A Time-Traveller's Best Friend: Volume One

by A Time-Traveller's Best Friend- Volume One (epub)

  “Storage cabinet?” he wondered aloud. Lieutenant Morgan groaned something unintelligible. “No, you’re right. It smells like a sewer in here. He’s shut us in the toilets.”

  That would explain the cold curve he was leaning against. Mikkel thought briefly about shifting away from the toilet bowl, but he was already sitting on the floor, the tacky consistency of which was more than slightly worrisome. The toilet bowl was probably the cleanest place in the room.

  When his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness he could see the lieutenant, a dark huddle against the far wall. Mikkel watched him struggle into consciousness with distant sympathy and a certain fellow feeling.

  “What’d he hit us with, Lieutenant?”

  A groan. “Shifting spanner, I think.”

  “Old-fashioned, isn’t he?”

  “Not the word I would have picked, sir,” said Lieutenant Morgan, struggling to sit up. “Are you tied up too?”

  “Very extremely. Can you slide towards me?”

  “Don’t think anything’ll slide in this muck, sir.”

  “Shuffle as much as you can, then, and I’ll meet you half way.”

  It was easier not to think about what his hands were scraping against. Mikkel set his teeth and inched his way across the floor toward Lieutenant Morgan, who fumbled and rolled until they met, painfully, in the centre of the tiny room.

  “Back to back,” said Mikkel, straightening himself with some effort. “We’ll see if we can’t untie each other.”

  “Got a knife in my boot, sir.”

  Mikkel gave him a wondering look. “Why?”

  “It’s a last resort in case of um, ambush.”

  “That worked out well for you.”

  “Yes, sir. It’s in an ankle holster, if you think you can reach.”

  That meant more wriggling, with the ropes grating painfully against his wrists. By the time Mikkel managed to tug the knife out of his Lieutenant’s boot, perilously captured between forefinger and middle finger, he was feeling a sneaking sense of annoyance. His annoyance grew as the inherent difficulties in manipulating a slender blade with his wrists tied became apparent, but they managed to cut themselves free without the loss of too much skin and blood.

  “I’ve got blood on my shirt,” said Lieutenant Morgan, rubbing ineffectively at the long drops.

  “You’ve got worse on your rear,” said Mikkel. He kicked his feet free from the cut pieces of rope and wrenched at the door handle. It was an ancient push/pull mechanism that jerked open slightly and then abruptly stuck. Through the finger-wide gap, he could see the iron bar that Marx had shoved through the handle.

  “Well, we won’t be getting through that in a hurry.”

  Behind him, Lieutenant Morgan laughed incredulously. “Sir? He forgot to take our quick-shifts! We can shift right back and arrest him!”

  “Unusually careless of him,” said Mikkel slowly.

  “His loss,” said Lieutenant Morgan. “I’ve programmed yours, sir.”

  “Why would he leave our quick-shifts? He took the time to bar the door.”

  “We were tied up, sir. Here we go–”

  He wanted to make sure we had no other options, Mikkel realised.

  He said: “Don’t push that button!”

  And Lieutenant Morgan pushed the button.

  ***

  Marx waited. The Upsydaisy was docked out of sight behind the tertiary engines on an intergalactic liner, masking the indisputable fact that there were in fact two Upsydaisys. He waited until the Upsydaisy’s computer informed him for the second time that the port lockout had been shut down, the need for action crinkling up and down his spine. It was still possible that the two Time Corp agents would wake up. In fact, it was very probable that they would wake up. Marx grinned humorlessly at his console and began to program the chronomatrix. Well, if they did, they had a bit of a shock in store for them.

  Still, Marx wasn’t really surprised when something hefty stuck the Upsydaisy and shook it like a rattle. A red diagram flashed over the console, showing missile fire across his stern, and he hissed a quick breath through his teeth. Time to go.

  The chronomatrix wasn’t quite ready but Marx kicked the Upsydaisy into motion anyway. If he didn’t move, the weapons fire would shred his stern. Beneath his feet the footbar was quick and responsive, and as familiar as if he’d been flying just yesterday. He could control the Upsydaisy from the console alone but the footbar, as old-fashioned as it was, had always felt more natural.

  Marx flipped his craft up and over the antennae of the liner, drawing a glittering line of fire after him. Was it Time Corp shooting at him?

  “Vessel Upsydaisy, cut your engines and return to dock,” said his comm-screen. “You are in violation of Port and World regulations. Terminal force has been approved by Time Corp.”

  “Stop and you’ll shoot?” said Marx. “No thanks.”

  The port tipped around him as he kicked savagely at the footbar, driving the Upsydaisy straight up. Weapons fire exploded in a series of firecracker shots along the galactic liner’s hull, and Marx saw someone’s startled face appear in an outfacing window as he hissed past.

  The comm-screen was still crackling warnings at him. Marx, finding the warnings repetitive, muted it and slapped it away in favour of a real-time screen of the port. It was littered with red.

  “Close all my exits, will you?” he muttered.

  Wait, there was an exit-marker in green! The galactic liner was going out, was it? Marx streaked along the side of the liner, momentarily safe from control-tower’s fire, and gazed long and hard at the expanse of free space through the liner’s Paxton 5s. They were sending out fiery gouts of half-spent fuel in their warm-up cycle, but he could see clear through them. An idea began to tickle through Marx’s mind. His fingers spread over the chronomatrix, paused briefly, and began to type.

  ***

  “Lieutenant?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “You’re an idiot.”

  “Yes, sir. Where are we?”

  “An observatory. A locked observatory. And before you ask: no, do not attempt to shift us out.”

  “Sir, is that–”

  Mikkel sighed. “Yes. That’s the Upsydaisy, in the process of being stolen.”

  “Good view from up here, sir. Oh, look, they’re shooting at him.”

  “Yes, they do that when someone breaks the law. What does he think he’s doing? They’ve already closed all the exits except–”

  “Sir, I think he’s trying to kill himself.”

  “No,” said Mikkel, unable to stop himself grinning. “No, he’s going to fly through the Paxton 5s and out of the port.”

  “That’s suicide!”

  “There he goes,” Mikkel said. In spite of himself, he found himself pressed against the window like a little boy watching his first flyby.

  “Those things are ejecting fuel every half second. He’s going to cook himself.”

  “Watch and wait,” said Mikkel. The Upsydaisy dove for the liner’s right Paxton without slowing, then flickered once, twice, three times. Ejected fuel marked each jump with fiery emphasis, and Mikkel laughed in sheer amazement as the Upsydaisy blurred into a series of jumps too fast to follow with the human eye.

  “He’s through!” The Lieutenant’s voice was exuberant, gleeful. “He’s through, sir!”

  He’s forgotten which side he’s on, thought Mikkel; but he felt the same lift of spirits when the Upsydaisy appeared, impossibly, outside the port exit. The port’s outer gunnery took up the chase, spilling the Upsydaisy’s fuel in a messy stream behind Marx. The craft winked out of sight almost immediately, bound for the Other Zone, but it was in bad shape and Mikkel wondered how hard it would be to follow that trail.

  Lieutenant Morgan sighed almost inaudibly, then said in some surprise: “The door’s unlocked now, sir!”

  “Of course it is,” said Mikkel. “This is going to be one heck of a report, Lieutenant.”

  “Yes, sir.”

>   ***

  There were First World hunters in Boris’s kitchen. Kez, treading softly, saw the long, wavering shadows they cast in the firelight– heard the sparkling ring of steel on whetstone. She whirled, breath catching in her throat, and leapt for the door as one of the hunters sniffed long and deep.

  “She’s here! Hunt, brothers! The hunt!”

  Three of them tore through the door after her, feet swift and silent and entirely too close. Plumy grass whipped at Kez’s legs as she ran, and she felt herself blur in and out of the Other Zone so quickly that it was over between one step and the next. She was still between the house and the barn, but now it was before, and the hunters were gone. Kez slowed to a walk, her breathing quick but even, and ducked into the goat shed from sheer habit. The goat wasn’t there, but someone had laid out clothes for her: a set of First World light armoured leggings and an incongruously flowered dress that looked far too big for her. Boris must have put them there, because beneath the dress was one of his big woolen jumpers. Kez was please to find that it covered the flowered dress completely. She was not fond of flowers.

  The barn door was open when she crawled back out of the goat shed. Kez pulled her leggings up and walked into the barn with clammy hands. Boris would be there, milking the goat. He would look up and nod at her and say nothing, just as usual. There would be goat milk and maybe porridge to eat.

  Only why, she thought; Why was the clothes in the goat shed?

  She saw the blood in the straw before she saw Boris. Kez followed the widening pool with her eyes and saw Boris’ legs sprawled in a wild tangle of straw and dirt. They were limp and crooked, and Kez wasn’t at all sure they were still attached to Boris. His face was caked with blood and tears, and she didn’t know whether she was glad or horrified to see that he was still breathing, still weeping.

  “Kez, I’m disappointed in you,” said Marcus. She should have seen him: he was leaning against the back wall with his sleeves rolled up, and there were bloody shadows leaching into his skin all the way to his shoulders.

  There was a sick churning in Kez’s stomach that made her talent tingle, but she forced it down again.

  “I did warn you, you know. And I’m rather annoyed, as a matter of fact. My client tried to kill me because of you. He seems to have known all along about your affinity for time as well as space– an oversight I’m still astonished I made.”

  Straw rustled faintly. Boris’ voice rasped: “Kess. You run now.”

  “I tortured him for hours,” said Marcus conversationally. “Couldn’t get a word out of him! I never expected you to drop into my lap so conveniently. No, don’t fade away, Kez: you disappear, and your friend stays here with me. He’s a fine, strong specimen. He’ll last for hours yet.”

  Kez pulled herself back fiercely from the Other Zone. Not Boris. Boris had to live.

  Boris said: “Kess. You fight so long. Now you run. Run, Kess.”

  There was a quiet, an innocuous pop. Kez’s mind couldn’t pair the sound with the tiny, round hole in Boris’ forehead, or the sudden way his chin dropped to his chest, but her talent knew what it meant. Marcus ducked and dropped out of sight, swearing at the suddenness of it all, and Kez couldn’t stop herself slipping into the Other Zone, the taste of fear sour on her tongue. Her back crawled with the expectation that she too would be shot at any moment. She stayed in the milky white of the Other Zone until the urge to throw up receded and left her quietly shaking.

  Boris was dead. He was tortured, and dead, and she couldn’t stop it happening without Marcus getting her too. Kez gazed at the Other Zone around her with glassy eyes. Nowhere felt safe. Nowhere seemed possible to stay. Marcus wanted her alive, and someone with First World hunters on their payroll wanted her dead. And on Second World, in a tiny barn somewhere in the middle of a field of plumy grass, Boris was dead.

  In the end, she went back to Second World. This time she picked a specific time and place; one perilously near to the war that would lead to the obliteration of the planet.

  Kez had a plan.

  Perhaps Marcus would find her again. Perhaps the First World hunters would get to her first. Or perhaps she wouldn’t be scared enough when the attack began, and it would destroy her with everyone else. But maybe she would skim out, riding the edge of the nuclear blast, and just maybe Marcus and everyone else would think she was dead. And maybe one day there would be recompense for Boris, if she could live long enough to make it happen.

  Second World stores proved ridiculously easy to rob. Kez took a gun from one, food from another, and rode the drop chute to the roof of one of their stylized old buildings. She sat amongst the chimney-pots and watched the sky for a bloom of red, and the rooftops for First World hunters.

  She was picking at the ladder in her stockings when something began to come out of the Other Zone. Kez wiped her nose on her sleeve, steadying her stolen bolt gun against one knee. As the ship solidified overhead she drew a slow, shallow breath between her teeth and let it out again. She was ready this time.

  ***

  Blue Watch

  When Mikkel opened his eyes, his sleeping quarters were already bathed in blue. He made the panicked dash to his tiny refreshment chamber before remembering that he wasn’t on duty tonight. Or perhaps any other night. Blue Watch had begun, and for the first time in six Relative Year Units, Mikkel would not be presiding over the bridge.

  He found himself with one hand on the door-switch, staring unseeingly at the floating bobbles of pink that were always superimposed on his wall through Blue Watch. That blue light, direct from the spherical Control’s power module outside, struck the string of Fifth World glass beads that festooned his out-facing window to produce the pink blobs. When the ship completed half its orbit around Control, Blue Watch would be over and real light from the twin suns would begin to dawn.

  The trouble was, thought Mikkel, jabbing a finger into the door-switch to access his shower, Relative Year Units aside, he was beginning to feel old. Life in the Time Corp was screwy at best: time didn’t so much flow mellowly past as pop periodically into the room and spit, metaphorically, in your face. There was always somebody, somewhere, darting around in a time machine where they had no business to be. Somebody causing ripples in causality and time-line: somebody breaking laws that hadn’t been enacted yet: somebody hiding from the force of laws that had been enacted.

  And lately there had been two somebodies. Mikkel, enjoying a far longer shower than usual, found that he was grinning and tried to stop. It wasn’t professional to cheer for the enemy. Particularly when it was the fault of these particular two enemies that he was at present relieved of command.

  His official reprimand read: ‘Failure to engage criminal craft while under orders’: which, as far as it went, was true. He had ignored orders to fire upon the Upsydaisy, a tiny, ancient relic of the earliest time-travelling past that was surprisingly fast despite its ancient machinery. What the official reprimand didn’t mention, however, was that the crew of the Upsydaisy, in addition to a small, wiry, and decidedly angry man, also consisted of a small, wiry and decidedly homicidal little girl. Killing children in the line of duty hadn’t appealed to him, even if this particular child had just stabbed him with a screwdriver, and Mikkel had stood down his weapons. The fact that his firing controls had been tampered with and would have blown up his own fuel cell if he’d fired on the Upsydaisy had been used as further evidence against him; and on the testimony of his Commander, Mikkel had found himself suspended, pending charges.

  Mikkel, dousing his head and shaking the water from his ears, chuckled into the steam. They’d even said thank-you. His eyes narrowed in the soft blue light. The kid had said something else, too. What was it? The scene played through his mind again: Marx’s hard, stubbled face appearing briefly on the comm-screen, flanked by Kez’s narrow, pinched one. She looked like she needed a good feed. She’d grinned at him fiercely, showing all her teeth, and said: “Thanks, golden boy. Be seeing you soon.”

  The Co
mmander had mentioned that, too. Conclusions had been drawn, of course.

  “I wonder,” said Mikkel, aloud. “I wonder.”

  The faintest of tremors fluttered through the ship. Mikkel, familiar with every hum and shudder of his ship, recognized it at once. He stopped the shower with a casual thump of his fist and strode into the living quarters, wrapping a towel around his hips. There was an insistent buzzing in his ears, suggesting that someone was leaning on the hailer outside his door, and the light that flowed into his room was now a delicate pink instead of blue.

  Mikkel slapped a palm against the door sensor and said into the cool huff of displaced air: “Who the blazes took my ship out of Control orbit?”

  Someone cleared their throat delicately. He looked down to see a plump little ensign with an abundance of brown, curly hair that was only just pinned beneath her hat. She seemed to be trying not to look at his bare chest, a difficulty that wasn’t helped by the fact that it was directly in her eye line, but she said, valiantly enough: “Person or persons unknown, Captain. Could you please return to quarters, sir? I’m here to um, guard you.”

  Mikkel took a step back. “Are you here to stop someone getting in, or to stop me getting out?”

  “Both, sir,” said the ensign. Her voice was diffident, but she followed him quickly into the room and activated the Brig lock efficiently enough. He could see over her shoulder easily as she entered her code, and was surprised that she made no attempt to hide the keypad from him.

  “Twenty-dot-fifty-two-dash-one,” Mikkel said, hoping to fluster her. He had a preference for small, plump women, and this one was more adorable than most. Perhaps it was the roll of soft brown hair the framed each side of her face, just up but threatening to fall down at any moment. Perhaps it was the smiley face that she’d drawn on the inside of her wrist and forgotten to wash away. Whatever it was, it made him feel enough of a boy again to take two steps toward her, backing her into a corner. She looked wary, but not exactly flustered.