Memento Mori

by W. R. Gingell

  “Wot? ’Course not!” Kez grinned. “Got a better idea than that!”

  She tossed the collar into the safe, careful to keep it just out of the same space as everything else, and it settled uneasily somewhere in the back of the safe, not quite in but not outside of it, either.

  “Your hands came back!”

  “Told yer,” said Kez. She shut the door of the safe and sent it back into its rightful spot, watching until the water began to trickle over the top of it again, and said, “Orright. Might as well go back into the other room, then.”

  “Are you—” TuanTuan trailed after her, just barely remembering to step over the dangerous patch of carpet instead of on it, and tugged at the side seam of her knitted jumper. “What are you?”

  “I’ve been wondering that for a while now,” said Marx’s voice, prompting a fierce, glad warmth to bloom in Kez’s stomach. He was standing just inside the double doors, his trousers and face streaked with grease, remarkably cheerful.

  She would have rushed forward, but to her outrage she was instead hauled backward by the red knit of her jumper and clutched to someone else’s jumper.

  “Get orf!” said Kez in exasperation to the blue and white striped arms that were clinging to her. “He ain’t gonna hurt us!”

  TuanTuan looked from Marx to Kez, frowning. “Who’s he? Have I seen him before?”

  “Isn’t that what I should be asking?” asked Marx, grinning.

  Kez grinned back at him. “’Ow’d you get in ’ere? ’Fort I lost you lower in the ship!”

  “There’s a hole in the floor.”

  “Wasn’t me.”

  “All right; kid, I know it wasn’t you.”

  “In this floor?”

  “In all of ’em,” nodded Marx. “A bit lax, I thought. What about you, kid?”

  “Well,” said Kez; and then, in surprise, “Oi. Wot’s up, TuanTuan?”

  TuanTuan had gone absolutely white, his brown eyes even bigger beneath that heavy fringe. “You came—you came up through the hole in the floor? Why did you do that?”

  Marx, who had been frowningly scanning him up and down, said sharply to Kez, “Who’s this?”

  “You have to go now,” said TuanTuan. He looked as though he was about to throw up.

  “Can’t,” Marx said. “The funeral is about to wrap up. If we’re going to steal anything, we have to do it now.”

  “You don’t understand!” cried TuanTuan. “Once the hole in the floor opens it’s already too late!”

  “It didn’t open. I opened it.”

  “It doesn’t matter!” TuanTuan said, his temples glistening with the faintest touch of sweat. As Kez watched in astonishment, he darted across the room and punched in a lock code on the double doors, then feverishly began tugging the closest couch over to cover them.

  Marx, his eyes suddenly wary again, crossed the room and helped him. Kez would have gone to join them, but she could feel something very…odd…beginning to happen around the edges of the room.

  “Don’t reckon that’s gonna help,” she said.

  Neither of them listened to her, TuanTuan still feverishly stacking furniture and Marx doing the same in a regular, workmanlike rhythm that had the door covered before the odd wrinkling around the edges of the room had a chance to become anything more than wrinkling.

  “Oi, Marx,” said Kez, with a suddenly dry throat. “Space is doin’ summink weird, and it’s not me wot’s doin’ it.”

  Marx kicked another chair against the pile of furniture around the door. “Can you stop it?”

  “Don’t think so.”

  “It shouldn’t be coming in here,” TuanTuan said chokingly. “The hole is in the other room. It shouldn’t know how to—It didn’t know how to do that last time!”

  “What is it, exactly?” asked Marx, very clearly and quietly.

  “Keep breathin’, TuanTuan,” Kez said, and thumped him on the back. Her eyes darted about the room. Something was doing what she had done earlier with both herself and TuanTuan’s collar. Something very big.

  “It’s—it’s the thing that lives in the middle of the ship. It’s organic, animal, and it learns things it shouldn’t be able to learn.” Both of TuanTuan’s hands had gone to his hair, tugging, tugging. “It’s part of the security in here. If someone trips the alarm, it comes out. If I try to leave, it comes out. If the hole in the floor opens, it comes out. If I don’t—if I don’t behave, it comes out and snaps its teeth at me all night so that I can’t move off the sofa.”

  “Oo-er!” breathed Kez, because she had just caught sight of some very large teeth in the wrinkling of space. “Ain’t it big, though!”

  She was used to the peculiarities of things that passed through space, but she wasn’t prepared for the speed at which the shark-like head lunged through the wall, solidifying as it came. A blur of blue and white hit Kez at speed, knocking her into the softness of the blue sofa and depriving her of breath at the same time. She gasped for breath, groaning, and clutched at knit with two clenched fists while the sound of furniture smashing thundered around her in a muted kind of a way.

  When she could breathe again, Kez yelled through a mouthful of blue and white stripes, “Git orf!”

  TuanTuan’s face ducked down into the warmth between couch and jumper, bringing with it a shower of debris. “Hold still,” he said. Kez had the distinct idea that he was trying to be comforting, and that only made her angrier, because it was stupid for anyone trembling as much as TuanTuan was trembling, to try and comfort her. “It won’t hurt you if I’m in the way. It’s not allowed to hurt me.”

  “Ain’t allowed to hurt you?” snarled Kez. There was blood dripping down TuanTuan’s neck where it had no right to be. She punched and kicked, struggling to be free. “It’s already ’urt you! Ain’t you got no sense?”

  “Please, Kez!”

  Kez, incensed to find that no matter how hard she struggled and how hard she pinched or kicked, TuanTuan’s lanky frame didn’t budge by so much as an inch, howled her frustration into that blue-and-white prison.

  “Please be quiet, Kez,” whispered TuanTuan. “Please.”

  “Wot about Marx!”

  “All good,” said Marx’s voice from somewhere in the room, but Kez heard something different in it. “It didn’t like the spanner. It’s gone back through the wall. Stay where you are, kid.”

  “Like heck!” Kez yelled, and shifted through the back of the couch. She tumbled out of her shift onto the carpet behind the couch, and heard muffled flailing from the other side. Scrambling to her feet, Kez punched the fabric back of the couch and shouted, “Don’t you ever do that again, you flamin’ skinny mucker!”

  “Why did you do that?” TuanTuan shouted hoarsely, standing up on the seat of the couch. “Now it knows how!”

  “Wot? Knows how to wot?”

  “Now it knows how to do that too!”

  “Already knew,” Kez said shortly, digging the scissors out of their hiding place. “’Ow’d you think it got into the room in the first place? Must’ve seen me takin’ your collar off. Duck, Marx!”

  Marx ducked, and the shark-headed beast lunged cleanly over his head through the wall, its diamond-sharp skin glittering into solidarity as it swept over them. Its body followed this time, whipping across the ceiling in a flash of light, lithe and deadly. It wasn’t flying, but it wasn’t falling, either. It was swimming through the air, cutting with a touch of its long tail and coiling itself around them all with very little trouble. Its head dipped toward the floor, a flash of silver in Kez’s peripheral.

  “Mind yer ’ead,” she said, yanking TuanTuan down toward her by the hair. He gasped and fell to his knees, his jumper slashed at the shoulder by the beast’s tail, and flinched toward her. “This way!”

  She dragged him with her, leaping over the last of the beast’s tail, and that tail whipped back toward them. A duller shine of silver met it: Marx, swinging accurately with his shifting spanner, sent it wildly flipping into the wall. />
  The beast roared, and darted back into another part of space, shivering out of their sight.

  “Thought you said it wouldn’t hurt you!” gasped Kez, her fingers aching where they gripped the scissors.

  TuanTuan, shivering and white, said, “The—the—collar!”

  “Well, that’s flamin’ handy, ain’t it?”

  Marx pulled Kez up by the shoulder of her jumper. “How long before it comes back?”

  “Dunno; it ’asn’t gone far.”

  “Get us back in the Upsydaisy.”

  “Gotcha,” said Kez, and grabbed his hand where it gripped a handful of knit. She shifted them right into the Upsydaisy, and it wasn’t until she discovered her other hand was full that she realised she had also brought TuanTuan along. “Oi!” she said in surprise. Where were her scissors? She couldn’t have dropped them to grab TuanTuan’s hand. That made no sense. “Did you grab me ’and?”

  “You. Grabbed me,” said TuanTuan. He was shaking so badly that the words came out in choppy pieces. “Don’t leave me here. Please, Kez.”

  “He can’t come with us,” Marx said, before Kez could respond, adjusting controls on the console. To TuanTuan, he said, “That beast is the least of the problems you’ll have if you come with us.”

  “He says you can’t come,” Kez said, but she didn’t let go of TuanTuan’s hand. He was still shaking, and something very silver and…sharky…was starting to protrude from the console.

  Kez screamed in rage and threw her arms around that sharp nose so that it couldn’t shift again. “Bash it, Marx!”

  Marx obliged with all his usual savagery and good aim, taking out the beast’s left eye, and Kez was violently torn through the Upsydaisy’s console.

  Space moved fluidly around her, and Kez yelped, “Oi! Don’t you go pickin’ up me tricks!”

  The beast shook its head, tail whipping around her, and threw Kez free. She shifted as she flew, avoiding the edge of that tail by a breath, and put herself right back in the Upsydaisy.

  Two thin bands of steel wrapped around her. “Kez!”

  “Get orf!” snarled Kez, kicking TuanTuan in the shin. “’Urry up, Marx! It’ll come back soon. You got that thing wiv you?”

  “What thing?”

  “That thing wot bends time!”

  “It’s a time dilat—yes, I’ve got the thing that bends time!”

  “Giv’us it!”

  “Why?”

  “Explosives as well,” said Kez, without bothering to argue.

  TuanTuan, combing debris from his hair with two shaking hands, asked, “What are you doing?”

  “Trainin’ your beastie,” said Kez, with a sharp grin. “Bailin’ up kids on sofas ain’t the sorta thing wot ought to be encouraged. Gonna teach it summink new.”

  “Kez,” said Marx, systematically removing roll explosive from the safety locker, “do you know what you’re doing?”

  “Course!” scoffed Kez. Batting Marx’s hands aside, she attached three of the small rolls to the palm-sized time dilator. “Where’s the remote for the pops?”

  “They’re WAOF grade explosives.”

  “Yeah, but they still only make a little pop.”

  “Two of them can take out a double bulkhead.”

  Kez made a dismissive huff of air at him and snatched the remote detonator out of his hand.

  “What are you going to teach it?” TuanTuan asked, his eyes darting nervously around the cockpit. “Is it—I think it’s coming back.”

  “Gonna teach it wot ’appens when you get too tricky for your own good,” said Kez grimly. “It’s too flamin’ quick to catch, and I can’t—”

  “And you can’t do any funny business in time without teaching it how,” said Marx, nodding. “All right, let’s do it. But outside.”

  “Yes, but what are we doing?” protested TuanTuan, as Kez grabbed his hand and shifted them all back onto the dock. “Why are we going away from the—oh.”

  “He ain’t as dumb as he looks,” Kez said to Marx, dragging them both to the far end of the dock. They had nearly gone as far as the door in when it opened. “Oops! ’Ere comes your mum, TuanTuan!”

  There was a wild shout, and one of the men with Auntie Li was plucked into the air. He flew in a graceful arc, trailing droplets of blood, and vanished over the edge of the dock as the beast ducked through the Upsydaisy, threading in and out of sight. There was a heavy thump that Kez thought might be a body hitting the dockyard floor far below, but then the Upsydaisy seemed to shudder in the air, and a streak of silver sliced through the hawser line.

  Thump!

  “Stop bashin’ our ship!” yelled Kez as the beast swept under the Upsydaisy, making a shriek of sparks along the dock below and a corresponding one on the Upsydaisy’s lower hull.

  “Flamin’ heck!” snarled Marx. “Look after the dilator, kid; I’ve gotta stop it beating the ship to pieces.”

  He sprinted for the ship with his shifting spanner in hand, and Kez belatedly began patting her pockets for the dilator.

  “Where’s it gorn?” She couldn’t see it, but she could feel the effects of it; the time dilator was beginning to stretch, and pull, and warp from a certain point in the dock; a certain point in the dock that converged on…TuanTuan.

  The time manipulation sensors must have caught it, too; every alarm on the Chaebol seemed to roar into life as Kez turned and gazed at TuanTuan in utter surprise. He was watching her with shuttered brown eyes beneath that heavy fringe, and one of his hands was behind his back.

  “You sneaky liddle mucker!” she said. Whatever else she had expected from TuanTuan, it had not been this.

  “You have to take me with you,” said TuanTuan. He didn’t look exactly different, but there was a mulish set to his chin and that curiously determined glow to his brown eyes that Kez had seen momentarily earlier.

  Marx, from beneath the Upsydaisy, laughed and called out, “You wanted a pet!”

  “I don’t want him,” grumbled Kez. “I want that ensign.”

  TuanTuan indignantly demanded, “What ensign?”

  “Ain’t none of your business, you flamin’ time stealer! Why’d you pinch me stuff again?”

  “You have to take me with you.”

  “Good plan,” Marx called encouragingly, his eyes wandering around the dock for that tell-tale glint of silver. “But what if we don’t agree?”

  “Then…”

  “We’ll die? That thing will be back in a minute or two. Are you happy for Kez to die?”

  Kez, with narrowed eyes, saw the tiny movement of TuanTuan’s foot against the dock as it moved in her direction. She was certain Marx saw it, too, because he grinned at TuanTuan. To Kez’s surprise, it wasn’t one of his humourless grins; it was almost a friendly one.

  “Think you can do it?”

  “I told you,” said TuanTuan, while his eyes flickered from Kez to the glint of silver that circled the dock, “I told you. You have to take me with you.”

  “Your mum ain’t too ’appy wiv you,” Kez said, looking over her shoulder. Things had already slowed considerably toward the door, thanks to the dilator, but there was no reason to tell TuanTuan that. “Don’t think she knows ’ow to stop that beastie.”

  There was a flash of silver in her peripheral.

  “Here it comes!” called Marx warningly, at the same time. The beast was flashing in and out of existence as it sliced through space, quicker and quicker. A blink of silver, and Marx was dripping blood from his left leg; another, and one of the men with Auntie Li was cut down, his throat spitting blood.

  “TuanTuan,” growled Kez. “Giv’us the dilator!”

  “No,” said TuanTuan as the beast rippled in the air and turned in their direction.

  “TuanTuan!”

  “I—I won’t.”

  The beast seemed to smile; and, dipping its head, rushed toward them, mouth gaping.

  “Chuck it in its mouth!” howled Kez.

  TuanTuan’s eyes turned desperately from Kez
to Marx, and as they did, the beastie turned its toothy grin in Marx’s direction.

  “No you flamin’ don’t!” said Kez beneath her breath, the detonator damp in her hand.

  Marx gave a dry kind of laugh and hefted the shifting spanner in his left hand, his knees bending slightly. Kez, wailing like a banshee by way of a distraction, charged at the beastie from her side.

  There was a scream from TuanTuan, and she saw the time dilator hurtle over her head, directly at the beastie. Morphing through space, it whirled and snapped at the time-dilator, swallowed it whole, then darted at TuanTuan without stopping, its maw wide open. Kez, still running, shivered in and out of the present moment by the smallest sliver.

  The beast seemed to flicker in the air, testing the new ability she’d shown it, and Kez pressed the tiny button on the remote detonator once, twice, three times to be sure, gasping in her relief. Then she put her head down and shifted to the shelter of Marx and the Upsydaisy, hoping that TuanTuan was clever enough to seek cover on his side of the dock.

  There was a very small, silent moment of sprinting where Kez thought she had made a mistake. Then Marx grabbed her by the collar, stopping her wild dash, and the dilator exploded very, very slowly. The parts of the beastie that weren’t in sight exploded slowly along with it; Kez saw each part as it began to be stretched and torn apart slowly through time and space, and the wave of changing time as it rippled toward herself and Marx. TuanTuan was already caught up in it, ducking his head into his arms to escape the explosion overhead, and over by the door, Auntie Li had slowed so much she was almost frozen.

  “We’d better move her,” said Marx, jerking his chin up at the Upsydaisy.

  “Wot about ’im?” Kez said gruffly, her eyes on TuanTuan. If Auntie Li and her men were moving like glacial ice, TuanTuan was moving like molasses. She could see the slowly changing expression on his face as it went from fear to relief. Soon, she knew, his face would fall slowly into the same kind of despair she’d first seen there when he told her he could never escape.

  “There’s nothing we can do,” Marx said. “It’s too dangerous to shift through that lot while it’s expanding and exploding. Get us in the Upsydaisy before she’s too far gone to move.”