by RR Haywood
Harry tuts, shaking his head at Emily.
‘We all need time. Yes. Yes, we all need a time machine to give us more, when all we really need is love in our hearts to hear the word of God our Saviour. They say Affa himself was a believer. They say Affa himself met our Lord and took that word to overthrow the oppressors and lead us to righteous—’
‘He didn’t.’
‘What now?’
‘He really didn’t,’ Emily says. ‘He was the lead agent from the British Secret Service that Harry and I killed in one-two-six, but we think they went back and got him again.’
The man blinks, confusion spreading over his face as he refocusses to bring the conversation back. ‘Yes, my child. We all want Affa to come back. Affa is in all our hearts for following the word of God our Saviour who he met on the mound and they broke bread to pray together and—’
‘Have you met him? I’ve met him. Alpha’s a good agent but he’s not God and Harry kicked the shit out of him so . . .’
‘UNKNOWN ADULT FEMALE. THE USE OF REVOLTING, ABUSIVE OR INSULTING WORDS IS PROHIBITED IN THIS PUBLIC PLACE.’
‘You are right, my child. Affa is not God. God is God. God is love and forgiveness. God is within us all . . .’
‘Okay,’ Emily says, ‘can I ask you a question?’
‘But of course,’ the man says piously, bobbing his head at Emily.
‘So let’s say two friends get drunk together one night, right?’
‘Ach, Emily.’
‘And they have a bit too much to drink and they end up going upstairs and having just the best sex ever. Like, imagine the best sex ever, but better than that. I mean steamy, really steamy, like clothes off, kissing, licking . . . hot hands and sweating bodies all grinding and . . .’
The man coughs into his hand, listening intently. ‘I understand. Go on, my child.’
‘I mean this is the best sex you could imagine. His hands are all over her body. He’s strong but gentle and she’s so turned on, really, really turned on . . . Can you imagine that?’
‘I can, my child,’ he whispers earnestly, leaning in to listen.
‘And they even orgasm at the same time. Imagine that? Then they go back to his room and they do it again.’
‘Again?’ the man asks.
‘Again?’ Harry asks, staring at Emily.
‘Two more times,’ Emily says, holding two fingers up.
‘Two more times you say,’ the man asks breathlessly.
‘Two?’ Harry asks, rubbing a hand through his beard. ‘I remember the first but not the other two . . .’
‘Oh, you should remember,’ she says, not looking away from the man. ‘Can you imagine all of that?’
‘I can,’ the man says.
‘Then what happens the next day when the man is a total dick?’
‘UNKNOWN ADULT FEMALE. THE USE OF REVOLTING, ABUSIVE OR INSULTING WORDS IS PROHIBITED IN THIS PUBLIC PLACE.’
‘Seriously? Dick isn’t swearing.’
‘UNKNOWN ADULT FEMALE. THE USE OF REVOLTING, ABUSIVE OR INSULTING WORDS IS PROHIBITED IN THIS PUBLIC PLACE.’
‘It is,’ the man says.
‘Wow, strict times,’ Emily says. ‘Anyway, that’s my story. What about it?’
‘Well now,’ the man says. ‘Three times you say?’
‘Three times,’ Emily says.
‘Drunk you say?’
‘Drunk,’ Emily says.
‘I’d say the man must show honour and decency. These are modern times and promiscuity is rife, but the sin is in the intent, my child. Does the man have genuine regard for the woman?’
‘Er . . .’ Emily says, not expecting the answer.
‘Aye, he does,’ Harry says.
‘Would the man ever harm the woman?’
‘Not a hair on her head.’
‘Would the man stand by the woman in times of peril and darkness?’
‘Aye, he has and he would.’
‘Does the man love the woman . . .’
Harry stares down at Emily, seeing her blush.
‘Look just sod off,’ Emily snaps.
‘I will pray for you both,’ the man says, making the sign of the cross while backing away with a little bow.
Emily stares out at the street. Watching. Assessing. Scanning and looking for threat and risk while her cheeks burn and her hands feel strange hanging down at her sides. She goes to fold her arms and stops midway, not knowing what to do with them.
‘Emily . . .’
‘Don’t,’ she snaps. ‘Watch your side.’
‘So nice,’ Safa says. ‘Harry will love these. Coffee’s a bit shit though. Got a weird taste, like chemicals or something . . .’
‘I’m guessing it’s probably synthetic,’ Ben says. ‘It feels hot here and I noticed yesterday in Hyde Park and the plaza that the heat is more like Italy, which I’m guessing is global warming. Beef cattle was said to be a major contributor to global warming and if locusts are being served then it suggests either a cessation of meat-eating or a viable alternative to a sustainable source of protein. They were talking about locusts and insects as food in our time, and if it’s getting hotter this far north of the equator then maybe something messed up the plantations growing the coffee beans. A lack of water or a change in environmental conditions could do it. Plants get diseases too – could be anything – so a synthetic derivative would plug the gap in the market . . . Either that or it’s just cheap coffee.’
Miri sips from her cup, watching him intently while inwardly admiring the ease with which he connects the dots.
‘How was it?’ Jerry asks, sweeping from the building with the well-practised air of making sure people don’t leg it without paying while pretending to be concerned over their enjoyment of the food. ‘Enjoy it, did you? Like the locusts?’
‘Very nice,’ Ben says. ‘Is that coffee synthetic?’
‘Eh?’ Jerry asks, blanching in response. ‘Where you from then? Course it’s synthetic. What are you, the coffee police? Haha! We don’t touch the natural stuff here. Oh no. No, no, Affa. No natural coffee here. Oleg? We don’t do natural here, do we?’
‘NO.’
‘I was just asking,’ Ben says quickly. ‘It was very nice . . .’
‘I got’s to say that,’ Jerry says, sidling closer to Ben with a hushed tone. ‘You want some of the real stuff, do you? How much you want? Enough for a cup in the morning? We roasted them last night. Gorgeous they are. Proper Arabica. Got a source from a mate. Know what I mean? Tell you what. You get Ria to drop me a couple of them claws in and you can have a half kilo. How about that?’ He steps away to the table, grabbing the plates and cups to load onto a large hovering tray. ‘Natural coffee! Cor, do me a favour, Affa. We don’t peddle that stuff here . . . How you paying today, Affa? Got a tourist chip, have ya?’
‘Er, yeah, a credit chip . . .’
‘Lovely stuff,’ Jerry says, whipping it from Ben’s hand and holding it up to his eye. He takes on that far-away look they saw so many times yesterday then blinks back to focus. ‘All done,’ he beams, handing the card back. ‘Hang on here,’ he whispers, rushing out of sight into the building.
‘We know how the credit chip works then . . .’ Ben starts to say as the waiter bustles back out, grinning and laughing. ‘So you follow the road and find old Ruben up the way.’ He stops next to Ben, placing one hand on his shoulder and leaning close as though to explain directions while pressing a small paper bag into Ben’s hand. ‘Enough for the morning,’ he whispers. ‘Little taster, yeah? Get me some claws and I’ll get half a K . . . Give Ria our regards. Bye then, Affas! Best locusts in London, yeah? All in the sauce . . .’
He walks off, striding out into the street to intercept the next potential customers as Ben, Miri and Safa head back up towards the junction, with Ben looking round guiltily while pushing the baggie into his pocket. ‘Did we just do a drug deal?’ he whispers.
‘Feels like it,’ Safa says, glancing back to wave at the waiter. ‘Ria’s selling
claws? That’s funny as anything.’
‘It is not funny, Miss Patel. It is a misuse of the device and something that will be stopped.’
‘Why?’ Ben asks, seeing the grim expression on Miri’s face.
‘The girl is accessing points of time for her own use,’ Miri says tightly. ‘What if someone carbon dates those claws?’
‘Or,’ Ben says in a voice dropping several notches, ‘she was getting by and using what she had to survive . . . This isn’t our history, Miri. This isn’t our timeline.’
‘Discuss later,’ Miri says, ending the conversation abruptly as they walk back into the bedlam of the main road.
There is a crowd ahead, blocking the side of the road as people stop and gather to look inside one of the stores: the Nazi jacket on proud display in the window. It looks surreal. They only saw it a few days ago. The same jacket that Harry ripped open to pull the papers from. The same blood stains from the bullet entry wounds from Emily shooting him.
‘Misuse,’ Miri states firmly.
‘Sure,’ Ben says, shaking his head. ‘Good luck to her.’
‘At least we didn’t have to worry about the body,’ Safa muses, going ahead of the other two to push through the door into the book store.
Silence in the alley. Harry leaning on one side. Emily on the other. Nobody pays them any attention. This is a city full of weird and wonderful folk, so two more only add to the backdrop of chaos.
Harry thinks back, trying to remember the other two times. She said three times. He could remember the first above the bar but not the other two, but now she’s said it, and now he thinks about it, so he gains flashes of memory, of sensations, sounds, feelings and things happening in his room in the bunker. Emily on top. Him on top. Against the door? Did that happen? Something in his mind about being outside too on the grass. When did they go outside?
‘Did we go outside?’
‘I’m not talking to you,’ she replies stiffly.
He rubs a hand through his beard, watching people as they pass by and trying to remember while glancing, every now and then, at Emily as though to try and jog his memory.
‘Yes,’ she says after a few minutes of silence. ‘On the grass.’
‘Oh.’
The silence comes back and he frowns, still thinking hard and not seeing the glances, every now and then, from Emily as she looks at him.
‘And in the portal room.’
‘Eh?’ he asks.
‘The portal room,’ she says without looking at him. ‘Our legs were in the bunker but our heads were in Rio.’
‘Oh.’
‘It was funny at the time.’
He thinks harder. Sighing and shaking his head.
‘And the main room on the big table.’
‘The big table, you say?’
‘Then in your room against the door.’
‘Ach.’
‘Then in your bed.’
‘I see.’
‘Then again in your bed.’
‘Ach.’
‘But, hey, forget it. Just a bad night, yeah?’
‘Ah now, miss.’
‘They’re back,’ Emily says, pushing off the wall at the sight of Safa, Ben and Miri coming through the crowd. ‘And my name is Emily.’
‘Thousand quid,’ Safa says, looking at them both. ‘Thousand quid for two books. Unbelievable. We had locusts and this weird crappy coffee. Harry, you’ll love locusts. Anything here?’
‘Nowt,’ Harry says. ‘A religious man talking about god.’
‘An agent?’ Miri asks sharply.
‘No, Miri, just a weirdo,’ Emily says quietly.
‘Everything okay?’ Ben asks, detecting the atmosphere between them.
‘Aye,’ Harry says, avoiding looking at him.
‘Fine,’ Emily says. ‘Er, did you get food and clothes?’ She spots their empty hands and looks quizzically from one to the next.
‘I just said,’ Safa replies. ‘We spent all the money on two bloody books.’
‘We need supplies,’ Emily says.
‘We’ve got the sword and helmet. We’ll bring them back and trade,’ Ben says.
‘Or a book . . . or a claw . . . or maybe a dinosaur,’ Safa says with a grin. ‘Ria’s been selling our bunker off bit by bit . . .’
Twenty-Two
Bertie’s Island
A gorgeous warm evening and Ben looks up at Miri lighting a cigarette, then goes back to the book open on the table in front of him. A quiet afternoon of reading the history books. Drinking coffee, eating fruit and stopping now and then to look out at Safa, Emily and Harry swimming in the sea with Malcolm and Konrad fishing on the shore.
‘Stop bloody smoking!’ the doctor shouts from his hammock.
‘Go back to being dead,’ Miri mutters, making Ben snort a laugh. It was the first thing they did on returning from Lambeth-not-Lambeth. An application of thought given to resolve a problem because Safa told them, very clearly and very honestly, that she would be extracting Doctor John Watson and there was no hope in hell anyone would be stopping her.
Ben explained his thoughts to Miri. ‘Bertie went from the island timeline to the bunker timeline to extract Ria and brought her back into the island timeline. If we extracted the doc before Bertie got Ria then there wouldn’t be a Ria, but we’re not. We’re extracting the doc after Ria was extracted. She’s now detached from the original bunker timeline. The fact she chose to go back there isn’t relevant. So yes, it’s safe to get the doc back and it will not make Ria cease to exist.’
Even Miri struggled on that one for a few minutes, which resulted in a whiteboard from Bertie’s shack being brought out to help give visual aid as Ben explained it again.
It was during that lengthy and very in-depth discussion that Safa snuck into the shack, set the portal, went into the bunker, rescued the doctor just seconds before the big female Diplodocus crashed through the roof and brought the confused chap back to the island still holding the tea he had just made.
‘So there,’ Ben said, prodding the whiteboard full of diagrams.
‘Evening,’ the doc said, strolling over.
‘Evening,’ Ben said in greeting before turning back to Miri for a full five seconds before the penny dropped. ‘What the fuck, Safa!’
Now they read the history books to understand the changes made and how they altered the world they knew. It’s all there too. Laid out in the succinct way of fact and proven conjecture that history books have, and as Ben reaches the last few pages of the second book so a cold drip on the back of his neck makes him yelp and twist round to a soaking wet Safa fresh from the sea standing behind him and he finds himself captivated by the way the water runs over her skin, made darker from the sun, and between the mounds of her breasts hidden under her sports bra.
She plonks down next to him, sending a shower of seawater over Miri’s history book. ‘I want to go to Paris.’
‘What?’ Ben asks, blinking at her.
‘Paris. It’s meant to be romantic.’
‘What the fuck? Are you Safa?’
‘I’m still a woman, Ben,’ she says as Emily and Harry walk over from swimming. ‘Ben’s taking me to Paris later for kissing and hand holding.’
‘Am I?’ Ben asks.
‘That’s nice,’ Emily says, flopping down next to Safa and sending another shower of seawater over Miri’s book. ‘Make sure you don’t get drunk and end up . . .’
‘Oh, give it a rest, Emily,’ Ben groans.
‘How is it?’ Harry asks, looking from Ben to Miri. ‘Read it all?’
‘Yeah, I think so,’ Ben says.
‘And?’ Safa asks. ‘No, hang on . . . whatever you’re going to say, cut it in half then half again then say it . . .’
‘I don’t overexplain things.’
‘You do,’ Emily says.
‘Aye.’
‘Well, sod off then. Ask Miri.’
‘One twenty-six AD. Romans got killed. Bad guys did it. Changed stuff but mostly it was
okay,’ Miri says with the perfect timing of a rare joke.
‘See!’ Safa says, all of them laughing as Ben huffs. ‘What about the other bit?’
‘Nineteen forty-five. Bad guys drop a nuclear bomb on London,’ Miri says.
‘Bit more to it than that,’ Ben says. ‘For instance, a chap called Herr Weber was in charge of Nazi Germany’s nuclear programme . . .’
‘Did Hitler still happen then?’ Emily asks.
‘Don’t ask questions,’ Safa groans.
‘Yeah, it’s weird because by then it’s really close to our own history. Like, for instance, some of our Prime Ministers didn’t happen but some did. Churchill still happened, Stalin . . . Roosevelt . . . Anyway, the Nazis ditched the nuclear programme early on. They didn’t see it had any worth, plus they killed nearly all of their Jewish physicists and in the first few years of the war they’re pretty much winning . . .’
‘Were they?’
‘Sorry, Harry, but they were. Point is they don’t build a nuclear bomb. By nineteen forty-five the Germans are losing badly. Russia are pounding them, the allies are bombing the shit out of Berlin, Hitler is hiding in his bunker, then a physicist called Herr Weber, who was on the original Nazi nuclear programme or whatever they called it, gets a visit from five men who give him an atomic bomb. There’s a bit more to it than that obviously. He never learns who they are, but pretty much acts on his own volition with a few fervent Nazi units still committed to the cause. Five visits are made by these mysterious men and on the last visit they deliver the bomb, which is dropped on London. Now this is where it gets interesting . . . Later, when the war is over, everyone points the finger at America because they were the only country developing nuclear bombs at that time. America obviously deny it. They only had two operational bombs at that point. One was dropped on Hiroshima, but no second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki in their time. That means it was still only two nuclear bombs used during the Second World War: Hiroshima and London. I’m guessing that Alpha and his lot used their device to nick one from America after the war and used that. Long story short, they never actually prove or work out who did it. America deny ever losing a nuclear bomb, but then as the historians point out, which country in their right mind would ever admit to losing one? Herr Weber was killed on returning to the airfield after the bombing raid. So were all his men, apparently by a surprise Allied attack that was later confirmed by the Allies, who said they were given a tip-off about a high-ranking German official or something. Lots of conspiracy theories all over the place. Think nine eleven but with a nuclear bomb. Who really did it? That sort of thing.’
