‘Now work!’ Demus jabbed one button, then the one next to it.
Somewhere deep in the bedrock of the place a mechanism began to grind away. Behind us a gantry groaned and the chain beneath it began to move. Unseen in the reactor core an array of hot graphite control rods were being withdrawn millimetre by millimetre, slowly relinquishing their role in calming down the nuclear chain reaction.
‘That’s all I can do!’ Demus barked into his phone. ‘What you got?’
The voice came faint and crackly, almost inaudible above the shudder and hum of the reactor. ‘A hundred and twenty per cent. It’s not enough.’
‘Shit.’ Demus punched the wall. ‘Shit. Shit. Shit.’
He took up the sort of wrench you use for killing zombies and went to a bolted steel plate close to a bundle of power cables thicker than a man. One by one the bolts surrendered to him and at last the whole plate fell away with a deafening clang. A thick chain assembly lay exposed in the recess behind. Demus took the winding handle from its hook and fixed it in place. A red plastic sign read, ‘Manual Rod Withdrawal. Reactor must be shut down prior to use.’
‘Shit.’ Demus began winding. Almost immediately a loud alarm began to sound, a bell rather like the one for school assembly. The blue glare from the waste pool intensified, overthrowing the fluorescent lights above to cast Demus’s shadow black on the wall before him.
After sixty seconds of winding, a second alarm began to sound. This one sounded serious. A cross between an air raid warning and a police siren. Every now and then it fell silent to allow a calm recorded voice to interject, ‘Radiation levels at critical. Evacuate the reactor chamber immediately.’
Demus glanced down at his radiation badge. The dosimeter had shaded through yellow, orange and red into a purple so dark as to almost be black. ‘Shit.’
He gave three more turns of the wheel, then scrambled up the metal ladder to the walkway above. A moment later he stumbled through the submarine-style hatch and heaved it shut behind him. He tried his phone. ‘Eva? Eva? Got you the juice. I just have to reconfigure the distribution . . . Eva?’ Silence. No line noise. The phone was dead. Killed by the radiation, no doubt. I now had my explanation for bald Demus in January. Radiation sickness will do that for you even quicker than chemotherapy. The Demus I met back then couldn’t have had long to live, even if Ian Rust weren’t waiting for him.
Demus swallowed some pills and went back to the engineering room where his men had been. Afterimages from the glare plagued his vision and the room seemed darker. Shutters had lowered themselves across the windows, sealing off the reactor room below. I hoped they were lead shutters. Thick ones.
‘Davis? Jenks?’ Demus couldn’t be using their real names, not with witnesses, but either way there was no reply. He blinked and rubbed his eyes. Someone was standing in the opposite doorway. Demus patted his pocket. His hand curled around something metallic and heavy. A gun? I guessed that we were saving two worlds, so unavoidable casualties were an acceptable price to pay. But despite that I couldn’t imagine shooting someone. I couldn’t imagine a me who would do it, either, no matter what twenty-five more years had laid on their shoulders. Even so, he took the gun from his pocket. ‘Who’s there?’
‘A gun. I didn’t think you had it in you, Dr Hayes.’ Charles Rust stepped into the room. He advanced at an even, unhurried pace. ‘And given that you do seem to have it in you . . . why not a ray gun? I’ve watched Space 1999. They have ray guns, no?’
‘Stop right there.’ Demus levelled the pistol at Rust, no nonsense in his voice. Mine would have been trembling.
‘If you were going to shoot me you’d have done it by now, Nick.’ Rust had closed half the distance. ‘I would have started shooting the moment I saw me. I did try to burn you up.’
‘I mean it!’ His voice shook now and so did his hand.
‘It’s a cliché, but most amateurs like you forget to take the safety off in moments like this.’
Demus glanced at his weapon. Rust moved faster than thinking. Somehow he had a knife in his hand. Before I knew what had happened, the blade was in Demus’s guts. He collapsed under Rust, squeezing the trigger to no effect. He
had forgotten the safety, and in any event Rust had that hand under control, pointing it towards the wall.
‘I could have stabbed you in the head, of course.’ Rust pinned Demus with one hand and his legs while the other twisted the blade. ‘But that would be too quick. I mean you avoided the burning. Fair play. But I still have to make it hurt. Nothing personal, but a debt has to be paid.’
Demus screamed. The initial stab hadn’t hurt, but as Rust twisted the blade I felt it as though it were white hot. Demus’s free hand might have done something useful, but instead it struggled to push back Rust’s knife hand. There’s no choice under that sort of hurt.
‘Where next?’ Rust pulled the blade free and moved it up Demus’s body, the strength in his scrawny arm such that even Demus’s desperation failed to resist the advance of his knife hand.
Demus glanced at his gun. We both saw the fire extinguisher at the same time, a red cylinder of compressed CO2 strapped to its wall-stand just over a yard from his swaying hand. The knife drove home again as Demus struggled to flick the safety catch off. He screamed and convulsed but managed to fire off a shot, then two more in quick succession. One of these hit the target and a blast of icy gas boomed across the room, instantly fogging the air. The force combined with the surprise of it proved sufficient to roll both men over, putting space between them. Demus fired blind into the fog, swinging his arm and shouting incoherent curses.
‘Nick? Nick! Are you alright, Nick?’ For a moment I thought it was Eva come to save me . . . or Demus, but I opened my eyes to see Sam’s worried face inches from mine. He had me by the lapels of my dinner jacket as if he were planning to shake an answer from me.
‘Y-yes.’ I was very much not alright. Demus had been stabbed. I could still feel the knife in my guts. And Rust was still there, waiting for the fog to clear.
‘You sure? You don’t look alright.’ Sam sounded drunk. I thought perhaps the grip he had on me was to hold him up. I swung my head. The crowd had thinned, and overhead the brighter stars had begun to poke their way through the light pollution. A string quartet had struck up beneath a nearby gazebo and were holding their own against the distant disco thud. A romance of strings swelling into the night. Somewhere far away Demus was bleeding to death. I wasn’t going to last much longer either. But there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about any of it. I surrendered. If this was to be my last night outside the walls of a hospital, I might as well spend it in good company. ‘Where’s Mia?’
But Sam was no longer looking at me, no longer gripping my jacket. ‘Who is that?’ He exhaled the question.
The violins swelled again, caressing the darkness. Scattered couples began to waltz, and winding through their number came a huge square-shouldered figure.
‘That is Piers Winthrop. Don’t hate him because he’s beautiful.’
‘Oh dear God, yes he is!’ Sam looked down at me excitedly, both hands gripping each other at his breastbone. ‘Electricity! Electricity!’
I glanced confusedly between him and Piers, who was now looking our way. ‘You mean?’ Was he talking about knowing the love of his life when he saw them? That instant attraction he’d spoken about back at my house . . . ? And somewhat belatedly, the penny dropped. ‘You’re Elton’s friend. One of Elton’s special friends. You’re g—’
‘Going in! Yes, I am.’ Sam grinned. ‘Wish me luck.’
And I did.
I slumped back into my chair and watched Sam zero in. I found myself feeling slightly more human. The codeine must be kicking in. I even felt sorry for his inevitable disappointment. Unless . . . unless, of course, Pier’s refusal to consummate with Helen had more to do with taste than Christianity. Twenty years ago, being gay could put you in prison. Attitudes might have softened somewhat since then, but you were still breaking the l
aw if you did much about it before the age of twenty-one . . .
I watched Sam and Piers talking for a few moments. The painkillers were helping, but I felt so damn tired. A yawn cracked my jaw. What I really needed was forty-eight hours of sleep. Maybe seventy-two hours. I closed my eyes, just for a moment. Just for a moment.
I had maybe three seconds of sleep before the nightmare reclaimed me.
Demus crawled through the clearing fog towards the nearest control desk. He held the gun in one bloody hand and red drool hung from his mouth as his breath rasped in, then out. I wanted him to watch for Rust, to hold the gun up, ready for that monster to come hurtling towards him. Instead the whole of his effort was laser-focused on the desk, as though it were a distant mountain peak towards which all his will was bent.
He hauled himself up it, blood flooding down his legs. With a groan he made it into the chair. The extinguisher lay like an unfurled metal flower, its fog now just traces around the edge of the room. Crimson footprints tracked towards the exit to the rest of the plant. At least one of the bullets must have caught Rust. I hoped the bastard was bleeding out in a stairwell somewhere.
Demus manipulated a set of levers and buttons on the desk, laboriously typing a long code into a fixed keyboard. Finally he threw a switch and reached for the red phone.
‘Eva?’
‘We’re running out of time. Tell me something good.’
‘Rust may be heading your way. Wounded. Don’t know how bad.’
‘Oh God.’ Real fear in her voice. ‘How did you get away?’
‘I didn’t.’ A laboured breath followed by choking. ‘Got you the current though. Check it. Then hit it. Be quick.’
‘Nick, I—’
‘Quick!’ Demus managed a shout. ‘Get out of there straight after!’ He hung up and slumped over the desk. The contact that had been established between us began to dim and fade.
‘This is what death’s like, then.’ Just a whisper. He knew I was listening. ‘Hurts a bit. Not so . . . not so bad. Nothing. Nothing to be . . . scared . . . of.’ A long silence, then, ‘We’re all infinities.’
And he was gone.
The blow of the time hammer hurled me from my chair. I opened my eyes, expecting to see scores of students thrown down in their finery like hay before the reaper’s scythe. Everyone but me seemed unaffected. Although the fabric of the universe flexed and warped before my eyes, it seemed that my fellow ball-goers flexed and warped with it, noticing nothing.
Painfully and with almost as much effort as it had taken Demus to haul himself up to that last control desk, I regained my chair. I had no idea how long I had to reach the moment of paradox before the echoes of the time hammer died away and the chance of untangling the two timelines was lost. I also had no real idea how long I’d been asleep or where any of my friends were.
‘Simon?’ I hadn’t noticed him when I was on the ground, or when I crawled back to my seat. It wasn’t until he started to snore that I realised one of the chairs close by was occupied. ‘Si!’
He stirred and grumbled.
‘Simon!’
Simon cracked an eye open. ‘Oh, hi.’ He sat up, yawning. His dinner jacket really didn’t fit him and he had what looked like chocolate cake smeared at the corner of his mouth. ‘Can we go yet?’
‘Where’s Mia? Have you seen Helen?’
‘Uh?’ Simon rubbed his eyes.
‘It’s urgent. I need to find them!’
Simon looked over his shoulder, yawned again, and waved an arm vaguely. Following the line of his gesture I saw that, miraculously, it led to a distant table and set of lawn chairs where both girls sat alone. A moment later the view was blocked with the to and fro of scattered ball-goers but my glimpse had shown the girls facing away from each other, hunched and staring at their hands.
‘I think Sam and Mia argued. And Helen was shouting at the big guy.’ Simon couldn’t seem to stop yawning.
‘Get me over there. I need to talk to them.’
Simon gave me a look that said, ‘Really? But I’m comfortable here . . .’ To his credit, what he actually said however was, ‘OK.’ He got to his feet and reached for my arm. I let him haul me up, and leaning on each other we made slowly for the distant girls. This was it. I was going to make it, and the universe’s best efforts to stop me had failed. Even cancer couldn’t bring me down before I crossed the necessary hundred yards.
‘Why, if it isn’t Halligan’s little doggy.’ Crispin Waugh strode into our path. Thankfully his sword-wielding chum wasn’t at his side.
‘Ignore him,’ I told Simon in a quiet voice. Waugh wasn’t a brawler and he could call me all the names under the sun. That wasn’t going to stop me. I limped towards him, leaning heavily on Simon.
‘It turns out we have some friends in common, Hayes.’ Waugh grinned and nodded behind me.
A large hand closed around my upper arm and spun me about. I found myself staring into a broad chest straining a wing collar shirt. Raising my gaze past the bow tie, I met the glaring eyes of the ginger giant who had so nearly caught me in the punt chase. To either side of him crowded the rest of that crew of drunken toffs, seemingly just as inebriated as they had been a week earlier.
‘Time for some payback.’ He grinned and drove a meaty fist into my stomach. I doubled up around the blow, all the air leaving my lungs in an agonised ‘wuff’. A moment later I was on the grass with a big foot descending towards my face to blot out the sky.
The blackness turned to a dark corridor along which I seemed to be running for all I was worth. It was hard to care. Whatever was happening at the power station it couldn’t change the fact that I’d failed. The universe had steered Waugh and his cronies into my path, and even if their drunken rage didn’t kill me in my weakened state, there was no way I would reach the girls, let alone have that moment of paradox. The game was well and truly over. Only it wasn’t a game. It was my life and the lives of people I cared about. And all our plans had come to nothing and despair.
The thud of the runner’s feet might have been the thud of blows raining on me as I lay helpless on the lawn . . . I couldn’t tell the difference. My mind sought escape and found what was perhaps the last time I’d been happy.
‘Poof!’ Mia had used her hands to mimic the half-genie’s smoke. ‘Your limited wish is my command, oh master.’
‘I wish . . .’
Mia had edged the figures on the map closer, closing from all directions.
What had I wished? Sam had wanted to know the answer while they were helping me out to the ball’s riverside entertainments. The others wouldn’t tell him. They said it had been me that wished and it was up to me to describe it.
John’s warrior had been down in the smoke, entangled by the huge glowing serpent that Mercuron had let out of his flask. Simon’s thief had been knocked unconscious when the mechanical soldiers battered down the door. Sam’s paladin had been laid low earlier by another flying chunk of a different broken door and left for dead. Meaning that only Mia’s cleric and my mage were still on their feet, no longer bound by the enchantments of a love potion but with enemies closing from all directions, far more of them than they could possibly handle.
‘Well,’ I told Sam. ‘You have to remember that we were in an impossible situation. There was no way that all of us were getting out of there alive.’
‘But you had a wish!’
‘A limited wish. You can’t get an awful lot done with one of those. Maybe I could have got out of there scot-free on my own. Possibly I could have got Mercuron out with me and completed the mission. But then you would all have died. Maybe I could have blasted half our enemies. But then the other half would have killed us all. Maybe I—’
‘So what did you do? Is Sir Algernon still alive?’
‘I don’t know for a fact that he’s dead,’ I offered with a wan smile. ‘What I did was convert an enemy into a friend.’
‘Mercuron!’ Sam declared.
I shook my head. ‘Mercuron was a
prisoner there. If he couldn’t escape by himself, he was hardly going to be able to get us and him out. So I wished . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘That the snake was our friend.’
‘That’s it?’ Sam looked disgusted. ‘You thought that serpent from the flask could defeat four mechanical soldiers, Mercuron, and a horde of his assistants armed with God knows what?’
‘No. But I thought it could escape up the chimney and take us with it!’
‘But . . .’
‘I shouted for it to get us out of there and for Hacknslay to hang onto it if he still could. Then I ran over and grabbed hold. It was semi-solid, which made it easy to dig in for a grip. Sharia froze Mercuron with a “hold person” spell.’
‘She grabbed him? At least that was a success!’
‘No, she grabbed Fineous and managed to catch hold of the snake’s tail as it slithered towards the fireplace. It knocked the cauldron over, dousing the fire, and the place filled up with toxic steam. Then up it went, bashing through a dozen sets of bars. A few seconds later we were several hundred feet higher and on the outside of the university.’
‘There’s an outside? But they said . . .’
‘They lied.’
‘So you failed the mission, but you all survived. Except for poor Sir Algernon.’
‘Actually, we succeeded if you think about it, because we were only trying to steal Mercuron to get money to graduate so we could leave the university. And we ended up leaving the university without having to do any of that.’
‘The lying bastards! I—’
‘There’s no reason to assume Sir Algernon is dead, but we didn’t all survive. Somehow Sharia didn’t manage to hang on.’
‘So you lost Sharia and Fineous?’
‘Just Sharia. Fineous did manage to hang on.’
‘He was unconscious, though!’
‘Pretending to be. You know Simon. Once he saw how things were going he thought he’d play dead and see if he couldn’t escape later, in the confusion.’
Sam had frowned. ‘Not sure I like this game any more.’
I shrugged. ‘I think results like the one we had are the reason why I like it. It’s not an all-or-nothing game like those board games our parents made us play. Win or lose. It’s more like life. Mixed. You can’t have it all, but sometimes you can have what you need.’
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