Lost in a Good Book

'Why would you think that?'

  I stared into Mr Stiggins's unblinking brown eyes. If I lied he would know. If I told him the truth he might feel it his duty to tell SO-1 that I had been involved in my father's work. With the world due to end and the trust in my father implicit, it was a kind of sticky moment, to say the least.

  'They will ask you, Miss Next. Your evasion will not be appreciated.'

  'I'll have to take that chance.'

  Stiggins tilted his head to one side and regarded me for a moment.

  'They know about your father, Miss Next. We advise you to be careful.'

  I didn't say anything but to Stiggins I probably spoke volumes. Half the Thal language is about body movements. It's possible to conjugate verbs with facial muscles; dancing is conversation.

  We didn't have a chance to say anything else as the door opened and Flanker and two other agents trooped in.

  'You know my name,' he told me. 'These are agents King and Nosmo.'

  The two officers stared at me unnervingly.

  'This is a preliminary interview,' announced Flanker, who now fixed me with a steely gaze. 'There will be time enough for a full inquiry – if we so decide. Anything you say and do can affect the outcome of the hearing. It's really up to you, Next.'

  He wasn't kidding. SO-1 were not within the law – they made the law. If they really meant business I wouldn't be here at all – I'd be spirited away to SpecOps Grand Central, wherever the hell that was. It was at times like this that I suddenly realised quite why my father had rebelled against SpecOps in the first place.

  Flanker placed two tapes into the recorder and idented it with the date, time and all our names. Once this was done he asked in a voice made more menacing by its softness:

  'You know why you are here?'

  'For hitting a Skyrail operator?'

  'Striking a Neanderthal is hardly a crime worthy of SO-1's valuable time, Miss Next. In fact, technically speaking, it's not a crime at all.'

  'What, then?'

  'When did you last see your father?'

  The other SpecOps agents leaned forward imperceptibly to hear my answer. I wasn't going to make it easy for them.

  'I don't have a father, Flanker – you know that. He was eradicated by your buddies in the ChronoGuard seventeen years ago.'

  'Don't play me for a fool, Next,' warned Flanker. 'This is not something I care to joke about. Despite Colonel Next's non-actualisation he continues to be a thorn in our side. Again: when did you last see your father?'

  'At my wedding.'

  Flanker frowned and looked at his notes.

  'You married? When?'

  I told him and he squiggled a note in the margin.

  'And what did he say when he turned up at your wedding?'

  'Congratulations.'

  He stared at me for a few moments, then changed tack.

  'This incident with the Skyrail operator,' he began. 'You were convinced that he had a soap gun hidden about his person. According to a witness you thumped him on the chin, handcuffed and searched him. They said you seemed very surprised when you didn't find anything.'

  I shrugged and remained silent.

  'We don't give a sod about the Thal, Next. Your father deputising you is one thing, replacing you out of time is quite another. Is this what happened?'

  'Is that the charge? Is that why I'm here?'

  'Answer the question.'

  'No, sir.'

  'You're lying. He brought you back early but your father's control of the timestream is not that good. Mr Kaylieu decided not to threaten the Skyrail that morning. You were sideslipped, Next. Joggled slightly in the timestream. Things happened the same way but not exactly in the same order. It wasn't a big one, either – barely a Class IX. Sideslips are an occupational hazard in ChronoGuard work.'

  'That's preposterous," I scoffed. Stiggins would know I was lying but perhaps I could fool Flanker.

  'I don't think you understand, Miss Next. This is more important than just you or your father. Two days ago we lost all communications beyond the twelfth of December. We know there is industrial action but even the freelancers we've sent upstream haven't reported back. We think it's the Big One. If your father was willing to risk using you, we reckon he thinks so too. Despite our animosity towards your father he knows his business – if he didn't we'd have had him years from now. What's going on?'

  'I just thought he had a gun,' I repeated.

  Flanker stared at me silently for a few moments.

  'Let's start again, Miss Next. You search a Neanderthal for a fake gun he carries the following day, you apologise to him using his name, and the arresting officer at the Skyrail station tells me she saw you resetting your watch – a bit out of time, were you?'

  'What do you mean – "for a fake gun he carries the following day"?'

  Flanker answered without a trace of emotion, 'Kaylieu was shot dead this morning. I think you should talk and talk fast. I've enough to loop you for twenty years. Fancy that?'

  I glared back at him, at a loss to know what to do or say. Looping was a slang term for Closed Loop Temporal Field Containment. They popped the criminal in an eight-minute repetitive time loop for five, ten, twenty years. Usually it was a laundromat, a doctor's waiting room or a bus stop, and your presence often caused time to slow down for others near the loop. Your body aged but never needed sustenance; it was cruel and unnatural – yet cheap and required no bars, guards or food.

  I opened my mouth and shut it again, gaping like a fish.

  'Or you can tell us about your father and walk out a free woman.'

  I felt a prickly sweat break out on my forehead. I stared at Flanker and he stared at me, until, mercifully, Stiggins came to my rescue.

  'Miss Next was working for us at SO-13 that morning, Commander,' he said in a low monotone. 'Kaylieu had been implicated in Neanderthal sedition. It was a secret operation. Thank you, Miss Next, but we will have to tell SO-1 the truth.'

  Flanker shot an angry glance at the Neanderthal, who stared back at him impassively.

  'Why the hell didn't you tell me this, Stiggins?'

  'You never asked.'

  All Flanker had on me now was a slow watch. He lowered his voice to a growl.

  'I'll see you looped behind the Crunch if your father is up to no good and you didn't tell us.'

  He paused for a moment and jabbed a finger in the direction of Stiggins.

  'If you've been bearing false witness I'll have you too. You're running the Thal end of SO-13 for one reason and one reason only – window dressing.'

  'How you managed to become the dominant species we will never know,' Stiggins said at last. 'So full of hate, anger and vanity.'

  'It's our evolutionary edge, Stiggins. Change and adapt to a hostile environment. We did, you didn't. QED.'

  'Darwin won't mask your sins, Flanker,' replied Stiggins. 'You made our environment hostile. You will fall too. But you won't fall because of a more dominant life form. You will fall over yourselves.'

  'Garbage, Stiggins. You lot had your chance and blew it.'

  'We have right to health, freedom and pursuit of happiness, too.'

  'Legally speaking you don't,' replied Flanker evenly. 'Those rights belong only to humans. If you want equality, speak to Goliath. They sequenced you. They own you. If you get lucky perhaps you can be at risk. Beg and we might make you endangered.'

  Flanker shut my file with a snap, grabbed his hat, removed both interview tapes and was gone without another word.

  As soon as the door closed I breathed a sigh of relief. My heart was going like a trip hammer but at least I still had my liberty.

  'I'm sorry about Mr Kaylieu.'

  Stiggins shrugged.

  'He was not happy, Miss Next. He did not ask to come back.'

  'You lied for me,' I added in a disbelieving tone. 'I thought Neanderthals couldn't lie?'

  He stared at me for a moment or two.

  'It's not that we can't,' he said at last. 'We just have no
reason to. We helped because you are a good person. It is enough. If you need help again, we will be there.'

  Stiggins's normally placid and unmoving face curled up into a grimace that showed two rows of widely-gapped teeth. I was fearful for a moment until I realised that what I was witnessing was a Neanderthal smile.

  'Miss Next—'

  '—Yes?'

  'Our friends call us Stig.'

  'Mine call me Thursday.'

  He put out a large hand and I shook it gratefully.

  'You're a good man, Stig.'

  'Yes,' he replied slowly, 'we were sequenced that way.'

  He gathered up his notes and left the room.

  I left the SpecOps building ten minutes later and looked for Landen in the café opposite. He wasn't there so I ordered a coffee and waited twenty minutes. He didn't turn up so I left a message with the café owner and drove home, musing that with death by coincidence, the world ending in a fortnight, court charges for I don't know what and a lost play by Shakespeare, things couldn't get much stranger. But I was wrong. I was very wrong.

  9

  The more things stay the same …

  * * *

  ' … Minor changes to soft furnishings are the first indications of a sideslip. Curtains, cushion covers and lampshades are all good litmus indicators for a slight diversion in the timestream – the way canaries are used down the mines or goldfishes to predict earthquakes. Carpet and wallpaper patterns and changes in paint hues can also be used, but this requires a more practised eye. If you are within the sideslip then you will notice nothing, but if your pelmets change colour for no good reason, your curtains switch from festoon to swish or your antimacassars have a new pattern on them, I should be worried, and if you're the only one who notices, then worry some more. A great deal more… '

  BENDIX SCINTILLA – Timestream Navigation for

  CG Cadets Module IV

  Landen's absence made me feel unsettled. All sorts of reasons as to why he wasn't waiting for me ran through my head as I pushed open the gate and walked up to our front door. He could have lost track of time, gone to pick up his running leg from the menders or dropped in to see his mum. But I was fooling myself. Landen said he would be there and he wasn't. And that wasn't like him. Not at all.

  I stopped abruptly halfway up the garden path. For some reason Landen had taken the opportunity to change all the curtains. I walked on more slowly, a feeling of unease rising within me. I stopped at the front door. The boot-scraper had gone. But it hadn't been taken recently – the hole had been concreted over long ago. There were other changes, too. A tub of withered Tickia orologica had appeared in the porch next to a rusty pogo stick and a broken bicycle. The dustbins were all plastic rather than steel, and a copy of Landen's least favourite paper, The Mole, was resting in the newspaper holder. I felt a hot flush rise in my cheeks as I fumbled in vain to find my door key. Not that it would have mattered if I had found it – the lock I used that morning had been painted over years ago.

  I must have been making a fair amount of noise because all of a sudden the door opened to reveal an elderly version of Landen complete with paunch, bifocals and a shiny bald pate.

  'Yes?' he enquired in a slow Parke-Laine sort of baritone.

  Filbert Snood's time aggregation sprang instantly – and unpleasantly – to mind.

  'Oh my God. Landen? Is that you?'

  The elderly man seemed almost as stunned as I was.

  'Me? Good heavens, no!' he snapped, and started to close the door. 'No one of that name lives here!'

  I jammed my foot against the closing door. I'd seen it done in cop movies but the reality is somewhat different. I had forgotten I was wearing trainers and the weatherboard squashed my big toe. I yelped in pain, withdrew my foot and the door slammed shut.

  'Buggeration!' I yelled as I hopped up and down. I pressed the doorbell long and hard but received only a muffled 'Clear off!' for my troubles. I was just about to bang on the door when I heard a familiar voice ring out behind. I turned to find Landen's mum staring at me.

  'Houson!' I cried. 'Thank goodness! There's someone in our house and they won't answer … and … Houson?'

  She was looking at me without a flicker of recognition.

  'Houson?' I said again, taking a step towards her. 'It's me, Thursday!'

  She hurriedly took a pace back and corrected me sharply:

  'That's Mrs Parke-Laine to you. What do you want?'

  I heard the door open behind me. The elderly Landen-that-wasn't had returned.

  'She's been ringing the doorbell,' explained the man to Landen's mother. 'She won't go away.' He thought for a moment and then added in a quieter voice, 'She's been asking about Landen.'

  'Landen?' replied Houson sharply, her glare becoming more baleful by the second. 'How is Landen any business of yours?

  'He's my husband.'

  There was a pause as she mulled this over.

  'Your sense of humour is severely lacking, Miss whoever-you-are,' she retorted angrily, pointing towards the garden gate. 'The way out is the same as the way in – only reversed.'

  'Wait a minute!' I exclaimed, almost wanting to laugh at the situation. 'If I didn't marry Landen, then who gave me this wedding ring?'

  I held up my left hand for them to see but it didn't seem to have much effect. A quick glance told me why. I didn't have a wedding ring.

  'Shit!' I mumbled, looking around in a perplexed manner. 'I must have dropped it somewhere—'

  'You're very confused,' said Houson, more in pity than anger. She could see I wasn't dangerous – just positively, and irretrievably, insane. 'Is there anyone we can call?'

  'I'm not crazy,' I declared, trying to get a grip on the situation. 'This morning – no, less than two hours ago — Landen and I lived in this very house—'

  I stopped. Houson had moved to the side of the man at the door. As they stood together in a manner bred of long association, I knew exactly who he was; it was Landen's father. Landen's dead father.

  'You're Billden,' I murmured. 'You died when you tried to rescue …'

  My voice trailed off. Landen had never known his father. Billden Parke-Laine had died saving the two-year-old Landen from a submerged car thirty-eight years ago. My heart froze as the true meaning of this bizarre confrontation began to dawn. Someone had eradicated Landen.

  I put out a hand to steady myself, then sat quickly on the garden wall and closed my eyes as a dull thumping started up in my head. Not Landen, not now of all times.

  'Billden,' announced Houson, 'you had better call the police—'

  'No!' I shouted, opening my eyes and glaring at him.

  'You didn't go back, did you?' I said slowly, my voice cracking. 'You didn't rescue him that night. You lived, and he—'

  I braced myself for his anger but it never came. Instead, Billden just stared at me with a mixture of pity and confusion on his face.

  'I wanted to,' he said in a quiet voice.

  I swallowed my emotion.

  'Where's Landen now?'

  'If we tell you,' said Houson in a slow and patronising tone, 'will you promise to go away and never come back?'

  She took my silence for assent and continued:

  'Swindon Municipal Cemetery – and you're right, our son drowned thirty-eight years ago.'

  'Shit!' I cried, my mind racing as I tried to figure out who might be responsible. Houson and Billden took a fearful step back. 'Not you,' I added hastily. 'Goddammit, I'm being blackmailed.'

  'You should report that to SpecOps.'

  'They wouldn't believe me any more than you—'

  I paused and thought for a moment.

  'Houson, I know you have a good memory because when Landen did exist you and I were the best of pals. Someone has taken your son and my husband and, believe me, I'll get him back. But listen to me, I'm not crazy, and here's how I can prove it. He's allergic to bananas, has a mole on his neck – and a birthmark the shape of a lobster on his bum. How could I know that
unless—?'

  'Oh yes?' said Houson slowly, staring at me with growing interest. 'This birthmark. Which cheek?'.'

  'The left.'

  'Looking from the front, or looking from the back?'

  'Looking from the back,' I said without hesitating.

  There was silence for a moment. They looked at each other, then at me, and in that instant, they knew. When Houson spoke it was in a quiet voice, her temper replaced by a sadness all her own.

  'How … how would he have turned out?'

  She started to cry, large tears that rolled uninhibited down her cheeks, tears of loss, tears for what might have been.

  'He was wonderful!' I returned gratefully. 'Witty and generous and tall and clever – you would have been so proud!'

  'What did he become?'

  'A novelist,' I explained. 'Last year he won the Armitage Shanks Fiction Award for Bad Sofa. He lost a leg in the Crimea. We were married two months ago.'

  'Were we there?'

  I looked at them both and said nothing Houson had been there, of course, shedding tears of joy for us both – but Billden … well, Billden had swapped his life for Landen's when he returned to the submerged car and ended up in the Swindon Municipal Cemetery instead. We stood for a moment or two, the three of us lamenting the loss of Landen Houson broke the silence.

  'I think it would really be better for all concerned if you left now,' she said quietly, 'and please don't come back.'

  'Wait!' I said. 'Was there someone there, someone who stopped you from rescuing him?'

  'More than one,' replied Billden. 'Five or six – one woman; I was sat upon—'

  'Was one a Frenchman? Tall, distinguished looking? Named Lavoisier, perhaps?'

  'I don't know,' answered Billden sadly, 'it was a long time ago.'

  'You really have to leave now,' repeated Houson in a forthright tone.

  I sighed, thanked them, and they shuffled back inside and closed the door.

  I walked out through the garden gate and sat in my car, trying to contain the emotion within me so I could think straight. I was breathing heavily and my hands were clenched so tightly on the steering wheel my knuckles showed white. How could SpecOps do this to me? Was this Flanker's way of compelling me to talk about my father? I shook my head. Futzing with the timestream was a crime punishable by almost unimaginable brutality. I couldn't imagine Flanker would have risked his career – and his life – on a move so rash.