Bad Timing

by Rebecca Levene

  It was true. So many of the young men from the village were now working in Brother O'Blarney's mines that there'd been a danger the fruit would rot on the trees before it could be brought in. Even the little children, as young as six, had been taken out of their lessons to help.

  "And don't think for once second that all your efforts aren't appreciated," O'Blarney said.

  "Well...' Ladybird's father hesitated again but this time decided to plough on. "It's just, people are beginning to question. The miners are beginning to wonder..."

  "When will the processing be done?" Ladybird finished for him. "When will the ore be ready for us to use?"

  Her father glared at her, but the other villagers were looking at her with approval, glad the question had finally been asked.

  O'Blarney smiled. "The directness of youth warms the cockles of yer heart, don't it?"

  "Indeed," Ladybird's father said through gritted teeth.

  "Soon," O'Blarney finished. "Refining the ore hasn't been a piece of cake, but I've nearly cracked it."

  "So you'll be able to cure us soon?" Ladybird asked, eagerly. "We'll be normal, just like the Glass People?"

  O'Blarney smiled. More of a grin really. Slightly feral, Ladybird suddenly thought - an abrupt baring of his silver teeth. "Yeah, darling. I promise you, in less than a day you'll be in exactly the same state as them."

  There was a hum of pleasure through the room, and several of the villagers turned and hugged each other. Even Ladybird's father smiled at her. Ladybird herself felt an elation so acute it was almost painful. It really was going to happen! Very soon, she and the man she loved would be able to be together, properly, forever. She realised her hands had clenched into fists so tight that her nails were drawing blood from her palms. She felt like she had to keep them closed, to hold on to her joy, her hope, or it all might float away like mist.

  "Oi, sweetheart!" O'Blarney said, and she realised he'd been talking to her for some time.

  She smiled at him, so overflowing with gratitude she almost felt like she loved him, too. "Yes?"

  "I've got a small favour to ask you. Just a little errand that needs running. Will you do that for me, darling?"

  "I'll do anything you want," Ladybird told him. "Anything at all."

  As soon as Johnny had been able to restore some sort of order, he'd ordered the Strontium Dogs to spread out and search for O'Blarney. This time no one, not even One-Eyed Jack, questioned him taking command. They all seemed to feel the need for a little leadership. Or they were simply too hung-over to think for themselves.

  Johnny been prepared to let Jo stay at the camp, since she was clearly in no state to join in the hunt. But as she'd been clinging on to the Sloth's corpse, crying enough to flood the lake, her body had suddenly convulsed and the strange change had occurred which turned her into a him. As soon as he was in his rugged male form, Joe had pushed the other mutant's corpse from him in disgust. He'd insisted that he be allowed to join the search, that O'Blarney's disappearance was far more important than the death of a dim-witted mutant who should have known better than to fall asleep over a tree shoot. Johnny had been unable to tell if he really meant it, or if it was some kind of macho act to cover up his real feelings.

  Still, Johnny wasn't complaining. They needed every able body for the search. O'Blarney's disappearance could only mean one of two things, neither of them good: O'Blarney had allies who had sneaked his body away, or O'Blarney wasn't dead at all. When they'd spread out to search, Johnny had told everyone to keep visual contact with someone on each side. He had that twitchy feeling that told him trouble was coming.

  He'd chosen to put One-Eyed Jack to his right and Red to his left - the two people he most wanted to keep a watch on. His eyes flicked to them as often as they scanned the ground, searching for traces of O'Blarney, and gazed at the horizon, looking for the first sign of an attack. Nothing doing on any front, though.

  The air was bright with birdsong and soft with the smell of a million flowers. Dawn, as it did here every day, had brought spring back to the world. Winter itself had passed in the night. The leaves, which they had seen fall from the trees as their day progressed, had been lying on the ground in untidy red-brown heaps as they fell asleep. Now they were gone, melted away to nothing, absorbed into the ground to provide the fuel for the riot of growth which was sprouting all around them.

  The riot of growth which had killed the Sloth, Johnny quickly realised, had covered up any tracks that might have been left by whoever removed O'Blarney. It was probably hopeless, and if they searched much further they'd be separated and vulnerable.

  He ran his hand back through his hair, sighing. He was just getting ready to shout out an order to regroup when the figure of a young woman materialised in front of him.

  He recognised her immediately. It was the woman he had seen earlier, standing in front of him in the village square. There was something different about her this time, though. At first he wondered if it was her hair, which seemed longer than the last time he'd seen her, or even her face, which was beginning to lose the puppy fat of youth. Then he realised, and as soon as he did his finger tightened on the trigger of his blaster and he carefully centred the barrel on her chest.

  There was nothing blurred about her. No subliminal sense of movement. She was there. She was really there, in the same time frame as him. As he watched her, she blushed under his scrutiny and ducked her head as if trying to hide her face from him.

  "Hello," she said, and this time he could understand her perfectly. "I'm Ladybird." Her voice was light, slightly breathless. She sounded nervous.

  Johnny relaxed his finger slightly but didn't lower the gun. "Alpha," he said. "Johnny Alpha."

  She smiled, shyly. "That's a funny name."

  Johnny relaxed even further. Whatever this girl was, he was damn sure she was no threat. "Yeah, shame I don't have a normal name like yours," he said dryly.

  Her expression fell. Johnny realised, alarmed, that she was on the point of tears. "You think my name's strange?"

  "Your name's just fine," he said hurriedly.

  She smiled sunnily again, all hint of tears gone. "I think your name's wonderful," she told him. "I knew it would be."

  Johnny frowned. "You know me?"

  She nodded eagerly and moved closer, closer than Johnny was comfortable with. "Oh yes, I've been following you."

  Johnny's finger tightened unconsciously on the trigger, and he stepped back. "Who told you to do that? Who asked you to spy on us?"

  Ladybird looked hurt and tearful again. "No one. I'd never do anything to hurt you, Johnny. I love you."

  "You what?" Johnny felt like he was having half of an entirely different conversation to the one she was holding.

  But the young woman wasn't deterred by his tone. She stepped up to him, rested her hands against his chest, and leaned forward so that their lips were almost touching and he could smell a faint odour of mint tea on her breath. "I love you. I want to be with you for the rest of our lives." Then she pressed her lips against his and kissed him.

  For a moment, Johnny was too shocked to know what to do. Then he grabbed her arms, pulling them away from his body and tore his lips away from her mouth. "Look, girl, I don't know who you think I am, but you don't know me, and you sure as hell don't love me."

  The girl did start crying now, big fat tears that slid down her cheeks and dripped from her chin onto her light, flowery dress. "This isn't how it's supposed to go!" she said. "I've waited a whole year to speak to you, and now you're acting like you don't even know me!"

  Johnny let go of her hands and stepped back, eyes narrowed. "Yeah, and how exactly are you speaking to me? Last time we met you were in a whole other time frame."

  Ladybird shrugged, swiping the tears impatiently away from her eyes. "The chronite. I've only got a little bit, and until Brother O'Blarney works out how to refine it, it only lasts-"

  Johnny grabbed her arm again, gripping tight enough to hurt. He saw her face screw
up in pain but he didn't care. "You know O'Blarney?"

  "Yes," Ladybird said. "Brother O'Blarney's our friend. He's trying to cure us."

  Johnny shook her, trying to shake some sense into her, or some answers out of her. "Is he still alive?"

  She nodded, a look of fear on her face.

  "Where is he? Was it you who took him?"

  Ladybird struggled to get away, but Johnny was too strong. "Let me go - you're hurting me!"

  "I'll let you go when I've got some answers," Johnny growled, ignoring her feeble attempts to claw his fingers away from her arm.

  "Fine," she said. "Come back to the village with me and I'll explain everything. And then tomorrow we can get married."

  "Married?" Johnny said incredulously, feeling the conversation slipping away from him again.

  The young woman stared at him with big, pleading eyes. "I know this seems quick to you," she said. "I'm not mad or anything. But to me it's been a year. I know you're the one for me. This isn't just some stupid teenage crush, I'm nearly nineteen. If you come back to the village I can get some more chronite and you can get to know me too and then you'll see that we're made for each other." She smiled winningly at him, as if sure that she'd just won the argument.

  Johnny released her arm and stepped back. "Look..." he said, then paused, really not sure how to go on. Give him a battle, put him against an enemy, and he knew what to do and didn't hesitate to do it. But this... "Listen," he continued after a moment. "I can't come with you. I've got a job to do. I don't know what you think O'Blarney is, but he's a killer and he's no friend to anyone but himself."

  "You're wrong!" Ladybird said fiercely. "O'Blarney loves us. And I love you!" She stamped her foot, like a child having a tantrum. "Oh! Why won't you listen to me? Why won't you just come with me?"

  Johnny's attention was suddenly caught by a flicker of movement to his left. He snapped his head and gun around, only to see that it was Red. He guessed she must have heard the sound of Johnny's argument with Ladybird, and was heading towards them, her own gun drawn. Johnny help up his hand, motioning her to stop. He didn't feel in any danger from Ladybird, and he didn't think Red joining the conversation was going to help any.

  Once he saw that Red had halted - though she continued to look at him with a puzzled, and slightly suspicious expression - he turned back to Ladybird.

  "I can't-" he began. And then he realised that she was gone. He spun round, searching the surrounding bushes for any sign of her, but she seemed to have vanished like a wraith into thin air.

  "Sneck!" he muttered, angry with himself for letting her go, for frightening off the one person who might have been able to lead him to O'Blarney. Now she was gone he knew exactly what he should have said to her, how he should have played along with her strange fantasies about him until he'd got all the information out of her that he wanted. He'd messed up. But who could blame him? Why did women have to be so emotional and so damned unreasonable?

  Thinking of which, he turned back to Red, wanting to explain what had happened, so see if she could make any more sense of it than he had.

  Except that she, too, had gone.

  He ran to where he had last seen her, gun drawn, pulse racing, but she had disappeared as completely as Ladybird and far less explicably.

  14 / WHEN GOOD LOVE TURNS BAD

  Red, it quickly became apparent, really was gone. Johnny scanned the horizon, pulsing out alpha rays in every direction, trying to pick up any trace of her, any lingering hint of her mind, the focussed, predatory energy of it that Johnny had come to know so well over the course of their missions together. But there was nothing. The rapidly heating mid-morning air was stirred only by a breath of breeze, and it carried no noises on it save for the cawing of the gulls which flew invisibly fast round the lake's shore. Even the lake itself, nearly a kilometre behind Johnny, seemed oppressively silent and still. Untroubled from this distance by even a hint of a ripple, it looked like it had been painted onto the surrounding landscape, a broad stroke of blue in the prevailing muddy browns and greens.

  "There a problem here?" a voice suddenly said at his shoulder, and he realised that One-Eyed Jack had loped over to join him.

  He thought for a moment about covering up, but what was the point? If Red really had taken off, then One-Eyed Jack would find out soon enough. "Red's gone," he said.

  One-Eyed Jack stared at him in silence for a moment. His jaw worked, chewing a wad of tobacco and then spitting out the juices. "So, now we know who took O'Blarney out from under our noses."

  Johnny shook his head. "We can't be sure about that."

  The other mutant scratched a hand through the stubble on his chin. "Sure, and we can't be sure the sun is gonna rise tomorrow, but we can take a damn good guess."

  Johnny would have argued further, but he had to admit that Red's disappearance did look as suspicious as hell. And it wasn't like he hadn't been harbouring a few doubts of his own about her ever since they'd landed on the planet. Still, there was something about her disappearance that didn't sit quite right in his mind. If she had indeed spirited O'Blarney's body away from the compound - presumably in conjunction with Ladybird's people - then why had she come back afterwards? Why risk being caught? Unless, of course, there was something else she had wanted to do, some other havoc she intended to wreak before she left for good. In which case...

  Johnny holstered his blaster and turned back towards the camp. "We'd better regroup," he said to One-Eyed Jack. "We ain't gonna find anything and wandering around out here just makes us easy targets."

  One-Eyed Jack nodded, and without needing to be asked set out in the opposite direction to help round up the remaining members of Team X. Johnny in turn picked up Middenface and the Blimp. They came together at their old campsite.

  For a second, it shook Johnny to see the large, bleached white skeleton sitting in the centre of the camp. After a moment, though, he realised that it was all that remained of the Sloth after the planet's native scavengers had had a clear hour to work on him. Growing up through the skeleton's ribcage was a silver-barked tree. The ground was covered in the confetti of pink, sweet-smelling petals which had fallen from its branches.

  Johnny felt a twinge of regret that the big, gentle mutant was gone, but found it easy enough to put to one side. He'd lost so many comrades over the years, as each one fell he'd come to care that little bit less. And if that made him seem hard - well, it was either that or go insane with grief, and where was the profit in that?

  Woman Man, he saw, stared at the remains with horror, frozen on the spot for a second. Then he swallowed visibly and sat as far away from it as possible. Min Qi Man's reaction was more muted, his face giving little away, but Johnny saw him flinch when a petal from the tree floated down to land on his arm. Enigma looked more angry than upset, glaring at the tree as if holding it personally responsible for all their troubles. Only the Blimp seemed unbothered, positioning herself in the tree's shade and piling up the fallen petals into a soft seat to cushion her now considerable bulk.

  "Well," Johnny said when they were all seated. "Looks like we've got ourselves a problem."

  Enigma flicked a glance round all the faces, then back at Johnny. Her forehead creased in a puzzled frown. "Where's Durham Red?"

  Johnny nodded. "Yep, that's the problem."

  "Ye're nae telling me she's goan and run off?" Middenface said.

  "Sure seems that way," One-Eyed Jack said.

  "We don't know what happened," Johnny corrected. "One minute she was there, the next - gone."

  "Well," the Blimp said, "I don't like to speak ill of the absent, but it seems highly suspicious that she'd just happen to up and leave when everything's started to go wrong round here."

  Middenface nodded. "The wee lassie's right."

  Joe was scowling, and Johnny could see that one of his hands was mindlessly pulling grass out of the ground around him, leaving him marooned in a patch of bare earth. "If she killed the Sloth I'm gonna rip off her head
and spit down her neck!"

  Johnny leaned forward, staring into the other man's eyes, hoping to get through to him. "Nobody suggested the Sloth dying was anything but an accident. And we can't afford to go running off chasing phantoms or looking for revenge. We've got more important things to be worrying about."

  "More important than one of our friends being killed?" Enigma said angrily.

  "Yeah," Johnny said, "more important than that."

  Min Qi Man's head snapped up and for the first time Johnny saw an expression like anger in his eyes. "Must the metal grow cold in order to become hard?"

  Johnny smiled wryly, getting his meaning, agreeing even, but Middenface leapt to his defence. "Hold yer wheesht!" he snapped at the small mutant. "Johnny kens what he's talkin' aboot."

  "So," One-Eyed Jack drawled, "what are you talking about?"

  "I'm talking about O'Blarney."

  One-Eyed Jack's one good eye widened, then narrowed. "You're saying he's alive?"

  Johnny nodded. "Alive and well and up to no good whatsoever."

  "How do we know that's true?" Enigma demanded. "How do we know it wasn't you who took O'Blarney's body away?"

  Middenface looked at her with contempt. "And why would Johnny do that?"

  It was clear Enigma hadn't thought that far.

  "I didn't take O'Blarney's body," Johnny said, "but I can tell you who did, or at least who was behind it. The people from that village."

  "How can you possibly know that?" the Blimp demanded.

  Johnny ran a hand wearily back through his disordered curls. "Because one of them told me."

  "You spoke to one of them?" Joe jumped on his words like a dog latching onto a fresh bone. "When? How?"

  "A few minutes ago," Johnny replied. "But the second one's the important question. 'Cause I think the answer could cause us a whole heap of bother."

  "So, what is the answer?" Enigma demanded impatiently.

  Johnny looked round at his companions' faces. They looked, tense, angry even, and several of them were glaring at him with undisguised dislike. Good. Better that than the lost, scared look they had held straight after the discovery of The Sloth's body. "The answer's chronite," Johnny told them. "O'Blarney's got them mining it from the mountains. I'd guess it must be ground zero of the time bomb strike up there. The chronite's formed by the fallout from the blast."