So, to the controls. He got the machine powered up, checked the instruments, made sure he had green lights across the board, and went to dial in the destination time. Right now, the dashboard clock told him it was twenty-two minutes past ten p.m. He wondered if Molly was back from her treatment by now. Now stop right there, he told himself. Concentrate. Stick to the task at hand. He’d been told earlier that even at eight p.m. James was in the process of getting killed. He thought about this for a minute, trying to shake off a clinging sense of creepiness about the entire venture — yes, all I care about right now is getting the damned disc, rather than trying to save James and Electra’s lives — and decided to drop in on Chez Rutherford at about six this evening. He set up the jump, checked once more that everything was working as it should, and hit the go button.
CHAPTER 24
All at once, it was much brighter outside; he winced at the glare, and started powering down the unit, and trying to think of just how he would go about talking to James about the disc, knowing what he knew about James’s looming fate. Should he try and warn him about his impending death? Should he, in fact, try and take him off somewhere where Electra couldn’t get him? Should he try and take Electra, instead, since she was the real problem? Had his near future self tried all these things and failed? That was the thing bugging Spider the most: that all these ideas had been tried, and succeeded only in making things worse, to say nothing of implicating himself into the crime scene. Go directly to Jail. Do not collect $200. Brood in jail about failing to stop Molly’s torture.
Getting out of the Boron and down off its trailer, Spider found himself still getting rained on, still cold, still miserable, and full of doubts about his mission.
Right, then, he said to himself, glancing about, and looking up the central tower at James’s floor. All I have to do is go up to James and say, ‘James, mate, listen, can’t stop long, just passing by, no, don’t straighten up, it’s… okay. Yeah, anyway, look, would you mind lending me that disc with your late wife’s suicide on it, please? Yes, that’s the one. How do I know you’ve even got such a disc? Ah, well, you see…’ And here Spider stopped, cold rain pouring down his face, soaking his clothes, standing there in front of the complex, thinking about his situation. There was no way Spider could possibly know about the disc. James had, after all, never told him about it. It wasn’t something he could have surmised after, say, accidentally stumbling on Sky’s little video on Snuff.com the other day, as part of his normal relaxation time browsing among snuff movies. He shook his head, shivering in the cold, and went and stood under the entrance portico.
He would have to tell James that he’d come from the future, found the disc, but it was broken. Yes, he knew all about the video, and of course knew about Sky. Why had he come to visit James in the future? Since he had never been to James’s place even once in all the time they’d known each other? Why had he been looking for the disc in the first place? What could the disc and its, er, content possibly contain that someone like Spider might need?
“Shit,” Spider said, hating this entire situation. How could he possibly do this without letting James know that he would die tonight? What if even inadvertently letting him know about his fate somehow brought about that fate? Hadn’t Near Future Spider warned him about that very thing?
Then, an idea: what if, Spider thought, all excited now, he could persuade James to leave the building? Then he could — no, wait. How would he get inside the apartment if James — and his keys — were not there? Electra could let him in, he thought for a moment. Hello, Electra, he could say. Is your dad about? No? Just missed him? Damn. What about? Well, as it happens, I’m looking for a disc your dad’s got. I don’t know what it’s called, no. It’s got a video on it, of your mum…
He shook his head, hating himself. Suppose, though, he could get them both to leave — but then, there’s the problem of getting into the apartment without anybody there to open the door. He supposed he could try kicking in the door, but he knew that places like this had very solidly built doors. None of that hollow plywood crap you saw in cheap starter homes.
Suppose he set off the fire alarm? Get everybody running outside! Back to locked apartment door, though. He should have brought Iris with him. That had been the whole point of having Iris come along with him tonight in the first place. She might be helpful. “Idiot!”
So, go back to the present, get Iris, come back, try again? Once again, how do I know about the disc? How do I know to ask for it? Do I ask for it? Maybe I want something else, and James invites me in, offers some coffee, and while he goes off into the bowels of the apartment trying to find whatever it is, I stealthily swipe the disc? Seen that work in any number of movies and TV shows.
Yeah, right. “I need that bloody disc!” he said, anguished, thinking about everything he could fix if he could just stop Sky Rutherford killing herself — and that was assuming that something, anything, could in fact stop her going through with it. He’d seen her work. She was tough. Determined. Getting her to change her mind on a plan so well thought through would be more than hard.
He paced back and forth, thinking hard, rubbing his temples, as if to coax brilliant ideas to come out and play. Then, “I don’t need the disc itself!” he said, wide-eyed with realization. “I just need…” Energized now, bouncing on his toes, unconcerned about being dripping wet, he knew what would do the trick. He just needed someone to let him in. He’d seen residents and visitors coming and going throughout this whole frustrating time; it was just a question, as Near Future Spider had told him, of waiting for someone and then slipping through behind them.
This took a while to come off. People coming and going suddenly became very shy about coming or going. Nobody at all used the main entrance. He thought about going downstairs into the underground parking garage — though he’d need to work the same magic there, as well, he realized. Damn it all!
Then, here came some guy, expensive suit under expensive raincoat, bearing designer umbrella, talking to someone on the phone. Spider shot him a nod and a smile, and the guy nodded back, indicated his phone patch, and rolled his eyes at Spider. Spider smiled again, understanding only too well what it was like when people called and just would not shut up or get off the line. The guy let him in.
Thank God, Spider thought, dripping on the polished marble. He squished his way to the elevator lobby, and stood there, again waiting for someone to help him out. What he really needed, he knew, was a pizza delivery costume, preferably including a real, hot pizza, giving off very persuasive aromas that would convince anybody he was really there to deliver pizzas and was in a hurry. Next time, he told himself. Next time.
Eventually, someone came along and helped him out, and he made it into the elevator lobby. The ride up to James’s floor was excruciating. The infinite Spiders reflected in the mirrors tormented him even more this second time. He watched the level indicator display, bouncing more on his toes, trying to keep at least reasonably calm, telling himself that when the doors opened he would not just run all the way to James’s door. He would—
The car was stopping at another floor. “Good grief!” he said, and wanted to hit something. God, all he needed was this one piece of information, just one piece of info!
Well, he thought, why not just phone the bastard and be done with it? G’day, James! Spider. Yeah. Hi. No, I haven’t forgot about tonight. No worries. I just wanted to ask about… Spider sagged against the wall of the elevator car, seeing how the rest of this would play out. Yes, I just wanted to ask for very specific details about your wife’s suicide. Which, of course, you’ve never told me much about, other than the simple fact that she did indeed top herself. Why do I want to know exactly when she did it? Why right now? Well, er, um… Spider shook his head, frustrated.
The car stopped, the doors opened, and a middle-aged black woman, expensively dressed, stepped into the car. She gave him a polite smile, and
concentrated on the level display. Spider thought her perfume was wonderful.
At length, he arrived on the correct floor. “Thank God!” He did his best not to run along the passageway. Passersby kept getting in his way, making him step around them. He had to keep a smile on his face, as if to say, yes, I really belong here, I’m not an intruder, no, not at all, why do you ask? I’m just here to see my old buddy James Rutherford. Yes, you can smell his place from all the way back here, can’t you?
And there he was. The smell was bad. People inside were alive: he could hear a news show on the media wall, turned up loud. He knocked. Nothing happened. He held his breath. He knocked again, louder. He heard probably James’s muffled voice shouting something, and then, he was guessing, Electra’s voice, yelling back, which led to a very loud and hostile interchange. Spider was thinking, oh no, don’t say it all started because some poor bastard came to the door and they had a fight over who should get it? That wouldn’t be right! But he knew all kinds of stupid things led to people getting killed. He hadn’t thought of this. Oh God!
Then he heard latches working, and then the door swung open a crack — releasing a great waft of landfill odor that nearly made him swoon and cough — and there was the delightful Electra Rutherford: shorter than he had expected, very post-goth, all shredded black lace combined with a fluorescent pink Fifties-style circle skirt, with layers and layers of shredded black petticoats, finished off with bright red Doc Marten boots. And in her hair, all manner of distracting flashing and blinking Christmas tree lights, or something like it, only they seemed to flash in time to something she was listening to on her watchtop. Her eyes were completely black, no whites showing, with extensive smudgy black mascara all around them. The effect was disgusting, and at first made him think she’d somehow put out her eyes.
“What?” she said, looking him up and down like he was something filthy she’d just stepped in.
And that did it for him. He was profoundly tired, felt like he’d been awake for days on end, still unsure that he was completely inside his own head, and, frankly, needed to take a dump sometime soon — and here he was, face to ghastly face with the infamous Electra Rutherford. He certainly had not intended saying what he now went and said, had in fact no way of knowing these words had been poised for delivery, as if waiting there, patiently, for weeks and weeks. Yet, the sheer bizarre sight of her in all her weird yet mundane reality, led him to say out loud the sort of thing which, if he had been more in his right frame of mind, he’d have kept to himself. This, however, was the strangest of strange times. He’d just seen this same person, dead by her own hand, submerged in a bathtub. He’d seen her father, slaughtered like a pig. It made him think of Clea Fassbinder. He said, “You really should have done a better job hiding Clea’s body.” And there it was, out and hanging in the air between them. He felt, in this moment of extreme weirdness, as if he could see the words, hanging there, jiggling a little, and he could quickly grab them and hide them away, and make it so that he’d never said such a stupid thing.
But they were not just hanging there, and he could not call them back. He had tipped the balance of time in a particular direction — and he felt like an idiot.
She first looked confused, then took a closer look at him, taking him in, this time examining him, sizing him up. How much of a threat are you? she seemed to be thinking. Her hideous black eyes narrowed. “What did you just say?”
“See,” Spider said, “if it was me, and I was trying to hide a body, I’d stuff said body in a time machine, like you did, but just the one. I’d set the controls for, say, a thousand years in the future — or the past, but then again, you never know when some archeologist guy might do a dig on that site, and next thing you know you’ve got well-preserved human remains clearly belonging to the twenty-first century turning up in eleventh century dirt, right? So you send the body off to the future, never to be a problem for you ever again.”
Electra stood there, staring and staring at this raving idiot going on and on before her. She said, “Who the fuck are you?”
“But no,” he said. “No, you had to be a bit clever about it. It wasn’t enough, was it, to just hide the body in a time machine? Your dad, probably, the great time machine engineer, famous in his field, told you about this neat trick you could do, more of an exploit really, hiding one time machine inside another time machine. Do it right, and nobody ever knows. The hidden time machine is buried away forever in its own little bubble universe. But that’s only if you do it just right, and you, you stupid girl, you didn’t do it just right, did you?”
She’d gone quite pale; the contrast with her eyes, hair and all that mascara was alarming. “Why don’t you come inside, and we can talk about this quietly. What do you reckon?” She was glancing about behind Spider, to see if there were any neighbors listening.
Spider thought, And here it is, the invitation. Other versions of himself had been here, in similar circumstances, and they had gone inside, and come to horrible grief one way or another. He’d blown his secret: she knew he knew. He’d lost the game. Tension boiling and bubbling in his guts, staring at the full horror of her, he tried to decide what to do, but then—
James came up behind Electra. “Oh, hi, Spider.” He looked stunned to see Spider standing there, and doubtless remembered the last time he’d seen Spider, and the state he’d been in when they parted company. Awkwardly, to cover embarrassment, not wanting to reveal anything in front of Electra, James went on, “I thought I heard your voice. Come on in, have a drink.” It looked like James had already had five or six too many drinks. He stood there in old tracksuit pants and a grimy Linux conference t-shirt, a shambles of a man. Just like I used to look, Spider thought, with a shiver of recognition.
“James, hi, um, yeah,” Spider said, at a loss, his entire plan in disarray, struggling to come up with a way back to what he was trying to achieve. He just had to ask James for the exact date Sky killed herself. Did he remember the date?
But here he was being swept into the dank apartment, James leading the way, and Electra behind him, close enough that he could smell her perfume, something offensively sweet and strong, like a candy store, only condensed and cold, mixing horribly with that vile landfill stench. She said, from behind him, a subtle tone in her voice he figured only he would notice, “Would you like something to drink, Mr. Webb?” She’d popped into the kitchen, he could hear her rummaging about in drawers full of clattering cutlery. He thought, getting scared now, Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit! I’ve completely stuffed it up!
And now here he was in the living area, his feet crunching on stuff on the floor, his eyes noticing small black things scuttling hither and yon with each footfall, and the smell, my God, the smell! He wanted to ask James, who looked, well, he looked too drunk to notice, probably, how he could live like this, but he couldn’t quite do it. All too aware of Electra somewhere behind him, wishing he could put his back against the media wall behind him, and now James was clearing layers of crap from the couch so Spider could take a seat, kick back and relax.
Electra appeared with a can of Zhujiang beer, and offered to open it for him with her deeply scary long black fingernails. He said, no thanks, he was fine, and set it down on a few square centimeters of clear space on the coffee table. He could see the screen running the media center on the table where he “remembered” seeing it, in the future — or in one future, at least. He didn’t know what was going to happen now. The other future, the one he’d already seen, would go on as it was supposed to, in another timeline. What happened in this timeline, however, was up for grabs, and here was Spider, without anyone to back him up, all alone and in massive, stupid trouble. He sat there, perched uncomfortably on the edge of the smelly couch, looking around. Electra popped into her bedroom for a bit, and then emerged again, equipped with a vintage Fifties-style handbag that, he realized, she probably got from the actual Fifties, and said, “Okay, Dad. Headi
ng out to see The Beat. Back later. Be good now, you two…” She shot Spider a look that said, “You are so dead!” and flounced off to the door, stepped outside, and slammed the door behind her.
“Thank Christ she’s gone!” James said, opening a new beer with shaking hands, and settling back into the couch, and, Spider noticed with creeping unease, appearing to blend into the couch, becoming a part of it. “Filthy fucking cow!” he said, staring across the room towards the front door. “Finally get a few moments’ peace!” He helped himself to most of the can’s contents in one go, drinking like a man in the desert dying of dehydration, like his life depended on it. Spider tried not to remember the sight of this man dead in his bed, a couple of hours from now.
“Kids, eh?” Spider said, hoping this remark was suitably bland, but also keeping an eye on that door, in case Electra came back unexpectedly.
“Kids?” James said, glancing at him. “Electra is no bloody kid, Spider. She’s, I don’t know, she’s a fucking monster.” The words of what he said sounded angry, but his delivery was all regretful sadness.
Spider decided to say nothing, and just let James talk. Sometimes it was the best thing to do.
“Heard you talking to her, before,” James said. “How long have you known?”
“Not long,” Spider said, doing his best to keep his comments brief, and to keep from blurting out, JAMES SHE’S GONNA KILL YOU, MAN! GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE NOW!
“It was all her idea. You wouldn’t think a thirteen-year-old girl would sit around plotting murder, but there she was, working it all out, doing research out on the tubes, putting details together. She made it clear to me one night over dinner. I would help her with some of the technical details, because I had caused her mother…” He hesitated here. “Caused her mother to take her life.”
Time Machines Repaired While-U-Wait Page 32
