‘What I think,’ Sam said, ‘is that you two should talk more. Some would be a start.’
‘What sort of things does she say about me?’
‘Well . . .’ Sam frowned and shrugged. ‘You know, with Mia it can all be a bit chaotic. Sometimes I’m not sure when she’s talking about real life or some space-age D&D game you lot must have played before I knew you. I mean, I try to be open to all the new ideas . . . you know, like crystals and meditation and stuff. But there’s a lot of weird things she says about fate and who you’re going to turn into, and who she’s going to become, and time and destiny. . . Goes over my head, if I’m honest.’
‘So you think I should talk to her?’ It didn’t sound like something I would be good at.
Sam nodded. ‘Definitely. She didn’t say much, but I could tell she was upset about your new girlfriend.’
‘My new . . . ?’
‘You know. The girl in the photo?’ He smiled a faint smile. ‘Did you get that electricity when you first saw her?’
‘Like you wouldn’t believe!’ The entire laboratory had short-circuited. ‘I mean no, not like that!’
Sam looked confused. I was rather glad there hadn’t been any spark of the sort he meant. Finding myself attracted to my daughter, whatever the circumstances, would have been very hard to swallow. I never wanted to be that person.
‘Well . . .’ Sam leaned in even closer across the coffee table. ‘I really think you two should talk. I just don’t know how to arrange it.’
‘I appreciate the thought, dude.’ I almost never said ‘dude’. It was just a sign of how awkward the conversation was. ‘But Mia and I did a lot of talking. Too much, maybe. And this is where it got us.’
‘Time heals all wounds.’ Sam offered the old cliché.
‘Time causes a lot of them, too.’
‘If you just took her somewhere new . . . broke out of the old cycle . . . maybe you two could fix things up?’
I was about to opine that Sam was the worst boyfriend ever when my brain shook off the amazement that had clogged it thus far and kicked in with an idea. ‘Sam, how would you like to take Mia to a ball in Cambridge? A posh honest-to-God dress-up-to-the-nines ball? Evening gowns and dinner jackets?’
His eyes lit up, and I knew I had him.
By the time I’d sent Sam on his way, Mother was waiting with the car keys, ready to take me to hospital. Technically I was old enough to go to the adult wards at Ealing General, but since I had started my treatment at the Chelsea and Westminster Children’s Hospital and was only just over sixteen, I was allowed to do my second round in the same ward that I did my first in.
I led the way in. The place was full of kids. I guessed it would stop me feeling too sorry for myself – some of them couldn’t have been ten yet. They kept the really little ones on a ward down the hall. Some of those were barely old enough to walk. It would have broken my heart to have to work there every day, but I felt unutterably glad that people existed who could shoulder that heavy burden.
Mother saw me settled in, my books and snacks arranged on the bedside table. Not that I felt like eating. My stomach had clenched itself into a sick knot, like it already knew what was coming.
The familiar antiseptic reek of the hospital began to infect my sinuses. The clean white efficient lie, the illusion of control as left and right children slipped through the grasp of nurse and doctor alike, falling into their sickness.
‘I’ll pick you up at noon tomorrow, dear,’ Mother said, checking her watch. ‘Dr Ellard said you’ll be able to come back for the remaining sessions during the day, and leave within the hour if there are no adverse reactions.’
I grunted. The medical profession’s view of what was ‘adverse’ differed considerably from mine. Going bald I considered adverse. I didn’t believe the words ‘mild’ and ‘vomiting’ were ever meant to be put next to each other, unless by ‘mild’ you meant the type of beer, and you set the word after ‘vomiting’ rather than before. I also didn’t feel that veins itching on the inside was a tolerable side effect.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow then.’ Mother’s eyes shone and her brittle tone reminded me that she needed me to be strong. Otherwise I’d just end up pushing her over her own emotional step-function into an embarrassing breakdown.
‘I’ll be fine.’ I reached out and squeezed her hand.
She nodded, squeezed back and left.
That was fine. I could handle this. I could do it alone. Alone was good. Me versus my disease. I’d always faced my challenges alone. There wasn’t anyone alive but me who could wrestle the truth from the mathematics that stood between me and breaking time. At least not until Eva arrived. I was used to tackling invisible enemies alone and coming out on top.
‘Medicine time.’ At the far end of the ward a thickset nurse wheeled in the steel trolley laden with the bags containing the chemo drip, the same lambent yellow that haunted my dreams. She and a colleague set to hooking up the first two children. And suddenly I felt far more alone than I ever wanted to be.
I’d set maths aside and was elbow-deep in my ultimate comfort read, The Lord of the Rings, when someone called my name. I looked up to see John and Mia closing on my bed. Behind them came Simon, and bringing up the rear, Elton, looking uncharacteristically self-conscious, darting looks at the bald kids to either side.
‘Nick!’ John grabbed one of the two plastic and tubular steel chairs, both of which looked to have been swiped from our old classroom, and sat down heavily. ‘What is this shit?’ He waved a hand at me, at the drip stand beside the bed, the line feeding it into the veins of my arm.
Mia came to the bed before I could answer. ‘Leave him alone.’ She took my hand. ‘Seriously, though, you should have told us.’
Simon took the opportunity to take the remaining chair and stared at me accusingly as if leukaemia were my secret plan to inconvenience him. It was just how he was. At the core, though, I knew I could rely on him.
‘You got through this before, man. You’ll do it again.’ Elton slapped my shoulder and backed off.
‘I thought—’ The words dried in my mouth. Elton’s dad had died and although I didn’t remember the details, at least some of it was on my hands.
‘Just ’cos I can’t hang out with you don’t mean I don’t care what happens to your skinny arse.’ Elton shook his head, half a smile showing.
Embarrassed by how grateful that made me, I asked Mia a question instead. ‘Maybe I should have told you. But I didn’t. So who did tell you?’
‘Your mother, of course.’
An excess of emotion huffed out of me as my chest contracted. The others tactfully gave me a moment. ‘Thanks for coming, guys. It means a lot to me.’ I looked around. ‘Sorry about the chairs. Maybe you could ask—’
‘I could stand all day.’ Elton smacked his legs and grinned. ‘Body of a Greek god! You didn’t forget that, surely?’
I laughed out loud at that. Mia laughed too. She went and scrounged two more chairs and soon all four of them were huddled around my bed, me the focus of their attention. The thing about hospitals is that they eat conversation. There’s something about being there under the bright lights with beds crowding to either side that makes every attempt to spark a new line of discussion peter out into an awkward silence.
‘So . . .’ John said, as his D&D anecdote about what a dick Sam was died an uncomfortable death under Mia’s hard stare.
I let the silence stretch. I shouldn’t have left a mate hanging, but I kinda did. I could have pitched in to help make fun of Sam, but since his visit earlier that day I’d begun to see all of Sam’s actions in a much more positive light. I didn’t really feel like trashing him just because he was a more committed role-player than the rest of us.
‘So . . .’ I echoed John, and lacking any other conversational gambit I began to tell them all the truth about Eva.
CHAPTER 18
‘That’s crazy! You’ve got a daughter!’ Elton shook his head.
&nbs
p; ‘A hot daughter,’ John added.
‘That explains the anomaly.’ Simon seemed unimpressed with the whole ‘daughter’ bit and instead focused his interest on the temporal implications.
‘You marry some Cambridge student?’ Mia frowned, obviously piecing together what that meant for us. ‘So all that stuff Demus said . . . ?’
‘Well, it seems unlikely now. I mean he’s still trying to “fix” things, but I’ve no idea if it will work. Most likely is that although both things will happen, it won’t be me they happen to, just another version of me. I am infinite, you know.’ I grinned sardonically. ‘Just like you.’
Mia pressed her lips together into a thin line, crooked at the side, like her mouth went when she was puzzling through something she wasn’t sure she approved of. ‘And what happens to you in this . . . Helen timeline? Do you . . . are you OK?’
‘It doesn’t matter what happens to me if I do this or if I do that. That’s no way to live. When I roll the dice I don’t want me or anyone else to already know what the result will be—’
‘It’ll be ones.’ Simon held out a twenty-sided die to prove his point.
‘That’s just a side-effect of the universe trying to kill me.’ I waved his hand away. ‘I’ll make my choices based on how I feel, on gut instinct and past evidence, like everyone else does. I can’t be responsible for a billion billion future versions of me, or for particular versions of me that happen to come back for a chat. I’m done with it. I—’
‘Wait. What?’ Mia, whose smile had been growing throughout my declaration of independence, now frowned. ‘The universe is trying to kill you?’
‘A little bit,’ I admitted. ‘It’s the statistical anomaly thing. I keep getting into fatal situations.’
‘Like what?’
‘Uh, falling plant pots, exploding chip shops, that sort of thing.’
‘That. Sort. Of. Thing?’ Mia repeated.
‘Don’t forget the sword thrust,’ Simon added helpfully. ‘And the car crashes.’
‘Car crashes. Plural?’ Mia scowled at Simon, then returned her glare to me.
‘Hey.’ I held up both hands. ‘I wasn’t in any of the cars. They just kinda . . . swerved at me.’
‘Why is the universe trying to kill you?’ Elton’s usually open, friendly face had become guarded.
‘Well. If I don’t die before the Trinity May Ball tomorrow, then I cause a paradox that will destroy Eva’s timeline and Demus’s timeline about thirty-two years from now.’
Elton stood and set a hand to my shoulder. ‘You know I love you, man, but I gotta go. I can’t be part of this. I got my mum—’
‘I know.’ I patted his hand before he withdrew it. ‘Thanks for coming. It meant a lot.’
Elton nodded, eyes bright, and left, his stride that of a man unsure whether he should run or turn back.
‘So just don’t go to the ball, Cinderella.’ John took Elton’s seat and moved in closer. ‘No paradox, no worlds ending. Everyone’s happy.’
‘I wish it worked like that.’ I sat up straighter and began to draw lines in the air with my finger. ‘Demus and Eva came back to this timeline thinking that it’s their own. Demus thinks so because he remembers coming back, and Eva thinks so because her timeline is bound to Demus’s and she’s done the sums to prove it. But, like Cinderella, if I don’t go to the ball I ruin everything. If I don’t go it means that Demus is deluded, his memories are false, and Eva got her sums wrong. It means that this isn’t either of their timelines, let alone the root of both of them, and that nothing they do here can save the existence of the worlds they came from.’
‘But if you don’t go it means that the universe no longer has an imbalance to correct,’ Simon said. ‘It’ll stop trying to kill you.’
‘That sounds good to me.’ John nodded.
‘Me too,’ Mia said.
It didn’t sound too bad to me, either, but I shook my head. ‘I can’t do that to them. Or to their Earths. That’s billions of people.’ Even as I said it I knew that it wasn’t the billions of people I cared about. It wasn’t a baby in Argentina, it wasn’t the Amazon rainforest or a giant turtle, baby seal, pristine wilderness or whatever that I wanted to save. I was as shallow as anyone else. What mattered to me were the people I knew, had met, had touched. Two possible Earths out of an infinity were an academic concept. Future Earths pour out of every decision every one of us takes. Every roll of every die, real or imagined, creates a bunch of them. What mattered to me were Eva and Demus. They were now. They were real, concrete, touchable. ‘I have to go to this damn ball and I need you guys to come with me. I’ve got enough tickets and—’
‘No way.’ Simon shook his head.
‘So, Si’s in,’ I said. ‘How about you, John?’
‘You bet. I can borrow my dad’s DJ.’
‘I still don’t think you should go,’ Mia said.
‘But I am going. So are you going to come and keep an eye on me, or leave that duty to Simon—?’
‘I’m not going,’ he repeated.
‘To Simon, John and . . . Helen?’
Mia harrumphed and folded her arms. ‘I don’t even have a dress.’
I lifted my pillow to reveal Demus’s roll of notes. ‘There are some benefits to having time-travelling friends,’ I said.
‘I’ll think about it,’ she said.
‘Can we play now?’ Simon asked.
‘Play?’ I frowned.
‘Of course,’ John said. ‘You didn’t think Simon came all the way to this miserable hospital just to see you, did you?’
With an audience of sick children, my bed as the playing area, and a kidney dish for rolling dice in, we set to a quick spot of D&D. There is of course no such thing as a quick D&D session, but ours lasted a mere hour, which is the blink of an eye compared to the usual.
With Sam absent, the control of Sir Algernon fell to Mia along with her cleric and of course the running of the whole game. Having so much on her plate, it wasn’t surprising that she needed a little prompting.
‘Saving throws first,’ said Simon.
Both my mage, Nicodemus, and Mia’s cleric, Sharia, needed to roll to see if they could shake off the effects of this seemingly everlasting love potion. I threw my D20 into the kidney dish before anyone could mention the statistical curse I was labouring under.
‘Saved!’ Simon blinked in surprise. I’d rolled a seventeen.
Mia rolled. An eighteen. She too had saved, after failing the throw six times in a row previously.
‘You’re free!’ John grinned. ‘Free! Fly, my pretties!’
‘Well. That’s good then?’ It felt a bit odd.
‘Good.’ Mia nodded, a tiny frown wrinkling her brow.
Simon clapped his hands and rubbed them together. ‘So now all we need to do is deal with these mechanical guards advancing down the corridor towards us, then go and free Mercuron from his laboratory, hand him over to the Guild of Golden Truths, spend our reward to buy degrees and graduate from this damned university so we can get on with our lives.’
‘Simple!’ John said, moving his warrior to defend the doorway. ‘How many of these guards are there?’
I moved Nicodemus to the far side of the room. The ‘s’ on the end of ‘guards’ already told me that there were too many of them. We had fought one similar guard earlier on, while penetrating the laboratory complex, and had survived only by using all our reserve magics. Even so, both our fighters had been badly injured, hardly able to swing a sword until the cleric had exhausted her healing spells patching them up.
The door burst open, flying across the room in splintered sections, one of which brought Sir Algernon to the ground. Arrayed in the corridor beyond the doorway stood four of the mechanical soldiers. Each stood studded with crude pieces of armour plate alchemically welded to their metal skeletons. Behind their ribcages sat large black coil-springs, wound tight by unknowable forces, a reservoir of energy to power their attacks.
I used Nicodemus’s last
spell and sent a lightning bolt ricocheting down the corridor. The electricity grounded through all four of the enemy, leaving them sparking and immobile as the lightning rattled around inside whatever enchantments supported the mechanisms.
‘Quick.’ Nicodemus waved the others ahead. ‘Don’t touch them!’
Fineous and Hacknslay took off up the corridor, the nimble thief weaving a path between the paralysed mechanicals. Hacknslay brushed against the last one and hopped on, yelping, patting at the burned patch on his arm where a small electric discharge arced out to reach the ground through his body.
Sharia was more hesitant. ‘What about Sir Algernon?’
‘Well . . . I guess we could drag him,’ Nicodemus suggested in a slightly grudging tone, eyeing the unconscious paladin.
‘What?’ Hacknslay stared back, incredulous.
‘We found him here, we leave him here,’ offered Fineous from the far end of the corridor. ‘Hurry up!’
John was making furious eyes at me over the bed when he thought Mia wasn’t looking, but I felt kind of guilty abandoning Sam’s character after his visit earlier. ‘Can we drag him?’
‘What’s your strength again?’ Mia asked.
‘Uh, six . . .’ It meant that the average thirteen-year-old could beat me in an arm wrestle.
‘Sir Algernon is six foot four, well muscled and wearing full plate armour . . .’ She shook her head. ‘Even with two of us we could never manoeuvre him past the guards, and it looks as if they’re starting to recover.’
‘We take his armour off then,’ I said.
Another shake of the head and a grateful smile. ‘It would work, but there isn’t time. It takes an age to get armour off even if you cut the straps rather than undoing them all.’
‘So let’s drag him.’
Mia bit her lip. ‘Leave him. It’s us they want. He’ll be OK.’
I met her eyes. ‘Are you sure?’
She looked down into her lap and nodded.
So Nicodemus and Sharia ran after Fineous and Hacknslay, dodging the jerky, ill-coordinated lunges of the recovering mechanicals.
At last, after all this time searching, we burst into Mercuron’s laboratory and there before us stood the man himself, tall and angular, his white robe stained in most shades of the rainbow, eaten away in patches. He stood before a huge fireplace beside a bubbling cauldron large enough for three very close friends to bathe in at once. One gnarled hand clutched a steaming ladle, the other a long-necked flask in which a glowing liquid swirled as though it were a snake coiling continuously around and about itself. His assistants appeared to have fled the scene.
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