Temporal Tales
Page 7
Carter broke the spell the name had cast over them, “Well, at least someone got the gold and got to enjoy it, and not that tosser, Narcissus. He must have been pissed off when his men didn’t come back.”
“Or, he just thought they were dead like that lot.” Mark pointed over his shoulder with his thumb.
Carter stood and looked over to the spilled head again, and then saw the Roman nose, amidst the crude carved runes on the face, what he had mistaken for the remains of a tattoo took on a different meaning.
“Oh!” he sighed.
“What now?” Mark was feeling the exhaustion of the day and didn’t have any more energy for surprises.
“I don’t think they got away with it. See the mark on the face, I bet all of them have one. It’s a Celtic curse mark. Think for a moment. Why leave these barrels with the body? And there are eight of them. Narcissus sent eight men according to that record we found.”
“Could they not be people she killed in battle, you know, trophies, Celts took heads, didn’t they?”
Carter shook his head. “Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t, but I bet if these are analysed they will have DNA from the Mediterranean, either Roman or some auxiliary unit given this crap Latin. Whatever curse was here to protect this great Queen, these guys didn’t escape it, someone caught them and killed them, and by the looks of things, painfully."
Mark sat there for a moment, whistling in amazement at the twists in the story, then he suddenly perked up, a smile on his face. “But that means the treasure is still out there!”
Carter just looked at him. “Fuck off, mate… enough is enough. I’m done, what more is there than finding Boudicca? Just accept that the gold is gone, gone for ever… or at least until some lucky bastard stumbles across it.”
The Man with the Gun and the Time Machine
By Rob Wickings
The plan was to put a bullet in Einstein's head while he was sleeping. But where's the fun in that? If he was going to be erased from history anyway, there was no harm in getting some kicks along the way.
I booted the end of the bed, hard enough to shunt it a couple of inches. He woke quickly, and his intelligence lit up the room better than any lamp could have done. He was calm, assessing the situation in one glance. I made sure he got a good, long look at the gun in my left hand, just to make things perfectly clear.
"There's money in the dresser," he said. "A little. But take it, if that's what you're here for."
I chuckled. Then figured, what the hell. He might as well see. I pulled the silken hood off my face in one smooth movement. I'd changed a lot over the years, but his eyes still widened when he saw me. I guess some faces are tough to forget.
"I'm not here for your money," I said. "I'm here for your future."
"My future."
"Uh-huh. I'm here to end it before it gets started."
I could see his mind spinning at that. He glanced across at the chalkboard that took centre stage in his tiny garret of a room. Everything else he did was secondary to the waltz of numbers and letters, a dance into which he could slip this new beat of information.
"You know things about me that you should not know," he said. "You know things about me that have not happened yet. You wear a face that is supposed to frighten me." He was thinking out loud, piecing together tiny clues and inferences out what I had and hadn't said. The clothes I wore. The gun. God, that mind. That terrible, magnificent mind.
"Here's what I know," I said. "You will be one of the most celebrated men on the planet. You are weeks away from a discovery that will change the course of science. The beautiful and the powerful will fall at your feet." I grinned. "Unless, of course, I change all that." I lifted the gun slightly, letting the faint wash of moonlight from the single high window flow down the barrel.
He nodded faintly. "I'm right then. About everything."
"Yes. And no-one will ever know."
"I see." He thought again for a moment, factoring in everything he knew, figuring out the right tactic, the correct thing to say. "What if..."
I pulled the trigger. I don't know what ammo goes into the frail-looking silver gun that the Exarchs gave me, but it does the job. Einstein's head exploded. That magnificent, astonishing brain blasted across the back wall of the room, an action painting in arterial red and chunky grey. His corpse slumped back onto the bed. His right hand gripped the bedclothes convulsively for a moment, then relaxed.
“What if.” Still not bad for a final quote. Appropriate for one of the greatest scientists that the world would never know.
I invoked the Q-gate with a gesture. It snapped into place, a sharp-edged rectangle in the air. I had learned from hard experience not to look too closely at those edges. They were boundaries between infinite numbers of dimensional possibilities. The work of the headless corpse on the bed would be the theoretical underpinning that would one day make them possible. I had just made sure that day would take a lot longer to arrive.
I plucked an incendiary charge from my pocket, and tossed it onto the bed. I stepped through the Q-Gate as it triggered, vanishing from reality as it bloomed into ravenous life. The house, and the man inside who was now no more than a cold case and a footnote to scientific history, would be ashes in minutes.
***
I fight back the sharp twist of nausea as the Q-Gate spits me back into Alt-Null. The step out and back from every known universe can easily scramble an unprepared mind. I've done it so many times that I hardly ever even throw up any more.
Alt-Null is the ultimate hideout. It sits sideways on to reality, a tiny flaw in space-time that thumbs its nose at Einstein's great works while at the same time proving them conclusively. A place like Alt-Null should not exist, and I have the feeling that if, as we discussed at length, I had brought Albert back with me instead of turning his brains into an impromptu art project, he would have convincingly argued that it didn't. No-one would ever think to look for us in Alt-Null because Alt-Null wasn't, in the generally accepted view of things, there to be found.
G tells me that the rock we call home is the extent of the rogue dimension. A ten-mile-wide hollow asteroid that serves us as base, fortress and staging ground. The Rock is where we plan our next move, where we build our armies. There isn't much of a view. The Exarchs, the race that found Alt-Null and equipped our little enterprise, aren't big on windows. It's ok. I'm used to living underground.
The Q-Gate meniscus sits in a corner of Main Mission, our monitoring station. I've argued that should things go wrong, should enemy forces take hold of the Q-Gate, then they have a direct portal into the heart of our operation. G reasons that if that were to happen, he and Zander would be able to deal with the incursion. He has a point, I suppose. He keeps his recurve bow and sabre close by, and Zander never unstraps his gladius. That being said, the pair of them don't have much experience against automatic weapons. I've tried to make that point, but G and Zander don't take criticism too well. So I've held my counsel, and made sure that they don't know about the grenades I've rigged under the platform to the meniscus.
G doesn't turn as I step through the gate, but he knows I'm there. His warrior instincts are as sharp as ever. He's glued to the monitor banks, watching history shift and reform around the wound I've torn in it.
"The event front's already shifting." G, squat and solid, his mahogany-hued shaven skull glinting in the harsh lights of the readouts. "They're losing a lot of the fundamentals. I didn't think the Exarchs knew what they were talking about when they slotted Einstein for the drop, but your boy had more influence than we knew. We've just slowed the creation of the microprocessor down by a factor of ten. No Internet until the mid-21st century. Certain branches of physics have just vanished." He turns then, and offers me a look at his stubby, ruined teeth. It's the closest G gets to a smile. "That's nice work."
"Thanks." I unrig my gun, and place it back in its charging cradle. It's a nasty little thing, with no heft or weight, no obvious place to put the ammo, no safety. Given the
choice, I'd much rather walk through the Q-Gate with a Walther or a good old-fashioned Luger in my hand.
I gave up on any illusion of choice a long time ago, at the moment the Exarchs appeared and offered me a way out of a seemingly intractable position. That wasn't really a choice either. I wasn't about to give up on my empire just because of a few logistical issues.
"So, what's next?" I walk up behind G, and squint at his monitors. The swirl and ripple of figures and numbers mean nothing to me, but he doesn't have to know that. "More to the point, who's next?"
G chuckles, low, throaty. "Always thirsty for the next kill, eh? The Exarchs really knew what they were doing when they picked you for this job." The pair of them have made no secret of their disdain for me, for the chance at true greatness that I, in their not-so humble opinion, threw away. I got bored with the taunting a long time ago. Screw them. They weren't there. They don't know what I had to deal with.
"The sooner I'm done, the sooner we can send in the armies. Why wait? Who is it, G? Churchill? Eisenhower? That dick, Stalin?"
A snort of derision from across the chamber. "Oh, you'd like that, wouldn't you? Fortunately, the plan doesn't pivot around your agenda. For one thing, we have to reset and recalibrate the Q-Gate. Seventeen hours at the outside before we can send you through again."
I resist the urge to pull the Exarch's funny little toy gun back out of its cradle and show Zander how things work when you put a spray of nine-millimetre hollow-point up against a short sword. Instead, I tilt my head politely and listen.
"Your next job is Lincoln. September 20th 1862, before he delivers the Emancipation Proclamation."
Zander, hawk-like, imperious, taps a stud and the holotank glows to life, spraying a net of probabilities across its concave, silvered surface. "Our projections show this is the optimal point to tip the balance of history over into chaos. The advantage slides away from the North with no clear leader at the helm. The Civil War sputters on for thirty years in one form or another. Internecine squabbles, border disputes, brushfire conflicts. Texas declares independence, and gets swallowed up by Mexico after a land grab goes badly wrong. The United States of America crumbles away into a loose cluster of poverty-stricken city-states, limping from one frail alliance to another. Ours for the taking."
Zander takes a breath, finally, and points his hunter's gaze at me over that hooked blade of a nose. "Churchill can wait. And we can get to Russia much more easily if we take this Lenin character out of the picture and erase Communism before it has a chance to take root. Don't you think?" His gaze is steady, unblinking, and once again I wish I had the gun in my fist.
"You're the boss," I say, and turn to leave.
"And that's half the problem," G says. He stops me in my tracks without needing to do or say anything more. The will of command, an emperor's most powerful weapon. I'm not done with you yet.
"Why do you do it? Zander and I have plans. The Exarchs have promised us empires greater than even we can imagine."
"And as you know, we can imagine quite a bit." Zander's smile has all the charm and welcome of a vulture's invitation to dinner.
"But you? There's no reason for you to take this. No need to put yourself at risk. You could tuck yourself into the shadows and let a faceless soldier do all the work. What's in it for you, Dolf?" G isn't pushing it, and for once it feels like we're communicating as equals. My empire wasn't as long-standing or glorious as theirs. But I like to think it left a certain legacy.
I smile and my hand strays up to my beard. Even now it grows in strangely. If you look closely you can see the darker patch where I cultivated the toothbrush moustache I used to think looked so cool.
"Hell, I dunno," I say. "I guess I'm just happiest when I'm fucking shit up."
And then I turn on my heel and walk away. Time for a coffee and a cheese strudel, while I think about what I will say to Abraham Lincoln before I put a bullet in him.
Tick… tick… tick…
By S.J.A. Turney
John hurried down the stairs, taking some of them two at a time. Even at his advanced age, he was surprisingly lithe and had no trouble, even vaulting around the bend in the staircase with one hand on the rail. His feet, encased in soft cotton socks, hit the bottle-green deep pile carpet of the hall with a static charge that was truly hair-raising.
Pausing only for a second, he reached up to the electricity meter cupboard on the wall above the inner banister, opposite the front door, his fingers running along the dusty top surface until they found the KEY. His fingers closed on the small brass object and he moved away, through the door and into the lounge.
The CLOCK stood in the rear, left corner of the room, its walnut case standing as tall as John, with its brass, ebony and mother-of-pearl face. It matched the piano, though more through luck than planning, as well as the small occasional table that stood to the other side.
John crossed the room hurriedly, turned the case key and swung open the door of the CLOCK, inserted the KEY and took a deep breath. Twenty-eight thousand four hundred and nineteen.
Tick: Twenty-eight thousand four hundred and twenty.
Tick: Twenty-eight thousand four hundred and twenty-one.
John turned the KEY, over and over, his fingers calloused from the repeated procedure. With a smile, as the KEY reached its final position and the CLOCK began its rhythmic journey once more, he gently nudged the second hand to the correct position, closed the door and locked it again.
That was close. Normally, John timed it so that he had a good minute or two of reflection on times past as he watched the CLOCK wind down to loose. This time his digestive system had been causing him a vast amount of trouble following the previous evening’s spicy food and a few glasses of fine Scotch.
Twenty-eight thousand four hundred and twelve ticks to go.
Time to go and put the kettle on. A spot of tea and a scone, and settle down for the Antiques Roadshow.
* * *
Tick… tick… tick…
John’s eyes flicked open in the cool navy-blue dark of his room. With a frown, he reached out and rubbed the lamp on the bedside table – a cordless novelty lamp in the shape of something from an Arabian tale that he’d liked the look of in the store but had discovered, on day three of owning it, just how hideous it was. The oil-lamp clicked into life, a golden glow emanating from the spout. For a moment it flickered like a real oil light, but John smacked the side and the glow settled again.
Twenty-eight thousand one hundred and nine. Plenty of time. Rubbing his eyes, he peered down to the Battlestar Galactica novelty clock that announced the time in an irritating robot voice when the alarm went off and said ‘By Your Command’ when he pressed the set button.
3:57 am.
Just on the cusp. John inched over to the window and peeked through between the curtains. The first pale strip of light grey banded the eastern horizon. Any time now the dawn chorus would start up. Probably 4:04, but sometimes the rooks in the tree behind were up a few minutes early and sometimes the thrushes slept in.
With a yawn, he rubbed his eyes again and wandered out onto the landing. Briefly, he wondered whether to take time to use the bathroom, but he quickly decided against it. He wasn’t desperate and there would be time to go on the way back to bed. Better than being late…
With a sleepy gait and the sureness of a man who has done this so often that he didn’t really need to open his eyes, John strolled down the stairs, around the corner and to the bottom, reaching up for the KEY and turning to enter the lounge.
The lamp in his hand cast its glow on the CLOCK in all its walnut glory, reflecting off the mother-of-pearl in the face.
Placing the lamp on the occasional table, he opened the door of the CLOCK and checked the count in his head.
Twenty-eight thousand three hundred and eighty-six.
With a smile, he settled down to wait with the KEY in position, ready.
Time, as John had tried to explain on numerous occasions to the denizens of the
Black Lion, was the most important thing in the world. Forget money. Forget love. Forget even space. Time was critical, and it was important to pay close attention to time.
They laughed at him in the pub, he knew, but they were only in the pub when they ‘found the time’.
* * *
John was plastered and he knew it. He got drunk so rarely he was never quite prepared for the feel of it. It had been the fault of Angie down the Lion… he shook his head. That was cruel. It wasn’t her fault. She was leaving the pub to go to Australia with her boyfriend, and her leaving do had run to the early morning and a lock-in that had seen more than two dozen folk roll out into the street singing at 2am, falling over and laughing, occasionally decorating the pavement.
John had gone home. He had seriously exceeded the beer and Scotch ‘sensible levels’ and he’d known that the moment he joined in singing along to Abba. But it had been pleasant and sociable and one thing had remained a solid surety: he knew how long he had.
And so, as he now lurched around the kitchen, the smell of toasting cheese came from under the grill; an effort to soak up some of the alcohol. John sauntered through the doorway and across the dining room. Pausing to snigger at his reflection in the mirror – he really did look a sight – he opened the door out into the hall and swiped the KEY from the dusty cupboard top, brandishing it like a weapon as he kicked open the lounge door like they did in the movies and swished the KEY left and right, scything down imaginary foes.
With a giggle, he crossed to the CLOCK and opened the door.
Tick: Twenty-eight thousand four hundred and eighteen.
Tick: Twenty-eight thousand four hundred and nineteen.
Tick: Twenty-eight thousand four hundred and twenty.
Tick: Twenty-eight thousand four hundred and twenty-one.
The KEY turned in the clock face over and over, the mechanism tightening with each rotation. After a time the winder would go no further and John removed the KEY, adjusted the hands with a tut, closed the door, did a little Morecambe and Wise ’Bring Me Sunshine’ dance, laughed until he brought up a little bile and then left the room, bearing down on the smell of the cheese toastie, and wondering whether he would risk half an hour of television before bed.