Of course, he got absolutely nowhere.
“Can you make this thing work again?” Tuesday demanded.
September looked down at the broken time machine. Her face didn't show any signs of recognition.
“What is it?”
Tuesday smacked his head into the wall.
“We don't have time for this! Can you fix it?”
September bared her teeth in annoyance.
“I don't even know what it is. How am I meant to fix it?”
Although most experts would agree that trying to fix a half-busted time machine with no tools and zero training could be a bad idea unless you were hoping to Ouroboros the entire timestream up its own backside, Tuesday had no choice but to chance it. So while he couldn't even name half of the components in the little slab, it was the only hope he had left. Call it optimistic or call it delusional, but he had to at least try.
After a good five seconds of whacking the device on the deck without any luck, Tuesday's next repair attempt was to randomly connect the burnt components together with strands of dirty chewing gum from the bottom of his boot. It still wasn't working as the second line of purple-uniformed officers disappeared into the ravenous rats, never to be seen again. Eight seconds later, an entire wall panel exploded behind September in a hurricane of black fur and scissoring, dirty teeth, and just like that she was gone. It took less than two seconds for her to completely vanish, and she only had enough time to say five words before becoming a part of the deadly swell. For the first time in her life, she looked confused.
“Why do you love me?”
Tuesday’s clumsy hands were still furiously working the hardware when a big, black mongrel jumped forwards as a vanguard of his demise. Just as a mouthful of jagged teeth surrounded Tuesday’s nose the busted Nokia decided to flare up in a burst of light and colour. Electricity arced across the walls, streaking about as bolts of lightning, and Tuesday was gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
YOU ONLY LIVE THRICE
Within an almost-bare loft situated on the desirable crossroads of Fifth & Pringle, Ernest Fell was glaring knives from behind his marble desk. On the far side of the large space, beyond an extremely nervous gangland gofer and the unbreakable lump of muscle known as Jeeves Butler, respectively, was a sweeping balcony made from woven platinum. Deeper through the sprawl of cream starscrapers that made up most of the world of Seven Suns, a five-kilometre slab of pure white descended from the heavens and hovered in mid-air like an 8-bit cloud in the first level of Super Mario Brothers. Despite its distance, you could clearly see that FRONTIER was embossed on its hull in pure gold.
Leaning forwards, his eyes narrowed to hateful slits at the nameless underworld delivery person, Ernest hissed his next words.
“Explain that to me again.”
On the phone, the young gangster's voice had been crystal-clear with enthusiasm about making this successful delivery. After all, it didn't get much more prestigious than doing something for Mister Fell, even when the crimelord’s reputation had been in freefall for weeks. Now that the delivery guy was actually here in person at one of Ernest’s many safehouses, the poor schmuck looked as though he was seriously considering fleeing the planet to become a soybean farmer on the most distant dirtball in the galaxy.
“I…” the delivery guy ummed. “I…”
A tiger-like growl sounded from behind him. The gangster turned his head just enough to glance at Jeeves. The mountainous thug was deliberately standing in shadow, but his silhouette was edged with light from a sweeping paper-thin television display wall.
“Mister Fell asked you to do something.”
The gangster finally pulled himself together and faced Ernest again.
“Like I said, we found the target, Jim Tuesday, tripping with a New New Age tribe a few systems across the galactic plane. The target reacted to us calling his name, but he didn’t try to run or offer any resistance. Reckon he was too stoned to walk.”
“Not that part.” Ernest snapped. “The next part. I want you to repeat the next part.” “The DNA tests confirmed he was a perfect match,” the gangster stressed. “Admittedly, yes, at a glance there may appear to be a bit of a difference to the file picture, Mister Fell, but…”
Ernest rocketed out of his chair like a baking soda missile.
“There may appear to be a bit of a difference?!” Ernest screamed, slamming his fists into the marble desk so hard that he almost broke his pinkies. He pointed at the other side of the loft. “You think that is a bit of a difference?!”
Jeeves casually moved his two hundred kilogram frame out of the way of Ernest's pointing finger. The sidestep revealed an interesting creature on the other side of the office: it was a mass of dozens of eyeballs joined together by a dense tangle of what appeared to be a cross between optical nerves and tentacles. Each of the pupils were darting about the safehouse independently. As soon as it realised everyone was looking at it, the creature's beaked mouth opened into three triangular sections to reveal two sharp, prehensile blue tongues. The tongues waved politely, and it made a noise you’d expect to hear from the Swedish Chef from the Muppets.
Although everybody in the safehouse was currently distracted by life-or-death matters, the big lightscreen behind Jeeves automatically divided itself to show all fifteen news channels. Every segment had BREAKING NEWS flashing across them. Each square showed a different reporter, but they were all standing outside of the exact same Spaceport at slightly different angles and were delivering an identical scoop.
“...when an unknown madman somehow managed to break the military cordon before leading armed pursuers on a merry chase through the pallets of supplies...”
“...amazingly, the intruder stowed away on a cargo-grade gravity lift, which theoretically should have smashed his bones into jelly within...”
“...of course, the launch of The Frontier will have to be delayed until the stowaway is found and removed by...”
“...local government officials are refusing to confirm whether the stowaway was actually Binary Star recipient Bob Tuesday...”
Jeeves glanced over his shoulder towards the television, his ears prickling. He lost his train of thought when Ernest slammed his fist onto the marble desk again.
“Hey!” Ernest snapped. “You can watch the box on your own time, Lurch.”
“Sorry, Mister Fell.” Jeeves apologised, stiffening. “I thought it said...”
Ernest gave a curt wave. It was the “shut up and get ready to mop a large volume of human blood off the tiles” motion he used all the time. His eyes flicked back towards the delivery guy, who had lost all colour by this point. Ernest raised a finger, as though deep in thought.
“I need you to help me with something. Do you know the confidential MedTek arcade over on Rushmore & Pringle? The one that takes Amerikan pounds as well as German yen?”
The gangster looked relieved. A chance to make up for his mistake!
“I do, Mister Fell!”
Ernest placed his hand on the gangster's shoulder.
“Good.”
In one smooth motion Ernest snatched an antique letter opener off his desk and stabbed the delivery guy right in the liver. The gofer's shocked eyes opened so wide that they were mostly just white, and he curled up like a hunchback. Somehow, he didn’t collapse. Ernest extracted the improvised weapon, wiped it on the delivery guy’s shirt, and patted him on the back.
“If you hurry, you might get there before you bleed out.”
Ernest ignored the delivery guy as he staggered out, leaking and moaning pitifully, and slammed into his comfy chair. Jeeves was already reaching to turn on the MopBot in the corner.
“Will these damned Tuesdays ever stop infuriating me?”
Ernest got his answer before he’d finished speaking: a tear in the space-time continuum opened up less than five metres from his head, and Bob Tuesday tumbled out. As Tuesday had been sitting perfectly still when the Nokia time machine had flared twelve weeks into th
e future, he dropped straight down and crashed mouth-first into the tiles. As more than five dozen hive-minded ship rats had been leaping through the air at top speed when they were gathered by the chronological rip, their arc sent them ploughing straight into Ernest. They hit the crimelord so hard that he was knocked from his chair and skidded across the floor, and by the time he realised what was going on he’d already been nibbled to death.
Tuesday rolled over on the tiles, muttering curses, and the defective Nokia crackled to ruin beneath his body. The temporal rip instantly sealed, and all of the hived rats immediately collapsed in perfect synchronisation, bleeding from their ears, nostrils, eyes and mouths. If Tuesday was a smarter man he might have known that this was because they’d been cut off from the Hiver Queen, who was still residing in the future. As it was, he was too busy being concussed.
Groaning, Tuesday managed to get up. Unfortunately, Jeeves was standing there with an accelerator pistol clenched in a massive hand. For almost ten seconds, they stood there like statues. Finally, Jeeves spoke.
“You know, your family has been bad news since day one. Irritating. Annoying. Embarrassing. And you know what?” Jeeves gripped the side of his accelerator pistol and popped out its antimatter battery slab. Tuesday could clearly see a one-gram sphere of antimatter bobbing about inside of the vacuum clip. Jeeves slapped the two separated components on Ernest's desk. “I’m out.”
Tuesday squinted.
“I…what?”
Jeeves began to strip. Once his Armani jacket was off, the ceramic combat vest came next. It clunked loudly on the tiles.
“Tuesday, you just used a horde of teleporting suicide attack rats to kill one of the most dangerous men alive. My limit has been reached. I’m out.”
“Well, technically, they were time-travelling suicide attack rats…”
Jeeves just stared for a few seconds.
“Yeah, that’s a lot less terrifying, thanks.” Jeeves began to detach a multitude of chemically sharpened knives that had been hidden all over his considerable person. He dropped them onto the ceramic vest one by one. “Anyway, my service contract was for the duration of Mister Fell’s life. That life is now over. As my hypnotic conditioning requires, I am to report back to the Nevada Desert facility for reassignment. I suggest you stay away from any of my future employers.” Jeeves made eye contact with Tuesday. “I was hypnotically conditioned to obey Mister Fell at all times. I am in no way responsible for anything I have ever done to you or your family.”
And with that semi-apology, Jeeves was gone for good.
Turning away from the open door, trying to understand why he was still alive, Tuesday finally noticed the mass of eyeballs slumped in the corner. Blinky, or whatever its real name was, gestured for Tuesday to come closer with a waving blue tongue, and it said a simple phrase in Unglish that rocked him to the core. Tuesday was in such shock that he was unable to believe what he had just heard, and, with a sigh, the freak was forced to repeat itself.
“Where's my Zippo?” the mass of eyeballs croaked.
Tuesday crossed the loft slowly, one gradual step at a time, and he produced a well-worn and well-travelled Zippo gas lighter in a shaking hand. Cheered by the look of recognition in those darting, alien eyes, Tuesday was suddenly treated to an unexpected spectacle: the creature quivered violently, and four hundred eyeballs began to separate from its body with quiet pops. The orbs bounced around a bit before dissolving into nothing. The scrawny alien body warped with the crackle of dislocating joints, shifted to a light beige colour, and finally completed its transformation back into the near-human known as Jim Tuesday. Jim shook off the last dregs of the shape-changing hallucinogenic drugs with a shudder. Smiling toothlessly, he chuckled exactly like his firstborn and took the offered Zippo.
“Son, if you ever get offered a free hit of something called Morpheus from a convicted war criminal, my advice...” Jim blinked, choosing his words carefully, “...my advice is to use it in moderation.”
Tuesday embraced his Dad. It was a hug that had waited for thirteen long years, a hug that had been cruelly separated by slavery, imprisonment, deep space, death, insanity and a dozen other insurmountable obstacles. For the first time in years he felt like “Bob” again, rather than the scumbag known as “Tuesday,” and it was an embrace that could possibly have lasted forever...
Bob felt an odd, unknown emotion, a warm sort of… completeness, as though finding his Dad had been the whole point of this story all along. It felt right, a fitting way to finish this particular metaphorical chapter of his life, like the sensation you get when sipping a coconut-rum-and-lemonade nightcap with someone special after a successful date. It rounded things out nicely.
Then it dawned on him: September, and everyone else on The Frontier, was still in fatal danger.
In a rare flash of insight, Tuesday knew that his mission was your classic cause-and-effect time travel problem, the sort of thing faced by chronal-jockeys on a regular basis. But how would he fix things? Could he stop his earlier version from sneaking aboard The Frontier? After all, if he never stowed away in the first place there would be no need for September to steal Eulogy’s Hiver Queen, and that meant that Jimmy wouldn’t accidentally set the Queen free, and so the rats wouldn’t get smart, and that meant Jimmy and September and the Fleet Admiral and everyone else wouldn’t die horribly…
But would it make a difference? Was the future really malleable? Would his actions only result in the exact same thing? Or would it actually change the timestream?
And then he realised something: in their trip into the extremely far future, Mister Boodle's cage had still been in the Department of Dimensional Plotting. He distinctly remembered that they left it in Jimmy's bedroom after the alarm went off. Either somebody had decided to move it back there for no apparent reason, or...
It was a paradox. And where there was one, there could be a million.
“We need to hurry,” Bob said urgently to his Dad. “We only have a few minutes, at best. I need to make a call.”
“Who…”
“Look, we’re going to save the life of someone I totally, utterly love, and who loves me too, even though rescuing her will mean she’ll never even know that I existed at all.” Although he was trying to be tough, Bob blubbed the last few words. This girly emotional stuff had been alien to him until now, and he felt embarrassed. His mouth quivered like a small child jumping up and down on a trampoline. “But I knew you’d find me, Dad. I always knew.”
Jim smiled, searching pointlessly for something to say.
“So…” Jim shrugged, already running out of material from his minuscule stock of people skills. “You been up to much?”
Bob put a supportive arm around Jim’s shoulders and they staggered for the lift together, through the ashes and smoke, ready to face everything that the bastard Universe could possibly hurl at them, now and forever.
TO BE CONTINUED IN
“TOTALLY, UTTERLY, SCREWED”
Scum of the Universe Page 49
