by Brian Hughes
Hogan blinked, cast his eyes around wearily at the press of inquisitive faces, flinched backwards, banged his head on the arm of the chair and then realised exactly where he was.
“Cissy?” Cissy beamed down at him, her teeth glistening in the yellow glow from the table lamp. “What happened?”
“It’s a long story.” She stood up, brushed herself down, and flicked away a disconcerting screw that had mysteriously been forgotten in the rush. “I’ll invent something later. Come on. There’s work to be done.”
The chill of the night wrapped itself about the four figures as they stood on the doorstep blowing warm breath through their fingers. Cissy had reached the conclusion that, given the opportunity of time travel, there were certain matters that required her attention straight away. No time for long goodbyes.
On the other hand Allison wasn’t too sure. There was something final in Cissy’s expression that probably meant she wouldn’t be back in a hurry. She attempted to delay the departure for just a few moments more.
“How come your mother’s walking better?”
“What?” Cissy turned to stare at the angry old woman peering myopically into the gloom at the garden’s end. “Oh that. She’s always like that. She’s not really a cripple. It’s just her way of getting attention for herself. She’s only fifty-odd for Goodness sakes.”
“Cecilia Doyle! How dare you accuse...”
“Shut up, Mother!” Cissy returned her gaze to her overweight friend. “She tends to milk her imaginary hearing problems for all they’re worth as well. Until such times as she forgets...”
Allison kicked up an imaginary stone with her fluffy toecap and pondered the meaning of all that had happened. A snail’s trail glistened delicately across the stone slab in the moonlight.
“Will you ever be coming back, Cissy?”
Somewhere deep inside, Cissy knew that this was the end. She wasn’t sure how or why yet but the evening had an ultimate feel about it. It must have been the atmosphere. Or perhaps it was just the chill in her marrow.
“We’ll be round tomorrow night,” she muttered. “I’ve already told you. Not us ‘Now.’ Us from the future! All being well.”
“What time?” Allison looked out from beneath her fringe.
“Nine o’clock, sharp. So don’t forget and go out to the disco or something!” She was uncertain for a moment whether to shake her companion’s hand or not. “And don’t mention any of this, will you? It’s important not to, ANN reckons.”
There! That was that.
Time to go and right wrongs.
Time to subtly change history.
As long as it was done with great care. The three silhouettes began to move away down the gravel path. Cissy’s boots reached a stop with a hollow crunch as she cast a last lingering glance at her old friend filling the bottom half of the doorway.
“Oh yeah...and you’d better dig a hole in the back garden. Just behind the patio.”
“What for?”
“I can’t tell you...” Cissy nodded, allowing a grin to reveal her teeth. “But make it a big one. It might be important tomorrow.”
Chapter Eighteen: Loose Ends
In order to understand time it’s necessary first to visualise something without quite so many dimensions. Something straightforward and recognisable, such as an old string vest. The sort that your Grandpa might have worn on those cold winter mornings back in the sixties.
In our illustration one strand of the weave represents one path along the time continuum. Go ahead. Choose a strand at random and follow it. For example, choose the strand with the Mackerson Stout stain on it so that it’s easy to remember. Now watch how it works.
For the first half an inch or so everything runs smoothly, just the thin skeins of irony wrapping themselves about the central core of temporal progression. That’s what makes the threads of time so incredibly strong and hard to break.
But it doesn’t take long before other strands, other possibilities, meet up with this one and present the traveller with a choice of directions.
Carry on up the threads in an uninterrupted line until you reach the yellowing section where the navel should be. And now, keeping a finger pressed firmly on the hairy belly button of the present, choose an alternative section of vest. Somewhere a little over to one side and further back.
Schrodinger postulated that, ‘The act of observation affects that which is being observed.’ But this hypothesis depends upon exactly who’s observing it. One of the problems with time travel is that it creates different observation points. Which amounts to the fact that although two entirely different events might have occurred, where the time lines cross one another again only one set of results can have dominance. And generally you end up with a rather big knot.
This is one of the reasons why people shouldn’t be too hasty to interfere with time. On the other hand if you’ve just been granted a second chance to even the score, having been thrown through the time barrier by an exploding Tachyon bomb, then why not?
Sergeant Partridge scratched subconsciously at his own copious belly button and stared at the magazine before him on the station counter. It had been a busy couple of days since the terrible events at Patternoster Row and already time was attempting to heal itself.
The station house was currently undergoing reconstruction. Everybody appeared to have forgotten about the half-crazed, four hundred-foot gorilla stomping round the town. Now the generally accepted theory was that all the damage had been the result of a freak hurricane. Such are the capacities of the human mind to bend the truth back into shape. Of course, that didn’t explain why the copper dome of the town hall had been found wedged down Watson Drive with what appeared to be several huge bites taken from it. But already a number of the more impressive toe dints had been transformed into ornamental ponds.
Sergeant Partridge, on the other hand, was older and wiser. His mind wasn’t quite so flexible as it ought to have been. In fact right now it was just about reaching breaking point.
The police station foyer was a symphony of labouring noises. Police stations are one of the few buildings in the world where workmen actually get on and work instead of standing around in large groups drinking coffee and swapping anecdotes. Perhaps ‘symphony’ was the wrong word to have used. It was more of a jazz orchestration of disjointed hammering, ill conceived and badly whistled theme tunes from television adverts, chisels clinking and saws rasping.
“Ah, Jaye!” The young constable had just entered through the self-locking door. Jack stood upright, continuing to thumb over the pages of Model Maker Monthly.
“Sarge?”
For a moment Jack stumbled over his words. Then he thought of what had recently occurred and took the plunge.
“Thought we might go out tonight,” he began confidently. “After what’s ’appened I thought we could all do with a drink.”
“Can’t tonight, Sarge.” Jack felt his heart sinking slowly towards his socks. “I’m already off out...with my...”
She looked at the sergeant, questioning his time honoured approach to life for a moment.
“My ‘gentleman’ friend.”
“Right. Yes. Of course...” Jack suddenly noticed how young the girl was, feeling very old himself. Very overweight. And he thought about how much larger his bald patch had become whilst he wasn’t paying attention to it. “Well, another time perhaps.”
He coughed and threw his stare back into the new range of ‘Star Battle Cruisers.’ “By the by...there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask y’ for ages. What exactly do y’ get up to round the back of the station?”
“Sarge?” Jaye stared at him quizzically as if the question hadn’t made sense. Jack’s brow burrowed deeper between the pages of the magazine. “Filing Sarge. You know? Work?”
She smiled, a rogue’s smile, and although he couldn’t see it Jack knew it was there. Jaye continued.
“Something that you and Parkins wouldn’t know anything about I suppose.”
“And...er...the suntan?”
“Suntan? What suntan, Sarge?”
Yes, well. Now that she’d come to mention it, what suntan indeed? There was probably just some Mediterranean in Jaye’s genetics. Funny really, how some things were obvious when you stopped to examine them carefully.
He thought about how he’d bumped into Henry Higginbotham the day before. Henry had been on his way to the park with Toby Patterson, a football tucked firmly beneath his armpit. Not a word had been spoken, but there had been several embarrassed glances exchanged. He could have sworn that he’d been a witness to Henry’s corpse only a matter of hours before.
This whole thing needed further investigation, Jack concluded. Especially considering the numerous reports concerning Allison Moore and the peculiar new colleague she had acquired. Her latest crony had been described as ‘apparently arthritic and mentally unstable’ and was being blamed for causing a nuisance of himself with the Hob Nob display at Sainsbury’s. ‘Obviously a foreign type,’ Jack thought. ‘Not used to British customs.’
He watched the tightly skirted rear of Constable Jaye disappear back into the dark confines of the station’s interior.
“I’ll call on Amanda Duck later on,” Jack thought to himself, recognising the photograph of a camouflaged model that resembled a brick but was listed as a Xnarghian Mothership. “See ’ow she’s doin’. Didn’t like the look of that doctor much! Better keep an eye on ’im! Fine woman, Amanda! Good bone structure. Pleasing personality. Even if she did try t’ bite me on the knee.”
A large knot where the broken threads of Time are tied haphazardly together. A tangle that becomes smaller the more distance is put between it and the observer.
Now move backwards, following the strand of weave down the alternative route. Back to the evening of Commander Hogan’s first arrival on Earth. Back to the events that took place shortly after the Columbus crashed. And let’s see if we can work out what’s created such a tangle.
“You shouldn’t have done that!”
“Done what? All I did was warn Toby that if he wanted to save his mate’s life then he’d better make sure he wasn’t at home watching the porno channels tonight!”
The two figures moved slowly through the overlapping shadows that fell across the park’s entrance drive. The gravel that crunched beneath their feet was bathed in the blue light from the moon hanging solemnly above them.
A third, smaller figure lurched behind, supported on a stick, rickets gnawing uncomfortably through its legs and a screwed up expression glued onto its face. Every so often the stick would have to be forgotten as Mrs. Doyle put an extra spurt into her walk to catch the other two up.
“You were messing about with ‘Cause and Effect’!” Commander Hogan stopped abruptly in front of his companion, cocking his snarling features onto one side.
Mrs. Doyle slowed her pace to an arthritic crawl in the background.
“Was I really? Who’s to say that Henry’ll take any notice?”
“I’m to say!” Hogan pulled himself up to his full, impressive height in an attempt to convey a message of authority. Judging by Cissy’s brazen aspect it wasn’t working. “You can’t expect a gonk with half a brain like that not to respond to the threat of having his testicles nailed to a table!”
“It was just a joke...” Cissy folded her arms, directing her gaze away from his eyes. “He probably doesn’t even know what ‘testicles’ are, anyhow.”
“He will now that you’ve pointed them out to him with your boot!” Hogan tried to attract her attention and gave up. “Anyhow, I thought you couldn’t stand the ‘Fat Git’?”
At this Cissy lifted her gaze, optimistically.
“Are you jealous, Mr. Spaceman?”
This was too much for Hogan to bear. He searched around in desperation as his thoughts flailed wildly. At length he appeared to brighten.
“I think I’ve just worked out what happened to that missing shuttlecraft,” he muttered, clicking his fingers and pointing off towards the crazy golf course. “C’mon. No time to lose.”
He set off at a jog, taking a short cut over the grass. Cissy watched him before turning to her mother. She was shuffling awkwardly through the watery shadows beneath a group of poplars. Occasionally she’d cast a glance in her direction. Even though it was dark Cissy could still feel the betrayal that the old woman’s expression sourly hinted at.
And the last few dregs of her dreams about the conquest of space began to trickle away in a subsidence of guilt.
Dawn didn’t so much break as the world became less dark. It turned from a hollow vault of empty blackness into a soggy grey landscape the features of which appeared blue and flat as they receded into the distance. Small wisps of mist coiled up from the damp ground resembling charmed snakes.
A dewdrop hung suspended from the end of Hogan’s nose, dimly reflecting the twin shapes of Cissy and her shivering mother. The trench coat collar was turned up about his cheeks, which in this light appeared ashen and withdrawn. Every item of their clothing glistened like damp marzipan, creaking beneath the weight of the cold autumn morning.
“I’m too old for this sort o’ thing, Cecilia!” Mrs. Doyle shrugged her shoulders, protecting her ears from the damp. “I ought t’ be ’ome in bed.”
“You can’t go home yet, Mother.” Cissy was reluctant to argue. “Not while we’re still there.”
“That’s nonsense. Y’ don’t know what y’r talkin’ about!”
A hedgehog ambled over the concrete humps that adorned the golf course. Its tiny claws clicked across the blue and yellow paint leaving miniature scratch marks.
Blind as a bat.
Hedgehogs are intrinsically myopic, having just enough vision to weigh up the prospects of a fat juicy worm. Ironically fourteen-ton trucks don’t constitute as worm shaped, so hedgehogs have a tendency to ignore their approach.
Moments later a rumbling noise broke through the stillness. Very gradually at first, as though something was drawing in from the outskirts of town. It grew in intensity with the sound of a hundred kettles boiling over onto a hundred gas cookers all at once.
Out of the sky swung the edifice. A yellow and brown camouflaged slab the size of a bowling green.
Commander Hogan awoke, the thick points of his coat lapels slapping against his cheekbones in the localised hurricane. Great curls of his black hair smacked in matted swathes across his eyes as both he and his companions stared upwards through a veil of tears.
The hedgehog stopped, its little black nose all shiny and twitching. At that moment a great scream went up, fighting and punching against the wind.
“What the BLOODY ’ELL is that?”
Startled, as the last echoes of Mrs. Doyle’s voice were blown away on a spiralling gust, the hedgehog scarpered. As the Firestar touched down its fat bottom was rapidly waddling towards Mario’s Ice Cream Parlour by the boating lake.
The commander was already up on his feet, his arm outstretched behind him as he offered Cissy his hand.
“C’mon Cissy. Let’s go...”
There was a pause as Cissy stared at the fingers reaching out for her. All she had to do was grab them and everything she’d always wanted would be hers for the taking.
An infinitesimally small voice in the rear of her head held her back. She turned to confront a very old, very wrinkled and very dejected looking face.
“See...” said Mrs. Doyle, her eyebrows knitted together in a scowl. “I told you ’ee’d come between us.”
With a ‘Humph’ the geriatric struggled up onto her furry boots and started off towards the park gates with a deliberately stumbling gait. Her stick was swung forwards with more emphasis than usual, every step being an obvious and painful manoeuvre.
“Mother!” An autumn leaf committed suicide, sticking to the lifeless fibres of Cissy’s hair with a damp slap. “Mother? We could all go together. It’d be fun.”
“You go...” A tiny, root-like hand waved her backwards with dismissiv
e rejection. “I’m too old for gallifrantin’ around the universe...”
“But...” Cissy was clutching at straws, her voice a familiar tremble. “There’s so many worlds out there to explore...”
“Pah!” The elderly woman swung around with the sharpness of a needle. “’Ee’s an alien Cissy!”
“We’re all aliens, Mother.” There was already a certain resigned sadness about Cissy’s demeanour now. “We’re a planet of aliens. Every last one of us....”
“I’m too old Cecilia!” Mrs. Doyle re-established her rickety hobble. “I’m too bent and knackered. It wouldn’t be right at my time of life!”
“You’re fifty-ODD!” Cissy’s statement rose into a high pitched clamour of heartache as she watched the figure lurching balefully away. At length she turned back to Hogan who had been watching this scene unfold.
For several moments the two of them stared at each other. Then Cissy smiled. A sad little smile that was more of an expressionless cut across her lower features than a genuine assertion.
“Right!” Hogan slapped his palms together. “Ready then?”
There followed a protracted silence, during which Cissy’s expression revolved through a number of alternative countenances.
“I can’t go...” she mumbled at length, the point of her chin burrowing into her wiry neck.
“What?”
“I can’t go with you.” Cissy’s egg-shaped eyes loomed up from beneath what was fast becoming a tangle of dead leaves for a fringe. “Some of us have got responsibilities, y’ know?”
She concluded the proclamation with an aggressive crack to the words.
“Cissy...she’s old enough to look after herself.” Hogan was now the one wearing the dumbstruck expression.
“No she can’t!”
At which point Cissy span on her heels and fled, the tears welling up in her saucepan-sized eyelids. She didn’t want the commander’s final memory of her to be all watery and red and acting about as maturely as a schoolgirl.
“You wouldn’t understand! You’re an ALIEN!”