by Paul Meloy
She reached for the hatchet in her belt and withdrew it.
And then, from the van, a shout, and a mighty thump, and all the spiders fell suddenly dead.
THE DOOR IN the side of the van slid open and the man stepped out. He was short and stocky and looked old and tired. His hair was white and thin and his face was tilled from decades of worry and concern. He trod through a drift of dead spiders, his boots kicking them aside. When he trod on one it snapped and broke into shards, its body already hardening and rotting away. He went around to the rear of the vehicle and opened a hatch. Chloe watched from inside the shop as he ducked down and worked on something. She heard him grunt and he emerged holding a metal cylinder, dull grey and heavy looking. The man straightened up and stretched, looking up at the sky and arching his back.
And then he closed the hatch with the heel of his boot and turned and walked over to the hardware store.
Chloe stumbled away from the window and raised the hatchet.
The man stopped outside and knocked once on the door.
The hatchet trembled in Chloe’s fist.
“Chloe,” the man said. “Chloe, my name is Babur. I’m coming in.”
THE DOOR OPENED and the man stepped inside.
Chloe stayed where she was, backside pressed against the counter, hatchet raised. The man closed the door and turned to face her.
“I need you to do something for me, Chloe,” he said.
Chloe stared. She realised her mouth was hanging open so she closed it, aware of how dry her lips had become.
The man held up the metal cylinder.
“This is an alternator. Look at it and say the word, please.”
Chloe looked at the cylinder and then at the man’s face. There was a tired patience etched there. And kindness, she discerned in the set of his features.
“Alternator,” she said in a whisper.
“Excellent,” he said. “Now, I’m going to walk past you and go into the store room behind the shop. You might want to cover your ears.” He smiled.
Chloe lowered the hatchet and stepped aside. She was smiling too now, suddenly at ease with this fellow—Babur—who edged past her and went to the door at the rear of the shop. He opened the door and Chloe was immediately assaulted with the inexhaustible delight of a million new things crowding her, trying to slip their meanings and their purposes into her mind. She put her hands over her ears and shut her eyes.
Babur went into the storeroom and shut the door. A moment later he was back in the shop, a brand new, shiny alternator clutched in his hand.
“Won’t be long,” he said, and he went outside and opened up the back of his van and got on with replacing the alternator while Chloe watched from the doorway.
When he had finished, Babur straightened up and wiped his hands on the legs of his trousers. He closed the hatch and strolled over to Chloe.
He held out a hand.
Chloe looked at it and raised her eyebrows.
Babur grinned and patted Chloe on the shoulder. Chloe experienced a sudden rush of emotion, intense and lovely, at the contact. She grabbed Babur and hugged him.
Babur stumbled out of her embrace, laughing. He held up his hands.
“Steady, girl. We’ve only just met,” he said.
Chloe laughed, still trembling with the thrill of her first human contact.
“Are you okay?” Babur asked.
Chloe nodded, a little breathless. “Shit!” she said.
THEY SAT ON stools at the counter in the hardware store.
“That noise you heard earlier was a modified electro-magnetic pulse,” Babur said. “It stops those things dead but it plays havoc with the alternator in my van. It’s a machine designed and fitted by a young man named Robin Knox. He was a clever boy.”
Chloe let the information settle. She was getting used to the process; the words went in, made connections, threw up images and impressions. She was learning at an exponential rate. For example: tenses.
“Was?” she said.
Babur nodded, his eyes suddenly bright with emotion. “He saved my life.”
BABUR LIES BROKEN in the doorway of a derelict shop in the plaza on the Invidisham-next-the-Sea estate. He watches as the transit van reverses into the rippling, golden Gantry split open in the air in the middle of the plaza and rams its back end into the tentacled beast emerging from within.
The men have found the child, thank God. Now he is safe with his father in that horrible public house, The Macebearer, on the corner of the plaza, but these two, Mick and Frank, are warring with this thing, attempting to finish it off and close the Gantry.
Babur can feel the blood flowing from the wound in his side, a fatal gash dealt from a razored, lashing limb that has thrown him clear across the square. He groans. His vision is fading with each pulse of blood. He is laying in a pool of it, thick as fat. He can smell it even above the pestilential stink of the cockroaches and urine in the doorway of this dead shop.
There is an explosion. A great geyser of fire thunders up through the atrium, obliterating the Gantry and those monsters within. He sinks back into the drifted filth in the corner of the doorway and waits for death.
As the smoke clears he hears a new sound. It is the sound of an engine. He opens his eyes and through the entrance to the plaza comes a Volkswagen camper van. It is covered in antennae. It has its headlights on and they cast misty cones of luminescence across the plaza as it trundles beneath the archway. Babur squints as the light washes across the doorway.
The van stops and a man gets out. He is backlit by the headlights as he walks over so Babur cannot make out his features or ascertain his age.
The man kneels. Now Babur can see that it is a young man, no more than twenty-five.
“Can you get up?” the young man asks.
Babur wouldn’t have thought so a moment ago, but he draws on a resource of strength and will that has served him well over the years—a dogged grit borne of experience, temperament and sheer cussedness—and grips the man’s forearm and pulls himself into a sitting position. Blood begins to flow again and he shuts his eyes as white spots dance in his vision, drifting flakes of encroaching death he knows. Death is not blackness, but a sudden sweep of white, high-octane light, and you’re away, gone. It’s not so bad, he thinks. There’s pain but there’ll be an end to that with the great wave.
The young man is shaking him.
“Come on!” he says.
Babur struggles awake again. Now the boy - he really is no more than a boy - is pulling him to his feet.
Babur stands, leaning almost his entire weight against the other. His legs are bandy, wobbling.
The boy helps him over to the van and they climb up into the furnished interior. Babur groans again and sinks down onto a bed pulled out at the back of the vehicle.
“Son,” he whispers. “What is your name?”
The boy is already climbing into the driver’s seat. He looks back.
“Robin,” he says. He sits down and starts the engine. As he swings the van around they pass the withering, smoking remains of the beast from the slot, and the grey, still burning shell of the Transit van. The headlights pick out something lurching towards the front of the camper and Robin brakes sharply.
“Is it human?” Babur asks. He can see the head and shoulders of it approaching the front of the cab. It is indistinct, caped by swirling drifts of smoke.
“Not any more,” Robin says and guns the engine.
“Then drive through it,” Babur says and slumps back against the pillows as Robin accelerates and ploughs into the thing in their path. It disappears beneath the front end of the van and they both feel the judder as the wheels pass over it.
They see more of the creatures as they drive through the estate. They look lost, aimless, drawn by the Gantry that had opened in the plaza, transformed by its power into grotesques, bestial phenotypes of their own inner corruption; now the Gantry is closed and the child taken, they are purposeless. As Babur watches, s
ome fall where they stand and begin a rapid dissolution, melting or fracturing or rotting away.
They drive on, negotiating the thinning debris of fallen monsters until they leave the estate and turn onto the main road out of town.
When they have travelled about a mile Robin pulls into a layby so that he can tend Babur’s wounds. He has dressings, antiseptic and bandages, which he applies with a field medic’s skill, and a vial of oramorph that he makes Babur swallow. He withdraws a syringe and prepares a dose of antibiotic, which he injects into Babur’s forearm. He hardly speaks as he works, just to ask compliance at intervals and explain what he is doing. Babur watches through a haze, the oramorph starting to kick in after about ten minutes.
When he has finished, Robin washes his hands at the tiny sink and puts a blanket over Babur.
“What now?” Babur asks.
“We go to Dartford,” Robin says. “The others have left with the child and are on their way there. There’s a safe house there. That thing that opened in the plaza? There are more coming. Bigger. They want to destroy us all. You’ll be safe with us.”
Robin climbs back into the cab and they drive off. On the way, Babur sleeps, and although it is good, healing sleep, he falls into it with reluctance. He had wanted to know more, a lot more.
“YAK ROZ DIDI dost, roze dega didi bradar.”
“What?” said Chloe.
Babur focused on Chloe’s face again. “Sorry,” he said. “‘The first day you see a friend, the next day you see a brother.’ It’s an Afghan proverb. I only knew Robin for a couple of days but he was very special.” Babur smiled. “And now we know that your mother doesn’t speak Afghan, which despite being an educated woman, I’m sure, is of no great surprise. But it proves something you might be interested in.”
Chloe was giving Babur a strange look. Babur laughed.
“This place, all of it, the town, the mountains, these shops, you made them and your mother fills them. She can only fill it with what she knows, but it’s enough for you to draw on.” Chloe was nodding but she was feeling light-headed. Babur reached out and put a hand on her arm. Again, Chloe felt a warm rush of tenderness and the colour came back to her face.
“You haven’t been born yet, Chloe. You’re just a baby in your mother’s womb. But you are very powerful and very precious. This place is your Quay and it’s supposed to be safe but unfortunately it’s not quite as safe as it should be. Something wants to hurt you and it wants to take what you have.”
“Why?”
Babur sighed. “You’re the Escape Wheel, Chloe. You’re the most essential part of the Night Clock, and without you it cannot be wound.”
Chloe’s eyelids began to flutter and she swayed on her stool. Babur caught her in his arms as she fell.
“WHAT... IS... THE... what is the Night Clock?”
Chloe opened her eyes. Babur was kneeling by her side.
“You’ve been saying that for about five minutes,” he said.
Chloe sat up. Babur helped her and together they sat with their backs against the counter.
“Robin told me things,” Babur said. “So much in such a short while, while I was recovering. It terrifies me.”
“I’m not scared,” Chloe said.
Babur led his chin drop to his chest. He closed his eyes.
“The Night Clock is not an object. It is what happens when enough of you come together. There are ten of you now and that is the smallest number possible for the Night Clock to function. Any fewer and it is lost to you, you forfeit certain celestial rights. If it is lost you lose control of Dark Time and there are no more dreams. Without dreams there is madness, chaos. You are a Firmament Surgeon. Others I met when I was recovering. There is a force that wants to destroy you so it can bring in an age of despair. They are Autoscopes and they were once like you. Imagine what dreams men had in early times. With so many of you in concert, Dark Time flowed like rivers. Now it is a trickle. Dreams are weak, dreamers are weak. The Night Clock is a sundial now, whereas once it was housed in a terrible tower swarming with wheels, thundering its hours out through the universe, its chimes winding galaxies.”
“Each of you have remnants of the Night Clock in your Quays. Reminders, symbols, mechanisms. You have been scattered, killed, some reborn in time, others lost. The Autoscopes are strong now. So strong. You have all forgotten your highest calling, your first estate. It was Robin who put the theory back together and it was Jon Index who started calling you all. If he can start the Night Clock running again, he can destroy the Autoscopes.”
“What do I do?” Chloe asked.
Babur took her hand. His felt warm and rough, and strong as she held it. “You keep yourself safe, girl. Stay off the roads at night. We will watch over you until it is time for you to be born.”
“When?”
“Not long now,” Babur said. “But you must know, your mother has been gravely hurt. She will survive, but she is weak.”
“Where is she?”
“Index has taken her to one of the Quays. Your kind are gathering there, and your Paladins. He is preparing for the last winding of the Night Clock.”
THEY SAT TOGETHER for another hour. Chloe rested her head against Babur’s shoulder and let her mind drift. A part of her wanted to kick open that door in the back of the shop and run inside, revelling in the knowledge her mother could give her, but she was also aware that might be dangerous, too much of a distraction. What if she was overwhelmed? Or learned something terrible? Could her mother keep secrets from her or was it all fair game? Chloe considered that it was better to take what she needed rather than go blundering through her mother’s mind and memory, greedy for information. Instead, she asked Babur to tell her about himself.
Babur shifted against her and reached into his inside jacket pocket. He took out a photograph. It was old, and faded and in black and white. There were creases that made white cracks across the picture. It showed four young men leaning against an army vehicle. They were in uniform and they were all smiling for the camera.
“That’s me, second from the left,” Babur said. “We’ve just appropriated that BMP1 armoured personnel vehicle from the Russians during the Soviet War. I was a soldier, and when the war was over I came to England to start a better life.”
“Was it better?”
“In some ways,” Babur said. “In some ways, not. But here I am anyway, still fighting. And I like my new vehicle more.”
“Was it Robin’s?”
“He fitted it out with weapons and detectors. That modified EMP was something he designed to knock out the creatures the Autoscopes sent against us. Those antennae are calibrated to pick up their vibrations. He showed me how to use them but I really have no idea how they work. The Autoscopes take light from peoples’ nightmares, nihillumination they call it, and use it as fuel for their monsters. Its foul and polluting and hurts the eyes. It lights up corners in minds that should remain in darkness. Before he left with the others to rescue your mother from the killer they sent for her, Robin opened a Gantry for me. He sent me through in the camper with instructions to find you and explain what you needed to know to keep you safe. But I think something went wrong. Or if not wrong, there was definitely trouble and I fear Robin was a casualty of the battle.”
“How do you know?”
Babur put his photo back in his pocket. “I’ll show you,” he said, “Come on.” He stood up and dusted his backside off. He held out a hand and helped Chloe to her feet.
They went outside and Babur took Chloe over to the camper. He slid open the door in its side and they stepped up. Chloe was immediately impressed with the decor. Plush purple carpet and curtains and a soft bench seat covered in silky red cushions. There was a sink and a cooker and a small fridge and lots of tiny cupboards. She noticed Babur was watching her, his eyebrows raised.
“I like it,” she said. “Cozy.”
Babur huffed. “This is my war machine,” he said.
“I live in a cave,” Chloe said.
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“Point taken.” Babur knelt and pulled a drawer from beneath the sink. It revealed a panel of glowing bulbs. Only ten were lit. He looked up at Chloe. She was biting her lip.
“A light for each of you who remain. I can track you through your Quays. When you’re there, they flash. It’s calibrated to the resonance of your Gantries. Look, that’s Index’s flashing. That’s yours. You’re home.”
“Why are the others off?”
“It means they’re gone.” He pointed to one of the unlit bulbs. “That was Robin’s.”
“Gone where?”
Babur stood, stooped slightly beneath the low, curved roof of the camper. “When you’re flesh and blood you can be killed. It depends on where you die. If you’re killed in the waking world then you have a chance to be reborn or reside solely in the Quays. If you die in your Quay then it seems you go back to the ether. Job done. You’re as eternal as any spirit but there is a limit to your power. You’re not God.”
Chloe was still looking at the panel. “Look at that,” she said.
Babur glanced down.
Another light had started flashing.
“Who’s that?”
For a moment, Babur looked stunned. He stood in silence with his brow furrowed. Then he said, “That, I believe, is Daniel.”
Chloe felt a thrill of excitement, but then she noticed Babur’s expression. “What is it?”
Babur looked into her eyes.
“Okay, Chloe, I need to go now.”
Chloe’s eyes widened. “Because of him?” She pointed at the newly lit bulb.
“Yes. According to Robin, Daniel has been missing for a long time, but Index has been looking for him. If he’s in his Quay he might be disoriented. He might be open to deception. I have to go and find him and then bring him here. He’ll be looking for you anyway.”