9.

  The More Things Stay the Same

  Minor changes to soft furnishings are the first indications of a sideslip. Curtains, cushion covers and lampshades are all good litmus indicators for a slight diversion in the timestream—the same way as canaries are used down the mines or goldfishes to predict earthquakes. Carpet and wallpaper patterns and changes in paint hues can also be used, but this requires a more practiced eye. If you are within the sideslip then you will notice nothing, but if your pelmets change color for no good reason, your curtains switch from festoon to swish or your antimacassars have a new pattern on them, I should be worried; and if you’re the only one who notices, then worry some more. A great deal more . . .

  BENDIX SCINTILLA,

  Timestream Navigation for CG Cadets Module IV

  LANDEN’S ABSENCE made me feel unsettled. All sorts of reasons as to why he wasn’t waiting for me ran through my head as I pushed open the gate and walked up to our front door. He could have lost track of time, gone to pick up his running leg from the menders or dropped in to see his mum. But I was fooling myself. Landen said he would be there and he wasn’t. And that wasn’t like him. Not at all.

  I stopped abruptly halfway up the garden path. For some reason Landen had taken the opportunity to change all the curtains. I walked on more slowly, a feeling of unease rising within me. I stopped at the front door. The footscraper had gone. But it hadn’t been taken recently—the hole had been concreted over long ago. There were other changes, too. A tub of withered Tickia orologica had appeared in the porch next to a rusty pogo stick and a broken bicycle. The dustbins were all plastic rather than steel, and a copy of Landen’s least favorite paper, The Mole, was resting in the newspaper holder. I felt a hot flush rise in my cheeks as I fumbled in vain to find my door key—not that it would have mattered if I had found it, because the lock I used that morning had been painted over years ago.

  I must have been making a fair amount of noise, because all of a sudden the door opened to reveal an elderly version of Landen complete with paunch, bifocals and a shiny bald pate.

  “Yes?” he inquired in a slow Parke-Laine sort of baritone.

  Filbert Snood’s time aggregation sprang instantly—and unpleasantly—to mind.

  “Oh my God. Landen? Is that you?”

  The elderly man seemed almost as stunned as I was.

  “Me? Good heavens, no!” he snapped and started to close the door. “No one of that name lives here!”

  I jammed my foot against the closing door. I’d seen it done in cop movies but the reality is somewhat different. I had forgotten I was wearing trainers and the weatherboard squashed my big toe. I yelped in pain, withdrew my foot and the door slammed shut.

  “Buggeration!” I yelled as I hopped up and down. I pressed the doorbell long and hard but received only a muffled “Clear off!” for my troubles. I was just about to bang on the door when I heard a familiar voice ring out behind. I turned to find Landen’s mum staring at me.

  “Houson!” I cried. “Thank goodness! There’s someone in our house and they won’t answer, and . . . Houson?”

  She was looking at me without a flicker of recognition.

  “Houson?” I said again, taking a step towards her. “It’s me, Thursday!”

  She hurriedly took a pace backwards and corrected me sharply: “That’s Mrs. Parke-Laine to you. What do you want?”

  I heard the door open behind me. The elderly Landen-that-wasn’t had returned.

  “She’s been ringing the doorbell,” explained the man to Landen’s mother. “She won’t go away.” He thought for a moment and then added in a quieter voice, “She’s been asking about Landen.”

  “Landen?” replied Houson sharply, her glare becoming more baleful by the second. “How is Landen any business of yours?”

  “He’s my husband.”

  There was a pause as she mulled this over.

  “Your sense of humor is severely lacking, Miss whoever-you-are,” she retorted angrily, pointing towards the garden gate. “I suggest you leave.”

  “Wait a minute!” I exclaimed, almost wanting to laugh at the situation. “If I didn’t marry Landen, then who gave me this wedding ring?”

  I held up my left hand for them to see, but it didn’t seem to have much effect. A quick glance told me why. I didn’t have a wedding ring.

  “Shit—!” I mumbled, looking around in a perplexed manner. “I must have dropped it somewhere—”

  “You’re very confused,” said Houson more with pity than anger. She could see I wasn’t dangerous—just positively, and irretrievably, insane. “Is there anyone we can call?”

  “I’m not crazy,” I declared, trying to get a grip on the situation. “This morning, no, less than two hours ago, Landen and I lived in this very house—”

  I stopped. Houson had moved to the side of the man at the door. As they stood together in a manner bred of long association, I knew exactly who he was; it was Landen’s father. Landen’s dead father.

  “You’re Billden,” I murmured. “You died when you tried to rescue . . .”

  My voice trailed off. Landen had never known his father. Billden Parke-Laine had died saving the two-year-old Landen from a submerged car thirty-eight years ago. My heart froze as the true meaning of this bizarre confrontation began to dawn.

  Someone had eradicated Landen.

  I put out a hand to steady myself, then sat quickly on the garden wall and closed my eyes as a dull thumping started up in my head. Not Landen, not now of all times—

  “Billden,” announced Houson, “you had better call the police—”

  “NO!” I shouted, opening my eyes and glaring at him.

  “You didn’t go back, did you?” I said slowly, my voice cracking. “You didn’t rescue him that night. You lived, and he—”

  I braced myself for his anger, but it never came. Instead, Billden just stared at me with a mixture of pity and confusion on his face.

  “I wanted to,” he said in a quiet voice.

  I swallowed my emotion.

  “Where’s Landen now?”

  “If we tell you,” asked Houson in a slow and patronizing tone, “will you promise to go away and never come back?”

  She took my silence for assent and continued: “Swindon Municipal Cemetery—and you’re right, our son drowned thirty-eight years ago.”

  “Shit!” I cried, my mind racing as I tried to figure out who might be responsible. Houson and Billden took a fearful step backwards. “Not you,” I added hastily. “Goddammit, I’m being blackmailed.”

  “You should report that to SpecOps.”

  “They wouldn’t believe me any more than you—”

  I paused and thought for a moment.

  “Houson, I know you have a good memory, because when Landen did exist, you and I were the best of pals. Someone has taken your son, my husband, and believe me, I’ll get him back. But listen to me, I’m not crazy, and here’s how I can prove it: He’s allergic to bananas, has a mole on his neck—and a birthmark the shape of a lobster on his bum. How could I know that unless—?”

  “Oh yes?” said Houson slowly, staring at me with growing interest. “This birthmark. Which cheek?”

  “The left.”

  “Looking from the front, or looking from the back?”

  “Looking from the back,” I said without hesitating.

  There was silence for a moment. They looked at each other, then at me, and in that instant, they knew. When Houson spoke it was in a quiet voice, her temper transplanted with a sadness all her own.

  “How—how would he have turned out?”

  She started to cry, large tears that rolled uninhibited down her cheeks; tears of loss, tears for what might have been.

  “He was wonderful!” I returned gratefully. “Witty and generous and tall and clever—you would have been so proud!”

  “What did he become?”

  “A novelist,” I explained. “Last year he won the Armitage Shanks Fiction Award for Bad Sofa. He lost a leg in the Crimea. We were married two months ago.”

  “Were we there?”

  I looked at them both and said nothing. Houson had been there, of course, shedding tears of joy for us both—but Billden, well, Billden had swapped his life for Landen’s when he returned to the submerged car and ended up in the Swindon Municipal Cemetery instead. We stood for a moment or two, the three of us lamenting the loss of Landen. Houson broke the silence.

  “I think it would really be better for all concerned if you left now,” she said quietly, “and please don’t come back.”

  “Wait!” I said. “Was there someone there, someone who stopped you from rescuing him?”

  “More than one,” replied Billden. “Five or six—one woman; I was sat upon—”

  “Was one a Frenchman? Tall, distinguished-looking? Named Lavoisier, perhaps?”

  “I don’t know,” answered Billden sadly. “It was a long time ago.”

  “You really have to leave now,” repeated Houson in a forthright tone.

  I sighed, thanked them, and they shuffled back inside and closed the door.

  I walked out of the garden gate and sat in my car, trying to contain the emotion within me so I could think straight. I was breathing heavily and my hands were clenched so tightly on the steering wheel my knuckles showed white. How could SpecOps do this to me? Was this Flanker’s way of compelling me to talk about my father? I shook my head. Futzing with the timestream was a crime punishable by almost unimaginable brutality. I couldn’t imagine Flanker would have risked his career—and his life—on a move so rash.

  I took a deep breath and leaned forward to press the starter button. As I did so I glanced into my wing mirror and saw a Packard parked on the other side of the road. There was a well-dressed figure leaning on the wing, nonchalantly smoking a cigarette and looking in my direction. It was Schitt-Hawse. He appeared to be smiling. Suddenly, the whole plan came into sharp focus. Jack Schitt. What had Schitt-Hawse threatened me with? Corporate impatience? My anger reestablished itself.

  Muttering Bastard! under my breath I jumped out of the car and walked briskly and purposefully towards Schitt-Hawse, who stiffened slightly as I approached. I ignored a car that screeched to a halt inches from me and as Schitt-Hawse took a pace forward I put out both hands and pushed him hard against the car. He lost his footing and fell heavily to the ground; I was quickly upon him, grabbed his shirt lapels and raised a fist to punch him. But the blow never fell. In my blind anger I had failed to see that his associates Chalk and Cheese were close by, and they did their job admirably, efficiently and yes, painfully, too. I fought like hell and was gratified that in the confusion I managed to kick Schitt-Hawse hard on the kneecap—he yelped in pain. But my victory, such as it was, was short-lived. I must have been a tenth of their combined weight, and my struggles were soon in vain. They held me tightly, and Schitt-Hawse approached with an unpleasant smile etched upon his pinched features.

  I did the first thing I could think of. I spat in his face. I’d never tried it before, but it turned out delightfully; I got him right in the eye.

  He raised the back of his hand to strike me, but I didn’t flinch—I just stared at him, anger burning in my eyes. He stopped, lowered his hand and wiped his face with a crisply laundered pocket handkerchief.

  “You are going to have to control that temper of yours, Next.”

  “That’s Mrs. Parke-Laine to you.”

  “Not anymore. If you’d stop struggling, perhaps we could talk sensibly, like adults. You and I need to come to an arrangement.”

  I gave up squirming, and the two men relaxed their grip. I straightened my clothes and glared at Schitt-Hawse, who rubbed his knee.

  “What sort of arrangement?” I demanded.

  “A trade,” he answered. “Jack Schitt for Landen.”

  “Oh yes?” I retorted. “And how do I know I can trust you?”

  “You can’t and you don’t,” replied Schitt-Hawse simply, “but it’s the best offer you’re going to get.”

  “My father will help me.”

  Schitt-Hawse laughed.

  “Your father is a washed-out clock jockey. I think you overestimate his chances—and his talents. Besides, we’ve got the summer of 1947 locked down so tight not even a transtemporal gnat could get back there without us knowing about it. Retrieve Jack from ‘The Raven’ and you can have your own dear hubby back.”

  “And how do you propose I do that?”

  “You’re a resourceful and intelligent woman—I’m sure you’ll think of something. Do we have a deal?”

  I stared hard at him, shaking with fury. Then, almost without thinking, I had my automatic pressed against Schitt-Hawse’s forehead. I heard two safety catches click off behind me. Associates Chalk and Cheese were fast, too.

  Schitt-Hawse seemed unperturbed; he smiled at me in a supercilious manner and ignored the weapon.

  “You won’t kill me, Next,” he said slowly. “It’s not the way you do things. It might make you feel better, but believe me, it won’t get your Landen back, and Mr. Chalk and Mr. Cheese would make quite sure you were dead long before you hit the asphalt.”

  Schitt-Hawse was good. He’d done his homework and he hadn’t underestimated me one little bit. I’d do all I could to get Landen back, and he knew it. I reholstered my pistol.

  “Splendid!” he enthused. “We’ll be hearing from you in due course, I trust, hmm?”

  10.

  A Lack of Differences

  Landen Parke-Laine’s eradication was the best I’d seen since Veronica Golightly’s. They plucked him out and left everything else exactly as it was. Not a crude hatchet job like Churchill or Victor Borge—we got those sorted out eventually. What I never figured out was how they took him out and left her memories of him completely intact. Agreed, there would be no point to the eradication without her knowing what she had missed, but it still intrigued me over four centuries later. Eradication was never an exact art.

  COLONEL NEXT,QT CG (nonexist.),

  Upstream/Downstream (unpublished)

  ISTARED AFTER their departing car, trying to figure out what to do. Finding a way into “The Raven” to release Jack Schitt would be my first priority. It wasn’t going to be hard—it was going to be impossible. It wouldn’t deter me. I’d done impossible things several times in the past, and the prospect didn’t scare me as much as it used to. I thought of Landen and the last time I saw him, limping across to the café just opposite the SpecOps building. It was going to be his birthday in two weeks—we planned to take the airship to Spain, or somewhere hot for a break; we knew we wouldn’t be able to go on holiday so easily once there was a baby—

  The baby. With all that had happened, I didn’t know whether I was still pregnant. I jumped into my car and screeched off into town, startling a few great auks who were picking their way through a nearby garbage can.

  I was heading for the doctor’s surgery on Shelley Street. Every shop I passed seemed to either stock prams or high chairs, toys or something else baby-related, and all the toddlers and infants, heavily pregnant women and prams in Swindon seemed to be crowding the route—and all staring at me. I skidded to a halt outside the surgery. It was a double yellow line and a traffic warden looked at me greedily.

  “Hey!” I said, pointing a finger at her. “Expectant mother. Don’t even think about it.”

  I dashed in and found the nurse I’d seen the day before.

  “I was in here yesterday,” I blurted out. “Was I pregnant?”

  She looked at me without even the least vestige of surprise. I guess she was used to this sort of thing.

  “Of course!” she replied. “Confirmation is in the post. Are you okay?”

  I sat down heavily on a chair and burst into tears. The sense of relief was overwhelming. I had more than just Landen’s memories—I had his child, too. I rubbed my face with my hands. I’d been in a lot of difficult and dangerous life-or-death situations both in the military and law enforcement—but nothing even comes close to the tribulations of emotion. I’d face Hades again twice rather than go through that little charade again.

  “Yes, yes,” I assured her happily. “I really couldn’t be better!”

  “Good,” beamed the nurse. “Is there anything else you’d like to know?”

  “Yes, actually,” I replied. “Tell me, where do I live?”

  The shabby block of flats in the old town didn’t look like my sort of place, but who knows where I might be living without Landen. I trotted briskly up the stairs to the top landing and flat six. I took a deep breath, unlocked and opened the door. There was a brief scrabble of activity from the kitchen and Pickwick was there to greet me as usual, bearing a gift that turned out to be the torn cover off last month’s SpecOps-27 Gazette. I closed the door with my foot as I tickled her under the chin and looked cautiously about. I was relieved to discover that despite the shabby exterior my apartment was south-facing, warm and quite comfortable. I couldn’t remember a thing about any of it, of course, but I was glad to see that Pickwick’s egg was still in residence. I walked softly around the flat, exploring my new surroundings. It seemed I painted a lot more without Landen about, and the walls were covered with half-finished canvases. There were several of Pickwick and the family which I could remember painting, and a few others that I couldn’t—but none, sadly, of Landen. I looked at the other canvases and wondered why several included images of amphibious aircraft. I sat on the sofa, and when Pickwick came up to nuzzle me I put my hand on her head.

  “Oh, Pickers,” I murmured, “what shall we do?”

  I sighed, tried to get Pickwick to stand on one leg with the promise of a marshmallow, failed, then made a cup of tea and something to eat before searching the rest of the apartment in an inquisitive sort of way. Most things were where I would expect to find them; there were more dresses in the closet than usual and I even found a few copies of FeMole stashed under the sofa. The fridge was well stocked with food, and it seemed that in this non-Landen world I was a vegetarian. There were a lot of things that I couldn’t remember ever having acquired, including a table light shaped like a pineapple, a large enamel sign advertising Dr. Spongg’s footcare remedies and—slightly more worryingly—a size twelve pair of socks in the laundry and some boxer shorts. I rummaged further and found two tooth-brushes in the bathroom, a large Swindon Mallets jacket on the hook and several XXL-size T-shirts with SpecOps-14 Swindon written on them. I called Bowden straightaway.