Something rotten (14 page)

There was one piece of furniture that remained unchanged whilst all about raced, moved and blurred in a never-ending jumble. It was a small table with an old candlestick telephone upon it. I stepped into the room and lifted the receiver.

“Hello?”

“Hello,” said a prerecorded voice. “You’re through to the Swindon ChronoGuard. To assist with your inquiry, we have a number of choices. If you have been the victim of temporal flexation, dial one. If you wish to report a temporal anomaly, dial two. If you feel you might have been involved in a timecrime . . .”

It gave me several more choices, but nothing that told me how to contact my father. Finally, at the end of the long list, it gave me the option for meeting an operative, so I chose that. In an instant the blurred movement in the room stopped and everything fell into place—but with furniture and fittings more suited to the sixties. There was an agent sitting at the desk. A tall and undeniably handsome man in the blue uniform of the ChronoGuard, emblazoned at the shoulder with the pips of a captain. As he himself had predicted, it was my father, three hours later and three hours younger. At first he didn’t recognize me.

“Hello,” he said. “Can I help you?”

“It’s me, Thursday.”

“Thursday?” he echoed, eyes wide open as he stood up. “My daughter Thursday?”

I nodded, and he moved closer.

“My goodness!” he exclaimed, scrutinizing me with great interest. “How wonderful to see you again! How long’s it been? Six centuries?”

“Two years,” I told him, not wanting to confuse a confusing matter even further by mentioning our conversation this morning, “but why are you working for the ChronoGuard again? I thought you went rogue?”

“Ah!” he said, beckoning me closer and lowering his voice. “There was a change of administration, and they said they would look very closely at my grievances if I’d come and work for them at the Historical Preservation Corps. I had to take a demotion, and I won’t be reactualized until the paperwork is done, but it’s working out quite well otherwise. Is your husband still eradicated?”

“I’m afraid so. Any chance . . . ?”

He winced. “I’d love to, Sweetpea, but I’ve really got to watch my p’s and q’s for a few decades. Do you like the office?”

I looked at the sixties decor in the tiny room. “Bit small, isn’t it?”

“Oh, yes.” My father grinned, clearly in an ebullient mood. “And over seven hundred of us work here. Since we could not
all
be here at one time, we simply stretch the usage out across the timestream, like a long piece of elastic.”

He stretched his arms wide as if to demonstrate.

“We call it a timeshare.”

He rubbed his chin and looked around. “What’s the time out there?”

“It’s July fourteenth, 1988.”

“That’s a stroke of good fortune,” he said, lowering his voice still further. “It’s a good job you’ve turned up. They’ve blamed me for the 1864 war between Germany and Denmark.”

“Was it your fault?”

“No—it was that clot Bismarck. But it doesn’t matter. They’ve transferred me to another division inside the Historical Preservation Corps for a second chance. My first assignment occurs in July 1988, so local knowledge right now is a godsend. Have you heard of anyone named Yorrick Kaine?”

“He’s Chancellor of England.”

“That figures. Did St. Zvlkx return tomorrow?”

“He might.”

“Okay. Who won the SuperHoop?”

“That’s Saturday week,” I explained. “It hasn’t happened yet.”

“Not
strictly
true, Sweetpea. Everything that we do actually happened a long, long time ago—even this conversation. The future is already there. The pioneers that plowed the first furrows of history into virgin time line died eons ago—all we do now is try and keep it pretty much the way it should be. Have you heard of someone named Winston Churchill, by the way?”

I thought for a moment. “He was an English statesman who seriously blotted his copybook in the Great War, then was run over by a cab and killed in 1932.”

“So no one of any consequence?”

“Not really. Why?”

“Ahh, no reason. Just a little pet theory of mine. Anyway, everything has already happened—if it hadn’t, there’d be no need for people like me. But things go wrong. In the normal course of events, time flies back and forth from the end of and then until the beginning of now like a shuttle on a loom, weaving the threads of history together. If it encounters an obstacle, then it might just flex slightly and no change will be noticed. But if that obstacle is big enough—and Kaine is plenty big enough, believe me—then history will veer off at a tangent. And
that’s
when we have to sort it out. I’ve been transferred to the Armageddon Avoidance Division, and we’ve got an apocalyptic disaster of life-extinguishing capability Level III heading your way.”

There was a moment’s silence.

“Does your mother know you wear your hair this short?”

“Is it meant to happen?”

“Your hair?”

“No, the Armageddon.”

“Not at all. This one has an Ultimate Likelihood Index rating of only twenty-two percent: ‘not very likely.’ ”

“Nothing like that incident with the Dream Topping, then,” I observed.

“What incident?”

“Nothing.”

“Right. Well, since I’m on probation—sort of—they thought they’d start me on the small stuff.”

“I still don’t understand.”

“It’s simple,” began my father. “Two days after the SuperHoop, President Formby will die of natural causes. The following day Yorrick Kaine proclaims himself Dictator of England. Two weeks after that, following the traditional suspension of the press and summary executions of former associates, Kaine will declare war on Wales. Two days after a prolonged tank battle on the Welsh Marches, the United Clans of Scotland launch an attack on Berwick-on-Tweed. In a fit of pique, Kaine carpet-bombs Glasgow, and the Swedish Empire enters on Scotland’s side. Russia joins Kaine after their colonial outpost of Fetlar is sacked—and the war moves to mainland Europe. It soon escalates to an apocalyptic shoot-out between the African and American superpowers. In less than three months, the earth will be nothing but a steaming radioactive cinder. Of course,” he added, “that is a worst-case scenario. It’ll probably never happen, and if you and I do our jobs properly, it won’t.”

“Can’t you just kill Kaine?”

“Not that easy. Time is the glue of the cosmos, Sweetpea, and it has to be eased apart—you’d be surprised how strongly the Historical Time Line tends to look after despots. Why do you think dictators like Pol Pot, Bokassa and Idi Amin live such long lives and people like Mozart, Jim Henson and Mother Teresa are plucked from us when relatively young?”

“I don’t think Mother Teresa could be thought of as
young.
”

“On the contrary—she was
meant
to live until a hundred and twenty-eight.

There was a pause.

“Okay, Dad—so what’s the plan?”

“Right. It’s incredibly complex and also unbelievably simple. To stop Kaine gaining power, we have to seriously disrupt his sponsor, the Goliath Corporation. Without them his power is zero. To do that we need to ensure . . . that Swindon wins the SuperHoop.”

“How is that going to work?”

“It’s a causality thing. Small events have large consequences. You’ll see.”

“No, I mean, how am I going to get Swindon to win? Apart from Kapok and Aubrey Jambe and perhaps ‘Biffo’ Mandible, the players are . . . well, crap—not to put too fine a point on it. Especially when you compare them to their SuperHoop opponents, the Reading Whackers.”

“I’m sure you’ll think of something, but keep an eye on Kapok—they’ll try to get to him first. You’ll have to do this on your own, Sweetpea. I’ve got my own problems. It seems Nelson’s getting killed at the beginning of the Battle of Trafalgar wasn’t French History Revisionists after all. I talked to someone I know over at the ChronoGendarmerie, and they thought it amusing that the Revisionists should even
attempt
such a thing; advanced timestream models with Napoleon as emperor of all Europe bode very poorly for France—they’re much better in the long run with things as they are meant to be.”

“So who is killing Nelson?”

“Well, it’s Nelson
himself.
Don’t ask me why. Now, what did you want to see me about?”

I had to think carefully. “Well . . . nothing,
really.
I met you three hours ago and you said we’d spoken, so I came here to find you, so then I suppose I should ask you to figure out who’s trying to kill me this morning, which you wouldn’t have been able to do if I hadn’t met you this morning, and I only met you this morning because I’ve just told you right now I might be assassinated. . . .”

Dad laughed. “It’s a bit like having a tumble dryer in your head, Sweetpea. Sometimes I don’t know whether I’m thening or nowing. But I’d better check this assassin out, just in case.”

“Yes,” I said, more confused than ever, “I suppose you should.”

9.

Eradications Anonymous

Goliath Backs Kaine and Whig Party

The Goliath Corporation yesterday renewed its support for Chancellor Kaine at a party to honor England’s leader. At a glittering dinner attended by over five hundred heads of commerce and governmental departments, Goliath pledged to continue its support of the Chancellor. In a reply speech, Mr. Kaine gratefully acknowledged their support and announced a package of measures designed to assist Goliath in the difficult yet highly desirable change to its faith-based corporate status, as well as funding for several ongoing weapons programs, details of which have been classified.

Article in
The Toad,
July 13, 1988

H
amlet and I arrived home to find a TV news crew from Swindon-5 waiting for me outside the house.

“Miss Next,” said the reporter. “Can you tell us where you’ve been these past two years?”

“No comment.”

“You can interview
me,
” said Hamlet, realizing he was something of a celebrity out here.

“And who are you?” asked the reporter, mystified.

I stared at him and his face fell.

I’m . . . I’m . . . her cousin Eddie.”

“Well, Cousin Eddie, can
you
tell us where Miss Next has been for the past two years?”

“No comment.”

And we walked up the garden path to the front door.

“Where have you been?”
demanded my mother as we walked in the door.

“Sorry I’m late, Mum—how’s the little chap?”

“Tiring. He says that his aunt Mel is a gorilla who can peel bananas with her feet while hanging from the light fixtures.”

“He
talked?
”

Friday was using the time-honored international child signal to be picked up—raising his arms in the air—and when I did so, gave me a wet kiss and started to chatter away unintelligibly.

“Well, he didn’t exactly
say
as much,” admitted Mum, “but he drew me a picture of Aunt Mel, which is pretty conclusive.”

“Aunt Mel a gorilla?” I laughed, looking at the picture, which was unequivocally of . . . well, a gorilla. “Quite an imagination, hasn’t he?”

“I’d say. I found him standing on the sideboard ready to swing from the curtains. When I told him it wasn’t allowed, he pointed to the picture of Aunt Mel, which I took to mean that she used to let him.”

“Does she, now? I mean, did he, now?”

Pickwick walked in looking very disgruntled and wearing a bonnet made of cardboard and held together with sticky tape.

“Pickwick’s a very tolerant playmate,” said my mother, who was obviously not that skilled at reading dodo expressions.

“I really need to get him into a play group. Did you change his nappy?”

“Three times. It just goes straight through, doesn’t it?”

I sniffed at the leg of his dungarees. “Yup. Straight through.”

“Well, I’ve got my auto-body work group to attend to,” she said, putting on her hat and taking her handbag and welding goggles from the peg, “but you’d better sort out some more reliable child care, my dear. I can do the odd hour here and there, but not whole days—and I certainly don’t want to do any more nappies.”

“Do you think Lady Hamilton would look after him?”

“It’s possible,” said my mother in the sort of voice that means the reverse. “You could always ask.”

She opened the door and was plinked at angrily by Alan, who was in a bit of a bad mood and was pulling up flowers in the front garden. With unbelievable speed she grabbed him by the neck and, with a lot of angry plinking and scrabbling, deposited him unceremoniously inside the potting shed and locked the door.

“Miserable bird!” said my mother, giving me and Friday a kiss. “Have I got my purse?”

“It’s in your bag.”

“Am I wearing my hat?”

“Yes.”

She smiled, told me that Bismarck was not to be disturbed and that I mustn’t buy anything from a door-to-door salesman unless it was
truly
a bargain and was gone.

I changed Friday, then let him toddle off to find something to do. I made a cup of tea for myself and Hamlet, who had switched on the TV and was watching MOLE-TV ’s Shakespeare channel. I sat on the sofa and stared out the windows into the garden. It had been destroyed by a mammoth when I was last here, and I noted that my mother had replanted it with plants that are not very palatable to the Proboscidea tongue—quite wise, considering the migrations. As I watched, Pickwick waddled past, possibly wondering where Alan had gone. For the day’s work, I had done very little. I was still a Literary Detective, but twenty thousand pounds in debt and no nearer getting Landen back.

My mother returned at about eight, and the first of her Eradications Anonymous friends began to appear at nine. There were ten of them, and they started to chatter about what they described as their “lost ones” as soon as they got through the door. Emma Hamilton and I weren’t alone in having a husband with an existence problem. But although it seemed my Landen and Emma’s Horatio were strong in our memories, many people were not so lucky. Some had only vague feelings about someone they felt who
should
be there but wasn’t. To be honest, I really didn’t want to be here, but I had promised my mother and I was living in her house, so that was the end of it.