Second Lives

by Scott K. Andrews

  Jana laughed at this, and most of the group cracked grins. The tension eased slightly.

  'I wish you'd tell us, Dora,' said Quil softly.

  Dora shook her head. 'Sorry. I swore an oath.'

  'So it's not going to be as simple as just promising to go forward only,' said Jana, her frustration plain on her face. 'There are more loops to close.'

  Dora nodded. 'A few, yes,' she said.

  'So,' said Kaz.

  'So,' said Jana.

  They all turned to Quil.

  'So,' she said. 'We have to work out what we do now.'

  'Quil - the other Quil - has no idea the bubble exists,' said Kaz. 'She doesn't know we're waiting for her. As far as she's concerned she's coming here to wake up her army and finish the war. So why don't we just sit here and wait for your evil twin to arrive?'

  'Because when she does, you will see two of me for a millionth of a second, and then the superposition will collapse,' said Quil, rolling her eyes to show just how stupid she thought the question was. 'One of us of us will wink out of existence. I'd prefer not to take the chance that it will be me.'

  'Yeah, but it might not be,' said Kaz. 'It's a fifty-fifty shot. And if she vanishes, problem solved. You've been purged of the poison that made you go nuts, you know we're not your enemies. If the superposition collapses and cancels her out, leaving you, it's all sorted. We switch off the quantum bubble, you go back to your war, we go back to wherever and whenever we want to be. End of story.'

  'But what about Steve?' said Jana. 'Don't you think his interference implies that it's not that simple? I think it means that there is still some issue left to resolve.'

  'Which makes you think that I'm going to go "poof" when my other half arrives,' said Quil solemnly.

  Dora nodded. 'I think so,' she said. 'We have to assume that wThen mad Quil arrives here, friendly Quil will vanish. And we'll be back to dealing with a psychopath who wants to kill us.'

  There was a solemn silence as they digested that fact.

  'We need to get you out of here,' said Kaz curtly. 'Am I right, Professor, to think that if they cannot be seen together by anybody, the superposition will not collapse?'

  Kairos shrugged despondently. 'I think so,' he said, 'but who knows?'

  'So if we make sure you and she never meet, then you both continue to exist,' said Jana with hope in her voice.

  'It's worth a try,' said Quil. 'But . . .'

  'But what?' said Jana.

  'But you'll still be at risk from her,' said Quil.

  'Um,' said Kaz nervously as he noticed that Quil was starting to glow red. 'Guys!'

  Quil looked down at herself and stood up from her chair in alarm.

  'What's happening?' asked Dora.

  'I think we talked too much,' said Kaz, drawing his gun and pointing it at Quil.

  'Hey!' yelled Jana indignantly.

  'No, he's right,' shouted Quil as the glow around her intensified. 'I could—'

  She never finished her sentence. Everyone winced and covered their eyes as Quil was engulfed in a blinding penumbra of red light. As Sweetclover appeared beside her, the woman they had been speaking to seemed to shimmer and burn, writhing and screaming as the superposition that had split her in two collapsed, the quantum state resolved itself and the universe chose which Quil would remain.

  Sweetclover solidified and immediately backed away from the pillar of fire that was his wife. Violent winds whipped around her as if she was the eye of her own personal tornado, and there was a sound that mingled with her screams, a sort of tearing, rending noise as if reality itself were being shredded.

  'What have you done?' screamed Sweetclover, holding his hands up over his eyes and falling to his knees. 'What have you done to her?'

  The wind whipped faster, the noise increased, the fire burned brighter until there was a loud explosion and a flash of sun-bright white. Then silence and stillness and the slow returning of their vision as their eyes readjusted to the comparative gloom of the undercroft.

  - Dora was quick off the mark. She leaped forward and grabbed Sweetclover by the scruff of the neck, dragging him away from Quil. She knelt beside him and held a sword to his throat.

  Kaz and Jana both had guns trained on the blank spot in their vision where the light had blinded them, waiting for their eyesight to recover. Which version of Quil would be standing before them? And what should they do if it was the wrong one?

  Quil had fallen to the floor after the explosion and now she slowly rose to her feet. She was smoking and glowing, like metal fresh from the furnace. Her clothes had burned away, but her flesh was unharmed, so she stood naked. It was impossible to tell which version had been extinguished and which now stood before them. 'That . . . hurt . . she said as her eyes rolled back in her head and she collapsed to the floor again, unconscious.

  Henry Sweetclover was frantic.

  'What have you done?' he cried over and over. Anger, horror and sadness mixed in together as he looked at her body lying motionless. 'What have you done?'

  'Calm down, Henry,' said a voice close to his ear. Dora. 'We didn't do anything.'

  Henry didn't - couldn't - believe her. He and Quil had walked into some kind of trap and they'd killed her. If there was a tiny measure of relief inside his grief, he did not acknowledge it to himself as he wept.

  'She's alive,' he heard Kaz say. 'Too hot to touch, but her chest is moving, she's definitely breathing.'

  Henry exhaled and groaned in relief.

  'Which one is she?' asked another voice urgently. Jana.

  'Can't tell,' replied Kaz. 'She looks the same, I think.'

  'Not burned?' asked Jana.

  'No,' replied Kaz, who was swimming into focus.

  Suddenly Jana's face was right in front of his, and Henry's disorientation momentarily increased as he was confronted by an angry younger version of his wife.

  'Did she have her face fixed?' demanded Jana.

  'What?' mumbled Henry.

  'Your wife, did she have her burns sorted out,' shouted Jana. 'Plastic surgery, you know?'

  'Uh, yes,' he replied, stammering. 'Yes, yes she did.'

  Jana turned away from him. 'So it could be either of them,' she said.

  'Or an amalgam of the two, perhaps,' offered a tall older man who was nervously shifting from one foot to another at the end of what Henry could now see was a huge table.

  'What?' said Jana, angrily.

  'I don't know,' the tall man protested in a whine. 'This is all uncharted territory.'

  'We should make her comfortable,' said Dora, still close in by Henry's ear, although the sword had been removed. 'Get her downstairs into a bed. Keep her safe, but guard her. In case.'

  'Where are we?' asked Henry, blinking up at the brick ceiling, feeling as if he should know the answer to his question.

  Kaz reached down, grabbed Henry by his lapels and hauled him to his feet, bringing their faces close together and saying, through gritted teeth, 'You're home, you bastard.'

  Henry gasped as the room swam into focus. Beyond the tables and chairs was a glass wall through which he could clearly see the undercroft of Sweetclover Hall.

  'My God, what's that?' he asked as he saw a huge ball of flame hanging, frozen, above the centre of the room.

  / 'Where were you going?' asked Kaz.

  Henry forced his attention back to Kaz, who was still holding him tight by the lapels of his jacket.

  '2158,' he said. 'Ten minutes after the timebomb detonated.'

  'That explains that,' said Jana.

  Henry didn't think it explained anything. 'Does it?' he asked.

  'Anyone trying to travel to any point in time that lies past this moment gets pulled in here,' said Dora. 'It's not a trap. Not exactly.'

  She laid her hands on Kaz's as she spoke, gently getting him to release Henry. He did so, and stepped back, but the aggressive sneer remained on his face.

  Henry looked around the cellar of his home. 'I hoped I'd seen this place for t
he last time,' he said. 'I was expecting to arrive on the ridge, looking down into a smoking crater where my house had been.'

  Jana and the older man were carrying his wife out through the glass door. He wanted to run to her, but he glanced at Dora first, tacitly asking permission - he did not want to feel her blade again.

  Dora nodded and Henry ran to his wife. As he took the place of Jana, holding his wife by the shoulders, there was a loud bang and a flash of light from the centre of the undercroft. The man holding Quil's feet looked up in panic and shouted to Henry to put Quil down.

  Henry did so, confused and angry, as the man ran to a piece of mechanical apparatus that sat in the middle of the undercroft floor. It was fizzing and sparking.

  'Oh no, oh no!' cried the man, as he leaned over the device and pressed buttons.

  Dora, Kaz and Jana came running out and joined him.

  'What's the matter, Prof?' said Jana.

  'The bubble, it's destabilising,' babbled the man. 'The collapse of the superposition has thrown all the readings off, blown something in the machine. I don't think it can hold. We have to get out of here. NOW! Or we'll all be vaporised!'

  'Look!' cried Kaz, pointing to the frozen explosion that hung above them.

  At first Henry could not make out what he was supposed to be looking at, then he saw it. The fire and smoke were moving, almost imperceptibly - the ceiling was exploding very, very slowly.

  'It could go completely at any moment,' said the professor.

  The machine gave another loud bang and, as Henry watched, the explosion sped up slightly.

  The bang also had an effect on his wife, who jerked suddenly and violently on the floor, as if going into a fit. Henry knelt beside her and held her hand, frantic with worry.

  She thrashed about with her arms and he was forced to let go of her hand. Instead he reached out and grabbed her head, turning it to face his, hoping the sight of him might calm her. The panic and fear in her eyes made his blood run cold - did she not recognise him? What had they done to her?

  'My love,' he said, stroking her cheek. 'It is I, your husband. It's Hank, sweetheart.'

  Gradually her vision seemed to clear and he saw the recognition in her eyes.

  'Hank?' she whispered. 'What happened?'

  He helped her to her feet and then removed his jacket and draped it around her naked shoulders, pulling it tight and zipping it up for her.

  'I don't know,' he said, studying her face. It seemed younger to him. The faint blemishes and barely perceptible unnatural creases caused by her surgery had gone. Was this truly his wife?

  'Step away from her, Henry,' said Dora from behind him.

  Henry turned and was amazed to see Jana, Dora and Kaz all standing in a line, all holding guns aimed at his wife.

  He turned to face them and pulled Quil behind him, shielding her with his body.

  'What are you doing?' he asked, so very confused.

  'Yes,' yelled the professor from over by the smoking machine. 'What are you doing? We need to get out of here!'

  But the three young people facing Henry did not react to this entreaty. They stayed steady, guns aimed.

  'Quil!' yelled Jana, her face inexplicably screwed up in grief. 'Do you recognise this man?'

  'Of course I do,' spat his wife from behind him. 'He's my husband. What is this place? What have you done to me?'

  Jana bowed her head and Henry realised, to his amazement, that she was crying, even as she kept her gun levelled straight at him and his wife.

  'We can end this right now,' said Kaz.

  'I agree,' said Jana, looking up, her tear-streaked face a mask of fury.

  There was a beat, but Dora did not chime in as they had obviously expected her to.

  'Dora?' said Jana.

  'I don't know,' said Dora. 'This isn't what I expected.'

  'What did you expect?' yelled Jana. 'What haven't you told us?'

  Dora held Henry's gaze for a moment, and he could see that there was a question in her eyes that he couldn't answer. After a moment, she nodded.

  'Very well,' she said.

  'Please, no,' said Henry, as it dawned on him that he and Quil were standing in front of a firing squad. But he saw no pity or mercy in their eyes.

  He turned and clasped Quil tight in his arms, burying his face in her neck and squeezing his eyes closed as he waited for death.

  All the hatred that burned in Kaz's chest felt like a tight ball of fire as he aimed his gun at Henry Sweetclover's head. All he needed to do was squeeze the trigger and the people who had conspired to murder him, his friends and his mother would be gone for good.

  He began to squeeze the trigger, slowly, gently - if asked, he would have been unable to tell you whether he was hesitating out of reluctance to commit cold-blooded murder, or a desire to extend the moment of sweet revenge as long as possible.

  And then his mother burned into existence right in front of him, staring down the barrel of his gun.

  She was literally smoking, her clothes in tatters, hair wild, face streaked with soot. The smell of the Beirut car bomb washed over Kaz once more, triggering an overwhelming rush of traumatic memories that froze him, just for a second, in stunned disbelief.

  A second was all Sweetclover needed.

  He stepped forward and smoothly wrapped his arms round Peyvand, bracing one hand against her temple and the other against her neck, before stepping back to keep his wife sheltered behind him.

  'Where am I?' screamed Peyvand. 'Who is that? Kaz? Kaz?'

  Kaz realised that she could not see, her eyes still blinded by the flash of the car bomb explosion.

  She struggled in Sweetclover's grip, but he was too strong.

  'Yes, Mum, it's me,' said Kaz, lowering his gun as calmly as he was able and waving for the others to do the same.

  'Peyvand, stop struggling,' said Dora as she lowered his weapon, her voice full of firm authority.

  Kaz's mother did as she was bid, but her breathing was ragged, her eyes stared madly and she was visibly shaking.

  Another small explosion sounded through the doors.

  'We have to go. Now,' pleaded Kairos. 'The bubble is about to burst, that warhead will impact and this whole house will be destroyed.'

  Jana deposited her gun on the floor and stood upright. Kaz could see Dora doing likewise, but somehow he couldn't bring himself to lower his weapon.

  'Kaz,' said Dora, his name a warning. 'Kaz, drop the gun.'

  Kaz held his aim, breathing hard, so angry that he was shaking with it. Sweetclover met Kaz's gaze and there was a resolve in his eyes that Kaz did not doubt. He lowered his gun but, unlike his friends, he put his in his pocket. He would get his chance, sooner or later.

  Quil stepped out from behind her husband as soon as Kaz's hand was empty.

  'Kick your guns to me,' she said briskly.

  Jana and Dora did so.

  'Good,' said Quil, bending down and picking one up. 'Now finally, perhaps I can be free of you.'

  She raised her gun and pointed it to the left of Dora, who stood at the far left of the group. She pulled the trigger and a white-hot beam shot out. She swept it sideways, towards her husband's one-time servant.

  Quil was intending to kill them all.

  'No,' cried Kaz, scrabbling in his pocket for his gun.

  Perhaps it was the threat to her son, perhaps she simply regained her composure, but Peyvand screamed in rage, grabbed Sweetclover's arm and pushed it upwards, throwing off his grip, turning towards her captor and head-butting him.

  He staggered sideways, knocking into Quil and throwing her aim off.

  The upward curve of the beam sliced through Dora's hair but missed her flesh. She moved forward to intervene, as did Kaz, but before they could take a step, the struggle was over.

  Sweetclover staggered backwards away from Peyvand, his nose spraying blood . . .

  . . . Quil, unbalanced by him, lurched sideways, her gun arm going wild, trigger still depressed, beam still lancin
g out wildly . . .

  . . . cutting straight into Peyvand's shoulder with a terrible

  hiss.

  It took only a millionth of a second for the beam to slice from her clavicle through her ribs and spine and burn free through her hip.

  Peyvand gave a terrible scream that strangled off into silence as her top half slid stickily sideways and fell to the floor.

  Sweetclover was still falling backwards when Quil grabbed him and together they vanished into time with a flash of red fire.

  There was no time to react, to scream, to cry, to run. No time for anything. Time stopped.

  Literally.

  Kaz felt time slow around him as if he was an insect stuck within air that was thickening like sap into amber.

  A glow, fierce and terrible, emanated from outside the room, from the place above the bubble where the warhead of the timebomb pushed against their thin protection. The very fabric of reality seemed to warp and fold, coruscating waves of light burst across them, but their sightless eyes registered nothing.

  Then there was only noise and light and heat as the quantum bubble collapsed, the warhead slammed into the ground and Sweetclover Hall, and everything in it, was vaporised.

  The morning air was cool and crisp. The sky was blue and it buzzed with insects and birdsong as Quil and Sweetclover appeared in a flash of flame on a high ridge that looked down into a familiar valley.

  Both dressed in combat gear, carrying weapons, they looked out of place in such a rural idyll.

  'There,' said Quil, pointing down at the old house that lay about a mile away and at least a hundred metres below.

  'It has hardly changed,' said Sweetclover, holding binoculars to his eyes. 'How old is my home now?'

  Quil closed her eyes as she did the calculation. 'Five hundred and thirty-nine years.'

  'Incredible,' he breathed.

  'Up!' said Quil urgently, and Sweetclover lowered his binoculars and looked up into the sky. It took a moment to find what she was pointing out, but then he picked out the missile. It seemed to hang there silently, growing larger at an almost leisurely pace until suddenly there was a huge flash

  and it began to arc down from heaven trailing fire and smoke, screaming towards the house his father had built. The sonic boom hit them just as the missile impacted, knocking them off their feet.