Caught in a Moment (The Alex Trueman Chronicles Book 1)

by Martin Dukes

  “But what about everyone here?” he asked incredulously.

  “Discontinued,” said Malcolm, with a shrug. “Sorry.”

  “Discontinued? You mean, like, dead don’t you. Why don’t you just say so?”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” admitted the angel. “Tough I know, but there you go..”

  “It’s easy for you to say that,” said Alex indignantly. “I’d say it’s a bit more than tough.”

  “I get it,” said Malcolm. “Now look. Don’t jump the gun. Nothing’s been decided yet. We may be able to get a clean-up team in. I guess you’d better come with me to see Tony. He’s my boss. Particularly if it’s you that’s been sticking a spanner in the works. He’ll want to have a word with you.”

  “Oh… Right.” A thought occurred to Alex. “Look. You can’t get me back into Reality can you? Things are a bit awkward for me here.”

  Alex explained why things were a bit awkward for him; his running foul of Ganymede, his difficulty with Paulo. Malcolm, sitting on the garden wall, listened patiently to him, running his finger pensively along the edge of the rod. He didn’t look like an angel, Alex had to conclude. And he was wearing odd socks.

  “Sounds like a mess,” said Malcolm, when Alex had finished. “I was never in this sector before but it sounds like this Ganymede character’s sailing close to the wind. I heard Tony talk about him, and he wasn’t complimentary, I can tell you. He’s with Ganymede now. As for getting back to Reality, well I’m afraid that one’s not really our remit. You’re on your own there, pal. It happens when it happens.”

  Malcolm had his transponder in his hand again.

  “Anyway, we’d better go see Tony,” he said, studying its surface carefully.

  “Right,” said Alex. “Everyone’s out looking for me by the sounds of things.”

  “Well, there’s no way they’re going to spot you en route,” said Malcolm pensively, tapping the wider end of the transponder.

  Before Alex could respond, the air shimmered, much as it had at the end of the sector, earlier that day. He had a brief sensation of weightlessness. The world shattered and quickly recomposed itself into the form of Ganymede’s office. With a lurch, and a sensation in the pit of his stomach that reminded him of being on a roller coaster, Alex’s feet re-established themselves on solid ground. He gasped.

  “I know,” said Malcolm apologetically. “Always a bit odd, the first time. You never quite get used to it either. I still get the shivers.”

  What had to be presumed to be Angelic light shone from under the door of the room next door. Raised voices could be heard, including, from time to time, that of Ganymede. The discussion sounded ill tempered, although Alex could make out little of what was being said.

  “Tony,” mouthed Malcolm, putting a finger to his lips. He crossed to the door and knocked softly on it. The voices carried on. Malcolm knocked more sharply. This time the voices ceased.

  “Is that you, Malcolm?” said someone from within. “Get yourself in here.”

  With an apologetic glance at Alex, Malcolm opened the door just wide enough to admit himself, closing it gently behind him.

  “And what kind of manifestation do you call this?” he heard an unfamiliar voice ask, before the door clicked shut. Alex found himself alone.

  Ganymede’s office was much as he remembered it, the familiar clutter of mugs, pot plants and piles of paperwork. Alex’s eye was drawn to a printed document on Ganymede’s desk, a fountain pen lying lidless beside it.

  “Census Return,” was the title of the document, next to a row of figures that might have denoted a date. Alex edged nearer, keeping an eye on the door. There was a long string of digits in a box next to the word “Sector” and Ganymede’s name next to another one.

  “Daniel Beddowes,” read Alex, with a frown. Perhaps this was Ganymede’s real name.

  Underneath was a list of other names, some of them familiar. Next to the names, in a column labelled Origin, various descriptions were written. Most of them said simply Disassociation. One said Coma. The name Roger Bradley stood next to this. Alex frowned. Interesting. His eye scanned quickly down the list of names and then stopped.

  Deceased, read one description at the foot of the page. Next to it was a familiar name. David Hemmings. Alex felt his throat tighten.

  “Jesus,” he said, under his breath.

  There was no sign of his own name on the page, or that of Paulo or Kelly. Alex flipped over the page. More names. There was his own - Disassociation. And Paulo - Coma, -now there was a surprise. And Kelly. Alex gasped, stepping back involuntarily from the desk. He stared at the entry, but the letters remained stubbornly clear and focused. There could be no mistake.

  “Deceased,” he breathed. “Deceased.” He glanced around wildly. “Christ, Kelly’s dead!”

  He had hardly recovered from this shock when the door opened and Malcolm put his head round it.

  “Can we have a word?” he asked.

  His mind still reeling, feeling a deep sense of foreboding, Alex stepped into the room. A table with two chairs was laid with a meal, disturbed half-eaten; manna rolls and a glass jug of water. At least Ganymede didn’t apply double standards. He wasn’t tucking into a five course meal with a nice claret. This forced Alex to concede a little grudging respect to him. Ganymede was there, leaning against a sideboard, staring at him with undisguised hostility. With him was another angel, this one authentically winged and white robed, filling the room with light. Clear radiance streamed out of his face, which looked significantly older and more careworn than Malcolm’s. In addition to this he looked in a thoroughly bad mood. This had to be Tony.

  “Hi,” said Alex in a small voice.

  “Hello, Alex,” said Ganymede in a voice that strained itself to be polite. “This is Tony. He’s in charge of Intersticia.”

  “Indeed,” said Tony inclining his head towards Alex. “And it looks like you’ve been making a bit of a mess of this interstice.”

  “Sorry,” said Alex meekly, glancing from face to face. “I didn’t know.”

  “Well, I don’t know why you didn’t know!” snapped Ganymede. “I thought I made it abundantly plain to you.”

  Tony raised his hand, before Ganymede could launch himself into a new bout of criticism.

  “Do you understand the consequences of interference with Statica?” he asked.

  “No,” said Alex. “Not really.” He got the feeling that if Tony wasn’t exactly on his side, then Ganymede was in big trouble too. It wouldn’t do any harm to drag Ganymede further into the mire. “It wasn’t explained to me.”

  Tony shot Ganymede a very satisfactory wounding glance, which made Ganymede cast his eyes upwards to the ceiling and clench his fists.

  “Well perhaps someone should explain to you,” said Tony, who had an undeniable air of authority about him. “I wouldn’t normally think this necessary, but then you are evidently very far from being an ordinary Interstician. It is very rare to come across someone with such marked ability to translate material objects from Statica to Intersticia. Most inhabitants of Intersticia find it impossible. The two worlds exist side by side harmoniously. You need to understand the relationship between them.”

  Stepping forward he used a slender, luminous finger to trace a red line on the table top. The line had an arrowhead at one end of it.

  “Imagine this line represents what you think of as Reality,” he said. “The world you dropped out of. Time advances like so, and you are always at the leading edge of it, at the very tip of the arrow, with the past reaching out behind you.”

  He lifted the red line so that it hovered in the air before Alex’s eyes. Then he traced another arrow line, this time a shorter blue one. Its own arrow head met that of the red one, but it hung downwards and at right angles to it.

  “This blue line represents Intersticia,” said Tony. “You can think of time here as advancing at right angles to that of time in ‘Reality’. Observe.”

  The blue line began to leng
then but the two arrows remained head to head.

  “Which is why time in Intersticia moves onward while time in Reality appears to be frozen.”

  Alex nodded. This did indeed make sense, providing that one was prepared to cast away all that three hundred years of scientific discovery had set in place.

  “But the relationship is delicately balanced,” continued Tony. “It relies upon logical consistency. Consider this from the viewpoint of Reality. If things inexplicably alter from one instant to another, inconsistency is established. If you used your unusual powers here to move a table from one point in a crowded room to another, people in that room in Reality would see an inexplicable and doubtless startling event take place from one instant to another. That is what we call an anomaly. Anomalies lead to logical inconsistency, logical inconsistency leads to the breakdown of physical relationships and deterioration in the fabric of space-time. The universe has an infinite capacity to heal itself, but it can do so in rather undesirable ways. Catastrophic ways, I may say,” he said with a grim smile. “It is best to intervene before this becomes inevitable. We in the Angelic community are tasked with the preservation of balance. I have to tell you that balance is in grave jeopardy in this sector. There are numerous anomalies here, some of them severe.”

  He looked hard at Ganymede, and then at Alex. He had a very long chin, Alex decided. An uncomfortable silence ensued and Alex began to feel that something was expected of him.

  “Oops,” he said, which quickly struck him as inadequate, and then... “What are we going to do, then?”

  “We haven’t decided yet,” said the angel, nodding gravely. “It may be possible to bring in a clean up team. Resources would have to be made available. I don’t know. It’s a mess,” he glanced meaningfully at Ganymede again at this point. “We shall be having a meeting of all interested parties in the near future to decide what should be done. In the meantime, Malcolm here needs to continue to assess the damage…I can trust you do that, Malcolm? ” he said sharply.

  Malcolm, who had been studying his fingernails, suddenly jerked upright.

  “Hmm?…Oh yes,” he said.

  “You are aware that your position as Head of Sector will need to be reviewed,” said Tony to Ganymede, after a moment of staring critically at Malcolm. “I shall be sending a report to Mike on the matter. I have to say that I am disappointed in you, Ganymede. I acted contrary to the advice of others when I appointed you. Since that time I have begun to wonder if they were right and I have made a mistake. Your imprudent use of scarce resources, your cavalier attitude to security only confirms me in that view.”

  Alex could hardly keep himself from smirking. The corners of his mouth strained outwards, held in place only by pursing his lips firmly together. Oh joy! The sight of Ganymede getting it in the neck made him feel that little bubbles of warm air were being inflated in his chest. Ganymede, for his part, scowled and shuffled his feet.

  “I was acting on good authority,” he growled. “When I made those modifications… I had a clear understanding with Gordon.”

  “What you may or may not have agreed with my predecessor is no concern of mine,” snapped Tony. “You certainly have no written authority of any kind from me. How you think giving a citizen visible thought bubbles constitutes responsible use of delegated angelic prerogative I really can’t imagine. And what was the other one?” He tapped his head and grimaced in a parody of thinking hard. “Let me see. Oh, yes. Psycho-Auditory modifications to some youth’s speech to correct their use of profane language. A marvellous use of constrained resources that was. I suppose you think that’s funny? I suppose that appealed to your sense of irony?”

  Ganymede, flushed deep red under his facial hair, but seemed incapable of reply.

  “Fine. Well I’ll bid you good day,” said Tony, stiffly. “I shall monitor the position here with interest and I daresay a meeting of Council will need to be convened. You will both be required to testify. In the meantime, I will thank you not to further abuse your authority with regard to Alex here. You will answer for it if you do.” He beckoned to Malcolm. “Come on. We must try to see Raphael before he goes to dinner.”

  With this, both angels disappeared, shrinking into tiny bright dots that blinked out of existence, leaving a vaguely electric smell. For a moment there was silence, and then Ganymede erupted. Had he been Paulo he would have named every vegetable under the sun. When he had finished ranting and waving his arms around he stood glaring at Alex, his chest heaving. Once, not long ago, Alex would have felt intimidated. Now, he only felt vaguely amused.

  “Get out of my sight!” roared Ganymede at last.

  Alex got out of his sight, as directed, with a wry smile and at a leisurely pace. He heard the door slam behind him and laughed until his sides ached as he strolled out into the 'Stician dusk.

  Before he had gone far he came upon Stacey and Sarah, sitting on a low wall outside the White Horse, kicking their legs. They stood up quickly enough when Alex hove in view.

  “Look who it isn’t,” crowed Stacey. “I know a man who’d be pleased to see you.” She nudged Sarah. “What do you reckon? Do you think we should have a little word? Ganymede said he might be puttin’ some extra manna our way.”

  “Have as many words as you like, for all I care,” said Alex airily. He favoured Stacey with a tight little smile, and looked pointedly up and down her considerable paunch. “Looks like you could do with a few extra rations. You don’t want to go wasting away, do you?”

  The resulting expression on Stacey’s face was highly satisfactory, but Alex only allowed himself a glimpse of it as he turned on his heel and walked away. A stream of abuse followed him up the road, but he cared not a jot. He felt that he had done something to even the score so far as Stacey was concerned. He was still dwelling happily on this when he reached Will’s house.

  “Hi, Will,” he said cheerfully, walking in as Will and Tanya ate their supper by the glow of a single lightstick.

  “Alex!” they said together, leaping to their feet.

  “All hail the conquering hero!” he said with a broad grin, spreading his arms wide. “Your hero returns.”

  “Where have you been?” asked Will, while Tanya hugged Alex. “Everyone’s been out looking for you.”

  “So I hear,” said Alex. “I’ve been roughing it with Paulo and Kelly up at the Hall.”

  “Yes, well Ganymede went, like, totally ballistic when you legged it. He’ll crucify you if he gets his hands on you. I never saw him so pumped.”

  “He hasn’t even given us any work,” added Tanya. “Everyone’s just, you know…milling around doing nothing.”

  “What on earth have you done?” demanded Will. “I know you cheated with your task; Kelly told me. But it must be something more serious than that.”

  “And where is Kelly?” asked Tanya, craning her neck to look past Alex, as though she thought Kelly might be lurking in the hall.

  Alex told them all about the events of the last few days, whilst Will and Tanya listened, wide-eyed.

  “I knew I saw you move Statical stuff,” said Tanya triumphantly, when Alex confessed to his interference with Statica.

  “What, so you can just go and help yourself to anything you please? Chocolate? Doughnuts? Cakes and stuff?” asked Will enviously.

  Alex nodded.

  “Well, come on then,” said Will, brushing crumbs off his sleeve. “What are we waiting for? Let’s get down to the cake shop right away.”

  “Haven’t you been listening to a word I said?” Alex asked him. “I really can’t. Ganymede had good reason to tell me not to mess about with Statica. He just didn’t bother telling me why. Me doing stuff like that destabilises 'Sticia. If things get any worse here the Angels are going to pull the plug on our bit of it.”

  “Oh,” said Will. “And what happens to us then?”

  “I don’t know. I guess we sort of ‘die’ here. We’d carry on in Reality of course.”

  There was a pause as Will and
Tanya considered this.

  “Do you know,” mused Will. “For a king sized bar of fruit and nut, I almost reckon it’d be worth it.”

  “And another thing…” said Alex, ignoring this.

  He told them about the census return he had seen in Ganymede’s office. And about Kelly. So much had happened since that furtive glance across the page, the horror of it had receded from the forefront of his mind. Now that consciousness came flooding back. He had felt confident, triumphant even, after witnessing Ganymede’s humiliation. Now he felt suddenly deflated. A pensive silence settled over the room. The lightstick reached the end of its life too and darkness gathered around them.

  “You mustn’t say anything,” said Alex into the gloom. “She doesn’t know. What good would it do telling her, anyway? There’s nothing to be done about it. She’s just, well…dead.”

  “So Kelly’s a ghost?” came Tanya’s small voice.

  “No,” said Will. “’Course she’s not. It’s just that she only exists here now in 'Sticia. It’s all over for her in Reality.”

  “But what happens if the Angels close us down?” persisted Tanya. “What happens to Kelly then?”

  Alex hadn’t considered this. He did now.

  “It’s alright for the rest of us,” said Will. “We go on living our lives in Reality. I guess it’d be curtains for Kelly though.”

  “Isn’t there anything we can do?” asked Tanya plaintively. “Kelly can’t die.”

  “And what about Cactus Jack?” asked Will. “Do you think he’ll be coming for Kelly next?”

  “I don’t know,” admitted Alex. “I only got a quick glance at the list. I was looking for names I know. There might have been other names too with deceased next to them.”

  He swallowed hard. David Hemming’s name had been above Kelly’s. And he hadn’t noticed any more occurrences of that sinister word between them in the list.

  Chapter Twelve

  The next morning they had visitors. These proved to be Morlock and his sidekick Minion. Minion, who was as short as Morlock was tall, made Morlock seem a chatterbox by comparison. He said nothing at all. Perhaps he was incapable of speech. He had the same tiny sparrow’s eyes as his partner and simply stood grinning at Morlock’s side, whilst Morlock summoned Alex into Ganymede’s presence. The grin had a look of permanence about it.