by Martin Dukes
Will was standing at the gate, when Alex reached home.
“Never a dull moment,” he said. “Guess who’s dropped in for tea…….Paulo and Kelly,” he said, when Alex looked blankly at him.
“Oh, Jesus,” said Alex. “Give me a break. I need to think this through.”
“I thought you’d be pleased. About Kelly anyways,” said Will, turning for the door.
“I am…sort of. But I found out how Kelly died. At least I think I know.”
He told Will about the accident, and the blood.
“And there’s another funny thing,” he said. “In Ganymede’s Census Return, Paulo’s name came right underneath Kelly’s. There was a date and a time. I guess the time they entered 'Sticia. I took special note of that, because at first I thought it was identical. But it wasn’t. There was just two tenths of a second difference. Odd that, isn’t it?”
“What are you saying?” whispered Will, running his hand through his tousled dark hair.
“I’m saying it was Paulo, that was driving that car,” Alex said grimly. “It was him that killed her.”
Will bit his lip. “Christ!” he said. “That could place a strain on their relationship if she ever finds out.”
“Best she doesn’t,” Alex told him. “At least for now. Do you hear me?” He pressed his finger to his lips. “Schtum.”
“Loud and clear,” said Will, following him into the house.
Paulo and Kelly were upstairs in the back bedroom with Tanya. Paulo was bragging loudly about their adventures as fugitives, but he stopped when Alex and Will came in.
“Hey, Alex, my man!” he said, as though Alex was a dear friend of his. He got up and raised a hand gleefully for Alex to slap. Alex pointedly ignored it. “Come on. No hard feelings, man,” said Paulo, toning down the enthusiasm. “I was desperate. You know that.”
“Yeah, and I bet you’re desperate now, or you wouldn’t be here,” said Alex coldly. “Down to your last twenty are you?”
He was conscious of Will, at his side glancing nervously at him.
“You know you are sooo wrong,” Paulo told him, standing up, but there was a glint of hostility in his eye now. The way he was shifting his weight from foot to foot, suggested a readiness to do violence to him, with difficulty suppressed.
“What’s going on here, anyway?” asked Kelly, looking anxious, as well she might, because at that moment Alex was ready to punch it out with Paulo, however uneven the contest. A small part of him stood back and wrung its hands anxiously at this entirely uncharacteristic bravado.
“Everyone’s talking about the end of the world,” she said. “What with Ganymede giving everyone a week off and so on….” Her voice tailed off. She looked at Alex in a way which pleaded with him not to antagonise her brutish companion. “Tanya won’t tell me a thing. Gone all sulky on me, hasn’t she?”
Well, it wasn’t sulkiness. The poor girl simply didn’t know what to say, so she was saying as little as she could get away with. Alex shot her a sympathetic glance and sat down carefully on a pile of blankets.
“'Sticia’s in trouble,” he told Kelly. “And it’s mostly my fault.”
He explained all that had happened in recent days, since his escape from Paulo’s custody, omitting from it any reference to Kelly’s status as dead girl walking.
“So don’t ask me to go down the offie for you,” said Alex, turning suddenly to Paulo and saying slowly and deliberately, “BECAUSE IT ISN’T GOING TO HAPPEN.”
“Why not?” asked Paulo, staring back at him with his cold, pale eyes. “Seems to me if we all want to get back to Reality it’s the best thing we can do. If we do enough damage to this broccoli place we’re going to sprout it all up and the whole potato place folds. End of story. We get on with our cabbage lives.”
“Yes, well that’s all you cauliflower know,” said Alex derisively.
“Huh?” grimaced Paulo. “What’s he cucumber talking about?”
“I’m just saying,” said Alex, leaning towards him. “That there’s a few people with an interest in keeping this interstice going. And I’m not going to let you sprout it up.”
“Why?” said Paulo, an expression of distaste and mystification on his face. “Why is he talking about fennel vegetables?”
“Stop it,” Will told Alex, nervously, sensing that Paulo was getting to the end of his fuse.
“Look, Paulo,” said Alex, thinking hard. “If we get dropped back into Reality it’s all over. Everything we’ve had here. Done with. We won’t even remember it…” he lowered his voice, looking meaningfully at Paulo and then Kelly. “We won’t even remember each other. Malcolm told me.”
There was a silence. Paulo seemed to consider this, fingering his earring. Alex could pretty much see the cogs going round in his head. At last he took Kelly’s hand and swung it bashfully, giving her a wan smile.
“Yeah, okay. Peas. Maybe you’re right. Leek me if I couldn’t do with a beer though.”
Relief swept over Alex. “We’ll need that cash you’ve got,” he said, following up this breakthrough. “Taking that made a big hole in 'Sticia. It has to be put back.”
“Huh!” Paulo’s eyes glinted briefly like hard little stones again.
“Go on!” Kelly told him, giving him a sharp nudge in the ribs. “Don’t be so daft.What the hell do you need it for anyway? You never even bought me flowers.”
“Yeah, sorry chick,” he said with a leer. “I would if I could, mind. You know that.”
Kelly tweaked his nose. “Yeah. I believe you….Come on..cash. Cough up!”
After a moment, Paulo reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled wad of notes. He extended these towards Alex, pulling them away teasingly at the last moment, before finally letting Alex take hold of them.
“You owe me one, big ears,” said Paulo, giving him a playful slap around the head that made him see stars.
Later, whilst Paulo slept in the front bedroom, Alex was awoken by Kelly’s hand on his shoulder. It was nearly dawn, and the 'Stician moon was sinking to the horizon behind the bottle factory, taking with it its soft cloak of darkness. Alex, who had hardly slept anyway, looked blearily up at her.
“Can we talk?” she whispered, glancing warily back into the upstairs landing. “Outside.”
Alex followed her stealthily down the stairs, past the bedroom where Will and Tanya still slept, Will, wrapped loosely in blankets, his mouth wide open.
“There’s something up, isn’t there?” said Kelly, when they stood by the front gate. A small stiff boy on a scooter was frozen in the act of hurtling past, an expression of determination set in his features. “Everyone’s behaving funny around me.”
Alex briefly had another fragment of the long debate he had with himself throughout the night. Should he tell her? His instincts assured him that he shouldn’t and reason, taking the opposite view, was just about worn out with arguing. It was easier to say nothing, however and Alex felt too exhausted to do otherwise.
“It’s just Paulo,” he lied. “He’s such a chav. Can’t you tell we don’t like him? What do you see in him anyway?”
Kelly seemed to accept this explanation. She shrugged, and smiled wanly at him. “I don’t know. He’s funny and he can be really generous. He’s a free spirit…you know. No one can hem him in. He doesn’t see why he has to play by the rules. He makes his own rules. I don’t know….there’s lots of things.” She cast her dark eyes upward, thoughtfully. “Maybe he reminds me of my Dad.”
“I thought you couldn’t remember your Dad,” objected Alex.
“No, but I know what he was like,” said Kelly. “Mum talks about him enough. He was a bit of a rogue too.” She frowned, affecting seriousness. “Anyway, why am I telling you all this. It’s none of your business, is it?”
Alex didn’t answer, so she took his hand in hers, small and warm and full of life.
“Is that jealously I hear talking?......I like you too,” she said, with a smile and a coy tilt of her chin.
Chapter Fourteen
It was the Gathering later that day, so Ganymede would be tied up in the park restoring a measure of normality to 'Stician life. He gave his instructions to Alex and his friends first, making a good show of concealing his annoyance when confronted with Paulo. Paulo grinned insolently at him. Ganymede told him all his previous offences would be forgiven if he helped set things right. To Alex’s relief, Paulo seemed to accept this. Kelly went with Will and Tanya to the park, to keep up the impression that things were alright. Paulo and Alex went with Malcolm to the post office.
“Hey, dude,” Paulo said to Malcolm, when the angel arrived. He favoured Malcolm with another insolent smirk. “Ain’t never met an angel. Funny…you don’t look like an angel.”
“He’s undercover,” Alex told him, whilst Malcolm looked uncomfortable. The angel fetched out his transponder and began pressing parts of its top surface. “There,” he said triumphantly at last, as a brilliant glow suffused him. “What do you think of that?”
The next moment he was authentically an angel, clear white light, streaming from him so that Paulo had to shade his eyes. Unfortunately, instead of growing into a tall majestic angel like Tony, he had shrunk into a tiny, cute, naked winged child, like those Alex had seen in Renaissance paintings. Paulo and Alex stared open mouthed, whilst the little angel fluttered on dove sized wings before them.
“What?” said Malcolm, before glancing down at himself. “Oh!” he said, reverting abruptly to his usual be-suited shape. “Bloody Mark Fourteen. Piece o’ garbage.”
Alex picked the transponder from the fruit stand, where Malcolm had thrown it, whilst Paulo sniggered and made a rude gesture with a crooked little finger. Morlock and Minion looked on impassively. They had come along in case any heavy fetching or carrying needed doing.
“Let’s get on with it,” said Alex, taking the bank notes from his pocket and straightening them out.
Malcolm travelled back to the previous instant to take pictures for the sake of comparison. Soon the notes were replaced in the till, exactly as Alex had found them. Malcolm held his transponder over them and nodded.
“Yep. That’s made a huge difference. Hell of a spike that was. Now it’s hardly a blip.”
Malcolm’s moving to and from the previous interstice had given Alex an idea. Their next job was at a large house that Paulo had stayed in with Kelly two nights ago. There was a little green graffiti here and there, and the general scatter of litter associated with Paulo’s occupation. Lager cans bobbed in the swimming pool. Alex took Malcolm to one side whilst Paulo helped Morlock and Minion fish these out.
“I think I know how my friend got killed,” he said, whilst the angel tilted his head to one side. “Can you do me a big favour? I need you to go back again to the interstice before this one. Only this time I want you to go to the ring road. There’s an accident there. If you could just have a look in the crashed car, and in the gutter. There’s only a blood stain there right now. Please. I’d be really, really grateful.” He looked at Malcolm earnestly.
“This is outside my brief,” said the angel, looking doubtful. “Is it something to do with that idiot?” he said nodding towards Paulo, who had just thrown an empty can playfully at the back of Minion’s head.
“Maybe,” said Alex guardedly.
Malcolm pursed his lips. “Hmmm. Okay. I’ll be right back.”
He was as good as his word, returning almost before Alex had realised he had gone. The angel’s face was pale, and his eyes darted towards Paulo, at the other end of the pool, before he seized Alex’s arm and pushed him behind the changing room.
“You were right,” he said. “It’s him. Paulo. He’s the one in the car. It’s a mess. Blood everywhere. He’s alive though; just about.” He cupped his hands over his mouth and drew them slowly downwards. “Your friend’s definitely a goner though. It’s like you said. She’s lying in the gutter…like a broken doll. Sorry pal,” he said, putting a light angelic hand on Alex’s shoulder.
Alex bit his lip. It brought him a certain grim satisfaction to be proved right, but a kind of bleak despair too. He wanted to run up to Paulo and hurl him into the pool; hold his stupid head under until the bubbles stopped rising.
“There’s got to be something you can do,” he said.
“Why has there?” asked Malcolm reasonably. “You don’t think I’m about to go back and start messing about with the course of Reality do you? Even if I could. Accept it Alex. It’s better if you do in the long term.”
But Alex couldn’t accept it. “What would happen if you went back in time a few moments and twisted the wheel of Paulo’s car so that he just missed Kelly?”
“No way! You must be joking. That would alter the course of this Reality,” said Malcolm. “It would create a different future. We call it a Mod. I don’t have authority to insert a new Breakpoint. That kind of permission has to come right from the top. I’d have to go through Mike, and I don’t see Mike signing up to that one. It’s not like Kelly’s a big wheel in this Reality. Her getting offed hardly makes a ripple. Okay, so maybe if she was going to invent a cure for cancer something could be done. No. Forget about it, Alex. It isn’t going to happen.”
Why can’t I go back?” asked Alex desperately. “If I was there a couple of seconds earlier, I could knock her out of the way.”
“Uh, huh,” said Malcolm, shaking his head violently. “Two major points there. First 'Sticians don’t decide when to drop back into Reality. Reality sucks them back in when their time is up. Second, you guys can’t time travel. Simply can’t be done. Besides, then you’d exist twice in the same instant. Think about it. There’s one of you already there in the instant you want to go back to. Suddenly there’d be two of you. At the very least it would be embarrassing. Reality doesn’t take kindly to being messed about. ‘Could be catastrophic. At the very least the instant would fold. ‘Could lose the whole Reality. Put it out of your head.” He paused, apparently hearing voices in his head and then nodded. “Okay. So now we’ve got other priorities anyway. I just heard from Dave in Tony’s office. The meet’s tomorrow. We’d better go tell Ganymede.”
“What you need to understand about Tony, is that he’s a deeply bitter little angel,” Malcolm told Alex and Ganymede that night. “He was a rising star, tipped for the top. Everyone said how gifted he was. And then there was some scandal about the allocation of resources. Nothing was ever proved, but our Tony’s reputation took a nose dive, nevertheless. His junior, Mike, got the plum job he’d coveted for himself. That’s how it is now. There are four Archangels, see. Top jobs in creation. There’s Uriel in accounts, Raphael in Personnel, or Angelic Resources as they’re starting to call it nowadays. Then Gabe’s in charge of PR and right up there at the top of the tree there’s Mike, Head of Operations. Poor old Tony got lumbered with Intersticia. He was lucky to get that.”
Malcolm had a laugh about this and poured each of them another glass of the delicious drink he had brought with him. Nectar, he called it, and it was like a golden distillation of honey and sunlight. Drinking it made Alex want to laugh and cry and run around the room all at the same time. With difficulty he restrained himself. His fingers and toes tingled delightfully.
“But Mike’s never going to rest so long as Tony’s holding down any kind of responsible job. They hate each other like poison. If he can prove Intersticia’s going down the tubes, he’ll have an excuse to kick Tony out. He’d be lucky to get my job,” scoffed Malcolm. “So Tony’s under pressure to run a tight ship, what with Mike breathing down his neck, and Ganymede here letting holes get torn in the fabric doesn’t exactly help his case.”
“It’s pretty much fixed, didn’t you say?” grunted Ganymede, looking resentful.
“Sure. We ironed out a lot of spikes, but it’s going to be pretty much touch and go. Have you had a look at the moon recently?”
Alex and Ganymede exchanged glances for a moment and th
en crossed to look out of the window. The moon was rising above the poplars by the football pitch.
“See anything odd?”
“Oh my god!” breathed Alex and Ganymede in unison.
There was a definite blurriness around its outline that hadn’t been there before.
“Cumulative you see,” said Malcolm matter-of-factly. “Takes a while for the instabilities to take effect. You might have felt a few earth tremors too. It’ll take a while for our fixes to feed through. You’d better hope it’s not too little too late.”
“There’s about seventy lives depending on it,” said Alex.