They were standing in a small vault somewhere deep underground. A single lamp shone down on the wooden desk illuminating an old-fashioned black typewriter under a glass dome.
‘It’s the only remaining machine from that era,’ Caitlin replied.
‘From 11.588? I was thinking more Shakespeare and Black Death.’
Caitlin walked to the table and lifted the glass carefully off the machine. ‘We use it to communicate with the Chaos Brigade.’ She pointed at the blank sheet of paper that sat loaded on the smooth black roller. ‘The shield’s effects are weaker down here.’
‘I mean it’s too modern for that era. In my timeline this is more like something from the early twentieth century.’
Caitlin typed a slow, methodical series of keys that made a satisfying clunk as she carefully picked each letter.
> Init transfer request. Ends.
She stepped quickly away from the typewriter as if it had burned her fingers.
There was an awkward silence while she watched the keys. Josh wasn’t quite sure what was supposed to happen next, but knew better than to ask.
A minute later the carriage shifted down a line and a key depressed by itself, then another, until the ghost in the machine had typed out.
> Denied. Ends.
Josh looked up at Caitlin who was reading the line with a look of disbelief.
‘That doesn’t usually happen?’ he asked quietly.
She shrugged. ‘No, but then we haven’t communicated for a few years.’
‘Who is working the other end?’
She shrugged. ‘No idea.’
Josh looked at the keys of the typewriter, which were in the same arrangement as the keyboards of the school computers. He’d never really understood why the letters were arranged in that order. As a dyslexic, they tended to move around of their own accord anyway. There was something about vowels being in certain places under your fingers, but the logic escaped him.
‘Can I try?’ he asked.
‘By all means,’ Caitlin said, swiping the return bar and watching the carriage move down to the next line. ‘The sooner I get rid of you the better.’
Josh thought about what to say. He needed to find the colonel, so he tried to think about what possible event or memory may have crossed over between the timelines.
He touched a key. It was cold, and there was only the faintest trace of a timeline, so he teased it out, letting its history drift between his fingers.
‘That’s not what I meant,’ Caitlin said as Josh unwound the path.
He followed the line, chasing the history of the machine back into the past until he found the same typewriter sitting in a small clerk’s office. An ordinary-looking man in a suit was sitting at the desk, and standing behind him was a guard dressed in a uniform from the First World War. He had a vicious looking bayonet attached to the end of his rifle.
He lifted his hands away from the keys. ‘Okay. Maybe getting their permission is a good idea. Who’s in charge back then?’
‘We don’t know for sure.’
She seemed uneasy, as if she were giving away some kind of secret. ‘Their operators use codenames mostly.’
Josh had an idea.
‘Does anyone ever call himself the Colonel?’
She looked puzzled. ‘Yes, but how —’
‘Never mind,’ he said, typing out a message.
> Tell Colonel the Weatherman requests an audience. Ends.
Josh looked at the simple line of text and smiled. It was unlikely they would’ve had the conversation about the colonel’s dislike for weathermen, but he knew him well enough to know that the old goat would still harbour the same opinions about them.
Five long minutes passed, and neither of them spoke. They stared at the inert keys waiting for some kind of response. Caitlin took off her coat and proceeded to smoke three cigarettes, one after another, and was lighting her fourth when Josh asked: ‘Why Dalton?’
‘He’s a powerful man,’ she replied, blowing out a long trail of smoke, ‘and his family were good to me after my parents died. They took me in.’
‘So you owe them? That’s no reason to go and marry him.’
‘It’s none of your goddam business,’ she snapped.
‘In my time he was a bully. Liked to show everyone he was the boss.’
‘You don’t know him.’ Her voice quavered a little and her arms crossed so that her hand could cover a series of bruises. They were fading, but Josh could see that they were spaced out like finger marks.
Dalton had broken her somehow, and he knew he had to put it right.
‘So it’s a good sign they haven’t responded?’ he said, changing the subject.
‘Maybe.’ She shrugged, wisps of smoke escaping from her red lips.
Josh found himself staring at her mouth for a little too long.
‘It could mean anything. What on earth does “Weatherman” mean anyway?’
‘Just a little joke he told me once. In another time.’
‘And you think he has the same sense of humour?’
‘Oh. I think there are certain things that never change — no matter what timeline you’re from.’
The typewriter suddenly sprang to life, hammering out a message.
> Accepted. Transfer of WEATHERMAN granted. Ends.
Josh read the message twice and smiled. ‘Looks like it worked then,’ he said, turning towards her.
She was staring at him intensely, in the way she used to do. It took Josh’s breath away, her eyes like lasers burning into him.
‘How?’ she asked.
‘I’m the Paradox.’ He smiled, pulling the sheet of paper out of the typewriter. ‘This is what I was born to do, my chance to put it back the way it should be.’
There were tears in her eyes: she’d wanted to believe all along.
He waved the sheet in front of her. ‘I’m going to fix this. This whole fascist Nazi thing you guys have got yourself into.’
Then, on an impulse, he grabbed her around the waist and kissed her. At first, she tried to push him away, and then slowly surrendered. Her lips parted and he felt her body soften and fold into his.
A long minute later he stepped back, then gave her his best self-assured smile and disappeared.
Caitlin stared at the space where he’d been, touching her lips as if savouring the sensation, then shook her head and slowly put her coat back on.
‘What the hell is a Nazi anyway?’ she murmured to herself as she carefully placed a new blank sheet of paper in the typewriter and replaced the glass dome.
10
The Colonel
[London. Date: 11.588]
The bespectacled chubby man in the tweed suit was obviously unaccustomed to holding the pistol; the barrel waggled around in the air as he tried, and failed, to keep it pointed straight at Josh.
‘Mainwaring, for God’s sake put that down before you hurt someone.’
The sound of the colonel’s unmistakable bellow was something Josh never thought he would miss. He wanted to hug the old man, but the sight of him as he came through the door made him reconsider. The colonel was wearing a stained, threadbare tunic of a General from the First World War and leaning heavily on a stick. The skin on his bald head was puckered with scars and he had a patch over one eye, but his beard was as a wild as ever.
‘So you’re Weatherman?’ he slurred, looking Josh over. ‘I’d be interested to hear how a Terminist came by that little joke — never met one yet who had a decent sense of humour!’ The old man slurred his words, he was obviously drunk.
Two stone-faced guards appeared behind the colonel. ‘But first, I’m afraid you’ve an appointment with our reception committee. A formality really: just need to ask you a few questions, pry into your past — you know, the standard kind of interrogation thing.’
Josh nodded and let the guards handcuff him. They looked just as grim as Dalton’s squad: their thick fingers were clumsy and twice the size of his, meant for crushing and not precision work.
‘Give my regards to Major Kelly!’ The colonel saluted as they walked Josh out of the room.
Great, thought Josh, at least this time it would be an expert tramping around in his memories.
11
To the Palace
After they’d questioned him for a night and most of the next day, they let him sleep. At breakfast the following morning Edward Kelly had appeared; a much more reserved version of the one that Josh was used to, but still surrounded by an aura of madness — he was definitely ‘touched’, as his Gran used to say.
Fortunately for Josh’s stomach, the Grand Seer had no intention of turning him upside down this time.
Kelly had taken his hand and stared at him for the longest time. Josh could hardly feel his mental presence, it was almost as if someone were talking in another room. The seer moved like a ghost through his past, until he finally came to the same conclusion as everyone else.
‘Paradox?’ he whispered in disbelief, as though it were a question for himself.
Josh smiled. They all reached the same conclusion in the end. He pulled back his sleeve to reveal the Ouroboros, just to show that the answer had been there the whole time.
The Grand Seer clicked his fingers and two guards appeared. ‘Guard this man with your lives,’ he ordered before bowing to Josh and leaving.
The colonel sat opposite him in the Royal carriage. It was some kind of steam-driven car, which, by Josh’s estimation, had a top speed of twenty miles-per-hour. The old man looked out-of-place sat on the velvet cushioned seats wearing his dress uniform, he was obviously not a comfortable in enclosed spaces and reminded Josh of one of those Russian bears who’d been put into too small a cage.
‘So it appears you and I may have met before,’ he said, staring out of the window.
They were driving through an alternate version of London. The streets were narrow and full of soldiers and Josh caught a glimpse of barrage balloons floating above the buildings.
‘Yeah, you recruited me.’
‘I seriously doubt that.’
‘Like I kept telling Major Kelly, and the guy before him, this timeline is seriously screwed up. Whatever you’ve got going on with this war thing’ — he waved at the window — ‘is totally out of control. My version of the sixteenth-century involves Shakespeare and sword fights — not Zeppelins and bolt-action rifles. Someone has gone back and changed the past — just like you said they would.’
The colonel scratched his beard, another habit that had survived the time shift. Josh thought to himself.
‘Did I indeed? How insightful of me.’
The car came to a stop at the gates to the Tower of London, a beefeater in a black and red uniform opened the door and saluted the colonel.
‘They’re expecting you sir.’
The colonel tugged on the front of his jacket and puffed out his chest. ‘Right. Come on then Mr Paradox, let’s get this over with.’
12
Elizabeth I
The Royal apartments were grand — not as extravagant as those of Louis XVI, but these had more style: the walls were lined with oak panels, and there were gold-framed portraits of the Tudor Kings lining the walls. The room was warmed by a large fire that burned in the ornately canopied fireplace.
A group of important-looking people stood around a long mahogany table debating tactics on a large map that had been spread across it. Josh spotted Lord Dee immediately. He was dressed in a three-piece suit rather than his usual sombre robes, but still had the beard and the piercing blue eyes. The other men, who were dressed like high-ranking members of the army, were collected around one elegant Lady — a beautiful redhead in a long green dress.
The colonel waited impatiently for them to finish their conversation. Josh could see that it was killing the old man to stay so quiet for so long.
From what he could overhear, they were discussing an impending attack. There was a fleet of Spanish airships currently somewhere over France that would be in British airspace within the next few hours.
‘The Armada is due at 0500 hours. We can have our fighters in the air by 0200,’ declared one of the gold-braided officers as he pointed to the South Coast.
‘Their gunners will cut your squadron down before they get within striking distance,’ said another. ‘We should use our long-range artillery batteries.’
‘They’ve not been proven to be that effective and the collateral damage to the civilian population would be too high a price to pay.’
‘Gentlemen, please,’ demanded the lady. ‘I believe the Royal Astrologer has something to add.’
Lord Dee bowed to her. ‘If I may be so bold, my Lady.’
The others did little to hide their dislike of Dee, whispering insults to each other like schoolboys.
‘There is a high chance of bad weather over the coastal areas, thus, I believe the Armada will be blown off course by a factor of three and a half degrees to the West. If Commander Drake were to send his squadron to approach from here,’ — he used his cane to point to a particular spot on the map — ‘the sun would be rising in their eyes, blinding the gunners temporarily and giving his men the weather gage.’
The Generals’ smug expressions turned sour as they considered the details of Lord Dee’s plan — it sounded like a good one to Josh, and he could see from the smirk on the colonel’s face that his master had put them in their place.
‘So do we have a stratagem gentlemen?’ the lady asked of her council.
They each nodded reluctantly.
‘Good. Then I suggest you make ready. I want to teach Philip a lesson once and for all.’
The generals trooped out through a secret door in the bookcase, leaving the lady and Lord Dee at the table. The colonel coughed, reminding them of his presence.
She turned with all the grace of a prima ballerina, and Josh was entranced.
‘Majesty, may I present Joshua Jones Esquire,’ the colonel began. ‘Joshua, this is her Royal Britannic Majesty, Elizabeth the First, Queen of England and Ireland, Empress of the colonies and Supreme Governor of the Church,’ the colonel recited with a bow.
Josh felt awkward as the Queen walked towards him. There was an inner radiance about her: her skin was so pale as to be nearly transparent, and her eyes were deep brown pools that were hard to look away from.
She put out her hand, and he bowed his head, touching his lips to her ringed fingers in the way the knights used to do in the old movies his mother watched.
‘So, Lord Dee. This is the mysterious Paradox you’ve been telling me about? He’s rather more handsome than I’d imagined.’
‘I hadn’t notice Ma’am,’ observed Dee.
‘Quite as it should be, and how fares my favourite Colonel?’ she asked without taking her eyes off Josh. There was a hunger behind the stare that made him feel quite vulnerable.
‘Can’t complain, my Lady,’ answered the colonel gruffly.
‘Good.’ She pursed her lips. ‘So master Jones, Lord Dee informs me that you have travelled from the future.’
Over her shoulder, Josh caught the eye of Dee and knew immediately that he was on dangerous ground — a tiny shake of the head was enough to convey the seriousness of the situation.
‘Yes. Your Majesty.’
‘My lady will do. And how do you find it there?’
‘It’s all wrong… My lady.’
She laughed, a girlish, high-pitched giggle that lightened the mood.
‘Of course it is! Lord Dee is such a tease, and gives me nothing but riddles. Too worried about the end of the world.’ She leant in close and whispered: ‘Do they still believe in the monarchy?’
Dee’s cheeks were turning purple with anger, but it was the colonel that spoke up. ‘Your highness, you know we cannot divulge —’
‘I know
, I know. God’s balls!’ She held her hand up. ‘If it wasn’t for your damned strategies — I would’ve had you both hung, drawn and quartered years ago!’
Josh realised that this wasn’t the first time they’d been asked these questions.
‘But this is all wrong too,’ Josh began, knowing that this may be his only chance. ‘Something is out of place.’
The colonel looked puzzled, and Josh wondered whether he still harboured the same old conspiracy theories about the advancement of the past.
‘Time is out of joint?’ replied Elizabeth with a theatrical flourish. ‘Where have I heard that before?’
‘Hamlet, Ma’am. Shakespeare’s latest.’
‘Ah yes, master Shakespeare has quite a talent for memorable phrasing. So Joshua, what is it that you find so pas à sa place?’
Josh could feel Lord Dee’s eyes burning into him, cautioning about giving too much away.
‘You have guns when you should have swords. You fly airships instead of sailing in warships. Someone has given you technology that you shouldn’t have!’
The Queen’s features hardened as she listened to him.
‘My Lady...’ began Dee, but he stopped as she raised one delicate finger.
‘It seems to me that we have no more or less than we deserve, Master Jones. Whether that was by happenstance or fate — these weapons are equal to those of our enemy, who are bearing down on us with all speed.’
She walked back over to the map. ‘So, gentlemen, can you assure me that we shall be victorious tomorrow? Will I still be Queen of England in twenty-four hours?’ There was a steeliness in her tone, one that spoke of a lifetime of threats and hard choices.
‘My calculations predict —’
‘No more of your damned calculus! I want him to tell me!’ she shouted, pointing directly at Josh. ‘If he is from the future, he should know.’
The Infinity Engines Books 1-3 Page 40
