“Yeah, and how’s that gonna go over with everyone?”
“We’ll see,” she said, tilting her head from side to side.
Spider remembered Constable Wu, who told him she’d studied “his case” at the Academy. Who told him she admired him for what he’d done. Maybe, he thought, things might be changing.
He opened Iris’ car door, making a show of it. “Oh, thank you, good sir,” she said, smiling wearily, and getting in. He closed the door, and she lowered the window. “You gonna be okay tonight?”
“Yeah. Back to Molly’s. Gotta look after the fish.”
“There’s a fish?”
“Yeah. Long story.”
She flashed him a wry smile. “Fair enough. Now go. Before you catch your death.”
He watched as she backed out and drove off, and kept watching until her tail lights disappeared into the teeming traffic.
Later, much later, that night, Spider was back at Molly’s place, on her couch, trying to sleep, but pretty sure he wasn’t going to get any. Between the row he’d had with Patel, losing his job, and the dismembered time traveler, Spider was feeling done in. Buggered, in more ways than one. Exactly what was he going to do in the morning? His resignation, Mr. Patel had told him, was effective immediately. There was an excellent chance that, should he show up at the shop, there’d be security goons at the gate. There’d likely be a new head technician there, too. And, what about all of his stuff, his “personal effects”? He supposed they would be chucked into a box and left for him to collect — or maybe not.
Now, at two in the morning, and not feeling remotely sleepy despite his aching fatigue, he felt a dull, throbbing ache in his head, like something huge banging on a castle door, trying to break in and kill everyone — only this was something trying to break out. Something that might tear a person limb from bloody limb.
He snapped awake, wide-eyed, realized he’d just been sort-of dreaming, that it was now almost half-past three and his phone was ringing.
He tapped the phone-patch, still stuck to his face. “Hello…” The voice of weariness itself, fed up with the entire universe.
“Al! Hi! It’s me! How are things?”
It was Molly.
“Is that… Is that you, Molly? It’s—” He checked his watchtop.
“Yeah, hi! Just thought I’d check in, see how you’re going, what’s happening, see how poor Mr. Popeye’s faring — you know if he dies and you replace him, I’ll absolutely know, you can’t fool me!”
Was it his imagination, or did she have a bit of an American accent now? There was something weird about it. And loud! He fumbled in the dark with his watchtop interface, trying to find the control for lowering the volume. “Molly, it’s, oh God, it’s really late here. What time is it there? It must be…”
“So how is my little fishywishy? I hope you’ve been giving him his medication, Al. He’s my special little guy, and I’d hate to come home and find he’s died.”
“He’s fine. Sends his regards. Wants a bigger tank.”
Molly actually laughed. Spider lay there, blinking, thinking about that, trying to remember the last time he’d heard her laugh. She said, “Aren’t you the funny one!”
“One tries,” Spider said, still all half-dead, but not sure which half.
“So have you signed those papers yet?”
“Papers? What — Oh, those papers. No. I have not as yet—”
“Oh, come on, Al. You gotta let me go! I have to move on, be free!”
He wanted to ask her, who are you and what have you done with my real sort-of ex-wife? This did not sound like Molly. It sounded like, he thought, he wasn’t sure what. “How’s New York, then? Busy?”
“Oh, Al, it’s fabulous! You have to come out and see it for yourself, you’d love it! I’ve met all these lovely people!”
Last news Spider saw showed how much of New York City was in a process of economic and even physical collapse. There were riots, huge protests. It was, Spider thought, like 1980’s Beirut. There was nothing “fabulous” about it, and he failed to see any of these “lovely” people Molly mentioned. He said, “Okay, that’s nice, love.”
“Oh, gotta go, Al! Someone’s calling for me. Talk to you soon!”
“Um, see ya,” Spider said, and heard the click as the line went dead. He lay there, staring at the ceiling, at the cobwebs in one corner, his head ringing with Molly’s voice, full of that strange enthusiasm. Had she been high? That might have been it. She might well have been completely off her face on something one of her dubious new pals had given her, some party drug. It was certainly the strangest conversation he’d ever had with her, in all the time he’d known her. For another thing she had also been far happier in that call than at any time in their entire relationship. Even on their wedding night, she hadn’t been that happy. Something, he knew, was wrong.
The alarm on his watchtop went off at six-thirty. He’d been lightly dozing, having terrible dreams. “Oh, God,” he said, feeling his heart starting to settle down. “Errgh.” Shafts of molten brass light came slicing through the windows, casting stark shadows on the ceiling.
“Coffee. Must have coffee.” He lurched to his feet, went to the loo, splashed cold water on his stubbly face, considered shaving, thought better of it. “Hmm. Food. Food good.” In the kitchen, the light was far too bright for decent people. Even the light in the fridge was too damned bright. And he was very pleased to see, as he rummaged for milk for his coffee, that there was no giant severed head in there, asking for his help.
Later, showered and dressed in yesterday’s overalls, he got his bike out of the garage, popped the polycarbonate canopy, and climbed into the framework, easing his aching self into position. It was as he snapped the canopy back into place that he stopped, staring at nothing in particular, and looked at his watchtop.
That call from Molly, he thought, squinting to remember. There was something—
Time-gaps. There had been no time-gaps when he was talking to Molly during the night. Spider, in the course of his former job, had to talk to people overseas all the time — parts suppliers, manufacturers, sales reps, international regulatory bodies. And when you spoke to such people overseas, there was always a slight gap between what you said, and what they heard, and vice versa. It simply took a small amount of time for the voice signal to make its way around the bulk of the planet. No matter how you tried to compensate for the gap, it was still there, tripping up the people on each end of the call.
But Molly had been speaking to him with no such gaps, as if she had been calling from next door. He realized that, aside from the fact that Molly had sounded not at all like her usual bristling self, the absence of those tell-tale time-gaps meant Molly, strange, weird, off her face Molly was almost certainly here in Perth.
Chapter 11
Spider pedaled off to the shop. It was all he could think of to do, and he arrived with no memory of the journey. The whole way there, his mind was filled to bursting with the thought that Molly was, for some reason, back in Perth, off her face on some damn thing, but keen to make him think she was still in New York. What was that about? Why would she do that? What had happened to her over there? She’d only been there a week. Surely the first couple of days she’d have been too jetlagged to do anything but just lurch about, wearing dark sunglasses, experiencing the city as if dreaming, the sort of dream where very little makes sense.
As he rounded the corner onto Inverness Road in Malaga, he very nearly ran into a white semi-trailer coming the other way, blatting its horn at him. He snapped back into default reality in time, swerved the bike, avoided the impact, heard the hissing airbrakes on the truck blasting away over his head, and next thing he was tilting over, the canopy popping — there was a mighty thump as he and the bike hit the ground — and he tumbled out, landing in a heap on the dried out grassy verge in
front of the abandoned tire place that used to be next door to Time Machines Repaired While-U-Wait. He lay there a long moment, dazed, his shoulder and hip hurting, his nose full of the smell of dead brown grass, and glancing back, saw the semi-trailer turn and head for Malaga Road. He saw, not quite understanding it, the Bharat Group logo, huge along the side of the shipping container mounted on the back of the semi. Spider stared as the truck disappeared. In the time he’d worked at the shop since Bharat had taken over, he’d never known the company to send out a bloody great truck like that. Certainly, the company had sent out some new equipment, but that stuff fit on the back of a one-tonne truck, no problem, and still left room for the driver’s kelpie dog.
Spider struggled to his feet, wincing; rubbing at his shoulder, wanting to make sure his hip would still take his weight. So far, so good. Inspecting the bike itself showed it was none the worse for the spill. The front gate was only a few meters away. If he still had his job, he would have been on-time, more or less. It was not until he saw the front gate that he began to understand the reality of this new day.
The gate was chained and padlocked. There was a sign, from a commercial real estate firm, saying the property was up for lease. OWNER WILL REDEVELOP TO SUIT TENANT, it said. The shop’s front door was closed, with anti-intrusion tape across it. NO TRESPASSING. As he stood there with his bike, staring and staring, he heard the basso profundo booms of big dogs barking, going nuts, in the distance, and thought, Oh, no.
Three big black dogs, each the size of a truck, came boiling out from behind the building, thundering towards him, slobber flying, eyes crazy. They flung themselves at the gate. Spider stumbled back, numb with shock. The dogs hurled themselves at him, again and again, desperate to get at him, and tear at him — he flashed on the remains of John Stapleton and for a moment wondered if he could have been done in by something as ordinary as a pack of wild monster dogs. Spider, backing away, could not believe how high they could jump.
Feeling sick, shaky, and cold inside, Spider turned his bike around and slowly pedaled to the nearby lunch shop, a place he’d visited just about every day since he started working at Time Machines Repaired While-U-Wait. The girl behind the counter, Sheri, said, “G’day, Spidey, how’s it—” She stopped, once she got a good look at him. “Spider, God, what happened, mate?”
He went to speak, but couldn’t. He gestured, trying to indicate the workshop, not looking at her, not looking at anything. He felt his eyes stinging, and his throat tighten up, and he realized he was going to cry, and that wasn’t on, so he tried to smile, and went to leave, waving to Sheri to let her know that everything was fine. Except that Sheri wasn’t stupid, and she came after him, “Spider! What the hell’s going on?” She grabbed his arm; he tried to pull away from her, but she hung on. “Spider! Talk to me!”
So, taking his time, and thanking her for the tissues and the coffee she gave him, he told her that just yesterday, he’d inadvertently quit his job, but he figured Mr. Patel would just replace him and things would go on. He never ever expected that the company would shut the place down. What about Charlie and Malaria? What about them? They hadn’t done anything wrong.
Other customers came and went, wanting the usual morning pick-me-ups, and they all, to a man, ignored the stubbled figure in the corner, turned away so nobody would see him. He was thinking of heading to the city to talk to Patel. Not, by any means, to beg for his job back. That was not going to happen, not if Spider lived to the End of Bloody Time. No, he wanted to see Patel and, maybe, just maybe, give the swine a good kicking. Yes, Mr. Patel might be angry with Spider, fine, no problem. He could respect that. But closing the shop? Taking Charlie and Malaria’s jobs, in the current economic climate? Was that entirely necessary? Anger, Spider could understand, but cruelty, too? It wasn’t fair. And Spider needed to tell him that. Now. In person.
Leaving the lunch shop, his coffee unfinished, Spider steered his bike onto the Mitchell Freeway, slotted into the bike lane, got a nice low gear going, and cruised towards the rising towers of Perth, forging a new, hard anger in his heart. Thinking, with every stroke of the pedals in front of him, just what he was going to say to Mr. Patel, rehearsing the entire thing in his head.
But when he got there, got into the Bharat Group office tower, the Ground Floor receptionist would not let him pass. “I’m sorry, Mr. Webb. I cannot allow you onto the premises. I have specific orders.”
“You have orders. Oh, good, you have orders. Fine. Good for you.” He pushed past the reception station, across the gleaming floor to the elevators. “I’ll give you bloody orders,” he muttered to himself — and then found he was facing a pair of heavy-duty security officers, stun-guns leveled at his chest.
“Mr. Webb. Please leave at once,” said one. The other joined in, “Let’s not make a scene, what do you reckon?”
Spider took some breaths, doing his best to control the frantic, booming, beating of his heart. The adrenaline fizzing through his system, he could do nothing about, and he knew that his entire body was, right now, up for a fight, you just watch, he could totally take these two clowns. He remembered all the unarmed combat training he’d gotten as a copper. Two guys? No worries. Two guys with stun-guns? Okay, that would present difficulties, but if he was quick, and zigged when they were expecting him to zag, well, who knows? He smiled at them. His best, most disarming smile, lots of teeth. Look at me, I’m harmless, no threat at all. He had his arms and hands out, to show he was just a regular bloke, nothing to worry about. “Now, look, fellas, I just want to go and talk to my boss, okay? That’s all I want.”
“Your former employer, sir,” the goon on the left said, taking a step towards Spider, the stun-gun still leveled at him, “does not wish to see you. If you do not leave immediately, we will take action, and we will hand you over to the police, and have you charged with trespass, and whatever the hell else we can think of to have you charged with. Now you don’t want that, do you, sir.”
“But I just need—”
The darts hit Spider. He went down, shaking, in agony.
When he woke, he was sitting in a plastic chair, feeling dizzy, and everything hurt. A voice to his right said, “What am I going to do with you, Spider?”
Squinting, he saw Mr. Patel, sitting at right-angles to him, on another plastic chair.
They were in a small, windowless room; it looked something like a first-aid station, with a high narrow examination bed, some simple medical equipment, a medication cabinet on the wall with a big red cross on it, a full-size plastic human skeleton, grinning at him. He could hear the air-conditioning; it was loud, and was making the already stuffy air in the room smell bad. Seeing Mr. Patel was a shock. The man was dressed in a business shirt, sleeves rolled up, no tie, and no data-glasses. He looked, Spider noticed, as bad as Spider felt. “You,” Spider said, and wished he hadn’t. Fresh waves of pain crashed in his head as he spoke. He clutched at his forehead, his eyes closed. Once again, an image of something huge and monstrous trying to escape the bone prison of his skull filled his mind, and when he opened his eyes again, he saw Patel, still there. “You shut us down.”
Patel shrugged, trying to appear calm and rational, but in fact looking like he’d had no sleep. Spider imagined the guy spending the night trying to figure out what he was going to do. The cops breathing down his neck, the man he’d chosen to sort out his troubles gone, Phoebe’s parents screaming at him. Yesterday, Spider had been sympathetic. Today, no. Today, Spider wanted to strangle him. “How could you do that?” The words boomed in his head, and he winced.
“Spider, it was an underperforming node in the network. The KPIs were flatlining. Revenue was down sixty percent on last quarter, and forecasts suggested it would continue to decline and ultimately crash. It was a mercy killing.”
“There was no need,” Spider said, clutching his head, his eyes squeezed shut, “to sack Charlie and Malaria.”
&n
bsp; Patel was surprised by this, and peered at Spider. “They are not fired, Spider. Far from it. They are valuable Bharat Group assets. We moved them to new positions at our Morley dealership. Malaria Brown has been inducted into our executive training program. Charlie Stuart has his own department in the workshop.”
“I beg your pardon?” Spider had heard what the man told him, but he did not believe it. “Why should I believe you?”
“Believe what you like.”
Spider said nothing, sat there, aching all over, soaking in the pain.
Patel said, “I suppose you’ve come to get your job back.”
“No chance of that.”
“Quite so.”
“Wouldn’t be caught dead.”
“I have had a box containing your personal effects couriered out to your last-known domicile.”
My last known domicile? Spider thought. Molly’s place, or Mrs. Ng’s? He’d have to check. “Thanks,” he said, grudgingly.
“You are most welcome.”
Again, the silence settled between them. Spider heard the air-conditioning wheeze. There was a faint odor of something like damp socks.
“Any word of Vijay?”
“What do you think?”
Spider nodded, gently. “Three days now.”
“No need to tell me.”
“You’d think he’d come back, if he could.”
“You think I’ve not had that same thought?”
“Sorry.” Spider was finding it hard to stay angry with the man.
“I am sorry, too.”
“I told the cops. Last night.”
“I know. I have already heard from Inspector Street?”
“Time Crime Unit.”
“So she said.”
“How’d you play it?”
“Full cooperation. What else?”
“She’ll look after you.”
Patel nodded, staring at the floor. Spider wasn’t sure, but it looked like the guy had more grey hair than he’d had when he spoke to him yesterday. His face was drawn, with bags under his eye-plugs. “This morning I got a note from Parminder.”
Paradox Resolution Page 12
