Tomorrow's Guardian

by Richard Denning

CHAPTER TWENTY–THREE – TRAFALGAR SQUARE

  Tom glared at Septimus. It was true then: the Welshman had betrayed him; had planned to sell him to Redfeld for money, for profit, just as if he was one of those Greek vases he had once spoken about. Tom’s temper finally erupted. “Septimus, you lied to me!” Tom shouted. “You strung me along and pretended to be saving me when all the time you meant to betray me!”

  Septimus at least had the grace to look embarrassed and one of the guards sniggered at his obvious discomfort. This appeared to make him angry because his face flushed a dull red, his eyes widened and he looked about to say something to the guard, but Tom would not let him be distracted.

  “I trusted you – but you tricked me. All along you were working with people who planned to destroy my family!”

  “Tom ... I ... I’m sorry ... I,” Septimus started to say, but Redfeld cut across him.

  “I told you not to waste your breath on him, Thomas.”

  “Shut up!” Tom spun round to glare at the Captain, his face a mask of fury. Unable to find any words to express what he was feeling, he glanced at his other companions.

  Charlie and Edward were looking on in confused silence, unsure what was going on. Meanwhile, Mary had perhaps worked out a little more than the others, because she was staring at Redfeld with a terrified expression on her face, as if convinced she had found the evil monster she had feared him to be.

  Turning back to Septimus, Tom’s anger continued to mount like a raging torrent. “I trusted you and all the while you were working for these ... these people,” he pointed a finger at Redfeld, who seemed to find Tom’s tirade amusing. Both he and his men had stopped moving towards the Walkers and appeared to be enjoying the performance.

  Tom finally stopped shouting and tried to control his breathing. As he did this, he looked at Redfeld and his guards more closely. He still found it hard to believe they were not from the same planet. “So, is it true, Redfeld? You really are from another world?

  “Deutschland is our home, young man. But, the correct one,” the Captain answered. “Germany did not lose the war like in your feeble version of history. In my world, The Glorious Third Reich rules from the Urals to the Atlantic and from the Arctic to the Sahara. Your world should not exist: it is an error to be eradicated, deleted and corrected. The true version of history will reign supreme and ... you will make it happen!” Redfeld’s eyes now shone with an almost holy zeal.

  Tom’s face blanched. So that was what this was all about. “And how do you plan to do that?” He spat out the words in contempt.

  Redfeld seemed not to notice, “A door: I need to open a door. You will be the key. That door will give me the present as well as the past and the future!”

  “What’s this nonsense about?” Charlie Hawker asked from his perch on one of the lions, “I don’t understand what he is saying, but I don’t like the sound of it one bit. The man’s a damn Nazi! How’d you get involved with scum like him?”

  “Look, Charlie,” Tom gazed up at him, “all I can say for now is that these guys attacked Mary and me before and that they want to harm us!” Tom paused then added, “Me particularly!”

  “Yeah? Well, that’s good enough for me,” Charlie stated. He jumped down in front of the lion and walked towards the guards.

  “Charlie, what are you doing? They’re armed!” Septimus yelled a warning.

  Seeing Charlie approach, the guards stopped and one of them pulled out a pistol and levelled it at him. The young seaman froze. Then all hell broke loose.

  One of the American tourists spotted the gun, shouted, “Terrorist!” and screaming, the crowds started to scatter like startled pigeons. A shot rang out followed by a ricochet as the bullet rebounded off the lion, chipping a piece off its nose. This time it was the pigeons that scattered in terror; with a whoosh of wings they took to the sky, creating a swirling cloud of grey and black.

  This was when Charlie chose to act.

  Tom was looking right at him at the time, so he saw him move like a blur through the terrified pigeons. Unlike when Tom himself Walked, such as when he was dodging the Zulu spears by hopping short distances, Charlie never totally vanished. What he seemed to do was make a series of multiple tiny jumps, each just a little further than a man could run in that instant. Nothing staggering as such, perhaps, but put all the minute Walks or jumps together and the effect was rather like watching a dancer at a disco when the strobe light is on. It was fast – blisteringly fast. One moment Charlie was just behind Tom and the next he had swung round and attacked Redfeld’s guards from the side.

  Like a rugby forward, the young seaman used his shoulders and his momentum to great effect, knocking two of Redfeld’s guards down in short order and upon reaching the third, slapped the pistol from his hand. Two more guards finally reacted and turned to face this new threat. That left an opening and now Edward jumped forward and charged towards these two from their rear.

  At that same moment, Tom saw Septimus swing a fist round into the final guard’s face. With a crunch, it connected and the man let out a groan and collapsed onto the pavement.

  The next few moments passed in a blur. Tom was vaguely aware of a lot of shouting from all sides, the barking of orders, the sight of yet another guard on the ground, spitting out blood, and Mary screaming as she was knocked over by one of Redfeld’s thugs. Finally, there was the deafening bang of a pistol shot and Septimus let out a cry of agony.

  Then, suddenly, as Redfeld reached out to seize him, Tom came to his senses and everything came back into focus. He kicked the man hard in the shins and Redfeld fell back grasping his bleeding leg. Tom scampered forward and jumped over him to land next to Septimus, who lay bleeding in a heap on the ground. Mary was beside him and as Tom came closer, she raised her hand like an evangelist preacher and shouted out the words, “Wall be gone!”

  Around them there was a shimmering in the air followed by a cry of outrage from Redfeld who cried out, “My wall!”

  Abruptly, Tom could feel the Flow of Time and he reached over and laid a hand on Septimus and Mary.

  “Charlie! Edward! Come here now: we can leave,” he yelled.

  Charlie moved like a bolt of lightning towards them, followed more sedately, by the Victorian officer.

  “Not so fast, my brave young men!” shouted Redfeld, climbing to his feet. From his pocket he pulled out a box, which looked rather like a TV remote control. He turned to point it away from Tom towards the far side of the square and pressed a button.

  “He’s putting his wall up again!” Tom gasped.

  Mary shook her head, “This is no wall, Master Tom. It is more like ... more like a door. Look!”

  Close behind Redfeld, Tom saw a pinpoint of infinite brightness appear and expand rapidly with a load crack. In the Square around them the remaining onlookers started shouting about a bomb going off and were scattering further away, whilst from the distance police sirens could be heard approaching.

  Meanwhile, the bright point had now spread out to an ugly gash in the air five feet wide and ten high. On either side of the gash, the buildings on the edge of the Square were clearly visible, whilst through it Tom could make out the room that he had seen twice before: a room full of work benches and pieces of scientific equipment with gauges and wires showing. On one wall was a bank of computers, their screens depicting furious activity as rows of numbers and lines of code scrolled downwards. In front of the benches a couple of dozen soldiers were standing: all in grey uniforms with steel helmets and armed with rifles.

  In the midst of the soldiers, there was some kind of machine. Tom squinted to make it out, but it was hard because of the beam of light that shone from it almost like a torch, directly towards the gash. No, not a torch – Tom could now perceive a few more details and saw that the device was more like a projector in a movie theatre. It was almost as if the guards were in a cinema watching the fight in Trafalgar Square.

  Was this the door Redfeld spoke of? Tom doubted it. Afte
r all, Redfeld had done this himself. As he watched, six guards reached forward and touched the projecting device then vanished from sight. In the next instant they reappeared in the Square, standing to attention next to Redfeld.

  “Get them!” Redfeld ordered, pointing at Edward and Charlie who, just as shocked as Tom, had frozen in their tracks and stood gawping at the scene. In a moment, the six guards swarmed towards them and, outnumbered, the Walkers were soon overpowered and forced to the ground. Tom saw Charlie take a clout to the back of his head from a rifle butt and then slump, lifeless, into the arms of two of the guards. Edward was still struggling, but to no avail. Before Tom could react, his new friends were dragged, with Edward kicking and screaming, back through the strange doorway into the room. With an ear–piercing clap, the gash slammed shut and the Square looked normal again: normal that was, apart from Redfeld and his original six guards, the wounded Septimus and the panicking tourists still screaming about ‘terrorists!’

  “Charlie! Edward!” Tom yelled, searching the empty sky.

  “Well, that was easier than I expected,” Redfeld chortled, “and now, Thomas, it’s your turn!” he said. He stepped forward whilst cocking his pistol, levelled the weapon and pointed it at Tom.

  Tom though, was already on the move. He Walked Septimus, Mary and himself away from the Square. At the last instant he heard a loud crack as Redfeld discharged his pistol. An agonising pain shot through his head: and everything went black.

  All Tom knew of the next moments was a series of confused, fractured images in his brain: Mary and Redfeld sitting cross–legged like nursery children, building walls with toy bricks. Mary knocking over Redfeld’s bricks and him running away crying and saying he wanted his mummy. Next, Tom saw Alexander the Great playing cricket. He was actually rather good at it and hit several sixes with his sword before having the umpires executed after they had given him out. A moment later, Tom was in an office building standing next to a man in a suit. The man was looking down at the table in front on him. The table was covered with sand. Images and patterns swirled across it. Then, all was calm. The man smiled, sat back down and crossed his arms.

  Following this, Tom’s dream changed to scenes from old black and white war movies: British soldiers driving trucks across the desert to fight distant battles. However, the men they fought were not the Germans that Tom remembered from all those Sunday afternoon movies. These had different uniforms and marched under a strange banner with a lightning bolt symbol on it. Tom saw the face of the figure carrying the banner and recoiled in shock as he realised that it was himself. Then he heard the voice of Captain Redfeld calling out to him in triumph.

  “Did I not I tell you that you would give us Time?”

  Then the dream changed again and Tom knew, as he always did, that this was no longer a dream: he was Walking again. But where was he now?

  The Office again. And, just as before, Tom becomes the man in the suit. What is his name? Does he have one? If he ever did, it has no meaning or importance now. All that is important is preserving the two realities in eternal balance. That has been his job since – well, since he came to exist: since the ‘Event’. He does not recall any life nor any purpose before this life and this purpose.

  He is the Custodian.

  The Custodian looks at the table. He notices that the lines representing that dangerous boy’s family come to an abrupt end. Redfeld has done his job. He has travelled back and eliminated the boy’s parents and thus the boy also. He permits himself the faintest of smiles. Then, the smile fades. He has just noticed the swirling confusion of lines twelve years after that intervention. Another line emerges from the present day, moves back through the sand a dozen years, before returning to the present once more. Then, with blinding alacrity, it hurtles back and forward across the centuries. What is going on? Finally, the line returns to the twenty–first century once more.

  As he puzzles over this, he becomes aware that another figure is in the Office. He looks up and it is almost as if he is gazing into a mirror. For, another old man in a suit stares back at him.

  “So, you have finally come to see me,” the Custodian says and then adds the man’s title, “Professor.”

  “I have come about a boy you would have dead,” Neoptolemas replies, “... brother.”

  With a start, Tom sat up and stared, unseeing, all around. His heart was pounding and his palms were sweating. Brother. Had the Professor really called the man in the suit ‘brother’? Tom was now used to these dreams and could tell which ones were real. Somewhere in the strange world between worlds where the Office was found, the Professor had met the Custodian. But if, along with Redfeld, the man in the suit was connected with the death of Tom’s parents, what was Neoptolemas’ part in all this? Tom blinked and focused on his surroundings. Where was he? Not Trafalgar Square, certainly.

  He was sitting on a park bench. Septimus was next to him and was still unconscious. Mary was lying on the ground in front of the bench, but there was no sign of Charlie or Edward. The three of them were in the middle of a park near a long lake with boats on it. A woman walking by pushing a shopping basket gave them a strange look: half curious, half afraid. Tom examined her clothes: she wore a modern, dark grey dress; so it seemed they were still in his own time. He realised she was staring at Septimus, who was bleeding from a wound on the side of his chest. When the woman saw Tom staring back she looked away and scuttled off. He felt moisture trickling on his scalp and probed at it with his finger tips. When he examined them, his fingers were covered in blood. The bullet had grazed his scalp and he had the worst headache that he could remember, but the blood seemed to be drying now so it appeared that the damage was slight and that he had been lucky. It also meant he had been here for some while; how long?

  Septimus looked to be in much a worse state. The bullet had hit him in the chest and he was losing a lot of blood, his face was the colour of dirty chalk. The man needed help, but Tom could not carry him even if Mary could help. Though his scalp wound was slight, Tom felt weak and he knew he could not just Walk them to a hospital. For a moment, his anger returned as he remembered that he still had an unfinished conversation with the traitor Welshman. Then again, Septimus had fought against Redfeld and it appeared that whatever the deal he had once struck with the enemy, he had changed his mind and had tried to protect Tom. As a result Septimus now lay there, badly injured. The conversation could wait. Tom had to try to wake him and get him to a doctor. Leaning over, he shook the Welshman by the shoulders.

  “Septimus, wake up!” he shouted. The man groaned and opened his eyes. Slowly he turned his head to take in the scene.

  “Where are we?”

  “London; Hyde Park, I think. As for the date it’s …” Tom squinted as he quickly checked his link with the Clock and the Flow of Time. “Gosh, it’s July 2nd … why, it’s still today!”

  Septimus smiled weakly but then started coughing. He put his hand to his mouth and when it came away Tom could see flecks of blood on it.

  “I must get you to a hospital,” he suggested.

  “No!” Septimus shook his head and winced. “They will be watching them.” Pulling himself to his feet he stood swaying and pointed through the trees to the tall Regency buildings beyond. “The Institute is that way. It’s not far, but we must move quickly. If we can get inside, the Professor’s barriers will protect us.” He started coughing again, his breath coming in hoarse gasps of pain.

  Tom was far from convinced. He wanted to tell Septimus about his dream and his fears that the Neoptolemas was not what he seemed, but the Welshman was clearly badly wounded and needed help fast. He would have to risk it and hope the Professor was not there. Get Septimus patched up and ... then what? Tom really had no idea.

  He nudged Mary with his foot. “Mary, wake up!” he ordered. For a moment he was afraid she was still unconscious, but then her eyes opened and she stared up at him blearily without recognition for a moment, before sitting up and looking around fearful
ly.

  Tom spared her what he hoped was a sympathetic smile. “It’s alright. Redfeld isn’t here, Mary, but we must get away. We will have to walk; I haven’t got the energy to Walk.” At any other time he might have found that statement funny, as it was, he grimaced.

  Septimus gave a groan and collapsed back onto the bench. Pulling him to his feet, Tom let the Welshman lean on his shoulder. Mary scrambled up and moved to support him on the other side and together they moved off towards the gate. At one point, they saw a policemen peering at them from the corner of the park and could see him speak into a radio set on his jacket. They hurried out of the park and tried to cross the Bayswater Road. As they did, a police car hurtled past them. The driver craned his head round to look at them and a moment later the car’s brake lights came on. Tom urged Septimus and Mary along and like some bizarre six–legged zombie, they staggered across the road. Tom suggested to Septimus that maybe they should get the police to help, but he shook his head.

  “It would not be safe ... for them, I mean,” the Welshman gasped, gritting his teeth. “When Redfeld turns up, he will show them no mercy.”

  They were now across the road. Marble Arch could be seen in the distance and Tom recognised the side road leading to the avenue where the Institute stood. They turned into it and Tom risked a glance behind. The policemen had left their car and, joining up with the officer from the park, were crossing the road. They were now just thirty paces away.

  “Oh no!” Tom heard Mary cry out.

  Glancing ahead again, his heart sank, for Captain Redfeld and two of his guards had just stepped out of thin air and were only twenty feet away. For a moment, they were all looking north, away from Tom, Mary and Septimus. In desperation, Tom searched about for an escape route, hoping to get out of sight before Redfeld spotted them.

  He was too late.

  At that moment, one of the policemen following up behind yelled out.

  “Sir, stop please; we just want to talk to you!”

  Hearing this, Redfeld turned and saw his quarry. He smiled and reached for his pistol as his guards levelled their rifles.

  Tom swallowed hard and waited for them to open fire.