Shadow Child

by Graeme Smith

  * * *

  The British Library, St Pancras, London, England.

  “I'm telling you Curator, it was bloody gone! I came in, to make some notes for the next bunch of bloody Philistines I'm getting at Oxford, and it was bloody gone! Just an empty case!”

  “Yes, Professor Spencer. I'm sure it was. But it isn't now, so that's all right then isn't it.”

  “No it's bloody well not! It's not all right! Because I came in again this morning, and there's bloody two of them! And... and one's... I mean, I know it's his bloody writing. But look at it! 'Lucille en la ciel avec diamants'! And look at what's under it!”

  “Yes, Professor Spencer. I know. And may I commend you on your memory? It's quite remarkable. Almost nobody remembers.. but no matter. And it's scribbled out, yes? So it doesn't really... I mean, after all, we don't actually have to... Look. Just pretend you never saw the damn thing. Ever. We'll burn it.”

  “Burn it? You can't bloody burn it! This is... it's incredible! It's... I mean, the implications! And a new work by... you can't! When I make my next presentation at the Coleridge society, this is going to be my center-piece!”

  “Ah. Yes. I suppose it would be. I mean, will be. Quite. Well, Professor, I suppose there's nothing else for it. I'll have this wrapped for you. It will only take a few minutes. I'm sure my secretary will get you a nice cup of... of something. She's just outside my office. Why don't you go and ask her?”

  “Ah. Right. Yes – tea. Of course, Curator. Tea. Thank you.”

  The office door closed behind the straggle haired academic. The Curator sighed, and picked up his telephone. “Miss Clark? Yes, I'm afraid it’s another one. Coleridge this time. And the Professor... Yes. He does seem a little excited, doesn't he? No, Miss Clark. I don't think he's the type to forget easily. Tell Doctor Bailey we won't be needing him and his flickering lights. We'll have to... Yes. Indeed. Would you...? Ah, the brake line on his car? An excellent idea Miss Clark. I can see you'll go far. Ah. Very droll, Miss Clark. No, I wouldn't go far in the Professor's car either. But let's make sure the Professor does. We don't want anything too close to... Very good, Miss Clark. You'll take care of it? Thank you.” The Curator put his down his telephone, picked up one of the two manuscripts on his desk – and lit a match.

  * * *

  From The Times Obituary Column.

  It is with deep regret that we must report the death of world renowned Coleridge scholar Professor Wilberforce Spencer. Professor Spencer was returning to Oxford from studies at the British Library when his vehicle lost control while...

  * * *

  The Coleridge Museum, Nether Stowey, England.

  “But... but it's impossible, sir!”

  “Well, Mrs Wilkinson. I'm sure it seems impossible. But...”

  “But it's fresh, sir! I mean, it's clean! And it's new! Well – some of it is.”

  The Museum Director looked down at the lock of hair on his desk. He looked up at the Museum Manager in front of the desk. “Mrs Wilkinson. This is a lock of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's hair. It would be rather difficult for it to be new. Mr Coleridge has, after all, been dead for...”

  “But it is, sir! It is! I... well, sir. I know it's not really proper. But first it disappeared, and then it came back, but it was – well, it looked wrong sir! There was too much of it! When I saw it in in the cabinet – well, I had to know, sir! My grand-son, he's at Southampton University, sir. So I sent... well, just some hairs...”

  The Museum Director sighed. Clearly, today wasn't going to be a good day. Now he just had to find out who it wasn't going to be good for. “You sent him some hairs, Mrs Wilkinson? Without asking me first?”

  “Well, yes sir. I just... I needed to know, sir!”

  “And do you, Mrs Wilkinson? Was your son able to – to help?”

  “Well, his girlfriend is studying Forensic Psychology sir, and...”

  The Director sighed again. “I see.”

  “Yes, sir. And she took them to the lab, sir! The hairs, I mean. And some of them - they're new, sir! Not all of them – just some. Which means – well, I don't know what it means, sir! It's incredible, isn't it?”

  “Absolutely, Mrs Wilkinson. Quite – incredible. But we have to be careful with these things. So I have to know. Have you told anyone else? Apart from your son, I mean. Well...” The Director made some notes on the pad in front of him “... and his girlfriend, of course.”

  “Oh no, sir. I came right to you.”

  The Director nodded. “That's good, Mrs Wilkinson. Now, it happens that the Curator of the British Library is a friend of mine. I think you should show him your... your find. And it would probably be a good idea if you took your son and his girlfriend as well – so he can get the whole picture, you understand.”

  “The British Library sir? The Curator? Oh, sir! That would be wonderful! I'll call my son right away!”

  “Yes, Mrs Wilkinson. You do that.”

  As the door to his office closed behind his Museum Manager, the Director sighed for a third time. Then his picked up his telephone, and dialed a number. “Ah. Miss Clark. May I speak with the Curator? Oh. I see. Well, if you could tell him I've sent someone to see him. Well, three someones actually. I'm afraid it's Coleridge. Yes, I know Miss Clark. Someone's been rather careless. Oh, you'll take care of it? Thank you, Miss Clark.”

  The Director hung up the telephone, and took out a file. He sighed for a fourth time. He hated interviewing for new staff.

  * * *

  From The Bridgewater Mercury.

  It is with regret that we must report the death of local historian Florence Wilkinson of Nether Stowey. The sad victim of a road traffic collision, Mrs Wilkinson was killed when her vehicle lost control as a result of a burst tire, despite having recently been serviced. The accident also claimed the lives of her passengers – her son Robert and his friend Alice Drake...

  * * *

  Mom was pissed. I could tell – mostly by how much she was smiling. So I wasn't really surprised when I went to CG for a mission pack and he said she'd told him not to give me one. So I asked him how the fuck I was supposed to lock on to Sammy Coleridge and he said it wasn't his fucking problem and how Mom had told him it was my problem. Which was when he patted my butt and told me to be a good little agent and get on with it. And if he hadn't been only eight, plus a thousand years or so of not being nine, we might have gone somewhere and talked about my butt some more. But he was, and if Mom was pissed, I was pissed-er, so he shouldn't have been surprised at what happened next. I mean, I don't think I broke too many bones.

  OK. Maybe I did.

  Still, I felt bad when I stormed out of the office and finally felt what he'd slipped into my back pocket while he was patting. The guide to the British Museum was interesting, especially the big black circle round their exhibit of 'probably the original manuscript of Coleridge's Xanadu'. And the pamphlet for the Coleridge museum seemed to want everyone to know about their lock of Coleridge's hair. Then I thought about it, and decided it was all Mom's fault anyway and CG would just have to look after himself. Because without a mission pack to tell me how to get when, and when, I needed to be, I needed something else – and the first something else was a plane ticket.

  Sonata

  Sviluppo - Sesto Movimento

  October 18th, 1797. Ash Farm, between Porlock and Linton.

  The man in the black leather duster clapped his hand over a mouth for the eighth time. A twist, and bone snapped.. The kid hadn't done a bad job on the team covering the door, but he figured she was supposed to. She'd missed the cover team – also like, it looked, she was supposed to. Jack dropped the body, and dug the dull red gem fragment from its forehead. He'd seen that trick before. Jack slipped the gem fragment into his pocket to join the other seven, and picked his way through the six dead bodies of the decoy team.

  The door to the farmhouse was open. He wrapped Shadow around himself. This was going to be tricky. He checked the loads in his gun again, and the thing in his po
cket. Then he stepped through the door. The two of them were where they were supposed to be.

  * * *

  In a place that didn't actually exist, an old man in a blinding white vest and red overalls chuckled. The shadow hanging on a wall that wasn't actually there - didn't. “What the...? The Idiot! Was this your idea? Is he going to...? But he can't do that! I mean, I couldn't do... It's impossible!”

  The old man shrugged. “Ah. Impossible. So if he does it then, that's, like, a Paradox?”

  The shadow not hanging on the wall that wasn't there sighed. “You know, you really are a bastard.”

  The old man shrugged again. “Well, someone has to be.”

  Shadows don't smile. So the shadow that wasn't really there didn't. Widely. “Idiot.”

  The old man grinned. “Always.”

  The shadow sighed. “So? Are we going to help?”

  The old man raised one eyebrow. “You mean cheat?”

  The grin the shadow didn't have got even wider. “I won't tell anyone if you don't.”

  The old man's grin couldn't have been wider. “That's my girl.”

  Shadows don't blush. So this one didn't – bright pink.

  * * *

  Jack concentrated, wrapping Shadow round the two figures in front of him. Then he raised his gun, and pulled the trigger. The Sig P239 stopped pointing at the back of the girl's head and fell to the floor. The man who'd been holding it clearly thought the gun had the right idea and followed it down. The girl spun on her heel, her hand going under her short skirt. Jack figured he was supposed to be distracted. The skirt rode up, mostly because of the Glock in the girl's hand. Jack's gun fired again, and the Glock flew out of the girl's hand. Jack grinned. “I saw that in a movie once. Always wanted to try it.”

  The girl spat. “Bastard! You just killed Coleridge!” She spun on her heel again, her foot slammed into Jack's head in a perfect ushiro geri. Or it would have, if Jack's head had still been there.

  Jack slid one step sideways. The heel of his palm slammed under the girl's chin, snapping her head back. His other arm curled under her unconscious head, cradling it with an odd gentleness. He lowered the girl to the floor. “Yeah” he whispered. “We should talk about that.” He ran his hand up the inside of the girl's thigh. His hand stopped. He nodded to himself, his eyes cold. He took a flask from his pocket and opened it. The smell of Unicorn Horn filled the air.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Calendar Girl

  So I know what you're thinking. It's, like, hey. The girl can travel in time, go any-place she wants, any-when. So why does she need a plane ticket? Like, even if she doesn't have a case file, she can make a good guess. And if she gets stuck, she can always come back and try again, right?

  Guess what. It's not that easy.

  One of the first things CG warned me about was flying blind. Like, as in not doing it. Ever. Which is why the Organisation does the whole case file thing. Because a bad signpost is worse than no signpost at all. Like, if my target is, say, Santa Claus. And I figure I don't need no steenkeen' case plan, because everybody knows you can find Santa any day before Christmas Eve, at the North Pole loading up his sleigh. So I get me some Horn on, and I send myself to last Christmas Eve and the North Pole, so I can have a nice little chat with Mr S about the pink jumper I somehow got and not the new pink bō shuriken I was supposed to be getting.

  Bad Idea. Real bad.

  See, I hate to break it to you, but there ain't no Santa Claus. So even though there is a North Pole, Christmas Eve or Labor Day, he isn't going to be there. But the Horn, it doesn't care. I do anything quite that dumb, it's going to send me some damn place. I've got no idea how the damn stuff works, and from what CG said, neither does anyone else. But it's like it's alive or something. Or maybe it just opens you up to the Universe, and the Universe is alive. With a really fucking warped sense of humour. Because if I was dumb enough to try the Santa Claus thing, the Horn, or maybe the Virgin's Tears, they'll latch on to something else I was thinking of. Or maybe something else someone else was thinking of, or to atmospheric conditions, to shoes, to ships to sealing wax – to any damn thing it finds. And it'll send me somewhere. Somewhen. But not to any-place or any-when I wanted. Which isn't likely to be good for me, or for anyone who gets in my way when I get there. And I know. I can hear you, even if you're not saying anything. Like, so I just get more Horny, and I come back, right? No. Not right. See, I get back because I know how I got there. Even if I have no idea how it works, I still somehow know, CG told me. But if I don't know where I am, I don't know how to get back. Like, you live in New York, and one day I snatch you and dump you some place. And you wake up and you have no idea where you are, and the people speak some language you don't know, or there's no people, and you know where you came from like the back of your hand, but you still can't click your ruby slippers and take one step back home – because you don't know which way to step.

  Remember that Bad Idea thing up there? Well, there aren't many worse.

  But Bad Idea or no Bad Idea, I still had to find Sammy C. And I didn't have a case file. Which was entirely what Mom wanted. Like, an initiative test. First I figured I could pound a file out of CG. But I'd already pounded him for the butt thing, and the Organisation infirmary has locks to give Houdini nightmares. So I was stuck with the whole initiative deal, and that meant I had to make one. A case file, I mean. And CG, because maybe he wasn't so bad after all, and maybe we should take some time to talk about my butt when I got back even if he was eight-going-on-a-thousand, had given me some damn good hints. But to do something with them I needed to be some places I wasn't. So yes, a plane ticket. But there isn't much you can't do with an Organisation credit card, which is why the British Library was now short one original manuscript, and the Coleridge museum was down what I was hoping was actually Coleridge's real hair. I'd seen the look in Mom's eye, and I knew that Mom or not, I was either coming back with Xanadu or I was going to get a terminal case of lead poisoning. Or a mind wipe, which might be even worse. Because to her, it wasn't like she'd be losing a daughter. It was like she was going to be getting rid of a fucked-up waste of her time. Either way, I'd be ex-Organisation.

  So I'd got me my plane ticket, and I'd danced some night-fandango at the Library. Then I'd come here, to the Coleridge museum. It didn't matter that I'd taken their prize exhibits. If things went well, I'd put them back. I grabbed an imaginary eraser and scrubbed out the imaginary 'if' in my head. When I was done, I'd put them back. Now what I needed was the right date to aim at. Which was a problem. Because nobody seemed to know exactly when Xanadu was actually written. Just possibly smart guesses. But the Mission position's no place to be guessing. Because where there's a will, there's a history book, and a visit to the Coleridge Museum in broad daylight told me all I needed to know.

  * * *

  January 14th, 1798. Shrewsbury High Street.

  I watched Sammy come out of the church. Five foot nine, or near. Pale, wide mouth, thick lips. Long, half curled black hair. Good enough. I slid back behind the alley wall and let him almost-pass. Then I took him from behind, my knife at his throat. Of course, I wasn't going to kill him, but he didn't need to know that.

  “I have little coin upon me, if that is your...” For a man with a knife at his throat, he didn't seem very scared. Something was wrong. He reached back. What is it about guys and butts? “That's leather! Who...? Oh. It's you again.” His voice was different. I was right. Something was more than wrong. I slapped his legs from under him and dropped him. But I kept him face down. Whatever was wrong, I didn't need it getting worse. “Xanadu. Kubla fucking Khan. When?”

  His leg kicked, and it wasn't random. Sammy C couldn't possibly know Muay Thai, but apparently his leg did. “Look. I've got the bloody books. I'll tell mommy you were a good little girl. Now get the fuck off me before anyone sees you.”

  This was bad. Worse than bad. Badder than a very Bad Thing on a very Bad Bay. Either Mom was even more pissed than I thought, or t
here was a new player in the game. Either way, I needed a date, and whoever was under me was the closest I had to a Plus Two. I twisted my knife on his throat. “Xanada! Now!”

  He chuckled. He fucking laughed! “Oh! I get it! You haven't done it yet! You're the before, not the... Oh. Right. They told me not to say anything about that. Spoilers, they said. Hell, you're good. Maybe even as good as She says you are. OK. October seventeenth. But play nice – no hit...”

  I smacked his head hard enough to stop him being a smart-ass for a while, then grabbed my flask. I was already fucked, and nobody had bought me dinner. Someone was going to pay for that, whether I did or not. I pulled the flask from the pocket in my skirt.