Second Lives

by Scott K. Andrews

  'But he knows that now,' said Peyvand. 'He wasn't angry with you when you met him, was he? He seemed happy to see you.”

  Zbigniew nodded, conceding the point. “But it’s not much to look forward to, is it?” he said. “ Years of unhappiness, raising him in Poland. On my own. Boze moi, it’s not a pretty picture.”

  She knew that nothing she could say would puncture his melancholy, so she let silence fall again. He drained his glass and took himself off to bed without a word, leaving her alone with the wine bottle.

  She was still sitting on the sofa two hours later, opening yet another bottle of wine as she listened to Zbigniew’s soft snores emerging from the bedroom, when a figure appeared before her in a silent flare of red sparks...

  'You're too different,' said Jana. She bit into a pastry and considered Dora. She recoiled slightly; her eye-mods were taking a moment to reset to normal magnification and her initial view of Dora consisted of one enormous nose pore. She resisted the urge to recommend a new exfoliation regime.

  They were sitting on the roof of an apartment building overlooking the street market, bathed in mid-morning sun, repeatedly scanning the crowd, the rooftops, the traffic, the surrounding streets - looking for any hint of Quil, time travellers, anyone or anything that looked out of place.

  'I am older,' Dora replied.

  Jana shook her head, sprinkling flakes of pastry on her shirt. 'That's not what I meant and you know it.'

  'Jana, we are in the middle of an operation,' snapped Dora. 'Can this wait until later?'

  Jana shrugged and swallowed the last of her pastry. 'Whatever.'

  'Let's go through it again,' said Dora.

  'Seriously?' asked Jana. She already knew she didn't entirely trust this new Dora, but she wras beginning to think she didn't like her much either. Far too bossy for her taste.

  Dora's hard stare answered clearly. Jana shook her head wearily and began.

  'In,' Jana checked her watch, 'seven minutes young Kaz - who is adorable by the way, did you see that hair! - will come round that corner with his parents. A minute later, as they pass the stall that sold me this delicious pastry that you refused to even try, Kaz's mom will stop to buy some goodies for the cinema. Kaz and his father will walk on. As soon as their backs are turned Kaz's mom will run to the far end of the street to a place of safety. Meanwhile a black sedan car carrying the head of the intelligence service will turn into the street from the opposite corner, moving past Kaz and his dad towards the pastry stall. When it draws level with the stall the nervous young man sitting in that blue Toyota down there, currently pretending to be on his mobile, will blow himself, his car, his target and half the market to bits. Kaz's mom will be safely away by this point, but Kaz and his dad will catch the shockwave of the blast and briefly be separated in the confusion. Eventually they will find each other and leave the area, heading to the hospital. Zbigniew will tell poor Kaz his mother is dead but in fact she'll rendezvous with us and we'll bring her back to the future.'

  'Wild cards?' asked Dora.

  Jana rolled her eyes. 'Immediately after the explosion me and Kaz, along with Steve, whoever he is, will appear in the midst of the wreckage during our attempt to escape from Sweetclover in 2014,' she said. 'But they quickly leave the area too, heading for a local cafe where they will eat some truly disgusting food before jumping back to Io Scientific.'

  'And?'

  'And at some point while all this is going on, you expect Quil and/or Sweetclover and/or their weird blue-tattoo fetish goons to intervene and try to snatch either version of Kaz, or maybe his mom or dad, or perhaps you or me, or older me and Steve. Basically, anyone she can get her hands on.'

  Dora nodded.

  'I still think you're being paranoid,' said Jana.

  'Perhaps,' acknowledged Dora. 'But it's the perfect opportunity for her to make a move on us.'

  'Assuming she even knows about any of this,' said Jana.

  'Assuming she does.'

  'We walked the area twice,' Jana pointed out. 'We saw no evidence of her.'

  Dora paused, considering Jana for a moment. Jana did not like the calculating stare one bit. She couldn't read Dora any more, couldn't get a handle on her. It made her uncomfortable.

  'Do I need to remind you, of all people, how resourceful and ruthless Quil is?' said Dora. 'We underestimated her once before and we all nearly died. You more nearly than any of us. Are you trying to convince me not to worry, or convince yourself that you're safe? Because someone who didn't know you better might mistake that for displaced cowardice.'

  It took Jana a moment to gather her wits. As cold and hard as Dora now seemed, Jana hadn't expected such harsh judgement from her.

  Before Jana could reply, Dora ploughed on. 'I don't blame you for being scared, because this is all about you,' she said. 'I don't know why, but that chip in your head is important to Quil. There's some connection between you and her that puts you right at the centre of this. I would suspect she was your future self, but she did try and stab you to death, so I don't think that's likely - not unless time travel is way more complicated than Kairos thinks. But whatever the reason, if Quil arrives here today, it's probably only because she thinks it's a way to get to you. It might have been better if you'd stayed behind and let me handle this myself.'

  jana clenched her jaw and took a deep breath, telling herself not to lose her temper.

  'No, I'm good, thanks,' she said brusquely, staring down into the street and noticing Kaz's family coming round the corner. The conversation had become so uncomfortable for her, she was guiltily glad there was about to be distracting carnage. 'We're on.'

  Jana was aware of Dora's body language changing as she became tense and alert, every inch a hunter. It freaked her out.

  Down below, young Kaz was happily chatting away between his two parents. Zbigniew was stony-faced, looking straight ahead, focused and prepared. Peyvand looked as if she were on the verge of tears, but she forced a smile as she stopped and told her men that she was going to pop back and get some pastries for the film. Kaz smiled in return and then he and his father moved on down the street.

  But Peyvand just stood there and watched them walk away.

  'What the hell is she doing?' murmured Jana, alarmed by the black sedan nosing its way into the street. 'Move, for God's sake.' If Kaz turned round, he'd see her standing there and that's not what he remembered happening. The consequences of an error at this moment could be catastrophic.

  Peyvand's face was a mix of terror and loss as she stared at the retreating backs of her husband and child, apparently frozen to the spot by the enormity of what was about to happen. Then she looked around her frantically, as if returning to reality, saw the black sedan approaching and opened her mouth. Jana realised with horror that she was about to try and warn the crowd about the bomb.

  'Crap,' whispered Dora and then there was a flash of red sparks and she was gone.

  Jana looked down at the market street, watching the scene play out, knowing there was nothing she could do.

  Time seemed to slow for Jana as the car carrying the bomber's target pushed slowly through the crowd towards the Toyota, still parked opposite the pastry stall at which an old man was buying baklava for a young boy - his grandson perhaps - who stood looking up at the kind-faced old man in happy anticipation. Jana zoomed in on the bomber's face as he sat in the front seat of the innocuous small blue car. He was a young man, still a teenager, she guessed. His face was slick with sweat, his eyes open unnaturally wide, his lips moving silently. He saw the sedan approaching and in that instant he smiled widely. The beatific expression of rapture on the face of a boy who was about to kill scores of innocents froze Jana's blood.

  A flash of movement drew Jana's eye away and she saw Kaz - her Kaz, the older one who was supposed to be sitting this day out in the quantum bubble - running through the crowd, pushing and shoving and barging his way past outraged families. Peyvand still stood, her back to him, rooted to the spot, her mouth open bu
t no sound emerging. It occurred to Jana that maybe she was actually committing suicide. Is that what this was - not fear or combat panic but a death wish?

  The black car drew level with the blue one . . .

  The bomber opened his mouth wide and shouted something at the top of his lungs as he closed his eyes . . .

  Kaz barrelled through the crowd, reaching out his hand, stretching towards Peyvand, trying to make fingertip contact. . .

  And then the bomb exploded and the street became a maelstrom of fire, shrapnel and body parts.

  It was the loudest noise Jana had ever heard. Even four storeys up and three buildings away, she was blown over by the blast, shocked by the physical impact of the shockwave. As she sprawled backwards she saw the engine block of the Toyota rising into the air, drawing level with her eyeline seemingly buoyed by a cushion of smoke and flame, then falling, as if in slow motion, back down into the confusion and death. She couldn't tell if the equally shocking silence that followed the detonation was real - a street of dying and injured people still too disorientated to cry out - or whether she was deafened and it was taking a few moments for her hearing to return.

  After a long few seconds of surreal stillness, the screaming began.

  Jana looked down into the street but was unable to see much. The smoke - thick, black, choking - masked everything. Some places glowed orange, as fires burned within the cloud. People ran out of the confusion at the far edges, some running headlong, screaming, some feeling their way cautiously, afraid of ploughing into debris or treading on a casualty. She stared for a few moments, at a loss what to do. Then, as the smoke began to clear - settling downwards, heads and pieces of market stalls emerging from the cloud as if rising from water - a red flash just at the periphery of the blast area drew her eyes.

  Standing there, just about the only people fully upright and unscathed, were the earlier versions of Kaz, herself and their mysterious rescuer Steve, currently disguised as Sweetclover.

  She watched as her younger self and Steve grabbed Kaz by the arms and pulled him away, in shock after his first-time jump and the memories of the blast that he was even now experiencing a few metres to his left, as a young boy. As her earlier self and her companions rounded the corner, she zoomed in on fourteen-year-old Kaz. He was standing, flapping his arms in nervous shock, crying for his parents. There was blood on his hands and he was coated in dust that caught in his tears and streaked his face. Before him were the remains of a man, disassembled by the explosion and dumped at Kaz's feet in pieces. Kaz was so desperate he didn't even seem aware of the horror that lay around him. Jana wanted more than anything to run down and comfort him, but she knew she couldn't. A moment later Zbigniew limped out of the smoke, scooped Kaz up with one arm and hurried out of the area, round the corner.

  The smoke around the seat of the explosion had cleared enough for Jana to scan it. She had definitely seen Kaz - 'her' Kaz, the present-moment one from the quantum bubble - running towards his mother at the instant of the explosion. It was possible he'd made contact and spirited her away at the split second of detonation, but it was equally possible they'd both been blown to bits. The mess where they had been standing was impossible to decipher. Debris of market stalls and their wares, glass from the windows of the buildings, shutters, pieces of balconies and cars littered the street. And then there was the human wreckage, which turned her stomach. She'd thought the massacre in Pendarn was bad - and it had been, in the cold, calculated cruelty of the slaughter - but the violence of this devastation, the rending and tearing and dismembering of it, that was an order of magnitude more sickening to survey.

  Kaz would be the first to admit that he had never been the most patient of people, but staying behind, twiddling his thumbs in the quantum bubble, deep beneath Sweetclover Hall in the distant future, while his friends tried to save his mother's life, was almost enough to drive him insane.

  He stalked around the undercroft, restless, unable to settle. Every possible scenario played out in his mind. Stupid, ridiculous fears that some self-correcting property of time itself would find a way to prevent their meddling and ensure her death - his mum would trip and knock herself out and get blown up anyway; the bomb would go off earlier than he remembered; a freak piece of shrapnel would bounce off a building and ricochet into her, even though she was in the next street; the engine block would fly into the air and land on her like an anvil in an old Looney Tunes cartoon. No fear was too absurd, no possible outcome too horrible. He couldn't stop his mind racing. And that was even before he considered the variables Quil could add to the equation, if she turned up.

  Maybe his mum would round the corner, make it to safety in time and run straight into the arms of Quil, who would use her to force his compliance; maybe she had people on the ground already, waiting for Jana and Dora, ready to swoop the moment the bomb went off.

  He really, really hated sitting around waiting. 'You look like a polar bear.5 Kaz turned to see Kairos walking towards him. Kaz stopped and cocked his head, confused. 'A polar bear?5

  'They walk hundreds of miles in the wild,' said the professor. 'So when you cage them they go insane and walk in circles for ever, scratching off their fur.5

  Kaz smiled in spite of his tension. 'I remind you of a mad, mangy polar bear in a cage.5 Kairos shrugged and smiled. 'When are you expecting them back?5 asked Kaz. Kairos shrugged again. 'The relationship between the flow of time within the bubble and the flow of time without makes it impossible for me to . . .5

  'Forget I asked,5 said Kaz with a weary smile of defeat. He became aware that they were standing directly beneath the timebomb warhead. He looked up and shuddered. It hung there like a threat or a promise. The cloud of debris above and around it prevented him seeing into the house above, but he imagined Sweetclover Hall, ancient now, collapsing in on itself, funnelling tons of plaster, oak and stone down towards their heads. A sudden thought occurred to him.

  'When we were in 1645,5 he said, 'right here under the house, Quil set a bomb that was supposed to demolish the whole place, bury the evidence of her presence here. I suppose it didn't go off. Wonder why.5

  Kairos shrugged. He hadn't been with them, how would he know?

  Kaz shrugged too. 'I suppose Dora must have defused it.' He banished the thought.

  Before he could formulate another one a shrill alarm began to sound, the door burst open and Dora ran into the room.

  'Kaz, something's wrong,' she said breathlessly as Kairos switched the arrival alarm off with a key fob.

  Kaz felt a rush of fear, all his stupid worries rising up again to taunt him. He stood rooted to the spot as Dora ran up to him.

  'What happened?' asked Kairos, after apparently waiting for Kaz to ask and then realising he was dumbstruck.

  'Everything was normal, no sign of a problem,' gasped Dora. 'But at the moment she was supposed to run, she just stood there.'

  'Why would she—'

  Dora interrupted. 'I zoomed in and there was something about the look on her face, the mix of confusion and fear,' she said. 'I recognised it. It was the exact same look my mother had when she was under the influence of the mind-writer in 1645. Quil must have got to her.'

  'How do we save her?' asked Kaz bluntly.

  Dora looked at him appraisingly, sizing him up; he could see she was considering what she could get away with saying next.

  'I don't think we can, Kaz,' she said. 'I jumped away seconds before the bomb exploded and she was right next to it. I just can't see—'

  But Kaz never heard the end of the sentence; he was already barrelling through time, hunting for the right exit point. Within seconds of his subjective time he was standing in the warm air of a Beirut street in the light of morning.

  He blinked in the quiet half-light of the the real world had left

  the delay his weakness was causing, he took a deep as hard as he could on fighting through his He needed to know where and when he was, He found himself staring into the eyes of a child. The little boy, ab
out five Kaz guessed, was standing on the side of the small side street on which Kaz had The boy's mouth and eyes were wide open in trying to work out how the strange man had just of thin air.

  Under normal circumstances Kaz the boy, or held a conspiratorial finger to his lips, and walked off. But now he shouted, 'What street is this? What's the time?'

  The boy only stared. Kaz hurried across the road, grabbed the boy by the shoulder and asked him again, this time in Arabic.

  The boy's wide eyes began to tear up and Kaz realised he the child. He turned and ran. Time enough to about his behaviour later. Right now, he didn't have the luxury of beating himself up for making a small boy cry.

  He rounded a corner on to a larger street and got his sudden sunlight: the transition from the opposite undercroft into the sensory overload of materialised. He was momentarily startled. Impatient, astonishment, and appeared out

  along a row of shops, none of which he recognized. He stood there, looking for a clock on a wall or inside a shop; nothing. He was breathing so hard it took

  food. He spun and stared through the window of the small cafe where he, Tana and Steve had sought refuge after the

  Kaz

  and as hard as he was able; ignored the stitch in his side, the shortness of breath, the pounding in his head. Round another corner and across the street, feeling the rush of wind as a truck passed him by, missing him by the tiniest of margins; he barely noticed. Weaving through traffic, horns blaring at him, faces leaning out of windows shaking fists and shouting; he couldn't have cared less. Another corner and now he was on a long side street. He kept going, tuning out the various pains and signals that his body kept sending to tell him he was pushing himself too hard. He raced across streets; more horns, more shouts, a cyclist sent wobbling into a wall. Still he ran.