Max Quick: The Bane of the Bondsman (Max Quick Series Book 3)

by Mark Jeffrey

  When she reached his stair — Cody Chance’s stair, she could hardly even think the words! — Casey took a moment to catch her breath. She fixed her hair and wiped the sweat from her face. Carefully, she re-holstered the Red Roses.

  Her eyes drifted to the motorcycle.

  Written on the gas tank, in Western lettering, was the name, Trigger.

  A stab of adrenalin kicked her heart.

  That had been what Cody Chance had named his wooden bicycle. He was probably the only cowboy in history to ride a bike instead of a horse. Horses could be spooked, Cody reasoned. They could throw their riders. Especially in a gunfight. Bikes were safer.

  Further proof that this was Cody Chance.

  Not the she needed it.

  She nearly smiled her face in half. Giddy happiness flooded through her. It was him! She bounded up the stair in three strides and knocked playfully on the door.

  It opened almost immediately.

  The Mozart Requiem of the final gunfight with Blackthorne came flooding back into her head at that moment. Her breath caught in her throat. The dust of Arturo Gyp seemed to be all around her once again.

  Because Cody Chance stood in the doorway before her.

  She couldn’t believe it for a good long moment. Then, she rushed forward and threw her arms around his neck, weeping uncontrollably with happiness.

  “Cody! I knew it was you! You’re alive! You’re here!”

  It was a full minute before she realized that Cody wasn’t returning her embrace. In fact, she got the distinct impression of cringe from the muscles in his body.

  At that, she withdrew. Did she repulse him? Was she sweaty from the run over here? Was that it?

  But as she saw his ice-blue eyes, she knew it was more than that. He was confused.

  “Cody,” Casey said. “It’s me. It’s Casey. Casey Cyranus.”

  “Casey …?” It was his voice, alright. But it was like he was saying her name for the very first time, as though the syllables were foreign to his tongue.

  “Right. From Arturo Gyp! Remember? Blackthorne? Logan White-Cloud?”

  “Who …?” he said.

  At that, a sense of whirling horror gripped Casey. “The Whitby! The Grande! Are you telling me you don’t remember any of that?”

  “No,” he said. “And my name’s not Cody.”

  He regarded her now like she was a crazy person. He was inching back into his house, fingers clearly ready to slam the door shut at a moment’s notice.

  Panic welled up in Casey’s throat. My name’s not Cody. He didn’t know his own name? And … his voice sounded different! Where was his cowboy accent? He sounded almost … preppy?

  “We were together. In Arturo Gyp. You and me,” Casey argued in gasps, as if she only needed to say the words forcefully enough and they would be so. “We were together!”

  But that seemed to sting him. He was shaking his head. “No. No we weren’t, Miss.” That Miss hurt. It put distance between them, a distance of ice. “My name’s not Cody. It’s Camden. And I’m —”

  “Your bike! You named your bike ‘Trigger’!” Casey stabbed a finger at the motorcycle. Her eyes brimmed with tears.

  “I — named? Oh, the motorcycle. I bought it like that. The last owner painted that ‘Trigger’ on there, not me. I have no idea why he did that. I’ve been meaning to get it repainted. The police department doesn’t approve of me using if officially,” he mumbled.

  Casey put her hands to her forehead as if it would soon explode. She shook her head.

  “And you and me …” he said awkwardly, fumbling for the words. “We ain’t never been together.”

  “Yes we have,” Casey insisted. “You just don’t remember.”

  He looked around nervously. “Uh. No. We —”

  The sound of a woman’s voice cut the air. “Camden? Who is that at the door?”

  A glint of panic danced in his gaze. “No one, honey! Just a someone … someone selling something!”

  Honey?

  Cody — Camden — looked at her painfully. He held up his hand. A white gold wedding band circled his finger. “Listen Miss. I’m married. That’s my wife. I don’t know who you think I am, but you’ve got the wrong guy.”

  “But … Cody … No!” This couldn’t be happening. He was alive, here, but he didn’t remember? The Bondsman’s world was a nightmare after all. It would have been better if he had stayed dead. Because this was worse. A lot worse.

  The long coat Enki had given her was caught by a sudden blast of wind. Cody or Camden looked down and saw the guns at her side. Shock filled his eyes.

  “Listen. You need to leave. Now. Or I’ll call Fell Simon’s men about those … those … things you’re wearing. You got me? Go! Get out of here! And don’t come back here ever again!” Fear soaked his eyes.

  He slammed the door in her face.

  She cracked in half.

  I’m married.

  This was worse than when he had died. At least then, it hadn’t been his choice. He’d died defending her, he’d died trying to kill the unkillable Blackthorne. And Cody would have done anything to live, to be with her still.

  Slamming a door in her face would have been unthinkable for the real Cody Chance.

  For a moment, she considering drawing the Red Roses and shooting her way through the door. Her magnificent weapons could reduce it to sawdust in an eyeblink.

  But then what? She couldn’t shoot sense into him.

  “Casey.”

  She turned, almost drew again.

  Enki stood there, alone. He wore his deep green Saville Row suit — cleaned now and patched up — with golden cane. He beckoned Casey over.

  “Ah … Maurice and Ian are cleaning up from you shooting the Red Roses back there in Victory Square. There were a few secret policemen who saw. Fortunately, the Ian intercepted them. I sort of blasted the knowledge of how to inflict minor cryptomnesia into both of their heads. Maurice is oddly good at certain things, by the way, including that. Anyway: they’ve been erasing memories and evidence of the incident — and think we’re safe enough.

  “But now, you’ve seen for yourself what has become of Cody Chance in this world. It is enough. Now, come away.”

  Casey stood for a moment and then ran to him. She buried her face in his suit and cried like the world had died.

  “SO YOU LIED to me,” Casey said to Enki. They were back in their hotel room.

  “No,” Enki snapped back. “That is not true. I did not know.”

  Casey considered this for a moment. “Okay. Now that you do know, tell me: exactly what was Arturo Gyp?”

  “We call this reality ‘the Dreamtime’ for a reason,” Enki said, waving his cane at the hotel room around them. “All of reality is just a species of dream. And so it was with Arturo Gyp, as I had said. When that Arch malfunctioned, it knocked you unconscious — but it also lent power to your dream. Power from the Arch flooded your mind, power meant to transport you from one time to another, but instead it was channeled into your dream. As a result, you had a Big Dream.

  “I knew that Sasha had accidentally become locked inside of this Big Dream with you. But now, I see that several other people were drawn into the dream as well. This Camden person was evidently there as well. Except there, he called himself Cody Chance. Or maybe you named him that.”

  “Then why doesn’t he remember?” Casey said.

  “People forget what they dream,” Enki said.

  “But we were there for months,” Sasha interjected. “How could Cody — or Camden — how could he —”

  “His name is Cody,” Casey said bitterly.

  Sasha nodded. “Cody. If Cody was in Arturo Gyp the whole time with us, how was he just asleep for a night out here in the ‘real world’?”

  “He wasn’t,” Ian said. “Last year, Camden was in coma for several weeks.” Ian pointed to a record on his screen. He was logged into the Bondsman’s ‘Informatics’ network via the courtesy terminal the Rosewood Arms provided
in every room. “This protocol is really easy to hack once you know your way around,” Ian sniffed in disdain.

  “What happened to him?” Casey asked.

  “Motorcycle accident,” Ian said. “No helmet. Bloody hell. And he still rides after that?”

  “Well, he wears a helmet now,” Casey said. “So while he was in the coma out here, he was in Arturo Gyp with us? And he thought he was a cowboy?”

  “His consciousness was adrift, confused” Enki said. “Somehow, it was attracted to your Big Dream. Even if you did not create him, I believe that it is likely that you chose him. You brought him into your dream. And your subconscious created a Western town. So, you naturally gave him the role of cowboy. His mind was stunned, and very susceptible to suggestion.”

  “But, hang on a minute, we’re in a different timeline now,” Ian said. “Camden would have had to gone into a coma in the original timeline, not this one. And in the present day, not 1977.”

  Enki shrugged. “Perhaps the malfunctioning Arch originally went to 1977. So when it malfunctioned, it bridged a dream-connection with the people in that time. And as for the timeline change, perhaps you’ve noticed that we are unaffected?”

  “What do you mean?” Ian replied.

  “You retain your memories of the original timeline, before the Bondsman’s alternate timeline was introduced. So do Max, Casey and Sasha. Have you stopped to wonder why that is? Or how you wondered whether there is another Ian Keating out there somewhere running around in this world? Or another Max Quick?”

  “Well I wouldn’t have been born yet,” Ian said, and then sudden worry flashed in his eyes. “But Max … if there is another Max Quick running around out there … and the Bondsman finds him —!”

  “Don’t worry,” Enki said. “There isn’t. There is just one Max here.”

  “How do you know?” Ian asked.

  “The world is a dream, we are the dreamers. Thus, it follows that altering the timeline is about altering consciousness. For most people, when the world re-shapes around them, their consciousness simply gets dragged along with it. The timeline alters for them. But for others, whose minds are strong — or assisted, or protected at the moment of the shift by something like the Pyramid of the Arches, as yours were — timeline changes do not affect them. Rather, the opposite happens. The new timeline accommodates their consciousness.

  “Thus, the moment we passed into the Bondsman’s world, the other versions of us ceased to exist, going back to the moment Max smashed the Machine in 1912, the very moment of timeline was ruptured. Because we are here now, other versions of us with separate memories are incompatible with us. The versions of us here now have the most powerful consciousness, so we trump the other versions.”

  “Never mind the fact that it weirds me out that we erased the young Max, how does —”

  “No,” Enki said. “That is an incorrect way to think of it. We have not erased anyone. Max is still here — somewhere, at any rate. We have erased an alternate past for him, that is all. No version of him has been harmed.”

  “Well that’s comforting, anyway,” Ian said. “But what I was going to ask was, how does this tie into Camden? I mean Cody?”

  “Cody’s mind and Casey’s were strongly linked,” Enki said. “The mark of Arturo Gyp is strong on both of them. Because it was real for Casey, and because this version of her in this timeline trumps any other, the events in this timeline that led to Arturo Gyp as she recalls it must perforce still take place.”

  “So even though this is a new timeline, Cody still had to get put into a coma,” Casey said. “That event could not be changed. That still had to happen somehow.”

  Enki nodded. “Yes. Perhaps in the original timeline he was hit by a car, and that was what put him into a coma. But here, some event was required to occur that replicated the coma — so this time, it was a motorcycle accident. With respect to you, Casey, the tyranny of the page is in some ways still absolute.”

  “Well,” Sasha said, “What do you know? She is a Cyranus, after all!”

  At that, Casey cracked the first smile they had seen out of her in days.

  “I remember when I died,” Maurice said suddenly.

  That sucked the oxygen out of the room. They all turned to him.

  “It was in ‘Nam, man. In 1967. Charlie was all around us, we were in a firefight on all sides. We couldn’t get out. So our own dudes — the United States military, man! They decided to napalm the whole jungle — there was no way they could get us out with choppers in time. They took out a lot of Charlie, sure. But they got us as well.”

  Maurice sniffed and reflected. “I mean, I can see the logic of it and all. But what happened to that ‘no man left behind’ stuff they told us about? I really believed that, man. I wasn’t drafted: I signed up! I believed! And this is what they did to me.”

  “But … you’re not dead,” Ian said carefully. “Nobody killed you.”

  Maurice laughed a little. “No. Not here. Because here there was no Vietnam War. Hell, here, there’s no America. Isn’t that a holler? The world of the Bondsman is a better place for me than our own world!”

  Enki sat down near him. “You remember our timeline? The original timeline?”

  “I heard him sing ‘Penny Lane’. Back at the Shell,” Ian said.

  “Yeah man,” Maurice said. “That’s true. I knew what I was singing. I just wasn’t in the mood to talk about it.”

  “But — but it’s important!” Ian sputtered. “You can recall another timeline like us! We need to know about that!”

  Maurice looked at him piercingly and said, “Listen little English dude. In one timeline, I died. In a war. I don’t usually like to talk about it. Get it?”

  Stung, Ian only nodded. “I — I — I didn’t think of it that way. Sorry.”

  Maurice nodded. “S’alright. I know you didn’t. Just explaining.”

  “Well, now that you’re feeling a little more talkative … would you mind explaining to us how you remember what we do?” Enki asked carefully. “Did you … time travel?”

  “What? No man. Don’t be stupid.” Maurice sighed. “I don’t know how. I died in ‘Nam. And then I was here, presto! In 1967 Bondsman world! And I had, like, two sets of memories. Wham! Just like that. I mean, I was happy to be alive and all, but that was a little disorienting, you know what I mean? I was really freaked out. So I drank a lot. I supposedly had been working this job in the Bondsman’s world all this time, moving boxes in a warehouse — and after I died and split — I mean split into two me’s — well, I got fired for being weird. And drunk, yes, I’ll admit that.

  “But something happened. I got pinched by the secret police. Not for anything I did or for getting fired. They somehow knew I was out of place — weird, somehow. They sensed the two-memories thing or detected it.”

  Enki nodded. “Yes. In a world where thought creates form, a sensitive would sense the disorder in your mind.”

  “Okay,” Maurice continued. “I have no idea what you just said, but yeah: they knew I was weird. I got brought to the damn City-State of the World Emperor! They flew me out in a Sky Chamber and everything.”

  “What happened?” Enki asked.

  “Well I remember going there. I remember they knocked me out and … and … it was like they experimented on me or something. It’s a blur. But then, they let me go. They didn’t hurt me or nothing. The only weird thing is … when I got out, it was 1976. And it only seemed like day or two had passed from my persepective.”

  Enki pulled at his beard, lost in thought. “That is odd. Without knowing more about the Bondsman directly, I can’t explain that. But as to why they captured you in the first place … You were an anomaly. They didn’t understand you. Your mind is powerful, Maurice. In fact … I suspect you may be a genius.”

  “Get out of here,” Maurice said with a laugh.

  “You beat me at chess,” Enki said. “And you beat me every single time. That is not something to discount blithely. I am a ge
nius, if I say so myself. I created mankind — or had a very big hand in genetically shaping the species, at any rate. And I have played chess for many tens of thousands of years. Yet I am a toy to you.”

  “You just … miss opportunities, is all,” Maurice protested.

  “No. It is you who see them where I do not. Your mind is extraordinarily powerful. It resists the re-shaping by the shift in the timeline that has occurred. Not all the way — you did not time travel — but you retain two sets of memories, as a powerful mind would do. And the Bondsman did not expect that — nor did the Archons — but they don’t know what to do about it. So they let you go.”

  “But why not just kill him?” Ian asked. “Sorry. I keep doing this, I know. But wouldn’t that be easier? Round up all the divergent memory people and just purge them from the system?”

  Enki shrugged. “I cannot know all Archontic ends. But it is sure they feel Maurice is useful to them somehow. Perhaps they wish to experiment, see what he does. See if the effect is permanent. Knowing that, they can figure out how to prevent it from occurring again. Wiping out one intellect like this does not mean more may not occur — and they may not know how to locate all of them.”

  “What about Ninti?” Casey asked.

  “Huh?” Enki whirled like someone had just caught him stealing.

  “Ninti,” Casey repeated. “The woman Max and Ian told us about — the one they visited in Connecticut. She has a powerful mind. Hers would have resisted a timeline shift as was well. Right?”

  Enki nodded, still stunned whenever she said the name. “Yes. Yes, she would have. She must be here, somewhere, as well. Though … where ‘Connecticut’ may be said to be here is unsure.” He thought and then added, “Wherever she is, she is deep in a forest, secluded. She is not walking among people. She hates people.”

  “Oh, come off it,” Ian said. “She wasn’t all that bad.”

  Enki rolled his eyes. “You don’t know her like I do.”

  LATER, WHEN EVERYONE had gone to sleep, Casey and Sasha stayed up late, talking.

  “I hate that there’s a Bondman picture over my bed, looking down on me all night,” Sasha said.