by Dale Smith
His heart sank: he hadn’t even thought about this.
‘My name’s Lechasseur,’ he said calmly. ‘You can call me Mr L if you have trouble with it.’
‘Bloody hell,’ coughed Leiter, picking up on the accent. ‘A Y’ats.’
Leiter gave a scowl, but it soon turned into a wince of pain. The giant was lying against one of the walls, practically in the position Honoré had/would find him in.... in far too few minutes’ time. His eyes were already starting to turn to glass, and even his great hands couldn’t stop the tarry blood from pulsing out of the wound in his chest. Even if he hadn’t seen the body in its future, Honoré would’ve known that Leiter didn’t have long left.
Leiter coughed again, and a thick glob of blood flew from his mouth. Honoré had really hoped he’d miss all this.
‘I’m dyin’ here,’ Leiter grumbled.
Too many memories.
‘Yeah,’ Honoré managed.
Leiter shook his head and looked at his hands. They trembled slightly as they tried to keep his insides in. Honoré guessed that the giant couldn’t actually feel them any more.
‘I knew I wasn’t getting myself out of this,’ Leiter muttered. Honoré didn’t respond: he wasn’t completely sure Leiter was talking to him any more. ‘Turning the belt off was meant to bring some future me here, yeah? Armed to the teeth with band-aids and iodine.’
Leiter looked at Honoré. There was blood in his eyes.
‘Not coming, is he?’ he asked.
Honoré didn’t answer.
‘Bloody hell,’ Leiter said. He closed his eyes. ‘Bloody hell. I was going to be indestructible, wasn’t I? ’Cept they never finished the job. Because of her. I was going to do something, you know? Something useful. I was going to save the...’
Leiter coughed thick, black blood over himself.
He looked at Honoré with round eyes.
‘You’ll see her, won’t you? My Kate?’ he asked. ‘Tell her I always did love her, eh?’
Honoré didn’t say anything, just nodded in silence.
‘Never bloody did,’ Leiter chuckled painfully to himself. ‘But what kind of last words are they, eh?’
Again, Honoré didn’t answer. This wasn’t the kind of thing anybody should be intruding on, a rawness that just wasn’t meant to be seen. You always had to do this alone, even in the middle of a crowd, and anybody else standing there – living – was just going to make it worse. It didn’t make it any easier knowing what he was going to do, even if it would save another life. Emily’s life.
How would she have handled this?, he wondered. How would he, when the time came?
The thought struck him that the next time he was in the future, he could find out. All it would take would be a trip to Li Po, or whatever system descended from him: the deaths would be recorded somewhere, and all the important details. Who, where... when: his and Emily’s death certificates were already written somewhere – the way they hopped about in time, could be there was already a note of them in some dusty archive in 1951. It wasn’t a comforting thought.
Honoré realised that Leiter’s eyes had opened again. They were glassy and lifeless: how many moments he’d been dead, Honoré couldn’t say for sure.
He knelt down by the dead giant’s side.
‘Sorry,’ he apologised softly.
When he stood up, he was holding one of the belts: Little Honoré. Little Emily he left for his future self to find.
He checked his watch again: only a few seconds before he would have to jump or block his own arrival, and alter his own history. And Emily didn’t want that. His hand went automatically to his pocket, pulling out the two wallets sitting there. One pristine, one bloody. He had to leave one here – otherwise he wouldn’t realise that he had to come here – and it had to be the pristine, the younger, one he presumed.
He wondered what would happen if he dropped the bloody one: would time unravel around him, would he see both possibilities before one became the only one? Could he divert history from the path it seemed to want to follow, regardless of the intentions of those stuck inside it, flies drowning in amber. It would be so easy, with hindsight, to shape the way the world would go...
Honoré dropped the wallet in the blood.
He activated his belt and fell...
10B. 4 November 1951, 18:54
... and arrived.
For a moment, Honoré just stood and looked around him. He was standing with one foot on a discarded dressing gown, and another on a plate of what had once been ham and eggs. There were books thrown here and there, as if they had managed to annoy their reader to the point of flinging them across the room. A single bulb swung overhead, without a lampshade to cover it. It was the most beautiful place he had ever seen in his life.
‘If I make coffee,’ Emily said, ‘you have to tell me how you did that.’
She was sitting on the sofa, a pile of unopened letters on her knee, and looking up at Honoré with an expression of admiration. She was still dressed in the clothes he’d left her in, he couldn’t even remember how long ago, obviously intending to wait until she was tired before she went to bed, rather than obey the clock. He couldn’t help but smile at her.
‘There’s nothing I’d like more,’ he said. It was all he could do not to reach over and hug her. ‘But we haven’t got much time.’
Emily looked grave, and stood.
‘Trouble?’ she said.
Honoré wasn’t sure how to answer that one. Instead, he handed her Little Honoré and collapsed into the nearest clear armchair. She held the belt as if it was a dead fish, and looked to him for some kind of explanation.
‘Put it on,’ he said. She wrapped it round her waist. ‘Don’t tell anyone you’ve got it: you’re going to get frisked, so make sure it’s well hidden.’
Emily nodded, sealing the buckle. She caught sight of the symbol on the buckle.
‘This is...’ she began.
‘I know,’ Honoré interrupted. ‘But there isn’t time to worry about that.’
Emily nodded, and looked at the controls: they were self-evident, practically a dial for the date and time and a big button that might as well have been marked ‘Go!’.
‘Listen, Emily,’ Honoré said firmly. ‘I know what you’re like. But listen to me, please: there’ll come a time when there’s nothing left you can do, and you’d better use this thing then. I’ve been through too much to have you screw this up and leave me here alone. Okay?’
Emily looked down at him. Her eyes were soft and dark.
‘What time’s that?’ she asked, a hint of a smile.
Honoré frowned.
‘Twenty-five past three,’ he said solemnly. ‘February twenty-third.’
Emily blinked.
The sun came out as she smiled.
‘And try not to let me scare you too much,’ Honoré added, with a resigned grin.
Honoré checked his watch: there wasn’t enough time, ironically, but then there never was enough time. He didn’t much fancy the idea of still being here when his younger self arrived – too many explanations, for a start, too much he might have to say. He jumped back out of the chair: no rest for the wicked.
Oh!
He picked up the dressing gown at his feet and thrust it at Emily.
‘Put this on,’ he ordered, already heading for the door. ‘Quickly.’
Emily scowled at him, but pulled the dressing gown over her clothes. Underneath, Little Honoré could barely be seen, unless you already knew it was there. Hopefully the belt could stay hidden until she needed it: he hoped so – he’d done all he could, but there was still so much that could go wrong.
‘I’ll see you later,’ he said, and ducked out of the apartment.
He tried not to wonder if he would.
He heard himself charging up the stairs three at a ti
me, rushing to make sure that Emily was alive and well. Getting ready to pull her into the very danger he was trying to save her from. But if they didn’t go now, what would happen when the Albino finally did find them? How would time shake itself out this time?
Honoré activated Little Emily and fell.
Back to Emily.
10C. 23 February 1951, 03:48
The Albino let out a hiss as they jolted against the cold ground. Emily thought herself lucky: if he’d been able to speak, it would’ve been a scream.
As it was, in all the confusion, no-one had even noticed them arrive.
She knelt down next to the Albino, making to put a reassuring hand on his arm and then thinking better of it: his teeth were clenched as he hissed at her, pain obviously turning him in on himself. She looked around: ambulance men were running all over in the early morning cold, warmed by the fire raging behind her. It would be simple enough to call out and get the Albino put into their care – there was no real reason for her to feel responsible any more: she had saved him, made her point.
She caught sight of two stretchers in the distance. One she couldn’t see clearly, but the other had a familiarly pale figure lying on it, attended to by an excessive number of medics and a single dwarfish lawyer determined to make his voice loud enough for two men twice his stature. So it wouldn’t be so simple to hand the mute Albino over, with his younger self already lying there.
But she could still do it.
‘Try to keep calm,’ Emily said softly. She tried to tell herself to leave him here. Alone, in the middle of an explosion, in the heart of London. ‘I’ll be back soon.’
She tried to tell herself she was just concerned about causality.
As she stood, Emily took a moment to survey the scene before her. The bunker had all but disappeared: at least, that was to say, the area of London that had hidden the bunker had all but disappeared into a fresh crater that was belching smoke and fire as if the Book of Revelations had just been opened. Policemen, ambulance men, reporters, local residents and tourists flitted about in the half-light, doing whatever they’d come here to do: punish the wicked, save the innocent, find the truth or a story to tell.
The sky above was dark and cloudless, but the smoke was doing its best to make up for that. Emily looked into the split earth and tried not to think what it would have been like to be caught in its red glow.
Her hands were already undoing the belt as she hurried across this waste ground. She knew that she wanted to be away from here as soon as she possibly could.
‘Mr Schreck,’ she said politely. He ignored her, so she pushed the belt into his face. ‘Mr Schreck!’
The lawyer paused, and looked up at her. He didn’t seem pleased, but he did seem to recognise the belt.
‘Where did you get that?’ he asked.
Emily wondered briefly if there was a sensible answer to that.
‘It doesn’t matter where it came from,’ Emily said, handing the belt to Schreck. Goodbye, Little Honoré. ‘It matters where it’s going. Give it to the Albino, when he’s better. With Miss Blandish’s regards.’
That seemed to surprise Schreck. God knew, Emily was pleased to have found something that did.
‘Miss Blandish?’
Emily turned back, just for a moment.
‘Who is the Albino?’ Schreck asked.
Emily smiled enigmatically.
‘You’ll find out,’ she said, and turned to leave.
She heard a snort behind her.
‘If you take another step, I will shoot you,’ Schreck said. Emily froze. ‘I think my client may enjoy a few words with you, once he has recovered.’
Emily closed her eyes for a second.
Schreck screamed. It was shrill, girlish, but quiet.
‘I ever see you point anything at her again,’ growled a familiar voice, ‘I’ll make sure you eat it. Am I understood?’
There was another small squeal then, but Emily didn’t turn around. Instead she stood, facing the darkness with a small smile on her face. As she closed her eyes and took a short breath, she felt a firm but gentle hand rest briefly on her shoulder.
‘Come on,’ said Honoré. ‘Let’s get away from here.’
Emily let herself be guided, just for a moment. Then she looked at Honoré, and had to stop: he looked exhausted, his eyes cold and dead. He was missing his goatee, and some of his eyebrows. His skin was charred and dark. His coat was torn and stained with something that was either his, or someone else’s, blood.
‘You look great,’ Emily said, with a smile.
‘Up until ten minutes ago, I thought you were dead,’ Honoré said flatly. ‘Give me a break.’
Emily nodded, took a moment.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
Honoré nodded solemnly.
The Albino was, unsurprisingly, still where she’d left him, kneeling on the floor, cradling his own arm. She knew the amount of agony he’d be in if he tried to let the arm support itself: it might make him hiss and spit, but the fracture made the Albino as docile otherwise as she had ever known him. It was almost a shame that the bones ever had to heal.
He looked up at them both, his pink eyes burning with something that was either agony, or hatred.
Emily could take a good guess.
‘The belts are gone,’ she said, as calmly as she could manage. ‘You know that. You do know that, don’t you?’
The Albino said nothing.
‘We can take you back to November,’ Emily continued. An idea hit her. ‘Before we go back to our time. Where you’ll never find us. If you want to go back...?’
The Albino glared at them both.
‘Or we can drop you some time after the last ice age,’ Honoré offered. He’d never really been one for subtlety.
Looking into the Albino’s eyes, Emily could tell that the gravity of the situation was starting to dawn on him.
‘So,’ she said, almost sympathetically. ‘Home?’
The Albino nodded, eventually.
‘I’ll be back soon,’ Honoré told Emily.
She knew he would be.
Epilogue
8 April 1938, 07:00
Over them, it was raining – but behind the houses and the buildings, the skyline was clear and bright. Anybody else might have spent the morning enjoying the sights, taking one last look at all the buildings that wouldn’t make it through the next seven years. But not Emily, nor Honoré: for them, those bomb-hit buildings weren’t really gone, anyway. They could go back and see them again any time they wanted, and of course that meant that they never did.
Instead, they came to do inspection tours of big holes in the ground.
Great.
Emily looked across at Honoré, lumbering his way through the rubble as if he was looking for something important. His skin had lost the rawness the fire had given it, but his little goatee beard hadn’t grown back yet: Emily wasn’t sure whether she preferred him without it or not. She didn’t suppose it made much of a difference: he’d expressed a desire to grow it back the moment he could, if only to have some physical sign that he had actually recovered.
‘Seems strange nobody noticed this,’ he called back to her. A breeze was picking up, snatching at his words. Bringing the rain in.
Emily pushed herself off the side of the foundations, and trudged carefully over to Honoré. Work had only just begun on the site, and it was little more than a big hole in the ground strewn with rubble and debris: in one corner, a fire burnt the site’s waste and cast a strange light on the dull morning. It might have been hard to imagine it was the same place, if Emily hadn’t seen it in the aftermath of the explosion.
‘It seemed bigger on the inside,’ Emily said quietly. She looked around. ‘I suppose they didn’t know what it was: who was building bunkers in 1938?’
‘The presci
ent,’ Honoré snorted.
‘And then I suppose they had other things to worry about,’ Emily said. Her eyes went to the sky. ‘Odd none of the builders said anything, though.’
Honoré didn’t answer. He didn’t need to: the same explanation had occurred to her.
‘This’ll do,’ Honoré announced.
He kicked at the clean edge of the foundations with his boot until the earth began to crumble away. Not the most professional job, but pretty soon he had a hole big enough. He unhooked the belt from around his waist and held it up to the morning sun. Valves glinted.
‘I don’t have to do this,’ Honoré said, hesitantly. ‘It might come in useful.’
Emily shook her head.
‘The Albino found a belt in the wreckage, after the explosion,’ she said. She sounded like she was reading from a script. ‘It might not have been this belt, all right. But if it was, and you don’t put it there...’
Emily reached across and gently unscrewed one of the belt’s valves.
‘We’ve done this stuff more than once,’ she said, not looking at Honoré. ‘We know what it’s like. It’s like time has a path already laid out, and anything we do to try to change the route won’t do much in the long run. Time settles out how time wants to.’
And with that, she popped the valve.
‘And that’s that?’ Honoré asked.
Emily didn’t answer.
Neither did Honoré: instead, he took the belt and pushed it into the hole he’d kicked in the earth. He found a few stones and piled them up before smearing the dirt back over them. It wasn’t the most effective job Emily had ever seen, but she supposed from his point of view the belt had been found, so it was bound to survive no matter how he hid it.
‘Emily,’ Honoré said softly. He didn’t look up. ‘What if we can change it? What if it was you who died in that explosion? What if we changed it?’
Emily didn’t say anything.
