Dispel Illusion (Impossible Times)

by Mark Lawrence

  CHAPTER 22

  1986

  ‘Mia!’ I couldn’t keep the bitterness from my voice. ‘For God’s sake! You’ve ruined everything.’

  Young Nick and Mia stood with their mouths open, staring at me in confusion.

  ‘I don’t understand . . .’ Nick reached towards the machete handle swinging about on my side as I got to my feet. ‘This is all pretend?’ He glanced at Rust on the floor, then at Mr Arnot.

  ‘No, they’re dead.’ I gave Rust a hefty kick. ‘And this bastard truly deserved it.’ I raised both hands in fists and let out a roar of anger. ‘We were so close! So fucking close! And now it’s all in ruins.’ I’d been within touching distance of saving Mia. And who’d stopped me doing it? Mia herself.

  ‘We’ve forked the timeline?’ Nick asked.

  ‘Forked it and fucked it.’ I nodded. ‘None of this matters to me now. None of it carries forward to the Mia I had to save in 2011.’

  The here and now Mia, the fifteen-year-old one with the bloody neck and unreasonable powers of observation under stress, shook her head; still confused, apparently. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure!’ I couldn’t help shouting at her. ‘This wasn’t what happened at all.’

  She shook her head again. ‘I mean, are you sure they’re both dead? Because I thought I saw Mr Arnot move his hand just now.’

  I sighed deeply, glanced at the fallen man, then inhaled a breath to explain it to her again. But the words that actually came out were, ‘Holy shit!’

  All of us backed away rapidly as Mr Arnot pushed himself up from the pool of his own blood, the stuff dripping from his security jacket, then turned his face towards us.

  I don’t know who screamed. Might have been me, or both of me.

  ‘Hey!’ Mr Arnot raised a bloody hand in a placatory gesture. ‘Mia. She’ll explain it.’

  ‘I will?’ Mia asked, her voice faint.

  ‘No. I will.’ And Mia. My Mia. My wife, who in my mind should still be in her hospital bed having old memories repatterned into newly regenerated brain tissue, stood up from behind the food counter.

  I took another step back, fell into a waiting chair, and laughed that kind of on-the-edge-of-insanity laugh. ‘Would anyone else like to join the party?’

  On cue, the main doors banged open to reveal John and Elton with Simon puffing up behind them. I guess the looks on their faces were as astonished as mine.

  ‘You look . . . well,’ I said.

  Mia came to join me in the centre of the restaurant. She did look well. No sign of the accident except for a pink scar on her forehead like a jagged Y.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘You look like crap.’

  ‘Make-up,’ I said. ‘Mostly.’

  She came close and hugged me like she hadn’t seen me in a hundred years. We kissed, and it was good.

  ‘What?’ Young Mia’s slightly horrified voice broke into our reunion. ‘Demus is Nick?’

  The Mia in my arms broke free and addressed her younger self. ‘He is. Now be quiet and think it through. You’re a clever girl. You’ll figure it out.’

  Young Mia nodded, dumbstruck, and stepped back.

  The others were all standing in a loose circle, watching us: Elton beside his father, having established that the blood on him was no more real than the blood on me.

  ‘Are you still . . . you?’ I asked, reaching tentatively to close my hand around ‘old’ Mia’s arm.

  ‘I think so.’ She smiled, half-sad. ‘How does anyone ever tell?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I felt lost. I wasn’t entirely sure if I was me any more. ‘What are you even doing here? How are you even here?’ I was asking all the questions. Young Nick and Young Mia both seemed overwhelmed by the presence of centre-stage Mia.

  ‘Well, it took me a while to recover. The best part of two years. And then a while to think it all through. I wasn’t pleased with you, Dr Hayes. Not at all. But then I was looking through your notes and I had a great idea. So I fired up the time-rig—’

  ‘But the barrier!’ I could believe, after helping to send over a hundred travellers back, she could work the equipment on her own. The barrier, though – that should have stopped her.

  ‘I figured out what you’d been up to before you left, then I went to see that nice young professor in Birmingham and persuaded him to see things my way. I am very rich, you know!’

  ‘Professor?’ I guessed that Elias Root had been promoted in a hurry. I pressed on with more important questions. ‘Why? When? How?’

  She grinned at my lack of eloquence. ‘I came back to save you, of course.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘I saw your designs for the taser and I understood what you were trying to do. It’s very clever.’ She took my hand.

  ‘Thanks.’ At that stage it hadn’t been more than doodles and wishful thinking. I looked around at the disaster it had turned into and saw that it had never stood much chance, but I couldn’t manage to be sorry about it. After all, somehow Mia was miraculously restored, and Mr Arnot was alive. I didn’t know how that had happened, but the weight that had lifted off my soul because of it was immense, greater even than I had known, and I knew it was heavy. Even if it didn’t last and paradox tore it apart, I was glad for the chance to have seen it. ‘I gave it my best shot. It was quite clever, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Clever, but not as clever as it could be, because you, my love, might be good at sums but you’ve never been very good at lying, or acting, or—’

  ‘Get to the point, maybe? We’re standing in somewhere we’re not allowed to be next to the body of a man I killed.’

  ‘I saw what you were trying to do and I thought I’d go one better,’ she said. ‘You’ve got a suitable corpse, I assume?’

  ‘In a van round the corner,’ I said.

  ‘Suitable corpse?’ Nick asked: his first words since I’d confirmed we’d forked the timeline.

  ‘I remember that I died here tonight,’ I told him. ‘All of us know it. But I didn’t want to die here, so I faked it.’ I knocked at the machete handle still swinging around on my side. ‘And it would have worked, too . . .’ I shot Young Mia a hard look, then softened the blow by adopting an American drawl. ‘It would have worked if it hadn’t been for you damn kids!’ We shared a smile. ‘Anyway. When you had all left the building my plan was to bring in the body I purchased illegally for “medical research”, shove Rust’s machete through his chest and then leave him. I’ve already bribed the pathologist who is going to carry out the post-mortems to write it up as if the wound was the cause of death and substitute some suitable photos of me into the records along with some of my DNA.’ I had thought the bribery part was going to be difficult, but the guy had jumped at the money.

  ‘And it was a great plan!’ my Mia said. ‘But what about poor Mr Arnot?’

  ‘What could I do?’ I twisted my face. ‘I mean, if I survived, I was planning to build a time-rig and come back to you. I only landed back in ’86 a few weeks back; there are no other memories of me that need making. With Mr Arnot . . . I mean . . . it’s different. He’s Elton’s dad, for God’s sake! He died! I remember it.’

  Mia cocked her head and pursed her lips. ‘You remember what?’

  ‘I remember he’s dead. I’ve seen the grave.’

  ‘You remember being told that he died. Reading it in the newspapers. Seeing it in the police reports. Never seeing or hearing from him again.’

  ‘But . . .’ I floundered. ‘How . . .’

  ‘I arrived back months earlier than you, Nick,’ Mia told me. ‘I made a lot of money the same way you did. Bets and investments. Then I went and introduced myself to Elton’s family. I showed them five million pounds in several suitcases to start with, and then bank accounts with similar sums in. I told them who I was. Explained everything. Proved it with tricks like predicting the Challenger crash and the football results. I said that I knew it was a big decision but if they would move cities and take steps never to let you know he was al
ive, then I would set them up with new lives and as much money as they would ever want.’ She turned towards Elton. ‘They were going to tell you all this tonight, before anyone told you your dad had been killed.’

  ‘But . . .’ I flailed, trying to seize some kind of sense from all this, ‘. . . that would mean Elton withdrew from our friendship . . .’

  ‘To keep you from learning the truth,’ Mia said. ‘You had to believe Mr Arnot was dead.’

  ‘But. No, this is nonsense. Rust killed Mr Arnot!’

  ‘He probably would have if he’d bumped into him,’ Mia said.

  ‘But he was lying RIGHT THERE!’ I pointed to the bloody puddle.

  ‘He was, but not when Rust brought me in.’ Mia smiled at Young Mia. ‘Her, I mean.’

  ‘He was there! I saw him!’

  ‘Did you?’ Mia shook her head. ‘He crawled out while Rust was questioning me . . . her . . . from where he was hiding behind the counter with me and lay there where none of you could see him until you stood and looked round after all the fighting. That was all that was needed – for young you to see him and think Rust had killed him. If I hadn’t come back and interfered, then yes, Rust would have found him and killed him. But this way everything is consistent with your memories and Mr Arnot gets to live.’

  ‘So . . .’ I boggled. ‘You’ve got a suitable corpse, too?’

  Mia nodded. ‘In a refrigerated van around the corner. Plus, I managed to get the old pathologist reassigned and a new, rather corrupt and easily bribed one put in post. And my corpse actually did die of stab wounds and has been on ice ever since, so he’s a damn sight more convincing than yours. Jean has already posed for the morgue shots. We had a special effects guy from Hollywood get him looking right.’

  ‘Well . . . as nice as it is to argue in front of our young selves about who’s brought the more convincing substitute corpse . . . we’ve fucked it up.’

  ‘Is that a problem?’ John found his voice. ‘I mean, you’re here. She’s here, and recovered. Can’t we just leave Rust and never speak of this again?’ He looked most hopeful about the ‘never speak of this again’ bit.

  ‘It wouldn’t be a problem,’ I sighed, ‘except for paradox. This is all wrong. It doesn’t fit. And because of the way our timeline is plumbed together, that small problem is apt to grow and grow and grow until a few years down the line it eats the world.’

  ‘Oh,’ said John.

  For a few moments we all stood in silence, variously covered in fake or real blood, or just a thick layer of bewilderment.

  ‘So,’ said Young Mia. ‘All this went wrong because I spotted those wires?’

  ‘Taser wires,’ I said. ‘Yes. And sorry for being a dick. It was my fault, not yours. I should have made sure they weren’t left in full view.’

  ‘So,’ said ‘old’ Mia. ‘It was mostly bad luck and easily avoided.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said bitterly.

  Old Mia turned to Young Nick. ‘You’ve got those memory bands on you?’

  ‘In a bag hidden in the car park,’ he said, seeming almost hypnotised by her.

  ‘Go and get them,’ she ordered, and when he hesitated, ‘Run!’

  He ran.

  ‘But they don’t work,’ John said.

  ‘I got this.’ Elton held up a black case. ‘That’s what we needed, ain’t it?’

  I nodded. ‘Yes. It literally just needs to be clicked into place on the motherboard.’

  Then Old and Young Mia, both of whom had always thought bigger and more devious thoughts than I had, spoke together. ‘Stage the play then!’

  ‘What?’ I asked.

  ‘Stage the play,’ my Mia repeated. ‘Set everyone where you need them. Wipe everyone’s memories back to the point where things went wrong. Start again.’

  I shook my head. ‘That’s crazy.’

  ‘Not if it leaves us with the same memories we know we had. We should all go off and do what we remember being done. And this timeline will still be the one you and I came back from.’

  The idea was fantastic, if it could be done: if we could replay the whole encounter so that Young Nick and Young Mia left the building remembering exactly what Mia and I remembered, then they would act as we had. They would live their lives as we had. And the fatal paradox would be avoided. It wouldn’t matter why they remembered what they remembered. It wouldn’t matter if the whole thing was a fake. As long as it was consistent, then we should be safe. This whole thing could still be salvaged, and left with a far more palatable secret underbelly where Mr Arnot survived to enjoy a wealthy retirement and Elton only pretended to blame me.

  I still wasn’t buying it. ‘What moment could we go back to that would possibly work?’

  Mia didn’t even pause to think. ‘When young you turns the lights on. You and Rust were on the floor. You can pretend to wrestle him. Nick hauls him off. You hammer him again. It all goes from there. Only this time we remove the real machete and the taser from the scene entirely.’

  ‘What about John and Simon and Elton?’ I looked at the trio, standing together by Mr Arnot.

  ‘Well.’ Mia frowned. ‘We could wipe them back to the point Simon and Elton found John, and everything would be waiting for them just as it should be when they get here . . . But it would be tricky to get the headbands out there, and we only have two . . . Or we could just tell them now what we remember they did next and they could do that . . .’

  ‘What, and just not tell me about it for the next few decades!’ I boggled at the idea.

  ‘Sure,’ Mia said. ‘You can keep a secret. Can’t you, boys?’

  They all nodded.

  ‘But . . . but . . . this is monstrous!’ I blustered. ‘You mean that the John and Simon I left behind in 2011 remembered all this and have been lying to me practically my whole life?’

  Mia pursed her lips and nodded. ‘Pretty much.’ She frowned. ‘It was John who brought me the plans you had for the pretend machete when I was recovering in hospital.’

  ‘But I didn’t even think of that until after I came back!’ I stared accusingly at John.

  He shrugged. ‘I guess that’s something you need me to do in 2011, then. Memo to self: fake machete plans and give them to Mia in hospital twenty-five years from now. I need to know, though, do we have jet cars—’

  ‘They knew it all worked out?’ I couldn’t keep from shouting. I strode towards Mia. ‘And that you were here that night, all healed up? For twenty-five fucking years? And never told me?’

  Mia shrugged. ‘You’re about to ask them not to, aren’t you?’

  I harrumphed disgustedly. ‘I guess.’

  ‘There’s a problem with all this,’ Young Nick announced. I hadn’t seen him return, but he was breathing heavily and had the bag with the headbands in his hand. ‘You stage the scene, use the two headbands to wipe Mia and my memories, and turn the lights on. Fine. But then there are the two of us – her lying on the floor there . . .’ he pointed, ‘. . . and me standing over here.’ He indicated the spot. ‘Both wearing funky headbands. How’s that going to work?’

  The Mias thought for a second.

  Young Mia spoke first. ‘Elton stands behind you, and as the lights go up, he lifts the headband off you and backs through the doors. We’ll keep it dark for a good while before so everyone is dazzled when the lights go on.’

  ‘And I’ll stand behind you,’ Old Mia said to Young Mia, ‘and take off your headband, then retreat to hide at the back of the restaurant. You and Nick will both be too dazzled and otherwise preoccupied to notice. Nick will remember being in the middle of a fight and you will still be wondering if your throat has been properly cut.’

  ‘What about the timing?’ Young Nick asked. ‘How accurate are these things, and how do we even know what time to set them to?’

  ‘Excellent points. Fortunately, we’re in an electronics laboratory and I can tweak them for accuracy. Also . . . again fortunately . . . I was looking at my watch quite a bit, so I think I can judge the time p
retty well.’ I looked suspiciously at Simon. He’d given me the watch in the week after Mia’s accident. He must have done it knowing full well I would need to be wearing one today.

  ‘OK!’ Old Mia took charge. ‘Let’s do it. Let’s get this show on the road, people!’

  Before I got to work on the headbands, I went across to Elton. I felt awkward. Him a kid I hadn’t really spoken to for longer than he’d been alive. Me a grown man, responsible if not for his father’s death, then at least for the upheaval of his family’s life. Albeit with the compensation of millions of pounds.

  ‘I . . . I’m glad we found a way to work this, Elton,’ I said, tentative, unsure of myself. ‘I know this sounds lame . . . but I missed you.’ To my horror I found myself far more emotional than I wanted to be, blinking rapidly to keep any suggestion of tears from my eyes.

  ‘No, man.’ Elton shrugged. ‘It don’t sound lame at all.’ And to my surprise, he moved into the Nick Hayes no-hugging zone and broke the only rule. ‘I’m gonna miss you, too. Mia explained how it has to be, but it ain’t right. Ain’t right at all. Not any righter than cancer. But the world’s got plenty of that sort of shit in it.’ He stepped back and grinned. ‘Dunno what you’re planning now, Doctor Who, but if you ever go back to the future like Michael J. Fox, then Mia says you can look me up. We can sit out on the balcony and have a few beers together like a couple of old men, eh?’

  I grinned back, turned away and got to work. Those would be a few beers long overdue, and ones I was determined to have.

  Mia said to get the show back on course, and so we did. We cleaned blood, we stood chairs back up, we readied the stage. With the headbands sorted, I lay down and arranged my fake machete so I looked transfixed by it. Mr Arnot returned to his blood pool. Mia stood behind Mia, hands ready to remove the headband. Elton stood behind Nick at the door.

  We variously stood or lay in darkness waiting for our eyes to adjust, something that took much longer than I had expected. And then, at last, I had the deeply unpleasant task of hauling Rust’s gory, cooling corpse on top of me.

  ‘Everyone ready?’ Old Mia asked.