The Terror Time Spies

by David Clement-Davies

  “Ghosts, Nellie,” Francis gulped, tugging his collar, “The dead.”

  “Perhaps, bambini,” said the tall Italian, like a gentle pirate, as little Spike clasped Henry’s hand, “Ghosts in the machine, if there are any ghosts. At present though, we’re here to assist with your defence you before the SP.”

  Spike thought of The Scarlet Pimpernel again.

  “The Special Tribunal,” explained the elegant Italian though and she remembered the man in the Square.

  “Tribunal?” cried Henry, wondering if they would ever escape, even up here in the clouds. “And what defence?”

  “That’s technically incorrect, Garimondo,” corrected the woman in blue stockings though, in a strong American accent, just like Obediah Tuck’s, “These children haven’t even been arraigned yet.”

  “Ah no, but they will be, Spilling, they will,” said the tall Garimondo, as if addressing some annoying work colleague, “Everyone is, in the end. You know that, Spilling. Its inevitable.”

  “What do you mean, Sir,” gulped Henry, not liking the sound of being arraigned at all, as the crystals in the smoky cloud seemed to quiver and sing around them, while the strange watch trembled in his hand.

  “We are ‘ere doing free work for the BCA, bambini,” explained Garimondo, with a kindly smile, “Just as my colleague Miss Spilling here says. The Bureau of Children’s Advisement.”

  “Citizens,” corrected Spilling, with a gentle frown, “The Bureau of Citizen’s Advisement, Professor Garimondo. It’s a new world now. All is change.”

  “Quite, Senora,” cried Garimondo, looking very irritated though, “you are with the times. But we’ve been trying to get through since you birthday, Henry Bonespair, or since you started to pull us through, for Citizen’s Advisement, courtesy of our firm, Messers Chronos, Garimondo, Spilling…”

  “And Boffin,” snapped the third extraordinary bald character. He looked rather sour, still rubbing his head. “And that bucket hurt, boy.”

  Henry Bonespair blinked at him in astonishment. They had all been down the well. It had not been Spike throwing her voice at all.

  “At your service, Mr Bonespair,” said Spilling, in her flowing gown, looking rather admiringly at Obediah Tuck’s now waxwork-like moustache. “The senior partner ain’t with us, I’m afraid. Chronos is back teaching at the moment, academically, for Habeas Corpus College, at his old Universe.”

  “University, Senora,” corrected Garimondo sharply.

  “Yes, yes. The University,” said Spilling, blushing, “Chronos is…er…he’s the law Don there now, specialising in special Patents.”

  “You are lawyers!” cried Henry Bonespair, wondering how they had climbed so high.

  Francis was trying to scribble in his book, but in the Cloudburst his pencil would not work, but just kept slipping across the page.

  “We are Counsel, yes, Henry,” corrected the floating American. “Advocates.”

  “Advising our new murderous French citizens?” said Count Armande rather coldly, as they wondered if they had been killed, and these were really angels.

  “Advising citizens of the World, Count,” answered Spilling sharply. “A new world, especially now it’s all going Decimal.”

  “The Tribunal Judge sent us though,” said the big headed child now, in his piping voice. “The Tribunal of the Twelve.”

  “Twelve?” said Hal sharply.

  “The Great Watchmaker, they call him. The Tribunal Judge. Just a hobby of his, of course, clocks I mean, and mechanisms, between important cases.”

  “Isaac Harrison,” whispered Count Armande suddenly, “but he’s fou. Mad. In Bedlam. I read it.”

  Henry thought of the Godfather that he had never even met and the Club wondered if they were all mad too, talking to three celestial lawyers, in the middle of a cloudburst, as they tried to escape Revolutionary France.

  “Not Howling Harrison, no, Count,” said Spilling rather sadly, “Dearee no. He’s not the Tribunal judge. Although, when he was making that special Chronometer, Henry’s Godfather did stumble on some quite remarkable discoveries, well before their time too. About Time, in fact. Or Space, and the other worlds.”

  Francis Simpkins thought of Tuck talking of another world in the Eagle, and of England, Austria, Holland, The Australias and the Americas. He was goggling at these floating apparitions now.

  “Silence, Spilling,” snapped Garimondo though, “They couldn’t understand it, yet. Besides, you know teenager’s brains are different. They can hardly hear us really.”

  “The w-w-watch,” said Francis Simpkins though, “it’s linked to H-H-Hal, isn’t it? It was made on his Birthday, 1779, by his Godfather.”

  “Bravissimo,” cried Garimondo, clapping his big hands, “And Isaac promised him a very special present, so the very mechanism contains essence of Bonespair too. In its hair spring. A hair which Isaac Harrison plucked from his own little head, in his cot.”

  Henry jolted and remembered that sharp pain in his head, that he had felt in the carriage on the Dover road, and that old dream of a face peering down at him kindly.

  “But what do you want?” asked Henry, in astonishment, feeling like he was inside a glittering dream right now, and suddenly noticing how very pretty Juliette was.

  “Want?” piped the large headed bald child, “Not much. Except to warn you that you must never lose that watch, or let it stop either. That’s some free advice from Messers Garimondo, Spilling, Chronos and Boffin. We’re celebrated legal Rainmakers.”

  The diminutive lawyer looked expectantly at the other two.

  “We’ll see Boffin, eh, we’ll see,” muttered Garimondo, “That depends on how you do here, my friend. A full partnership, I mean, at the firm.”

  “But this,” cried Henry Bonespair, holding up the Chronometer, its hands still whizzing furiously in opposite directions, “it’s was Mr Wickham’s, not mine. Father works for him, his Land Agent, although the diplomat’s really an English spy.”

  “Commissioned for Wickham’s own father, yes,” said Spilling knowingly, “during the American wars, when you were born. It was a time of spies too, just like the great George Washington. Wickham’s father requested that catch, and the Gloved Hand symbol, to open the compartment at Twelve, for ordinary miniature secret messages, to be used practically in your secret service…

  “Or so he thought,” said Boffin, with a wink.

  “But jealous of his famous cousin, John Harrison,” said Garimondo, “and very brilliant too, mad Isaac worked on, in the deepest dark, and thinking of you as well, Hal, and your dear parents, added some very special refinements, which the foolish, spying adults never even knew about.”

  “Refinements?” grunted Skipper, feeling very confused indeed and very left out too.

  “Only in certain hands does that watch have very special properties. Brave young hands, Henry Bonespair. In fact, it’s patently Revolutionary, in younger hands. For Revolutionary times, eh, bambini?”

  Henry felt a strange tingling.

  “But Isaac always intended it for you. We wouldn’t be here otherwise. Isaac first opened the doorway, with the No-Meter, but you first pulled us through, by simply using it. I almost wish you had not fiddled quite so much.”

  “Opened the doorway?” said Henry.

  “Told you so,” cried Spike, looking smugly at Hal. “The Nometer. Magic.”

  “Or the Yes-Meter,” said Spilling, “It can give you a Yes or a No, on very important questions. It has rather remarkable ways of affecting young travellers too though, that dial.”

  “In Time?” whispered Count Armande, “you’re really travellers in time, then?”

  “Or space,” said Spilling, “Although on sabbatical, Count, as we are, academic readers who get a chance to travel like to call ourselves ATM’s: Agents in Time and Motion. If such a thing as Time exists at all. And it’s all unpaid work ,of course, at the BCA. Free Citizen’s Advice.”

  Francis Simpkins suddenly remembered the patent
pending inside the watch.

  “I’m an academico myself, really,” sighed Garimondo, “although more actively involved in current affairs than Chronos now, and most interested in France’s history.”

  “You mean Francis’s?” corrected Spilling again, and Garimondo frowned. He looked a little confused.

  “Ah, yes. Simpkins.”

  Francis Simpkins felt rather nervous.

  “The Revolution,” said Boffin though, “we shan’t know it’s real effects these three hundred years.”

  “You’re just secret agents too then,” cried Spike angrily though, “Time Spies…of Terror, watching us, like horrid...”

  “Of Terror? ” smiled Garimondo, “Hardly fair, Nellie Bonespair. Although terror faces you all now, it’s true, so we must be on the look out. When it’s on the outside though, perhaps it starts gets inside too. You must watch for that, always.”

  Spike shivered and remembered the blood soaked Square.

  “You’re still spying though,” said Nellie rather angrily, remembering what she had felt when she had had to say her prayers.

  “Watching, child. But when I’m not acting for The Special Tribunal,” said Garimondo, “or teaching at the University, I prefer to think of myself as rather skilled in science, and mending machines.”

  Spilling and Boffin both looked at Garimondo rather sceptically, on their Arial platform, but Francis was delighted at this talk.

  “Then us,” he cried, “We’re travelling in t-t-t-time too.”

  “No, no,” said Spilling immediately, “We think the Club’s doing very well indeed, in your own time, although you may well have been born out of it. So many of you are.”

  “You?” said Hal.

  “The Bureau has not taken a position yet,” interrupted Boffin, although Spike was sure they were talking about children, “but you may find, with that Chronometer, that the future has a strange way of coming to you, early.”

  “Coming to us?” said Henry.

  “It depends on what you do in the revolutionary historic maelstrom. The Cloudburst. They only occur at certain momentous times in your strange history. Really Revolutionary times, just like now. Or if you cross the strings.”

  “Strings?” said Spike.

  “Do?” said Henry though, clasping hold of one of the balloon’s ropes tightly.

  “Ever seen a stone dropped in a pond, Henry Bonespair?” said Garimondo, “The ripples? Everything you do affects the future, and so the time strings. If you reverse them, as that watch can, sometimes, it is only logical that the future starts affecting you too. It’s a very remarkable machine, Mad Harrison made.”

  Henry Bonespair thought of that terrible electrical storm and those strange spirals of weaving water and light, curling out of the sea, as they had crossed the Channel to France.

  Is that what Garimondo meant by strings?

  “Some theorists believe strings into the past too,” said Boffin, clearly trying to compete with his boss Garimondo, “and even what you call ghosts.”

  “Time,” cried Francis though, “you’ve made Time itself stop. That’s why we’re…”

  “Nonsense, Snipkins,” snapped Boffin, “Stay sharp, boy. It’s the machine, the watch, not us, and in all this mayhem, we’re now really moving at fantastic speed. That’s why everything else, relative to you, seems to be…”

  “Standing still,” whispered Francis, looking around owlishly.

  Count Armande noticed the musket ball had inched just a tiny bit closer to his nose.

  “Exacto Mundo,” said Garimondo.

  “It is magic,” gulped Spike.

  “That’s just a classification, child,” snapped Boffin, rather scornfully, “a word, like everything else, although of course it is. Don’t you believe in magic anymore? But do you want Counsel, or not? There must be Justice, and proper, professional advocacy.”

  “I’ll have to ask my pa,” said the seven year old, furious that this silly Boffin had been so rude about magic, and not understanding in the slightest.

  Garimondo smiled indulgently though.

  “I humbly submit Bambini, that you can’t,” said the celestial Italian lawyer softly. “Ask your papa, I mean. And you cannot have representation either, unless you want it. It’s against the laws.”

  “But why?” said Nellie, “I can do anything I…”

  “No, Eleanor. You will remember nothing of the other worlds, in your own world, because your thoughts are moving so fast now, it is all happening in the blink of an eye, that you will not even register back there.”

  “We’re in the Cloudburst,” insisted Spilling, with a kindly, feminine smile, looking around the weird, shining cloudburst, “The revolutionary historic maelstrom. The atmospheric interface of worlds too, and so in a sense the waiting room of the Special Tribunal, where only those who have really touched the Chronometer have some access to legal counsel, and the best advocates.”

  Boffin looked rather sceptical.

  “But this will be over soon,” said Garimondo, “and so you will only recall what you see of us in your reality. And that you will have to work out for yourselves, still, when you’re back again.”

  The Pimples were scratching their heads.

  “It’s against the Laws to know of the worlds at the same time,” squeaked Boffin ominously, “not to mention extremely dangerous. Look at Howling Harrison. It’s the most heinous crime to speak of those to non Pimples too. They never believe, and always forget too, as non Pimples just get rusty.”

  “But I saw you there, silly,” said Spike. “In Paris. And now here too.”

  “Ah yes, Miss Eleanor,” said Spilling rather sternly. “But there you’re sworn to secrecy, by the rules of your own Club. Besides, they were just visions to you there.”

  “But why?” cried Henry desperately. “What’s going on?”

  “You are, Henry Bonespair,” answered Spilling, smiling at the boy, “since, when something’s been set in motion, it has its natural path, and so we will see if you are innocent, or indeed if anyone is. And your Godfather wanted to help, while we think that the Great Judge is trying to understand the mechanism again, now its got so very complicated. Although he’s only First among the Twelve.”

  “Mechanism?” said Henry Bonespair indignantly, “I’m not a mechanism.”

  “And whether you’re due for acquittal,” interrupted Garimondo, rather gravely. “One day. But that’s rather far ahead in the future, boy. The problem of evil concerns us too though,” added Garimondo, with a scowl. “Eternally. The Black Barrister’s on the case as well, of course.”

  “Black Barrister,” gulped Juliette, thinking of the trial at the Champs de Mars, and Charles Peperan Couchonet, not liking the sound of it in the slightest.

  “And they used to call him the…”

  “SILENCE, Spilling,” snapped Garimondo furiously. “That’s confidential.”

  “Is he a KC, or QC nowadays?” asked Boffin, looking rather too eager. “The Black Barrister. King or Queen’s Counsel?”

  “HE’s beyond such primitive stuff,” said Garimondo. “Besides, both the King and the Queen have been removed now, Boffin. There, anyway. Or will be.”

  “Marie Antoinette,” cried Henry suddenly, “then in the fire, I did see her death? The Queen’s.”

  The other Pimples looked at him sharply.

  “I’m afraid so,” answered Garimondo sadly, “soon, though we argued very eloquently for her. Spilling’s a firebrand at defence litigation. But the Black Barrister was just too convincing, in the end. A bit intimidating too.”

  Boffin looked rather jealous and fumbled with his brief case on the floating platform.

  “The future,” said Henry though, “I’ve told the future too. Seen it.”

  Hal remembered his strange prophecy in the hallway.

  “Oh yes, Hal. You want to again?” asked Garimondo.

  “What do you mean, Sir?” said Henry nervously.

  “Just a glimpse, lad. Hold the
special watch up, turn the dial to the eye and think of something that happened.”

  Henry did so, thinking of when they had first read the inscription on the Dover Road, the milestone.

  The Club all gasped, as a kind of window appeared in the cloud, in the shape of an eye, and they saw a straight, long road. But it was far wider than the earth road they had taken, and along it, at horrifying speed, moved strange metal machines like large, upended Guillotines, with lights on and the noise was horrible.

  The terrible vision vanished again, as the eye seemed to close and disappear.

  “The Black Barrister,” gasped Henry though, lowering the Time machine again, “But I saw him in the channel storm, Garimondo. His face was glaring at me. It was horrible. In Paris too, when Roubechon’s was burning.”

  “Saw him!” cried Garimondo, in absolute horror, and all three advocates looked at each other very nervously indeed now, “but he never puts in a direct appearance there.”

  “Watch for the Black Barrister though, Pimpernels,” said Spilling. “And the really very bad. It isn’t nice at all.”

  “So be careful too, if you ever come back,” said Garimondo.

  “Back?” said Henry nervously.

  “To Paris. You’re going to fight on, aren’t you? All those poor Pimples, in such danger, high and low. Not to mention the Pimples of the future. We believe them to be in very gravest danger too now, with all the terror about.”

  The Pimpernel Club looked rather reluctant, as if asking why.

  “I’m never getting on another ship again,” groaned Francis Simpkins. “Besides, it all takes so much time. How will I ever study anything properly?”

  “Ah yes, but maybe there are other ways to travel,” said Garimondo. “or will be. Quicker routes, lad, or better special adventure equipment. Influenced by the future, now that you have that watch.”

  “I heard of plans for a new tunnel, Professor,” said Spilling, “Between France and England. A Channel Tunnel. Perhaps the Yesmeter can reveal a special one now instead, far ahead of time, for them to use more quickly here.”