by Dale Smith
‘No, that’s true,’ Burgess agreed with a smile. ‘But there was the matter of the discount. It’s so expensive when they need to be broken.’
Leiter the giant looked down at Burgess as if considering the best way to crush his skull. Emily saw the Albino flinch in sympathy, although Burgess never moved.
Leiter turned to Catherine instead, held her shoulders firm.
He looked deep into her eyes.
‘Kate.’ The giant said it softly, by his standards. Emily could still make out every word. ‘Kate, stop being so bloody stupid. You’re going with him. That’s the end of it.’
Leiter’s shadow fell over Kate, and the darkness of the bunker swallowed her face. Emily couldn’t see Kate’s eyes, but she guessed there were tears in them.
‘But why?’ she cried.
Leiter paused for a moment, almost delicately.
‘Because I’m bloody sick of you. And he’s offering good money.’
‘But... I thought...’
‘You thought what?’
Kate looked up at him. He was a good three foot taller and wider than she: to reach a hand to his face, she had to stand on tiptoe. But she did it anyway, looking into his eyes.
‘I saved you, Lee,’ she said softly, as if speaking to an invalid. ‘You remember? They took you and I found you. Because we love each other.’
Leiter looked for a moment, then barked an ear splitting laugh.
Emily looked back to the Albino. He was still hanging forward, mouthing each word the younger said, echoing his stance, even the slow beat of his heart. He must have relived this moment again and again while he was separated from it by time, turning it over in his memory to look at it from every conceivable angle. Probably he would have spent the rest of his life reliving it, if Emily hadn’t arrived: she couldn’t even begin to imagine the things he had missed, living in his past like that.
She closed her eyes for a moment, letting the darkness swallow her, and thought of the hole in her memory. Of all the trouble she had gotten into trying to find what was missing from it, without success. She opened her eyes again.
The Albino was moving forwards.
‘We did love each other,’ Kate said sullenly to the giant, ‘before they did this to you.’
Leiter reached for something at his waist.
‘Bloody hell!’ he laughed. ‘Can’t you –’
He was interrupted by a sharp tap.
Everyone in the room turned to look at Emily, or at least that’s how it seemed for a moment – but she realised they were actually looking at the Albino, standing out in the open and tapping a heel on the concrete floor. His arms were folded across his chest, and he looked at Burgess with an unreadable expression on his face. The Albino tapped his foot again, and Emily realised that she’d missed her cue.
She stepped forward.
‘My name is Emily Blandish,’ she said crisply and clearly. ‘I am a time channeller. I brought this man here, through time. He’s known as the Albino.’
She looked at Burgess.
‘He’s you,’ she said clearly.
Burgess looked from Emily to the Albino, then back again. His lip curled with disbelief.
‘This is some –’ he began, his hand sliding into his jacket.
The Albino moved so quickly, Emily wasn’t even sure she could detect a moment when he stopped being by her side and arrived in front of Burgess. Certainly it was so fast that none of the others had time to react, time to stop the Albino’s hand slipping quickly into Burgess’s inside pocket and pulling out the pistol he found there.
‘I said unarmed,’ Leiter growled dangerously.
The two albinos merely looked into each other’s eyes.
Emily saw Leiter take a step, his fists coming up to strike. Burgess saw the movement, but didn’t flinch: he didn’t take his eyes from the his older self. Neither did the Albino break the stare, but his arm came up and pointed the pistol directly at Leiter. Burgess raised an eyebrow, and still the Albino didn’t break the stare.
Leiter’s reaction was instant: he grabbed Kate and swung her round as a human shield, much to her surprise. Emily stayed very still: the Albino had been living this day again and again, and she could only trust that he hadn’t seen her death. Could only hope that he still needed her.
‘Wait,’ Burgess said. ‘I think...’
‘Don’t point that bloody gun at me, mate,’ Leiter growled.
‘Leiter,’ Burgess snapped. He turned to look at the giant, breaking the stare. ‘I think it really is me. And I wouldn’t hurt you.’
The Albino lowered the gun with a cold smile.
Leiter paused for a second, and then cast his human shield aside with an annoyed hiss. Kate fell on the cold floor in a heap, but Leiter didn’t move – for the time being, it seemed, he was still willing to trust Burgess. Kate looked up at the three of them. Emily could see tears in the woman’s eyes.
Kate turned and ran.
Leiter and Burgess both looked at the Albino, but he merely pointed to Emily.
‘Go after her,’ she said to Burgess. Right on cue.
He ran into the darkness after Kate.
Chapter Six
6A. 4 November 1951, 18:12
Lechasseur nodded solemnly.
‘There’s no chance...?’ His voice trailed off, his meaning clear.
Catherine found herself reaching out to him, their flesh touching briefly. She thought of Leiter. Cold electricity: she pulled her hand back sharply.
‘We watched them pull the body out together,’ she answered softly. Lechasseur’s face bore the same expression of sadness that it had on that morning. ‘I’m sorry.’
Lechasseur was silent.
For a moment, the café faded around them, the sound of old men smoking and discussing the dogs between slurps of tea muted and died. There were just the two of them, sitting in the middle of a smear of grey time. A second could have passed, a year, and neither of them would have noticed. Two people to whom time was so important, and it slipped by with barely a comment. Catherine felt a chill.
He looked at her, and for a moment she thought he knew.
She was caught in his eyes. They were snowdrop-white, standing out hypnotically from his coffee skin, Blandish burning like a fire deep inside them. They stripped the clothes from her, the skin, flesh and bone until they revealed her essential truth: the best way to save his friend was to ignore Catherine’s lies and just go on, living his life.
For a crazy moment, Catherine let him look.
Your friend might die, so my love might live.
I see nothing wrong with that.
Nothing.
There was a noise, and the moment was broken: two men at the far end of the café had started to fight, and a third was trying to break them apart with a broom. Catherine heard a woman at a nearby table comment that one of the men had said the King would be dead by the end of the year, but whether he was the one being beaten or the one doing the beating, Catherine didn’t know. Nor did she care: she looked back to Lechasseur, but he was already pulling his trenchcoat back over his broad shoulders.
‘You’d better come with me,’ he said grimly. ‘This kind of thing has a habit of getting out of hand.’
Catherine shook her head.
‘I’ll be all right,’ she said. In time, she thought.
Lechasseur looked at her for a moment, then nodded.
‘Thanks,’ he said, and wove his way through the gathering crowd.
Catherine sat in her seat for a few moments longer, and sipped her tea. She was cold, but nobody noticed. A few moments passed, and she pulled herself together: a sharp word, and her own long nails dug hard into the pale flesh of her arm. Tiny red crescents appeared as she removed her hand, like a new moon creeping into the sky.
She stood up, and the
greasy-haired café boy put himself between her and the fight as she strode out of the café, into the darkness outside.
Lechasseur was standing in the shadows out there, watching himself walking away. He must have been thinking about what was to come, but his face was unreadable. Even his eyes, so large and expressive, hid in the shadows. Catherine wanted to reach out to him, but for a moment she hesitated.
He turned to look at her.
‘We’ll change it,’ she said, her voice almost lost in the dark. ‘She won’t die this time.’
Lechasseur didn’t answer.
6B. 23 February 1951, 03:10
They arrived in silence, and for a while the silence remained with them. He shuddered briefly, like he’d shaken himself awake from a dream of falling, and needed a few seconds to convince himself that the world was solid again. Catherine ignored him, concentrating instead on the readout she had in her hand, taking her smoked glasses off to see the display. Honoré knew it was connected to Little Emily, the belt around his waist, the cold mechanics that pushed him through the snaking freefall of time without connecting it to any particular person. He didn’t want to know what it said.
The hopeless smell of damp concrete was in the air, and Honoré tried experimentally picking at the nearest blank wall: it crumbled easily under his fingernail. Even without an explosion, he didn’t think the bunker had long left to it – how long had it been sitting here, hidden underground? Li would know, perched in his web at the heart of the Library. Honoré imagined its past snaking out behind it, but it was only an imagining.
He looked over to Catherine: she had her eyes tightly closed.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked, immediately thinking of Emily.
Catherine took a breath.
‘It’s nothing,’ she said. Honoré didn’t believe her. ‘We’re later than I expected, that’s all.’
‘Can’t we go back?’
‘It wasn’t a mistake,’ Catherine said, shaking her head. ‘The belt bounced us here: Leiter must have left his on longer than I thought. It doesn’t matter. There’s still time.’
‘And if there isn’t?’ Honoré asked.
A pause.
‘If there isn’t,’ she said decisively, ‘we go back to before he arrived, turn our belt off and wait for him.’
Catherine rested a hand on Honoré’s arm.
‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘We’ve got all the time we need.’
Honoré nodded, and didn’t argue. Even though he could feel the weight of time pressing down on him. Catching up with them as they tried to slip through it, escape, bend it to their own will. He wondered if Catherine could feel it too: how much experience did she have, when it came to time? He found himself tempted to reach out and try to see into her past. What would he see? Perhaps nothing, perhaps the same black hole he saw when he tried to see Emily’s past.
We’ll change it, she’d said. As simple as that, no arguing: we’ll change it. It was such a simple solution, but it seemed more and more attractive with every moment that passed: no matter what Emily said, weren’t there just some things that were wrong? If you had the power to make them right, shouldn’t you? Okay, maybe the big things were too dangerous – maybe – but little things? Would the universe fall apart if he went back and saved some unknown guy from an accidental death?
Catherine’s hand moved.
‘What’re you doing?’ he asked.
She pulled the belt open and slid it off his waist.
‘I need to check this,’ she answered. But didn’t look.
‘And?’
Catherine looked away.
‘You had the belt,’ she said quietly, still not looking to him. ‘I remember. You saved me, before.’
‘Then I should have the belt now,’ Honoré said, reaching out.
‘No!’ Catherine hissed.
Honoré took a step back. Catherine steadied herself.
‘No,’ she said, more calmly. ‘We’re here to change it. This way, we have to meet to leave. It has to change. Do you understand?’
‘And if I can’t find you?’
Catherine didn’t answer. Honoré knew that she didn’t trust him to keep the belt. He tried to tell himself that she didn’t have any reason not to, but that would mean denying his first thought as she’d taken it: that he could still leave so long as he found Emily. But still, giving away Emily’s mechanical namesake felt too much like saying goodbye to her for real.
‘We have 14 minutes,’ Catherine said, checking the control. ‘Until the Albino’s bomb destroys this bunker. Go and find your friend. Go and find me. Bring us both back here. I’ll find Leiter and be waiting for you. I promise.’
She looked at him, her eyes wide. Honoré realised that this half-gloom was her natural habitat, her pupils wide and drinking in all the available light. This was where she felt most comfortable, not out in the light, but not completely in the dark. She didn’t trust him: could he trust her?
‘I owe you so much for bringing me here,’ she said, with utter conviction. ‘I won’t leave you.’
Honoré told himself that he wouldn’t leave her, either.
He hoped it was a promise he could keep.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘What do I need to know?’
Catherine looked at him, and smiled a tired smile.
‘Thank you,’ she breathed.
Honoré smiled back.
‘When you found me, before, it was outside the main chamber.’ She turned once, as if getting her bearings, and then pointed. Honoré checked the direction and nodded. ‘Go down there, you’ll find me. Call me Kate.’
‘And Emily?’ Honoré asked.
A pause again.
‘I don’t know,’ Catherine admitted. ‘I saw her arrive, and I ran. I didn’t see her again. I’m sorry.’
Okay. Breathe.
‘Where did she arrive?’
Catherine thought.
‘The main chamber. She can’t be far from here.’
‘All right,’ Honoré said. He didn’t have much time.
Catherine put a hand on his arm, stopping him.
‘When you find me, I’ll be with the Albino,’ she said. There was a fire in her eyes. ‘Don’t bring him here. He stays: it’s better than he deserves.’
Honoré didn’t say anything, just turned and jogged away into the darkness. He didn’t tell Catherine what he was thinking, didn’t tell her that his first priority was finding Emily, and getting her out of this dank grave. Before it was too late.
Didn’t tell her that, if he had to, he’d leave them all here, to save her.
Himself included.
6C. 23 February 1951, 03:04
For a moment, all they could hear was the soft echo of Burgess’s footsteps as he chased after Kate. Then there was nothing, just silence.
Leiter glared at the Albino suspiciously.
‘What d’you want here?’ Leiter spat.
The Albino only smiled, and the giant turned to Emily.
‘Why doesn’t he speak?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Emily said apologetically. ‘I don’t think he can. Any more, I mean. He brought me here because he needed someone to speak for him. Well, we brought each other here, with that.’
She indicated Little Honoré, wrapped around the Albino’s waist. Leiter looked at it, and something sparked in his eyes.
‘And why did you come here, little girl?’ Leiter growled.
‘I didn’t have a choice,’ Emily said. ‘He wants another belt, one that does what I do. It’s here somewhere.’
‘You treacherous little –’ Leiter growled.
He turned on the Albino, his fists rising, and Emily took a cautious step back. Before Leiter’s fist was even level with his waist, the Albino had his pistol raised. It pointed straight at Leiter’s
face. The giant paused, staring into the black hole of the pistol’s muzzle. Emily wondered briefly if he could see the bullet sitting in the chamber, ready to end his life.
Leiter didn’t move.
Emily’s heart beat hard in her chest. She looked at the giant’s waist, and saw two belts wrapped around it: the first was the mirror of the one they’d travelled here with, another Little Honoré; the other was obviously the belt the Albino had come here for – her replacement, Little Emily. The Albino cocked the pistol, and the click echoed around the bunker. Leiter glared hatred. The Albino gazed back impassively.
Emily realised he was waiting for her to speak.
‘I think he wants you to give him the belt,’ Emily said.
Leiter didn’t move.
‘Or he could take it himself,’ she said softly. ‘But he’d have to shoot you for that. Is it really worth it?’
Leiter didn’t speak.
But, very slowly, he reached down to the belt. The two men’s eyes remained locked on each other; the pistol didn’t waver. Leiter’s fingers fumbled with the catch, and he let his eyes drop for a moment so he could see what they were doing. The Albino’s eyes couldn’t help but follow, looking down to the belt for just a fraction of a second: Emily saw what was going to happen, like one of Honoré’s flashes of the future.
‘No!’ she said, but was too late.
Leiter’s eyes snapped back up, and he dived for the Albino far faster than a creature of his size had any right to. And yet, at the same time, slowly: time seemed to stretch, and the giant moved with balletic grace as he swatted the Albino’s pistol arm aside and went for his throat. Emily tried to focus, to wonder if she should or could help, but all she could do was gape. The Albino was lifted choking off his feet by a single arm as Leiter growled.
‘You –’ Leiter hissed.
The world clicked back to its normal speed with an explosion. It was so loud that, for a moment, the silence afterwards actually seemed painful – until Emily realised that there wasn’t any silence and the noise of Leiter screaming finally registered with her. Emily saw red on the giant’s side, and then he pushed out with a yell, and the Albino flew silently through the air before impacting against the far wall with a crunch.
