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

by Martin Dukes

  “I’ll be along later,” Alex told Ganymede’s envoy. “When I’ve had breakfast.”

  Morlock and Minion looked at each other uncertainly. They were evidently not used to being fobbed off. Minion’s grin faded a little.

  “Come now,” creaked Morlock, insistently, stepping forward.

  “I’ll come when I’m ready,” said Alex sharply, thinking that angelic protection made him pretty much bulletproof. The balance of power between he and Ganymede had shifted very satisfactorily in his favour.

  “And I wouldn’t go thinking about laying your bony hands on me,” he added, as Morlock flexed his knuckles, so that they clicked. “I think your boss would take a dim view of that.”

  “Very well,” said Morlock, after a moment’s consideration of this. He turned to leave.

  “Just a moment,” called Alex after Morlock’s retreating back. A thought had occurred to him. “What happens to you and your little pal if this bit of 'Sticia goes belly up?”

  Morlock turned. His long face stretched itself into an even more mournful expression.

  “Dead,” he said, before stomping off down the stairs.

  Hardly had Morlock and Minion departed than a new visitor arrived. This was Malcolm, who materialised suddenly in the middle of Will’s room as Will was folding his blankets. Will yelped and sat down hard on a pile of books. He blinked and gaped at the newcomer as the blankets fell disregarded to the floor.

  “I’m sorry. Did I startle you?” said the angel to Will, as Alex emerged from his own room. “Oh. There you are Alex. Tony wants you to help itemise all the spikes; you know, the anomalies.”

  “Fine,” said Alex, “Although I’ve got to see Ganymede at some point. He sent his pals to get me…..This is Malcolm,” he explained, for Will and Tanya’s benefit. Tanya was almost as still as a stiff, her hand frozen in the act of carrying a glass of water to her open mouth. “He’s an angel,” he added. “Kind of in plain clothes.”

  “I’m sorry about the halo and wings and so on,” said Malcolm apologetically. “I’ve got a problem with that at the moment. You’ll just have to take me as you find me.”

  “Fine,” said Will weakly. “Don’t go to any special effort for me.”

  Being able to materialise and dematerialise at will was a great aid to getting about. By the time Alex had done it half a dozen times it was almost second nature to him. They went to Wardworths first, where Alex introduced Malcolm to his mum and where they spent some time studying the pick ‘n mix. Malcolm wanted to know exactly where the sweets had come from and then spent a long time doing what he described as ‘triangulation’. This involved taking readings from his transponder in various places around the stall.

  “That’s given me a good three dimensional picture of the anomalies,” he said at last, pocketing the shiny stone. “Quite trivial those. Hardly a spike at all. More a ripple really. I shouldn’t think they’re causing much of a problem. I daresay a couple of chocolate éclairs going missing wouldn’t create much of a stir in Reality.”

  It was likewise with the Mars Bar, and with the minor items Alex had ‘borrowed’ from Boots. Malcolm wrinkled his nose, studied his transponder and told Alex 'Sticia could probably survive them. He was less sure about Stanton Post Office, though.

  “Uh, uh,” he said, holding the transponder up for Alex to see. “We have a major problem here. Look. Reading’s off the scale. See? Hell of a spike.”

  Alex could see nothing of the sort. He could only see smooth grey stone. He nodded though, to show willing.

  “Yep. This is the big one. I’d better triangulate on it.”

  Alex stood about glumly whilst Malcolm got on with his job. He felt uncomfortable. He and Paulo had made serious inroads into the drinks chiller. Various boxes and packets were scattered on the floor between the aisles in the grocery part of the shop. This could be replaced, he supposed. But lots of stuff was gone. He imagined Paulo and Kelly were busily working their way through it. Wherever they were. Alex mused unhappily on this whilst Malcolm homed in on the till. He made a low whistle.

  “Wahay! This one’s a doozey.”

  “Paulo made me raid the till,” said Alex guiltily, moving up alongside Malcolm. “I don’t know how much he got.”

  “Yes. Well he got a pig of a spike along with it.” Malcolm stroked the transponder thoughtfully and held it up to the light. “Do you know, there something odd about this sector. I’m picking up a real strange reading. It’s not exactly an anomaly. Not in the sense of creating disturbance anyway. It’s just a strange kind of constant background thing. Makes it quite hard to calibrate for the usual stuff.” He frowned. “Never mind. Could be this lousy transponder, I suppose. Anyway, where’re we off to next?”

  “The Hall, I guess,” said Alex glumly.

  At the Hall there was no sign of Paulo and Kelly, although there was plenty of evidence of their occupancy. Cigarette stubs, sandwich packaging, milk bottles, cereal packets and beer cans lay strewn around Lord Maynard’s elegant apartments. Paulo, armed with a spray can, had humorously spray painted the housekeeper’s face green. He had also sprayed uncomplimentary comments about Ganymede on various of the walls.

  “Sprout Ganymede,” was written in large letters across a mirror and an adjacent section of wall, in the green drawing room. “Ganymede is a runner bean,” appeared amongst the mounted heads of stags in the billiard room. There were many others.

  “Oh dear,” said Malcolm, with a wry smile. “He is a bit of scallywag, this Paulo.”

  “What a mess!” said Alex with alarm, running his hands through his hair.

  “It’s a problem alright,” agreed Malcolm. “This place’s got more spikes than a porcupine. Come on. We’d better make a start. You’ll have to do something about getting hold of this Paulo sometime soon. He’s single-handedly screwing up the sector now you’ve taken a break from it yourself.”

  By the time they were finished at the Hall, Malcolm was ready to go. There was an urgent meeting he had to attend, he said. And he had to write up all his findings. Besides, he had done enough for one day. He gave Alex a smooth grey pebble, the size of a fifty pence piece.

  “If anything urgent comes up, or you think of anywhere else you tore a great hole in the fabric of 'Sticia you might want to summon me with that,” he said. “It’s like a pager. Give it a firm squeeze and picture me in your head. Otherwise I’ll be in touch again if I need you.”

  Alex weighed the stone in his palm. He was about to ask Malcolm if he couldn’t spirit him back to Gladstone Street, but before he could do so Malcolm had vanished.

  “Never mind,” said Alex glumly, pocketing the pebble. He frowned. It was a long walk home from the Hall.

  It was after dark by the time Alex made it to Ganymede’s. He would have rather have gone back to Will and Tanya, but he supposed he had better keep his promise to Morlock. The creature was there at the door, waiting. He said nothing as Alex passed, merely hissing bleakly, his lips drawn back over big yellow teeth. Alex had half expected Ganymede to be one of the towering rages he was famous for, but instead he found him sitting at his desk, making notes in a small black book.

  “Ah, Alex,” he said, taking off a pair of glasses Alex had never seen him wear before. “Never mind. Better late than never. I’ve been thinking it’s time the two of us had a proper man to man discussion.”

  He drew back a chair and indicated it with a big hand. “Here. Sit down.” He poured Alex a glass of water and slid it in front of him. For a moment he seemed to consider Alex, nodding thoughtfully.

  “You and I got off to a bad start,” he conceded. “Looking back, there are some things I regret in the way I dealt with you.”

  There was a mildness in his voice and manner that filled Alex with suspicion. As a celebrated wolf, sheep’s clothing fitted him badly.

  “I want you to understand me,” he continued. “And there are aspects of life in Intersticia I want you to understand too. Things aren’t always as they seem. I dares
ay the others think I’m a crusty old so and so. I don’t doubt that some of them hate my guts. Do you think I enjoy that?” He shook his head sadly. “Of course I don’t. But they don’t understand what I’m up against. They haven’t got the first idea.” He shook his head in sadness at the ignorance of his subjects. “Still, the Angels charged me with running this sector and that’s what I’m going to do. I’ve done it longer than you can possibly imagine and I’m not about to give up on it now. One thing I’m not, Alex, and that’s a quitter,” he said, wagging a finger resolutely.

  “Establish a work/leisure balance they say. Give them meaningful tasks with a measurable outcome they say. But what resources do I get? I can barely feed everyone as it is. I don’t think you have any idea how hard I work. I don’t think anyone does.” He smiled grimly. “Come with me, will you please, Alex.”

  Pushing back his chair and setting down his glasses on the desk Ganymede crossed to another door. Feeling curious, despite his severe reservations about Ganymede’s sincerity, Alex followed. Ganymede opened the door. On the other side was a plain hall, with other doors leading off it.

  “After you,” said Ganymede, with a polite gesture.

  Instead of walking into a hall, Alex found himself falling. At least it felt like falling. Had he not been so used to strange experiences in recent days, he might have been seriously alarmed. As it was, he soon landed on some spongy surface on all fours, and scrambled into a sitting position, dusting off his hands and staring around him curiously. It was dark, but the ground beneath him was like thick moss, luminously blue, as though lit by countless millions of fibre-optic filaments. The black air around him swarmed with sparks of light. These varied in size and colour, some gliding majestically past, some darting unpredictably here and there. It was rather beautiful. Alex wasn’t exactly frightened. After all he was under Tony’s protection, but the thought did cross his mind that Ganymede might have decided to murder him in an act of heedless spite. This thought was coming to the forefront of his mind when Ganymede appeared beside him. He was carrying two nets of the sort used to catch butterflies and a large jar with a lid.

  “Pretty isn’t it?” he said, gesturing at the bizarre environment in which they found themselves. “It’s called Yer-bishnic-az-kesh, or something like that in Angelspeak, but I just call it TheOtherPlace. These little sparky jobs, they’re what I like to think of as sub-atomic particles. I know a bit about particle physics you see, from the days when I used to be able to hold down a job in Reality. Those little blue ones – I think of those as tachyons. See that large orange one, slow moving-that’s a meson. Watch out for the spiky purple ones. Quarks they are. Hurts like hell if you get one in the face.”

  “Okay,” said Alex, glancing at Ganymede wonderingly. “And the point of all this?”

  “The point of all this,” said Ganymede with a grim smile, “Is that we have to catch some of the little suckers.” He handed Alex a net. “Off you go.”

  They were surprisingly hard to catch. Even the slower ones seemed able to put on a spurt when Alex crept up on them with his net. Still, after a breathless chase, he caught himself a meson.

  “Is that all?” said Ganymede disparagingly when Alex presented it to him, fizzing and sparking spasmodically in the mesh of the net.

  He held up his jar, with a grin, to reveal half a dozen whirling, coloured sparks. “You’ll have to do better than that.” He suddenly stiffened, staring over Alex’s shoulder. “Look! A Higgs Boson. Those are rare as hell.”

  Without further explanation he was off, bounding across the blue moss, in pursuit of a bobbing red blob, the size of a hen’s egg. After a moment’s hesitation Alex set off after him. It was easily the oddest experience of his life, and in recent weeks he had had some pretty strange ones. It was exhausting work too. Somehow he seemed a lot heavier than usual, so that it was an effort to move, and the soft moss underfoot only made things worse. According to Ganymede they had to gather fifteen quarks, eight mesons, seven tachyons and a Higgs Boson. By the time Ganymede had a jar full of writhing light, Alex was fit to drop. Ganymede, who seemed only mildly winded, considered the jar.

  “I think that’ll do for now,” he said.

  “What now then?” asked Alex, trying to control his breathing. “And what, actually, is the point of all this?”

  “Home,” said Ganymede with an enigmatic grin. “And then a little cookery.”

  Alex had no idea where they were in this featureless landscape, but Ganymede led them towards a slender line of light which soon this resolved itself into the outline shape of the door they had entered through.

  “Excellent,” said Ganymede, leading Alex back through into his house. Another door opened into a small kitchen, where a woman was frozen in the act of washing the floor. Edging past her, Ganymede set the jar down on the kitchen table and switched on the oven.

  “Hang on. I thought electricity didn’t work in 'Sticia,” objected Alex.

  “It does here,” said Ganymede, getting bowls and various utensils out of cupboards and drawers. Angelic prerogative. That’s what it’s called. They make a sort of exception for me, if you like. If they didn’t I wouldn’t be able to provide you all with manna, and everyone would starve then, wouldn’t they?”

  He brought down a big brown bag of some flour like substance from one of the higher cupboards and set it next to the bowl. Soon, using scales, he was carefully measuring out a quantity of this and adding water to it from a blue striped jug. He gave the muddy mixture a vigorous stir with a wooden spoon.

  “And now the vital ingredient,” he said, with a grim smile.

  He unscrewed the lid from the jar and carefully poured in the various coloured sparks of light. One of the quarks shot across the kitchen and collided with a lampshade with a loud ‘ping’. With some difficulty Alex recaptured it with his net. Ganymede stirred the mixture with his spoon and wiped his hands on the front of his outermost coat. The state of his fingernails did nothing to inspire confidence in him as a chef.

  “And that’s manna?” said Alex.

  “It will be when it’s cooked,” agreed Ganymede, putting out dollops of it onto a baking tray. There were six dollops when he had finished.

  “But that’s not even one person’s daily manna allowance,” said Alex incredulously. “And you must hand out hundreds every week.”

  “Nearly two thousand,” said Ganymede evenly, putting the tray into the oven.

  “But how can you? There can’t be time,” protested Alex.

  “Time is a relative concept,” said Ganymede, straightening up. “As you should know by now. The room we are in now and TheOtherPlace, are outside of 'Stician time just as 'Stician time is outside Statical.”

  “This is all totally mad!” said Alex, shaking his head. “Too much!”

  “Au contraire,” said Ganymede patiently, adjusting the controls on the oven. “In an infinite universe everything is possible. More than that, it’s inevitable. Open up your mind.”

  Alex’s mind was blown wide open. He sat down heavily on one of the chairs, forced once more to re-assess his opinion of Ganymede.

  “You must be exhausted. How much time must you spend chasing those funny sparks in there?”

  “Lots,” said Ganymede simply. “But the love and gratitude of my people makes it all worthwhile.”

  There was such bitterness condensed into this one statement, you could have dissolved diamonds in it. Alex felt a pang of regret. For a moment he almost felt sorry for Ganymede.

  “But they hate me don’t they?” said the big tramp, as though he could read Alex’s thoughts.

  “Well, you haven’t got much of a fan base out there,” conceded Alex.

  “I’m tired,” said Ganymede, pulling up another chair and using the woman’s back as a foot stool. “Sometimes I’m really tired. But I don’t want to lose this sector.”

  “I’d have thought you’d have been glad to be rid of it,” said Alex. “It’s a whole lot of work, that’s for sure.
”

  Ganymede stroked his beard thoughtfully and leant back in his chair.

  “Problem is, I haven’t got a lot to go back to in Reality,” he said in a voice tinged with sadness. “Things didn’t really work out for me there. Here I’m something a bit special, see. There I was just the sweepings of the gutter. People looked through me, like I wasn’t even there, and when they did look at me it was with that special look of disgust. Pity, from time to time, but mostly disgust.” He sighed, looking at his hands. “And then I dropped into Intersticia, and suddenly everything was different. I’d been getting by in a kind of fog of cider and cheap British sherry. It was like walking out into clear daylight. And suddenly I was special. Like you, I found I could translate objects from one world to another. The woman who was running the sector when I showed up was making a dog’s breakfast of the whole show and she pretty soon got pulled back into Reality. The Angels gave me the sector… Best day of my life,” he said with no trace of irony or exaggeration. “Best day of my bloody life.”

  Suddenly he was looking at Alex. There was no hostility in his gaze, no humour, only a blank neutrality that Alex had never seen before.

  “Will you help me?” asked Ganymede simply.

  “What? Help you to do what?” asked Alex, although he knew very well. He just wanted to hear Ganymede say it.

  “Help me keep the sector,” said Ganymede. “I think we can save it; iron out the spikes, you know…the anomalies. You heard Tony. They’re having a meeting in a few days. If we can cut down on the damage by then I may be able to tough it out. If not, there’s only one obvious candidate to replace me.”

  “Oh?” said Alex carefully.