Paradox Resolution

by K. A. Bedford

  “Get to the bloody point,” he said.

  “The thing is, they reckon there is a real chance that this, whatever the hell it is, this ‘Vore’, or whatever, this thing that happened to Stapleton last night, is way, and I mean, way, beyond anything we can realistically handle. Even with the whole Tactical Response Group on hand. Even, for God’s sake, if we had the Army involved. We just don’t know what we’re up against with this thing, Spider. They reckon even nuking it wouldn’t be enough to slow it down.”

  “DOTAS knows about Vores?”

  “I suspect it’s more Section Ten that knows about them, but yeah.”

  “Nukes, huh? Hope it doesn’t come to that.” Last Spider heard Australia did not possess nuclear weapons. Not officially.

  “Yeah. Me, too.”

  “So,” he said. “A quiet night in, then.” He was shaking his head, disgusted. He had been sort of looking forward to the regress op, terrifying peril aside.

  “DOTAS said they would pass along a full report, as a matter of courtesy.”

  “Decent of them,” Spider said, fuming.

  “You think it’s at all possible Molly’s involved?”

  “I’m not sure what to think at the moment, to be honest.”

  “But surely there’s just no way—”

  “Yeah, I know. And yet, that’s what Stapleton told me.”

  “And you believe him?”

  “Yes, and no. I dunno.”

  Iris shook her head. “Jesus, Spider. The shit you attract, it’s incredible.”

  “Must be my aftershave.” Which was very glib and all, but inside, he was seething. DOTAS had specifically mentioned him, a washed-up cop/time machine repairman, of all people, in their memo! It was infuriating. He tried a bit of pacing back and forth, rubbing his face, trying to figure out what to think. What if Stapleton had lied to him about Molly and the Vore? What if he was just messing with Spider’s head — yes, but why would he do that? He was trying to win me over, to get my help to save his life. It made no sense for him to lie to me about Molly. If he really had met me in Colditz, he’d know my feelings about Molly. And, thinking that, he had a moment of chilly clarity: yes, and he’d know Molly was my weak point. Yes, he went on, thinking hard, but even so. He’d have to know how I’d react when he mentioned her; that I would do what in fact I did, and just punch out of the entire thing. He can’t have wanted me to punch out. Could he? Spider stood there, frowning, struggling with the crazy ideas that were his current reality. For only the nth time today, he wished he could get back into the Calgary simulation to talk to Stapleton in a “safe” environment. “Hey,” he wanted to say to the guy, “what did you mean by that crack about Molly ‘merging’ with this captive Vore? You just pulling my leg, or what?”

  “So,” he said to Iris, “did the DOTAS memo say just what they’d do if we, well, I, show up tonight anyway?”

  Iris rubbed the skin under her eyes. She looked exhausted. “I suspect they could do anything from taking you into custody as a possible terrorist, and letting you stew in a Section Ten dungeon for a week or two with no light and no contact with anyone, to simply shooting you dead.”

  “Because I’m such a terrible threat to them?”

  “Because you’re too personally involved.”

  “Because of Molly.”

  “They clearly know stuff I don’t, is all I can think,” she said, stretching and yawning. “God, I could go for a coffee right now. Last one’s worn off.”

  So, he thought, that’s that, then. The Feds stick their noses in, decide that helpless, pathetic little WAPOL couldn’t run a chook raffle, let alone handle a major incident like this, and he, Spider, was stuck. It felt like a personal rebuke, the hand of the federal government reaching down from the clouds above and pushing him back into his proper place. Which only left one key question for him, one he did not share with Iris, who was staring at Molly’s house again, shaking her own head with dismay, no doubt thinking she was going to have to go in there. Spider was thinking about the Feds: you want me out of that regress op tonight? Try and bloody stop me.

  Yeah, and what if in the process of trying to find out what had happened to Stapleton he wound up drawing the Vore to him, all, “Oh, there you are!” Which presented a conundrum all of its own: how to save the Canadian’s life? Could it be done? He doubted it, if he was honest with himself: Lone time machine repairman up against something from beyond the universe.

  “So, what’s the story here?” Iris said to him, pulling out her handheld. She already had a copy of the statement he’d given to the sergeant, but wanted to hear it from him. Spider, now that he had some kind of half-baked plan for tonight, settled the hell down, focused on the present situation, and did his best to explain what he could, that he’d come here and found the house in its present state. Door ajar. Nasty stink. Bad vibe. Probable trouble. Iris nodded, and said that was pretty much her impression, too. Spider thought it was remarkable that she could put aside her own feelings about having the regress op taken out of her hands, and focus on the job at hand. He doubted he’d be able to compartmentalize the two matters quite so effectively, given the same situation. He watched Iris and Mullens confer a moment about the best way to get into the house, then she sent Mullens around the back. Iris left him at the car, with strict instructions to stay put until she gave the all-clear. Spider sulked a little. But as Iris approached the door, the strength of the odor was too much. She recalled Mullens, and got him to grab the respirators from the boot of the car. “Right, take two!” Iris said, her voice muffled by the respirator, and approached the front door while Mullens once more went around the back. Sidearm drawn and ready, Iris eased the front door open, stepped inside, and was soon lost to view. Watching her go, Spider found himself feeling like he should be right there with her, or even instead of her, that if there was trouble in that house, he couldn’t bear the thought of Iris on the receiving end of it. And that stopped Spider cold, thinking about it. He knew Iris was capable of looking after herself; it wasn’t that. But that he “couldn’t bear the thought”? What? His heart boomed in his chest, and he was biting his lip. Spider, mate, what the hell’s going on with you? he was thinking, and the truth was he no longer knew for sure.

  Chapter 16

  Spider watched and waited. Fidgeted. Paced back and forth. Tried not to brood about the canceled regress. Tried not to think about the great knot in his chest. The way things were going today, the worst day Spider could remember in a long while, he could wind up losing Iris, too.

  Iris had kept him going these past several months. She’d helped him with the terrible dreams he’d started having after he returned from the End of Time, and got him some free counseling and treatment. She was one of the very few good friends he had. And now she was in that house, where whatever the hell it had been that had killed Stapleton might be waiting (what if, he thought, it wasn’t a Vore at all, but something else?). The thought was too much. He decided to hell with it, he was going in, regardless, but he hadn’t taken two steps before the young female constable appeared before him, her gun-hand resting on the butt of her holstered Taser, ordering him to wait by the car until further notice. She was a tiny thing, all of 150 centimeters, and probably weighed about as much as a pencil, but that look on her face and the tone in her voice, stopped Spider where he stood. The last thing he wanted was another Tasering. He went back to the car, his hands up, look, officer, nothing to see here, I’ll be good. He did say, “It’s just, it’s my ex-wife’s house.”

  “Just wait here until Inspector Street gives the all-clear, Mr. Webb.”

  So he waited, and waited. Five minutes passed, then ten. Wasn’t it taking a bit too long? Shouldn’t Iris and Mullens have emerged by now? What if they’d come to some kind of harm? Then again, he’d heard no sign of any kind of trouble: no gunshots, no screams. Just that vile odor that stung his nose
and made his eyes water. When fifteen minutes had passed, Spider could hardly bear the tension. He started edging his way down the brick-paved path to the porch, just so I can can hear better, he thought. Who knows, things might be such that Iris and Mullens couldn’t call out, and maybe never had time to get off a warning shot, or maybe—

  Just then, the front door eased open, and the two senior cops came out, holstering their sidearms. They pulled off their respirators once they were clear of the house, but even so, they still coughed, and when Iris came over, Spider could see her eyes were red and she was sniffing as if with a head cold.

  “Good God,” she said, shaking her head. Mullens, Spider saw, stood a couple of meters back, hands on his knees, coughing hard. Spider thought the bloke might throw up, and secretly hoped he would.

  “So, what did you find?” The suspense was killing him. It was all he could do to keep his voice calm and reasonable.

  Iris was taking in great, deep breaths of fresh air. “God, I can still smell it, I think it’s on my clothes, God…” she said, wiping her nose, “It’s bad. It’s real bad.”

  “How bad? Are there—?”

  She grabbed his shoulders to settle him down. “It looks like our mystery-thing has trashed the place. Like in a frenzy. All of those, artworks? The ones you told me about? They’re utterly destroyed. It’s like they were the focus for the attacks. Sorry, Spider.”

  “Her sculptures?”

  “Yeah. Just, just…” She struggled for a word that was both suitably descriptive and yet not too disturbing for Spider. “Just awful.”

  “God.”

  “Mind you,” she said, wiping at her nose again with a tissue. “There was one thing.”

  Mullens piped up at this point. “The goldfish is fine. No worries! Swimming about in his tank, fins look a bit rough around the edges, and, God, those eyes, geez.”

  It took Spider a moment to grasp what Mullens had said. “The fish is all right? Everything else is trashed like a bomb hit it, but the fish is all right?”

  Iris said, “It’s baffling.”

  Spider grasped the ungraspable, and he began, at last, to see. “It is Molly,” he said, amazed to have confirmation, looking at the house, thinking about Molly’s disappearance in New York, and that weird phone call that he had been sure was a local call. “This is Molly’s doing.”

  Mullens looked at Iris, hoping she would clue him in, but Iris was focussed on Spider. She said, with the greatest compassion, “Spider, no, just no. Even if she is here in Perth, and so far my inquiries have not indicated anything suggesting she is — there’s nothing in the system to suggest she re-entered the country recently — Spider, it’s just not possible—”

  “It is Molly. I’ll bet you a million dollars. Why else spare the stupid bloody fish?” I’ll place a fair-sized bet on the divorce papers still being intact, too, he thought.

  “No. You don’t understand. The scale of the destruction, it’s—”

  Mullens said, “It’s like someone stuck a chunk of C4 on each of those sculpture things. There’s just … there’s just nothing that could do that, not a middle-aged female artist, anyway.”

  “And anyway,” Iris pointed out, “if it was Molly — and I don’t really believe it was, okay? — but if it was, why would she destroy her own work like that?”

  That was a good point, and he had no ready answer. Molly had sweated blood over those ghastly things. They were her life. They were the work that got her noticed by Stéphane, and that led to MoMA. Why destroy them? Surely they meant more to her than Mr. Popeye, who was, as far as Spider could tell, a passing fancy at best.

  Iris was beaming photos she’d taken inside the house over to Spider’s watchtop, which chimed as they arrived. Spider flicked through them, noted the destruction. The house was no longer habitable, he could see that. It would have to be demolished, or rather, the demolition would have to be completed. The furniture had been reduced to splinters and bits of unrecognizable wood and metal. The sculptures did look as if they had indeed been blown up. Spider zoomed and panned around some of the wide shots, and found recognizable bits — fingers, arms, and legs — embedded in the living room wall. And yet, even with all of this shocking destruction before his eyes, Spider struggled to feel the full impact of it. There was so little in these images that he recognized it could have been any trashed house. The only thing missing was foul and unimaginative graffiti on the walls. Then he found the shots of Mr. Popeye, caught in a thoughtful moment, perhaps, contemplating his crazy owner as she rampaged about the house destroying everything that had ever meant anything to her, as if she was ruling a line under her old life, all of her old life, as if she was never coming back.

  Yes, that. Exactly. As if she was never coming back. Spider had dreaded, when she’d told him she was going to New York, that she would never come back to boring old Perth.

  Only Molly would have spared Mr. Popeye’s life. An entity from beyond time and space wouldn’t care, but Molly would. It reinforced the thought that the Molly part of the Mollyvore merger might be reachable, that she might actually have some control over what the Mollyvore thing did, which was a startling thought in itself. How had she not simply been destroyed in the process of merging with the Vore? How had she survived to have this much control over their activities? Would a Vore, left to its own devices, even bother with trashing a suburban home in Perth? Molly, he thought, might be reachable. That led him to wonder if, maybe, the merging might be reversible. Could he get her back? The thought left him standing there, agog, staring at the dying grass on the front lawn. Could Molly be rescued? What if what she/it had done here was Molly’s way of crying out for help? Drawing attention to the most personal part of her life so that the likes of Spider… He let the thought peter out, unconvinced. Really, how desperate are you, Spider, he thought, that even when presented with the clearest evidence in the world that Molly has more than moved on with what passes for her life, you still imagine yourself a knight in shining armor, ready to steal her back from the clutches of the fiendish bug-eyed monster? Just how sad is that?

  Chagrined, he began to question his decision to try and crash the regress op. He thought, is it really, in the end, any of my business what’s happened to Molly? Even if the merging happened against her will, did he really have any standing in the matter? Would she thank him for interceding? Probably not, he thought, in a moment of understanding that left him feeling a little unsteady on his feet, beginning at last to adjust to the idea of a life without Molly.

  “Spider,” Iris said, looked at him hard. “Spider, what aren’t you telling me?”

  “Iris?”

  “Spider, come on now. This is getting ridiculous. I’m spending all my time chasing after you in one crazy situation after another!”

  He could see she had a good point. “Yeah, sorry, Iris. It’s been a weird few days.”

  “Weird few days is right! Christ!”

  “I said I’m sorry. It’s just…”

  She held up a hand. “Just get yourself sorted out, Spider. I can’t keep coming to bail you out of this shit.”

  “I understand, I—”

  “I used to be in Major Crime, Spider!” she said, trying not to shout. “You know what that means?”

  He felt small. “I know what that means, yes.” Homicide, kidnapping, armed robbery, the big stuff, the glamorous stuff. The cases that made the news, that made coppers look good. Even though the Time Crimes Unit dealt with similar matters, it was not the same. They were second-best, handed the leftovers of the media coverage. He knew the demotion would burn an ambitious cop like Iris.

  “Now I’m stuck on bloody Time Crimes, and it’s all this bloody bullshit, every single day, time machine this, time machine that. God! The stupidity! And that’s just on a ‘normal’ day, Spider.” She made very elaborate, sarcastic air-quotes around “no
rmal”. “And now all this! One crazy thing after another. Dickhead’s severed head, Patel’s missing kids! This business with your ex, for Christ’s sake Spider, your ex! Take the hint: Molly’s gone. She’s moved on. She’s not coming back. Open your stupid eyes Spider, see what’s out there, you might get a surprise!”

  It stung him to hear all this. He knew she was right, dead right. He was abusing their friendship. It was a humbling thing to face up to. He slumped against the car, and said nothing, feeling guilty.

  Iris was next to him checking her messages on her watchtop, shaking her head, breathing hard, biting her lower lip.

  “You’re right,” Spider said.

  “Am I?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, good-o!”

  He pushed himself clear of the car, and went to get his bike, which he wheeled across Molly’s lawn. “I’ll be off, then. Sorry to bother you.” Not that he had the first clue what he was going to do next, but it seemed like the right thing to do.

  Iris looked up, confused a moment, then understanding. “Oh, now hold it right there, soldier. You are not dismissed.”

  That tone in her voice stopped him. He glanced across at her. “I’ll take care of everything,” he said. He’d imposed too much on Iris. It was time to stand up for himself. “I’m sorry I got you involved.”

  She came after him. “Oh, no.”

  “None of this should be your problem, Iris.”

  “Yes, you’re right, but it is. Because I’m the Time Crime Go-To Girl, so it all winds up in my lap, regardless.”

  “Even so. I have to move on, like you said.”

  Iris grabbed the frame of his bike, took it out of his grip, and wheeled it back to the front of the garage. She came back, took Spider by the shoulder, and marched him to her car, where she pushed him against the driver’s side door, hard enough that he nearly lost his balance. She said, “You are staying right where I can see you, full bloody time, starting now. You got that?”