Time's Arrow 3: White Noise (Pax Britannia (Time's Arrow))

by Jonathan Green

  PAX BRITANNIA

  TIME’S ARROW

  PART THREE: WHITE NOISE

  By Jonathan Green

  Pax Britannia

  The Ulysses Quicksilver Books, by Jonathan Green

  Unnatural History

  Leviathan Rising

  Human Nature

  Evolution Expects

  Blood Royal

  Dark Side

  Anno Frankenstein

  Time's Arrow

  The El Sombra Books, by Al Ewing

  El Sombra

  Gods of Manhattan

  Pax Omega

  An Abaddon Books™ Publication

  www.abaddonbooks.com

  abaddonsolaris@rebellion.co.uk

  First published in 2012 by Abaddon Books™, Rebellion Intellectual Property Limited, Riverside House, Osney Mead, Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK.

  Editors: Jonathan Oliver & David Moore

  Cover: Simon Parr

  Design: Simon Parr & Luke Preece

  Marketing and PR: Keith Richardson

  Creative Director and CEO: Jason Kingsley

  Chief Technical Officer: Chris Kingsley

  Pax Britannia™ created by Jonathan Green

  Copyright© 2012 Rebellion. All rights reserved.

  Pax Britannia™, Abaddon Books and Abaddon Books logo are trademarks owned or used exclusively by Rebellion Intellectual Property Limited. The trademarks have been registered or protection sought in all member states of the European Union and other countries around the world. All right reserved.

  ISBN (EPUB): 978-1-84997-307-6

  ISBN (MOBI): 978-1-84997-308-3

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Part Three

  White Noise

  ~ May 1998 ~

  “Lives of great men all remind us, we can make

  our lives sublime, and, departing, leave behind us,

  footprints on the sands of time.”

  – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  CHAPTER ONE

  Aftershocks

  WHITE NOISE.

  Red pain.

  Darkness...

  HE’S AWARE OF the ringing in his ears before he’s aware of anything else. It’s like it’s never left him, like it’s always been there; a background buzzing, as if there’s a furious fly trapped in his auditory canal.

  He tries to move but his body resists in painful protest. He’s lying on his back, of that much he’s certain, his arms and legs splayed out either side of him. His legs are trapped, his left arm too. He tentatively tries his right arm again, feeling grit rub against the palm of his hand.

  He opens his one remaining eye but is met by nothing but darkness. He blinks, and waits, hoping that his vision will somehow become accustomed to the gloom of this lightless pit in which he now finds himself.

  If only he could hear anything other than the constant buzzing in his ears, he might be able to find out more about his surroundings.

  There’s blood in his mouth, the hot battery tang of it coating his tongue. There’s something sticking into his back. He tries to adjust his position, but his legs are still trapped.

  He blinks against the impenetrable darkness, the utter blackness making his eye sore with straining. It’s more comfortable to keep it closed.

  He strains to listen, his whole body tensing in frustration, until he is forced to give up in annoyance.

  Panic waits for him, there in the darkness, but if he panics now he’s lost. Panic is the cringing beast that waits at the edge of the conscious mind, in the shadows at the edge of the impenetrable forest of the subconscious. Waiting, ready to pounce, and seize control when all reason has fled.

  At least he can breathe. He can feel something on his chest, but it’s not heavy and moves with him as he takes a long, slow breath through his nose.

  The air smells of plaster and charcoal. Dust particles tickle his nose, causing him to take a sharp involuntary breath. He coughs as more of the disturbed dust fills his mouth, spitting in an attempt to clear his mouth of saliva and blood.

  His heart is pounding. He can feel the throb of the pulse in his wrist where something is pressing again it.

  He can’t even move a hand to wipe the mess of spittle from his lips.

  He takes another careful breath. And another.

  And another.

  He focuses on nothing but his breathing, and as he does so he calms his thumping heart.

  Beginning to relax at last, he now focuses on the pressure of the pulse in his wrist and the throb of the pulse in his ears, visualising the blood being pushed around his body with every surge. And as he does so, his mind makes a connection between the dull thud of his heart and the pulsing of the sonic bomb buried in the basement in the phantom’s lair beneath the Paris Opera House.

  And he remembers...

  The immaculate study. The makeshift laboratory. The smell of animal musk and camphor and hot batteries. The brutalised pipe organ. The Monarch butterfly in its walnut frame, resting on the upper register of the pipe organ’s keyboard. The swelling sound of the orchestra filling the cellar. The pulses emanating from the weaponised instrument increasing in intensity with every arcing musical phrase, making his head throb and seeming to synchronise with the desperate beating of his heart.

  Saying goodbye to Cadence Bettencourt, leaving her to disarm the sonic bomb. Blood streaming from his nose. The flight through the subterranean labyrinth of secret tunnels and maintenance passageways beneath the Paris Opera. Meeting Inspector Dupin again in the foyer. The soaring triumph that was Carmine Roussel’s posthumous greatest work, and his last thanks to Le Papillon’s murderous actions. Their desperate attempt to evacuate the auditorium, Ulysses himself being carried along by the wave of panicked humanity.

  That was when the world had turned upside down. Then nothing, for he knew not how long, and now this; white noise, red pain, and impenetrable darkness.

  He tries moving his trapped legs once more, slowly this time, gritting his teeth against the pain, and feels something shift. He cries out as the pressure against his shins increases, the crushing weight on his legs intensifying.

  His voice sounds muffled in the claustrophobic darkness, but in the silence that follows his pained exhalation, as he is forced to draw breath again, he hears a voice. Muffled. Urgent.

  “Hello!” he shouts, and coughs as he inhales another cloud of dust. “Hello! Over here!”

  Voices again; more than one now.

  It takes him a moment to realise that they are speaking French.

  “Over here!” he calls again.

  Footsteps. A sound like feet on mountain scree. The crack and tinkle of breaking glass.

  He cries out again as something presses down on him from above. More urgent chatter and the pain eases.

  And there’s light now; only a chink, but it’s better than nothing. Blinking urgently, he sees the swirling dust, coloured silver now, the pieces of broken plaster resting on his chest, and the curving arch of a once ornate candelabra, the weight of it crushing his legs.

  The voices are clearer now and closer. Hands pull at the rubble and suddenly the light is more than he can stand and he squeezes his remaining eye shut against its glare.

  “Monsieur Quicksilver?”

  The intolerable
pressure on his legs eases. The release from pain causes him to gasp in relief.

  He can move his arms now too.

  He feels a hand grab his and someone pulls him from the rubble.

  “YOU’RE SURE YOU’RE okay?” Inspector Auguste Dupin asked as a look of anxious concern writ large upon his face.

  “How’s the saying go? That which doesn’t kill you...”

  “Only you look like shit. Like...”

  “Like the Paris Opera House just fell on me?” Ulysses Quicksilver said.

  “That wasn’t what I was going to say, but the analogy works just as well.” The rumour of a wry smile curled the corner of Dupin’s mouth.

  Ulysses hadn’t made it further than the entrance foyer of the Palais Garnier when the sonic bomb detonated. He was still there now, after a fashion, sitting on the marble steps of the grand staircase. Only now the foyer benefited from what a desperate property developer might have described as an al fresco aesthetic.

  Dawn was just breaking over the rooftops of Montreuil and early morning sunlight poured into the ruin of the now not-so-grand lobby. Dupin had told him he’d been trapped under the debris for hours. He had told him he was lucky to be alive. There were certainly plenty of others who hadn’t been so lucky.

  The roof of the Opera Garnier lay about Ulysses’ feet. Much of it was now blocking the Place de la Bastille and the Rue Halévy beyond. The police were still helping ballet-goers from the rubble, but a number of shrouded bodies were already lying in the lee of what had once been the ticket office.

  All things considered, Ulysses thought, it could have been a lot worse. They could have all died along with the Opera House.

  There was no way of knowing yet how many had lost their lives in the disaster, how many had been injured, or how many might yet succumb to their injuries, but – he kept telling himself, like it was some kind a mantra – it could still have been a lot worse.

  Dancers, musicians, backstage staff, passers-by, drivers of vehicles crushed by the collapsing structure as the edifice slid into the road like a calving glacier – it could number hundreds, if not thousands, but not everyone was dead, and Ulysses was still very much alive.

  No matter how selfish such a thought might be, to Ulysses, at that moment, that was all that mattered. It wasn’t that he valued his life more highly than anybody else’s, but that he valued the life of Emilia Oddfellow more than anybody else’s, including his own. As long as he was still alive, then he might yet save her, her father and his younger self, from the apocalyptic fate that awaited them on the Moon.

  God alone knew where Leroux, the phantom of the opera, and the ape had got to – and there had been that other bedroom in Le Papillon’s basement-lair too, the question of the identity of its owner still niggling at Ulysses’ subconscious – but the worst had already happened.

  And besides, this was Paris. This wasn’t his jurisdiction. It wasn’t his turf – although his role as agent of the throne of Magna Britannia could take him anywhere in the world to protect British interests – and the destruction of the Paris Opera wasn’t his problem. It was tragic, admittedly, but that still didn’t make it his problem.

  The French police knew now that Ulysses hadn’t been behind the Rue Morgue murders. Thanks to him they also knew the identity of the enigmatic terrorist known as Le Papillon, and where to start looking for him. The British dandy had done enough to get the ball rolling for the Parisian authorities. Having cleared his name, now all he needed to do was head back over the Channel to good old Blighty.

  He smiled, patting his jacket pocket. He even had the falsified documentation, passport and train ticket Valerius Leroux had passed him at the Louvre.

  “What happened to your friend?” Dupin asked.

  “My friend?”

  “The girl. The one you were with at Notre Dame. The one with the velocipede. Mademoiselle Bettencourt?”

  Ulysses blanched, feeling the blood draining from his cheeks.

  In all the commotion, he had forgotten that she had been working to disarm the bomb when it went off.

  How could he have been so selfish? How could he have been so preoccupied as to forget Cadence when she had sacrificed her life in an effort to save the Parisian elite visiting the Opera House for the premiere of Roussel’s Black Swan?

  He looked at the gaping hole in the ground behind him. In places, the rubble lay a good six feet lower than ground level.

  The detonation had been deep down beneath the Opera House, so deep that it would have brought down the cellars and labyrinth of tunnels that riddled the ground beneath the city streets, like the subsidence of a vast sinkhole. Nothing could have survived under all that.

  Even if Cadence had given up on disarming the bomb before it went off, and not been caught at the epicentre of the blast – pulverised to a paste by the lethal sound waves – she would surely have been crushed by the tons of earth, brick and Opera House that had collapsed into the huge hole afterwards.

  His gaze drifted across the piles of rubble and broken walls, and splintered columns. Smoke was rising from somewhere nearby, while the clouds of dust raised by the rescuers and shambling survivors as they stumbled from the rubble were turned gold by the early morning sunlight. The police were still pulling people from the rubble alive, but Cadence Bettencourt wasn’t ever going to be one of them and that saddened Ulysses.

  He had liked her. She had been resourceful, clever, charming. Attractive. He would have considered her a prize worth trying to win over, if his heart hadn’t already been spoken for by another. That aside, her death was just another pointless waste, one of hundreds, no doubt, following Leroux’s abominable attack on the Paris Opera.

  And it had all been so convoluted. What had been the point of that? Why a sonic bomb? Why not just plant half a ton of dynamite in the sewers and be done with it? What had been the point of all that tomfoolery involving the pipe organ?

  “Are you sure you’ll be alright?” Dupin pressed. “It’s just that there’s still much to be done and... I’m needed elsewhere.”

  “Come on,” Ulysses said with a weary sigh, “I’ll give you a hand.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Look, will you stop asking me that?”

  It was the morning of Sunday 17th May, 1998. There was still a month or more before the doomed Apollo 13 made its fateful journey to the Moon. He could help out here for an hour or two.

  “Yes. I’ve got plenty of time.”

  “I mean, don’t want to get yourself checked over by a professional?” Dupin said, looking at him now like he was concerned for his mental state as much as anything else.

  “Why, is there a doctor in the house?”

  “Probably, somewhere under all that rubble. But you could have concussion. Or worse.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Ulysses said, punctuating his declaration with a wheeze of pain as he got to his feet. His shins ached from where the candelabra had lain across them, and his shoulder was aching too. In fact, there wasn’t a lot of him that didn’t hurt, one way or another.

  His one-eyed gaze alighted on the shrouded bodies again for a moment. And besides, he was a lot better off than those who had fallen victim to Le Papillon’s attack on the Paris Opera. Like those poor wretches now lying under the blood-stained sheets, who had gone out the night before expecting an evening of delightful music and diverting conversation, not death and destruction at the Opera.

  Like Cadence Bettencourt.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Fait Accompli

  “YOU’LL NEVER GET away with this, you know?”

  The butterfly collector suppressed a snigger. “But my dear, I already have.”

  Leaning against the parapet, Valerius Leroux looked out across the city. Once more in the guise of Le Papillon, the agent of chaos – wearing what could once have been a French Foreign Legionnaire’s uniform with the addition of a utility belt and other accoutrements, his aristocratic features hidden behind a goggled mask – he stared at the si
te of the Opera Garnier.

  Dust hung in the air over the site of the demolished landmark – once referred to as “the most famous opera house in the world” – even now, hours after the sonic bomb had brought it crashing to the ground. His heart leapt at the memory.

  His sonic bomb. He had done this. Hundreds, if not thousands dead, and it was only just the beginning; a prelude to the main act.

  The echo of emergency sirens had faded long ago, although he could still see the red and blue lights blinking between the crowded tenements of the Gaillon district. From his vantage point he could also make out the traffic jams and congestion chaos his opening salvo had caused. One little building razed to the ground and practically the entire city had been brought to a standstill.

  He smiled, imagining the shock the populace of Paris were going to receive when he put the final stage of his plan into action. And it wouldn’t be long now.

  He turned back to where his colleague was finishing off connecting the other device to the tower’s superstructure. “Is it ready?”

  The rope tether creaked and groaned in the wind, the balloon anchored above them straining to be free.

  “Won’t be long now,” Dr Montague Moreau replied not looking up from his work, his speech impaired by the screwdriver clamped between his teeth. “Just need to double-check these last connections, then you can turn it on, sit back and enjoy the show as the shit really hits the fan.”

  Le Papillon’s jaw tensed at the scientist’s earthy tone, but he made no comment. Instead he said, “Good. I’ve been waiting months to see my plan come to fruition. As have other... interested parties.”