by Graeme Smith
Sonata
Sviluppo - Settimo Movimento
Washington D.C. - 350 And Down
The man in the black leather duster checked the cuffs on the girl's ankles and wrists. He looked up at the woman playing a duet with herself on the piano in the corner. None of her four arms and hands missed a note as she nodded. The man in black leather stepped back carefully, and pulled up a chair, out of reach of the girl's arms or legs even if she got free. Suddenly the piano player's head came up, and she stared at the girl. “Jack! She's...”
“I know, P.” The man in the black leather duster unloaded his gun, then loaded it again. But he never took the live round from the chamber, and if he wasn't exactly aiming it at the girl, he wasn't aimless either. “It's dead. Or not alive. One of those.”
“No, not the demon, Jack! She's... it's...”
“I know, P. I know.” Jack looked at the girl locked in the chair. “So you gonna stop pretending you're asleep kid?”
The girl's eyes opened, piercing blue and cold. She said nothing.
Jack grinned. IT was a shame there wasn’t any vodka around needing ice cubes. “So what’s it going to be? Dislocate your thumb and pull your left wrist out of the cuff? Then grab your gun, the one you think I was dumb to leave in your thigh holster? Oh. Right. The thigh holster I’m not supposed to know you have, right? Then you’re going to kill me.” Jack’s vice was flat, and his eyes never left the girl..
The girl's eyes widened. “How...?”
Jack shrugged. “Because it’s what I’d do. Difference is, I wouldn’t be where you are. Anyway. You did that already. Well, killing me, anyway. And I hate repeats.” Jack stood up. He stepped over to the girl and unclipped her wrist. He reached under her short skirt, and pulled the Glock from the thigh holster. Then he put the Glock in the girl's hand and stepped back. As the girl pulled the trigger, once, twice, three times, there was a flash of red and white light. He pulled the three petunia blossoms out of the Glock's barrel and tossed them at the wall behind him. Three cracks echoed through the room and three bullet holes opened in the wall. He looked at the girl and raised an eyebrow. “I think Jimmy's a bit too dead to be putting on weight, kid.” Jack sat down in the other chair. “So let's talk. About keeping you alive - even if it kills you.”
Chapter Fifteen
Piano Girl
October 17th, 1797. Ash Farm, between Porlock and Linton.
There's a lot of things I'd rather have in my mouth than Unicorn horn. Hell, just about anything, and not just what you're thinking. But the bad taste I had in my mouth this time wasn't the Horn. Mostly it was the six guys in Kevlar armour seventeen-ninety-seven shouldn't have known a damn thing about. The ones I was guessing I wasn't supposed to have noticed before I went skipping up to the door of the farmhouse to tell the nice Mr Coleridge not to answer the door to any insurance salesmen from Porlock. The ones with their eyes glued to long sights covering every approach to the farmhouse door. Sights set on top of four hundred and fifteen millimeter barrels able to throw five rounds of thirty-nine-millimeter-you're-fucked every three seconds at any target they saw inside three hundred and fifty meters. Right now I was wishing Mickey K had stuck to fucking poetry.
Poets. You just can't trust them.
Still, where there's a will, there's a way. Or in my case, where there's a piano wire garrote there is. Because whoever put these guys out, they hadn't given them overlapping fields like the kind of books Mom gave me to read when I was six say you should. See, that way if someone's creeping up on you with, like, the piano wire I mentioned, one of your buddies (or two if they're laid right, and I'm never against a guy's buddies getting laid) is half looking at you as well as the kill zone. Like that, the chick with the piano wire, assuming there is one, gets introduced to some real bad news even if she gets you. The way these guys were laid, they weren't going to get laid ever again, at least not by the time I was done with piano practice. But that still left me with a problem. If I cleared the meat, it wasn't going to be as quiet as making it meat in the first place. Sammy was likely to stop the scribbling he'd better be doing right now and come see what the racket was. If I left it where it was, then any passing insurance salesmen might see it. And that was apart from the other thing. The thing I'd missed. I had no idea what it was, but I knew there was something. Because there's always something. That was one of the first things Mom made me learn, and made me learn all over again every day. The time you think you covered everything, the time you think you didn't miss a thing? That's the time you're dead. So I dropped back down the track to the farmhouse, and I kept on dropping. I stayed in cover, but I kept moving. The only thing any insurance salesman was going to need was life-insurance, and the good news was he wasn't going to have to worry about making any more payments. Of course, that was the bad news too.
Or he wouldn't have had to. If he'd existed. Because there wasn't one. In fact, there wasn't anybody. Porlock or Poughkeepsie, this was starting to feel like the wrong Sammy. Like, less Coleridge and more Beckett (some stuff at school wasn't all bad). Because nobody came, and nobody went and nothing happened. All night. Which might have been just fine for Estragon and Vladimir, but not for me. See, I was here to fuck-up history, not get fucked by it – and somebody who might or might not have been an insurance salesman from Porlock was supposed to be dead by now. I had a feeling something was wrong, and the feeling was starting to feel like a friend with benefits. Like, one way or another, I was screwed. It was like a really bad game show, and I had to choose a door. Thing is I only had one and I didn't know if opening it or leaving it shut meant game over. I tossed a coin in my head, and it came down wondering what Sammy C would say to a girl in black leather at his door. I ran back down the track to the farm door – and I knocked.
Sonata
Sviluppo - Ottavo Movimento
Washington D.C. - 350 And Down
The man in the black leather duster sat back in the chair facing the girl. “I'd tell you that you get used to it, but you don't. Not really. You just stop noticing.”
The girl's eyes were cold. She said nothing.
The man in black leather raised an eyebrow. “Please yourself. But right now your head hurts like hell and you don't know if it's Thursday or Christmas. Even more than usual I mean. Because you get that a lot. The memory thing, right? Or rather – the not memory.”
The girl darted a glance at the four armed woman at the piano. The woman didn't look up, but four hands slid gently into 'Rhapsody in Blue'.
Jack shook his head. “Nothing to do with P. You just got Nudged.”
The girl spat. “Nudged? Whatever you hit me with, nudge isn't the half of it. You like hitting girls you bastard?”
“You're lucky, dear. You should have seen what he did to the Countess.” The piano player's hands slid into 'El Diablo Cojuelo'.
“Countess? What Countess?”
Jack shrugged. “Long ago, and far away. And besides, she's dead. She bloody well better be, anyway.” Jack's eyes went colder than the girl's. “But then, you know all about that. Or Maggie Spencer does, right?”
The girl's eyes narrowed. “Fuck. I knew I missed something. I could feel it. So CG wasn't the only one. I guess Mom's even more pissed with me than I thought, right? So what happens now?”
Jack raised an eyebrow. “Now? Right now, your soul knows you jumped a guy in 1798. Thing is, it knows he got dead in 1797 too. Or rather, it doesn't. Because you don't have one, do you?”
For the first time, the girl grinned. “I don't know about soul. I've always been a jazz...” She stopped. On her face, scared danced with puzzled, and it looked like both had two left feet. “Anyway. Fuck that! And fuck Mom too. Whatever this is, it's on you! You fucked up my mission!
Jack sighed. “Your mission. Yeah, you had a mission. You've always had one. Just one. Want to see?”
“See? See what?”
Jack shrugged. “I don't remember. Not yet, at least.” He pulled a bottle from his pocket, opened it
and drank. The smell of Unicorn Horn didn't fill the room. “You know how some folk drink to forget? This doesn't do that. This makes you remember. Even things that never happened.” He held it out. The girl locked her eyes on his – and nodded. Jack stood up and stepped over to the girl. He tipped the bottle to her mouth. “P?”
The piano player got up, and came over to the two of them. Two hands settled on Jack's head, and two on the girl's. Her fingers sank into their skulls.
Outside the room, the Universe screamed.
Chapter Sixteen
Dead Man Talking
October 18th, 1797. Ash Farm, between Porlock and Linton.
When you're an eighteenth century poet, and you open your door, and there's a gorgeous chick dressed in tight black leather with a pink gun pointed at you standing there, there's a way things are supposed to go. Like, maybe you say whatever the eighteenth century version of 'what the fuck?' might be. Or maybe you don't say anything at all, and your jaw makes a dent in the floor. Or maybe you figure you're still flying on the poppy you did last night, so it's, like, normal. What you don't do is use one arm to knock the chick's gun hand up to the ceiling, then slide your arm up hers to grab her wrist twist and twist it just right to make her drop her damn gun. And you certainly don't step back past her leg and do a perfect Kosoto Gari and put her flat on her back. And even if you do all that, you don't lean over her, and you don't fucking wink and you don't fucking grin and you don't say 'Hey, Maya. You're late.'
I didn't have to ask why the grin looked familiar. Somewhere, I knew some real badass sharks were screaming for their mommies. And some-when, I could almost see my own Mommy Dear with my file, scribbling out Maya and writing in 'Patsy'. So I kicked up, and I hooked my leg over the throat of Mr I'm-not-Sammy-C, and I smacked his head on the floor hard enough to make him forget next Thursday. I'd have blown his head off, but he had to live at least long enough for him to tell me to come back here tonight. Whatever he'd meant about books, I knew what he'd meant about Mommy. Because if nothing else made any sense at all, one thing did – I'd been set up. I was here for something, but it sure wasn't Xanadu. And wherever the real Sammy C was, he probably had a hole in his head that meant a lot more than Xanadu wasn't going to get finished. Or, like, started. I grabbed the bottle in my pocket, opened it – and swallowed.
* * *
Some-When. Middle-of-Nowhere, USA.
“You set me up!”
“Boss. Or ma'am.”
“What?” Mom didn't seem fazed by the pink Glock I was pointing at her. Some other time that might have been because of the number of times I'd shot her with it without so much as a bruise on her after. This time it was more likely because I wasn’t pointing it. I'd left it on the floor in Ash Farm and didn't have it to point. That wasn't good.
“Boss. Or ma'am. You see dear, this isn't the part where you're my daughter, and we laugh, and you tell me you'll do better next time. This is the part where you work for me, and you remember who's in charge. Although perhaps 'work' is a little bit of an exaggeration for the mess you just made of a perfectly simple task. And I suppose you'd feel more comfortable if you hadn't dropped this, hmm?”
It wasn't a whole lot pink any more, and the rust and years hadn't left it a whole lot of Glock, but it was a whole lot of mine. I caught it from Mom's throw over to me. “OK! So I dropped my gun! So sue me! But...”
“This isn't the type of employer who sues you when you mess up, dear.”
I couldn't remember if I'd ever heard Mom's voice so cold. “Mom – OK, so boss – like, the job was already screwed. That wasn't Coleridge. He was one of yours! So how the hell could I get Xanadu off him? I figured I'd come back and tell you he'd...”
“Tell me what, dear? That he'd killed Samuel Coleridge, and you were going to fail English because you knew a whole lot of poems he was never going to write? Surely if he was one of mine I already knew that, brat.”
Something was wrong. Mom had called me a whole mess of things in our time, but brat wasn't one of them. I worked the slide on the once-a-Glock. It snapped in my fingers.
“And the mission was never about Xanadu, you pathetic child. It was to see how you handled the unexpected. Which, it appears, you didn't. Not quite as bad as last time, but still – oh, to the Hells with it. I can work on that. A little less obstinate, and a lot more biddable next time, child. And if raising you is always so tedious, at least I get to kill your mother again. Ealdric? Do be a dear?”
They say you never hear the one that kills you. CG must have been using sub-sonic loads, because I almost did. Then the bullet ploughed into my hea....
Sonata
Ricapitolazione – Primo Movimento
Washington D.C. - 350 And Down
“She killed me!”
Wherever the three were, it wasn't quite the room they'd been in. The piano player's fingers stayed deep inside both the man in black's head and the girl's. The man in black leather shrugged. “Could be. Might have been. Might be. One of those, anyway.”
“My mother! She fucking killed me!”
Jack shrugged again. “Your mom. Riiight. We should probably talk about that. Just – just not yet. See, thing is, you messed up, kid. She figured you weren't up to the job she needed doing. So she started over.”
“Started over?”
“Yeah. Like I'm figuring somebody did to me. Started over. So maybe you wouldn't mess up next time. So maybe you'd be ready.”
“Ready? For what?”
“Let's find out.” The man in black leather nodded, and the piano player's fingers flexed inside two heads.
* * *
“You know they can't do this either.” Shadows don't speak. So the shadow on the wall didn't say anything to air in the room.
“Why not?” Words don't have colours. So the voice wasn't red and white. Even if it was.
“Because it's impossible, of course.”
“I thought we'd been through that?”
“Right. But that was just him. Not the piano-player. You know I can't let you do that.” A shadow arm reached out, a shadow rod poised to smack down on the frozen man's head.
“Guess not. So you'd better stop it then. Of course...”
“Of course what?”
“Well, you remember it. Remember this, right? So it has to happen. That's how it is, right? Like it's Fa...”
“Don't say it! You know I can't... I mean, trans-temporal-quantum-irregularity universe fucked up and... what is that noise?” The shadow didn't drift off the wall, and it didn't open the door, and it didn't shout at the screaming Universe. “Oh, do be quiet. Don't make me come out there!” Whatever the shadow hadn't done, the Universe decided it didn't want to make it do it again. It fell silent. Since the shadow had never left the wall, it didn't return to it. “OK. So they can't possibly do it. But I remember it. So it must have happened. Just like it did before. Just like it will again.” Shadows don't sigh, so the shadow didn't. “You know, I'd be having a headache if it had been invented yet. Has it?”
“Oh, I think so. It was probably my fault.” If a red and white laugh could be pink, the air in the room blushed.
“Then I supposed we'd better make sure they can do the impossible again, hadn't we dear?”
The shadow wrapped the room's air close round it, and reached out to the three frozen in the middle of the room. Outside, the Universe thought about screaming again.
Chapter Seventeen
Ash Wednesday
Washington D.C. - 350 And Down
“You know this is impossible, Jack?”
“What is, P?”
“Showing her. Showing her a future she never lived. One we never lived.”
“You didn’t, P. Not this time. But I did. That’s how it works. I remember. Everything. Even the things that didn’t happen because they got fixed. Because I fixed them. So take it from me.”
“Oh, I believe you, Jack. It’s just...”
“No, P. I mean, take it from me. My memory.”
“Right, P. See, it was like this. Or it was once...”
October 18th, 1797. Ash Farm, between Porlock and Linton.
When you're an eighteenth century poet, and you open your door, and there's a gorgeous chick dressed in tight black leather with a pink gun pointed at you standing there, there's a way things are supposed to go. Like, maybe you say whatever the eighteenth century version of 'what the fuck?' might be. Or maybe you don't say anything at all, and your jaw makes a dent in the floor. Or maybe you figure you're still flying on the poppy you did last night, so it's, like, normal. What you don't do is use one arm to knock the chick's gun hand up to the ceiling, then slide your arm up hers to grab her wrist twist and twist it just right to make her drop her damn gun. And you certainly don't step back past her leg and do a perfect Kosoto Gari and put her flat on her back. And even if you do all that, you don't lean over her, and you don't fucking wink and you don't fucking grin and you don't say 'Hey, Maya. You're late.'
I didn't have to ask why the grin looked familiar. Somewhere, I knew some real badass sharks were screaming for their mommies. And some-when, I could almost see my own Mommy Dear with my file, scribbling out Maya and writing in 'Patsy'. So I kicked up, and I hooked my leg over the throat of Mr I'm-not-Sammy-C, and I smacked his head on the floor hard enough to make him forget next Thursday. I'd have blown his head off, but he had to live at least long enough for him to tell me to come back here tonight. Whatever he'd meant about books, I knew what he'd meant about mommy. Because if nothing else made any sense at all, one thing did – I'd been set up. I was here for something, but it sure wasn't Xanadu, and wherever the real Sammy C was, he probably had a hole in his head that meant a lot more than Xanadu wasn't going to get finished. Or, like, started. I thought about grabbing for the bottle in my pocket, and somehow it felt wrong. For a moment, it was like the whole universe shivered. But running home to mommy didn't seem like a good idea at all. Mom wasn't big on 'fair' – mostly she was big on kicking my ass for whining.
