The Forever Man

by Eoin Colfer

  ‘On the temples!’ yelled the professor, his voice crackling like an overloaded speaker. ‘Not the chest.’

  Temples, thought Isles. This kid is gonna love me.

  He placed a paddle on each side of Chevie’s head and gave her the full thousand volts in a two-second blast.

  The effect was immediate. Chevie’s back arched from the initial shock.

  ‘That’s very cat-like,’ Pointer pointed out.

  And then she began to spasm, clawing the air and swallowing furiously.

  ‘She’s going to swallow her tongue!’ said the professor. ‘Put something in her mouth. A stick. A spoon. Anything.’

  ‘I can’t believe I’m doing this for a cat,’ said Pointer, and jammed his forepaw into Chevie’s mouth only to be bitten for his trouble.

  ‘Nothing wrong with her jaw,’ he said through gritted teeth, and then could not suppress a howl.

  Chevie thrashed for a full minute, and would have broken her own bones had Isles not weighed her down with his forearms, but slowly her convulsions subsided and her breathing settled into a steady resting rate and Pointer could remove his chomped paw.

  The professor stuck his head into her chest once more. ‘The heart is normal. She’s a strong one.’

  ‘She’s a Fed, Prof,’ said Isles. ‘We breed ’em strong.’

  They stepped away from the sofa and watched and waited in silence. Even the hunting hound gave his voice a rest so he could lick his paw.

  Nothing happened for a long moment, but then Chevie stretched as though coming out of a long sleep and opened her eyes, which were still the sunrise gold of a cat’s with arrowheads of dark pupil. But there was something behind them, something that could be intelligence.

  The professor hovered close enough to whisper.

  ‘My dear, can you understand me?’

  Chevie sat up slowly. ‘Professor Smart. But you died. I saw you dead. Twice.’

  The spirit of Professor Charles Smart, the man who had opened this entire can of wormholes, sighed and sank half into the floor.

  ‘Dead,’ he said. ‘Then I am truly a ghost.’

  Chevie stood with great difficulty. ‘Riley. We need to save Riley.’

  But all her strength was gone after a single step and she tumbled into Isles’s waiting arms. He laid her gently on the sofa and Pointer gripped a blanket between his teeth and tugged it over her length.

  ‘She’s going to be out for a while,’ said Charles Smart. ‘And no doubt she will have a million questions when she wakes up. You should both rest. I have a feeling you’re going to need your strength.’

  Pointer studied his injured paw. ‘Hey, partner. Maybe you could bandage this for me, since you’re playing doctor.’

  Isles smiled. ‘Sure thing. That was some quick thinking.’

  The dog wagged his tail, which was his version of a happy face. ‘Thanks, Fender. How about a beer to celebrate reviving the cat? There’s a jug in the refrigerator.’

  Isles shook his head. ‘No. We’re on the job now, Donnie. Clear heads all the way.’

  He turned to Professor Smart, who was still moping down in the floorboards. ‘Hey, Prof. Sorry to hear about you being dead and all.’

  Smart studied his own hands, watching the spectral bones within. ‘Twice no less.’ He raised his eyes to meet Isles’s. ‘And it’s only going to get worse.’

  Mandrake. Huntingdonshire. 1647

  Riley sat cross-legged in the Cat’s Collar contemplating escape. He had been sorely tempted to simply give in and sink into depression. It would be so easy to accept his fate. It was inevitable that Garrick would do him in and he’d always known it. Chevie had been so certain that Garrick was gone for good.

  But I always knew that Garrick could not be killed, for he is death.

  He gingerly tapped the wooden neck of the Cat’s Collar restraint.

  The Alleluia, he thought bitterly. Ain’t it an irony that the devil should pick a song of praise to get his dirty work done?

  Riley had some rudimentary knowledge of the violin and had even been known to saw the folk fiddle for Garrick’s amusement – but the Alleluia?

  ‘Not a bloomin’ prayer,’ he said to the rafters. ‘Never in a million years.’

  But the notion of dear Chevie enduring some terrible torture made him almost willing to give it a bash, so he racked his brain for the tune and wondered if he could pick out the notes without even testing the strings.

  Impossible. Even for a magician.

  He sat there, chained to the altar, humming quietly, when the chapel doors burst open and Albert Garrick himself charged through and hurried, nay, ran down the aisle. His screwed-up features relaxed when he saw Riley still trussed and helpless.

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘In time, then.’

  Then Riley knew by the hurried entrance and the obvious relief on Garrick’s face what had happened. In general at least, if not specifically.

  ‘Chevie escaped!’ he said. Now it was his turn to feel relief, and it felt as though a shackle round his heart had been unbuckled. ‘Hah! Albert Garrick, Witchfinder. Your witch has escaped.’

  ‘He confesses!’ declared Garrick to the crowd that had followed in a babbling jumble behind him. ‘And in this holy house.’

  ‘To me those words seemed spoken in mockery more than confession,’ said one man, standing forward.

  Garrick turned on him. ‘You would judge a confession, Jeronimo Woulfe?’ he thundered in his best menacing stage voice. ‘You would presume to divine the workings of a familiar’s mind?’

  The man stepped back into the throng, reaching to find the arm of a pretty young woman. ‘No, Witchfinder. No, forgive me.’

  ‘Chevie is in the wind, ain’t she, Albert Garrick?’ said Riley, and a glowing pride in his friend was all there was room for in his heart. ‘She’s given you the slip. And you the great escapologist. The mighty Albert Garrick.’

  Garrick knelt before his one-time apprentice, but did not seem unduly upset by either the turn of events or the level of cheek. In fact, his worried frown was quickly replaced by an ebullience that seemed out of place on his blanched features.

  ‘Ain’t this fun, lad?’ he said, rapping the Cat’s Collar. ‘All these shenanigans. It don’t make a whit of difference to me, so it don’t. It’s a distraction, as it were, from the sameness. From the eternal. It ain’t like I can make a fatal mistake, now, is it?’

  Riley knew there was no point in trying to talk sense to Albert Garrick and so addressed the congregation.

  ‘Would you put your faith in this creature?’ he shouted. ‘Do you believe him sent by God?’

  Garrick laughed. ‘Oh, the sauce of him! You are a scamp, my son. And no mistake. I am sent by Oliver Cromwell himself to deliver these godly folk from the abomination that is your mistress. And you, her familiar, would try to turn them against me.’ Garrick sat back on the front pew. ‘Go ahead, my lad. The stage is yours. Do your worst.’

  Riley stood gingerly, careful not to jar the Cat’s Collar. ‘People, please. I have confessed to nothing. Things are not as they seem in this place; surely you must feel the wrongness. Albert Garrick ain’t no Witchfinder. He’s a stage magician, no more. A common conjurer. And Chevie, my friend, well, she ain’t no witch. She’s a mutation from the future is all …’

  Riley’s speech petered out as he saw that his words were not having the impression he desired. In retrospect perhaps he shouldn’t have used the words ‘mutation’ and ‘future’.

  Nicely played, dullard, he told himself. You just lost your audience.

  Garrick applauded. ‘Hark at him, good folk of Mandrake’s Groan. His mistress ain’t no witch; she’s a mutation from the future. Oh! what a tangled web we weave/When first we practise to deceive!’

  That was nicely played, Riley admitted to himself. To eloquently quote a poem not yet written.

  He stared glumly at the audience and it occurred to him that generally people dressed as these were, in jerkins and doublets, wo
uld be on stage in a Shakespeare play or the like and he would be the audience. And so Riley, pushed beyond the point of reasonable endurance, said quite belligerently: ‘Actually, good folk of Mandrake, if this be the ghoul in which you choose to trust, then you deserve everything that comes your way, for I trusted this man once upon a time and all he brought me was doom and gloom.’

  Garrick applauded. ‘And still the boy has a spark in him.’ He stood and faced the townsfolk, who were clustered at the rear of the small chapel like sheep before the butcher. ‘And, yea, I sayeth to you: the servant of the witch shall deny his sins to the end, for that is his curse. And only death itself may redeem him.’

  And, yea, I sayeth? thought Riley. Albert Garrick truly relishes his role in this place.

  ‘So it’s damned if I do and it’s damned if I don’t,’ he said to Garrick’s back.

  Garrick spun on his heel, almost dancing with delight. ‘No, boy. Not damned at all, do you see? Redeemed you shall be. Saved, as it were. A confession is all that’s needed. Three little words.’ Garrick bent low so his face was level with Riley’s; the dead stink of his crypt breath was full in the boy’s face, and the coffin white of his skin seemed to glow with a sickening light. ‘ I am guilty. Admit it, boy. For you are certainly guilty of some such or other.’

  Riley was so scared in that moment that his stomach felt as though it might split and he could barely stop the confession tumbling from his lips, but he forced his fear down for Chevie, and instead spat a denial.

  ‘I ain’t no familiar, nor any class of demon. You are the devil here, Albert Garrick. Hell hangs upon you like a shroud. One look upon you is all that’s needed in the way of proof. One look, or one sniff of your brimstone stench.’

  Garrick sent a long finger twitching forward like a white worm and plucked one of the Cat’s Collar’s violin strings, and the note sang in the chapel’s nave. ‘Ah, the loyal familiar. Damned by denial. It seems more persuasion is needed. Perhaps when I have your dear Miss Savano lashed to a stake you will say anything, anything, to save her skin.’

  Then suddenly Albert Garrick was stretching to his full height and was all business.

  ‘Fairbrother Isles took the witch, ain’t that so?’ he said to Cryer.

  ‘Aye, master,’ said the constable, who stood shamefaced now by the door. ‘Into the fens, no doubt. For that is where he dwells without fear of beast nor monster.’

  ‘And how did the witch greet her rescuer?’

  ‘I don’t imagine she greeted him at all, master. Out of her senses, she was, when I last looked in.’

  ‘Good, then perhaps she’s harmless for the moment,’ said Garrick. ‘So merrily into the fens go we at first light. I will take twelve men of the militia with whatever ordnance we can muster. Except you, Constable.’ Garrick pointed one of his stripped-twig fingers at Godfrey Cryer. ‘You have brought disgrace to your office. Overpowered by a bumpkin indeed. You shall remain here and guard the familiar with however many men remain. Your watch begins forthwith and you shall neither sup nor swallow till the witch is recovered.’

  ‘But, Master Witchfinder …’ began Cryer, but his words trailed off as he could not muster a reasonable objection. He had been bested by a drunkard. ‘Yes, Witchfinder Garrick. As you command.’

  Garrick bent low for a wink and whisper to his one-time apprentice. ‘Riley boy. Hark at this. I have always wanted to speak the following lines.’

  He stood ramrod straight, threw back the folds of his black greatcoat and thundered: ‘Citizens! Prepare yourselves for the hunt. At first light we go!’

  With that, he took dramatic flight down the aisle, drawing a wedge of townsfolk in his wake as though he were some class of Pied Piper.

  In moments the small chapel was empty but for Riley and a handful of guards, and two notions occurred to the tethered boy in quick succession.

  The first was grudging: That indeed was a stirring performance. Albert Garrick has this audience in the palm of his hand.

  Then: If Garrick left bludgers to watch over me, he must believe that escape from this contraption is possible.

  The glinting of the arrowheads aimed at the tender flesh of his own neck gave Riley pause. He would not begin plucking strings just yet. In any event there was a disgruntled constable and his cohorts to be overcome even if he could dislodge the device.

  And then a third notion:

  Fairbrother Isles.

  Fair Brother Isles.

  FBI?

  Could he be a member of Chevie’s Pinkerton-style organization?

  How had Chevie referred to her brotherhood of lawmen?

  The Federal Bureau of Investigation or, with a witticism that Riley had never understood, Club Fed.

  Perhaps they were not alone.

  Perhaps there was hope.

  Once again the arrowheads flashed in his vision.

  A sliver of hope. A whisper.

  But they had survived on less.

  The Big Picture

  The field office. The fens. Huntingdonshire. 1647

  Chevie opened her eyes.

  Eyes that now had eight times more photoreceptor cells than they once had, so, even though the light in the cabin would barely register in the pupils of the average human, to Chevie everything in her field of vision was as clear as high noon. This was because Chevron Savano was no longer the average human. She was a mutation. Not that she realized this at the time. All Chevie knew was that it was daytime as far as she was concerned.

  It felt good to be concerned about anything. Her memories of the past day, if that was even the correct way to describe the time span, were a jumble of pain, sorrow and animal terror. It felt as though the wormhole had stretched her consciousness behind her on an elastic band and it had only just snapped back into her head.

  The tangle of thoughts began unravelling into a linear order and Chevie brought herself up to speed.

  Garrick kicked me.

  I was dying.

  Then the wormhole took us and I thought of Tinder.

  Then I was alive somehow and further in the past.

  They locked me up and took Riley.

  Oh, Riley. My Riley.

  Chevie knew the tunnel had done something to them both. Made them see what could be. It had never even occurred to Chevie before – after all, Riley was more than two years younger than she. And, as far as teenagers are concerned, two years might as well be two centuries.

  We could be … we could be … happy.

  It was something Chevie had never even considered for herself: actual happiness, beyond not being in fear for her life. Beyond taking a swim in clear Californian water.

  And he felt it too. I felt him feeling it.

  But later for all of that. There was more urgent information to be processed.

  Someone had rescued her from that wooden cell.

  An agent? Could it be?

  And then … this must have been a hallucination.

  A talking dog and the ghost of Professor Smart.

  Wormhole dreams, surely.

  That was the only explanation and Chevie would have banished these last faux memories to the dream section of her mind had not a large brown hunting hound’s head loomed in the corner of her eye.

  ‘Hey,’ said the dog. ‘Look who’s awake.’

  A fizzling man-shaped spectre rose through the floorboards, illuminating the entire space. ‘I imagine you have some questions, my dear,’ said the ghost of Charles Smart.

  ‘Emmmm,’ said Chevie. ‘Ehhhhhhh.’

  The dog sniffed Chevie’s leg. ‘I dunno, Prof. She still smells stupid to me. Sounds stupid too. Like a cat.’

  ‘It’s a dog!’ said Chevie, sitting bolt upright. ‘A dog with human talkings.’

  ‘That ain’t great sentence structure,’ said the dog. ‘Plus you hurt my feelings with the dog crack, and also you might wanna take a look at yourself in the mirror.’

  ‘Ehhhhhh,’ said Chevie again, and augmented it with: ‘Oooooooh.’

/>   Professor Smart raised his transparent hands. ‘Now, now, my dear. I can explain.’

  ‘Sure,’ said the hound, then snuffled. ‘He can explain. He’s been explaining for years.’

  Chevie jabbed a finger at Pointer. ‘Dog!’ she said.

  ‘Cat!’ responded Pointer. ‘And how come a floaty ghosty is no problem but a conversational canine you can’t abide? You better watch your mouth, kid.’

  The confrontational tone kick-started Chevie’s natural moxie.

  ‘I never punched a dog before, pooch,’ she said. ‘But, if there ever was a day for new experiences, this is the day.’

  Smart clapped his hands and they sparked at the contact. ‘Wonderful. Signs of intelligence.’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ muttered Pointer.

  Smart did his utmost to soften his perennially harsh features. ‘I know this must all seem very strange, young lady.’

  ‘You think?’

  The professor persisted. ‘As you seemed to know, my name is Charles Smart –’

  ‘I know. Professor Smart,’ said Chevie, interrupting. ‘Don’t you remember me? Agent Chevron Savano? Or Chevie maybe?’

  ‘We met, I take it? We were friends perhaps?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ said Chevie. ‘Once I saw you dead, stabbed, and once I was sent to kill you.’

  These confessions were met with a growl from Pointer and a lowering in Smart’s wattage so Chevie hurriedly added, ‘Which I didn’t, by the way. Someone else murdered you. Both times.’

  The dog slapped a paw on the floor. ‘Hey, don’t sugar-coat it, whatever you do. Heartless. Ain’t that just like a cat?’

  Chevie wrinkled her nose. ‘Why’s he talking about cats?’

  ‘I always hoped I might get home to my family,’ said Smart forlornly, ignoring the question, perhaps not even hearing it. ‘Be reunited with myself, you might say, but I never really believed it.’ He held up his glowing arms. ‘I suppose this is all that’s left of me now.’

  ‘Where’s the other guy?’ asked Chevie. ‘The one who rescued me?’

  ‘Agent Isles is checking the perimeter,’ said Professor Smart. ‘To use federal lingo.’