Alice Through The Multiverse

by Brian Trenchard-Smith

  “You got about two minutes to make up your mind.” Brandt rejoined his team.

  Paul moved back to Jane, who was expecting answers, but instead he addressed the skinhead girls, while making it look from Brandt’s point of view that he was talking to Jane.

  “Ladies…”

  “Piss off,” said Ms. Tattooed Skull.

  “One hundred pounds...” said Paul discreetly pulling out a roll of notes. He had their attention. “I’ll give each of you one hundred pounds if you go over to those three men I was just talking to.” Paul gestured over his shoulder without turning round. “See them, with the big guy?”

  Jane saw what Paul was up to.

  “Why should we do that?” asked Ms. Steel Toecaps.

  “Well, the first hundred reasons are obvious. Go on, take them.”

  Paul offered them each a note. They grabbed the money without hesitation, giggling at their good fortune.

  “More when you’re done. They’ll pay whatever it takes for some fun and games with the four of you.”

  The Skinheads’ smiles took on icy venom. Paul turned and smiled to Brandt. The girls saw Brandt’s glacial smile in return. Paul quickly continued before they could focus their anger at him.

  “See? Now don’t be offended, I’m just the messenger, so I’m quoting here. They said they’re horny as hell for fat dykes. And they’ll pay big. Go on, go see them.”

  That did it. They exchanged looks. Why not? They set off. Paul flashed a look at Jane. Get ready.

  The train left its narrow tunnel to enter the brief junction area where the Piccadilly and the Northern lines intersect. Another train roared past in the opposite direction. Then just as quickly they were back in a narrow tunnel. The loud noise had synchronized with a blur in Jane’s vision. Not now! her inner voice pleaded. Then as the sound diminished, her focus was restored. Jane watched as the skinheads, ignoring the transport police, pushed through the crowd towards Brandt. Brandt always avoided eye contact with street scum so he had no inkling of what they were about to do.

  Ms. Tattooed Skull landed a straight right to Brandt’s nose, while Ms. Steel Toecaps kicked him in the groin; not a knock out, but hard enough to sink the big man to his knees. The other girls sucker punched Selwyn and Jones. Pandemonium ensued as passengers fell over each other trying to get out of the way of flailing fists and feet. The transport cops immediately stepped in to restrain the skinheads none too gently. At the same time Paul pulled the emergency lever. The brakes squealed, the scrum of commuters lurched into further disarray, as the train came to an emergency halt in mid-tunnel. Selwyn yelled that they were antiterrorist agents but the sense of it was lost in the general hubbub. The transport police just heard was the word “terrorist”. All skinheads were terrorists to them.

  Immobilized by pain, Brandt knew at once what his adversaries had done. The American was smarter than he had thought. Through the crowd he saw the two of them prying open a sliding door the moment the train stopped. He forced himself to his feet to follow, but the transport police, with their batons out, thought he wanted to get some payback on the now subdued skinheads and blocked his path. Although the waves of pain were receding, Brandt could scarcely move or speak. He nodded at Selwyn, who understood that this was his chance for redemption. Selwyn slowly eased himself back into the crowd to disappear from notice.

  Jane jumped down from the carriage declining Paul’s outstretched hand, which grabbed her anyway and dragged her towards the rear of the train. But she went with it. She had to trust somebody and he was the sole option at this point.

  “You’re going to call your people in Washington, right?”

  “Langley. If they’re still alive.”

  “What?”

  “I think there’s a coup going down.”

  “You’ve got to be..!”

  A chill ran through her. Further questions died in her throat, then a glimmer of hope appeared ahead; the tunnel filtered into a junction. It proved to be a cavernous maze of intersecting rails, across from which there was a flight of fire stairs leading to the surface. Paul flashed a look back. No one. Yet. If they could make it across four sets of rails, before any of their pursuers entered the junction, they would have a chance to shake them off. But if they were caught half way across...they would have a choice between gunfire and electrocution. Paul pointed to the fire stairs. Jane’s first response was: You’re joking, right. Walk over live rails. In a hurry. She shuddered at the prospect.

  Paul saw her flinch. The girl now endangered his survival. But he could not cast her aside. He had become emotionally involved, a potentially fatal condition in counterespionage. Yet he found himself saying: “Come on. Watch my feet. Tread where I tread. Don’t touch the middle rail. Any rail! We’ll do it together.”

  He stepped warily over the first live rail, then stretched out his hands to her to guide her across. Jane was taken aback by the offer. “You’ll die if I..!”

  “We both will so make sure you don’t!” said Paul, summoning his most confident smile.

  That was the moment Paul gained some ground with Jane. Young men, particularly good looking young men, were so shallow, self-serving. She could not imagine a stranger doing this for her. She now saw how much like Alice’s James Paul was, essentially. Though it happened quickly, the passage across the rails seemed to take an eternity in her mind. She took Paul’s hand, clenching his fingers hard. Her breathing quickened. He watched as she stretched out her left leg, pointing the toe vertically down like ballet dancer in toe shoes. She cleared the 20,000 volt middle rail easily, then did the same with the other foot, this time faster. They exchanged a flash of a smile. One down, three to go.

  Brandt was now on his feet, arguing with the transport police, interrupted by the skinhead girls screaming sexual harassment. His brusque manner and sense of superiority to the transport cops when he showed his EST identity card was not working for him. They were going to do everything by the book. Unnoticed, Selwyn pried open the doors and jumped down from the carriage. He could see no one in either direction. They would not have gone forward, he decided. He drew his weapon and swiftly followed the tunnel back towards the last carriage. He would get the American this time.

  In the carriage, things went suddenly quiet. Everyone stared at the matte black Glock 9mm in Brandt’s hand that had replaced the official ID he had been waving at the transport cops. He was tired of arguing.

  “Enough! You’ve let a terrorist get away. We are leaving!” he shouted.

  Brandt and Jones pushed past the transport cops and jumped out of the carriage into the tunnel, following Selwyn’s path.

  Selwyn had reached the entrance to the junction. He could see his quarry most of the way across to the fire escape. He leveled his pistol, but the girl kept blocking his line of sight to the man he needed to put down, if he was to be the hero who recovered her.

  Paul had his foot over the last live rail, when he felt a hot wind play on his face. A roar in the gloom of the tunnel which fed this rail into the junction quickly followed. He could get himself across in time but maybe not her. He overcame the impulse to leave her. He nimbly guided her back outside the rails, as a West Bound train roared out of the tunnel, blocking the final set of rails they needed to cross. Paul made Jane crouch down. He anxiously scanned the gloom from which they had come, knowing that they were open targets. It was too dark to see Selwyn peering round the buttress from which they had set out across the junction.

  Selwyn saw them hunched over, the American’s head mostly obscured behind the girl’s. Best to wait. There would be time enough when the train passed and they stood up. Then Paul heard the sound of another train coming from the opposite direction. Jane heard it too. The distance between the two sets of tracks was narrow. Paul stood up, pulling her to him, to take up less space. Selwyn raised his pistol. A clean shot at last. His trigger finger tightened. Then the other trai
n, from the opposite direction on the adjacent track, thundered through, blocking his aim.

  Paul and Jane were now sandwiched between two trains hurtling in opposite directions. Paul caught a blur of astonished passengers’ faces. Jane reacted to the screeching wheels, the thunderous noise on each side of her, pressing her hands over her ears, buckling at the knees. Paul pulled her out of harm’s way and held her against his chest. As the noise intensified, Jane’s vision blurred and pixilated into swirling fragments.

  The portal had opened once more.

  CHAPTER 22

  The Rapture

  In the tube station, the girl in Paul’s arms convulsed, then threw her arms up around his neck. “James…”

  Oh, shit. She was Alice again. Their eyes locked. She was inviting his kiss. Despite every good reason to the contrary, Paul could not deny he wanted to kiss her. Under other circumstances. He must not kiss her. Yet he must not reject her. He pressed her head against his chest, gently stroking her hair. Alice smiled at his courtly response. They held each other tight, enclosed within a haven of peace amidst the roaring trains, swirling dust, and flashing lights.

  Selwyn decided that he had the opportunity to get closer and guarantee his kill shot. The live rail did not faze him. In the SAS he had done extensive minefield training. He methodically navigated two sets of rails, gun at the ready. The moment the nearside train cleared he would terminate the American. He would secure the girl then toss the American’s body onto the electric griddle to become a statistic, the result of unwise trespass on railway property. Nelson would make sure that no bullet was mentioned in the autopsy report. His return to Nelson’s favor was seconds away. So Selwyn kept his eyes on the approximate position of his target as he stepped onto the next set of tracks. He did not have to worry about the outer rail. Then his foot came down on the edge of a brick that years of vibrations had shaken from the tunnel’s vaulted ceiling. Selwyn lurched, and instinctively put his other foot out to steady himself. But there were patches of grease near the rail mountings. His foot slid forward. His shin connected with the middle rail.

  For the few instants in which Selwyn’s brain still produced conscious thought, even as intense heat and shock wracked his entire being, he did not attribute it to electrocution. Instead he knew that this was the very moment the Lord had chosen to return. The Rapture was sucking the souls of the Chosen toward Heaven. And he was proudly amongst them. It was just that he had not expected The Rapture to be so painful.

  The last carriages of both trains passed. Paul turned to check for pursuit. There was Selwyn standing twenty feet away, mouth open, body shuddering, arms flailing, the gun flung from his grasp. Alice stared at the man who had tried to coerce her from chastity, and had chased her into this life. Gareth. Quivering and jerking like a hanged man, yet there was no rope. God must be smiting him that he commit evil no more. Paul saw no distress at the sight in Alice’s face. Rather, her jaw set tightly as she crossed herself. He quickly picked her up and stepped carefully over the last live rail. The fire escape leading to the street was seconds away.

  Brandt and Jones arrived at the entrance to the junction in time to see Selwyn, a rigid dancing upright corpse, clothes smoldering, eyeballs melting. Beyond him Alice and Paul were almost at the fire exit. Brandt quickly took aim at Paul. Before he could fire, another train thundered through, grinding Selwyn’s body under its wheels. “Whoa!” thought Jones. It was like watching a splatter moment in a video game. But it was live. Amazing. Jones had never liked Selwyn, who constantly patronized him because he had not done military service. Didn’t help when it came to train spotting, did it, mate? The ladder to promotion suddenly had one fewer obstacle.

  The train’s brakes squealed, the carriages slowing to a halt across the junction that obscured the fire escape. Brandt, for his part, was shocked by Selwyn’s death. He had respected the man. But shit happens; he could not think of that now. His targets were gone, and he had better be gone, too. He needed to reach Nelson so that a press embargo on the accident could be imposed on the grounds of national security till the appropriate story could be manufactured. The pile of rendered flesh that was once their colleague, would, for a media minute, become a homeless, nameless vagrant illegally squatting in the tunnels of the London Underground. Tragic, the media would cluck, but a lesson to all vagrants. His body would be held at the central morgue awaiting claim. Which would never come. Meanwhile, Ian Selwyn, gallant soldier, awarded the Military Cross, posted on special assignment in Central Asia, would be blown to pieces by an IED, and brought home to a hero’s funeral. The body parts in the morgue would get a Christian burial. The media would have patriotic fodder for a few news cycles. Every cloud had a silver lining.

  CHAPTER 23

  “For oats, you need a ladle”

  Paul and Alice had left the station and were walking along a traffic-clogged street. Paul explained that the metal serpents and beasts had machines within them that enabled them to move without horses or oxen. No end of wonders, thought Alice, awestruck.

  A cab soon pulled over, and Paul hustled Alice inside.

  “Where to?” asked the cabbie, eyeing Alice with evident appreciation.

  “West End. Just drive. I’ll let you know.”

  Alice watched as James pulled out of his pocket a small black square and make it glow, just as she had seen the mad people do earlier. But she knew James was no Tom o’ Bedlam.

  Paul dialed an international number as the taxi eased away from the curb. He leaned in close to Alice’s ear and whispered: “Say nothing.” Alice nodded and smiled. She would do whatever James asked. He was the bravest knight on God’s earth. Paul’s call connected. He tapped the object three more times, then spoke: “This is 553-2HG6-Paul-439.”

  Buoyed by their escape, Alice was no longer unsettled by acts of sorcery. It was the way people lived in this world. She would master it too, in time. Paul spoke. “Put me through to section...Is Rick there?” Then Alice was startled. The square in his hand spoke back, though she could not understand what it said.

  “Chief Almaraz is on vacation.”

  Rick never took a holiday. Paul’s worst fears returned.

  “Let me speak to Wendy.”

  There was a pause. “She’s sick today. May I help you?”

  His section had been compromised, or worse. “It’s complicated. I’ll text.”

  He hung up, knowing that they were tracking his movements through the phone. He could leave the phone hidden in the taxi, which would buy him some time to find a bolt hole. But he wanted to get a better sense of the scale of the conspiracy he was up against, and how fast its response time was. He started drafting a text. Alice leaned against him for a closer look at the mystical square.

  “No quill or paper, yet you make words…”

  “More sorcery,” he replied as he felt her warmth press against him.

  Paul realized that he was becoming comfortable with her delusion. At the core of this personality was an innocent child full of sweetness and compassion, ostensibly the polar opposite of the anger-driven Jane. Alice projected an aura unlike any girl he had ever known. Yet he sensed that the two of them were essentially alike. What had embittered Jane?

  “What do you write?”

  “A test.” He could see the word had no meaning for her. “A trial,” he added.

  Alice nodded. That was something she understood. “For whom?”

  “Our enemies.” He completed the message and hit send. “Bring me in ASAP. Excelsior Hotel, Marlin Street. London. W.C 2.”

  Alice smiled. Her knight was plotting revenge.

  ***

  As the sky lightened, Paul and Alice sat in a cafe near a window with a view of The Excelsior across the street, which Paul had designated as the pickup point. Paul’s eyes constantly roamed the street. If anyone suspicious approached, the kitchen was close by for a fast escape. At the sound of footst
eps his head turned quickly to see a waitress arrive with a tray. He was a little jumpy. Food would be good for them both. He had not eaten since the previous afternoon. He’d been running on adrenaline till now, but a great weariness was seeping into his bones.

  The waitress put down a plate of poached eggs, bacon, sausage, tomato, baked beans, and toast in front of Alice. A clog of cholesterol, thought Paul.

  “It’s a feast!” Alice exclaimed.

  “Well, thank you,” said the waitress, placing a bowl of oatmeal and fruit in front of Paul. He was a health food fanatic even when starving. Alice ignored the cutlery, scooping a poached egg into her mouth, using toast as an all-purpose tool.

  “Mmmm...Surely, our Queen don’t eat this well.”

  The waitress gave a nervous smile and left. Paul watched Alice’s ravenous consumption for a moment, then to make the girl feel more comfortable, dug into his oatmeal with his fingers, ignoring its heat. He licked them clean, and looked at Alice. “For oats, you need a ladle.” She passed him a spoon.

  He had almost finished his oatmeal when cars full of security personnel arrived outside the Excelsior Hotel. Men ran inside. Paul caught sight of one of their adversaries, standing talking on his mobile.

  Jones was pleased to be in on the arrest. He would soon have this troublemaker in the bag and regain Nelson’s confidence. He was unaware as he ran past a waste bin at the door that inside was Paul’s discarded phone, luring them to his apparent location. Across the street, Paul now had visual confirmation that he was totally compromised; whoever controlled his section had relayed the phone’s coordinates to his enemies in London. No help would come from Langley, only a death sentence and an unmarked grave. He got to his feet, threw some money on the table, gulped down the remaining fruit juice, then pulled a protesting Alice, her mouth full of toast, towards the kitchen exit.