Spider went full-tilt straight into an invisible wall. “Shit!” he cried out, hearing and feeling his nose crunch and break. Then, even as that was happening, the rest of his body hit and crumpled and he fell against the wall, sinking to his knees. “Oh fucking bloody shit!” The pain in his nose was blinding, dazzling, in the dark, so intense and bright it was as if he could see by its light. He put his hands over his face, aware of blood emerging through his nostrils, and he slumped there, back to the wall, winded, wheezing, breathing through his mouth, shaking, still feeling all that adrenaline fizzing in his blood, trying to burn off. He tried not to make too much noise as he sat there, in gigantic pain like nothing else he’d ever known, like a religious experience of acute, sticky misery.
Spider struggled back to his feet, fell back, and he tried again, his whole head now throbbing with pain, his vision spinning, but he tried to look around. Where were those bastards? He was sure they were just behind him. Meanwhile, where was he? It looked like he was still in the middle of the field. Far as he could tell, it went on forever. So what had he run into? He reached out, and yes, there it was, solidity. It felt warm. It must be a display surface illusion of some kind, because he could feel, now he took a moment, despite his heaving breath, his racing heart, under his trembling hands a surface studded with hexagonal patterns that he guessed were some kind of emitters. Fine, who cares? he thought to himself, and set out again, trying to run, as best he could, this time keeping his right hand against the wall, searching for some kind of exit. Behind him, he heard Stapleton and his goons. They were close now; he could hear them breathing hard. He was glad they didn’t have dogs. That at least was lucky. He kept going, found a corner, and kept going, following the new surface, churning along, his face on fire, his mouth all dried out from the mouth-breathing, his teeth starting to ache now—
The wall gave way. He tumbled in a tangle into the recessed exit, landing hard on his left shoulder — felt something in the joint go thunk — then the side of his swollen face hit a wall or the floor, and it was like a fireworks of pain going off in his head, glittering bursts of agony, and he lay here, howling with surprise and dismay, and he tried, despite everything, to get back to his feet. The ground under him was solid, a real floor, but when he put some weight on his shoulder it, too, sent up a particularly spectacular blast of pain, and he gasped, but struggled up anyway, knowing he was in real trouble, but his feet slipped, and he toppled once more, hitting his nose.
Then, the smell of breath and sweat. Stapleton and the goons had arrived. “Mr. Webb,” Stapleton said, pausing for breath. “How lovely to see you again.” The voice came out from the dark. Then a boot collided with the side of Spider’s head, a study in the physics of momentum, but not for Spider. He was out cold, lost to darkness.
Chapter 19
And, boom, back in the Time Machine, at the controls, in a lot of pain. Iris was sitting up on the control panel. Oh, God, his head. Hard to focus on anything. Coughing hard; taste of blood. Very little light. The pain. It was everywhere. Last thing he remembered … curled up on the floor? A moment of sickening pain-beyond-pain. And they’d arrived somewhere. The air smelled different. He could taste things, in the air, but his nose — God, everything hurt. Mostly what he could smell was blood, but that was just him, he realized only after a long, puzzling moment. The room spun. The air tasted metallic. Oily. Iris was getting down off the Machine. “Is this it?” she said. “Doesn’t look very futuristic.” Then she turned, saw Spider, who was starting to subside back into the dark. “Oh, God! Spider, oh my God…” He became aware, as from far away, that Iris was trying to get him out of the Time Machine, without hurting him, which was impossible. She was talking to him, reassuring him, telling him to take it easy, it was going to be fine, just hang on a bit and she’d get him out of the damned thing, and there you go, good you can stand on your own, although — oh, whoa! Okay, maybe not on your own. She helped him to the floor. You’ve probably got a concussion. When did this happen? Did you see what happened? God, Spider. The floor was hard and cold. He could see fuzzy red lights. Everything hurt. My God, what happened to you? You look like, God, you’ve just been smashed to bits here. Jesus Christ, Spider. What you need is an ambulance, and I’m pretty sure they don’t have those here. Look, maybe we can get you back to our own time, do you think? No, probably not a good idea to move you again, not in this state. Okay, think, Street. Think. Let’s see. Patient is breathing. Good. Very good. Blood loss not serious, not hemorrhaging. Good. Spider, you still with me? He murmured something. It was dark, and cold. He was shivering, and shivering hurt. Machinery, all kinds of wicked machinery up there, tucked away, in the ceiling, he could see it, kind of. One of his ears was a howl of piercing agony, and he wondered if he’d lost an eardrum, maybe. He wanted to hold his hand over his ear, but moving his arm … oh, God, no, that wasn’t going to happen. He could hardly move that arm at all.
He was dizzy. He was barely awake. His head, the whole upper part of his body, hurt so much it felt normal, like it had always felt this way. When he went to speak, what came out sounded pathetic and stupid, and he was self-conscious, and resolved to speak no more. It embarrassed him to be like this in front of Iris. He tried to look around, but could only make out dim red lights, darkness, cables draping down out of the dark ceiling, a sense of huge, restless machines over his head. He let his head settle back against the floor. “Are you cold? Do you feel cold? Spider? Can you hear me?”
Nodding, he managed to open his mouth enough to say, “Fine. Fanks.”
“What happened to you? You were fine, just a minute ago, back home, you were just fine, I saw you, you were fine!”
He shrugged as expressively as he could without killing himself with fresh waves of nausea-inducing pain.
Iris crouched there next to him. He’d never seen this side of her. She looked upset at what had happened to him. She looked, and this was a little bit frightening, even: she looked lost, confused. Working through checklists in her mind, asking him first-aid questions, testing what he could see and what he couldn’t, checking his hearing, did he know who she was — of course he knew who she was! Did he know they had been in a time machine? All these questions. She examined the rest of his body, looking for signs of injury. From her examination, and the way he flinched and gasped when she touched various parts of his body, it became clear that Spider had been given a sound thrashing. Oh yeah, that’s right. He remembered running in a field. Still, he was awake, more or less, fading in and out, and he could see, a little, though his eyes were mostly squeezed shut from swelling. In his mouth he could feel loose teeth, and teeth fragments. When he tried spitting them out, it only made everything hurt worse, so he considered swallowing them, revolting as the idea seemed. The best news from Iris’s examination was that he could still feel his fingers and toes. His back was greatly abused, but still working. He would, in time, get over all of this.
“Help me, Spider. Promise me…” Dickhead had told him. “Avenge me,” he’d said. It was funny, thinking about it, in the way that things can be bitterly funny when there’s bugger-all you can do about them, when you’re helpless before limitless power, when it’s either laugh or cry and cut your wrists. He remembered Dickhead, how something had happened to his neck, that there had been a whooshing-swooping sound, like a skipping rope moving at full speed, followed by Dickhead’s whole head, huge like Uluru, sliding sideways, not like Uluru at all. And Dickhead still aware, reaching out to Spider to tell him, to remind him, of his responsibility to “Kill John Stapleton”. Fuck, Dickhead! How the hell do you expect me to kill anybody like this? Spider thought. A newborn baby would have a better shot at the bastard!
Then, two things happened, neither of them good:
The first was that the room abruptly lit up with spinning red lights, klaxons blared ocean-liner-loud — so loud he felt the fragments of his teeth vibrating in his mouth — followed by Iris staring up, w
ide-eyed, as the machinery in the ceiling unfolded out of the darkness — robot arms with laser-guided power tools and grabbers — and set about dismantling the Time Machine.
Iris screamed, “No! No you fucking don’t! That’s our way home! You — stop that!” She had her side-arm out, aimed into the guts of the darkness, held in both shaking hands. She fired once, then twice. The gun’s retort rang and rang in the confined space of the room. Spider’s bad ear felt like someone had driven a knife into it; the other merely felt abused. And he smelt burnt propellant. Iris frantically tried pulling the robotic arms away from the Time Machine, but was gently pushed back. A recorded voice asked her, politely, in English, to stand well back, behind the black and yellow striped line, for her own safety.
She came to Spider, knelt next to him, in tears. “I couldn’t. I tried, but—” She wiped at her eyes with the heel of her hand, delicate, careful.
Spider reached out, took her free hand. It was cold. She was shaking. He squeezed, which was about all he could do. Iris did not pull away.
The second bad thing was this: some unknown time later, long after the ceiling-machines had folded back up into the seething mechanical darkness overhead, taking the parts of the Time Machine with them, a door opened, revealing John Stapleton. Iris said, “Who the hell are you?” and Spider, still fading in and out, losing all track of time, managed a brief glimpse, and recognized him. Spider tensed up, and felt unwanted adrenaline blast through his abused body, making his heart go nuts as he lay there. He tried to tell Iris who the guy was, but he couldn’t speak properly, and it came out all wrong, and hurt. Stapleton looked different, Spider noticed. This time he was a tall strapping fellow, looking a far cry from the hunted, refugee figure he’d met in that virtual Calgary diner, and even a long way from the leather-clad crime lord figure he’d met in Dickhead’s Display Room. This version of Stapleton was clearly older, and not in a good way, more worn, bone-tired, and was dressed in a white jumpsuit which appeared to be glowing in the low light. This, whenever this was, was clearly years and years later after Spider had last seen the murdering bastard. And, thinking that, Spider wondered if this version of Stapleton still had that invisible wire device that he had used to slice off Dickhead’s enormous head.
Iris had her side-arm out and up and directed at Stapleton before Spider could so much as blink. “Stop right there,” Iris said, starting to get up. She positioned herself between Stapleton and Spider.
Stapleton stopped, looked momentarily embarrassed and said, “Oh, I’m sorry,” and put up his hands. “I just wanted to say hi to our newest arrivals. We’ve been waiting for a long time. Especially for you, Spider Webb. The Spider Webb. Wow!” John Stapleton seemed to relish the significance of Spider’s name. “I never realized, that the first time we met, who you were, and, truly, I’m sorry about that. It was a misunderstanding. We got caught up in what we were trying to do, and it’s a damn shame you got hurt like that. I’m really sorry. And of course, for you, it’s like it just happened, yes? Yeah, thought so. As I say, please accept my apologies. We have a sickbay. Really, there’s no time to lose. Things are getting a bit tight.”
“Just who the fuck are you, again?” Iris said, still aiming the gun at Stapleton.
Stapleton looked surprised that she didn’t recognize him. “Spider didn’t tell you? Ah, well, I’m John Stapleton. Hi.” He smiled, all charm, hands still more or less up, as he approached her. “You’re Inspector Iris Street, of the Western Australian Police Service, right? I’ve never been to Australia, I hear it’s really a lot like Canada…”
“Just stop right there.” Iris said. “What happened to our time machine? Give it back, and we’ll be on our way, out of your hair. No problems. No questions. Okay?”
Stapleton took another step forward as he spoke, doing his best to sound friendly, even a bit folksy. “Well, that’s a bit of a problem. We need the parts. All the other time travelers who’ve come here, they’ve had to give up their machines, too. Every bit helps, you know?”
“Oh no, we’re not staying. Spider needs urgent medical attention.”
“Yes, and he’ll get it, once you put down the gun.”
Spider managed to rasp out, “He attacked … me.”
Stapleton said, “What was that?”
Iris was looking at Stapleton and at Spider, back and forth. To Spider, she said, “He did this? How could he possibly have done this? You’ve been with me the whole time.”
“It … wath him. Thome goonth. They…”
Iris turned back to Stapleton. “Is that true? You did this to him?”
Spider was starting to drift away. His eyes felt heavy. His back hurt. He wanted to go to sleep. But somewhere in the back of his mind he knew that sleeping when concussed was not a good idea, but he wasn’t sure he was concussed, not really, and in any case, he was terribly tired. He could hear Iris and Stapleton still going at it. Iris was sounding more and more alarmed, but trying to hide it. Spider could hear it in her voice, and he was sure Stapleton could, too. He tried to tell Iris what had happened, but realized, after a bit, that he dreamed that part, that he had actually been asleep, so he tried to snap back awake, to shake himself out of it. Then, darkness, and torn dream fragments, and a gunshot. And he was awake. “You stupid bitch!” That was Stapleton, shouting. Iris yelling, “I told you to stay where you were and explain yourself.”
Stapleton: “You fucking shot me!”
Iris: “You’ll live.”
Stapleton: “Jesus! You shot me!”
Spider, his good ear still ringing, and his bad ear screaming, tried to contort himself, to see what had happened. He could smell the propellant from Iris’ gun. She really had shot the bastard! Good for her! he thought. Plug him for me, too, would you?
Iris: “Keep your hands where I can see them. Yes, that’s it. Now. Some straight answers.”
Stapleton: “I’m bleeding out here.”
Iris: “Is there someone I could call for you?”
Spider thought she sounded hesitant there, nervous. The situation going out of control. He imagined Iris cursing herself for shooting the guy. Stapleton said something Spider didn’t catch. For what seemed only a moment Spider blacked out again, during which he experienced a sensation of movement, of being swept along. There was a voice muttering something about “BP”. He thought he heard Iris say “Hang in there, Spider. Just hang in a little longer. Come on, mate. Make us an effort”. He also, and he was sure he was dreaming at this point, the sort of dream where you know perfectly well you’re in a dream, and you can sit back, inside the dream, and watch the craziness unfurl around you, he thought he heard Iris tell him, “Come on, Spider. I love you, okay? You got me to say it. I swore I would never say it. But, God, come on, mate. Come back to me. It’s been over a week now. I love you, I love you, I love you!” Yes, that was some strange dream he was having. Iris, he knew, would never say something as sentimental as “I love you”. She wasn’t that kind of woman. Even when they had their brief affair, those words had never entered into it. He had almost said it once, he remembered, in the so-called “throes of passion”, but held back, because he knew it would only piss her off, and he didn’t want that. At the time, though, he’d believed it, and felt it. Molly had been “difficult”, stuck on a commission project that wasn’t going anywhere, and the block was making her crazy. Even when he was home, she was almost always off in her studio, swearing, throwing things round, swearing some more. It was hard. She’d go to bed early, sleep badly, toss and turn, get up in the wee hours to go and throw stuff around some more, swearing something awful, always in clear, ringing tones that only emphasized the foulness.
So, yes, Iris telling him she loved him. Clearly a dream. But she’d said something else, hadn’t she? Just then. What was that she’d said? He tried, from inside the dream, to rewind and listen again, and yes, there it was. She’d said, “…it�
�s been weeks now.” Weeks? What? Only a moment ago he’d been lying on the floor and the Time Machine had been taken apart, and Iris shot bloody Stapleton — yay, Iris! — and now it’s weeks later? That didn’t make a speck of sense. She must be mistaken. Then again, it was a dream. Of course, when you’re in a dream, everything makes perfect sense. Yes, of course you’d be bobbing for apples with the British Prime Minister; doesn’t everybody? Only when you wake up and you think about it, and you realize, and you go, “What the hell?”
In any case, Spider thought it might be wise to try and wake up now. He was in control of this whole thing, so getting his body to wake up should be easy. Here we go, on the count of three, one, two, three, and wake!
Nothing. Nothing at all. He had a faint sense of Iris sitting there with him, talking to him, reading to him, telling him things about her life here in Colditz. Something about working on repairing a crashed timeship. She knew nothing much about chronotechnology, just what she needed to know in order to do her job in the Time Crime Unit back home, but she could work out plans of action, delegate jobs, prioritize manpower, work out schedules and timetables, and she was a whiz with project management. She told him one day that John Stapleton “wasn’t such a bad old stick once you got to know him a bit.” And it was “such a shame about his wife”. Which, when Spider heard it, he hardly took any notice. Spider at that point was a long way from anywhere, arguing with Dickhead about some damn thing, and he heard Iris as if from a great, echoing distance. Even so, he put Dickhead on hold, and paid closer attention. Iris was talking about John Stapleton, who wasn’t such a bad old stick … Iris? At that point Spider began to think about things. He’d been wandering around in the wilderness of his unconsciousness for quite some time, it seemed to him. Dickhead aside, it was lonely, and strange. And now Iris was getting cozy with Stapleton? All at once he felt himself banging on the underside of an ice floe, struggling to breathe, trying to get someone out in the world to see him, struggling to get out of his own useless head.
Paradox Resolution Page 25
