by Eoin Colfer
“You see,” said Vallicose. “The Blessed Colonel ordered two people killed today. Smart was one.”
And I was the other, Chevie realized. They were always going to kill me.
Vallicose holstered her weapon. “Shoot the child and be done, Sister Lunka. There is something not right with this place.”
“I’m just going to reach into my pocket,” said Witmeyer, whose hands were still over her head as though she were a prisoner. “And pull out a gun to shoot you with. I sincerely wish this wasn’t necessary. But orders is orders, as they say.”
If there can ever be a good time for a house to convulse, this was that time. Smart’s house shook as though in the grip of an angry giant, sending the occupants bouncing off the walls. Chevie came to rest on top of the dying professor. His blood seemed to draw her closer, like crimson tentacles.
“I’m sorry,” she said as the kitchen dissolved around them, revealing that they were no longer in London but some other dimension composed of matter that seemed solid, liquid, and gas, but also somehow aware. Smart space.
“Smart space,” said Charles Smart, as if he could hear Chevie’s thoughts. “And my name is Smart. Geddit?”
The professor chuckled, blood burbling over his teeth.
There was something familiar about this whole insane situation, but it eluded her still. Tantalizingly close, but not close enough, and she chased it like a seagull feather down Malibu beach on a windy morning.
Relax, said Traitor Chevie. We’re in the tunnel now. My time is coming.
The Traitor is coming. Great.
Chevie remembered the Thundercats. She rolled off Smart and looked around for them. Witmeyer lay folded almost double, like a discarded coat, wedged into a corner of ceiling that used to be floor, floating away into the smart space. Vallicose stood ramrod straight, her arms overhead like a diver. There were tears on her face, but they were tears of fanatical joy.
“I am ready, Lord!” she cried. “Take me to your arms. I am ready.”
It seemed as though the Thundercats were occupied. Chevie should see if there was anything she could do for the dying man.
The professor’s breath was ragged and irregular.
“The key,” he said, surely his last words. He was pawing at her weakly. No, not pawing, giving her something. A plastic pendant.
“And the table,” whispered Smart. “Lie on the table. It will anchor you.”
“Okay, Professor. I will lie on the table.” It was crazy, but not the craziest order she’d had today, not by a long shot.
His mission accomplished, Smart’s eyes rolled back, a long sigh rattled in his gullet, and he was gone.
Again, said Traitor Chevie. He has died in the wormhole before. Remember?
And she did remember something. It seemed like a déjà vu or maybe a dream fragment.
Don’t worry, said Traitor Chevie. I’m coming any second now. All will be revealed.
Chevie clasped the key tight in her fingers, and orange light glowed through her skin, because her skin had become translucent.
Translucent skin. Rarely a positive development.
The table! Chevie threw herself spread-eagled on the metal kitchen table and hoped that whatever the term anchoring meant in this situation, it would be good.
She couldn’t understand why she wasn’t terror-stricken.
I am afraid, yes, but not terrified.
Covered in blood in the midst of some supernatural event—and yet, while she had been shaken to her core a minute earlier, Chevie felt as though she was discovering a core of steel.
That’s me. I’m coming.
The Traitor’s voice seemed louder now, part of the real world.
No, that was wrong. She was part of the Traitor’s world.
Take me, God. Take me to your bosom.
That was Clover Vallicose thinking out loud.
You are not rid of us, Chevron Savano. We have a mission.
And there was Witmeyer—not dead, then. Wishful thinking.
The orange glow spread until it filled the space inside and outside Chevie’s head.
Perhaps I have shrunk.
A wind howled around her, tossing Chevie like a twig in a hurricane, then the orange light exploded, lifting Chevie and the table on the head of a giant geyser. Maybe liquid, maybe imaginary; but there was no pain, just the balm of helplessness.
Whatever is happening is going to happen, no matter what I do.
She saw Smart fall away below her and felt herself borne far away from everything she knew.
Traitor Chevie tutted. Isn’t there anything familiar about all of this? Haven’t you dreamed about orange light?
It was true. Chevie had woken several times in the past weeks with a quickly evaporating sense of orangeness, which had seemed stupid to think about, but maybe wasn’t so stupid now.
The geyser was suddenly spent, and Chevie found herself suspended by something in a sea of something, and that was about as well as she would ever be able to describe it.
This could not get any stranger, she thought. A notion that held true for a moment or two, until a second version of herself appeared in front of her. It was definitely her, but different. Harder. More combat miles.
Traitor Chevie, she thought, and the thought carried outside her head.
Her doppelganger reached out, grasping Chevie’s skull in both hands.
“I’m gonna open your mind,” she said. “It might not hurt.”
But it probably will, thought Chevie.
And she was right.
Time travel causes chaos, and chaos doesn’t follow your rules. That’s why it’s called chaos, dummy.
—Professor Charles Smart
THE ORIENT THEATRE, HOLBORN, LONDON, 1899
Anton Farley firing at his lord and benefactor with some kind of futuristic multi-shooter? Well, it was more than a brain could comprehend. Meek and mild Farley? Farley the ink man, who was content to be the butt of jokes? Farley the complacent, who bore without complaint the jibes of the Battering Rams, who could often be a cruel bunch, especially when the grog took control of their tongues?
Malarkey had a vague memory of one drunken night in the Hidey-Hole when Pooley had referred to Anton Farley as that doting simperling with his bag o’ colors.
Malarkey was not certain whether or not the word simperling was an actual soldier in the army of the queen’s own lingo, but it got the message across. Farley had never so much as batted an eyelid.
It’s been simmering, thought the Ram king now. All the slights been festering in his gnarled old heart.
Still, festering slights could not explain this sudden display of marksmanship, not to mention the fantastical weapon currently being brandished to devastating effect by the disgruntled tattooist.
In the twinkle of an eye since Farley had set his weapon a-spitting bullets, Jeeves and Noble had been cut down by the deadly hail. Virtually sundered, poor Noble had been.
And yet the gun made no more noise than a hacking consumptive, Malarkey thought now from the shadows of the orchestra pit into which he had flung himself, caring little as to the depth of the hole.
Had it been the pit of Hell itself, I would have taken the leap, he realized.
In truth, he did care now about the pit’s depth. Otto would have preferred a sight more depth and a sight more shadow, too.
I am trapped like a fish in a barrel down here. A blind man with a slingshot could nail me.
Malarkey felt a tear gather in one eye. Imagine. Great King Otto served his papers by a sixty-year-old tattooist. It don’t seem right. I always imagined that it would require a legion of bluebottles to drag me under, or perhaps an escaped lion from Regent’s Zoo. At the very least a hostile bunch of traitorous cohorts doing for me like Julius Caesar’s mates did for ’im. But no. A ruddy ink-jo
ckey.
It was an ignoble way to go, and Malarkey had always been uncommonly worried about posterity.
Farley can make up any old yarn, he realized. He could swear I died whimpering like a puppy in a sack. He could say Otto Malarkey soiled himself.
Otto’s pride urged him to call out to Farley, to offer parlay, but his soldier’s sense cautioned him to keep his big trap shut, as it was possible that Farley was not altogether certain as to where his king had disappeared.
Where is my brother? wondered Malarkey, not for a second considering that Barnabus could be dead. Inhumane had once found himself in the path of a Chinese blunderbuss during a skirmish behind an opium den, and the scattershot had only made him angry.
Farley’s weapon spoke again, sending a burst of hissing projectiles streaking across the square of light over Malarkey’s head.
Who was the tattooist aiming at?
This unspoken question was answered when a thunderous crash was followed by the appearance of a massive forearm over the lip of the orchestra pit. Blood flowed along the arm, collected in the hollow of the man’s palm, and was released in four spiraling dribbles between once powerful fingers.
Malarkey watched the viscous liquid pool between his boots, and he realized that any man who allowed this volume of blood to vacate his body would presently be shaking hands with Saint Peter.
Otto Malarkey knew then that the once indomitable Barnabus Malarkey had fought his last battle.
King Otto threw prudence to the wind and howled to the gods.
“Farley. Faaarley!”
A voice floated down from the stalls. Boomy and echoing, descending and condescending.
“Ah, Your Majesty. I was looking for you, as I wish to augment your last tattoo. A few touches of crimson, perhaps.”
A narrow beam of red light flitted across the pit mouth. It came to a point against the pit wall, then began a slow jittering descent toward the corner where Otto Malarkey sat shivering in rage and grief.
Barely a minute earlier, Riley had watched the situation deteriorate from ominous to lethal. He had predicted that Farley would be forced to concentrate his efforts on the warrior Rams, and that prediction would have been proven spot on had Farley not been an AS officer with multiple weapons, some from the late twentieth century. He trained his Steyr machine pistol on the Rams while keeping the Colt revolver aimed at Riley.
Hell and damnation, thought Riley. Two barrels.
Even though the mortality rate was high in Victorian London, murder was rare, and guns were scarce among civilians, even the Family. For one villain to be in possession of a brace of firearms was indeed exceptional. Albert Garrick, who had been a lifelong knife man, often said that guns were like mutts: they took feeding and often didn’t produce the barks when called upon—unreliable standards of manufacturing and London’s damp climate saw to that—but the gleam on Farley’s barrels spoke of nightly polishings with love and oil, and Riley would be willing to bet they barked to order.
This time Riley’s prediction was dead right. Farley’s machine pistol spat a stream of bullets into the throng of Rams, bullets that ripped through flesh and shattered bone. Jeeves and Noble fell in a mist of blood and it was obvious they weren’t ever going to be climbing back up again. Otto Malarkey and his brother, two veteran scrappers, dived for whatever cover they reckoned would fox this devastating new weapon. Otto tumbled into the orchestra pit with surprising grace for a big fellow, and Inhumane dived into the aisle, hoping to bash his way out through a wall, which would not be the first or second time wall-bashing had saved his hide. But the Orient walls were solid brick and in good nick to boot. There would be no bashing through to the outside world, even with a noggin as hard as Inhumane Malarkey’s.
Riley had barely a moment’s grace before Farley, with cold deliberation, spared him a quick glance for aiming purposes and then pulled the Colt’s trigger, accompanying his shot with the glib comment:
“Catch this, why don’t you, boy?”
He was referring to the famous bullet catch that was advertised in chalk on the sidewalk outside.
Farley is a bitter man indeed, thought Riley, if he can waste time jibing when there is killing to be done.
The bullet came at him, and Riley whirled inside his cloak, folding the layers of chain mail and increasing his chances of survival. The slug hit him in the chest and the impact was terrific, forcing Riley backward several steps. He could not tell if he was actually dying or merely hurt. In any event it was vital that he appear to be a goner so that Farley would point his beadies elsewhere. Riley slumped against the wall, allowing the folds of his cloak to droop apart. He slapped a hand to his chest as though his palm was magical and could somehow stop the crimson blossom spreading across his white shirt.
“Ha!” said Farley. “The Great Savano, my eye.”
Riley coughed once, stumbled forward, and then toppled over, and the velvet folds of his cloak welcomed him to blackness.
Chevie Savano was in the time tunnel, she realized now.
The Smarthole, she thought. Thank heaven for that.
Any television-watching kid over the age of ten had heard of the famous Einstein-Rosen bridge, or wormhole, or time tunnel, or whatever the latest sci-fi show chose to call it, but very few people had actually been immersed in one, and of the few that had been inside the tunnel, not one of them had been relieved to be so situated.
Until now.
Chevie felt a wave of relief, spreading a balm across a psyche that had been scarred by seventeen years of living in the Boxite Empire.
It doesn’t have to be, she realized. None of it.
The consciousness known previously as Traitor Chevie had punched its way to the surface, and suddenly Chevie remembered it all. Riley, Garrick, Victorian London, and most importantly, Colonel Box.
Clayton Box.
The missing special forces colonel and his team. So that’s where they went.
Box was the one who had been pushing the use of the Smarthole as a conduit directly to terrorists’ grandfathers.
Stamp out the bloodline, had been Box’s advice. Kill them before they breed.
Which had prompted Charles Smart to disappear into the past and shut down the program.
Everyone thought Box had gone MIA, but in reality the colonel and his team had gone MIT. They had brought the technology of the future into the past.
It seemed so obvious now that Chevie wondered how it had never occurred to anyone.
Did people really believe that the specs for intercontinental ballistic missiles had been dreamed up by Box the Divine?
Of course they did.
Why wouldn’t they?
Chevie had believed it all her life.
It was actually a lot easier to believe than what had actually happened.
Ludicrous.
It’s good to be cynical me again, thought Chevie. No more bowing and scraping. From now on…
From now on…what?
Chevie didn’t know. She didn’t know for sure where this pod, which Smart had hidden by disguising it as a kitchen, would dump her. And if she did end up in Victorian London, would the Thundercats have traveled back with her?
Thundercats. Now she got it.
Box had named his security police after an old kids’ cartoon show.
What a drama queen.
But back to the point. She had no plan and nowhere to go.
Find Riley.
That was a good starting place.
The boy had said his theater was in Holborn. She knew where that was.
Of course all this was provided she didn’t emerge on Mars being chased by white apes.
And it was likely that the Thundercats were in this quantum foam with her, but at least they should be disoriented for the first few moments, which would give her a chance to bolt.
That plan was too big. How could she put the kibosh on the rise of an entire world order?
Find Riley, and go from there.
It was a comforting thought: to find someone who would be happy to see her.
A friend.
Imagine that.
Farley watched Riley fall, which was unfortunate, because Riley would have dearly liked a private moment to raise an elbow to protect his face from impact with the stage floor. With Farley’s gaze on him, all he could do was tuck his chin and take the clunk on his forehead. Luckily, Garrick had always praised head butts to high heaven, saying that God has given us a nice wedge of bone and the means to aim it. So Riley had years of head-butting training to call on when his head smashed into the trapdoor. Had the trapdoor not been off the latch, he might have split his brainpan. As it was, the bang was severe enough that stars winked around his head as he tumbled through the trapdoor and into the trap room, leaving his cloak heaped on the stage above.
The move had been accomplished smoothly enough that perhaps Farley would be fooled into believing that Riley’s cloak had become his shroud and the boy lay dead in its folds. After all, there had been blood.
Pig’s blood from a rubber bladder, but blood all the same.
The bladder had been clipped to the back of a ring on the Great Savano’s middle finger and, during his bullet-catch act, was supposed to burst for a little blood around his gums. But it served equally well to fake a shot to the chest; the bullet had actually been stopped by the folds of chain mail.
Riley tumbled into the trap room, thumping onto the platform that was spring-loaded and counterweighted to shoot him upward for the show’s finale. Fortunately he did not knock against the lever. Heaven knows how Farley would react if Riley resurrected before his eyes.
Actually, even the glockiest of dummies could predict Farley’s reaction. He would kill Riley again toot sweet.
The commotion of Riley’s fall was masked by the rapid clatter of a large man moving quickly in the stalls.
That’s Malarkey’s brother having a go, thought Riley. Which is my cue to make myself scarce. Down the corridor to the back door and off into the city.