I looked at the paintings on the wall again, and instead of irritation felt something like pride. If that’s the way you see the world, I thought, all the pastels and white spray and wheeling seabirds, good for you. Long may you look through that window. I only wish all of them gave the same view.
Out through the screen door and into the car park, the hired car lurking in magnificent isolation and saying ‘The real world awaits you, my friend, and it has a lot more stamina than you.’ I clapped Dad on the shoulder, and he kissed Helena on the cheek. Mother hugged me to her, and I faltered and then hugged her back. We’re not a physical family. It’s just not something that we usually do. But she held my head close to hers for a moment, and I let her, and before she disentangled and I went on to do what I had to do, she whispered something in my ear.
‘I don’t care what she’s told you,’ she said. ‘She’s not with anyone else.’
Then we were apart, and when I looked back at her she was saying goodbye to Helena and I couldn’t ask her what she meant.
School was long finished by the time I parked the car in front of the yard, and the last stragglers waiting for a ride were gone. I stood in front of the railings and looked across at the trees on the other side, wondering if there were still Black Knights to be discovered there, and whether anybody looked. I never found one when I was a kid. They always eluded me, no matter how much time I spent sitting up in the branches pretending I was just a large and surprisingly non-green clump of leaves. Earl let his go, in the end. One afternoon we just decided to open the box. It lumbered round the container for a while, evidently not realizing how much bigger its world had become—then took awkwardly to the air and careered off out of sight.
‘So what now?’ Helena asked. She’d been quiet on the short ride from Tradewinds, maybe mulling over my father’s advice about how best to deal with flying ants.
‘We walk round it.’
‘Hap, I like a wander down memory lane as much as the next gal, but I wonder whether this is exactly the time for it.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s exactly the time. And memory lane’s just what it is. So walk it with me.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘I’m not sure.’ I had an idea, and it was growing in my mind. But it wasn’t close enough yet for me to articulate it to myself, never mind anyone else. ‘Just trust me.’
And so we walked. I didn’t know if this was going to work, just that it was the only thing I could try. It might have made sense to do it alone, replicate it exactly, but I figured I needed someone else there to make it real. Our own past always lives on, to some degree, within ourselves: we need the gaze of others to make it concrete. The light was about right by then, and it was the same time of year. We went the long way around, as I had about twenty-five years ago, and I told Helena what I could remember.
As we turned into the second side the lamps clicked on and I shivered, feeling suddenly younger, almost as if it was a walk back in time and at some point Helena would disappear, leaving just a small boy in shorts. I was aware of how much taller I was now, of the extra pounds I carried, the scar tissue. Everything I’d done felt like accretions around an earlier self, moss gathered by a stone whose progress was now slowing to a halt. I stopped for a moment as we turned into the long back straight, staring at the lamp in the distance.
Helena waited, knowing there was nothing she could say or do to help. I didn’t get anything as we walked that stretch, even when we stopped to look in at the trees, closer now, only twenty yards from the corner.
But as we passed under the lamp I felt something, almost like a thickening in my head. The sensation was elusive, and slipped out of my fingers like a fish if I tried to concentrate on it. Blanking happens when you use a memory so many times that you wear it out, like rubbing a sheet of metal for so long and so often that it fades to nothing, and you can see right through it. Attempting to touch it again just makes things worse. You have to come at it from an angle, see it from the side, make the most of what is left. I tried, but couldn’t capture it, and glanced at Helena, already shrugging.
Then it burst out of nowhere, like chrome gleaming at the torn edges of a car after a wreck:
I had turned and seen the man standing under the light. I started to run but then stopped, knowing I couldn’t escape him. Strange I should have thought that, in retrospect. I was a fast kid, and could dart over fences and dodge like a chicken. He was closer suddenly, but the footsteps I could hear were not his, but mine, echoes of something which had already happened, as if things were being presented in the wrong order, and causality was breaking down.
Then he was right there, a yard away, looking down at me. I saw his face for the first time: it was not unkind, but it was not a usual face. ‘Quickly,’ he said. ‘Come.’
I saw six men approaching from the other side of the street, from where a silver car was parked. They were all dressed the same and all walked together, and they didn’t look right. They didn’t seem bad, it wasn’t that, but I knew who I’d rather go with.
The man grabbed me by the arm and I let him drag me down the pavement, still staring back at the other men and wondering why they didn’t run. They could have caught us if they wanted to, but they seemed to be getting slower instead, though their movements looked just the same.
I had to turn round again to keep from falling over, and I saw something weird was happening. The street was sparkling, like someone had turned on a million tiny spots of light embedded in the nicks in the tarmac road; and also strange lights in the sky, oddly shaped, moving. There were now two people ahead of us on the sidewalk, just standing, as if waiting for us to pass. They were motionless, but their bent shapes looked a little familiar. Then I realized who they were.
My grandparents, on my father’s side, the ones who were already dead. As we got closer they started to move, like film cranking into motion: Nan smiled, and Grandad reached out towards me. I saw the hairs on the back of his hand, the distinctive pattern of liver spots, and looked up to see his eagle face, the few combed-back grey hairs.
Even at that age I knew that these were not mere images. They were actually there. I wasn’t in the least afraid, though I would be if I saw the same thing now. I thought: ‘That’s cool—I’ll be able to tell Dad they’re all right.’ And then we were past them, and everything was white. The world switched off like a light, and I was somewhere else. It wasn’t that I couldn’t remember what happened, more that it simply didn’t exist. It was gone; it was different; it was somewhere else. The memory stopped there for good.
As it faded I saw a wipe pan of verdigris and ice, as if it was something I was passing on the way back to the present day. I heard a voice, and realized it was Deck’s. He was talking quietly, reassuringly. I was afraid for a moment, twitchy, and I wanted a Kim. Most of all I wanted someone to come and either kill us or set us free.
Then I was standing on the corner of the school yard again, a little way from the lamp. I blinked and shivered, realized I was back in the real world, back in my time.
And that we weren’t alone.
Helena was standing two yards away, gun trained steadily on a man standing in the glow of the light. I recognized him properly now. He looked the same as he had back then, and as he had in the diner and Hammond’s study. He looked calm, unafraid, beyond every and any thing.
‘It’s okay, Helena,’ I said. ‘He’s one of us.’
Fifteen
‘You tried to go back,’ the man said.
‘No. I tried to remember.’
‘Same thing,’ he said.
‘Where are my friends?’
‘They’re there. You remember them, don’t you?’
‘How do I get them back?’
The man shrugged. ‘You should go back to LA. I might be able to help, I might not. There are more of them than there are of me.’
‘But you’re more powerful, right?’
‘That’s the word. Doesn’t alw
ays work out that way.’
Keeping her gun firmly in place, Helena turned to me. ‘Any chance of me being introduced here, Hap? Your social skills always were kind of basic.’
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Helena, this man is an alien.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, and turned back to face him. ‘Okay, alien motherfucker, put your hands where I can see them.’
The man raised an eyebrow, but slowly pulled his hands out of his pockets and held them up. ‘Does that make you feel safer?’
‘Patronize me and I’ll blow your head off.’
‘Helena,’ I said gently, ‘I’m not sure this is the way forward.’
She stamped her foot. ‘He just appeared out of nowhere, Hap. You know how I hate that kind of thing.’
‘He didn’t. He came out of my memory.’
‘Memories only exist in people’s minds, Hap. They’re just little flashes of electricity sparking in a mess of jello.’
I shook my head. ‘Not the way it works.’ I looked at the man. ‘Is it?’
‘Indeed not,’ he said.
‘Then why can’t I remember being there? Why can’t anyone remember it, when they get back?’
‘It’s impossible. It’s like trying to write in black marker on black paper.’
‘Yeah, very good. Very gnomic,’ snarled Helena. ‘Hap, what do you want me to do?’
‘Put the gun down,’ I said. ‘It wouldn’t do any good anyway. He’s not even really here.’
‘Hap, did your mother slip something weird in the lemonade?’
‘You should listen to him,’ the man said. ‘He’s right, and sooner or later he’s going to work out what he’s talking about.’
‘Don’t you patronize him either,’ Helena snapped. ‘That’s my job.’
I took a step closer to her, so we were together, and she slowly lowered the gun. You’d have had to know her as well as I did to understand that she was very frightened.
‘So how come I can hear what Deck’s saying,’ I asked, ‘if I can’t go there?’
‘Special case,’ he said. ‘Because of what you’re carrying in your head. Never happened before. It’s one for the record books.’
Didn’t make any sense to me, but I pressed on anyway. ‘What’s the big deal over Hammond?’
‘They had plans for him. Laura Reynolds messed them up.’
‘What kind of plans?’
‘You wouldn’t believe me even if I told you.’
‘Try me. I’ve got a high credibility threshold.’
‘Just be thankful they failed. He wasn’t right.’
‘For what? You guys planning to invade?’
‘Why would we do that?’
‘Why would you abduct people? What’s that achieve apart from scaring the shit out of them?’
He shrugged. ‘Nothing. It’s a game. One which I don’t play any more.’
‘Bully for you. And that’s bullshit anyway: you abducted me.’
‘A long time ago. And did you have such a bad time?’
‘I can’t remember.’
The man spoke quickly and firmly: ‘And you never will, Mr Thompson. That’s the way it is, and it can’t be changed. It’s not my doing. So just leave it. You’ll understand soon enough, but then you’ll be dead and the knowledge won’t be much use to you any more.’
‘Is that some kind of threat?’
‘Of course not. I don’t want you to die. I have a personal interest in you: we met when you were young and had a chance to understand. I can’t help you with that. The act of telling makes the truth a lie, because of all the filters it has to pass through. You see through the veils by waiting for the wind to push them aside, not by just describing them. That’s what the others are trying to do, and I can’t condone it. It will only make things worse.’
Helena turned to me and clapped her hands together. ‘Oh how lovely, a seminar. Are you taking notes?’
I ignored her. ‘You knew Travis’ name back at Hammond’s house. So you know what really happened to Hammond, and you also know I look like going down for it.’
‘My hands are tied,’ the man said. ‘I’m not exactly from around here. That’s for you to sort out. And, if you’ll take my advice, you might want to start round about…now.’
Suddenly I heard the sound of tyres on tarmac. I quickly glanced down the pavement towards the hire car, and saw a red Lexus heading towards it. The car stopped and two men jumped out. Even from that distance I could tell they were earthlings, and that they’d be carrying guns. The men peered in our car, saw it was empty, and then looked up and made us.
When I turned back to Helena she already had another gun out, and was standing with one in each hand. She was alone.
‘Where’d he go?’ I asked, dumbfounded. My head was still spinning from trying to parse what the man had been telling me, and also from a small and pointless relief that at least someone who appeared to be in some kind of authority knew I hadn’t been the one who’d murdered Ray Hammond.
‘Just disappeared,’ she said. ‘What an asshole.’
Together we watched the two men as they approached, pulling weapons out of shoulder holsters. They were standard-issue heavies, shoulders shaped by long-ago weight-training, stomachs by too much recent beer.
‘What do you reckon?’ I asked Helena, as I got out my own gun and slapped a new cartridge in. ‘This going to be settled with a polite conversation?’
The first bullet zipped past, flying right between us.
‘I doubt it,’ she said, and started firing.
At first the men stood their ground, obviously thinking they were dealing with a couple of amateurs, instead of just one. Most people miss with a good proportion of their shots, especially at twenty yards. Helena doesn’t. Helena doesn’t miss if you blindfold her and lie about where you’ve put the thing she’s aiming for.
This rapidly became clear, and the men leapt in different directions like a wave hitting a jagged rock. One clambered over the fence into the school yard. The other slid behind a car.
Helena kept firing as we ducked behind a car of our own. ‘He’s a lot of fucking help, this friend of yours,’ she muttered, as we squatted down and reloaded.
I glanced round the end of the bumper: one of the heavies was trying to crawl out towards us from behind his own shield. ‘He gave me the code to Hammond’s records,’ I said, squeezing a shot off. The man disappeared again very quickly.
‘Yeah, but why’d he do that? What’s it to him?’ There was a splintering crump as the rear windshield of the car blew out. Helena turned and fired two shots at the fence.
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
‘And who are these guys?’
‘I don’t know that either,’ I said. ‘Why don’t we go find out?’
She winked: ‘You take the guy behind the car.’ We waited out four more shots and then heard two dry clicks. ‘Let’s go.’
We leapt to our feet and peeled off round opposite sides of the car, spraying bullets. I kept firing as we ran forward: heard a scream from beyond the fence, and saw Helena dodge off to vault over it. I stopped firing for a moment, kept the gun trained on the air about six inches over the trunk of the other car. I was expecting him to wait a second, figure I was reloading, and then pop up. I was wrong. This guy had decided that he’d had enough. He was suddenly up and running, sprinting away back down the pavement. I ran after him, but he had too much of a start and was going to make it to his car way before I did.
I aimed carefully, shot him in the thigh. The impact swung his leg round behind him, sending him into a complex and rather balletic turn that ended with him crashing into the fence.
He kept hold of his gun and tried to roll into a shooter’s position, but I was already standing over him. ‘You could do that,’ I said. ‘On the other hand I could blow your head off. I don’t know how much you’re getting paid, but it would have to be a lot.’
‘Screw you,’ he said, and struggled to point the gun up at me. I sw
ung a kick at his wrist: it connected and the gun went skittering across the road. If I ever have a son, I’m going to tell him to practise this whole kicking thing. It really comes in handy.
‘Let’s wait and find out what happened to your buddy, shall we?’ I said. ‘Might help structure your next couple of responses.’ I stood on his hand and waited for Helena, who was wandering over towards us.
‘He’s dead,’ she said, apologetically. ‘Sorry.’
‘You see?’ I said to the guy on the ground. I could tell that the pain from his leg was beginning to pitch in hard. ‘You’re lucky you got me. Could easily have gone the other way.’
‘Fuck you, motherfucker.’
‘Charming,’ said Helena.
‘Who sent you?’ I asked.
‘Fuck you.’
‘He’s really rude, isn’t he?’ Helena said.
Keeping my foot where it was, I reached down and searched his jacket pockets. Came up with a wallet. No driver’s licence, but an access card. For REMtemps Security.
Suddenly I’d had just about enough of Stratten, of gun-toting aliens and just about everything else.
‘How did you find me?’ I asked, and kicked him in the stomach. ‘How?’
Helena reached out a hand towards me. I shrugged it off, my vision melting with fury. I kicked the guy in the leg, then grabbed his jacket. I pulled him off the floor and shouted right in his face. ‘How the fuck did you find me?’
He spat at me; grinned. I kept my hold on him and punched him in the face with my other hand. ‘You’re going to tell me,’ I said, right up close. ‘And if it involves my parents it’s going to be the last thing you ever say.’
‘Didn’t need them this time.’ The guy smiled. A trickle of blood ran out of his nose. ‘Lots of people want to turn you in. But next time…Well hey—we know where they live.’
I let him fall back to the ground, pulled the gun out. ‘Hap, no,’ Helena said urgently. ‘Don’t do this.’
‘I want you to take a message to Stratten,’ I told the guy, and dropped his security pass on his chest. ‘A very simple message. I am fucking fed up with being chased, shot at and generally fucked around, and either Stratten gets out of my face or I’m going to take him down.’
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