Tempus Fugitive

by Nicola Rhodes

  ‘It sank,’ she told him baldy.

  ‘Oh!’ he said. ‘That’s a shame,’ he said lamely. He really was not that interested.

  ‘A shame?’ said Tamar incredulously. ‘The most famous wreck in history. 1500 people drowned, and you say… all you can say is … you never heard of it did you?’ she realised suddenly.

  ‘No,’ he admitted, ‘and that’s a problem isn’t it?’ he added, suddenly catching on.’

  They both turned to gaze at the ship.

  ‘1500 people drowned?’ asked Denny.

  ‘Yes,’

  ‘Shit!’

  Tamar told him the story of the Titanic; he was flabbergasted.

  ‘That’s terrible,’ he said ‘what a momentous cock-up.’

  ‘Are you sure it’s real though?’ he added.

  Tamar nodded uncertainly. ‘I see what you mean,’ she said. ‘One of us has got it wrong, that’s for sure.’

  ‘How could that happen?’

  ‘History must have changed,’ she said. ‘And for some reason only one of us remembers the original version,’ she shrugged.

  ‘So what is the original version?’ asked Denny putting his finger squarely on the nub of the problem.’

  ‘That’s the fifty thousand dollar question,’ said Tamar glumly. ‘Will she sink or won’t she?’

  ‘And is she supposed to sink or not anyway?’ Denny added to the confusion.

  ‘Dunno,’ said Tamar unhelpfully.

  ‘Why do we remember it differently?’ said Denny. ‘If changing history changes our memory of it, as you say, then why…?’

  ‘… Does one of us remember it the way it was before it was changed?’ Tamar finished for him.

  ‘It’s got to be you,’ he said. ‘I mean who’s the Djinn around here anyway? You never saw the world like humans do and anyway, you were alive when it happened, I wasn’t.’

  Tamar reluctantly agreed to this. She did not like it at all, because it meant that the ship was meant to sink in order to fix the timeline and that they would have to be the ones to make sure it happened, because it clearly was not going to happen on its own.

  ‘It doesn’t matter why,’ she said. ‘We may have been the ones that caused it in the first place …’

  ‘Or Askphrit.’ put in Denny.

  ‘Either way, it’s got to be all this jumping around in history that’s done it,’ she said.

  There was a silence.

  ‘So what do we do?’ asked Denny eventually.

  ‘Nothing?’ said Tamar hopefully.

  ‘Um,’ said Denny and scratched his nose meaningfully.

  ‘Well look,’ said Tamar. ‘We don’t even know for sure that I’m the one remembering it right. Maybe you are. So we don’t even know for sure what’s going to happen here, I mean not really. Just because I was here at the time doesn’t mean my memory now is right. In fact, now that I think about it, it’s far more likely that it’s you that’s got it right not me.’

  ‘Explain,’ said Denny tersely

  ‘The change must have happened while we were in mainframe, which means that it’s more likely that the memory you took with you into mainframe was the right one. Because I was living at the time it happened, my memory will have altered along with the timeline – if it didn’t, then I would be remembering something that never happened.’

  ‘So she’s going to sink, and we have to stop it from happening?’ said Denny eventually. ‘Because it’s more than likely our fault anyway.’

  ‘Even if it wasn’t …’ began Tamar

  ‘Yes, yes, I know,’ said Denny testily. ‘Funny how you weren’t so keen to fix the timeline when we thought you might be the one remembering it right.’

  Tamar looked down.

  ‘Because if the timeline changed from a massive disaster to a happy ending then you would rather just leave it that way?’ he pressed on mercilessly.

  ‘Fifteen hundred dead, Denny,’ she said plaintively. ‘Fifteen hundred!’

  ‘It doesn’t make a difference,’ he said sternly. ‘Surely not mending a rift in time when you know about it is just as much a crime as deliberately causing one. Especially if there’s a good chance that we caused it in the first place’

  Tamar just looked stubbornly at him.

  ‘You can’t always play the hero,’ he said gently. ‘Sometimes you have to do the right thing.’

  ‘Gosh that was deep,’ he added to himself. ‘Practically Zen, in fact.’

  ‘Nah,’ said Tamar allowing herself a smile. ‘Zen’s that thing where you talk a lot of bollocks in order to confuse yourself into believing just about anything isn’t it? What you said actually made a lot of sense.’ She sighed. ‘I wish it didn’t.’

  ‘Here’s some more sense for you,’ he said. ‘It’s pretty clear that the timeline has changed, right? So whatever is going to happen is the wrong thing. Therefore, it doesn’t matter who’s right or wrong. Whatever happens on that ship, we have to be there to put it right again. Fancy taking a cruise?’

  ‘And if the ship doesn’t hit the iceberg?’ said Tamar.

  ‘Then your memory was the right one. The ship sank, and there’s nothing we can do about it. We’ll just have to face it and …’

  ‘And what?’ said Tamar.

  ‘Well, sink the ship obviously.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Um …’

  It’d be easier to make sure she doesn’t sink,’ said Tamar gloomily. ‘I mean just from a practical point of view even.’

  ‘I know,’ said Denny. ‘Spot the iceberg and shift it out of the way – easy.’

  ‘Exactly, but if there is no iceberg …’

  ‘Damn!’

  ‘There are always going to be a lot of people to say something weird happened,’ pointed out Tamar. ‘Doesn’t mean anyone will believe them – we know that.’

  ‘So we just …’

  ‘Make a huge great iceberg out of nowhere.’ affirmed Tamar gloomily.

  ‘Bugger!’

  * * *

  ‘Bugger!’ said Stiles

  ‘As you say,’ agreed Hecaté.’

  ‘Right!’ said Stiles pacing again. ‘Right! So … we can fix this. I just have to … Okay, let me think for a bit.’

  He continued pacing up and down the room muttering to himself. It was not in his nature to give up and accept things and besides, for one thing, they had promised Tamar and Denny that they would keep an eye on them, and how could they do that now, in the “time soup” that had been created? And for another, if they did not fix this, the historical ramifications could be horrendous. He could just imagine Tamar’s fury and Denny’s sarcasm. Oh no! Anything but that!

  Besides, Stiles liked a good conundrum to solve; it was the policeman in him.

  Hecaté maintained a respectful silence while she waited.

  Eventually he stopped pacing. ‘Right,’ he said again. ‘It’s obvious really. We have to get in there and put this lot back where they belong and get the people who are in the wrong files back where they belong’

  Hecaté raised an eyebrow ‘Just like that?’ she asked.

  ‘No, not “just like that”,’ he said. ‘I never said it would be easy, but there’s no other way. We have to go into the files. I mean we can, can’t we, now that we have the password? We can get in from here.’

  Hecaté nodded ‘The hands on, practical approach?’ she said, ‘mmm.’

  ‘The human approach,’ said Stiles. ‘Sometimes it works you know.’

  ‘So I have learned,’ she said. ‘I admit it would not have occurred to me to take such an arduous route.’

  ‘Sometimes you need to do more than just snap your fingers,’ said Stiles. ‘That’s life,’

  ‘Very well,’ she said humbly. ‘How do we begin?’

  ‘By tracking the historical anomalies of course,’ said Stiles with a grin.

  * * *

  Denny bounded up to the prow and balanced on the rails, fastened to the rail was a notice bearing the mystery �
��No persons beyond this point”. ‘That’s all they know,’ said Denny. He outstretched his arms and yelled. ‘I’m the king of the wor-r-r-ld!’*

  [*He was obviously picking this up from Tamar although he did not know it.]

  ‘Pillock,’ said Tamar contemptuously, ‘do you want to draw attention to us?’

  ‘Ha!’ retorted Denny. ‘If shifting a bloody great iceberg out of the middle of the ocean doesn’t draw attention to us, I don’t know what will.’

  ‘Keep your voice down,’ she hissed. ‘If it comes to that, we’ll be long gone by the time anyone notices that.’

  Denny subsided; he knew this was a strain on her. ‘How long have we got?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ she said in a strained voice.

  ‘And not a sign of any ice at all,’ said Denny

  ‘I know,’ she said gloomily.

  All that day they could feel the tension mounting. They barely spoke at all, and Tamar was beginning to get that look on her face that Denny interpreted as “I don’t give a stuff what the universe says, I’m doing it my way.”

  This was worrying. He knew damn well when she was up to something. He decided to tackle her before it was too late.

  * * *

  He got straight to the point. ‘You know if that iceberg doesn’t appear by 11.30 that we have to… that you have to manifest it don’t you?’

  ‘Why?’ said Tamar bluntly.

  ‘Tamar!’ he said warningly.

  ‘Oh sod off!’ she told him. ‘I’m not killing fifteen hundred people just because…’

  ‘I know how you feel,’ he told her. ‘But we can’t save all the people all the time. What are you going to do? Spend the rest of your life hurtling through time, stopping disasters, and preventing wars and assassinations? What’s next? Atlantis? Pompeii? JFK? The day the Beatles split up? All those things have already happened. It’s too late.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ she snapped, ‘of course I’m not, and I know that, but this is different. It hasn’t happened yet – not as such.’

  Then the penny dropped for Denny. She knew – had known all along, that the ship was meant to sink and that she intended to do bugger all about it. She had lied to him. He lost his temper.

  ‘You’re rationalising and you know it,’ he snapped – he intended to say a lot more, but Tamar turned on him in sudden fury.

  ‘Yes, I know it, so what? Anyway, you can’t stop me, so sod off and leave me alone!’

  Denny was startled at her vehemence; she sounded like she hated him. He walked away in silence.

  * * *

  He wandered to the other end of the ship and leaned over the back, contemplating whether or not to throw himself overboard. He was feeling depressed, and it was more than just the fight that was behind it. Perhaps he was getting sick of this kind of thing. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a couple of weeks just watching the telly and eating crisps and not having to worry about all this stuff? He was getting weary of it.

  ‘Fifteen hundred people, Denny. Fifteen hundred,’

  Denny jumped.

  ‘I can’t just let them die, Denny, I can’t.’ Tamar was behind him suddenly, sobbing. (She had become, since humanity had hit, a very soggy person.) ‘How can you be so callous?’

  ‘Oh you know me,’ he said, ‘I’m a completely heartless bastard.’

  She looked at the floor. ‘I do know you,’ she said. ‘That’s why I don’t understand.’

  Denny was silent for a long time, ‘Okay,’ he said, eventually, ‘do what you want! To hell with it.’ He rubbed his forehead wearily. ‘Remember what happened the last time I said that?’

  * * *

  The world felt strange around him; he recognised the feeling from somewhere. The air felt thick with destiny, perhaps because he knew what was going to happen. No, that wasn’t it – he could feel it – history was changing because of Tamar’s determination to change it, or rather not to change it back to what it ought to be. The reverberations were making themselves felt already. His memory of the events was the same, but it was as if he was looking through a window at the world as it would be after she had done it – as if he was in both worlds at once. This, he realised was the power of the Athame. He weighed it in his hand; ‘I just wish I knew what would happen if she goes through with it, what the consequences will be …’

  * * *

  It was eleven thirty p.m. And still nothing. Denny’s stomach lurched. This was all wrong. He found Tamar staring stubbornly out to sea. ‘Come with me,’ he ordered, roughly. ‘There’s something you have to see.’

  ‘What? What the hell is wrong with you? What do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘Showing you the consequences.’

  He faced her grimly. ‘The world is splitting,’ he told her. ‘Like it did when Askphrit went back to face himself and changed his own history. It’s splitting into two worlds and look.’ He drew out the Athame, and cut a symbol in the air, which shimmered and then faded. ‘There’s the world you’re about to create, where all these people survive.’

  ‘What …?’

  ‘Look!’

  She looked. It was like a screen seen through a window, while wearing 3D glasses. And she saw … ‘The future?’ she looked at him questioningly.

  ‘From our perspective it’s the past. But see …’

  ‘Hitler, Jack-booting through Europe unfettered. We didn’t stop him, why?’

  Denny handed her the Athame. Then she understood. ‘I see, because a man on this ship, who should have died, didn’t. And his son became a Nazi spy. One man made all that difference.’

  ‘No! One woman – you. There are other things too. I’m sorry.’

  ‘I don’t need to see any more.’ She handed the Athame back to him. ‘Close it.’ She ran away from him.

  ‘Tamar!’

  She turned back briefly, ‘don’t worry, I’ll do it,’ she said, and left him standing there, feeling guilty and depressed as the warning bell rang out.

  * * *

  The ship lurched sickeningly as it hit the berg, why the hell Tamar had insisted on remaining until it was over, was a mystery to Denny. ‘It’s morbid,’ he had said. But she had been adamant, and so he had not pushed it. Apart from that, she was not speaking to him – and that he could understand.

  It was strange, but it seemed that it was true that the majority of the passengers really did not seem worried at all yet.

  Denny leaned against the rail and watched their excitement and fun (they were actually playing hockey or football or something with the chunks of ice – Denny was not a sporty person, so he could not identify the game). He was overcome with a terrible depression. All too soon, there would be panic and screaming and death. Why had she wanted to stay, when they could not interfere, not even in the smallest way? Where was she anyway? He looked about him, but there was no sign of her. Bloody hell! He ran.

  She was down in steerage freeing the trapped passengers. Denny grabbed her by the waist in a fury and slung her aside. ‘What the hell are you doing?’ he screamed in fury. ‘You lied to me!’ He came closer in that moment than he ever had to hitting her. A different kind of man would have.

  ‘I didn’t – I wasn’t – listen to me.’

  ‘How could you? After what I … when I showed you …’

  ‘I’m not! This is different, these people are supposed to get out, but we changed it somehow, trust me.’

  Denny sagged. ‘We shouldn’t even be here, if we weren’t …’

  She nodded. ‘But we are, and we have to put right what I made wrong. There’s a reason why those files aren’t supposed to be accessed by the likes of us.’

  He looked unsure.

  ‘Use the Athame,’ she said. ‘You’ll see, I’m telling the truth.’

  Denny drew it out and weighed it in his hand. Then he brought it down on the lock, and it split. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said.

  The word best used to describe the experience that followed, from the point of v
iew of Tamar and Denny, was “cold”. As they bobbed in the freezing water, Denny eventually asked. ‘Now can we go?’

  ‘Close file.’

  ~ Chapter Ten ~

  ‘There,’ said Hecaté, ‘that is definitely not right.’

  ‘No kidding,’ said Stiles dryly. ‘So we’ve found one?’

  Stiles’s idea was to search for the historical anomalies that might represent a person out of time, just as they had been searching for Tamar and Denny. What made it easier in this case was that they already knew which files to search. Unfortunately, though, Tamar and Denny were still moving on and as they did, more and more people from different files kept appearing and then suddenly disappearing back to where they came from. This was all fine as far as it went, but it was distracting in the extreme and made the search for previously visited files more than necessarily confusing.

  ‘All right,’ said Stiles. ‘Send me through, I’ll go and fetch him.’

  ‘My God!’ he knocked himself on the head suddenly. ‘How stupid we all are.’

  ‘What?’ said Hecaté, alarmed. ‘What is wrong?’

  ‘Don’t you see?’ he said irritatingly, since she clearly could not. ‘We can get into any file we like, straight from here – any file at all, now that we have the password.’

  Hecaté’s eyes widened. ‘But how foolish we are,’ she said.

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  ‘We must get this done and done quickly,’ she said. ‘So that we can find our friends and bring them back here to end this.’

  ‘Amen to that,’ said Stiles. ‘Send me in.’

  The moment Stiles disappeared into the file one of their “guests” vanished – hopefully back to where he had come from.

  Stiles reappeared looking harassed. ‘I did what you said,’ he told her. ‘I grabbed him and said “close file”, but I must have lost him or something …’

  Hecaté smiled. ‘All is well,’ she told him. ‘Both are now back where they belong.’

  Stiles rubbed his head ruefully. ‘I hope you’re right,’ he said.