Anachronist

by Andrew Hastie

  ‘I will send you a picture of the label so you know what to look for.’ Her accent was strong and kind of sexy. ‘Lenin, get phone!’

  Josh had never heard anyone give Lenin an order, or see him take it without question. He guessed they were probably shagging because Lenin did exactly as he was instructed.

  Elena swiped through her photos until she found what she was looking for and then looked up at Josh with big, dark-rimmed eyes.

  ‘Number?’

  Josh was a little stunned. ‘Don’t have one. Sorry.’

  Elena swore in her own language and turned to Lenin. ‘Where did you find this guy?’

  Lenin shook his head and shrugged. ‘Tell me about it. He’s a nightmare. They just seemed to die on him.’ He picked out an iPhone 5s from a drawer and threw it to Josh. ‘It’s a burner. You can chuck it after the job.’

  Josh looked at the cracked screen and read out the number to Elena whose fingers blurred as she tapped it into her phone.

  A second later a notification popped up on his screen. There were two new messages: the first was a picture of a chemical label, the kind you saw on the side of lorries. The second was a nude picture of Elena with the words ‘YOU WISH!’ burnt into the image, obscuring her nipples.

  Josh swallowed hard and looked back at her, she raised one eyebrow at him as if daring him to show Lenin.

  Lenin took out a marker and began to hi-light different points on the floor plans as he explained the location of the security systems in the chemistry building.

  ‘I thought I was just driving?’ said Josh.

  ‘Everybody’s going in. Don’t want any second thoughts, and that thirty-kilo drum is going to need at least four of us to get it out, or a forklift if we’re lucky.’

  They went through the details of the job. Lenin was meticulous, going over each of the various different entrances to the university using Google Streetview images. Josh studied the maps closely, pointing out routes that would be potential hazards, and shortcuts that would help them lose the police. It was a simple job but he found his mind kept wandering: he went from wondering how easily he could do this if he still had the Tachyon Mark IV, to the naked image of Elena, to what the colonel had said as he took the watch back that morning.

  ‘Don’t do anything out of the ordinary. Don’t draw attention to yourself.’

  He wasn’t sure this qualified as normal to the colonel — what was ordinary to a time traveller anyway? This was the only life Josh had ever known, one where you took what you needed rather than waited for it to be given. He had little choice but to see this through. Lenin would be seriously pissed if Josh tried to duck out of it, and then there would be consequences that you didn’t need the colonel’s notebook to predict.

  ‘Enough with the talking,’ Elena snapped.

  ‘Let’s give the lady some privacy,’ Lenin said as he guided Josh out of the room. Elena threw off the sheets as they left and Josh had to use every ounce of willpower not to look back.

  Lenin’s crew had finished their game and were busy bagging up dope into plastic wraps. The sound system was banging out something ridiculously loud, and Lenin had to shout over the noise.

  ‘Saturday morning. Two a.m. You finally get to go to uni!’ He held up two fingers in a gangster salute and waved Josh out.

  Elena walked out of the bedroom towards the bathroom wearing a thong and a cropped black T-shirt. The guys started whooping and banging on the table as she walked down the hall towards the toilet.

  As Josh went through the front door, he heard Lenin shouting.

  ‘Elena. For God’s sake. Put some damn clothes on, you prick-teasing bitch!’

  27

  Another Colonel

  Collecting his things from Mrs B had taken longer than Josh had anticipated. Her ability to fuss over the smallest things drove him to distraction, but he patiently waited for her to finish the usual speech about trying to ‘stay out of trouble for your mother’s sake’ and then took the two carrier bags and left.

  There was a letter from the council taped to the metal grille where his old front door used to be. As he passed, he read the words ‘EVICTION NOTICE’ in bold red type on the envelope. Josh was less bothered by it than he’d thought he would be; it had never really felt like home — more like a prison where he’d just served five years.

  He felt an unusual sense of relief as he walked off the estate with everything he owned. The carrier bags were mostly full of clothes: boxers, socks, T-shirts and another pair of jeans, enough for a week — not much to show for his life. He’d put his photos and diary inside his coat, but the pockets were ripped, and the thing had fallen inside the lining, which was probably the safest place for it anyway.

  He was a mess, but for the first time in his life, he felt like something was actually going to change for the better.

  The colonel showed him to the guest room. It was a large bedroom with the slope of the roof encroaching on one side. There was a round window high at the end, which let in just the right amount of light. A large double bed took up most of the floor space and an old wooden wardrobe sat against the opposite wall — it was enormous, the kind that could take you into Narnia.

  ‘You can put your clothes in there,’ said the colonel, nodding at the cabinet, ‘but I should warn you that it’s pretty full already — space is a premium here, I’m afraid.’

  Josh opened the door to find it full of uniforms and outfits from at least two centuries.

  ‘I took the trouble of requisitioning you some gear — standard-issue stuff, really — should see you right back to the sixteenth.’

  Josh threw his bags into the bottom with the boots and shoes then sat down on the bed and felt the mattress. It was like sitting on air.

  ‘Right, get settled in. Dinner’s at eight. Then we have a few things to discuss,’ the colonel said, closing the door.

  Josh lay back, shut his eyes and let the bed carry him away.

  They ate in the kitchen on a table that folded out. The colonel made some excuse about the dining room being out of order, but Josh didn’t care — the old man had a real talent with food: it was some kind of red meat, not exactly steak. Josh devoured it all. He was starving, and it tasted even better than Mrs B’s.

  ‘So, Joshua,’ the colonel said, pushing his plate to one side, ‘you have a few questions I would hazard.’

  Josh nodded. ‘More than a few.’

  ‘I may not be allowed, or able to answer all of them, but fire away.’ The colonel poured a large glass of red wine from a dusty old bottle dated 1723.

  ‘What is it about that book?’ Josh asked, pointing to the battered old leather journal on the table. The colonel consulted it more than most people used their mobile phones.

  He picked it up and handed it to Josh.

  ‘Take a look for yourself. It’s quite a thing to behold the first time.’

  Josh opened the book at one of the many dog-eared pages and stared in wonder as the writing on it changed before his eyes. He flicked through the whole book, and every page was the same: covered in notes, diagrams and cyphers that seemed to be in constant flux as though someone was continuously re-writing it.

  ‘What the —’ exclaimed Josh.

  ‘I know, it’s quite hypnotic, isn’t it? I can still remember the first time I saw it,’ said the colonel, taking the book out of Josh’s hand before he dropped it in the remains of the béarnaise sauce. ‘This, my dear chap, is an almanac, a sympathetic book dating back to the sixteenth century where it is currently being revised and rewritten by the Guild of Copernicus: a group of mathematicians and statisticians who calculate the possibilities and consequences of our actions. You are quite literally watching history being written.’

  Josh remembered the symbols from the secret room in Paris; they were obviously co-ordinates.

  ‘So that’s like a map?’ he said, pointing at the page of moving lines.

  ‘A map of the possible. Yes, I suppose it is.’

  ‘S
o what do all these symbols mean? Are they like algebra?’ Josh had always hated maths — especially abstract stuff like formulae.

  ‘Those are temporal glyphs: probability coefficients, abstractions and equations that have been developed to help us calculate future outcomes.’

  ‘But you said we can’t go into the future.’

  ‘No, but we can make a bloody good guess as to what is going to happen. Well, at least some of the time. It’s complicated.’

  ‘So these Copernicus dudes spend all their time trying to work out what’s going to happen next?’

  ‘They pride themselves on their predictions — nothing lower than a seventy per cent certainty is ever accepted.’

  ‘Will I have to learn how this works?’ Josh asked, staring at a page that had stopped moving for a moment.

  ‘Eventually — we all have to. For now, you will have a mentor, such as myself. You never go back on your own, especially not without this.’

  He took the tachyon out and gave it back to Josh.

  ‘So is there some kind of college? Do I have to go school?’

  ‘No.’ The colonel laughed. ‘You are apprenticed. Everything you do, you learn on the job, and we have all the time in the world to teach you, don’t we?’

  Good, thought Josh, this was his kind of education.

  The colonel had told Josh to take some time to relax and recuperate after the first set of training missions. He’d mentioned something about quantum dilation; that his body’s cells would take a while to get used to it — like an extreme form of jet lag. He woke late the next morning. His sleep had been disturbed by a crazy dream: headless noblemen swimming after him down the Seine, while weird ghosts stood on the bridges as he swam underneath them.

  When he came downstairs, he found the house unusually peaceful, which could only mean that the colonel was out. He was one of those people who was incapable of doing anything quietly; just breathing seemed to require a cacophony of coughs and verses of song.

  Josh was still getting used to the idea that the colonel could be in another century or just down the shops buying some biscuits.

  After searching the kitchen cupboards for something that resembled a ‘normal’ breakfast, and there were many things that didn’t, he took some brioche and jam out into the conservatory and began to flick through one of the books the old man had given him the night before.

  The colonel’s cat magically appeared on the chair next to him and began eyeing the food. Josh stroked it absent-mindedly as he read. The textbook described the properties of temporal glyphs, each symbol laid out on its own page. The text was small and he had to concentrate hard to stop the letters jumping around. He tried to find one of the those that had been tagged to the gold, but they were hard to visualise the morning after. The memory of them was fading.

  Josh had finished his breakfast, or at least the part he’d managed to rescue from the cat, when he heard the first crash. It wasn’t the usual clatter of things being knocked sideways by the coat-tails of the colonel, but the sound of something being dropped from a great height and breaking into a thousand pieces, and it had come from the study and not the front door.

  This was followed by a second noise, quieter than the first and more in the form of a low groan, as if someone had hurt themselves badly and hadn’t the strength to call out for help.

  Josh moved stealthily towards the study door, looking for something to use as a weapon. He wanted to believe that the colonel had been working in the study the whole time and had hurt himself getting something from one of the higher shelves, but he knew that someone had probably broken in through the window and had injured themselves in the process.

  He pushed the door open enough to look through the crack and saw a large man sprawled on the sofa. The coffee table looked as if he’d landed on it first: parts of model aeroplane and wood were scattered over the floor.

  He was talking to himself and Josh recognised the colonel’s voice, although the robes and the shaved head made him think twice. He put down the brass poker he had been holding for purely defensive purposes and went over to the old man.

  ‘You’re not looking your best,’ Josh said as he spotted the blood seeping through the old man’s clothes. He was dressed in a white toga, like someone from an old Charlton Heston movie.

  ‘Seventeen to the fourth, Tiberian. Twenty-five. Nine. Fourth branch, ninth parallel,’ panted the colonel.

  ‘Where have you been? Looks like Rome or Greece maybe? You want me to call an ambulance?’

  The old man coughed and lifted himself up on one elbow. He looked very odd with no beard or hair, like a well-scrubbed potato. He shook his head and repeated: ‘Seventeen to the fourth, Tiberian. Twenty-five. Nine. Fourth branch . . .’

  ‘Yeah, I got it.’ Josh repeated it back to him.

  ‘Good,’ sighed the colonel. He closed his eyes and disappeared.

  ‘Well, that was weird,’ muttered Josh, looking at the bloodstain on the sofa.

  ‘So you’re sure it was me?’ the colonel asked with a grave look on his face.

  ‘Yeah, you turned up with all this blood and . . .’

  ‘Stop. I told you not to tell me any of the details.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it hasn’t happened to me yet. Something very bad must have occurred if I have come back into my own timeline — it’s called an intercession.’ He was stroking his beard with one hand and still holding the bag of shopping in his other.

  ‘But don’t you want to know what he — you said?’ Josh found it weird even saying that out loud.

  ‘Absolutely not! Under no circumstances can you tell me. It breaches about a hundred or so clauses of the Temporal Act.’

  ‘What act?’

  The colonel paced around the study trying not to look at his own bloodstain on the sofa.

  ‘The Temporal Act is the basic tenet of all our laws. The Protectorate will come down on us like a ton of bricks. We’ll both end up in Bedlam!’

  ‘The Protectorate, are they like time police?’

  The colonel shook his head. ‘Police no — more like secret service, the Stasi maybe. They really do make people disappear.’

  ‘To Bedlam?’

  ‘If you’re lucky. You must never mention this, ever. They aren’t particular about who they lock up in these situations.’

  Josh shrugged. He had no idea what was going on and the only person who did wouldn’t tell him.

  The colonel paced around for a few more minutes, and then seemed to make a decision.

  ‘All right, I have a plan. It was about time I introduced you to them anyway. Grab a coat. I’m going to take you to meet a few friends of mine.’

  28

  Others

  Josh had never seen the colonel inside a car. It reminded him of one of those Russian bears imprisoned in a zoo where the cage was far too small for him.

  ‘The Order has a series of staging posts at key points in time,’ the colonel began as he tried and failed to get his window to go down further than an inch. ‘They are commonly known as Chapter Houses and can always be relied upon for sanctuary. Usually they’re run by a family, or at least a husband and wife, who act as hosts and can comfortably accommodate over a hundred people at any one time.’

  ‘And why exactly are we going there?’ asked Josh, still at a loss as to what was stressing the colonel.

  ‘I need to go and find out what happened, and you can’t come with me.’ He held up a hand as Josh began to protest. ‘This is for your own protection. Where I may have to go is strictly off-limits and very dangerous. This Chapter House is a safe place, and it’s run by people I trust. You can continue your training with them until I return.’

  Josh didn’t like the idea of being dumped with a bunch of strangers.

  ‘So do I have a choice? Can’t I stay at your house?’

  ‘Not really. Anyway, I’m sure you’ll find some of their guests are far better company than an old codger like me.’

/>   The cab stopped outside a decrepit second-hand bookshop. The colonel unrolled the strangest collection of banknotes, peeled away a suitable number and handed them to the driver.

  ‘Trouble is that the house tends to move about so the best way to get to it is through a waybook.’ He nodded toward the bookshop.

  The inside of the shop was cramped and musty. Dust, disturbed by their entrance, swirled in strange and unusual eddies around the naked light bulbs that barely lit the cluttered shelves. There was no sign of a shopkeeper, even after the bell that hung over the door had rung itself out. The colonel didn’t seem to care; he knew what he was looking for. Josh followed him through the book-lined maze to a section labelled ‘special interests’ where he began to pull various books out and inspect them.

  ‘Books are one of the best ways to navigate back through the last couple of thousand years. Although the earlier ones are rather hard to get close to. You’ll find that most second-hand dealers and even some charity shops can get you back a good two hundred.’

  He stopped when he found a small tattered copy of The London Guide.

  ‘You can tell a waybook by the author — J. K. Bartholomew — it’s like a codename. Now where is it?’ He flicked through the pages. ‘Here we are: “The Charitable House of the Hundred”, fifty-six Mendover Place, Camden. Interesting — hasn’t been situated there for over eighty years. Alixia must be working at the British Museum again.’

  The Charitable House was nothing much to look at from the outside. A slightly run down, terraced Edwardian town house in a quiet side street of Camden; it didn’t really match up to the gothic mansion that the colonel had described, and its three, slightly wonky storeys certainly didn’t appear to be able to accommodate thirty — let alone a hundred people.

  They climbed the worn stone steps up to the black lacquered front door. Josh noticed the circular brass knocker was shaped like a snake eating its own tail — a match for the colonel’s tattoo.