by Adrian Speed
“Surely the glass will melt in the heat–”
“It’s not glass. Now trust me, we need to–”
Wood ground against wood. I turned to the shop. The house next to it was already aflame and with half its joists shaken out of place that was the only thing holding the shop upright. My blood ran cold as I watched the roof tilt towards us, roof tiles sliding off one by one.
“Move!” I pulled on Arnold’s arm and dragged him along the street, the pair of us running as fast as we could. Not in any direction, just away. Roof joists, ceiling tiles, kegs of wine plummeted out of the sky around us. I hugged John close as we ran. Every time we changed direction another piece of the building seemed to smash into where he was seconds before.
My headache only seemed to get worse as we ran. I struggled to remember where I left the time machine. I think we almost turned in a full circle until we stumbled into another figure all in black.
“Leave him!” my voice pierced through my mask. I looked up at the figure and into my own eyes. “Go find the time machine. I’ll take him from here.”
*****
I watched my past self stumble away. The further away I got from John the better the headache got. Now I was back with him my head felt like I’d just drunk a litre of ice cream but it didn’t matter. I had to get him less than twenty metres.
“Andrew?” John asked, muffled through the mask.
“Come with me,” I held his arm and pulled him into the nearest building. It was full of smoke, but that was only the time machine puffing away inside. The pain got worse and worse as I got closer until I almost couldn’t see. I fell against the doorway and turned the door handle with little more than a shrug. It was so hard to stay standing.
“Andrew? Are you hurt?” Suddenly John was cradling me. I was on the floor. I could feel it beneath me and yet it felt a thousand years away. I pointed towards the time machine, just a blur amongst blurs.
“Get... us... there...” It hurt to breathe. It hurt to think. I couldn’t see. John started dragging me and then paused. I could feel the lip of the time machine’s iron beneath my shoulder. We were so close. So close.
“Excuse me, are you John Arnold?” I heard Sir Reginald’s voice.
“Yes.” I felt John’s arm let go of me.
“A pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
“Do you know Andrew? Do you know what’s wrong with him?”
“I am afraid I do. I am sorry, but there is only one cure.”
Thwack. The moment I heard the blow connect my headache disappeared. My vision returned in a flood. Sir Reginald in the smoke above me, grabbing me and throwing me into the time machine, John’s dead eyes lying next to me, his face sodden with his own blood, his skull shape... wrong.
The world blurred and we lay in the street in Covent Garden. Sir Reginald bent down, put an arm under my shoulder and hauled me upright. I thought I would collapse instantly but I stood and stayed. Sir Reginald shoved me in the direction of our house.
“Get inside,” he ordered, his voice vicious and harsh. “I’ve got to put the time line back together.”
He disappeared in a flash of lightning and to my horror I felt myself getting better. The headache was gone, my vision was back, my strength had returned. John Arnold was dead. His bones rested under Birchin Lane.
I opened the door to our house in Covent Garden, stepped through the threshold and heard the tears of a grown man. My Sir Reginald, curled up in a chair, and weeping. Everything came crashing down around me. None of it mattered. Not John Arnold, not the mystery, not the 1660s, nothing. Sir Reginald was weeping.
I stepped towards him, my hand out to comfort him and he flinched away from me. His eyes were wild, and red, and all their sparkle had leaked out and run down his face. I didn’t say a word. I didn’t dare. I stepped back until I hit another chair and sank into it.
And waited.
Chapter XXVIII
Sir Reginald turned away from me and pulled in his pockets until a red handkerchief worked its way free. He scraped his face clean and then seemed to fall into it, huddling over himself and pushing at his eyes through the cloth. After a few moments he pulled the cloth away, folded it up and tucked it back into his pocket.
“You must forgive my lapse of composure,” he ordered. “I had thought you were different. I had thought you understood. I thought I could rely on you.”
“Sir Reginald you can–”
“Don’t!” Sir Reginald’s eyes flashed and the entire house shook with his thunder. “You have proven how little I can rely on you! You nearly destroyed yourself, and for what? For John Arnold? Whether he died in the fire or not he will be dead before the century is out.”
“He... he didn’t deserve to die...” I mumbled. “He’s a good man, Sir Reginald. I even saw him–”
“We. Don’t. Make. That. Choice.” Sir Reginald’s voice could have broken the will of kings. “Not when we know how they die. Not when we have interacted with the direct consequences of their death.”
“I burned the letter Elizabeth sent us, I destroyed everything that proved John Arnold died in 1666.”
“Destroy this, did you?” Sir Reginald pulled out the tablet. “Destroy my notebook, did you? Physical proof of John Arnold’s death is all around us. Considering that the universe was about to wipe you from existence I would say his death is a defining moment of your very existence.”
“How is that any worse than what you did?” I snarled. “You killed John Arnold. Now we’ve got a paradox that we go back in time to solve the crime we performed.”
“A paradox the universe can stomach better than the existence of a Hannah Delaronde who went back in time to save a John Arnold from dying who never died. Without your stupid mistake I would never have had to strike that fatal blow. It could have come from a keg of wine, or a falling beam, or simple gravity.”
“Going back to save John was not a mistake!” I was on my feet, blood pounding through me. My neck throbbed. I tried to calm down. “Fine, fine it was a mistake, but it wasn’t wrong.”
“On the contrary, my dear,” Sir Reginald stood as well, tossing his head to look down on me. “It was the very definition of wrong. It was the one thing we chrononauts must never, ever do. Now admit it. Say it was wrong, or I shall never trust you again.”
“Trying to save a life is never wrong.” I kicked out with my foot. It connected with the drawing room’s little writing desk which flew across the room and bounced off the wall. Its lacquer crumbled off when it hit the floor. Sir Reginald regarded it as he might a toddler’s tantrum.
“Very well,” Sir Reginald snatched up his cane. “Pick up your umbrella. We have some time travel to do.”
“No, you’re not just dumping me back in the twenty-first century, we’re sorting this out.”
“It’s sorted,” Sir Reginald’s face split with a cruel smile. “Saving a life is never wrong. So we’re going to head to Munich in 1895.”
“I don’t understand.”
“That is where Mr Hitler is undergoing his primary education. It should be easy for us to land the time machine, run him through and return here before history knows what hit it.”
“I’m... I’m not going to kill a child–” I stumbled through my words, unable to focus on the sudden change of direction. “Even a child Hitler...”
“Of course, history can weather that storm, another child will change his name to Hitler and adopt the same national socialist ideals,” Sir Reginald mused. His voice was as jovial as if he was suggesting a break on the Riviera. “We’d be killing thousands of children before we stopped Hitler that way. We could wait until 1933 and assassinate Hitler on the eve of his election. But that will only give the German people a martyr, wouldn’t you say?”
“I don’t understand what you’re–”
“We could wait until 1941, that is before the majority of the death camps form and the in-fighting between the different leaders of the Reich will likely cause the collapse of the
state before the gas chambers begin. Of course, if we’re not careful with the timing we might cause an invasion by the soviets. Stalin killed more innocents than Hitler, after all.” Sir Reginald twirled his cane and pointed it towards me with a snap as an idea came to him. “I know! We’ll kill Stalin as well. And Mussolini, and Franco and Leopold II and Napoleon. We’ll kill them all.”
“I said I wanted to save a life–”
“Hitler and his empire wiped out six million innocent lives,” Sir Reginald’s voice dropped low and cold. “The blood of eighteen million lies on Stalin’s hands. You would be saving more lives than anyone since Edward Jenner’s smallpox vaccine. All it takes is a few deaths. Why do you resist?”
“Because–”
“Because you were born in the twilight of the twentieth century, a century forged by these men. You know you will cease to exist. You can see the paradox instinctively and you know it can only weather so many small changes before your history can no longer tolerate the changer.” Sir Reginald advanced on me, cane tip pushing on my chest and pushing me down into my chair. “Even with the power of time travel you and I are still limited. We cannot save every life snuffed out before its time. We can rarely save any. What we offer is justice, and you must never forget it. We are thief-takers. Nothing more. Nothing less. We deliver the guilty to the feet of Nemesis and let her decide their fate. If we do otherwise, we perish.”
A lump began to form in my throat. I tried to fight it, but it was overwhelming. I’d never seen such cold anger on Sir Reginald’s face, let alone aimed at me. It was all I could do to hold back the tears.
“If you do not understand that...” Sir Reginald let his cane drop back to the floor. The anger fell out of his voice with each word until it was empty and exhausted. “If you don’t understand that you will meet the same fate as my parents.” Sir Reginald dropped to his knees so he could look at me eye to eye. “And I will do anything to stop you avoiding that fate. Even if it means sending you away.”
“What happened to your parents?” My voice was hardly above a whisper.
“That’s the worst of it. I don’t know. Not with certainty.” Sir Reginald’s legs slipped until he was sitting cross-legged on the floor. “They’re gone though. Only fragments of them are left in time. My uncle Albert, for one. Me, for another.”
“Your brother?”
“Gone too. Gone with them.” Sir Reginald put his cane across his knees and settled his head into his hands.
“How?” I asked. “Was it... was it something you...”
“If it was something I had done I would have surrendered myself to the titans of the Jurassic shortly after taking an axe to my time machine.” Sir Reginald pulled his eyes out above his fingertips, like a vole emerging from its hole. “No. It was my father. It was all my father. And my mother.”
“Your father had a time machine?”
“No,” Sir Reginald snorted. “No-one has a time machine but me. I invented it, I built it, none shall copy it. But my father... my father...” Sir Reginald slumped out of sight again. “My father had this... device. He called it a time machine but it was more of a time... engine... a time device... He was an idiot, the stupidest genius in history. His machine was a pathetic joke. It slipped and slid through time like a coracle crossing the Atlantic. It is a wonder he did not slide off the very face of the earth. Everywhere he went he set himself to righting wrongs. I would say I inherited his sense of justice, save that my mother’s was stronger. When she joined him, the pair were a menace to history. No Caligula or Robespierre could stand against their wrath. Yet, they claimed they were simply explorers. Chrononauts.” Sir Reginald snorted. “I am a Chrononaut. You are a chrononaut. My parents simply travelled through time. Until the universe could not bear the brunt of their paradox, and wiped them from existence.”
“Surely that would wipe you out too.”
“I spent more time with my boarding school black board erasers than I spent with my parents,” Sir Reginald said bitterly. “My father had no control of his machine, I told you. He dropped me at the closest time he thought was acceptable with nothing but funds for my education and memories of his machine.”
“So you built another one.”
“I built the first time machine. The true time machine. I am James Watt! He is Newcomen! No, not even that. He cannot even claim that victory. Newcomen’s engine was good for something! My time machine allows its sailor access to any point in time and space with infinite precision! His was little more than a lever marked forward and back! No!” Sir Reginald took a deep breath and brought himself up, resting a hand on each knee, holding his cane. “Further, my time machine was my lifeboat. Of that I am certain. Whatever wave crashed through reality wiped clean all references to my parents save where I had touched. Beyond that, I only see them through their absences, like searching for the missing Arnold family in that blasted computer.” Sir Reginald fell silent. He was hunched over himself almost like how a child holds a bear. “Perhaps in time I would have forgiven them, but that the wave took my brother with them.” Sir Reginald started up again. “You saw him once. At King’s College in the ninety-ninth century. A false image of him, anyway, conjured from my memory.”
“I remember him.” A tall, athletic figure, with too many teeth. I wouldn’t have picked him as Sir Reginald’s sibling. But then again, perhaps that was just how Sir Reginald saw his brother. Within a family you saw all the ways they were different from you, even while the outside world saw all the ways you were the same.
“He was born for Cambridge, born to be the kind of man... I simply am not.” Sir Reginald frowned. “He was brilliant and lacked the time-madness that had swept me up and he lacked... well at the time it felt like he lacked everything. He lacked my power of observation. He lacked my skill with languages. He lacked my technical understanding of physics. He lacked my interest in time travel. I despised him, I thought him vain and worthless, only interested in rugby, cricket and politics. I could have shown him the wonders of history... the living pyramids... the pygmy elephants of Malta... the rockets of Mysore... and instead I hoarded them all to myself.”
“You didn’t know what was going to happen, you can’t blame yourself.”
“So I tell myself.” Sir Reginald looked up at me and locked his gaze into mine. “But I can blame myself for you. I should have trained you far better than I have. And now I am left in a quandary. Can I risk abandoning you back in the twenty-first century with all the knowledge you hold, or must I watch over you for the rest of our lives?”
“I really don’t think either of those options would be a good idea,” I said, tensing. I could see Sir Reginald’s hand resting on the pommel of his cane. My umbrella was upstairs, with three doors between me and it. The time machine would be closer, if it was still in the cellar. That was my best option.
“My dear, please.” Sir Reginald caught my expression, saw the tension in my limbs and tossed his cane aside. “I could never use violence against you. That’s the whole reason we’re in this mess. If you were anyone other than Hannah Delaronde I’d have watched you wink out of existence and made little more than a wry comment on the nature of hubris.” Sir Reginald reached up and took my hand. “But you are Hannah Delaronde. My friend, my associate, my partner, my fellow chrononaut. I would rather watch the stars wink out one by one across the universe than see you die before your time.” His grip was vice-like, clinging like a newborn. “That’s why it pains me so to see you throw your life away so carelessly.”
“I... I...” I struggled to find the words. There are times when no matter how articulate, now matter how many languages one speaks, there are some thoughts that simply cannot be put into words. They are seen and felt and known. We sat, we stared, our hands clung each as if the other was dangling from a cliff. Everything that needed to be said was said without a word.
Dawn light began to filter through the windows when I broke the silence.
“It won’t happen again.”
/> “I know.” Sir Reginald let go of my hand. He pulled himself upright, brushed his suit and picked up his cane. "Now. Let's go and put the last of this dreadful mystery to rest."
Chapter XXIX
It felt like a lifetime since I was last on the moon. The butterflies from the low lunar gravity were accompanied by the chilling feeling of being surrounded by policemen. Fifty officers had surrounded a building deep in the bowels of Lucon, so far down the glass dome was a single scrap of black void amongst the skyscrapers. Robots prepared their mace spray and restraining foam, the other officers readied their stun weapons. Hundreds of tiny apartments were crammed into these dark depths, not a single one had a window. They were little more than bedrooms. All officers aimed their weaponry at Number 2051.
Finding our killer had been easy once we returned to Lucon. Searching the computer database for descendents of Johnathon's investors until we found the only one who had emigrated to the Moon.
“Tiberius Sotheby,” Ibrahim’s voice echoed across the officers and reverberated around the apartments. “This is Administrator Ibrahim El Siddig. The building is surrounded by officers of the Colcom Police Department. We urge you to surrender yourself to our custody. Come out of the building with your hands above your head.”
The entire space was silent, but for the distant rumble of machinery. Ibrahim repeated himself two more times. He looked at Sir Reginald, and then at his police chief. He opened his mouth to order an assault.
“Is Sir Reginald Derby there with you?” a voice echoed back from the apartments. It was amplified, but harsh, like it was coming out of broken speakers.
“That’s irrelevant, Tiberius. If you don't come out with your hands above your head we will be forced to enter for your arrest by force. Your safety cannot be guaranteed.”
“That’s a no, then,” the amplified voice sighed. “A pity. I wanted to know how close he got to figuring it all out before the end, like he did back in New York.”