One Word Kill (Impossible Times Book 1)

by Mark Lawrence

  ‘I ain’t breaking in anywhere.’ Elton shook his head. ‘No way. Mum would kill me. And then my brothers would stamp on my corpse.’

  ‘He says it’s to stop Mia from being a vegetable after the accident she has when he comes from,’ John said.

  ‘Man, these fairy stories again? Breaking and entering because of some trick with the dice? Ain’t happening. I mean like no way.’

  The argument that would have followed was stopped in its tracks by another tap on the window.

  ‘Fuck! That’s the guy!’ John stared with the rest of us at Demus. I was as surprised as the rest of them. He’d said nothing about showing up.

  For a moment all of us stood staring. All of us except Simon, who glanced from Demus to me and back again. Simon looked at the world differently. He was the sort to notice the number plate of the car hurtling toward him. The rest of us would be busy getting out of the way.

  ‘What’s he want?’ Elton asked.

  ‘We could let him in and find out,’ I suggested.

  And a minute later Demus was among us, standing there in one of John’s living rooms in his trench coat, a solid and inescapable fact. Still, only Simon seemed to have seen past baldness and a quarter of a century to notice how alike Demus and I looked.

  ‘Turn the TV on.’ Demus took us all by surprise.

  ‘Why?’ John asked, but he did it anyway. The big colour TV flickered into life, one of about four in the house and twice the size of any I’d seen anywhere else.

  ‘BBC 2,’ Demus said. ‘Quick as you like.’

  John punched the second channel button. The screen showed crowds of people standing in bright sunshine . . . some kind of sporting event. It looked chilly; they were well wrapped.

  ‘What’s the time?’ Demus asked.

  ‘You’re wearing a watch.’ Simon pointed to it.

  ‘Humour me.’

  ‘Four thirty-six.’ Elton read from his digital watch.

  ‘Half past.’ Mia pointed to the wall clock.

  The footage panned across the crowd to the space shuttle, engines fuming gently on the launch pad. The announcer reminded us that we were watching live at T minus one minute.

  ‘It’s going to explode seventy-three seconds into its flight,’ Demus said. ‘I’m sorry to use the deaths of seven people in this way, but it’s important that you believe me. It’s also important that you understand that for me this has already happened. I can’t change it.’

  ‘T minus thirty seconds.’ The official countdown from the NASA control tower now.

  ‘You could be beaming this in,’ muttered Elton.

  ‘It will be in the evening papers, with the time.’ Demus went to turn the volume up.

  We watched as the engines ignited and the shuttle shuddered on its powerful rockets, slowly ascending on a pillar of fire. I didn’t want it to explode.

  The shot switched to images of Americans craning their necks as the shuttle took to the skies. Smiles and awe, flags waving, an image of the families and senior officials. Beside me Demus’s silent count became a voiced one. ‘Sixty-two, sixty-three, sixty-four.’

  ‘Don’t . . .’ Mia’s face was frozen in horror.

  We watched without speaking, and nine seconds later the shuttle blew apart in a vast ball of fire, the two boosters spiralling away on their own trajectories.

  ‘You can change the channel and see the news flash hit. Or turn the radio on.’ Demus sounded as sad about what had just happened as I felt.

  Elton reached the TV in two strides and turned it off, angry. ‘It’s tricks. David freaking Copperfield stuff. If that guy can levitate over the Grand Canyon, then this guy here sure as hell can mess about with the timing on—’

  ‘Messing about with time is exactly what I am doing, Elton.’

  ‘Don’t Elton me! You don’t know me!’

  ‘I do, though. I really do.’ Demus still looked sad, almost as if he were on the edge of tears. He stepped in close to Elton, lowering his voice. ‘I know exactly what you want to tell the others. And you should do it. A few decades from now, hardly anyone would bat an eyelid, Elton.’ Demus pressed a folded piece of paper into his hand. ‘Really. It all gets so much better.’

  Elton stepped back as if stung, which wasn’t Elton at all.

  ‘I’m going to leave you to make your decisions,’ Demus said. ‘You’ll do that better on your own. Nick can show me out.’

  And, leaving a stunned silence in our wake, we both left the room. Demus moved confidently along the corridor toward the front door while I glanced around, expecting John’s mum to appear and challenge us at any moment. We reached the door unscathed, though. Demus leaned in toward me as we stood outside on the steps.

  ‘They’ll talk about this as “saving Mia”.’ He shrugged. ‘Let them. But you, you need to remember this: she saves you. In the end, she saves you. You’re not rescuing a damsel in distress here. You’re returning a favour in advance. She’s special. Don’t ever let me forget that.’

  And with that he went.

  I got back to the living room to find that John had got hold of a radio and turned the TV back on with the sound off. BBC 1 was breaking the news with footage of the explosion while on the radio an announcer was describing the scene.

  I turned the radio down and eyed Elton, who had just sat down beside John. ‘Well?’

  Elton pursed his lips. He glanced down at the paper Demus had given him, then closed his hand around it. ‘I can’t argue. That man knows stuff he shouldn’t be able to know.’

  ‘Are we doing this thing, then?’ I asked. ‘Breaking in, going after the chip he needs?’

  ‘We could try, I guess.’ Elton stood again. ‘Shit. I wouldn’t have come if I’d’ve known what you were going to get me into.’ He sat down again.

  We spent maybe an hour just going over how crazy it all was. Trying to talk ourselves out of believing. And failing.

  At last, John asked the other question. ‘What was Demus talking about? He said you wanted to tell us something, Elton?’

  ‘Yeah . . .’ Elton took to his feet again, nervous once more. He manufactured a grin. ‘Sorry I was late. I know you all wanted me to come and show you how to be cool with the ladies, but it seems like Mia got that sorted already.’ He paused, still tense. Elton wasn’t ever tense. He was the opposite of tense. He took tension out of you. ‘And I know I was late for this man from the future shit that I still don’t really believe but am going to act like I do believe anyhow . . .’

  ‘What’s up, Elton?’ Mia looked at him curiously, like she knew something we didn’t.

  ‘Look. This party . . .’ He sort of tossed his hands in the air and looked at the door.

  ‘Just tell them,’ Mia said.

  ‘Well.’ He puffed out his cheeks then took a deep breath. ‘You ain’t gonna see me getting off with no girls.’

  I frowned. If I was honest, I didn’t expect to see any of us getting off with a girl. Possibly John. But it wasn’t as if we knew many people there. And Elton just wasn’t bothered . . . ‘I . . . Are you . . . ?’

  ‘I wanted to invite you guys,’ he said. ‘It’s important to me. And besides. You really need it. But it means now I gotta share more than I was . . . ready for.’

  ‘You’re gay!’ I said. It all made sense. Suddenly the pieces fit together.

  ‘No way.’ John backed off a yard, laughing nervously. I could see all the thoughts crowding behind his eyes. Rock Hudson had died of AIDS a few months back. The newspapers were full of ‘The Gay Plague’. At our school, nobody would ever come out and admit they were gay. Social suicide. It just wouldn’t happen. Ever.

  Simon just sat there looking slightly bored, as if we were talking about the weather.

  ‘I needed to get that out there,’ Elton said. ‘That’s how it is.’ He slumped, but kept his chin up, eyes bright. ‘I was going to say it. Demus just helped, is all.’ He kept the crumpled paper tight in his fist as if it held a promise he wasn’t going to let go of. />
  ‘I’m easy,’ I said. ‘Not that you were asking my permission.’ A hasty addition, remembering quite how much even his ‘play’ punches hurt. At Maylert, we had the ‘you’re gay’ jokes honed to a razor-edge. Perhaps it was the same at all boys’ schools, a constant parade of protesting too much, all of us policing each other to a ridiculous degree in some kind of heartless dance of denial. I had to admit to taking part, and for all the hundreds of casual insults and accusations I’d flung, I had never truly thought any single one of them to be true, never believed a single one of my targets really gay. It was just part of the barbed and vicious banter of our existence. Some reflex part of me still wanted to riposte that it was good of him to leave more of the women to share around us real men. I bit back on it, knowing it to be small and petty. And realising with a breath of relief that saying something so stupid would have likely crashed any chances I had with Mia, who was watching me with unusual intensity. ‘It . . . uh . . . can’t have been easy to say. Thanks for trusting us.’

  ‘Uh . . . yeah.’ John nodded, his mouth twisting as he doubtless swallowed some of the same shit our school life had conditioned us with. ‘You don’t . . .’ He looked around at Simon and me. ‘You know?’

  Elton sighed, and Mia rolled her eyes. ‘You’re a good-looking fellow, John, but you’re really not my type.’

  A silence drew out between us. Elton ended it. ‘Questions?’

  Another moment of silence, then Simon cleared his throat. ‘I have one.’ He eyed Elton up and down, speculatively. ‘How are we going to get into this laboratory? Don’t they have alarms and guard dogs and things? I’m not good with dogs.’

  CHAPTER 16

  I took a taxi to hospital for my last chemo session. Or, at least, the last one of this batch. The doctors said they would give me some time off to recover, then blast me with another course. I felt like an old tree in one of those late autumn gales. The chemo’s job was to strip my leaves and keep them gone. My job was not to get uprooted while the gale blew.

  Mother allowed me to go alone but promised to visit, despite my saying that she didn’t have to. I wouldn’t even be staying overnight. The doctors had had their fill of watching me puke and were ready to let me go home an hour after they’d filled my veins with their toxic waste.

  I arrived to find Demus waiting for me on the steps outside, a cigarette in hand.

  ‘You sure you’re me? Didn’t think I’d ever be stupid enough to smoke.’ I went to join him, sitting upwind. Of course, the breeze changed immediately, swirling his fumes around me.

  ‘Just trying new things, Nick.’ He drew a lungful. ‘It’s not what it’s cracked up to be . . . I wonder if crack is?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I wonder if crack is what it’s cracked up to be.’

  ‘What’s crack?’

  ‘Never mind.’ He waved the question away. ‘So, are they up for this little robbery?’

  ‘I think so. John wasn’t happy about it. Or Elton. But they’ll do it.’

  ‘Good. Sunday is the time to aim for. Sunday night, or very early in the morning.’ He reached for a supermarket bag at his feet and pulled out one of his headbands. ‘The chip slots in here. I’m just using the databus and some core functions. And I’ve included a little instruction manual. Do break what will become the habit of our lifetime and actually read it.’ He fished out a stapled pamphlet, then dropped it back in and took another drag on his cigarette. ‘I mean, it’s not awful or anything. I guess I just expected more from tobacco than it had to give . . . There’s a lesson somewhere in there for you.’

  ‘Except I’m not going to remember any lessons,’ I said. ‘Because you tell me that pretty soon I’m going to wipe out the memory of the last week. Come to think of it, if I wipe my memory, how did you remember to find me here or at John’s the other day?’

  Demus laughed. ‘I don’t remember the events, but I sure as hell remember the place and day of the week I had my chemo. And the guys are going to be talking for years to come about the dance lesson at John’s on the day Demus predicted the Challenger disaster.’

  I grunted my acknowledgment that he was right. ‘Even so, I’m going to forget this lesson about smoking. You certainly did.’

  ‘Well, yeah. There is that.’ Demus nodded. He tapped the bag with his foot. ‘The instructions for erasing are in the manual, too. It’s a simpler process based around the application of powerful magnetic fields. No MiB shit here.’

  ‘Em eye bee?’

  ‘You know, Men in Black! Will Smith! What you think you saw, you did not see . . .’ He trailed off. ‘Sorry . . . Wrong decade. Anyway. Magnetic fields. A memory eraser. That’s something you’re going to have to develop in the next quarter-century, by the way.’

  ‘Me? I don’t do brains! Mathematics is—’

  ‘You do brains. Trust me. I’ve included the basics at the back to start you off. Some time travel stuff, too.’

  ‘That sounds a lot like cheating . . . Like cheating the universe!’

  Demus shrugged. ‘Meh. How do you think the universe got here? It pulled itself out of nothing by its own bootstraps. Happens all the time. Think of this as a little payback.’ He straightened his leg and winced. ‘I suspect that the self-seeding we’re doing here accelerates science across a bunch of related areas. It’s quite possible that the 2011 I’ve come back from is technologically a few decades ahead of where it would have been if I hadn’t come back.’

  ‘So we’re literally changing the course of history?’

  Demus shrugged.

  ‘Over a girl?’

  ‘There’s a better reason?’ He stubbed out his cigarette and smiled a slow smile. I found myself echoing it.

  After a short silence, he continued, ‘Anyway, technically we’re changing the course of your future rather than my history. My history is fixed and unchangeable.’ Demus tapped the bag again. ‘These memory things raise almost as many questions as the time travelling, you know.’ He handed me the carrier. It was far heavier than expected and I almost dropped it. ‘I don’t remember this last chemo session. Next month, you won’t either. So, did the Nick who is going to suffer through it truly matter? Take it to a logical extreme. If I offered you a million pounds to endure a night of horrific but non-injuring torture, in the knowledge that the next day you could wipe out all memory of it . . . then Nick tomorrow would presumably be all for it. He would be a million pounds richer and perfectly happy. And the Nick who suffered so terribly . . . Where has he gone? The memories were just electro-chemical patterns that have been erased. The pain was just nerve impulses that have finished. And the Nick who screamed and begged for it to stop? Does he matter anymore? Did his agony matter? And if you say “yes”, then repeat the question, but instead of a night of torture, reduce it to an hour, then a minute, then a second, then a quarter second. Does your opinion change?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I gripped the bag. The sheer weight of it felt important. As if it were telling me something.

  ‘I don’t know either, kid.’ Demus got up to go.

  ‘Wait.’ I still had too many questions to know where to start, so I started with what scared me most and it wasn’t the cancer. ‘This psycho, Rust. If you’re so keen to protect Mia, then shouldn’t you do something about him? Somehow I don’t think he’s going to let this thing with her go.’

  Demus winced as though just hearing the name hurt him. ‘As soon as you get the chip, your Rust problem will go away.’

  I blinked. ‘You’re going to wipe his memory, too?’

  A half-smile. ‘Just trust me.’ He set a hand to my shoulder. ‘Stay safe. And remember we’re on a clock with this chip thing.’

  ‘We are?’ I shook my head. ‘We need time to plan the raid. Scout the place out. Watch the guards. All that sort of thing. It’s not like any of us are experts. There’s no need to rush it.’

  Demus let out a long sigh at my stupidity. ‘I remember when I was you and a black BMW pulled up in front of me an
d Mia just after her mum cut Rust at the flat in the Miller Blocks. The next thing I remember is being in the park nearly two weeks later.’

  ‘Ah.’ I saw it then. ‘We need the chip soon so I can forget everything from the BMW up to the park.’ I really didn’t want to forget dancing with Mia, or the upcoming party. ‘Can’t you just erase those days years later?’

  He shook his head. ‘Has to be done soon after they were formed, or you risk losing important stuff, like remembering how to eat or walk. You’ve got four days tops. Sorry about the timing. It wasn’t mine to choose.’

  He started to hobble off.

  ‘Wait! When do I see you next?’

  ‘Twenty-five years, for sure. Just look in the mirror. You’ll see me coming.’ He waved over his shoulder.

  ‘You’re bugging out? Seriously?’

  ‘I don’t know, Nick.’ He turned, raising his voice to cover the growing gap. ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘You should come with us, help us get in and find the chip!’

  ‘I don’t think it happens that way, Nick.’ He smiled though an air of sadness hung around him. ‘And I have other things to do.’

  I watched me go, dogged by the feeling that there was something important I was forgetting to ask him.

  I got to the ward late and endured the tutting of Nurse Smithson as she poked ungently in search of a vein. When at last I was plumbed in, I sat in the chair beside my allotted bed and fished out one of the books I’d bought. There would be time for Demus’s toys and instructions later. I was still irked that he’d left me the task of inventing the damn things. Like an exercise for the student.

  I thumbed through my big fat copy of The Lord of the Rings to where I’d left the page folded. It was a comfort read. I knew the story backwards. For a quarter of an hour or so Tolkien had my full attention. Hobbits, elves, a king without a crown. A quest focused on a small but crucial object about which the world unknowingly revolved. But with the turning of each page, I felt a scraping at the back of my mind. Not an irritation, not something that was there and shouldn’t be, but the absence of something, like the missing tick of a loud clock that has finally wound down. I set the book beside me.