Fisher And The Bears

by T Hodden

  “Hello there.” She said brightly, flicking her hair back out of her eyes and wiping her hands on her shirt. She had chunky boots and a loose tool belt. “Sorry about this. Somebody cast a spell on the fossil gallery and the town is a little over run with dinosaurs. On the good side, you should swing by the pet shop. They have an aquarium where my fiancée put the trilobites. You will never see anything like it again.” She paused, seeing the way I was staring at her. “Oi, mind the eyes mate, I said I had a better half.”

  I nodded. “Miss Birch, I really need you to listen. You are in terrible danger.”

  She stopped. “This is King's curse isn't it?” She looked at me appraisingly. “Okay, so you would be worried how quick you get to used to this.” She broke into a grin that shattered my heart, because, well, it had been so long since I had seen my mother smile.

  I nodded though. “People from his future want to kill you. Before you give him a child.”

  “Really?” She took a cigarette from the packet tucked in the straps of her dungarees. She lit it with a match and sucked on it. “And when was I planning to do that?”

  “It's what they believe.” I said. “Friends sent us to help. To watch over you, but not too close.”

  “Well, that would kill the romance.” She admitted with an easy laugh. She looked at me. “Who are you?”

  “Fish.” I said, pointing at myself. “Musket, Theodore Edison Bear, Wendy and Gwyn.” I pointed at Ginger. “And Ginger.”

  “Hi guys.” Mum said. “Well, there are a few dinosaurs left to round up, but they are pretty harmless. So, you could watch that.” She was turning to look back up the beach when there was another flash of light and power. Another time traveller arriving. The sphere of light dissipated and it revealed a Paladin bear. He was not cute like Musket, or three feet tall like Musket, nor was he covered in fur. He was clearly the heavy combat model. A robot, for sure, but the armoured plates fitted together organically, like the metal had been grown rather than welded. He was the size of a van and as angry as a storm, one of his arms folded into the shape of a multiple barrelled machine gun, a cannon.

  Before I could shout a warning all the bears were jumping on Mum, dragging her aside. The air split open with the sound of gunfire as a barrage of bullets whistled through the air and thudded into the sea wall.

  “Friends of yours Fish?” Mum asked quietly.

  “No. The guys we were warning you about.”

  “I worked that one out.” She agreed. “Right, wait here then. I will sort this out.”

  “No, Mum!” I said. Then as she stared at me. “Ma'am. I said Ma'am.”

  “Oh god.” She groaned. “Is this a time travel thing?”

  The bears nodded.

  “And the son they don't want me to have?” She pointed at me. “Why would I call you Fish?”

  “Curse.” I said.

  “So you realise there is a lot more we have to talk about when we have time?” She asked. I could not answer, there was another raking burst from the machine gun. Then, emerging from the streets to the sea wall was Clarumcoma. He had an old and battered revolver in his hand, that he used to take careful aim with, drawing back the hammer. He was much older now, almost as aged and mummified as the man I knew. He fired once and a single bullet thumped the bright red button of the time travel device on the belt of the giant robotic bear. It sparked and fizzed, then the bear vanished in a flash of light. Carefully hiding the pistol he hurried down the steps towards Mum.

  “Just once I would like to bump into you before the nick of time.” He glanced directly at me. “Ah. Well, this should be interesting. Would you like to answer some questions?”

  I shook my head.

  “Will you?” My mother prompted.

  I nodded.

  *

  “So, why exactly are you bouncing around in time, and why can I not die?” Clarumcoma glared at me with a furious heat in his eyes. They blazed like a furnace of souls. “Because it has been a little under a hundred years for me, yet here you are, still wearing the soaking wet clothes from your fall down a mountain.”

  “Perhaps you just live a long and healthy life after a lucky experience.” I said.

  “No.” He folded his arms. We were in Mums apartment, above the offices for her private investigators firm. Her partners were busy keeping the solicitors happy with the paying work. I was in the easy chair. The one she kept even after she had moved in with dad. That I loved as a kid. He was looming over me. Mum was making the bears a pile of finger sandwiches. “If falling from a mountain once was my only brush with death, I could understand. But I have been gassed, shot, bombed, and locked in death traps too many times. And yet I always held out past my limits of endurance. With will power, my friend would once have written. Superhuman stamina he might have said. Superhuman is right. I should be dead by now at least six times over. And yet...”

  “Have you heard the myth of Vampires?” I asked.

  “I have met Lord Pendragon. Their king. Bested him in a conflict of wits.” Clarumcoma admitted.

  “He became a Vampire by sheer force of will, because he refused to die and kept his soul on the mortal plain. He must feed on the life of others to keep it going, but at his heart is a stubborn refusal to just die.” I explained.

  “I am no Vampier.” Clarumcoma reminded me.

  “No. But that is one will, one mind, one soul, refusing to let somebody die.” I met his gaze. “What do you think happens when there is somebody that so many people believe in, so many people have faith in, that they simply will not believe he can die? A man may become a hero, then the hero becomes a myth. A legend. Something far more than a mortal soul.” I smiled. “You become ever more like the legend, but the man remains at the heart.”

  He shook his head. “I am no legend. Once perhaps. But I do not call myself a hero.”

  “Others do.” I said. “You did not ask for this, but they have chosen you and as long as the candle burns, as long as your past self is a symbol, a myth, the heart of a legend, you will persist.”

  “So why are you defending me?” He snorted.

  “Because it took me this long to realise exactly what you are. Why the Horizon thought they needed to kill you four times over, but my mother only once.” I said. “And because one day we will be friends.”

  “I have no doubt.” He smiled. “You saved me many times, at the risk of your own life.”

  “Now I have to go.” I whispered. “I have perhaps won a battle, but the war still wages. I can't stay here. As much as I would love to, I should be in my own time.”

  “So your enemy will only send one robot and have done?” My mother sat beside me, still not quite believing she would ever be a mother. “Or is there something else?” She looked me up and down, the bears at her heels. “Oh.” She crouched and held my hand. “What is it that makes you so afraid to stop and think?”

  “I killed people.” I said. “Not all of us survived the tumble down the mountain.” I told her my story in full.

  “Those were just clones?” My mother asked, once I had explained the story from my point of view. “Not real people?”

  I pointed at Musket. He had not liked that comment. “He broke free of his programming. Tears was able to break out of her programming. Those clones have their own identities somewhere under the brainwashing. They are people. It may have been an accident, but I dragged them off a mountain and they died.”

  She gave me a look that was full of sorrow.

  “So you came here to protect us, knowing the risks of altering history?” She asked.

  “You are my mum. You are worth breaking all of history, all of time and space for.” I said at last.

  “I hope you grew up and found a girl worth doing that for?” She said.

  I nodded. “If I could could go back and save her or-” I caught myself. “Or put other things right.” I said at last. Because there was no way I could bring myself to tell my mother that if I could save her from that one night w
hen I was fifteen and she was taken from me, I would. “But I'm saying too much. Right now, this conversation is probably putting the fear of god into you and changing things.”

  “It reminds me how brilliant your father is.” My Mum said, brightly. “Blooming Nora boy, I have dealt with time travel before. Ghosts. Monsters. Dinosaurs. I got to see dinosaurs today. It is brilliant. I do things no other life could offer, see things nobody else can show me. I am not giving up on your dad just because one night soon we might... Well.... He is your dad right?” She pointed at a poster for the theatre.

  “Curse.” I reminded her, nodding at the bears.

  “Then what more can I say?” She punched my shoulder. I tried not to wince. “This is fantastic and I am not going anywhere. These robo-bears will have to try a lot harder to stop us.”

  “Please don't tempt fate.” I said. “I will do what I can to be sure you are both safe, then we need to go home.”

  Mum nodded. “So, killer robots, from the future. I think I saw the film.” She grinned. “You have to admit this is all pretty wild.”

  “I just wish I knew more about the threat.” I said. “The Horizon. So far we are reacting, playing on their terms and I don't even know why they want to invade. What I am dealing with. Clones and robots, but who is controlling them?” As I spoke I stared at Musket. He frowned. “How much do you remember?” I asked him gently.

  He shook his head and covered his head with his paws.

  “We can't make him remember.” Wendy said angrily. “It might make his programming take back control. It might make him one of them again.”

  “Sorry.” I said quietly. “I didn't think.”

  “We can ask the Ancestor Bear.” Gwyn suggested. “He seems pretty clued up. As long as time travel doesn't give him a head ache like it does me.”

  “Perhaps you could indulge me.” Clarumcoma said. “I survived a fall down that mountain because I apparently am too valuable to others to die. How exactly did you survive so well? Especially given your claims to have been shot.”

  I paused. “It hurt a lot on the way down.” I admitted. “And I slid down the mountain rather than fell, the waterfall carried and cushioned me...”

  “So you will be covered in scrapes and abrasions? Bruises? And let us not forget your bullet hole?” Clarumcoma said evenly. “The least I can do is help you. Show me your wounds.”

  “Well, they are feeling a lot better at the moment.” I said. “I guess I got too busy to-” My voice trailed off, I was staring at my hands.

  “What is wrong my friend?” Clarumcoma asked, raising his revolver and pointing it squarely at me. “You do not seem to be nursing so much as a limp. What is so fascinating about your hand?”

  “My scar is gone.” I whispered the words. “When I was six years old I was helping decorate a Christmas tree. There was a thin red glittery bauble that I did not understand was an antique or delicate. I fell off a chair because I leant too far to hang it on a limb. The fall didn't hurt at all, but the bauble shattered in my hand and left me a scar between my thumb and finger that was with me for life.” I looked at my other hand. “There was a burn on my palm from a possessed rope.” Reached around to look at my side, for another scar. Clarumcoma coughed and pointed at my tee shirt and fishing vest.

  “Slip those up. I want to know if your belly button is an inny or an outty.” Clarumcoma said.

  I lifted my shirt. There was no button in my belly. No fluff-trap. I screamed and rubbed at my belly in disbelief. “Who stole my belly button?”

  “I suspect,” Clarumcoma hissed with venom, “those born in a vat of chemicals do not have them.”

 

  “What is an emergency protocol?” I demanded, but the words were a little slurred. My heartbeat was growing faster, my muscles tightening up. I felt myself reach into the pocket of my fishing vest for a compact little pistol I did not know was there. I thumbed the safety catch with the same movement as I took aim. “Dodge left!” I screamed at Clarumcoma.

  I do not know what instinct made him listen to me and dodge, he could easily have shot me down before I finished pulling the trigger, but I am grateful he did. The bullet went wide and knocked the stuffing out of the toy cow Mum kept by her telly. I was already turning on my heels, knowing I could complete the prime objective before Clarumcoma could get to his feet and take aim.

  “Mum! Duck!” I shouted, before I realised Mum was already throwing herself behind the breakfast bar, pulling the door of her fridge open for cover. I begged my limbs not to pull the trigger, but they did. Three more shots hit the top of the fridge door, going too high to hit Mum. I started to walk forwards. One more shot, but it would be point blank range. “One more shot. Closing in. Reaching for the fridge door. Ow!”

  A milk bottle smashed on my wrist, knocking the gun from my hand. I shoved Mum back and tried to slam the fridge door at her. I closed my eyes wishing I had not seen the rack of knives over the worktop. “Ted! Stop me! I'm going for a knife.”

  “Well don't!” Theodore Edison Bear imbued that command with every ounce of authority he could muster. “Bad Fish! Bad Fish! You will go on the naughty step for this!” Several sets of paws were on me, trying to wrestle me down to the floor.

  “Ted I really do not want to hurt my Mum, so do something!” I screamed.

  “Cleanse With Fire!” Ginger suggested, pulling out his pocket sized, gas fired, flaming torch.

  “Something else!” I pleaded, feeling my way towards the kitchen cupboards and lifting myself up to grab the heaviest of the knives.

  “I am so sorry.” Ted whimpered. “I don't want to do this.”

  “Men.” Wendy hissed, shortly before something that felt a lot like a frying pan made contact with the back of my head. “There.”

  “Something other than murdering me.” I tried to say as I hit the floor.

  “You didn't knock him out!” Ginger said. “You have to knock him out.”

  There was another whack.

  “Okay, maybe not bludgeoning him.” Mum used her soft tone, that was kind and calm and used to scare the willies out of me. It meant real trouble. “Duct tape?”

  “Duct tape!” The bears agreed.

  *

  “Icmbeacln!” I tried to say through the wad of tape over my mouth. There was more on my wrists and ankles, binding me to the cheap plastic backed chair. I watched as the bears carefully drew around me with chalk.

  “You are so lucky my better half is not here.” Mum said in her non-growl of worrying calmness. “Busy chasing the last of the dinosaurs. Pretending to be his son? Do you know how much he loves the idea of us getting married and having a family?”

  “Yb!” I nodded furiously. “ButIcnbeaclne!”

  Ted tilted his head. “You can't beat a clown? I think you will find the real Fish can!”

  “He says he can't be a clone.” Ginger said.

  “Well he has a point. When did he stop being Fish? When was the switch?” Gwyn mused it like he was a moot point. “I just can't see it.”

  “Oh dear.” Wendy was holding out a pendulum. “I think maybe he thinks he is the real Fish. I mean that is the point right?”

  I glanced around, trying to judge the what everybody was thinking. I looked at Mum, a mix of concern and betrayal. Then the bears, who were trying quietly to remain optimistic as they weighed the evidence, then Clarumcoma. He was stood by the mirror, revolver pointed at me. But there, by my reflection...

  “Mrrrbrrrbr!” I said.

  “Mirror?” Ginger asked. He looked over, smiled at Clarumcoma, then his eyes fell on the mirror. He squinted, then he covered his mouth with a paw. “Oh yeah!”

  “Who is that?” Mum asked, seeing the out of focus shade behind my reflection.

  “We are meant to pretend not to have seen her.” Gwyn said with a finger in the air. “Because frankly we have no idea how to politely act about Doreen still being there.”

  “Doreen?” Mum asked.


  “A ghost that Fish helped. She was nice. We liked her, he loved her and then...” Wendy stopped talking. She suddenly became very interested in the floor. “She went to save somebody and got... Deleted. Wiped.”

  “Sent to the other side?” Clarumcoma asked.

  “No.” Ted said. “Destroyed. All except one little shade that Amduscias tried to torture him with.”

  “Oh god.” Mum whispered. “There is a little bit of her in his soul? Keeping the broken heart from ever quite healing? That is... Wrong. Very very wrong.”

  “But it happened to Fish.” Wendy said. “His soul.”

  Clarumcoma put his pistol away. “So even if he is an artificial reproduction they have forced his soul in there with something extra?”

  “Not just his memories. His being.” Mum asked in a whisper. “Why?”

  “Because there is no better way of slipping a cuckoo in the nest. A way of ensuring the mission succeeds.” Clarumcoma said. “Or worse.”

  “Wymystllre?” I asked.

  They looked at me. Mum cautiously removed the gag.

  “Why am I still here?” I repeated. “Killing me was one of their objectives. Why bother making me a clone? I already got killed? Why make me alive again?”

 

  “Abduction?” I demanded. “Why Abduct Bethany King nee Birch?”

  “Has a ring to it.” Mum grinned, toying with her engagement ring. “Who are you talking to dear?”