“Don’t worry, sir,” Arabella said kindly. “We haven’t come to lock you up.”
“Again.”
“Well, sir, you can’t say I was the one who locked you up, after all. I just made sure you stayed where you were meant to stay.”
“I’m curious about that, too,” said Mikkel. “That time, was it on Time Corp’s orders, or on their orders?”
Arabella hesitated.
“What? You can’t say?”
“Not can’t say,” Arabella temporised. “It’s—let’s just say that sometimes the orders of the Time Corp and my employers coincide, and I’m never quite sure if that’s just luck, or if they’ve done a dodgy in the Core.”
“And why exactly are we at the Holstrom Institute, if it’s not to lock me up again?”
“We’re here to open doors and lubricate wheels.”
“You’re going to bribe someone?”
“No,” Arabella said, and her prim smile was back. Mikkel was particularly fond of that prim smile; it was by no means as prim as it pretended to be, and it most often meant mischief of the best kind. “We’re here to open literal doors and lubricate literal wheels.”
Mikkel’s brows rose. “They don’t have a POAWy here?”
“There’s something I should explain before we go in, sir.”
“Yes, I think you’d better.”
“We have a very simple, very specific job.”
“I’ll try my best.”
Arabella ignored that. “The Holstrom Institute is a giant grid. The floorplan for each of the four floors is exactly the same: one wide hall running from front to back, and a series of smaller halls intersecting where required. The main hall is unobstructed by doors or security—those are only in the intersecting halls. It’s a nice, clean layout, and it means that visitors can get a look at the entirety of the Institute without having to trouble themselves with locked doors.”
“I suppose there’s a point to this, Ensign? Or is it just that you’ve got a passion for architecture?”
“The point, sir,” said Arabella, with deadly sharp politeness, “is that our route is prearranged. We start at the front door and walk directly to the back door.”
“That’s a reasonable sort of way to do it,” agreed Mikkel. “Where are we going, exactly?”
“Through to the back garden.”
“Also reasonable enough, but less understandable. What do we want with the back garden?”
“That’s where we turn around and come back.”
“Let me guess,” Mikkel said. “We go directly from the back door to the front and find ourselves in the front garden?”
“That’s right, sir.”
“What about this simple, specific job? I assume it’s not just to go in and out of the Institute.”
“It’s not so much about the going out and in. It’s what we do while we’re in there.”
Mikkel nodded. “Greasing wheels and opening doors.”
“That’s right. We’d better synchronise our timepieces, sir.”
“We have a time limit?” asked Mikkel, his brows rising in surprise.
“Not as such,” said Arabella. “But there are certain things that need to happen at exactly the right time. If they don’t…well, let’s just say that we really, really want them to happen at the right time.”
“Are we fixing events in time?”
“Something like that.”
“That’s going a bit overboard, isn’t it?” Mikkel said, frowning. Time and synchronicity were reasonably flexible: so long as a few major things remained fixed, smaller changes didn’t ripple too far forward. River-like, time had a way of falling back into its previous course, flooding around obstacles and back into its accustomed bed. “Even if we’re here to help Kez and Marx—! I mean, they can’t do too much damage running around the Time Stream; it is self-repairing, after all.”
Arabella gave a small, prim cough.
“It fixes itself.”
Arabella’s mouth pursed in a pained sort of way.
“Good grief! They broke the Time Stream?”
“They are trying to fix it, sir,” Arabella said excusingly. “And my employers would like us—me, that is—to help them. If we don’t pin down these few little things at the right time—”
“I get the picture,” said Mikkel rather grimly. He had seen what could happen when a Fixed Point in time was interfered with. “Are you telling me that Kez and Marx have made something as small as the opening of a door into a Fixed Point in the Time Stream? No, don’t answer that: of course they have.”
“I’m glad you understand, sir,” Arabella said. “Shall we begin?”
Patient #76
There was a white square above him. At first, he didn’t know it was a square; the straight edges that joined it at the sides and made it into a cube were also white, blending into one wholeness of white. He stared up at it for an eternity, and it seemed to him that his thoughts were also blurred from their usual straight edges.
He couldn’t remember what there should be above him—it was one of those thoughts that should have also had a straight edge, but was fuzzy instead—but it shouldn’t be a white square.
No, it wasn’t a white square. It was a white ceiling. And those things that joined it were white walls. There was a softness beneath his head and arms, and more softness beneath his back. He was in bed, and that was odd because the whiteness around him was bright. Had he slept in?
He didn’t seem to be able to move very well and that should have worried him. Somehow it didn’t. His thoughts wound languidly onward, free from panic, and he felt his fingers twitch momentarily against the softness beneath them. Balancing the softness, the cool, impersonal air in the room prickled at his exposed skin and left a tickle in his throat. He didn’t like that. His eyes were unpleasantly sticky, too. He let them flutter shut again, trying to ignore the feeling of stickiness, but the sensation of unpleasantly cool air remained. Now that he could feel it, it was a nagging discomfort at the back of his mind; one he could do nothing about. It stirred him to try and move again, but this time his fingers didn’t even twitch. He tried to settle back and ignore that discomfort as well. There was less blur to his thoughts now, which made it harder, but if he let the fuzziness cloud around him the cold touch of air felt less present.
His thoughts meandered along until, five minutes or five hours later, it occurred to him that there was something very important he should be remembering. He sat up slowly without thinking about it, and this time his body allowed it. White floor blurred with white ceiling and white bedclothes as he sat up, and he tilted too far forward. There was a moment of confused whiteness, then something soft hit him in the face.
Someone laughed. That cleared a little of the fog in his thoughts, but not enough to be able to sit up straight away.
Someone’s voice said: “That’s the way! Splat on yer face! Oi. Ain’t dead, are yer?”
He pushed himself up carefully but couldn’t seem to lift his head enough to look around. He said, slowly and heavily, “Who are you?”
“I been ’ere longer than you!” said the voice indignantly. “’Oo are you, then?”
It was when he opened his mouth to reply and found no answer ready that he knew what it was he couldn’t remember. What had been tugging at the back of his mind since he woke.
He couldn’t remember his name.
Patient #51: Codename, Trouble
It was the quiet period between breakfast and midmorning activities, and Kez was in the ceiling. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t exactly the ceiling; it was the bit of space between the ceiling of the second floor and the floor of the third. But Kez was there and she was feeling rather pleased with herself, because the room she was currently nested above was strictly out of bounds. Kez knew this not because there had been any announcement or special preparation, but because it had been such a normal, unremarkable room. Nothing out of the ordinary ever happened around it, and the side hall in which it was set wa
s an unremarkable, quiet hall.
Obviously Marcus was hiding something in there. There were no really normal rooms in the Institute; outbursts and situations were a daily part of life. A normal, quiet room was like Marcus himself—so unremarkable and pleasant until you realised what was underneath that unexceptional exterior—an appearance not to be trusted.
So Kez had waited and bided her time, watching. She had seen the quick, quiet way in which situations around that hall were quashed, and she had seen the unobtrusive security that came in the form of one too many nurses—or one too many trolley carts—wandering the hall. Eventually, she had taken to the ceiling. She didn’t like to use it too often, since Marcus had an awful habit of finding out things where there was a pattern, but it had occurred to her that she could kill two birds with one stone today.
The first bird was Marcus’ watch. Kez had been trying to steal it for the last two months. She’d gotten close, but never close enough; and even if she knew it was one of Marcus’ games, she still wanted to win. At the same time, she was aware that Marcus was using it to keep her attention away from other things—like the interestingly normal room here in the Violet Quarter of the Institute. It made her particularly happy to foil his designs in that area by doing both things at once. Thus the second bird: Kez’s determination to see exactly what it was Marcus was keeping in that quiet hall of the Violet Quarter.
And so Kez was in the ceiling. Despite all her wriggling between walls and ceilings, however, Kez didn’t manage to find a way actually into the room in the Violet Quarter. There was a troublesome beam that stopped her from accessing the ceiling space of the Violet Quarter unless she came out of the other ceiling space and crossed a hall or two to get to somewhere more convenient. That was irritating, but not unsurmountable. And once she was in the right ceiling space, there was a tiny, brick-sized grate on one side of the room’s ceiling. The grid of the grating was so small as to make it difficult to see, but she could just make out the room below her. That was close enough to winning the game to satisfy her, even if she’d had to pop in and out of the ceiling to get there.
She could see a blurred patch of the room below, a rectangle of white with one small circle of dark breaking it. That circle was someone’s hair, Kez thought, but it might as well have been a small dog or a duster for how much detail she could see. She peered down at that hair, willing it to move and do something interesting, and was pleased when it did begin to move. There was a boy under the white covers, thin and sticklike, his mop of dark hair by far too large for his frail figure. He tried to sit up too quickly, and immediately overbalanced onto his face in the bedcovers.
Kez chuckled her glee into the dusty grate. “That’s the way!” she told him, by way of encouragement. “Splat on yer face! Oi. Ain’t dead, are yer?”
The stick-like boy was quiet for so long that Kez thought he really might be dead—or that he had fallen unconscious again. At length, however, he asked, “Who are you?”
The cheek! thought Kez indignantly. She said, “I been ’ere longer than you! ’Oo are you, then?”
There was another period of quiet, and the blurry figure below might have tugged at the hair below his right ear. His skin was darker than Kez’s, and it stood out against the white, making the motions easier to see.
“I don’t know,” he said at last.
“Dunno yer name? S’pose that ain’t anything unusual round ’ere. Orright. I’m Kez.”
The boy seemed to be trying to push himself back up, his legs moving below the bedcovers for purchase. He said, a little stiffly, “Did you laugh at me?”
Kez peered down at that slender neck with its too-big mop of hair. “Yeah. Looked funny, din’t it? Oi.”
Two thin hands cautiously patted around his head as if trying to hold it up. The boy said: “What?”
“They put a collar on yer. Didjer know? ’Aven’t seen ’em do that to anyone before.”
“A collar?” The hands that had been propping up his head went to the collar unerringly; he’d probably felt it there without knowing what it was. “What is this? Why is it on me?”
“Dunno wot it is, but I’d be tryin’ to get it orf if I was you,” advised Kez. “They don’t do stuff around ’ere without it meanin’ summink.”
“How do I get it off?”
“Dunno,” Kez said again. “’Ave to fiddle wiv it, won’t yer? Look, I gotta go. You ’ave fun wiv that now.”
The boy below sat up straighter, and despite the limited scope of her vision, Kez saw the stiffness of his shoulders. He said quietly: “Don’t go.”
“Got summink to do. I’ll come back later, yeah?”
There was a brief silence before the boy said, “Please don’t go. Where is this place? Why am I here?”
“If you don’t know why, ’ow should I? It’s the ’olstrom Institute, innit? Yer probably mad. Most of ’em are.”
“What about you?”
“Me?”
“Are you mad, too?”
“Wot’s it to you? Maybe I am, maybe I’m not. Ain’t got nuffink to do with you.”
“Is it a madhouse?”
“’S’what it sez on the sign,” said Kez, disregarding the literal inaccuracy of her remark. “Don’t think that’s wot it’s for, though.”
The boy’s head swivelled, taking in the room around him. “How did you—are you in the ceiling?”
“Yeah.”
His head tilted, nearly overbalancing him onto his back this time, but he caught himself in time. Kez couldn’t see his face clearly through the grate, but she got the impression that it was as thin as the rest of him.
“I can’t see you.”
“Good,” Kez said, in some satisfaction. “’F’you can’t see me, you can’t turn me in later for points.”
“I wouldn’t turn you in.”
“That’s what everyone sez before they meets Marcus.”
“You already told me your name, though.”
“Yeah, well, I pinch a lot of things,” said Kez. “Wot makes you think I didn’t pinch that too?”
“Oh.”
She wasn’t sure if he sounded disappointed or merely thoughtful.
“What’s your real name, then?”
“Wot’s it to you?” demanded Kez again. “Ain’t like you’ve said your name.”
“I can’t remember mine.”
“That’s wot you say. ’Ow do I know it’s true? Oi.”
“What?”
“You want me to open the door for you?”
Kez had the impression that the boy straightened hopefully. “You can do that?”
“Yeah. If I want to.”
“Will you?”
Kez shrugged. “S’pose. Don’t matter to me. I’ll ’ave to go for a bit, though.”
“Oh.”
“You want out, or not?”
There was a pause. Kez peered through the grate, squinting her eyes.
“You don’t wanna get out?”
“I don’t know,” said the boy. “I might be in here for a reason.”
“’Course you are,” Kez said scornfully. “Just depends on whose reason it is, don’t it?”
“You—” the boy stopped, and continued unexpectedly, “I like you. Your mind is well-connected.”
“Yeah, thanks,” said Kez, unimpressed.
“Please don’t take long.”
Kez, gruffly this time, said, “Orright, orright. See ya in a bit.”
Delivery Schedule #3
He had a bad feeling about this job. He’d had it from the start, but now that Marx was outside the Holstrom Institute, the feeling had grown into an all-encompassing dread that made him hesitate with one foot on the first step of the delivery entrance. Fortunately, there were only two steps, so if his feeling of dread continued to exert itself on his legs, there was a good chance he would still be able to perform his delivery—and, more importantly, get paid instead of fired.
The thing was, thought Marx, forcing his stiffened left leg t
o follow the right up onto the first step, that he couldn’t pinpoint exactly why he had a bad feeling. He often couldn’t, if it came to that, and the stiffness in his left leg wasn’t entirely the stiffness of dread; it was the result of a similar, unsettled feeling that he had heeded rather more quickly than he did today’s—yet not quite quickly enough, for all that. That, of course, had been in his war days on Fourth World: those days were long since gone, as was any recognisable form of liberty or functional society on Fourth World, but like his stiff leg they still troubled him every now and then.
He rested the package against his waist while he waited for the muscles in his legs to loosen themselves, taking the weight off his aching arms, and came to the conclusion that a portion of his discomfort undoubtedly came from the fact that the package was by far heavier than something of its size ought to be. It would have been far more sensible to deliver it by the Worldwide Delivery Line: easier, too, since WDL had weight-regulating capsules that would have applied a slightly adjusted gravitational pull to it. Not to mention the fact that WDL’s price schedule was roughly half what Marx’s employers charged.
“If I want to spend my money on personal delivery, what’s it to you?” the sender had said, when Marx picked it up. “Don’t want to be paid?”
“I’m the one carrying it,” Marx muttered to himself. “That’s what it is to me.”
He’d wondered at the time what was in the package, but since he was more than slightly suspicious that his employers weren’t entirely above board when it came to the law, he hadn’t cared to ask too many questions. If he asked questions, he would probably get answers, and that would lead to one of two outcomes: either he would be killed for knowing too much, or he would find it necessary to do something about the situation, in which case he would probably also be killed.
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