The Split Second

by John Hulme

  The Most Amazing Thing of All was what many believed to be the answer to an ancient riddle—“If The Seems is building The World, then who’s building The Seems?”—and Sully wasn’t the only one whose ears perked up.

  “And I would still be able to keep my apartment in the city?”

  “Of course.”

  “What about the old World?” asked the Time Being, betraying her interest in the process. “Are you planning to institute the changes gradually, or does it have to be scrapped all at once?”

  Everyone close enough to hear watched—riveted—as Triton considered this point.

  “Open for discussion.”

  He abruptly looked to his left, as if someone was coming, not here but from wherever he was broadcasting. When he turned back to the Time Being, his voice had dropped to a whisper.

  “If you are interested in this offer, take the last train out to the End of the Line tomorrow evening, where I will be waiting to show you what I found. If not, I thank you for this opportunity, and wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors.”

  As his image began to dissolve into nothingness, Triton offered another elegant bow.

  “Until we meet again.”

  On that note, the Calling Card went dark and the wiry Drifter unplugged the rabbit-ear antenna from the back.

  “That’s a wrap, boss.”

  “Bon.” Thibadeau snapped his fingers. “Then we too must hit the road.”

  Like a well-oiled machine, the remaining members of the cell collected their equipment, and Sully actually allowed himself to think he might survive this fiasco. This, he feared, was a terrible mistake, for something told him that the very thought in his head was already sending a signal to a certain firehouse in the fictional town of “Jinxville,” where alarms were sounding and a team of pointy-hatted, curly-toed-boot-wearing Gnomes were gathering around their high-tech conference table to gleefully orchestrate an unpleasant Chain of Ev—

  “Aren’t we forgetting something?” The Wordsmith stopped at the entrance to the staircase and pointed to everyone on the roof who was not a Time Being or a member of The Tide. “These guys know who we are.”

  “Smithy’s right.” A malicious grin slowly spread across the Flavor Miner’s face, and he focused on Becker Drane. “It’s time to do a little roof cleaning.”

  “What’s the point?” Thibadeau shrugged. “Our identities have already been compromised.”

  “Yours, maybe.” The Drifter put the Calling Card back in its case. “But the rest of us weren’t stupid enough to blow our covers.”

  “You don’t think Central Command checked the Time cards?” Thibadeau shot back. “Or scoured that security cam footage for every last detail?” The look on the faces of his men said they hadn’t considered these unpleasant possibilities. “Right now, a Fixer or a Briefer is rifling through your offices and dresser drawers, your friends and family members are being interrogated, and your careers in The Seems are as good as over.”

  “Unless we win,” interjected Lena from beneath the cover of a small banyan tree.

  “Oui, unless we win.” Thibadeau turned to the woman whom Sully assumed was his girlfriend. “But I am not a murderer.”

  “Which is why this is not your decision to make.” Lena emerged from the shadows and reached for the Frenchman, but he took a reflexive step backward.

  “Madame Temporale,” Thib was imploring the Time Being with his eyes as much as his voice. “Surely you cannot let this happen in your own home?”

  Sophie’s face remained impassive, however.

  “I’m curious to see how an organization that seeks to make a new World handles such a situation,” she said, taking a seat and crossing her legs. “Decisions like this will be an everyday occurrence should you become the Powers That Be.”

  Sully kind of wished she hadn’t said that, because Lena’s expression grew even colder, and she turned to the Flavor Miner. “Do it.”

  “My pleasure.”

  Faced with the prospect of his untimely end, the Keeper of the Records took some comfort in the fact that he would probably be the last of the three captives to be thrown from the roof. That would give him perhaps thirty seconds to dive to the ground, smash what was left of the glass case with his forehead, then use his chin to open The Grand Scheme of Things and find out if the foreword said what it was rumored to say. But as the Flavor Miner patiently donned a pair of black gloves, Sully was distracted by something over by the staircase.

  It was the silhouette of a man, crouching on the steps that led to Sophie’s apartment. The fallen darkness kept most of his face shrouded, but Sully could just make out an index finger being raised to a pair of bearded lips. Whoever he was, it felt to the Keeper like he was being invited into a really good game of hide-and-seek, as long as he kept his mouth shut.

  “Then you leave me no choice.” Thibadeau Freck stepped in between the Miner and the thirteen-year-old Fixer. “I can’t let you do this.”

  “Suit yourself.” The Miner motioned for the others to join him. “I always figured you for gutless.”

  The Wordsmith grabbed one of Sophie’s shovels, the Drifter an awl, and they joined their mate in squaring off against the Frenchman. This removed them from the path of the moonlight, which now fell squarely on the figure who was skulking in the stairwell. Sully didn’t recognize his face at all, but there was something about the man’s strange choice of apparel that rang a distant bell. Though most of his years as a Case Worker were lost to his memory, the Keeper was pretty sure he’d seen the same aviator’s helmet and brown bomber’s jacket on a statue outside the Big Building.

  “Waitamminit!” Sully blurted out loud, though no one on the roof could really understand what he was ranting about. Not until he shoved away the gag with his tongue and shouted at the top of his lungs, “I know who you are!”

  “It can’t be,” thought Becker Drane, seeing exactly the same sight that caused Daniel J. Sullivan to hop up and down on his chair with glee. But it was.

  Fixer #7—whose name had been kept on the Duty Roster for over ten years to both honor his accomplishments and the hope that maybe he was still alive—stepped onto the roof deck with a wry grin upon his face and a dusty old Toolmaster 44™ slung over his shoulder. Becker could tell he was somewhat perturbed that Sully had blown his cover, but then again, the direct approach wasn’t working out so bad either.

  “You’re . . . you’re . . .” The Wordsmith’s voice cracked on its way past his lips.

  “Tom Jackal,” said Thibadeau, caught between shock and admiration. “Aren’t you supposed to be Lost in Time?”

  “Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.” The Welshman’s eyes burned so brightly that Becker could see them twinkling from across the roof. “I’ve just been living in a much better place.”

  The blood had run from the faces of the Wordsmith and Drifter, and Becker’s nemesis, the Flavor Miner, was literally quaking in his boots. Only the woman called Lena seemed to keep her cool.

  “You’re Tom Jackal? Wow . . . you looked so much taller in your photos.”

  “It’s not the size of the man.” Jackal stepped out of a divot on the rooftop, and as it turned out, he was just as tall as he looked. “It’s the magic in him.”

  “Would you like me to put in a call to the Museum of Natural History?” Lena laughed a little too loudly. “Because it looks like Chiappa’s not the only dinosaur on this roof.”

  Jackal feigned tipping his hat, as if admiring the jibe, then turned to the Fixer in question.

  “You’re looking fit, Lucien. Ombretta must be feeding you well.”

  From behind his ropes and gag, Mr. Chiappa shrugged, as if this were all just another day on the job.

  “Rest assured, I’ll have you back at her dinner table in a matter of—” Jackal stopped, and the fun and games abruptly ended. At this point, the unexpected visitor was close enough to see how badly The Tide had roughed up Becker Drane. Only a few hours ago, the kid
from New Jersey had been sharing dinner and white lies with his own children, and the father in Tom Jackal was deeply unamused. “Which one of you did that to the boy?”

  The Miner and Wordsmith backed away from Thibadeau so fast, you would have thought he was on fire.

  “I beat him fair and square,” posited the Frenchman, but his voice sounded defeated. “Ask him yourself.”

  “I got a better idea, friend.” Jackal dropped his Toolkit and helmet to the floor and began to remove his illustrious coat. “How ’bout you and me have ourselves a little fair fight too?”

  Strangely enough, as Jackal stretched his neck and loosened his shoulders, Thibadeau didn’t even bother to enroll the assistance of his fellow Tide members. Whatever bond they once shared had clearly been poisoned by the night’s proceedings.

  “Is this really necessary, monsieur?”

  “No.” Jackal pulled off a thick roll-neck sweater to reveal the white tank top beneath. “But it might be fun.”

  Thibadeau dropped his head, then fell into the same kiba dachi stance that had confounded Becker Drane since their days in Training. “Then combattons!”

  His opponent raised his fists, as if he’d been in a few brawls on the mean streets of Cardiff. “After you.”

  In the movies and on television, when one sees a battle reach its climax, it often appears as a ballet of martial arts; perfectly executed leaps and flying fists of fury. But in the real world, fighting is an ugly, awkward thing. And it was an ugly, awkward thing that Tom Jackal did to Thibadeau Freck, as he pounded the Frenchman into submission.

  “As for the rest of you . . .” Jackal cracked his bruised knuckles, then turned to the quickly receding Tide. “Why don’t you save me the trouble and turn yourselves in?”

  The three remaining male members of the cell actually looked as if they were considering the offer, but Lena would hear none of it.

  “I don’t know about you, but I have no desire to spend the rest of my life in Seemsberia!” She pulled a fearsome set of Chop Sticks from their hiding place in one of her boots. “We are four against one!”

  “Correction.” Mr. Chiappa rose from the chair, the ropes that once bound him sliding from his body like wet spaghetti. “Four against two!”

  As The Tide stood slack-jawed at the Fixer’s Houdini-like escape, Jackal’s laughter boomed across the rooftops. “Don’t you know anything? If you’re gonna tie up a Fixer, better make sure he doesn’t have any Elbow Grease™ up his sleeve!”

  Chiappa wiped the oily substance from his forearms, then whipped the gag from his mouth. “I could use a Second Wind™, Tomas!”

  Jackal tossed his Toolmaster 44 over to his old friend and comrade.

  “What’s mine is yours.”

  As the Corsican helped himself, the writing was on the wall, and no one saw it clearer than the Flavor Miner. He had already done a few years in Seemsberia for smuggling Dulce de Leche off Mount Caramel, and as far as he was concerned, if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime. But if he was gonna do that time, it wasn’t gonna be for kidnapping, or even for aiding and abetting the detonation of a Time Bomb . . .

  It would be for tossing that snot-nosed punk off this roof.

  “Lookin’ for me?”

  The Miner wheeled toward the sound of Becker’s voice, expecting to see the boy still bound and gagged, but all he saw on the chair was a pile of empty ropes. The Fixer, on the other hand, was crouching by some bags of birdseed, where someone had had the lack of foresight to leave a fully stocked Toolmaster 3001. Due to all the extra Space inside, there were literally dozens of possible weapons that would be perfect for just such an occasion, but #37 had made his selection quite some time ago. He whipped out a fresh Can of Buttwhuppin’™ from its refrigerated pocket, and gently unscrewed the top.

  “Told you so.”

  Even while Fixer Drane was sweeping up the roof with the Flavor Miner, his mind was entirely elsewhere. It was actually in a small cabin in the woods of Greenland, where a beautiful mother and her young children were no doubt clustered about the fire, wondering if their husband and father would ever be coming home. Becker had no idea if those people even existed anymore, given that the owner of that Frozen Moment had left it behind. But whatever it was that caused Tom Jackal to walk away from everything he loved, it had happened just in the nick of time.

  “How’d you find us, Tom?” Becker placed the unconscious Miner next to Thibadeau and the others, who were handcuffed and seated in a row. The only female member of the cell had made a slinky exit during the melee—down the fire escape and into the streets of Manhattan—but they had to let her go, because there were bigger fish to fry. “I mean, how’d you even know where we were?”

  “You can thank Linus for that.” Jackal was of course referring to Sully’s cantankerous “roommate,” and he quickly recounted the tale of how the craziest trip through the In-Between he’d ever taken had landed him in the disheveled Hall of Records. “By the way, Daniel, I put on a new DVD and cleaned his cage, but you may have some ruffled feathers to smooth over when you get back.”

  The Keeper raised a hand in the affirmative, but he was too preoccupied perusing The Grand Scheme of Things to care about anything else. Lucien Chiappa, on the other hand, was starting to come to grips that a man whose funeral he had somberly attended had seemingly returned from the grave. The English teacher’s eyes welled up with tears and words failed him, so instead he kissed Jackal on both cheeks, per the Corsican tradition.

  “It’s good to see you too, old friend.”

  “But . . . how?” was all Chiappa could stammer.

  “You can thank that rotten kid.” Jackal gave Becker a friendly shove (which almost knocked him off his exhausted feet). “He gave me this whole song and dance about saving The World.”

  Becker tried to play along with the ribbing, but he couldn’t shake the guilty feeling that regardless of how good the cause, it was he who had destroyed a happy, loving family.

  “There’ll be time to catch up later, kid.” Tom could tell that the boy he’d rescued from hypothermia had yet to ask the most pressing of his questions. “Right now, my 7th Sense is shivering me timbers.”

  Fixer Chiappa concurred. “Briefer Shan and I tracked the Split Second to the Tide’s headquarters in Meanwhile.” Becker and Jackal were equally taken aback by their fellow Fixer’s remark—#37 by the fact that Shan Mei-Lin was still alive, and #7 that Chiappa had lived to tell a tale of Meanwhile. “The only problem is, the Containment Field they’re keeping it in is on the verge of falling apart.”

  “Not to worry, Monsieur Chiappa,” said Thibadeau Freck, hands bound behind his back. “I’m sure Big Ben has rectified the situation.”

  “Wrong,” answered the Fixer. “The design itself is fatally flawed.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I’m the one who designed it.”

  Thibadeau’s last bit of moxie fell from his eyes—eyes that swiveled upward to Becker Drane. Their relationship was probably shattered beyond repair, and the same could be said for his relationship with fellow Tide members. With nowhere else to turn, the Frenchman turned to himself, and found the decision an easy one.

  “There’s a modified Skeleton Key around my neck.” When Thibadeau leaned to the side, a brown leather cord became exposed. “It will take you straight to Meanwhile.”

  “Sellout.” The defeated Drifter spat in Thibadeau’s eye.

  As Jackal snapped the Skeleton Key off the cord, Becker pulled out a handkerchief and wiped the spittle off his adversary’s face.

  “This doesn’t change anything.”

  “I know.” Thibadeau looked at Becker one last time. “Just don’t let The World be destroyed.”

  Fixer Drane nodded somberly, then joined his fellows for a meeting of the minds.

  “Even if we can get to the Split Second, we still don’t know how to Fix it.” Becker stared contemptuously at the Time Being, who was attempting to put her garden back in or
der. “Because she doesn’t feel like interfering with the unfolding of the Plan.”

  The owner of the roof deck swept up a few broken flowerpots, upset by neither the day’s events nor the tone of Becker’s voice. In fact, Sophie seemed as fond of the boy as the moment she’d met him, when they’d shared a cupcake before the madness ensued.

  “Didn’t I tell you the Plan would provide?” She motioned to Fixer Jackal, as if his coming to the rescue had been part of an intricate Chain of Events she’d been expecting. “And it will continue to do so if you have a little faith.”

  “Please forgive the lad’s temerity.” Though Jackal and the Time Being had never met, a moment of respect passed between the living legends. “He’s in a New York state of mind.”

  “The city will do that to you sometimes.”

  “Never sleeps. Now if you’ll just excuse us for a moment . . .”

  Jackal tipped his aviator’s helmet like a gentleman, then pulled the two Fixers aside.

  “Don’t sweat it, boys. Whether she helps us or not is beside the point.”

  “How can you say that?” asked Becker, electrified by the Welshman’s confidence, but not even daring to hope. Jackal zippered up his bomber jacket—like he was about to step into the driving snows of Myggebungen—then swung his Toolkit over his shoulder and reached inside.

  “Because I got one of these.”

  12.529

  Some Gave All

  Meanwhile, The Seems

  “I admire your courage, miss.” Big Ben Lum stared in wonder at the young woman inside the Containment Field. “In all the years I’ve worked in Time, I’ve never had the privilege of touching raw Essence with my own hands.”

  “Thank you for the kind words.” Briefer Shan blinked away the sweat from her eyes and looked out at the masked figure on the other side of the glass. “But if I could just have a few moments to concentrate . . .”