TimeSplash

by Storrs, Graham

  TimeSplash

  by

  Graham Storrs

  TimeSplash

  by Graham Storrs

  2nd eBook Edition, Copyright © 2011, Graham Storrs

  ISBN: 978-0-9871867-0-6

  First edition edited by Suzanne Schilit.

  Book design by Graham Storrs

  Cover art by Graham Storrs

  Published by Graham Storrs

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorised, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  Dedication

  Three brilliant and beautiful women are at the heart of everything I do: my mother, Audrey; my wife, Christine; and my daughter, Katherine. I dedicate this book to them.

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank my editor, Suzanne Schilit, without whom this book would have been full of embarrassing mistakes. Of course, any embarrassing mistakes that remain, despite Suzanne’s efforts to rein me in, are all my own work. I'd also like to thank Rod Rivers and Terry Hornby for their invaluable comments on earlier drafts of this book. I owe a debt of gratitude to Lyrical Press, Inc., New York, who published the first edition of this book. I am also immensely grateful to Emma Newman, whose belief in this book was instrumental in bringing it to a wider audience. As well as being a great writer, Emma also read TimeSplash for the audiobook edition, now available from Iambik Audiobooks, Montreal, Canada.

  Table of Contents

  Part I Summer 2047

  Chapter 1: Splashparty

  Chapter 2: The Lob

  Chapter 3: The Splash

  Chapter 4: Time to Kill

  Chapter 5: Arrivals

  Part II Winter 2049-2050

  Chapter 6: Rumours

  Chapter 7: Beijing

  Chapter 8: The TCU

  Chapter 9: Hide and Seek

  Chapter 10: Berlin

  Chapter 11: Hunters and Prey

  Chapter 12: Closing In

  Part III Summer 2050

  Chapter 13: An Invitation

  Chapter 14: Another Invitation

  Chapter 15: Targets

  Chapter 16: Time Enough

  Chapter 17: Plots and Plans

  Chapter 18: Night Time

  Chapter 19: At the Marina

  Chapter 20: Ready to Go

  Chapter 21: False Start

  Chapter 22: TimeSplash

  Chapter 23: Another Chance

  Chapter 24: 1902

  Chapter 25: The British Museum

  Chapter 26: Yankback

  Chapter 27: Unravelling the Past

  About the Author

  About TimeSplash

  Part I

  Summer 2047

  Chapter 1: Splashparty

  The music thundered. So loud it was hard to breathe. The way the dancing crowd heaved in time to the beat made Patty feel nauseous.

  Or was that just fear?

  There had been lots of splashparties. Since she became Sniper’s bitch that’s all they’d done, going from one to another, right across Europe. But she’d never seen a party from up here before. Not from inside the cage.

  “Hey, honey.” Sniper took hold of her jaw and turned her to face him. His gloved fingers were hard. “Relax,” he told her, his smile broad and glamorous. In the maroon leather jumpgear he wore—his trademark colour—he looked like a superhero from a Hollywood vid. Tall, broad shouldered and beautiful, in a youthful, Aryan way. He looked almost heroic, for a dangerous, psychotic killer.

  He spoke unaccented English, with just a hint of a German lilt to betray his origins. “You should smile for the cameras.” His grey-blue eyes flicked toward the gigantic screens behind them, some of which were showing Patty’s frightened face, ten metres high, haloed in bright distortions, pulsing to the driving rhythms of the splashmusik.

  “I don’t think I can do this,” she told him, trying to shake her head. “I shouldn’t have—”

  But his grip tightened, squeezing her cheeks, forcing her lips into a pout. His smile broadened. “Too late, sweetheart.” To emphasise just how late it was, he grabbed the tether that ran between his harness and hers. It was as thick as a finger and as strong as modern technology could make it . His eyes bored into hers, and the anger she saw there made her forget her fear of splashing. For that moment all she feared was that Sniper might despise her, might hate her, might dump her. Desperately, she tried to force a smile onto the lips he was squeezing. With a sneer of laughter, he let her go. The cameras tracked onto him, sensing his movement. He raised his arms in a triumphant gesture, turning to the dancing crowd, fists clenched and eyes blazing.

  “We’re gonna tear the fucking world apart!” he bellowed. An astute teknik fed Sniper’s suit mike into the mix so everyone heard his declaration. The crowd erupted in an answering roar of approval. “We’re gonna rip the fabric of the universe!” he promised them. “We’re gonna shake the foundations of reality!” The crowd went wild, most of them raising their own arms as they screamed and yelled back at him, never once losing the beat as they rose and fell like a mat of weed on an oleaginous sea.

  “Two minutes to lob,” the even voice of a teknik announced. The crowd shrieked in response. A chant started up in time to the music, “Sniper! Sniper! Sniper! Sniper! Sniper!” Patty could barely hear it over the constant thunder of the sound system. Had they turned up the volume? Was that even possible? A choking panic rose up inside her. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t. Two other bricks swaggered around the cage with her and Sniper. She looked at them, seeking support. Hal and T-800 were excited and eager. Hal raised a gloved hand and gave her a thumbs-up, grinning wildly. They were both seasoned splashers. Big name bricks. Not big like Sniper, of course, but well-known. She looked into their faces, hoping for some hint that they would help her get out of there, stop the countdown ticking away on the big screens behind them.

  “I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to lob.” She shouted straight into her suit mike, looking over at the control booth, a small rectangular island in the Sargasso of dancers. “Get me out. Stop the countdown.”

  * * * *

  Over in the relative quiet of the booth, the tekniks considered Patty’s distress. “She’s freaking,” one of them said. “Do we pull her?”

  “Too late,” said Klaatu in a firm voice. Although he was the youngest of them, only seventeen, he knew his was the voice of authority. Klaatu was the uberteknik and a close personal friend of Sniper himself. In the booth, his word was law, and they all knew it. Nevertheless, it was clear the girl was panicking. She was hyperventilating and twisting about as if looking for somewhere to run. Klaatu watched her with still brown eyes. She was a beauty. Drop-dead gorgeous, as all Sniper’s bitches were. This one was younger than most, just fifteen, Sniper had said, and despite her height and her curves, Klaatu believed him. In her close-fitting jumpgear, she looked magnificent. And she’d acted it too when she first went up into the cage, strutting about and showing off for the guys. But her nerve had crumbled. The wet dream supermodel she’d been playing at had given way to the frightened little girl she really was. He could see how pissed off Sniper was getting, trying to ignore her, d
oing his thing for the crowd. Sniper knew the importance of pleasing the crowds. He knew how much a lob cost and how everything depended on the money they made from these events—tickets, dealer concessions, merchandising, all of that. It must be driving him nuts that his bitch was being such a prat. Maybe after this, the big guy would dump her and Klaatu could pick her up, make her his own bitch. It wouldn’t be the first time.

  “One minute to lob,” Klaatu said into the PA mike. Meanwhile, he was buggered if he was going to pull the plug for the sake of one hysterical chick—no matter how gorgeous. Once the lob was over, Sniper could sort her out at the upstream end.

  * * * *

  In the cage, the others were putting on their helmets. Patty watched their calm, sure movements with horror. This couldn’t be happening. The countdown said fifty seconds. Just fifty seconds! She should never have agreed. It had all been bluster, the usual fuck-you bravado that had got her through so many foster homes and care centres. She wanted Sniper to think she was cool, wanted him to see her as more than just another bimbo who needed to be with him. But it was all show. She wasn’t the hard-as-nails tough guy she made herself out to be. All that sassy talk and teasing the guys was someone else. Not her. Even her tag, Patty—after Patty Hearst, some badass terrorist chick from the past—was a lie. Her real name was Sandra. Sandra Malone.

  “Thirty seconds to lob,” said the PA.

  Someone tapped her on the shoulder. She jumped and swivelled round. It was Hal holding up her helmet, urging her to put it on. She couldn’t see his face through his black visor. Hal had been looking at her all week with eyes both hungry and anxious. He fancied her like hell but he daren’t make a move while she was Sniper’s girl. It was always the same with men. They all wanted her, but only the ones like Sniper were arrogant enough to think she’d want them in return. Hal would be no help.

  She turned to Sniper, shouting to be heard. “I’ve got to get out of here!” But her voice was lost in the crashing, howling music, his metalglass-covered features impervious to her pleading. She began pulling at her harness. She had to get this thing off and get out of the cage. She was past caring what Sniper thought. She just had to get free before…

  “Ten! Nine! Eight!” The crowd was counting along with the big timer on the display. In a breathless panic, she heaved at her buckles. “Seven! Six! Five!” Electricity arced across the mesh of the cage—all for show, like the dry-ice “smoke” falling from the cables. Sniper grabbed her wrist, wrenching her hand away from the harness. He pushed her helmet down onto her head. “Stupid little…” he bellowed. She staggered as the helmet slammed down. Its thick padding was all that saved her face from being mashed.

  “Three! Two!” the crowd screamed as she stepped back from Sniper in shock and pain.

  “Oh shit,” was all she had time to say before the displacement field grabbed everyone inside the cage and flung them out of the spacetime she knew, lobbed them, in the jargon of timesplashing, out of the way of time’s normal flow, threw them back, back into the past.

  * * * *

  Out in the crowd, some minutes earlier, Luke and his companion had just arrived.

  “Yeah! Wild!” Spock shouted. He grinned manically, bobbing his head in time to the music. Spock was Luke’s best friend but sometimes he was a complete pain in the arse. Tall, olive-skinned and long-haired, Spock lived to get wasted. His first act on arriving at the splashparty had been to drop two tabs of tempus and it was already beginning to show. On top of the half-bottle of vodka he’d drunk on the long drive over, it was likely he’d be totally incoherent in another ten minutes.

  “We should have got here an hour ago,” Luke grumbled, “instead of driving round and round the Netherlands in the dark ’cause you’re too smashed to read the nav.”

  Splashparties were always held in obscure, out-of-the-way locations. In this case it was in the grounds of an ancient Dutch castle—Castle Eerde—near the town of Ommen. They’d found Ommen easily enough, driving east from the Channel Tunnel depot, but Eerde had been altogether more difficult. If they hadn’t ended up close enough to hear the music, they could have driven around the dark country roads all night.

  Spock dismissed his friend’s complaints with a wave and continued pushing his way toward the front, whooping from the sheer excitement of it. Luke had to smile despite himself. Being out with Spock was sometimes like being out with a very large puppy—and that wasn’t so bad. He’d probably do a tab of tempus himself later, get in the mood, but first he wanted to take in the atmosphere for a while, scope out the chicks, and enjoy the music. The countdown was showing a few minutes to the lob. He tapped Spock on the shoulder and pointed it out. “Far out!” Spock shouted back, his eyes widening into the familiar tempus-induced glaze. All through their increasingly stressful drive, Luke had been worrying that they wouldn’t make it in time. If you missed the lob and the backwash, you’d missed the best part of the night. A couple of girls dancing topless in flashing, animated body-paint grabbed at him as he moved past them. They were cute and stoned and very tempting. He turned to grin at them but kept moving. Plenty of time for that later. When he turned back to face front, he saw the cage for the first time.

  He’d seen Sniper splashing before, at a splashparty in Ireland last year, but even if he hadn’t, he would have recognised him instantly. There wasn’t a kid worth knowing on the planet who didn’t hero-worship the most famous brick of them all. There wasn’t a chick he knew who didn’t have a Sniper poster on her bedroom wall. The lean, muscular body, the almost-white blond hair, the piercing grey eyes and cocksure grin, were part of an image as well-known as any soccer player’s or rock diva’s. The guy was a megastar.

  “Hey, it’s fucking Sniper, man!” Spock yelled, slapping Luke on the chest and bouncing to the thumping music with the endless energy of the seriously wired. But Luke paid him little attention. He had just spotted the girl at Sniper’s side. She was stunning, tall and long-limbed, filling her jumpgear like it was sprayed onto her, with long black hair and the full lips of a Spanish princess.

  That a big-name brick had a beautiful woman with him was hardly a surprise—even when she was as beautiful as this one. Guys like Sniper had their pick of women, although Luke had never heard of a brick taking his bitch on a splash. Even more peculiar, in the big-screen closeup, despite the heavy makeup, he could see she was just a young girl—younger than he was, and Luke was only seventeen. And he saw something else, too, something he had never seen in a brick. Ever. He saw fear in the girl’s eyes.

  He grabbed Spock by the shoulder and turned him to face the girl—Patty, the tag said on her jumpgear.

  “Wassup, man?” Then his friend saw Patty too. “All right! Fuckin’ A, man!”

  Spock began whooping and shouting toward Patty as he danced, but Luke grabbed him again and shook him.

  “There’s something wrong, man. Look, she’s really freaked.” He looked over at the control booth but could see nothing through its tinted windows.

  “Looks real fine to me, mate,” Spock yelled, grinning suggestively. Frustrated, Luke let go of him and turned back to the girl. Why was nobody doing anything?

  “Two minutes to lob.” The announcement boomed over the music and the dancing crowd waved and yelled in response. They started to chant Sniper’s name over and over. Seeing the girl looking around in what seemed to be mounting panic, Luke grabbed Spock again and shouted in his ear. “I’m going to the booth. I don’t think they’ve noticed.” Without waiting for a response, he began to push and shove his way through the sea of bouncing people toward the mobile control centre.

  For a while he lost sight of the girl in the cage, but when he saw her again, he was shocked to see her standing there with no helmet on while the others were fully suited-up. He didn’t have much of a technical grasp of timesplashing, but he knew it was a rough ride for the brick. The jump back in time put the brick in a medium that wasn’t quite spacetime and certainly had no air in it. The brick’s jumpgear pro
vided pressure and the helmet provided oxygen. People had died trying to lob without the right gear. He paused to look at the girl’s beautiful, desperate face, willing her to get her helmet on.

  “One minute to lob.”

  There was no way he could make it. The booth seemed as far away as ever and the crowd this close to the cage was too dense for him to make much headway. Luke looked around wildly for some other way of stopping the lob. Control cables would run between the booth and the cage. Computing would all be in the booth. Power would come from a bunch of F2 devices in trucks parked behind the cage. The displacement field generators and the gigantic capacitor arrays would be in the platform under the cage. He knew the standard layout. He’d read the zines and wandered around at splashparties admiring the tech. But none of that helped him. The crowd began chanting the last ten seconds of the countdown. He couldn’t reach anything in time. A gasp erupted from the crowd. He looked up at the screens in time to see Sniper ramming a helmet onto the girl’s head. She struggled in his grip, still trying to get out of there, but at least now she wouldn’t die. Whatever was going on with the girl, Sniper had saved her. The countdown hit zero, and a brilliant flash of blue light blinded them all. The bricks had been lobbed back into the timestream. The girl was gone. The cage was empty.