Uchronie

by Richardson, Ian

  It was time for me to take action.

  I reached up and pulled Wayne’s knife from the sheath strapped to his leg.

  I was freezing, blinded by the snow and the flickering strobe light of night and day racing past.

  I couldn’t feel my fingers anymore.

  Blindly I hacked at the rope with the knife.

  I had to.

  ‘Don’t do it!’ shouted Wayne, trying to stop me. ‘Doctor Mentor…Get Corporal Price … He’ll be able to pull us up.’

  ‘There’s no time. Corporal Price is miles away!’ I shouted, as several strands of the cord separated. ‘I’m cutting the rope. The weight of two fully laden crewmen is too much… even for Corporal Price!’

  ‘Stop.’ shouted Wayne, unable to reach me. ‘Don’t do it mate!’

  But, before I could finish cutting through the rope, Doctor Mentor’s metal hand separated from the rest of the arm and flew past us.

  ‘NOOOooo!’ cried Wayne, as we tumbled out of the cylinder into the swirling sky.

  The Uchronie disappeared into the mists above us and we fell for a very long time.

  Next Episode: There must be some kind of way out of this.

  There Must Be Some Kind Of Way Out Of This

  In which thrown together by fate misfits, Nate and Wayne, try to find out where they are and… when they are.

  In apparent slow motion I fell through the swirling mists of time unable to see or hear anything.

  How long had I been falling? … I did not know.

  Hours?

  Days?

  A week?

  The air rushed past me as I fell at the maximum accelerated velocity that a body falling through space could attain, but I was not going anywhere. The ragged clouds around me seemed, by a curious optical illusion, to remain stationary.

  I realized that I was falling through time as well and, in my suspended state of static stall, I remember thinking that I would be most vulnerable to attack. I feared that I was an easy target although I had been assured that nothing would be able to interact with me while I was time traveling.

  My very existence had become this endless fall; when it was going to end I had no way of knowing. But I did know that somewhere up above me, on the other end of the rope, was Wayne.

  Tentatively I gave the rope a tug.

  The rope pulled tight and I knew that he was in the grey mists above me. I had to do something to get out of this situation because I did not wan to stay like this forever.

  Hand over hand; a few centimeters at a time, I hauled myself up the rope towards Wayne.

  Wayne had the parachute.

  If I fell out of this swirling sky alone… I was dead.

  I had to find Wayne.

  It was either that or come up with some suitable epitaph for myself and then spend my last moments regretting not saying a proper goodbye to Lolly.

  After a long exhausting climb my hand eventually touched a boot.

  It was Wayne, but he was dangling unconscious in space.

  Everything changed the moment I touched him and, suddenly, we both fell through the churning mist into a bright dawn. A rainbow curved ahead of us as we hurtled towards the ground at breakneck speed.

  Our only hope of survival was Wayne’s parachute.

  I threaded the rope round his waist and tied myself tightly to him.

  ‘Wot… are you doin’… mate?’ asked the groggy Wayne, as I lashed us face to face.

  ‘We’re heading for the ground.’ I said. ‘I’m going to pull the ripcord.’

  ‘Don’ panic.’ slurred Wayne, looking down sluggishly. ‘We’re not going to land. Look… we’re going to splash. There’s water below us; we won’t need no chute, we‘re ‘eadin’ for a soft landin’.’

  ‘You think water’s soft!’ I said, as we sped towards the lake.

  ‘Course it is.’ said Wayne. ‘You can drink it… swim in it. Run your fingers thru it. Water’s soft as a foxes brush.’

  ‘Well it’s a hard fact of science. ‘I gasped, trying to reach the ripcord. ‘That if we hit the water at this speed. POW!!! Even if it’s full of water softener, it’ll be like hitting concrete.’

  ‘Pull the ripcord!’ shouted Wayne, suddenly wide awake in the rush of cold air. ‘We’re both going to die, unless we pull the ripcord… NOW!'

  But before either of us could pull the ripcord, the A.A.D. pulled it for us.

  I was most relieved to see the parachute billow out above us, but quickly realized that we now had less than one thousand meters to find a suitable landing space.

  I pulled up my goggles, tore off my oxygen mask and looked around frantically as we swung down towards the water.

  On the edge of the lake a group of about thirty soldiers in black uniforms stood outside a large villa among the pine trees. They had just raised their morning flag beside the boat at the end of the jetty.

  ‘I don’ fink I like the look of ‘em.’ said Wayne, pulling us in the opposite direction. ‘Where’s that village we’re s’posed to be goin’ to? Bech… Becktesht...’

  ‘Bechtsgaden.’ I said, spotting an area of grassy shore beyond the forest. ‘This is it. This is where we’re supposed to land. I remember it from the photographs we were shown at the briefing.’

  At that moment it struck me that the vast area of grassland and sunlit trees looked very similar to the parkland I had seen from Ginger’s plane when I first flew over the Uchronie. Even the rainbow dipping to the ground below us reminded me of the vapor I had seen between her four gigantic steaming chimneys.

  A tree directly in our path snapped me out of my reverie. Soaring over the grass I turned upwind to avoid it.

  ‘Get into your P.L.F. position.’ I shouted to Wayne. ‘We’re going in hard.’

  As we crashed on to grass I remembered to bend my knees but, as I rolled on to my side, Wayne landed on top of me and crushed the posy of flowers in my top pocket. Then the rest of the rope snaked down from the sky, covering him in looping coils.

  ‘Lumme, get me out of this.’ gasped Wayne, as he was slowly buried beneath the heavy rope.

  ‘Wayne… push yourself up and let me out from under you.’ I cried, struggling to get out from underneath him. ‘Then I’ll be able to get you free.’

  Suddenly Doctor Mentor’s mechanical hand came hurtling out of the sky, smashed into the back of Wayne’s helmet with a resounding clang and knocked him unconscious again.

  ‘Well thank goodness that didn’t hit me in the face.’ I mumbled to myself. ‘Now… how am I going to get myself out from under all this rope?’

  As if in answer to my question Wayne’s knife plunged out of the sky and thudded, quivering, into the ground an inch from the side of my head.

  I have to confess, dear reader, that, at that moment, I was gripped with fear, but I recovered my composure quickly and used the knife to cut through the coils of rope. Then, with a mighty effort, I extricated myself from beneath Wayne’s dead weight.

  There was no sign of the soldiers that we had seen but I could see the villa through the trees on our right hand side.

  Quickly I gathered up the billowing parachute and coils of rope and stuffed them under the thick layer of pine needles and scrub that carpeted the ground among the trees.

  Keeping low to the ground I returned to Wayne.

  ‘Wot ‘appened?’ he asked, as he woke up again. ‘Somefin’ ‘it me.’

  ‘Doctor Mentor’s hand.’ I said, putting it in my back pack as I pulled out my Wave gun. ‘Quick. You need to move and get under cover.’

  ‘Packs quite a punch my ’alf bruvver don’t he?’ said Wayne, crawling after me into the undergrowth.

  I was aware that the scent of my crushed carnations really stood out amongst the smell of pine needles and I hoped that we were a bit less obvious among the spindly gorse bushes as the soldiers marched along the water’s edge towards us.

  ‘Are you alright?’ I asked, as Wayne took off hi
s helmet and rubbed the back of his shaved head. ‘Here’s your knife. It just missed us.’

  ‘We gorra get out of this.’ said Wayne, sheathing his knife and pulling the One Time Pad out of his backpack. ‘We come thru too early. I ain’t livin’ the next eleven years of my life waitin’ for 1937.’

  ‘Assuming we are in 1926.’ I said, checking my pocket watch. ‘Dr Mentor said that we could be thrown out anywhere in time. I’m not sure what the date is. There’s never a newspaper blowing in the wind when you need one.’

  ‘If we’ve both come thru, we’ll be in 1926.’ said Wayne, confidently. ‘That’s wot the Tippler tube was set for… so that‘s where we‘ll be. It don’ matter anyway, we‘re goin straight back. ‘Ere… grab ‘old of this.’

  I grabbed a handle on the One Time Pad just as Wayne pushed the return button.

  Nothing happened.

  ‘You’ve got to enter the code.’ I whispered, peering through the bushes at the soldiers.

  ‘Oh… yeah.’ said Wayne, typing in four numbers. ‘Doctor Mentor said it was the year. 1...9...3...7... .’

  He stopped and looked at me. ‘…and he said that you had the other numbers.’

  ‘I don’t have any numbers.’ I said, as the soldiers turned towards us ‘Just the link chart and the 24/7 chart. That’s all I was given. Doctor Mentor was shouting something just before we fell, but I couldn‘t hear for the wind.’

  ‘I couldn’t ‘ear him neither.’ said Wayne. ‘But Doctor Bro deffo said you ‘ad the code. Are you sure there’s nuffink in your backpack?’

  ‘There’s nothing.’ I whispered, as the soldiers marched past us. ‘Try the link year… put in 1926.’

  ‘That’s still one number short.’ said Wayne, hitting the One Time Pad in frustration. ‘A partial code might work inside but not out here in the open.’

  ’Ssssh!’ I said, as the soldiers stopped and stood to attention. ‘We were meant to get the numbers tattooed on to our skin but I don’t have any tattoos.’

  ‘So we’re stuck ‘ere.’ groaned Wayne. ‘I don’ Adam an’ Eve it.’

  ‘There must be some kind of way out of this.’ I said, relieved to see the soldiers move off towards the villa again. ‘Let’s head away from these guys and see if we can find any clues about where we are.’

  ‘Or when we are.’ said Wayne.

  ‘That’s such a time traveler cliché.’ I said, slipping through the undergrowth. ‘I can’t believe you just said that. Surely we’ll find something to confirm what year we're in.’

  But after an hour’s running, crawling and hiding behind trees all we had done was come round in a big circle. We were back beside the villa and the platoon of soldiers.

  Four of them, armed with machine guns, stood guard at the entrance.

  ‘Must be someone important in there.’ I said, as we made our way along the side wall and back into the forest.

  As we did so, a man in a long black coat appeared on the balcony directly above us and stood surveying the morning view.

  We pressed ourselves against the wall and looked up.

  ‘It’s ‘itler!’ gasped Wayne.

  He was right. Unmistakable in his Charlie Chaplin moustache and floppy black hair, Hitler was leaning over the balcony sniffing at the morning air.

  ‘Wot’s ‘e doin?’ asked Wayne.

  Inexplicably the guards on the gate left their posts and started to run.

  ‘Hide.’ I whispered to Wayne, as I crawled into the undergrowth. ‘Something’s up.’

  But Wayne was no longer beside me. He had pulled my Wave gun from my holster and was taking aim at Hitler.

  ‘Was ist das?’ barked Hitler, still sniffing the air and looking straight at us.

  ‘Zvei eindrinlinge aus dem loch.’ shouted one of the guards.

  ‘What are they saying?’ hissed Wayne, as the Wave gun locked and loaded.

  ‘They’re saying… two intruders from the loch.’ I groaned, as Hitler continued to shout from the balcony. ‘They’re on to us. He wants us captured alive if they can… or dead if they must!’

  ‘Los’ shouted Hitler, pointing straight down at us. ‘Carnation!’

  The soldiers raised their guns, took aim and fired. Bullets ricocheted around us as Wayne finally fired the Wave gun. Instead of firing properly it made a feeble fizzing noise and let off a shower of sparks.

  ‘The Uchronie’s too far away to power it.’ I shouted, scrambling backwards through the undergrowth. ‘Eleven years too far away. RUN FOR IT WAYNE!’

  A bullet whipped the Wave gun out of Wayne’s hand as he dived into the bushes beside me.

  ‘Wayne… Leave it!’ I shouted, as he turned back for it. ‘Run for the water. We can get away on that boat.’

  But Wayne had pulled his knife and was climbing up to the balcony, still determined to kill Hitler.

  I watched helplessly as the guards overpowered him and pulled him down.

  ‘Hande hoch.’ said a stern voice behind me.

  Slowly I raised my hands above my head and turned round to find myself looking down the barrel of a MG42 7.9mm machine gun.

  It was over.

  As Wayne and I were marched into the clearing by the platoon of soldiers Hitler descended his stairs and walked around us, slowly, with his hands behind his back.

  ‘Ich werde diese.’ said Hitler, plucking the posy of flowers out of my top pocket. ‘Ich werde sie in meinen garten pflanzen ais adenken.’

  ‘Wot’s ‘e sayin’?’ whispered Wayne.

  ‘I don’t know.’ I said, as Hitler strode off to his villa. ’My German’s not that good.’

  ‘So… Englishers.’ said the Captain of the guard, tying our hands behind our backs. ‘We have orders to shoot all intruders... Take them away into the forest.’

  Next Episode: A Long, Long Way from Home.

  A Long Way From Home.

  In which DeBlanc makes a difficult decision and Nate discovers his true value to the Commander of the Uchronie.

  At noon on Monday 3 May, 1937 Commander DeBlanc stood, wreathed in clouds of steam, at the controls of the Uchronie with his daughter, Lolly, by his side.

  Captain Wright and, a one handed, Doctor Mentor stood to attention in front of him, unsure whether to speak again or to leave. They had just given their Commander the news of the accident that had befallen Nate and Wayne in the Wells Tippler cylinder.

  ‘Wayne and our new observer lost.’ said DeBlanc, looking out at the misty mountains slipping past below. ‘Lost in another Monday 3 May somewhere back in time. How can I help?’

  ‘Sir. They are not completely lost.’ said Captain Wright. ‘We know they are in an armistice gap in 1926, but they have been captured by enemy soldiers. The latest information we have is that they are about to be shot.’

  ‘Good God.’ exclaimed DeBlanc. ‘We can’t afford to lose Wayne to an enemy bullet.’

  ‘Or Nate, daddy.’ said Lolly, pulling at DeBlanc’s sleeve. ‘Don’t forget Nate.’

  ‘Biffo is manipulating the large tachyscreen so we may observe them, my dear.’ said Commander DeBlanc. ‘He’s working on it right now.’

  ‘Bit trick eh… but fink I can do... n’that…’ said Biffo, from behind the large screen.

  ‘Surely Wayne has his One Time Pad with him.’ said Commander DeBlanc, frowning at Captain Wright. ‘Can’t he just use that and return to us?’

  ‘Sir, yes sir. Wayne did take his One Time Pad but he hasn’t been given the code to operate it.’ said Captain Wright. ’They were doing a practice run, using the harness, when they fell.’

  ‘I thought Nate had the code.’ said Doctor Mentor, quietly.

  ‘We must make sure that the enemies do not acquire any knowledge that will help them complete a time machine.’ said Commander DeBlanc. 'All our time travel knowledge is top secret. If there is a danger of a leak from Wayne, then… we must recover him.’

  ‘Enemy technology is advancing rapidly des
pite our precautions.’ said Doctor Mentor. ‘The Stuka bombers that attacked us are a future weapon sent to 1937 and I’m extremely concerned that the enemy appear to have MG42 machine guns back in 1926.'

  ‘We are supposed to be in control of all technological developments through time.’ snapped DeBlanc, covering his keypad with his purple gloved hand as he typed. ‘I wish Ginger was awake to explain where these Stuka bombers came from.’

  ‘Date set 1...9...2...6…’ said Biffo, from the shadows. ‘On lay sound’n stills comin’ thru…n that, but...’