Finally she reached the bottom of the stairs. A circular stone floor, its flagstones carved with archaic symbols from a forgotten language, had been created out of a series of ever-decreasing concentric circles.
Caitlin walked slowly into the centre.
She shivered as the first probing touch of spectral tentacles brushed against her face. The smell of corruption and desiccated flesh assaulted her nostrils, and her stomach lurched. Like circling sharks, they probed her defences, a little more with every pass. She had nothing left to fight with, nor any clue as to how — she’d apparently skipped the class on how to fight a Djinn. Exhausted, she sank to her knees, wondering if it wouldn’t have been wiser to let the monads take her; somehow their hunger was more honest — their desires less complicated.
The gigantic, tentacled head of a grotesque beast loomed out of the darkness, red eyes glowing fiercely as it closed in. Its touch was colder than ice, leeching the heat from her body — she felt her energy draining away. The Djinn were nothing more than giant parasites, feeding on the life-force of others.
Collapsing onto the floor, she wished she could have seen her parents one last time. She’d ever dreamed of getting into the maelstrom for so long and to have finally got here and failed was the cruelest of jokes. She wanted to blame Josh, but she couldn’t. There was something in the way he looked at her that made her feel capable of anything. He believed in her, and for all his faults he’d made her realise there was more to her life than she’d dared to imagine. In another time they would have grown old together, which gave her some comfort, but it still felt wrong not to see him one last time before she died.
As her vision dimmed and the world around her turned grey, she closed her eyes, feeling the cold stone under her cheek. The sharp-edged grooves of a symbol cut into her skin and Caitlin lifted her head weakly to look at it. Her eyes focused on the archaic glyph, realising that it was the same as the one on the palm of her hand, the one Darkling had left her with. Trembling, she placed her hand over the symbol and collapsed once more.
The Djinn seemed to retreat a little as she felt a slight tremor in the rock, a grinding sound that resonated through her bones — a tiny earthquake which rumbled from somewhere deep below.
Weakly, she opened her eyes to watch the conning tower of a submarine surfacing through the stone floor, and then, finally, she lost consciousness.
73
Time Loop
‘So your loop is exactly twelve-hundred minutes?’
‘According to this, yes.’ The colonel flicked through the book that Josh had given him. The pages were a pastiche of printed cards and old labels covered in scribbled notes. Obviously blank paper was something of a scarce resource in the maelstrom.
‘Twenty hours isn’t a lot to work with,’ Josh observed.
‘Not when you have to spend most of it reading this damn book,’ the colonel agreed, ‘but it adds up over the years.’
Josh could tell from the condition of the pages that it had been read many times. TikTok had done its best to repair the worn out binding.
They were sitting in an abandoned roadside diner in the middle of some mid-western desert. Josh had assumed it was all part of the ritual reboot; the monkey led them through a series of doors into the air-cooled sanctuary of the restaurant and went off to make coffee.
‘So what do we do now?’ Josh asked, wiping the dust off the window to get a better view. Outside was nothing but a heat-baked plain of dry sand and tumbleweeds. A rusting, bullet-riddled sign rattled in the wind. Josh could just make out the words: ‘TUCSON: 55 miles.’
‘You say we’ve already tried the observatory?’ asked the colonel, showing Josh a page entitled ‘things to do first’. It was a list that had been rewritten and corrected many times — the observatory was heavily underlined in red crayon.
‘Yeah. You spent over half your time on that.’
‘Hmm. What was the last thing I said to you?’
‘Something about a risky option?’
‘That was it?’
TikTok brought over two steaming cups of black coffee and a plate of pancakes covered in syrup.
Josh shrugged as he helped himself to the food. ‘Should be in the almanac, shouldn’t it?’ he added, pointing at the colonel’s book.
The colonel stiffened, as though Josh had just used a sacred word.
‘A what?’ he whispered.
‘Almanac — your notebook.’ Josh tapped on the front cover with a fork.
‘I recognise that word, though for the life of me I can’t say why,’ he said, staring off into the distance. ‘Say something else.’
‘Copernican?’ Josh obliged.
The colonel nodded, waving his hand eagerly for Josh to continue.
‘Draconian. Scriptorian. Tachyon.’
The old man closed his eyes and took a long, deep breath.
‘Watchman,’ he sighed. ‘I was a Watchman,’
‘Yes.’ Josh thumped the table with his fist. ‘And a good one. You taught me about the Order, remember?’
The colonel nodded. ‘I met you… in a park?’
‘Churchill gardens,’ Josh said, laughing. ‘I broke into your house — do you remember?’
Something was happening to the colonel’s other eye: it seemed to be clearing as he spoke. ‘You stole — a medal?’
‘And changed the outcome of the World War Two,’ Josh said, relieved the colonel remembered that timeline. He’d begun to think he was the only survivor, the last witness of his reality.
The colonel wasn’t really paying attention, too caught up in his thoughts. ‘We were looking for the ones who gave the secret of gunpowder to the Normans.’
The old man’s mind was having trouble merging the two timestreams. Josh didn’t want to dwell on those events; he still felt responsible for what had happened, but didn’t dare ask where Sohguerin and Johansson had got to.
‘We kind of did. At least you sealed the breach and stopped them coming through.’
‘Did I?’
‘Yes, and landed yourself in here in the process.’
Then the old man smiled. ‘I think I know what the risky thing was now.’
‘What?’
‘You had to remind me who I was. You had to break the loop.’
‘Okay…’
The colonel got up from the table with fire in his eyes. ‘I KNOW MY NAME!’ he shouted at the empty cafe.
Josh shrank back in the seat a little.
‘Rufius Vainglorious Westinghouse!’ There were tears in his eyes as he threw away the tattered book. TikTok went scuttling after it and tenderly checked it for damage. The clock in its chest had reset to ‘0.0.0.0.’
‘So how exactly is that risky?’ Josh asked cautiously.
‘Because I remember who you are and what happens next,’ said the colonel, clicking his fingers. The walls of the diner melted away, leaving them standing in the middle of the hot desert.
‘We’re going to need a more defensible position,’ he added with a wave of his hand, and the walls of a vast medieval castle rose out of the sand around them.
‘Great! You can control buildings, but what has that got to do with what happens next?’
‘Not just buildings. The very fabric of the maelstrom.’
The colonel walked out through the main gate, whirls of sand catching hold of his coat — a wind was gathering. ‘There,’ he shouted, pointing towards a swathe of dark storm clouds that had formed across the horizon. ‘The Djinn are gathering — drawn to the presence of the Nemesis.’
‘They’re coming for me?’
‘Your presence was more disruptive than I predicted, it seems.’
‘But I don’t know how to —’
‘Fear not!’ the colonel winked, and a large leather book appeared in his hand. ‘It appears I have been preparing for just such a scenario.’
‘How exactly are you going to fight them with a book?’
‘Taxonomy — knowing the name of a thing create
s order, and in a chaotic system, that has incredible power.’ He squinted into the distance and started to thumb through the Book of Deadly Names.
Josh wasn’t convinced. ‘Any chance I could have a weapon? Like a sword, or a gun maybe?’
The colonel shrugged. ‘Ask, and ye shall receive.’
Josh felt the leather of a handle form in his palm, and a scimitar shimmered into existence. The sudden weight pulled his arm down, and he struggled to hold it.
‘Are you sure you’re alright with that? I can summon something smaller if it helps.’
74
Nautilus
Caitlin woke from a dreamless sleep to the muted sounds of people talking in another room. They sounded remarkably like her mother and father, and she wondered for a moment if perhaps she was a child again. It was nothing more than a cherished memory from her past. The gods were being cruel, or the maelstrom was up to its usual tricks — she didn’t really care which; it was a comforting place to be, and she snuggled down into the bed and drifted off listening to their voices.
‘Cat?’
A familiar voice whispered to her from somewhere beneath the darkness.
‘Caitlin Makepiece, wake up, you lay-a-bed!’ Her mother’s voice pierced through the shroud of sleep.
She could smell the Earl Grey tea, the strawberry jam melting on hot, buttered toast, and her stomach growled at the thought of it. Caitlin couldn’t remember when she had last eaten: the adrenaline rush of the maelstrom had overridden her appetite.
At first, she thought it was another dream until she moved and her aching body reminded her of the welts from the Djinn attacks, and her eyes snapped open.
‘Mum?’ she said, looking into the radiant face of her mother.
Gathering Caitlin up in her arms, she whispered. ‘Hello darling.’
Her hair smelled of lavender and engine oil, and a whole bunch of other things Caitlin had almost forgotten. Holding her close, Caitlin could feel the gentle sobbing in her chest as her mother cried and repeated: ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’
There were too many emotions, and her mind short-circuited trying to process what was going on; disbelief and anger competed with elation and joy.
‘You’re alive? Dad’s —’
‘I’m here too pickle,’ came the deep voice of her father.
Caitlin lifted her head from her mother’s shoulder and saw through bleary eyes the unmistakable shape of her dad.
They were exactly as she remembered on that day, all those years ago.
‘You haven’t changed?’ she snivelled.
‘That’s the time dilation effect of the maelstrom, my dear,’ explained her mother, letting her go and wiping the tears away. ‘You, on the other hand, have blossomed!’
Her father beamed as he came in for the best hug she’d had in a very long time, and then they were all crying and laughing, holding hands and kissing. They were like a dream come true, the hundreds of hours she had spent wondering where they were, the countless sleepless nights crying into her pillow all forgotten in an instant. It was like having all those missed Christmases at once, or the best wish you could ever hope to be granted.
Her parents were alive.
‘How did you find me?’
‘Your mother picked up the sigil,’ her father said, pointing at the faint mark on her palm. ‘Quite ingenious of you to use the Nynetjer cartouche.’
Caitlin offered up a silent thank you to Darkling, wherever he was.
‘Are we on a submarine?’ she asked, in-between mouthfuls of toast and tea.
‘The Nautilus?’ her father said, tapping his knuckle against the metal wall. ‘Best timeship in the maelstrom.’
‘The only timeship,’ her mother corrected. ‘Your father and I built her from scratch. Not a bad little craft; it has got us out of more than a few scrapes.’
‘Nautilus, like twenty-thousand leagues?’ asked Caitlin.
‘Straight from Jules Verne. Your father is not the most original namer of things.’
‘I like it.’ Caitlin touched the metal wall. ‘What is it? Brass?’
‘Mostly. Brass and copper seem to be the most prevalent metals. There’s a lot of Victorian tech in here, and it turns out your mother is one hell of a riveter when she puts her mind to it.’
‘So, is that what you’ve been doing? Building a timeship and exploring the maelstrom?’
Her parents looked at each other as if trying to decide what to say next.
‘Not quite,’ her mother replied.
‘We need to talk properly. When you’ve recovered,’ her father added.
‘Yes, you should rest,’ her mother agreed, pulling up the blanket. ‘Get some more sleep, and we can talk later.’
Caitlin did feel very tired. The soporific effect of the tea and the warming food in her belly were pulling her back under the covers.
‘But I have so many questions,’ she pleaded sleepily.
‘They can wait, honey. We’ve all the time in the world.’
‘So you left me?’
‘Not exactly,’ her mother said, sitting opposite her in the galley. The metal table was etched with routes and notes scratched into the bronze patina.
‘But I was a child. What kind of parent leaves their kid?’
Caitlin’s father grimaced at the accusation. ‘We had no choice: bringing you wasn’t an option.’
Caitlin scowled, like a petulant ten-year-old. ‘Staying wasn’t an option? Watching me growing up wasn’t an option?’
Her mother stood up, her face flushed. ‘You’re angry, and you’ve good reason to be. It wasn’t a decision we took lightly, but you need to hear all of the facts before you judge us.’
‘Fine. Let’s hear it.’ Caitlin crossed her arms defiantly.
Her mother turned to her father. ‘Maybe it would be better if you explained.’
He stood up and pulled a map down like a roller blind from the low ceiling. Caitlin recognised it immediately — it was a horograph, a map of time, or more specifically, a personal timeline; her name was written in cursive across the top of the chart.
‘This was given to us on your tenth birthday,’ her father said gravely. ‘My brother, Marcus, created the primary calculations, but your mother should take the credit for the quadratic probabilities.’
‘And beyond the technical execution and artistry,’ prompted her mother.
‘We didn’t believe him at first. Marcus convinced us this was the best chance we could hope for. We tried every possibility, but —’
‘It always ended badly,’ Caitlin interrupted, studying the branching set of fine lines that flowed across the surface of the chart. There were hundreds of tiny formulae and annotations scribbled across the map where they had tried every eventuality.
Her father sighed. ‘No, but the best option was the worst you could ask a parent to consider.’
‘I don’t understand. Why would leaving me — protect me?’
Her mother had tears running down her cheeks. ‘It’s complicated. You’re the reason we’re in here. We had to be here for you — Marcus predicted you would come.’
‘He predicted it?’ she asked, not quite able to believe what she was hearing. ‘He knew I was going to be part of that?’
‘The probability was too high to ignore,’ said her father, tapping a nexus point on the chart. ‘He estimated there was an eighty-seven per cent chance you would end up in here once you coalesced with the Paradox. It wasn’t an easy thing to hear.’
‘The Paradox?’ Caitlin exclaimed.
‘Change agent, the strange attractor.’
Caitlin’s forehead creased. ‘You mean the Nemesis — Josh?’
‘Is that his name? We never had any detail, just a symbolic reference.’
‘So what’s he like?’ asked her mother, in a way that only she could.
‘He’s the idiot who put me in here,’ she growled.
‘Ha!’ Her father clapped his hands. ‘I was right!’
He
r mother rolled her eyes. ‘As if it really matters now.’
Caitlin stared at the lines that made up her life, the branching tree of alternative paths it could have taken, the many ways in which she never ended up here.
‘I spent a long time trying to imagine where you were and what you were doing. I never believed you were dead. I don’t know why. Maybe because grandfather always talked about you as if you were off on some great adventure.’
Her father stood next to her and put his arm around her.
‘Well, we kind of were. It’s been hard — we’ve waited an eternity for this day.’
‘But at least you knew!’ she shouted, shirking off his arm. ‘You had a plan. All I had were memories, and pain — grief is a bitch when there are no answers, nothing to mourn. I was only ten, and you abandoned me!’
‘That’s not fair!’ Caitlin’s mother complained.
‘No shit!’ scoffed Caitlin, storming out of the room.
‘Well, that went better than expected,’ her father said, sitting down.
‘What are we going to do, Tom? She has to understand the bigger picture, and soon.’
He smiled. ‘She’s just like you darling; she needs time to come to terms with the situation and then work out how to fix it.’
A frown formed on her forehead. ‘Are you saying I sulk?’
‘No, no.’ He held up his hands defensively. ‘You just like to contemplate your options in private seclusion — with chocolate. It’s not a criticism.’
‘Hmm...’
Caitlin hated herself for the way she’d reacted. She had rehearsed their reunion so many times, only to go and spoil it by losing her temper.
She’d always known they would never merely walk back through the front door. There had been a secret, childish dream in which she would meet them again, a glimmer of hope that had waited quietly in the back of her mind while she’d got on with her life.
The Infinity Engines Books 1-3 Page 60
