.

  The more Tom thought about it, the more convinced he became that it all hinged on his dreams of the Office. He reminded himself again how little he knew about both Septimus and the Professor. Who knows what they might be up to? They just told him to wait and expected him to obey. Tom balled his fists, his anger threatening to explode. They didn’t seem to care about what he was going through. They were probably laughing at him right now.

  So then, why wait? Why not just go back now and save his parents? Yes – go back now. But he could not tell anyone, for they would try to stop him. Tom was in no mood to be stopped and he had decided that he had done enough for this agency. He had rescued these Walkers and in the process lost his family. Let the Professor sort out Redfeld, whoever or whatever he was. Let Septimus play whatever games he was up to.

  Tom was leaving!