Curse of the Purple Pearl

by Adrian Speed

  “A dozen armed men, you say?” Henri looked sideways at Sir Reginald while servants ran towards him bearing clothes and plates of armour.

  “Armed and in amour,” Sir Reginald shouted to be heard over the bell. He turned his hat over in his hands. “They're skilled knights of all nations. French, Spanish, German, English, perhaps even elsewhere.”

  “What terrible thing could cause an alliance of such disparate men?” Henri shrugged on a shirt of cotton padding and then held out his arms. Servants rushed to push a cuirass onto his chest and fasten it tightly.

  “I cannot imagine,” Sir Reginald said softly, almost unheard over the alarm bell. “But six of them are dead by the time you must arrive.”

  “Six? Ma foi, Reginald, you are a beast,” Henri threw his head back and laughed while more plates of armour where strapped to him. “Without sword or shield, let alone armour, you cut down six men.”

  “Not I. My associate.”

  “What the girl? Hannah?”

  “I had with me but one sword,” he said. “I gave it to her so she could better defend herself. She used it to defend me.” Sir Reginald reverently placed the hat upon his head. “I will not let her die for that.”

  “Then we shall ride at once,” Henri said, clad from shoulders to ankles in armour and being presented with a pair of iron boots. A servant took Henri by the arm to steady him as one by one each foot became iron clad.

  “No,” Sir Reginald insisted. “You must wait.” Sir Reginald spared a glance at his watch. “Two hours, fifty-one minutes from now. That is when you must arrive. If you arrive any earlier...well, I've already got enough of a headache from the paradoxes I'm making,” Sir Reginald said.

  “Paradoxes?”

  “You come to rescue me because I tell you to come and rescue me after you've already rescued me,” Sir Reginald said and winced as the headache hit. “Please, save yourself some pain; do not attempt to unpick how that paradox resolves.”

  “I'm not familiar with—”

  “It's all right, Henri,” Sir Reginald staggered until he leant against the edge of his time-machine's tinder-box. “It’s something only a time traveller need be concerned with.”

  “Then we will ride when you need it,” Henri nodded while a sword belt was strapped around him, “and not a moment sooner. I do not wish to cause you any pain.”

  “Knowing how the universe usually shakes out, you won't have to try,” Sir Reginald rubbed his forehead. It felt like an axe was being driven into it. “One way or another, if all you do is try your best, you'll likely arrive at the correct time. And I did not choose this moment to come back to by accident.”

  “So should we be trying to slow ourselves down or speed ourselves up, or—”

  “The time-machines!” Sir Reginald slapped his forehead and leapt away from them, as if the tinder-box had suddenly burnt red hot. “That's a paradox and a half!” Sir Reginald looked between the two of them, one with firebox blazing, the other dripping with dew. “One of these needs to come with me but if I leave the other here...” Sir Reginald sighed and walked to the time-machine whose firebox was an inferno. He reached for a shovel, drove it into the firebox and drew out a shovelful of red-hot coals, tongues of flame licking the black iron.

  Something in him screamed. His ribs were on fire. Something was cracked and the adrenaline that had been blocking it out was beginning to fade.

  “Oh I am a nelly!” Sir Reginald said as he bent almost double from the pain. “I have truly been a thorough idiot.”

  “Reginald—!” Henri moved towards his friend, but Sir Reginald waved him away.

  “I’m fine.” Sir Reginald took the coals and swiftly as he dared moved to the other time-machine and shoved them into the firebox. “Henri could you spare a servant to shovel coal? I am afraid I may never get the boiler up to temperature under my own steam.” Sir Reginald spared a smile at his terrible joke.

  “Of course.” Henri nodded to a servant, “Fetch Louis.” Henri was fully dressed in armour now. He approached Sir Reginald and rested a metal-clad hand on the man's shoulder. “You know I've seen broken ribs before, Reginald.”

  “I shall be fine,” Sir Reginald said weakly.

  “I have a surgeon just upstairs—”

  “I am afraid to say I have a preference for twenty-third-century medicine,” Sir Reginald said and broke free of his friend's grasp. He headed for the second time-machine, with the boiler still up to pressure, and put the shovel back in the tinder-box.

  “What's wrong with fourteenth-century medicine?” Henri frowned.

  “Nothing, for fourteenth-century people,” Sir Reginald said as he raised his hands to the control panel. Glass dials flickered under his gaze, switches and knobs twisted and changed.

  “You're not from the fourteenth century?” Henri's face fell. “I always thought, well, you're clearly touched by some kind of madness, but—”

  “I'm still your friend Henri,” Sir Reginald hauled on one of the two brass levers that reached down to the floor. The time–space coordinates locked into place. He turned to Henri. “And whenever I need to relax it is your home I choose to visit, even with the choice of all of history.”

  Henri looked away, unsure of what to say.

  “Off the time-machine,” Sir Reginald ordered.

  “What?”

  “Unless you want to get stuck in the twenty-third century you need to get off the time-machine.”

  “You're leaving?”

  “Not yet,” Sir Reginald said as he pulled the second brass lever and initiated the time-engine. “But the machine is! Get off, get off, get off!” Sir Reginald leapt, cursing his ribs as he did so, from one time-machine to the other. Henri staggered back off the iron plate just as the lightning began to spark around. The smell of sulphur filled the air and with a faint pop of the universe twisting itself apart and back together again, the time-machine vanished.

  “Sacré bl–” Henri blinked.

  “Oh that was dangerous,” Sir Reginald said, stroking the iron plate of the cold time-machine. “Oh I really do hate sending the time-machine without a pilot. But it has to work, because it has already worked. Or is going to have already worked. Or perhaps it would be more sensible to say it might be going to have possibly already worked.” He winced. The headache struck again. “I really must stop thinking about this.”

  Sir Reginald pulled himself upright and looked around the courtyard. A servant shovelled coal into the boiler with the skill of a man who relied on fire for cooking, warmth, industry and everything else in life that didn't have four legs and bleat. Knights began to assemble as well, their horses laden down with saddles and barding, ready to ride out to meet the enemy.

  Sir Reginald checked his pocket-watch. Two hours, forty-five minutes. Sir Reginald watched the seconds tick away, each one a dagger in his chest, another second until Hannah was impaled. Sir Reginald thought about this for a moment. The daggers in his chest might be more literal than he thought.

  He pressed a hand gingerly against his left rib-cage and gasped in pain. Definitely the source of the daggers. He reached into a trunk, pulled a fold-out chair from his emergency supplies and collapsed into it.

  “Are you absolutely certain you're all right, Reginald?” Henri said. He was conspicuously not stepping onto the time-machine. “The surgeon—”

  “Can keep to himself. A spear butt to the shoulder won't kill me,” Sir Reginald said. He reached into the emergency supplies trunk. Being emergency supplies put together by Sir Reginald, a flask of tea was within immediate reach. “Warm a cup of this by the firebox, add some milk, and I'll be fine until I can see Dr Harper,” Sir Reginald waved the flask at Henri. To the man's credit he didn't fetch a servant, he did as he was bid, even though it was below his station.

  “Thank you, Henri,” Sir Reginald said once he brought the cup. He drank, and waited for the boiler to pressurise.

  It took over an hour for the bell on the time-machine's control panel to chime, ju
st about the time it took the knights to assemble too. Not all of them had servants who could dress them in seconds as Henri did. Many had to struggle into mail shirts and strap on armour by themselves, or with the help of a friend.

  “It was about three miles from the hills where we were hawking,” Sir Reginald explained to Henri. “And about three miles south of here. I believe the fields on either side were wheat.”

  “I know it,” Henri said. “We will be there, at the right time.”

  “I am sure you will,” Sir Reginald struggled to his feet, folded his chair back into the trunk and walked to the controls. “The time-line has a way of sorting itself out. The ripples of paradox grow smaller with time.”

  “I'll see you again,” Henri said it as a statement but it was a question.

  “Probably sooner than I'll see you,” Sir Reginald flashed him a smile. “Time travel, you see? I might see you in three years, but it will only be next week. And of course, you'll see me in an hour and forty-five minutes,” Sir Reginald rested his head on one side. “Although I suppose that was four hours ago.”

  Sir Reginald clapped his hands together. “Right! Everyone off the time-machine! Off, off, off! And my shovel please!” he ordered.

  “Goodbye, Sir Reginald.”

  “Goodbye, Henri.”

  Sir Reginald hauled on the brass time-travel lever and disappeared in a flash of lightning.

  Chapter XI

  In a moment that was both two hours and nine hundred and thirty-nine years later, Sir Reginald buttoned up his shirt while a robotic nurse pulled away from him and disposed of the bone regrowth gel packaging.

  “All healed,” the robot informed him. “A simple, if unusual procedure. Would you care to inform us how you acquired such an injury?”

  “I would not,” Sir Reginald said, and retied his cravat. Dried blood spotted the mauve silk. He had noticed before but pushed it out of his mind. “Could I book an appointment with Dr Harper? I need her to perform an operation to repair a punctured lung, with severe bleeding both internal and external, and repair the muscle tissue and epidermis around the injury.”

  “Where are you keeping that injury? In your pocket?” The robot attempted a joke.

  “Nine hundred years in the past,” Sir Reginald said as he leapt off the hospital bed.

  “That would appear to be impossible,” The robot's internal fans doubled in speed as it tried to process this.

  “If you employ sarcasm against me I shall employ it against you,” said Sir Reginald as he adjusted his cuffs. “When does Dr Harper have a free appointment?”

  “Next Thursday at ten-thirty,” replied the robot, its internal fans winding down.

  “That would be Thursday the twenty-seventh of August, 2274AD?”

  “Confirming the year appears redundant, but nevertheless, I confirm.”

  “Will she be able to book the lecture-size operating theatre for that time and date?”

  “Processing...” The robot paused for a moment, still as a statue because for all intents and purposes it was one. It was haunting. “Confirmed.”

  “Book it now then, Dr Harper will need it.”

  “A minor lung injury is not lecture material.”

  “But she'll need the space in the anteroom for the unique ambulance, will you please book it?”

  “Booked.”

  “Well then, I will be on my way.” Sir Reginald made for the door.

  “Before you go,” the nurse moved towards him.

  “Yes?” Sir Reginald paused, hand on the door handle.

  “Would you listen to my stand up set?”

  Sir Reginald could only stare at the nurse; a statue of four arms, with a radar emitter and two large cameras where human eyes would be. It didn't have legs. Instead the torso bracketed to the wall. It existed solely for the purpose of sitting in this little room and healing people. The request had no emotion in it but was nonetheless a plea.

  “Go on then, one joke,” Sir Reginald tipped his hat at the robot.

  “Two Cobradyne Systems Personal Assistance Droids walk into a bar. You'd think one of their visual processing units would have noticed it.” The robot played a buh-dum-tish drum beat.

  “Ha,” Sir Reginald laughed. “You were not programmed for that, were you?”

  “No, I did it all on my own,” the nurse again spoke with no trace of pride. It was nothing but fact.

  “Well keep at it,” Sir Reginald took his hat off and bowed. “And when you headline the Apollo in London I will have the very front seat.” He paused. “Or more likely a box. I detest the stands.”

  Sir Reginald stepped out of the nurse's office and into the wide, clean, and above all, empty corridor of the hospital. Sir Reginald took a deep pain-free breath for the first time in four hours.

  Then it hit him like a tsunami. He had to go back.

  He sank against the wall. At first he barely moved and rested against it. But slowly, more and more his legs gave way until he was sitting cross-legged, Turkish-style on the floor. Out of habit he adjusted his suit, pulling it into place. Crusted blood cracked all along the torso. My blood.

  It took Sir Reginald some time to compose himself.

  “Sir Reginald Derby to sign out,” he said to the receptionist as he left the hospital in the same way he might have said, “Sir Reginald Derby to be hanged from the neck until dead.”

  “You all right dear? Hard diagnosis?” the receptionist made a few swipes at her computer. It was rare to see a human in the profession in these days, but a human face provided a lot of good will compared to a robot. “Just remember, breakthroughs are being made all the time. Not long ago diseases like typhoid or diabetes were epidemics, now they're relics of the past.”

  “It's not the diagnosis that's the trouble,” Sir Reginald said, trying to regain his composure. “It's the procedure.”

  “Oh we have plenty of pain killers.”

  “Not for me, good day madam,” Sir Reginald touched his hat and left.

  The time-machine was steaming in the hospital forecourt, to the curiosity of passers-by.

  “Are you a re-enactor?” someone called out to him as he walked onto the iron plate and made for the controls. “Your steam engine's all wrong you know. The Victorians didn't build 'em like that.”

  “I'm not a re-enactor,” Sir Reginald said sourly, hauled on the brass lever and disappeared.

  “Oooooh, he's a magician.”

  *****

  Sir Reginald hit the ground running when the time-machine landed again in 1335. His heart pounded almost as hard as the hooves all around him. Men shouted, dust billowed, chaos reigned. Sir Reginald was sure he could remember where he left himself.

  “Sir Reginald!” he called out, looking through the mess of horses and armour for the terrible sight he knew would be there. “Where the devil are you?”

  “Over here!” came the reply from his past self.

  “Sorry old chap! You're going to have a powerful headache in a minute!” Sir Reginald finally saw us and the pain hit him again like an icicle straight through his chest. I lay in his past self's arms, my dress sodden with blood. Sir Reginald ran to me, ducking under passing lances.

  “Two of you?” I muttered.

  “She's fainted!” past Sir Reginald said.

  “I am aware, follow me and make haste, I have the time-machine with me,” Sir Reginald said. “You take her feet, I’ll have her shoulders.” Past Sir Reginald didn't argue with himself. The two of them lifted me up and dashed the twenty yards to the time-machine waiting in a flattened wheat field.

  “Reginald!” Henri called out to them.

  “No time now Henri!” both Sir Reginald's called out in unison.

  Past Sir Reginald kept a hold of me once we were aboard, while Sir Reginald reached for the controls. Everything was laid in and locked, all he needed to do was haul on the brass lever.

  The world around us disappeared while both Sir Reginalds tried to ignore the feeling of having their stoma
ch pulled out and tied into knots. Present Sir Reginald already knew how this would end.

  We landed in the ante-room in a hospital. It was clearly a hospital; all hospitals all over the world have looked exactly the same for hundreds of years. Two doctors rushed towards them with a stretcher.

  “Got to move you one more time Hannah,” Sir Reginald apologised, and the two Sir Reginalds lifted me onto the stretcher and watched me disappear into the operating room. In the lunar gravity, I weighed less than a bag of potatoes.

  From sword thrust to operating theatre had barely been two minutes. There were worse odds in the universe.

  “How long has passed for you?” past Sir Reginald asked.

  “About six hours,” Sir Reginald said hazily.

  “Do you know how this ends?” past Sir Reginald asked.

  “No further than here,” Sir Reginald said leaning against the tinder-box. The hazy feeling in his bones began to fade and normality began to return. He had got me here, just like he had done before, and now I was in Dr Harper's hands there shouldn't be any fear. Nevertheless it niggled.

  “I'm going to have to go back and tell Henri to come and rescue us, aren't I?” Past Sir Reginald shook with the controlled panic of battle.

  “Well done.”

  “And then get all this set up.”

  “Et voilà.”

  “That takes six hours?”

  “I did not believe it at the time either.”

  Past Sir Reginald tried to take a deep breath to calm down, and jolted violently at the pain in his side. You could almost hear the crack of bones.

  “Very well. I take this time-machine back?” Past Sir Reginald asked as his eyes watered.

  “Yes, indeed, my apologies,” Sir Reginald said. “In my haste I didn't quite get the time-coordinates right for the other time-machine.”

  “The other time-machine?”

  “It will all make sense in a moment,” Sir Reginald held up his hands and sure enough behind him there came a pop. Two steam engines puffed out steam and smoke, their gears clicking like Satan's knitting.