Yesterday's Hero

by Jonathan Wood

  “What about time magic?” I say.

  “It’s impossible, Arthur.” Clyde sounds almost exasperated. Like he thought better of me. “It’s just another form of intradimensional magic. Trying to punch out of a reality’s timestream and then into the same reality’s timestream further along. Trying to change time within one part of one reality. It’s not possible. It was all part of Chernobyl. It all ended in a big smoking hole that no one can live in and which causes terrible things to happen to wildlife. Sort of like the anti-RSPCA. Apart from the smoking hole bit. I don’t know what the opposite of that would be. Maybe if the RSPCA started building mountains. But, what I’m saying is that sort of magic doesn’t turn back time or turn shelves into trees. It just kills people.”

  Jesus. With that sort of glass-half-empty attitude, no wonder he looked so grumpy.

  I shrug, still not entirely cowed by logic. “It just seems like we’re making a lot of generalizations without taking the specific events into account.”

  “Crazy people,” Clyde says. “Illusion magic.” It is a remarkably succinct summary of his arguments. If he wasn’t using them to argue against me, I’d compliment him.

  “Illusion magic,” I argue, “is like an argument get-out-of-jail-free card. You didn’t break into the bank, some other guy did it, it just looked that way because of illusion magic.

  “Time,” Clyde informs me, “was concretized back with the establishment of Greenwich Mean Time as an international standard.”

  It seems a mean debating technique to just go and pull reality out from under my feet again.

  “Time was concretized?” I ask. I almost don’t want to, but in the end not knowing this stuff just leads to… well it leads to this sort of conversation.

  “Oh.” Clyde shakes his head. “Well, you see, when Greenwich Mean Time was established as an international standard there was this clock built. Ceremonial thing. But time sort of got tied to it. Still not wholly sure how that happened. Poses some interesting questions about collective perception and the nature of reality. How expectation influences probability. Really interesting fringe math in that area actually. Maybe I can access, a few papers…” His right leg starts to quiver and we veer slightly.

  “Clyde…” I’d rather his leg tremors didn’t send us into oncoming traffic.

  “Right.” Clyde nods. “Read those later. But yes. Time. Concretized. In a clock. Called the Chronometer, actually. Not the most original name really. Might as well just have called it ‘The Clock’ and be done with it. But polysyllables make some folk feel smarter I assume. Anyway, yes. Time. The Chronometer. Inexplicably linked. Wind the Chronometer forward, time goes forward. Wind it back, time goes back. So nobody does really.”

  I intend to say something like, “What?” or possibly, “Why?” but instead I let out an ugly sort of grunt. I’m beginning to notice that having my preconceptions beaten out of me seems to affect my speech centers first.

  So… time travel is possible. And we haven’t…

  “Hitler?” I manage to say.

  “Yes,” Clyde says and leaves it at that.

  “Why didn’t we…?”

  “Oh! Sorry.” Clyde shrugs twice. “I meant, yes, that is the obvious application. But, well, you know, the possibility of reality-annihilating paradoxes causing the Chernobyl explosion to happen at an atomic level throughout the entire universe. That sort of thing.”

  Which does seem like a good reason really.

  “Where is it?” I ask. Because it’s as good a question as any I have.

  “They put it in Big Ben,” Clyde says. “Sort of symbolic I suppose.”

  “Wait.” I try to wrap my head round that one. “Big Ben? The tourist attraction? The first thing to get blown up in every terrorist movie set in London ever?”

  “Well,” Clyde says, “to be fair to the chaps that put it there, it’s in a massive, lead-lined titanium room, with its own anti-magic field, surrounded by about a hundred fully-armed SAS ninjas.”

  “We have ninjas?” It’s possible that’s not the most important point, but I just have to know.

  “Oh,” Clyde says. “I just sort of figured. I mean, if you’re an international power player, shouldn’t you have ninjas?”

  That’s something I would have dismissed out of hand not so long ago. Now I’m genuinely worried he may have a point.

  Actually, I’m a little worried he’s right about everything. Time magic. The Weekenders. I could have put them in danger. Put my friends in danger. My girlfriend.

  George Coleman can be in danger. I’d be fine with that.

  But, Jesus, can I be so off on this? I was never a cop to go on gut instinct. Follow the evidence. Follow the paperwork.

  But there’s something about this… I don’t know. I just don’t know.

  Clyde drives on, and the rain begins to fall.

  TWENTY-ONE

  MI37 offices, Oxford

  “That’s it?” Coleman barks at me. He paces back and forth across the conference room floor, puffing his chest out like a preening peacock. Actually, you can lose the “pea.”

  I remain looking at Felicity, the primary recipient of my report on our London escapade—the Russians, Winston, the Weekenders, the conversation I had with them afterwards, theories of time magic. She remains, impassive, against the wall.

  “Did I miss anything, Clyde?” I am trying to play it cool in the face of Coleman’s bluster.

  “What?” Clyde shudders. “No. No.” He shrugs then says it again, “No.”

  And thanks for joining us, Clyde. I think the ability to read at any time is going to seriously damage his social skills.

  “So?” Coleman examines his corpulent fingers. “You didn’t get the papers I sent you for.” One finger up. “You didn’t capture the Russians.” Another finger. “And you told unauthorized individuals about military secrets.” The third finger. “What do you do for an encore, Wallace, fuck my daughter?”

  He steps forward on the last. A schoolboy bully. But if he wants me to kowtow, Coleman’s going to have to try harder.

  “George,” Felicity interjects into the tense little space between us, “you don’t have a daughter.”

  Coleman flaps a hand at her. “It’s an expression, Felicity,” he says.

  Only I call her Felicity.

  “Well?” Coleman shoves his finger at me. “What do you have to say for yourself? What mitigating circumstances permitted such a colossal fuck up?”

  I stare at that finger. Not exactly the scariest thing that’s been pointed at me today.

  “Where exactly were you during the mission?” I ask. “What support did you provide?” I will not be intimidated by him.

  Coleman’s cheeks go beet red. “Mission?” he spits. “Mission? It was a request to go to the fucking library, Wallace. I asked you to get a book out. I didn’t think you’d need an armed guard. Next time I’ll just send my goddamn grandmother.”

  “We were attacked,” I enunciate clearly, “by two Russian wizards. They ambushed us. And we killed one of them.”

  I’d not usually use the death of another human being as demonstration of a victory. No matter what someone does, killing them always seems a little extreme. But Coleman is pushing me to an edge here.

  “Yes!” Coleman says. “You even let the retarded treeman stomp on our one potential witness. I mean, bravo, Wallace. A real clean sweep of fuck ups.” He turns his back on me.

  I throw up my hands. “Is there even a point to this?” And I know the point, I’ve seen this before on wildlife documentaries. This is a pissing match. Establishing patterns of dominance. Coleman wants us all to recognize him as an alpha dog. Big man on campus. And I am far from an alpha male, but that doesn’t mean I want Coleman pissing on my lawn.

  He wheels round. “What’s that?” he barks.

  “I said,” I speak slowly, and instead of looking at him, I look at Felicity, “is there a point to all this?”

  Coleman approaches me slowly, predato
ry. And I get to take note of the fact that, while he is getting heavy at his waistline, he is a larger man than me. He invades my personal space, fills it with his bulk.

  “How do you think you’d fare, Agent Wallace,” Coleman asks, “against one of the Russians on your own?” There is a bite beyond conversational to his tone now.

  “You mean without the wonderful support you provided today?” I’m not going down without swinging a few conversational punches of my own.

  “From what I gather,” Coleman continues ignoring my defiance, “you did pretty much zippo to actually defend yourself. Your country. Faffed around a bit. Pulled your gun. Shot a tree. Lost your gun. Without a bunch of untrained, unprofessional, un...” he spits and froths, “...idiots, you would have died.”

  Another sneer. “But on your own, Wallace, would you contribute anything other than a few pints of blood to a fight?”

  And he does, unfortunately, have a point. Combat is hardly my field of expertise. It’s worked out so far, but it’s because I am with surprisingly competent people, like Clyde, and Kayla, and Felicity, and Malcolm West from the Weekenders.

  “We won today,” I say, refusing to go down under one conversational punch.

  “I think you’re dead weight, Wallace,” Coleman spits. “You’re not a leader. Not a fighter. Not a researcher. You know only jack and shit. You bring us nothing. And if you don’t find something soon, Wallace,” my name has become an insult, “if you’re not a team player, if you can’t keep your mouth shut around civilians, if you so much as utter a word to those idiot Weekenders again, if you don’t shape up, Wallace, then alone is exactly how you’ll find yourself. In the dark. Cut off. With no one to help you when the bogeymen come knocking.” He peers in close once more. Voice barely audible even to me. “And I think I know exactly how that’ll go,” he says. “And you do too.” He turns his back. “You pathetic excuse for an agent.”

  And screw him. I want to hit him. To feel his nose break. God knows if I could break his nose, but God I’d love to feel it. Except he’s pulling rank. He’s saying he could fire me. And there’s a chance he could. Jesus, there’s a chance that most of what he’s saying is even true. I mean, I certainly didn’t kill anyone today. And I basically let Clyde run the mission. But to deliver the news like such a complete jackass. No, I will not stand for that.

  “We’ll see,” I say, “who’s standing at the end of this.”

  Coleman laughs. An ugly laugh. Too confident for my liking too.

  And nothing from the peanut gallery. Clyde, still blank and silent. Too close to a meat statue for real comfort. Kayla, disconnected. Tabitha pissed at both of us for wasting her time. And nothing from Felicity. No leaping to my defense. No putting Coleman in his place.

  And then: “What…” A voice breaks the thunderous silence, then trails away. We all turn to stare.

  Devon seems to suddenly grow very small indeed. She clears her throat. Then she looks at me, and swallows, and says, “Well, I mean, I realize, you know, new girl on the team. Not completely up to speed on everything. Still wrapping my head around the infinite realities part of the day. But, well, that bit, where Arthur mentioned the time magic. Well, it rather… You know, you’ll be cooking scones and spam, for example. Well, maybe you don’t, but I do, and say I am, for example, of course, but there you are, elbow deep in dough and spam grease and time is just whipping by you, half the day gone in a blink. And then there’s ten minutes until ‘Whose Line Is It Anyway’ and suddenly that takes up the second half of the day. And, well, I suppose my point is, in a roundabout sort of way, that time is a slippery little chap, like some sort of pixie, or elf. At least that’s how I’ve always imagined him. But yes, doesn’t that make sense? The bit that Arthur said? About the time magic? I rather thought, you know, now that apparently I live in a world with zombie T-Rexes that that sort of all added up a bit. Maybe.”

  I want to run across the room and hug Devon and kiss her dimpled cheek and pump her hand like an oil prospector dredging up the last gallon from his well.

  But, well, public decorum.

  Kayla pats Devon on the arm in another very un-Kayla-like moment, which shows that she must have woken up at some point.

  “Ha!” Coleman brays a phlegmy half-laugh. Devon sinks further into her chair.

  “I say,” he booms at Devon, wiping froth from his mustache, “I rather think it’d be a better use of that pretty face of yours to try and convince me to buy you dinner than it would be to try and convince me this prick is even halfway right about anything.”

  The silence is thunderous. The sound of a momentous and collective, “what the hell?”

  Did Coleman just… Did he seriously just proposition Devon in the middle of all this?

  She turns first red then almost purple. Then confusion wins out over embarrassment and rage. “What?” she says. “I just… what?”

  And then, out of nowhere—the icicle making its triumphant return from hell—Kayla steps forward and says, in no uncertain terms, “You better mind your feckin’ manners.”

  Better men than Coleman—a term which, admittedly, encompasses all men throughout space and time—have tried to stand up to Kayla and failed.

  “I—” he starts. He puffs out his cheeks.

  Kayla narrows her eyes. “I’ll have no more of it.”

  And I don’t understand. And I have misread Kayla before, almost to the detriment of the entire world, but I have never seen this from her. Such defensiveness. Such loyalty. Almost… mothering.

  Oh…

  Oh, that I have seen after all. Except her girls…

  Oh, that’s not going to work out well at all.

  Coleman opens and shuts his mouth at Kayla. He runs his hands down the lapels of his jacket. And then, he turns on his heel and stomps towards the door. “That’ll be all then.”

  He opens the door. Pauses. “Oh, and tomorrow,” he says over his shoulder, “we’ll be relocating to London.”Another round of silence and bewilderment.

  “Wait,” Felicity finally pushes away from the wall. “We’ll do what, George?”

  “London, Felicity. I’m sure you heard me.” Coleman doesn’t even bother turning around. I can still see the bright spots of red on his cheeks, though.

  “Russians are there. Obviously,” he says. “We should be there. Obviously. And there’s free space at MI6. I’ve already made the arrangements. Pack up. Tonight. Shouldn’t take long considering the state of this shithole.”

  And then he’s gone, through the door, leaving confusion and outrage behind him.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Fifteen minutes later, in Felicity’s office

  “You know, Arthur,” says Felicity, “it is generally considered unseemly for a man in his thirties to sulk.”

  The look I give Felicity is not a charitable one. I feel more worked over and bruised from the encounter with Coleman than I do from the one with the Russians.

  “Come on,” she says. She carefully lifts an orchid off one of the shelves that line her office and places it into a cardboard box. “Work’s over. Get it off your chest.”

  But now is not the time. Now whatever I say will be confused, and mixed up with other unfair emotions. Really the best thing to do is to hold my tongue and wait until I’ve calmed down a bit.

  So I say, “Is that how it is then? We turn off the relationship from nine to five. Then, oh wait, time to head home, let’s be friends again?”

  Not my finest moment of heeding my own advice.

  Shaw shakes her head and unclips a daylight lamp from the shelf. “We spoke about this, Arthur. I’m your friend. Your,” she pauses over the next word, “girlfriend. But I’m your boss too. We can joke, and laugh, and shoot monsters in the face, but in the end I have responsibilities to my position here. You have responsibilities to your own. The fate of the world. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These are not little things, Arthur. They’re not things lightly set aside. So, when we’re at work, I am going to
put that first when I have to. Only when I have to. But I will. That’s going to be part of this.”

  She is calm and collected, reasonable and rational. It makes me less so.

  “Oh,” I say, dumping a stack of folders into a box with an unceremonious crash, “so sitting by and watching Coleman treat me like his new favorite pinãta was a responsibility that came first? I see now.”

  And part of me knows that I’m acting like a prick, but unfortunately it’s not a big enough part.

  “Coleman is really not worth it, Arthur. He’s really not.”

  “You’re not the one whose ass he’s riding.”

  She looks away at that. I smell blood in the water.

  “One word,” I say. “Just one of support, would have been nice.”

  “He was right, Arthur,” she snaps. She turns to look at me, holding her orchid, a beautiful complex architecture of purple petals. “He was right.”

  And that shuts me up.

  “He may have been a jackass about it. But you screwed this one up.”

  I’m holding more folders. I slowly lower them into the box and don’t stand up. Just sit and let that sink in.

  “We won,” I say. But the enthusiasm has been kicked out of my defiance.

  “The Russian got away with the papers.” Felicity shrugs. “That’s not a victory.”

  I stare at the floor. It’s much harder to fight back when someone is being so nice about letting you know how much you screwed up.

  “Come on,” Felicity says. “It’s not like I haven’t had to chew you out for failed missions.” Her voice is softer now, her expression softer, the shadows of her face deep as she unplugs another daylight lamp. “They come with the territory. This is hard work and there’s little margin for failure. And you’re up against hard odds. Though I should say, talking to the Weekenders was totally on your own head. That was completely within your control.”

  “They’re good people,” I say. Still stubborn.

  “Good people is not the same as competent people, Arthur.”

  Except I really hope it is.