‘You’ve sought to dominate it with your will as you have everyone else in the world,’ Bess said quietly. ‘I have simply shown the poor thing understanding … and in return it has shown me what I wished so much to see.’

  Her and Houdini when they were young, I realised numbly. When the two of them were starting out. The excitement of the climb, before you reach the top and realise the only way on from there is the slide back down.

  I didn’t have long to wrap my head around it all. The car lurched to a stop and we were all pulled out by Dawson and his two thugs and steered through a set of fancy French windows into a big sitting room. There were white floorboards and redbrick walls hung with stuffed animal heads and creepy paintings of hellfire landscapes. An old man in a white suit and fedora sat in a high-backed chair; Dawson stood at his right hand while the two hoods hovered on his left, their guns drawn and pointed at us.

  The old man started to speak in this low, rasping drawl. ‘Hello, Harry. You know you’re meant to kneel before royalty, right?’

  Houdini inclined his head. ‘Wiseman King.’

  ‘Sorry to drag you and your company over here without notice, but I read my horoscope yesterday and it didn’t look good. This face-changing freak I used to run my errands is running loose. Now, I was a careful owner.’ He leaned forward, narrowed his eyes at Houdini. ‘Guess the mug I sold it to wasn’t so clever.’

  ‘The ring grows weak, it can’t control the creature all the time,’ Houdini said. ‘That must be why its killing spree began.’

  ‘I can fix the ring. I got a power source right here ready to juice it up.’ King took off his hat and mopped his brow with a silk handkerchief. ‘You know, I can’t believe that all you made that beast do was take part in your lousy act! You’re no better than Gladstone – sold him the eye in the sky and he spies with it for his mindreading act.’ He leaned forward. ‘I had that freak impersonating senators, judges … making laws and breaking ’em. Getting me dirt on the great and good of this city. I was so, so sad to give the thing away.’

  Ryan stepped forward. ‘Yeah, well, maybe that’s why it’s saving you for last?’

  ‘That’s not gonna be a problem.’ King smiled. ‘Houdini, I know you didn’t carry that bulletproof cabinet out of Gladstone’s lock-up back to the theatre and all the way up to your wife’s dressing room. It moves, right – like a car?’ He looked between Ryan and me. ‘Damn thing would never work when I tried it, but somehow you guys got it to move …’

  ‘We can’t drive it, we only found it,’ Ryan said.

  ‘We just found the thing in Mrs H’s room,’ I added, but even I thought I sounded like a liar.

  ‘Look, doll. You’re all here because I’m taking back what’s mine. The cabinet, the shape-changer …’ King beamed at Houdini. ‘Hell, your boss is going to write me a real big cheque just to take that monster off his hands! And if you don’t cooperate, I start breaking bones.’ He nodded to Mrs H. ‘Starting with good queen Bess.’

  I felt frozen with fear. Mrs H just stuck her chin out at him, cool as you like.

  ‘There’s a problem, King,’ Houdini said calmly. ‘I’m afraid your goons here forgot to bring the ring along with them.’

  ‘What?’ King glared at the men either side of him. ‘Where the hell is it?’

  Dawson, the manservant with the huge grin, wasn’t smiling now. ‘He had it, sir.’ He stepped forward, started patting down Houdini. ‘I saw it on him …’

  ‘Seriously? He’s Houdini, you blockhead, you weren’t expecting sleight of hand?’ King was slowly turning puce inside his white suit. ‘He won’t have it on him. Get on back to the Uptown and you tear the place apart until you come back with—’

  ‘This what you’re after?’ The patio door swung open and the Doctor strode in, the ring raised in her left hand. ‘I found it in the trap space. Clumsy, Harry, dropping it like that!’

  ‘Fix her,’ King snarled and his men started forward.

  ‘I wouldn’t!’ The Doctor produced the pewter wand and tapped the glowing crystal tip against the ring. ‘I can scramble this thing in a heartbeat and it’ll be no good for anything. So, Mr King, why not go and fetch that power source you mentioned, eh?’ She tapped the ring again and it crackled. ‘Sorry, long night and I’m not feeling very patient. Could you?’

  King had turned waxwork still. Finally he looked at Dawson. ‘C’mon,’ he said. ‘The rest of you – kill Houdini and his wife first if she tries anything.’ He rose stiffly and left the room with his aide.

  ‘It’s good to see you, Doctor,’ I began. ‘Where are Yaz and—?’

  ‘Nice to see you too, Dodo!’ she cut me off. ‘You too, Bessie. Don’t worry, things will be fine. Won’t they, Ryan?’

  Ryan gave her a hopeful smile. ‘Fingers crossed, right?’

  ‘Right. Cos no one else is getting hurt today. I’ve decided.’ She tapped the ring with the metal rod once again. ‘And your boss, Mr King, I’m sure he’s going to see reason.’

  The door swung open. Wiseman King came shuffling back inside. He was holding a small metal case in his right hand. Dawson the manservant followed – and he was holding Graham and Yaz at gunpoint! No wonder the Doctor had hushed me up, her friends must have sneaked in from the other direction while she barged in the back.

  ‘Oh, dear,’ Bess whispered.

  ‘Oh, my days!’ Ryan groaned.

  ‘Sorry, Doc, Mrs H, Dorothy.’ Graham looked pained. ‘We tried to rush ’em, but …’

  ‘Smiling boy here was too fast,’ Yaz muttered.

  ‘Nice try, Doctor.’ King smiled. ‘Now how about you put down your little toy and let us men deal with things – before that freak turns up here, sharpening its claws. Give me the ring or these two trespassers die now.’

  ‘All right.’ The Doctor had stopped smiling. ‘All right, don’t hurt them. I’m throwing the ring across to you now.’

  King caught it neatly in one hand. He gave a sigh of satisfaction and placed the metal box down on the table.

  Then the old man’s body blurred and changed into a huge grey golem of a monster who crushed the ring in one enormous fist.

  I screamed, disbelieving, and grabbed Mrs H, dragged her to the floor with me as King’s men aimed their guns at the thing, ready to fire.

  ‘Don’t think so!’ Yaz snatched the gun away from Dawson just as Graham pounced on his friend and wrenched his revolver from his grip. As for the third guy, Ryan shoved him forward and Houdini karate chopped him on the back of the neck. The hood fell to the floor beside me, and groaned. I pulled off my shoe and hit him on the back of the head. He shut up then.

  ‘Nice work, everyone!’ The Doctor was back to beaming again.

  ‘Doctor, what’s happening!’ I shouted. That horrible grey monster was still here and it took a step towards me. I moaned with fear. I actually raised my shoe as if a two-inch heel could do a damn thing. But then my vision blurred again – and it was Billy looking down at me. Billy with those amazing eyes, full of worry, full of passion. Reaching out his arms …

  For Mrs H beside me.

  Gently he pulled her up. ‘You’re all right?’ he said. ‘I was so frightened King would hurt you …’

  ‘It’s you,’ I said, my voice catching. ‘The creature is you.’

  ‘He’s a person, Dorothy,’ the Doctor said softly. ‘Like the rest of us.’

  Mrs H shook her head. ‘Except for King.’

  ‘Where is King?’ Houdini gazed coldly at Billy, as his wife awkwardly pulled away from the boy’s grip. ‘You gave as precise an impersonation of him as you do of me … but you haven’t killed him?’

  ‘King’ll live,’ said Graham. ‘Me and Yaz jumped out and let Dawson here chase after us while Billy put the old sod to sleep in his strong room and came out in his place.’

  ‘Now the ring’s been destroyed there’s no way to control him,’ Houdini said. ‘He’s a killer.’

  ‘I am free,’ said Billy.

  ‘And he’s leaving,’ said the Doctor. ‘You understand that, Billy, don’t you. Your revenge ends here, no more murders. It’s time to go.’

  ‘Why didn’t you go before,’ I asked, ‘if you could?’

  ‘Because I didn’t have this.’ Billy pressed his hand against the metal of the box. ‘This is what I was looking for.’

  The box glowed, and suddenly visions filled the drawing room: an alien moon in space struck with strange constellations; grey, spindly figures dancing and waving on an azure beach. Unearthly cries and calls like whale song. Lights wheeling in an alien sky. ‘It was all the slavers let us take: memories of home.’ He smiled in wonder at the crazy pattern of images. ‘Now it’s all I have left of my old life. Those I knew and loved will be scattered far away and everywhere by now.’

  I remembered Billy asking me in the shop backstage: ‘You ever get homesick, Dorothy? The places where you grew, the people you knew – that helped make you what you are …?’

  ‘Now you can go find them, Billy,’ the Doctor said. ‘Space is a big place, but anything lost can be found.’

  ‘Yes, Doctor.’ Billy smiled at Mrs H. ‘I believe it can.’

  Houdini cleared his throat. ‘I know I also must make amends. You will allow me, perhaps, to help you take your cabinet from King’s men’s truck and ready it for departure?’

  Billy stared. ‘So, the great Houdini is to assist the stagehand?’

  Houdini glanced at his wife. ‘It is in both our interests, I think.’

  ‘Very well. I accept your offer.’

  ‘All right, then.’ Houdini smiled tightly. ‘There is no time like the present, hmm?’

  From the look on her face, Mrs H would have preferred pretty much any other time at all.

  The Doctor busied herself going through King’s strong room. She helped herself to any items she didn’t think belonged here, and loaded up Ryan and Yaz with them. Graham managed to manoeuvre King’s yellow 1914 Benz 8/20 Tourer out of the garage and onto the drive, and the Doctor got her friends inside, grinning like a maniac.

  ‘I’ve got form with motors like this,’ she said. ‘Named one after Mrs H, you know …’

  Bess waited with her husband and Dorothy on King’s lawn; all was quiet besides the hoot and call of night creatures in the surrounding woods. Billy stood inside his travel pod, ready to depart: his legs were lost in the curved white metal about him, the crystal casing clamped over his head, shoulders and chest.

  ‘Old Billy’s not wasting much time is he?’ said Ryan.

  ‘He’s been wasting it for decades,’ Graham murmured. ‘I know he killed those people, but … well, you do sort of feel for him.’

  ‘He’ll face no justice for what he did,’ Yaz brooded. ‘Nor will Houdini, for that matter.’

  ‘Poor Harry doesn’t last out the year,’ the Doctor said sadly. ‘Dies on Halloween night, 1926. Peritonitis.’

  They looked across to the proud, stocky man standing on the lawn beside Bess, who had tears streaming down her face. Dorothy placed her arms around her, and they wept together.

  ‘I suppose,’ said Ryan, ‘sometimes … all you can do is try to move on.’

  The travel pod smoked and hissed and glowed a deep and brilliant red, before it vanished like a hole in the night and burned away.

  The Doctor stuck the car in gear and waved to Dorothy and the Houdinis. ‘You squeezing in with us?’

  ‘We will follow on,’ Houdini called. ‘Farewell, Doctor.’ He inclined his head. ‘And to Ryan, Yasmin and Graham, adieu.’

  ‘The old boy doesn’t think I’m beautiful any more.’ Graham gave a pantomime sniff. ‘It’s time to go, all right!’

  And go they did. I waved to them, these four strangers who’d tipped my world upside down, and felt suddenly homesick. Not so much for Ocean Grove, New Jersey – more for the simplicity of the life I’d had up till then as plain old Dorothy Smith, the seventeen-year-old showgirl off to see the world. Even in my shock, the way my mind was shying from the things I’d seen, I knew I’d never be the same.

  We were still standing there on the lawn, trespassing on Wiseman King’s property. He and his thugs were tied up inside (Mrs H always was good with knots) but I only began to feel safe again when we’d driven King’s truck back across the city and parked up outside the Uptown. Houdini had wanted to be sure the Doctor’s box had gone, and it had. The alley was empty.

  ‘Well, then,’ Houdini said. ‘It is over. Out you get, Dorothy, my dear.’

  I still had the keys that Ryan had used to access all areas, and so I stepped out into the moonlight and the bite of traffic over on North Broadway. I glanced back at the truck and I saw, plain in the silver light, that Houdini was fully twenty years younger beside Mrs H, and the happiness in her face made her look nearly as young herself.

  And that’s when I worked it out: Billy hadn’t gone anywhere. Harry Houdini had performed his last and greatest escape trick. He’d felt trapped by the life he’d carved out at the top and imagined that the only way to go was down. But events these last two days had showed him another way: straight up and out.

  ‘In the end,’ Billy’d said to me, ‘you have to settle someplace.’ Only for him and Mrs H, I knew it wasn’t settling at all.

  I kept their secret, while it lasted. It scared me to death, but I knew what Mrs H knew – that Billy wasn’t evil, only angry, and born to another time with different laws. Besides, what else could I do? I didn’t want the show to spoil, and my time on the road to end. And so we journeyed on, our little company; ‘Houdini’ and Bess never put on Reincarnation again, of course, but they went back to the old Metamorphosis illusion and it went well every time. We took our greatest show to Ohio, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Michigan, to Canada …

  But Houdini – Billy, I mean – he died seven months later, in Detroit. Ruptured appendix. Doctors did their best but couldn’t fix him.

  Mrs H said to me after that Billy was killed in the end by human weakness, and wasn’t that just the biggest irony? I never saw her again, but I went on travelling and had my own adventures. I told you, it’s the travel that’s the greatest.

  As for the real Houdini, well, far as I know he never came back. I wonder where he went, flying through creation at the speed of thought? I try to imagine one iota of the things he must have seen …

  But, you know. The thoughts escape me.

  The Pythagoras Problem

  Trevor Baxendale

  ‘I feel like a right Charlie in this.’

  ‘Graham, you look great,’ Yaz assured him, and then turned away so that only Ryan could see her face. She was biting her lip to stop herself laughing.

  ‘It’s cool, mate,’ Ryan said, a little too innocently. ‘Believe me.’

  ‘Why can’t we wear our normal gear?’ Graham asked.

  ‘Honestly,’ said the Doctor, distracted at the control console, ‘you’ll thank me for it when we arrive.’ She was making a series of tiny, last-minute adjustments as she brought the TARDIS into land.

  ‘It’s all right for you young’uns,’ Graham said to Yaz and Ryan, who were now both trying harder than ever to keep straight faces. ‘You’ll fit right in. But what am I supposed to do with these?’ He pointed at his feet; bare and white in a pair of old leather sandals. He wiggled his toes. ‘I’m not even allowed to wear socks!’

  Yaz looked at Graham’s knobbly knees poking out beneath his toga and giggled again. Yaz and Ryan looked resplendent – as if they were on their way to the ultimate toga party. Next to them, Graham felt like an extra from Carry On Cleo.

  ‘Charming,’ Graham muttered. ‘What about you, Doc? How come you get to keep your usual clobber?’

  ‘I fit in wherever I go,’ the Doctor replied with the blithe confidence of the completely self-unaware. ‘And whenever, for that matter. Talking of which: we’ve arrived. Come on!’

  The giant crystal at the centre of the console had ceased its gentle rise and fall, indicating that the TARDIS had materialised. The Doctor was already halfway to the police box doors.

  ‘Don’t forget these, Doctor!’ Ryan called, scooping up a pair of sunglasses from the edge of the console.

  But the Doctor’s cry of ‘Hurry up, you lot!’ was already drifting in from outside the TARDIS. ‘Cor! It’s lovely here …’

  The sun shone hot and bright from the bluest sky Graham had seen in quite a while. He raised an arm to shield his eyes and reluctantly agreed that, yes, in this kind of heat his toga was actually quite comfortable. Ryan and Yaz were already scrambling down the dusty hillside after the Doctor. ‘Oi, wait for me!’ Being careful to shut the TARDIS door – someone had to be the responsible one, after all – Graham hurried after them.

  ‘Rome’s that way,’ announced the Doctor when Ryan asked her exactly where they were. Her arms swung around like a windmill to indicate various directions. ‘Sicily that way. Vesuvius over there, somewhere – can’t see it from here.’

  ‘Vesuvius?’ Graham queried.

  ‘Yeah, not due to erupt for a good few centuries though. Been there, done that. Twice. Oh, look!’ The Doctor stopped mid-stride and pointed directly ahead. ‘The sea! You can see Greece from here on a clear day.’

  They all stopped and admired the glittering blue ocean. It was difficult to imagine a clearer day, but the horizon was lost in a shimmering heat haze. Graham stared at the horizon and blinked, certain his vision was going wobbly.

  ‘Here, Doc,’ he said, ‘I dunno if it’s the heat or what but I don’t feel so good.’

  Yaz and Ryan turned to look at Graham as he bent forward, hands resting on his knees.

  ‘What’s up?’ Ryan asked.

  ‘Bit woozy, that’s all.’ Graham held a hand out to show he didn’t need any help. ‘I’ll be fine in a minute. I just need a moment.’

  ‘You’re getting old, that’s your problem,’ Ryan joked.

  ‘Hey,’ the Doctor said. ‘No cracks about advancing years, if you don’t mind. Besides, it’s not the heat that’s affecting Graham. I felt something too – like a sudden shift in the localised time-space continuum. Didn’t you feel it?’