Dickhead looked at him, studying his face, turning his head this way and that, trying to make up his mind. “Hmm, I don’t know, Spider. I’ve got two or three other people in mind for this little opportunity.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake, Dickhead!”
Dickhead straightened his jacket, leaned forward, extended his big right hand. Spider shook it, feeling cold and wretched and used, hating every moment, hating himself. He was a shit. All those years ago, he’d stood up to Superintendent Sharp and all of his vile pedophile buddies, he’d gone and testified at Sharp’s trial, and he’d told the bloody truth, and it had cost him everything he had. He had thought he would never feel worse than he felt then. He had been wrong. Dickhead looked him in the eye, grinned mischievously, and said, “Good night, Spider.” Not “See you tomorrow,” or “Later, mate,” or anything suggesting Dickhead would come back and repeat his big offer. In fact, Spider thought, watching Dickhead leave — without saying a word to Malaria — he might just have blown the entire operation. Suppose Dickhead did have other people in mind for the Zeropoint project, and he was off to see one of them right now? His future self was going to kill him.
It took more than two infuriating hours to drive to the airport — normally a twenty-minute jaunt — in one of the shop’s beat-up, fuel cell-powered vans, stop-start, stop-start, rush hour traffic, inching forward occasionally, spending long periods enduring constant horn-honking, bicycle bell-ringing, driver-screaming, traffic gridlock. He spent a lot of the time just sitting there, the van’s wheel engines switched off, brooding about how he’d screwed up the interview with Dickhead, ruined everything, the entire future of the universe down the toilet, all because of bloody Molly. He’d known she would call, and he’d known Dickhead would make his big pitch. His instructions, though, had been to let Molly know he’d be there to get her — but also to accept Dickhead’s offer, or at least indicate to Dickhead that he was very interested. There’d been no suggestion that Dickhead had other guys in mind for the job. His future self had assured Spider that the entire thing would go like clockwork, and all he had to do was hit his marks and say the right things. The future would take care of itself, he’d been told. Spider wondered at just what future point he had turned into such a manipulative, mendacious swine.
Traffic moved a little, as if it were on its last iota of life, and could only move a smidgeon at a time. Spider swore at Dickhead, at his future self, at Molly, at the whole bloody universe itself. He thumped and bashed the van’s steering wheel so much his hands and wrists hurt, and he got so caught up in this aggravation that several times he very nearly ran over cyclists, and only managed to avoid them by jamming on the brakes and risking rear-end collisions from all the other cars and bikes behind him. It felt as if his nerves were burning up.
Then, once he reached the airport, and cleared Traffic Security Pre-Screening, it turned out there were no available parking spots. This meant spending ages driving slowly up and down, and up and down, and around all the different carpark areas, reading off the Available Spaces displays everywhere for a reading other than Area Full. It was maddening. Spider shouted at other drivers, all of whom were doing the same delicate dance, following each other around and around, whole convoys of vehicles looking for vanishingly few spots. Spider remembered wonderful games from his teenage years, like Car Wars, where you could mount heavy weapons on your vehicle and deal with bastards like these most efficiently. Those had been the days.
In the drop-off and pick-up lane directly in front of the Terminal entrance, taxis, their horns blasting each other, jostled for space, risking fender-bending collisions, and traffic cops employed by the airport corporation did their best to keep the taxi drivers from killing each other. Spider was painfully aware that he had to make this whole charade look good. The idea, bizarre as it still seemed to Spider, was that any scenario in which Molly either took a taxi or allowed Spider to collect her, would end in at least Molly’s death, and possibly his own, too. Not that he cared too much about his own useless life just at the moment. The optimal scenario, Soldier Spider had explained, was the one where Dickhead’s trained monkeys — perhaps too kind a term — collected Molly instead. Only if Spider helped arrange Molly’s capture was she assured of surviving. It was killing him inside, thinking about it, and now, having to organize it in such a way that Dickhead’s goons didn’t realize that he, Spider, was in on it.
Dickhead’s agents had to believe that he was doing his very best to pick up Molly. He knew Molly was likely already long gone, in Dickhead’s custody. He had knots in his guts, so painful he could hardly sit up straight, and he felt hot and feverish, almost vibrating with anger — and could he just find one lousy parking spot?
It took almost thirty minutes, but he did find a spot, way out on the perimeter of the parking area, so far away from the Terminal building he could hardly see it. It was getting on towards late evening, cold and wet, with a nasty wind slicing through his clothes. Widebody jets heading for Southeast Asia roared into the sky every five minutes, even as others were visibly stacked up, ready to land, way out in the distance, their lights glimmering in the twilight sky. The rotating beam of light from the control tower swept overhead like a luminous knife.
Spider managed to get a lift on one of the crowded carpark shuttle buses, and at last made it to the Terminal, breathing hard, a nasty pain in his chest, and dripping sweat. The armed troops positioned at the Terminal entrances waved their millimeter-band scanners at him once it was his turn, but didn’t like how sweaty and aggravated he looked, so they took him aside to ask him a few questions. Spider knew better than to take out his frustrations on these guys, and they let him go with a caution, suggesting he just settle the hell down. Inside, pushing and shoving his way through the hot and pressing crowds of people waiting to check in and people waiting to leave, he thought about his situation. Since he was obviously far too late, he had only one option.
Glancing about, he took in the countless brightly-colored kiosks around the Terminal. The weary traveler could rent a car or a bike, book a package holiday, buy some shiny souvenirs of Western Australia, get their clothes cleaned in an instant, buy something to read or watch or play, rent a phone or even a watch, and much else. And, at last, its little kiosk all lit up bright blue and brighter yellow, there it was: Jiffy Instant Time Travel, with its tag-line, Never Miss A Flight Again!
Spider joined the line and tried to calm down, to control his rapid breathing, worried about the pain in his chest. He wished he had some water, and looked around for one of the wandering vending droids, and in the process saw that there were already lots of people in line behind him, so he was stuck. Sweat rolling off him, he stood there, eyes closed, wondering about the symptoms of heart attacks, wishing Molly was indeed still there, wishing he and Molly were still together, wishing — he could not believe he’d been reduced to bloody wishing! Forty-four years old, fat and going gray, and I’m standing here wishing for things. He was disgusted with himself. You might as well wish for a bloody pony!
He’d asked Soldier Spider, when the bastard first presented this little detail, just what they would do to her, and the older Spider had shrugged. He didn’t know, he said, and Spider didn’t know if he was telling the truth or lying. Spider asked why she even had to be mixed up in the whole stupid caper in the first place. The old bastard had told him, matter-of-factly, that Dickhead wanted to get an “edge” over Spider, to get him to cooperate. Dickhead’s people had plans for Spider, plans he suspected Spider would not be willing to carry out.
“What kind of plans?”
“I can’t say. I mean the timeline will be shifting and your future will no longer be my past. All I can say for certain is his plans are aimed at us.”
“But you know an attack’s coming?”
“That’s right.”
“And somehow I’m involved.”
“You make it possible for Dic
khead to attack us. Otherwise, the—”
“Flux-proofing thing.”
“Exactly. He can attack our people, but he has to get inside the ship first. You make it possible for him to do that.”
“Because I’m you.”
“Got it in one, Spider,” his future self said. “Our ship’s flux-proofing is like a firewall, with open ports corresponding to her crew. I’m part of the crew, so the firewall lets me though. And because it lets me through, it’ll let you through.”
“Uh-huh,” Spider said.
“So, since you’re reasonably likely to object to leading an attack against us, Dickhead needs a way to persuade you to see things his way.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
“Are they gonna hurt Molly?”
“Probably.”
“God,” Spider said, anguished.
“Sorry,” Soldier Spider said, and he looked genuinely upset at the idea. “Imagine how it feels for me to tell you all this.”
“Mmm.”
Now, back in the Terminal building, remembering that exchange helped, a little. The older Spider recognized, indeed understood only too well, how hard this was for Spider and his hopes for a reconciliation with Molly. He could imagine what she was likely to say, if he got a chance to talk to her again: “And you let them?” No amount of handwaving about the End of Time and parasites stuck on the outside of the universe, eating reality, was going to cut any ice, not with Molly. She would only see that he had let her down. Had exposed her to who-knew-what kinds of suffering. Standing there, withered and alone in this deafening, bustling, smelly crowd, hearing nothing but Molly’s voice ringing in his head, telling him she wanted nothing more to do with him, Spider found himself remembering the night — it felt like ages ago now — that the first Future Spider had shown him those crime scene photos of Molly, murdered, dead, sprawled on the floor of her house — the house that had once also been his. It had all happened in a different timeline, the result of a whole bunch of different choices. The memory ached, seeing Molly like that, on the receiving end of a brutal death. To say nothing of the sight of her body aboard the Masada, being able to touch her, knowing it really was her, and she really was dead, not just an image on a handheld. Would it now come true? Was this one of those events in the torrent of history that “wanted” to happen, no matter what changes time travelers tried to make?
Spider seethed, standing there, thinking of Molly, loving Molly. It had been Molly who wanted the separation, not Spider. He’d gone along with it because, above all, he wanted her to be happy, and if that meant not being involved in her life, well, that was okay. He’d do it, not make a stink about it, and hope for the best.
Thinking about Molly, remembering their wedding day, on Cottesloe Beach at dawn, surrounded by family and friends and well-wishers. Molly, luminous in dawn twilight; him, with a tux a size too small.
He wiped his eyes, and started to think about things in a way he had not thought about them before. All that mattered, as far as he was concerned, right now, was Molly. Right? He didn’t care about anything else, not Clea Fassbinder, not James Rutherford, not even the future itself. His whole universe was and always had been Molly. She was everything, and, he knew, would always be everything.
It was the kind of thought he used to have all the time, back when they were young and the future beckoned across the years. He realized he had not thought of Molly this way recently, not at all. The image of Molly he carried in his mind lately was the annoyed, peeved Molly, the Molly rolling her eyes at him, but still wanting him to fix her broken toilet, or put up a fence in the yard, or mow the lawn — once he’d fixed the mower first, of course. He hadn’t thought of their wedding day in years.
How could he have been so stupid?
Standing there in the Jiffy Time Travel queue, still several customers away from getting help, an idea formed in Spider’s overheated mind. Maybe, he thought, it was time to go off-script. Screw the future. Soldier Spider had said himself that all things are possible; not every timeline led to that future. Some timelines, surely, Spider thought, led somewhere better.
CHAPTER 17
Spider, already feeling lighter and more relaxed now that he had a plan of his own, went up to the Jiffy counter and, once he got to the front of the line, told the pretty young woman staffing the shop he wanted to rent a “Jiffy,” as their units were known.
She had been smiling — the shop was doing great business — but on hearing Spider’s request, she turned apologetic. “Actually, I’m really sorry, sir. All our units are busy just now.”
For a moment he thought he’d scream. Then he thought things through. “Busy?”
The young woman checked her screen. “One will be available in twenty minutes, as soon as I have it cleaned and prepared. Can you wait?”
“Oh,” Spider said, smiling now, too, “I can wait with the best of them.”
Exactly twenty minutes later Spider returned to find the very same young shop assistant standing next to a recently returned and spotlessly cleaned Jiffy Time Machine. It was a one-man, booth-type device with clear plastic walls and simplified controls. Spider briefly chatted with her about the technical specs of the unit. He knew they were limited to hops of no more than twenty-four hours in either direction, and designed to auto-return. Built in Shanghai, they were very popular and, it turned out, easy to maintain.
“There you go, Mr. Webb,” she said, smiling. He thanked her and she gave him a screen containing the end-user release, in which he promised not to use Jiffy products and/or services in order to gain unfair commercial or pecuniary advantage over other people with regard to games of chance, sporting events, or financial transactions on pain of severe penalties under the Act — all standard chrono-industry boilerplate. He signed, and she handed him the unit’s key. He stepped into the unit. There was a simple numerical keypad, a small display, “+” and “-” buttons, and the big green GO button. Next to the button was a coin slot: each hour of travel in either direction would set you back one dollar. He fished out a two-dollar coin, fed it into the coin slot, punched in “-2”, and hit the GO button. He heard the familiar three-chord jingle, and a voice said, “Thank you for taking a Jiffy!”
The only real indicator that anything had happened was that the sky outside the Terminal was noticeably brighter. Certainly the crowds inside the Terminal were no less bustling. Once out of the machine, it vanished, heading back to its “present”. Thinking about what to do, Spider popped his watch, which was receiving updated information about flight arrivals and departures, and checked that Molly’s Thai Airlines flight was, in this timeline, still on time. It was, and scheduled to arrive shortly. Right, he thought, furling his watch-screen. On landing, Molly would have to wait around while the aircraft was taken to its parking slot — which, given how congested the airport was right now, could take a while. Deplaning, working through the endless duty-free areas, baggage claim — though that could take time as well, he realized — and then the line-up for Immigration and Customs. He realized it might take nearly an hour for Molly to get out to the arrivals hall. She had complained in her phone call that she’d encountered trouble with Quarantine over a bunch of bananas, and who knew how long that might take? The problem was that Dickhead’s goons could snatch Molly before she made it out here to the arrivals hall, and there was no way he could get through the near-military-grade security apparatus to reach her in time. He’d have to wait. Muttering to himself, Spider bought himself a vending machine coffee and a chocolate bar and sat himself down where he could keep an eye on the doors leading out to the arrivals hall.
This was fine for a few minutes, but soon he started feeling nervous. It was hard to just sit and relax. Everyone he saw somehow looked suspicious, especially all those people who appeared perfectly innocuous: nobody who looked that innocuous could be anything but guilty, Spider
thought. Fortunately, he realized that was madness talking, started thinking about a different approach, and soon formed an idea. He got on the phone and called Molly.
She answered almost immediately. “Molly Webb, hello?”
It was wonderful hearing her voice. “Hi, Moll, it’s me. You okay?”
There was a brief pause, then she said, “Al? That is you, right?”
“Yeah, hi. How are you going?”
“What are you calling me now for?”
“Just letting you know I’m here at the airport, like we arranged.” Never mind that if he was here, waiting for Molly, then she had no reason to phone him later to protest that he wasn’t here. He figured in the overall scheme of things, where every possible reality occupies a separate timeline or world, both realities had plenty of room.
“Well, that’s great. Thanks,” she said, still surprised, but also sounding a little peeved that he’d bothered her during the flight.
Should he tell her there was a possibility — indeed, a likelihood — that bad guys were going to kidnap her? Sure, why not? Except, she’d never believe it, and why should she?
“How’d the exhibition go?” Spider asked, trying to find something to talk about, to keep her voice in his head as long as possible. Soldier Spider, he recalled, had suggested the exhibition had not gone well.
“Okay, you know. Made some good contacts.”
“Great!” he said, smiling too hard.
“Look, it’s lovely to hear from you, it’s just, I’m really worn out. I was just getting a bit of sleep when you…”
“Oh,” he said. “Oh, I didn’t know. Sorry.”
She managed a small laugh. “No worries. Look, I’ll talk to you soon.”
Panicking a little, knowing this might be the last conversation he would ever have with her, he flailed about trying to think of something to say, anything would do, just to keep her on the line. “See you,” he said at last, unexpectedly upset, and killed the link. “Shit!” he said under his breath and wiped his eyes.
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