This was the opportunity Ulysses had been waiting for. With the Dashwoods distracted, the dandy scrambled over the still shifting ground to where Nimrod lay, Ulysses shaking him from his stupor.
“You all right, old boy?”
With Ulysses’ assistance, the older man struggled to his feet. “I’ve been worse, sir.” He put a hand to his head and winced. “But then I’ve been better too.”
With Nimrod at his side, Ulysses turned to where Emilia sat, bound and gagged, and saw that her keeper had already fled. Jared Shurin was halfway up the steps to the Sphere, close on the heels of the original Dashwood and his pet scientists.
Ignoring the fleeing industrialist, Ulysses ran to free the imperilled Emilia.
“DASHWOOD, WAIT!” JARED Shurin called out on reaching the bottom of the steps leading to the top of the dais.
The hideously disfigured Dashwood hesitated and turned his skinless face and death’s-head gaze on the panicking Shurin.
All was chaos around them but still he waited as Shurin pulled himself up the steps.
“Have you got the plans, Shurin?” Dashwood demanded. “Where are the plans?”
“Right here,” Shurin panted as he mounted the platform.
“Show me!”
Shurin reached into a jacket pocket and took out the data storage locket that contained the plans for the Icarus Cannon.
Before Shurin could return them to their hiding place Dashwood struck, fast as a cobra, snatching the locket from his hand.
“What are you doing?” he gasped.
“Cutting out the middle man,” Dashwood snarled.
Shurin saw the pistol and saw that its muzzle was pointing squarely at his belly.
“You treacherous bas –”
The pistol fired with a puff of blue smoke and the sudden, acrid stench of burnt gunpowder.
Shurin’s gasp of shock and pain silenced him and he froze. Clutching his gut, blood dribbling out through the ragged hole in his back, Shurin toppled backwards. He tumbled back down the stairs to the floor where he lay, at the foot of the dais, in a spreading pool of blood as his last breath escaped him in a rasping rattle.
“Right,” Dashwood said, pocketing the plans and his pistol, “let’s get out of here.”
ANOTHER BLOCK OF mooncrete crashed to the ground, shattering against the grilled platform and denting a handrail. That had been too close for comfort, Ulysses thought.
With fumbling fingers he finally managed to undo the last knots keeping Emilia bound to the chair and pulled the gag free of her mouth.
As her father helped her up from the chair, Ulysses pushed them both along the walkway towards the exit from the domed chamber. A figure stood there, in the thick of the swarming Selenites, and yet remaining untouched; someone he felt he should recognise, although he could barely see the man properly between the milling alien ants.
Emilia looked up at him with desperate eyes. Her hair was a mess, hanging in ruffled tangles around her shoulders. Tears streaked her face, her eyelashes clumped together, her eyes ringed red.
“Go!” Ulysses implored her. “You have to get out of here now!”
“But what about you?” she said, grasping him by the shoulders.
“I’ll catch you up.”
“You’re going after Daniel, aren’t you?”
“I have to. I can’t let him get away again. The consequences would be too terrible to contemplate.”
Emilia’s own anxious expression sagged.
“Will I ever see you again?”
Ulysses smiled weakly. “Oh, I’m like a bad penny me. You don’t get rid of me that easily.”
“As if I’d want to.”
Ulysses looked across the chamber, trying to discern the mysterious figure through the press of battling Selenites and their Dashwood opponents, trying to get a good look at the man hiding in the shadows.
There was something about the man; something he couldn’t put his finger on, something that he didn’t know how he could possibly know, but he felt that he could trust him all the same.
“Go,” he urged Emilia and her father, sending them on their way. “I’ll be back, I promise.”
The domed chamber reverberated with the strangely insectoid clacking of the Selenites’ mandibles, the furious screams of the Dashwoods and the ever present white noise of the glowing Sphere.
“Sir!” Nimrod called from the other end of the curving walkway. “They’re getting away.”
Ulysses turned from his manservant to Emilia, to suddenly find her lips on his. Taken aback he found himself giving in to the moment.
Breaking contact, Emilia whispered. “And make sure you keep your promise this time.”
With a crash of metal and mooncrete, another piece of the fractured dome came down on the walkway, a steel girder coming down with it. Ulysses only just pulled himself back before the debris hit, tearing through a section of the walkway and slamming into the fractured floor of the chamber.
“Now go!” Ulysses shouted, blowing Emilia one last kiss before turning and running for the dais.
EMILIA TURNED AND, grabbing her father’s hand, ran. The old man stumbled after her, grunting and wheezing.
Ahead of them, Emilia could make out the strange figure beckoning to them from the entrance to the crumbling chamber, one hand outstretched towards them. Ignoring the terrifying creatures that had swarmed into the chamber with him at their head, she focused only on him, for he seemed to be their only hope now.
And then she was stumbling down the steps at the end of the twisted walkway, still pulling her father after her. She caught a passing glance of a stubbly chin and a black leather eye-patch, before the man took her hand and pulled her after him into the maze of corridors.
As they ran, through the flickering pools of light produced by the shaking glow-globes, she took in the man’s mane of lank hair, his battered, poorly-made suit and his scuffed shoes. But still there was something familiar about him; his height, his build, even the feel of his hand in hers.
“Stop!” she shouted, as realisation dawned. “Stop!”
The man ran on, not once looking back.
“Stop!”
Emilia’s scream echoed away into the shadowed depths of the passageway. The man came to a sudden halt, still facing away from her. He let go of her hand.
“Turn around!” Emilia commanded.
And then, slowly, he did so.
Emilia gasped, putting a hand to her mouth. A feeble whimper escaped her father’s rheumy lips.
He might have looked little better than a tramp, his hair long and unkempt, his chin covered with fine grey stubble and one scarred eye-socket covered by a black leather eye-patch, but it was still unmistakeably him.
The butt of a pistol thrust from the top of his trousers.
She made a mad lunge and then the gun was in her hand, the safety off, the muzzle pointed squarely at the man’s face.
“Hello, Emilia,” Ulysses Quicksilver said. “Well, I kept my promise. I came back.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The Butterfly Effect
T MINUS 6 MINUTES, 23 SECONDS
“WHAT’S GOING ON?” Emilia screamed. She had both hands on the gun now. It was pointing directly at the man’s forehead.
It was the man she knew, the man she loved – had once loved – there was no denying it. But how could it be, when he was still trapped in the chamber with the alien things and her cousin’s impossible army? And how could he have the beginnings of a beard, have changed clothes and – if the eye-patch was any indication – have even lost an eye?
“I realise you probably don’t want to believe your eyes right now,” the aged and stubbly Ulysses began, “but, trust me, we have to get out of here now!”
Emilia didn’t take another step. The gun in her hands shook but her aim was still true. Behind her, her father gave another near hysterical whimper.
“You do trust me don’t you?” The man sounded desperate now. “I mean I kept my
promise, didn’t I? I came back, like I said I would.”
Still she didn’t move. Her pupils were dilated from the rush of adrenaline surging through her. Her breath came in short, ragged gasps. Her bottom lip began to quiver.
“We’re not going anywhere until you tell me what’s going on!” And then it all came pouring out of her. “How can you be out here and looking like” – she looked him up and down again in appalled disbelief – “like this, when I just left you back there?”
He smiled weakly through the stubble. “It’s a long story.”
“Well you’d better give me the edited highlights then or we’re all going to die here, right here and now.”
“Very well,” Ulysses said with a sigh. “The short version is...” He hesitated, taking a deep breath. “I must have played this moment through in my mind a thousand times. But no matter how many times I rehearsed it I still couldn’t see you believing me.”
“Try me.”
“Very well. The truth is the man standing in front of you now is the future version of the man you just left behind, although I’ve actually travelled here from the past.”
“What?”
“But don’t worry about that now. The important thing is that I’m the same man. The same Ulysses Quicksilver. Your Ulysses.”
“Never!” Emilia suddenly snapped.
The man’s face – full of hope only a moment before – became downcast.
“You have to believe me!”
“Then I think you have a little more explaining to do, don’t you?”
A rumble like thunder passed through the passageway, causing a cascade of dust and rock chips to fall from the roof. All three of them looked up with anxious eyes.
Emilia looked from the shuddering ceiling to the dishevelled man in front of her.
“And you’d better be quick about it.”
ULYSSES QUICKSILVER – ATTIRED in an ill-matching jacket and trousers, and sporting three days’ growth of stubble after his journey in Steerage aboard the Apollo XIII – watched as Nimrod, Alexander Oddfellow, Emilia and his younger self climbed into the waiting limousine, whilst remaining hidden in the steam and shadows coiling beneath a huge water pipe.
Ulysses’ attention shifted to the girl sat in the cab of the taxi-droid who had just lost out on their business. Her obvious disappointment was clear to see in the girl’s innocent and honest expression.
He smiled to himself. Despite everything that he had suffered in the last few months, the pieces were slowly fitting into place. It was all coming together as it should.
Running a hand through his mop of untidy hair and adjusting the patch over his right eye, he hefted his pack onto his shoulder and then, as the car pulled away with all safely ensconced on board, stepped out of the shadows.
Not ten yards away, the two assassins were getting into a steam-cab of their own, refusing the cabbie’s help and insisting on loading their many heavy bags on board themselves. Oh how he regretted ever saving their sorry skins when the asteroid attack on the Apollo XIII, perpetrated by the Martian Separatists, would have sucked them out into the breathless void. It was a favour that they would very readily forget all about in only a matter of – he hesitated and took out his pocket watch, its face cracked now, and checked the date – four days’ time, when someone else was picking up the bill.
They said that money talked. Well, it certainly talked to those two.
He watched them for a moment, a look of resigned hatred in his eyes. He dearly wished that he could intervene but he knew that if he did so at this juncture– just as if he had tried to alter events on the space-liner –he wouldn’t have been standing there now. And it was only because he was there now that he had a hope of reaching Barty before his brother’s murderer did. At least that was one strand of fate he could change for the better.
Turning away, he wiped the grimace from his face, running a hand over the course grey stubble covering his chin, and made for the droid-cab. The robot’s shoulders drooped as if in disappointment. The name ‘Rusty’ had been stencilled in large yellow letters across its rust-red chest-plate.
“’Scuse me, Miss,” he called to the crestfallen girl seated behind the droid’s head, “but did I hear you say that you’re accepting fares to the city?”
The look of disappointment was instantly transformed into a cheery smile.
“We most certainly are,” she declared, beaming at him. “Where do you want to go?”
“Just into the city will do.”
It only took him a moment to climb up to the cushioned passenger cab. He patted the hull of the hulking droid as he did so, feeling a sudden warm glow. It was good to be reunited with the automaton that had saved his and Selene’s lives again – even if the droid hadn’t actually done so yet.
“The name’s Billie,” the girl said, as the droid rose to its full height and took its first lumbering steps towards the concourse’s exit. Turning round she offered the man a gloved hand.
He shook it firmly, feeling the girl return his handshake with a surprisingly strong grip.
“And this is Rusty,” she said, leaning forward and patting the droid’s head. “What’s yours?”
He hesitated before answering. “Wells.”
“Very pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr Wells. You been to the Moon before, only you look kind of familiar?” Billie asked as the droid strode along the thoroughfare between the chugging cabs and rumbling haulage wagons.
“Yes, I have,” he replied, his eyes glazing over as he recalled the events that had seemed to spin out of his control from the moment he arrived on the Moon and all that had happened in the months since. “This is my third visit actually.”
“Really? And what are you here for this time, if you don’t mind me asking? Business or pleasure?”
“Neither,” he replied sullenly. “It’s family.”
“Oh, I know what you mean. Can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em,” the girl chattered on over the increasing traffic noise and the chugging of the droid’s own motive systems. “What is it they say? You can choose your friends but you can’t choose your family.”
“Indeed.”
“So, whereabouts in the city are you headed?”
“Milton Mansions,” he said, suddenly feeling a jolt of nerves pass through him. But then that was hardly surprising, considering the enormity of the task that lay ahead of him.
And with that the droid-cab stomped off along the Humboldt Highway, headed for Luna Prime and a date with destiny.
“THIS’LL DO,” ULYSSES said as the lumbering droid turned into Kepler Street.
“Right you are, guv’nor,” the girl called back, bringing the droid to a clanking halt, and unfolding the steps again for him to disembark.
“And there you go,” he said, pushing a crumpled five pound note into the girl’s hand as he descended. The girl’s eyes widened as she stared at the note. “And keep the change.”
“You really mean that? But that’s a ruddy five pound note!”
“I know, and you deserve it,” Ulysses said with a smile. “Or, at least, you will do,” he added under his breath.
“But I only gave you a lift from the spaceport.”
“No, you take it. Buy your droid something nice.”
“Right you are, sir! Yes, sir! Very good, sir! If there’s anything else I can do for you, you let me know.” She handed him a scuffed piece of card with a number written on it in what appeared to be charcoal pencil. “You ever need a lift, you give me a call.”
“Oh, you can bet on it,” Ulysses said allowing himself a small chuckle. He suddenly felt much more positive about what he was about to attempt – this was his chance to put things right with his brother.
“We could wait for you now, if you like,” the girl offered.
“No, it’s all right. You get on your way. Besides, I know how to get hold of you now if I need you, don’t I?”
“Right you are, guv,” Billie said, flashing him h
er delightful smile once more as she put the droid into gear. “See you round. And good luck with the family reunion.”
“Thanks. I think I might need it.”
With that, Ulysses turned towards the closed gates of the apartment complex. With the droid’s clumping footsteps retreating along the street behind him, Ulysses ran his eye and a finger down the row of bell-pushes positioned next to the firmly locked gate.
Finding the number for his brother’s apartment he hesitated once more, his finger hovering over the button.
According to Inspector Artemis’s forensic team, in less than an hour his brother would be dead.
His brother’s killer might be with him already. Or Ulysses might have beaten him there. He still couldn’t completely dismiss the idea that perhaps it was Chapter and Verse or even Jared Shurin who had done the deed, despite all their protestations to the contrary.
And as he stood before the gate another thought crossed his mind – one that he had considered over and over, as often as he had considered how he would ever be able to explain to his precious Emilia what had happened to him after going after her insane cousin.
If he succeeded in preventing his brother’s murder, there was always the risk that his younger self would then fail to pursue the investigation that had set him on the path that ultimately brought him to this very moment. But he came to the same conclusion now that he had time and again before. The revelation he was about to make to Barty would set the Quicksilver brothers after Shurin and the others all over again, only this time, working side by side.
Letting out the breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding, Ulysses pressed the buzzer.
There was a moment’s silence, the only sound his pulse thudding in his ears, and then the crackle of static accompanied by an irritated voice came through the speaker. It was a voice he hadn’t heard in months and one that – at one stage – he had never thought to hear again.
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