The Master of Time

by David Wingrove

  And, just as if he knew what was about to be asked, he reaches out and takes a file from the side, then hands it to me.

  ‘Our closest approximation,’ he says, sitting back, getting his old bones comfy again.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Only that it changes. Constantly.’

  ‘Now he’s there … now he’s not.’

  ‘Precisely.’

  And, no doubt, the file will be the same, the very print on the pages changing moment by moment as Kolya jumps between the timestreams.

  I open it; read the opening paragraph and look to Master Schnorr again. ‘The fading?’

  The old man nods. ‘It’s our term for what’s been happening, out there at the periphery of Time.’ He pauses, as if trying to find the proper words. ‘To put it simply, Otto, it’s all a question of how close to the hub – or distant – a timestream is. The further away, the less energy is involved. Whereas at the hub … that’s where it’s intense. That’s where you’ll find the highest energy levels.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And you should speak to our expert on the subject. She can explain it much better than I do.’

  ‘She?’

  And, even as I say it, so she shimmers into being beside me.

  ‘Katerina …’

  490

  She has explained it all. And now – post-coital, our ‘expert’ naked in my arms – I think over what she’s said.

  Put simply, we seem to have worn Time thin. So much so that, in the peripheral worlds – those timelines furthest from the centre – things have begun to fade, to lose substance, their energy drained by the hub. It’s apparently what happens after two centuries and more of constant misuse. And, because Time is Time, it was always so. Potentially, anyway.

  All of it pre-ordained, if we are to believe what Katerina has told me.

  Only I don’t. I still think that Time is in our hands to change.

  Not that I tell her that. But there is something I want to rehearse with her. An idea that’s struck me as to why we’re here, in 1609.

  ‘Katerina?’

  ‘Yes, my love?’

  ‘What if all these other timelines are wrong?’

  ‘Wrong?’ She gets up on one elbow and looks down at me. ‘What do you mean? They exist, don’t they?’

  ‘Yes. But what if they shouldn’t? What if all of this is simply Reality repairing itself. All of the branches of the World Tree moving towards a single singularity?’

  ‘For two hundred years?’

  ‘Why not? I mean, that’s just a blip in cosmic terms.’

  I see how she thinks about that. How she goes to speak …

  Only I don’t let her.

  ‘He’s here for a reason, Katerina. To settle things for good. This is the End Game.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘I’m certain of it. Just as I am that nothing has been decided yet.’

  ‘So this here, this now …’

  ‘Is a contest to the death. To establish which of our realities is to prevail. Ours—’

  ‘Or his,’ she finishes.

  ‘One hundred and seven times I’ve been here. And this the last.’

  She looks down, contemplating that, then looks at me and nods.

  ‘Done,’ she says. ‘And not done.’

  ‘Precisely.’

  I smile. ‘But first the play.’

  Katerina looks at me again, a query in her eyes.

  ‘Will’s play,’ I say. About time travel.’

  She laughs, a disbelieving laugh, then, seeing that I’m serious, leans closer.

  ‘You’ve been meddling again, Otto, haven’t you?’

  ‘I wouldn’t call it meddling. Improving, more like.’

  But I say nothing of my notion of implanting the idea of time travel.

  ‘Otto?’

  ‘Yes, my love?’

  ‘If this is the “End Game”, then be careful out there.’

  ‘I shall.’

  ‘And mind the spirals.’

  ‘The …?’

  Only she’s gone. Vanished from my arms, only the perfumed smell of her remaining.

  Gone. And my heart aches to follow.

  491

  We spend the afternoon and early evening rehearsing. And every now and then new pages arrive. Fifteen copies of each, in six separate hands, Shakespeare’s own among them. And each time the play improves, becoming funnier, more poignant, far more dramatic.

  And the players?

  The players love this play. Involved is not the word for it. It fills them. And, as the day progresses more and more people gather, intrigued by the news that Shakespeare has a new play – and not just new but different. Yes, by the time the sun begins to set the Globe is packed to the rafters, the host of watchers engrossed as they’ve never been before.

  Yes, and their laughter when it comes is like a great wave of warmth …

  The only shame is that Shakespeare does not witness any of this, for he’s busy writing and rewriting, honing what was already magnificent into a work of paramount excellence.

  The single best play ever written.

  And then, quite suddenly and without a word, he’s gone.

  It’s young Todd who raises the alarm. Young Todd who plays the boy-girl in most plays. Not finding Shakespeare in his room, the young lad hurries back to give the news that there’s no trace of him. It’s like he’s vanished into the air, which I know with an instinctive certainty’s the truth.

  Kolya. I know it almost for a fact. And, just as soon as I’m alone again, I jump. Back to when I last saw him.

  And wait.

  And sure enough, our old friend makes an appearance, smiling at me as he turns and, opening the door, walks in on Will.

  Six seconds I have to cross that room, and in the end I have to throw myself across the desk, spilling ink and clearing papers to the floor, but reach him I do, grasping Will’s left wrist as Kolya jumps—

  492

  Sprawling out into a sun-baked harbour, thrown forward on to the cobbles.

  ‘Where the …?’

  I sit up, looking about me. There’s no sign of anyone on the vacant quayside. Only the abandoned trappings of a small fishing port, the soft grey of distant mountains.

  Is this another trick? A trick to trap me in one of Time’s cul-de-sacs, like that time in New York City?

  I stand, then close my eyes, a wave of unsteadiness passing through me, making me totter on the stones.

  And then the light begins to fade.

  I turn slowly and see it – there, twenty paces distant. It’s like a tiny gateway, the light there more intense. I walk toward it, and as I do, so the gateway starts to pulse, the colour slowly bleaching from the rest of it.

  And as I come closer, so there’s a disembodied voice in the air.

  ‘Come, Otto. It’s time for you to see where it began.’

  Only I know where it began. And besides, when did I begin to trust Kolya or choose to do what he told me to do?

  No. Turn your back on it, Otto. Jump!

  And I jump … Only, apart from some vague tingling on the surface of my skin, it seems there is no power left to jump. Either that or there’s some kind of jump suppressor set up hereabouts.

  I look to the glowing portal once again. Discern, in its depths, a slow turning shape – a spiral, and recall what Katerina said. Her warning about spirals. And turn away, deciding to go back. We can proceed with the play, after all, even with its author missing. And my hunch is that he won’t be missing for long.

  I try once more to jump. And this time it works!

  Only my sudden reappearance amid the crowd at the Globe causes general consternation. People stare at me and point. I try to make my way away from there with as little fuss as possible, only there’s a whole mob of them now, hemming me in, shouting at me, their hands grasping, pulling me back, seeking to restrain me.

  I’m going nowhere, it seems. Only suddenly I’m no longer there. Su
ddenly it’s night, and cool, and across from me the Rose is brightly lit and welcoming and I heave a massive sigh, even as I realise that I’ve made an impact on this timeline that I really oughtn’t to have made.

  Which is unfortunate. Only what real harm could it have done?

  I pause in the doorway, looking across to our regular table in the far corner and see a number of familiar faces. Will’s players. Then, with a shock, I see others among them, people who really should not be there, drawn, no doubt, by my earlier hasty and ill-planned jump.

  Blagovesh, the marsh pirate, is there, as is the young Russian time agent, Saratov. And there – smiling across at me – the gypsy woman, Mari-something, also known as Jamil. And there’s another – a tall man in his forties, who carries a purse at his belt and the marks of surgery on his half-shaven skull – who I only part recognise and cannot put a name to.

  None of whom should be here. So what are they doing here? Is this Kolya’s work, once again?

  I make my way across, looking for Will among that host, and find myself stopped by the tall man. He grips my arm.

  ‘Do I know you?’ I ask, looking down at his hand, glowering at him.

  The tall man smiles. ‘Not in this form, no.’

  I’m about to ask what he means, when, with a shock, I realise that the purse at his belt isn’t a purse at all but a shrunken head.

  ‘Reichenau?’

  The villain’s eyes light up. ‘The same. But not as you’d remember me, neh?’

  ‘We killed you,’ I say. ‘Time-dead.’

  He shakes his head. ‘No one’s time-dead, Otto. Not these days. It’s all unravelling. Didn’t you know that? Unravelling, and then …’

  And then what? Only I don’t ask, for at that moment Will reappears, grinning, Katerina on his arm.

  Seeing me, she smiles. ‘I saved him,’ she says simply. ‘I went in there and snatched him back.’

  But seeing her there with Will, their arms linked, I feel a strong surge of jealousy.

  Jealousy? Yes. Because I know how charming he can be. And because Katerina is an impressionable young woman. Didn’t her reaction to young Nevsky prove that?

  Only right then things grow more complicated, as the gypsy woman – what was her name? Mariya? – comes and joins us at the bar.

  ‘Otto …’

  Katerina looks to me for an explanation, but before I can say a word, the woman takes a small package from her shoulder bag and hands it to me.

  ‘You forgot these,’ she says. ‘Last time you came to visit me.’

  It’s a tarot. But not a complete one. No. These are the special cards. The ones Mariya read for me that time. I flick through them, then look to her once more.

  ‘I thought them lost.’

  Her smile returns. ‘Nothing’s ever wholly lost.’

  ‘Otto?’ Katerina unlinks her arm from Will’s then reaches across to take the cards. She studies them a moment, then looks to me, lifting one of the cards – the High Priestess – to display its markings.

  ‘This is me.’

  ‘I know,’ I say, taking them back from her, noting once more how warm the cards are. Unnaturally so.

  I flick through them once more, naming the twelve as I do.

  ‘Starke … Death … The Lovers … Judgement … The Hanged Man … The Tower … The Magician … The High Priestess … The Wheel of Fortune … The Star … The World, and the Two of Coins.’

  The last of these is perhaps the strangest, portraying, as it does, a weird two-headed man who’s clearly Reichenau, but that’s only a question of degree. For Kolya’s here, as Death, and Master Hecht, there on the top half of The Lovers card, like an Archangel, his wings spread wide. And on the Judgement card there’s Katerina and I, our pale corpses stretched out on the cart at Krasnogorsk. Dead.

  And everywhere – so it seems – the symbol of the lazy eight. Kolya’s sign.

  Only what does this mean? That it was all – as Katerina claims – preordained? The working-out of Fate?

  As I’ve said already, I don’t believe that. Despite all I’ve seen, all I’ve experienced, I think we yet might shape how things turn out.

  Later, when things have quietened down and we’re alone, Will hands me a small sheaf of papers. ‘Kolya’s speech,’ he says. ‘For the end of the play.’

  I read it through, then tear the paper up. ‘It doesn’t work,’ I say, but I can see just how shocked he is at my reaction. Shocked and hurt. But it’s true. It doesn’t work. It ought to have done, only …

  ‘Look,’ I say. ‘I’ve got to get some rest.’

  And leave him there. Only halfway up the stairs to my room, I realise I have left the tarot cards on the side behind the bar, and turn back, meaning to get them. And it’s there, from the doorway, unnoticed by them, that I see Katerina kiss Will. It’s not a proper kiss, just a peck really, but I note how her hand lingers on his shoulder, how the two of them exchange smiles. Katerina, who, a moment before, was somewhere else in Time, returning specially for that kiss.

  My stomach knots. I close my eyes in sudden agony.

  And when she joins me, later, in my room, she sits by me and asks me what is wrong. And I cannot tell her. Only when she makes to take my hand in hers, I shrug her off, and she stands, angry suddenly. More angry than I’ve ever seen her.

  ‘What in God’s name is going on in your head, Otto? Did all those years together mean nothing?’

  ‘Will,’ I say, hardly daring to articulate my fears. ‘You and Will …’

  ‘Will? Will Shakespeare?’ And she laughs, as if I could have said nothing more ridiculous. Only I saw them. Saw the way she touched him, that exchange of smiles.

  ‘I love you, stupid!’ she says. ‘Don’t you understand that? You, Otto Behr. Not him. You.’

  ‘Then why …?’ Only I can’t say it. For there are no words for how I feel right then, and when I flinch from her touch a second time it’s all too much for her. She glares at me, then is gone from the air once more. Gone where? I wonder. To him? To punish me?

  Whatever, she is gone. Yes, and all is chaos once again.

  493

  Shakespeare knocks us up early. He has us gather in the bar, more than half our number well the worse for drink.

  Swallowing my pride, my fears, I go down and join them, standing there, silent and surly at the back of the room as he begins.

  Calling for silence, he announces what we’re going to do today, producing, with a flourish, a letter from King James in his own handwriting, requesting our attendance at the palace of Whitehall for a private performance.

  It’s not the first time that they’ve performed one of Will’s plays for the Court, but the very nature of the summons – in the King’s own hand – makes this somewhat special. For Will, particularly, this is a chance to get new sponsorship – from the King, no less – as well as clear his debts, and so he rushes here and there, organising things, keen not to squander this golden opportunity.

  Will’s only problem is that his current ‘sponsor’ – the one he borrowed the money from – wants his money back and he wants it back now, not a day, or a week or a month from now.

  Why does he want it? Because some bigger crook wants his money back, and he can’t, it seems, wait.

  Will seems to think that the problem will go away, but I’m not so sure.

  ‘Why don’t you go and see him,’ I say, keeping my tone neutral. ‘Give him something up front and promise the rest next week.’

  Will considers that and, despite the fact that he hasn’t finished organising things, agrees to take an hour out of his schedule to go and see the man.

  Which is where I get my first big shock. Because when I get to the inn we’ve agreed to meet at, the man who greets me – the Big Boss of London in these Stuart times – is none other than …

  …‘Ernst?’

  ‘Ernst’ frowns at me and looks to one of his henchmen for an explanation. He clearly doesn’t know who I am.

  ‘Ernst?’
he asks, his voice similar but different. Ernst but not Ernst.

  And my immediate thought is that this is Kolya’s doing – that he’s taken an Ernst from another timeline and is now using him against me, to fuck with my head.

  ‘You know this man, Otto?’ Will asks.

  I still find it hard to speak to Will. Not to grab him and accuse him of stealing my wife from me. But I keep it all in check.

  ‘I do and I don’t.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning he’s the image of an old friend. Only it isn’t him.’

  Our fake ‘Ernst’ looks from Will to me then back to Will. ‘Well?’ he asks. ‘You have the money?’

  ‘Not enough to pay you off today. But my fortunes have changed and—’

  ‘Fuck your fortunes! You know the deal.’

  I look down, wondering what’s the best course of action. Whether to fight our way out or simply vanish. Because one thing’s clear. This ‘Ernst’ isn’t going to compromise.

  Only Will has already decided what he’s going to do.

  ‘One day,’ he says. ‘That’s all I ask. Then I’ll pay you the full amount.’

  ‘Ernst’ smiles unpleasantly. ‘What’s this? Have you found some other gullible idiot to back you?’

  ‘You might call him that, that is, if you didn’t value your head.’

  ‘He’s an important man, yes?’

  ‘No less than the King.’

  ‘The King?’

  ‘Come with me. We’re performing at the White Hall, three hours from now.’

  ‘Ernst’ looks to his men, then looks back at me. Up until twenty seconds ago, I’d have said we were heading for a stalemate, that or a pitched battle, but this version of Ernst – from wherever Kolya’s brought him – seems to like the idea of seeing Shakespeare’s play in the King’s company almost as much as getting paid the full sum of what he’s owed.

  ‘All right,’ he says after a moment. ‘But you keep in sight, right? My men will be watching you closely. One false move and …’

  He smiles and makes the gesture of a blade cutting a throat.

  And so we return, to find the handcarts stacked high with all our makeshift sets, the players anxious – and eager – to get going.