‘Dalton is searching for you. He’s close,’ she said, holding up a lensing prism and rubbing her temple.
‘We need to split up,’ declared Phileas. ‘Sim you stay with Josh. Lyra and I will create a diversion.’
‘How?’ asked Josh.
‘Give me your tachyon. Dalton is probably using it to track you.’
Josh didn’t like the idea of handing it over. He hesitated before giving it to Phileas.
‘It’s okay. You still have Sim. He can pull you both out of a crisis. Just make sure your friend survives.’
Lyra and Phileas disappeared into thin air.
‘What are we going to do now?’ Sim asked.
‘I have an idea, but it means I have to do something illegal.’
‘Great!’ said Sim with a wide beaming grin. ‘I’ve always wanted to do something bad.’
59
Gossy
They were driving fast, trying to stay in sight of the tail lights of Gossy’s Porsche.
Sim’s knuckles were white where he gripped the seatbelt, and he kept making small frightened noises whenever Josh got too close to the car in front.
‘Better than Xbox?’ shouted Josh with a hint of sarcasm.
‘Yeah,’ Sim groaned through gritted teeth.
Gossy was pulling away from them. Josh had forgotten how good a driver he was. In his rearview mirror he could see his younger-self coming up on the inside lane. Weaving between the slower moving cars like a pro.
Josh had to stop himself from getting carried away. The car he and Sim had broken into was a late model Mazda MX5, and it had some serious power. His plan was to stop the accident by getting between the two cars at the right moment, but both of them were driving so recklessly that it was proving difficult not to cause an accident of his own.
Sim checked his watch. ‘Two minutes, fifteen seconds,’ he said nervously.
Reading the road ahead, Josh could sense an opportunity, and he pushed the accelerator to the floor. A car moved across to the middle lane as they came up the outside, allowing them to draw level with Gossy. Josh looked over to him. The twelve-year-old was staring straight ahead, his face set in deep concentration as he focused on his next move. Josh could remember the way the two of them had argued about who took which car — Gossy almost always went for the silver ones. He thought he was James Bond.
‘One-minute-forty.’ Sim’s time check brought Josh back to reality.
His other self was only two cars back and gaining on them. Josh let Gossy move ahead and then slipped into his wake.
‘I’m going to try and sit between them,’ he shouted to Sim over the roar of the engine.
‘Okay. Forty-five seconds.’
‘Count me down from ten.’
He thought back to the way that Gossy had tried to block his attempts to overtake, playing through the memory of those last few seconds. He saw the cars and the lorries beginning to move into their final positions.
‘Ten . . . nine . . .
Josh felt the ABS kick in as he braked hard to avoid a mini that pulled out unexpectedly. That hadn’t happened last time. He felt the sweat begin to bead on his forehead.
‘Eight . . . seven . . . six . . .’
There was less than a metre between him and the back of Gossy’s Porsche. Josh could see the approaching traffic through the windscreen of his friend’s car. He saw Gossy look back in the rearview mirror and his hand come away from the wheel to flip Josh the bird.
‘Four . . . three . . . two . . .’
Josh pulled back into the middle lane, leaving a gap for his younger self.
‘Hold on,’ he screamed, spinning the steering wheel and braking hard. The rear of the vehicle kicked round, but he controlled it, counter-steering until he had the car sideways across two of the lanes.
The Subaru ploughed straight into them. He watched his younger self disappear under the airbag as it deployed and felt the judder of their collision run up his spine. An adolescent version of Lenin bounced in the passenger seat next to him, held back by the seat belt. As he’d planned, the front of their car buried itself into the back door of the Mazda, which crumpled as it absorbed the impact.
Josh looked to his right to see Gossy’s car slipping ahead through the traffic.
‘Now,’ said Josh as the smell of fuel leaked into the car. Sim gripped his hand and activated his tachyon.
They reappeared amongst a stand of trees on a hill overlooking the scene of the accident.
The Mazda was on fire, and there were people running around with phones trying to get everyone away from the danger. Josh couldn’t see any movement in the car with Lenin and his younger self, and there were no signs of the emergency services. Two brave men were trying to open the doors but they were having trouble getting anywhere near it.
‘Did your calculations predict this?’ asked Josh. ‘What happens if I die?’
‘You won’t,’ Sim replied confidently. ‘Don’t you remember what happened?’
‘No — wait, what’s he doing here?’
A familiar figure in a military greatcoat appeared from behind a truck and starting yelling at them to back off. The colonel marched up to the car and wrenched open the door. Josh watched in amazement as the old man pulled both himself and then Lenin out of the car, and dragged them over to the side of the road.
‘So Lenin didn’t pull me out of the car?’ Josh said under his breath.
‘No, and Gossy survived. See?’
Josh could just make out the silver Porsche heading south, oblivious to what had happened behind him.
‘Do you feel any different?’
‘Nope,’ replied Josh. ‘Why? Should I?’
‘No reason. It was just a pet theory of mine. Do you still remember what is was like to lose your friend?’
‘I didn’t lose him, he drove off and left me to die — selfish bastard.’
‘So no memories of him dying?’
‘What are you talking about? You saw for yourself he just took off.’
Sim made some notes in his book.
‘Okay. Well, we’d better get a move on before Rufius sees us.’
60
Bad Odds
‘So did it work?’ Caitlin enquired the moment Sim appeared in her room.
‘Yes, and no. He has no memory of his friend’s death, but for some reason Lenin is still holding his mother to ransom. He’s not happy.’
Caitlin closed her eyes and chewed on her lip, something she only did when she was deep in thought.
‘I’d hoped it would have fixed the mother issue too.’
‘Too many variables. You know it’s always difficult to predict emotional outcomes.’
‘So there is no escaping the showdown?’
‘It’s plus ninety-five now,’ Sim said, consulting his notes.
‘Bugger.’
‘Have Lyra and Phil returned yet?’
She nodded. ‘Dalton didn’t take too kindly to their little diversion. His mother’s actually had them arrested,’ she muttered, her eyes still shut.
Sim laughed. ‘I wish I could have seen his face. When did they take him?’
‘Oh, they dragged him around the seventh for a day and then back to the second. You know how much he hates that particular millennia.’
She opened her eyes.
‘Where is Josh now?’
‘Safehouse in 11.884. I can’t believe Ravana has actually locked them up!’
‘Currently under investigation,’ she said with air quotes.
‘Wait until Methuselah gets to hear of it. He’s going to crucify them.’
‘I doubt it. She’s getting more powerful within the Council and Dalton says she’s destined for greatness, or so he keeps telling himself.’
‘What did they ask you?’
‘You know, the usual stuff. When had I been and where, but they already knew everything. The Copernicans had given Dalton a log of my movements for the last three months. It makes for quite interesting readi
ng when you see it written down.’
‘Josh has had quite an effect on us,’ Sim agreed. ‘Do you really think he is the one? Lyra has convinced herself.’
Caitlin’s voice changed, becoming more serious. ‘You have to keep him safe, Sim. Just for a bit longer.’
‘I know. I’m trying, but he’s so —’
‘Impulsive?’ she interrupted.
‘I was going to say unpredictable, but impulsive is better — he just doesn’t play by any of the rules. It’s really hard to calculate his next move.’
‘I know,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Did you check the safe house for weapons before you left him?’
‘No. Why?’
‘Because he’s angry and wants to take it out on Lenin. In their culture, that always tends towards violence. What do your latest calculations predict? I assume you have a scenario running at the moment.’
‘Of course,’ Sim replied with a wink as he opened his almanac — ‘Shit!’
‘What?’ she asked, taking the book out of his hands.
‘He’s got hold of two Colt 45s and jumped to the meeting place.’
‘Where?’
‘Somewhere local.’ He took the book back. ‘Their old primary school. It seems to hold some special significance to the relationship between him and Lenin.’
‘I’m coming with you.’ She walked over to her wardrobe and took out a black coat and Samurai sword.
Sim shook his head. ‘You can’t, Cat.’
‘Why the hell not?’
He held up the page of his book. Lines and symbols danced around her name. ‘Because there is a fifty-four-point-six per cent chance you’re going to get shot.’
‘I’ve had worse odds,’ she said, putting on her coat. ‘Now lend me your tachyon and go back to Copernican Hall and re-run the numbers.’
61
Hiding Guns
[London, UK. Date: 12.007-08-22]
Josh appeared in the middle of the old playground between the twisted climbing frames and broken seesaws. It was a sad sight: chains rusted slowly on swings with no seats, brambles flourished in the sand pit and the roundabout had completely rotted away.
He’d gone back to the night before the meeting with Lenin so that he could get his bearings, remind himself of the layout of the place and stash something somewhere for insurance.
He was wearing a long leather overcoat that he’d found in the safe house. It reminded him of the guy out of the Matrix and was also especially useful for hiding weapons. The Victorians really knew how to make a coat: it was waterproof and warm, which was comforting at five o’clock in the morning when the sky was full of dirty grey clouds chucking rain down on your head.
Inside the coat he could feel the weight of the two pistols pressing against his rib cage. They were hard, awkward shapes that felt cold against his body.
The school building was in a bad way. It’d been closed down a few years ago and the 60s pre-fab construction hadn’t stood up to the rigours of bad weather and vandals. The smashed windows and barricaded doors looked more like a scene from some zombie-apocalypse movie — broken glass and old bits of classroom furniture were scattered in front of the entrance, and grass and weeds had burst through the pavement as nature reclaimed its own.
The text from Lenin contained one important word: ‘Pirates,’ and it was all that he needed. There was only one place that meant anything and that was here, at their old primary school, where he and Lenin, or Richard as he was known then, had spent a few blissfully innocent years before everything had got serious. The school was the first and last part of his childhood: before his mum got ill, before he started stealing cars — when he still believed in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, and his friends didn’t stab each other over a disagreement.
Pirates was a game they used to play in the gym. It was one of his only happy memories of school. His gym teacher, Mr Morgan, was a typical man’s man — an ex-rugby player who took no shit but didn’t dole it out either. He had retrained as a geography teacher and worked in a private school until he got ill and had to take a career break, returning as a primary teacher two years later. It was strange that the only contribution Mr Morgan had made to Josh’s life was one afternoon a week in which he got to play the best game ever invented.
It was a simple game, the best ones always were. They would put out all the gym equipment including ropes, bars, mats, benches, a whole array of equipment to jump and climb upon, and then with everybody taking their places Mr Morgan would blow his whistle, and the mayhem would begin.
No one could touch the floor, for it was the sea, of course, and full of sharks. One kid would be the pirate — usually this fell to Lenin, who even then wanted to take control, and he would recruit his crew by chasing them across the equipment and tagging them. Once on his team, they would go off recruiting on their own, and so on until everyone had either fallen into the sea or joined up. It was Spiderman, X-men, Batman and a dozen other things rolled up into one perfect afternoon.
That was until Mr Morgan’s cancer returned and he had to take sick leave. Josh had cried at the assembly when they said goodbye. He was probably the closest thing he would ever get to a father figure. There were no more Pirate games after that, and they left the school a year later.
As Josh entered the building he had a flashback of his first day — it all seemed so big and scary back then. His mum had walked him to the gate and waited there as he disappeared inside. He’d watched her from the classroom. She’d stayed at the gate for hours in case he came back out, but he never did — by lunchtime, she was gone and he was busy kicking a ball around the playground with Billy and Shags.
He felt like a giant as he walked down the corridor to the main hall. In his day it had doubled up as the gym and had been the arena for their game. Everything around him seemed to have been designed for midgets. The coat pegs, noticeboards and what was left of the cupboards were all built at a metre high. Even the chairs looked like something out of a doll’s house.
The walls were covered in the tags of the various gangs. Every budding graffiti artist came here to practice. Josh was not sure the old headmistress, Mrs Bowler, would have approved, but it did bring a certain street-cred to the place that his art teacher, Mr O’Connell, might have liked.
Water was dripping into pools from the ceiling where the flat roof had perished. The front of the school was a single-storey building and he had found his way up on to its black-tarred surface many times, hunting for numerous balls that had been accidentally kicked up there.
It was a ruin now, and he resented Lenin for bringing him back here. Knowing him, it was probably some kind of intentional psycho-bullshit that was intended to put Josh off his guard, but Josh had the luxury of time. He could deal with his ghosts and reminisce all he wanted — tomorrow was as far away as he needed it to be.
The gym/hall was a larger, two-storey extension at the back of the school. It was in a better state than the front of the building, probably because not everyone could be bothered to walk all the way down. There were a few gang tags sprayed across the walls and the scattered remnants of enough booze and nitrous oxide canisters to suggest there had been some kind of party here recently.
Every one of the windows in the hall had been broken, but somehow the roof had remained intact. Birds had nested in parts of the ceiling and what was left of the climbing bars; the stench of their droppings was overpowering.
Josh sat down on one of the old benches, its varnish scored with hundreds of initials of forgotten pupils. He felt the history reaching out to him, surfacing moments of his younger self bundling over the vaulting horse — of his friends screaming with delight as they chased him across the equipment. He longed to go back there and relive those moments, but he knew he couldn’t focus on the past now; nothing was going to change the fact that he had to deal with Lenin once and for all.
Caitlin had told him that there were certain events that just had to happen, that no amount of changing the past see
m to make any difference — this was going to be one of those moments, this was a cornerstone.
He wished she could be there. She would have been a good wingman for what was to come. Josh had been impressed with her skills on the ship — Cat had obviously seen more than her fair share of action, but Josh knew he had to do this alone, he couldn’t ask anyone else to fight his battles.
He took one of the guns out and aimed along its sight to where he knew Lenin would be standing the next day. On the raised stage at the other end of the hall, exactly where the old headmistress used to witter on about the three Rs: ‘Respect, Responsibility and Reflection,’ something that no eight-year-old with dyslexia and undiagnosed ADHD had any interest in whatsoever.
Josh had been an anathema to most of the teachers. They automatically assumed he was just another ‘disruptive influence’, but he wasn’t stupid — he was just bored. His grades were hampered by his reading and he fell behind target, finding himself consigned to a class full of misfits and rejects — he had no choice but to adapt to his environment.
Looking back, it was easy to see how his life had got messed up: the bad breaks, false promises and injustices that he’d experienced as both the system and his own choices let him down. He refused to hold his mother responsible for any of it, even though she blamed herself for everything: if they had been born in a different part of town; if she’d helped him with his reading; if he’d had a father; if she had never got ill... there were too many ifs when you looked at your life that way. That was how Sim saw everything — a series of events that led to where you were now. Josh didn’t want his life to be about probabilities and causalities; he wanted to be in control. He wanted to choose his own destiny. If travelling through time could never fix his mother’s MS, or his dyslexia, then all he could do was use it to ensure that he made the best future for the both of them.
He pulled the second pistol out. It made him feel like a cowboy — a six-shooter in each hand. The guns had histories of their own. He could sense their past moving under the surface of their carved wooden handles. They’d been halfway round the world: carried by an officer of the 7th Cavalry at the Battle of the Little Bighorn; by a British soldier fighting the Zulu in Africa, and had even murdered a Russian politician on the Trans-Siberian Express.
The Infinity Engines Books 1-3 Page 30