A Window into Time (Novella) (8 page)

Dad and Rachel were going away to Ibiza for a long weekend with a whole bunch of their friends—well, mainly her friends.

“Sorry, son, that's a nonstarter,” Dad said on Wednesday evening when I asked if I could stay in the flat by myself. “We arranged this little break months ago. Can't get out of it, and it's not fair to Rachel to try.”

“I get it.”

“You don't mind staying with Uncle Gordon, do you?”

“No.” Which was true. What I did resent was missing seeing Michael every lunchtime. I was learning so much from his memories. What I wanted now was more details dating between Vladimir's second Facebook post and now. I wouldn't get that if I was stuck up in Lincolnshire with Uncle Gordon. On the other hand, it was only until next Tuesday. In espionage, patterns betray you to enemy agents all the time, and I had been going to Docklands on a regular basis.

I took an hour to pack that night, making sure I had enough clothes, and that they were the right ones, and then added extra in case of emergencies, like Dad's plane crashing. They were flying in an Airbus again.

I was checking Big Russell's Facebook page in bed when I heard Rachel say: “Can't he go by himself? Gordon will be there to pick him up.”

“Ha!” Dad grunted. “That stoner couldn't pick himself up off the floor.”

Vladimir hadn't replied to Big Russell's message. I put my headphones on and started streaming
Supergirl.

Dad came with me on the train to Peterborough. Uncle Gordon was waiting for me on the other side of the station ticket barrier. Dad gave me a hug and said, “Call me if you need me. I'll have my phone on the whole time. Promise.”

I hugged him back; it was hard to let go. I guess Dad was my new normal now. Actually, he was my only normal.

Even with my memory, I miss Mum.

“Don't forget to charge the phone at night,” I told him when I let go. “Put it on before you go to sleep.”

His mouth did a funny little half smile. “I'll remember, Jules.” Then he went back out on the platform and caught the train that was going back to London. He'd only been in the station for seven minutes.

Uncle Gordon took the sleeping bag off me and put his arm around my shoulder as we walked to his car. “How you doing, Jules?”

“Okay, I guess.”

“I heard there's an offer on the house.”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to swing by for a last look?”

“No point,” I told him. “It's in my head.”

He nodded slowly. “She's in there as well, isn't she?”

“Of course.”

“I'm glad you've still got her, Jules. That's nice.”

We arrived at the car and put all my luggage in the boot. “I'll remember you when you're dead,” I told him reassuringly.

Uncle Gordon laughed. “Good to know.”

His kitchen was even more cluttered now that he had all Mum's old appliances. The lounge was hot, hotter than it'd been in Spain.

“Got to keep the wood burner on,” he said with a shrug. “That's what heats the hot water.”

He went to get lunch ready. I opened my MacBook and used the cottage Wi-Fi to log in to Facebook.

Vladimir McCann > Big Russell.

I know you. Liar! I know what you are. Liar! They will never be happy in the future. Liar! They will never be happy anywhere. Liar! She is my eternal love, she has been my love a thousand times in a thousand lives already. Don't you understand that, you maniac? I am Mark Antony and she is my Cleopatra; I am JFK and she is my Marilyn; I am Captain Kirk and she is my green-skinned alien dancer. She will be mine a thousand times again in the real future of every life I will live. You cannot stop this, for our love is blessed by gods and angels alike. Don't try to lie to me again. Don't try to hide. You are nothing. I laugh at you. You are the darkness at the end of time. I am the light. I am the truth. You will know me. You will know my wrath.

I closed it down fast.

“Chicken soup all right? The tins are still in date,” Uncle Gordon called from the kitchen.

I nodded.

He came into the lounge. “Chicken soup—Aw, Jules, what's wrong, man?”

“I'm wrong,” I stammered. Talking was hard. My throat had all tightened up. I was crying. “I got it wrong. I don't do that. I'm not wrong. How did it happen?”

“Naa.” He sat on the sofa beside me and put his arm around my shoulders. “You don't get nothing wrong, Jules. There's just a few bumps on every road, that's all. I think you hit one.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Don't be. It's okay to get worked up about your mum. It's only been a couple of months. I'm never going to forget her, and I don't have anything like your memory.”

“All right,” I mumbled.

“I'm glad you're here, Jules. Here is where you get to chill and be yourself, understand? You don't have to put a brave face on everything. You can be real here, man.”

“Thanks, Uncle Gordon.”

“All right then.” He gave me a big squeeze. “Chicken soup it is. I'd give you something else that'd help, but you're not really old enough, and your dad would kill me.”

“Uncle Gordon,” I said when he got up.

“Yeah, man?”

“I won't ever want any of that, thanks. Mum was really against drugs.”

“Er—what?”

“I know that's not really spinach you grow in your greenhouse. I am thirteen, Uncle Gordon.”

“Riiiight.” He grinned, then laughed. “I love it. Nothing gets past you, 'coz you are the best, Jules. Really, the best.”

I started to tidy up the sofa bed. The whole place was a complete tip. Even as I was doing it, I had trouble focusing. Vladimir was coming to get me. I would know his wrath, he said. I sat down and opened the MacBook again. I closed down Big Russell's Facebook page, then canceled the Gmail account. Just to be certain, I ran a virus check as well. The MacBook was clean. Vladimir had no way of tracing me now, I was sure.

When I'd finished, I felt a bit safer. It was frightening, though. If he did trace the IP address (somehow; maybe friends in that hacker group Anonymous?), there's no way he could know it was me. But he might think it was Dad. If he was good enough to hack the IP, he would be able to check who lived at the flat, so he'd see no one called Russell was there. So I guessed it would be okay.

I heard Uncle Gordon yell angrily from the kitchen. I yelped in fright:
He's here already, Vladimir has found me!

There was a strange
twang
sound, and Uncle Gordon was shouting: “Get out of it, you little sod! There's plenty more of those coming your way. Go pee on someone else's garden.”

I was shaking badly when I peered around the door. I saw Uncle Gordon standing by the back door, which was open. He was holding a thick black plastic catapult.

“What's happening?” I asked.

“Bloody cats. This village is under siege from them. They come in my garden and crap all over the potato beds.” He turned back to the open door and raised his fist. “I eat those potatoes, you know.”

“Cats?”

“Yeah. There's a whole load of mad old cat women around here, they let them run about all over the place.”

I stared at the catapult. It was quite big, and the elastic was thick and powerful. “Won't that hurt them?”

“That's the idea, Jules. I only use gravel, mind. It's ball bearings that are lethal. Hell, put one of those in a top-of-the-range catapult and they're like bullets. Gravel's milder, but any cats get hit by gravel, they think twice about trespassing here again, dig? It stings like a bastard.”

Which wasn't very nice. Cats are pets, and you can't keep them inside like you can dogs. But I suppose if they're using his garden as a toilet, he's entitled to take precautions. Especially as he eats the potatoes.

Actually, I eat those potatoes, too.

My stomach gurgled in reaction, and I felt mildly sick. “You do wash your vegetables, don't you?” I asked.

“ 'Course I do.”

I saw the small pile of gravel on the work surface near the door; the stones were bigger than I expected. “Where did you get the catapult from? It looks…dangerous.”

“Ah ha! You haven't seen my new toy yet, have you?”

Uncle Gordon had a 3-D printer.

“I got it to make my own specialist cable clips,” he told me as it buzzed away behind his servers, creating a new batch of clips. “But the Internet has a million files of stuff you can print, including catapults. You need to buy the elastic, mind. Can't print that. Not yet anyhow.”

“People have printed guns,” I told him.

“Bloody hell. Well, we're not printing a gun, Jules. What else do you fancy? I've only got black plastic, mind. Darth Vader, maybe?”

“A catapult like yours,” I told him straightaway.

We made three that afternoon. It was brilliant. Uncle Gordon showed me the design program, and we customized them for me. The handle on the first was too big for my fingers; then we adjusted the length. We wound up with one that was modeled exactly on my grip.

There was some elastic left over from his, which we used. Then I went out into the garden to practice. Uncle Gordon set up some old plastic milk cartons for me to shoot. Pulling the elastic back for the first time and taking aim, I felt like Katniss Everdeen in the Hunger Games arena. So slick and cool.

The first four shots missed completely. Uncle Gordon told me to move closer. I managed to hit a bottle on the seventh go.

I think they must use a lot of CGI to help Jennifer Lawrence in the films. That or catapults aren't as accurate as her bow and arrow. The gravel doesn't help; the stone is always an irregular shape, which throws everything off.

After ten minutes, Uncle Gordon went into his shed and produced a box of one-centimeter ball bearings. “These won't tumble in flight,” he said confidently. “Good for your confidence when you're training.”

We made a new target. First we rigged up an old blanket between wooden posts to capture the ball bearings—like sandbags on a firing range. Then we got one of his giant marrows from the garden and propped it up in front of the blanket.

He was right. Ball bearings are much better projectiles than gravel. I learned how to draw the elastic back level, centering it between the fork prongs. Then you had to hold it steady when you released; I'd been flinching a lot before.

The ball bearings didn't just hit the marrow. They actually penetrated it and got stuck inside the pulp—which was kind of scary but fun. I kept shooting until I could hit the marrow every time.

“I think that's enough for today,” he said eventually.

My arms ached. I'd been using the catapult for ninety minutes. I felt really pleased with myself. I'm never any good at physical sports stuff, which is why I hate them. But this I could do properly. If mad Vladimir stalked me now, he'd never know what hit him.

We had pizza and chips for supper. Afterward, Uncle Gordon lit one of his spinach cigarettes, then flicked through the Freeview TV channels until he found a repeat of
Big Bang Theory.
I don't like watching repeats. There's no point, especially not with sitcoms. A joke is never funny the second time you hear it. And I remember all the dialogue. But Uncle Gordon chuckled away at it.

“We'll work on distance tomorrow,” he said.

“Sounds good.”

“You just have to keep steady. Need to build up your muscles a bit for that, Jules.”

I never thought of myself as weak, but I know my coordination isn't the best. “Rachel has a gym membership,” I told him.

“I would never have guessed.”

“Really?”

“Sarcasm, Jules, sarcasm. You should deploy it more often; it's a shield against life.” He took a deep drag. The smoke was awful, all sickly, which made my stomach churn. I couldn't find any studies on whether it's carcinogenic like tobacco, but I'm reasonably sure it must be.

“What I was thinking was she could take me to her gym and I could do the exercises with her.”

“So you'll be working out with Rachel, eh?” He winked at me. “I like your thinking.”

“Uncle Gordon?”

“Yep?”

“Do you think reincarnation is real?”

“Whoa, deep thoughts there, man. Is this about your mum again? If it's true, she'll be back as someone wonderful, a heart surgeon or a teacher. Something like that.”

“But is it real?”

Uncle Gordon muted the TV. “Okay, here's something for you, Jules:
The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.
It's a very famous quote. Do you know who said it?”

“No.”

“Jack Haldane; he was a British Indian geneticist and evolutionary biologist. One of the smartest people of his time—of any time, come to that. A proper radical, not like the Twitterstorm idiots you get today. And you know what? He was right, too. The more we delve into the quantum structure of the universe, the less we understand. Consider this: Every human culture, no matter how separate their origins, has legends and beliefs about an afterlife and soul. How did that come about, huh, unless there's a grain of truth in it?”

“I suppose so.”

“That's right, man, truth is a universal constant. Remember that—oh, 'course you will.” He got to his feet, swaying about, then started up the stairs. “G'night, Jules.”

“ 'Night, Uncle Gordon.”

“Wait, you deserve a full and honest answer.” He turned and gave me a dazed smile. “Personally, I believe consciousness is just a window into time.”

Dad and Rachel didn't die in a plane crash, so he came to collect me on Monday evening. I was waiting on the platform when his train pulled in.

“Well, you look happy,” he said.

“It's been good,” I told him.

He gave Uncle Gordon a vaguely perplexed look. Uncle Gordon touched two fingers to his forehead in salute. I think it was sarcasm.

The train back to Kings Cross departed nine minutes later. “Did you have a good time?” I asked once we'd found our seats. They were prebooked; I know it's Rachel who does that for him.

“Ate too much, drank too much, danced too much,” he said with a grin.

I smiled. “Is that all?”

Dad's expression was funny. I suppose that's what I must look like when I'm trying to work out if someone's being ironic. “Uh, that's all I'm going to tell you about, yes.” He put a hand on my knee and squeezed fondly. “So what did you two get up to?”

“Uncle Gordon's got a three-D printer. He makes all his own plastic ties and clips now.”

“Sounds…interesting.”

“No it doesn't. But I want one for Christmas. Please, Dad, you can print anything on them. They're the future.”

“Okay, then. How expensive are they?”

“Depends what sort you get. I made a list for you.”

“Of course you did.”

I didn't mention the catapult and box of ball bearings I'd packed in my suitcase. I'd practiced a lot over the weekend, and I was a really good shot now. I checked online, and the Olympics didn't have a catapult category, which was a shame. Everyone at St. George's would have been amazed if I'd represented the UK.

That night, Dad and Rachel went to bed early. They were both tired, they said. I unpacked and put my dirty clothes in the laundry basket. The catapult went in my bedside cabinet along with the ball bearings. Having it that close made me feel properly safe. If Vladimir broke in to massacre us, he'd be sorry.

I had to wear two hoodies to go to Docklands on Tuesday. My catapult went into the pocket on the inside one, then I zipped the outer one over it so nobody could see it. The Internet gave me a long list of weapons you're not allowed to carry in the UK, like knives and hand claws, hollow Kubotans, shuriken (throwing stars), kusari, all sorts of martial arts stuff. And no one under eighteen is allowed to buy or carry air rifles and crossbows. But, legally, catapults are classified as toys—which is really dumb. By Sunday evening, my shots were taking big chunks out of Uncle Gordon's marrows. I didn't want to chance a police officer or the office security people seeing it. If they did, they might use search and seizure laws and decide the catapult was an offensive weapon. So if I got arrested, it would be up to the court to decide if I had reasonable circumstances to be carrying a catapult. Which I did, obviously, but they'd have to know about Vladimir to understand that. That might be difficult for a stupid to accept.

So even though it was midsummer, I wore two hoodies. I was very careful in Docklands. I got there early—twelve o'clock—and scouted Jubilee Park for any sign of Vladimir. I covered the broad walkway beside the water, and checked the Tube station twice. He wasn't there. After that, I relaxed a bit and hung around for Michael.

At twelve thirty-eight, Michael and three colleagues came strolling along, talking away about deals and reports. I decided to be very daring and walked straight for them but in the opposite direction, so I actually passed him less than a meter away. He never noticed me, but I remembered this huge surge of emotion he experienced, so strong it took my breath away. Hardly surprising considering what Jyoti told him.

I can feel my eyes watering right there in the middle of the Chinese restaurant, and I don't care.

“What?” I ask in a real croaky voice.

Jyoti smiles at me across the table. She looks amazing, wearing a purple satin dress that clings to her like static, light glinting off her gold necklace. She never needs to wear much makeup, she's so naturally beautiful, but she's dusted on a few highlights so that she looks especially gorgeous tonight.

“Blue line,” she says with a mischievous glint in her eyes. “No mistake.”

“You mean…really?”

“Yes. I'm pregnant.”

I reach over the table and grip both her hands and kiss her. “Really?”

She laughs at how foolish I am. “Yes. The tests are pretty much infallible. I took three.”

“You're pregnant?”

“Yes.” She gives me a concerned look. “You're not upset, are you? I know this isn't quite the sequence of events we had in mind.”

“It's the best thing that's ever happened to me. Uh—apart from you.”

She laughs again. “So…big question.”

“What?”

“Do we bring the wedding forward?”

“Oh, hell. Your parents.”

“They're not that bad.”

“No, but—Oh, whatever. Yes, let's do it. Let's get married right away. Hey! We could do Vegas.”

“OMG! You did not just say that!”

“Yes, I did. Come on, how many people do you know who've actually done that?”

She giggles delightedly. “It's crazy. Nobody does Vegas.”

“So we will. It'll be special and unique.”

“Mike!”

But I can see she is intrigued by the idea. It is such a magical meal. My brain is melting out of my ears; I am being deliriously stupid I am so happy. Having a baby together will be utterly wonderful. She'll be a perfect mother. If it's a boy I can take him to Arsenal matches with me—
don't say that out loud!
But…“Is it a boy?”

She rolls her eyes. “You have to have a scan to know that. It's way too early.”

“Oh, right.”

“Do you mind which…? Wait! Are you thinking about taking a boy to football matches?”

“No!”

Her mouth makes a great big O, and she throws her napkin at me. “Michael Finsen! You were!”

“Well, maybe a little.”

She laughs hysterically.

I don't know what we eat. I don't taste any of it. Not this night. And I swear off alcohol for the whole pregnancy to be supportive. We only just make the theater in time—and the ushers never let you in after the performance starts. Opening night of
Nobody's Freedom,
too. The tickets cost me a fortune. It's about a funny dystopian world in the future, or something. At least I think it's a comedy; Jo Brand is in it. But I'm not watching. I just sit there with my arm around Jyoti, staring at her until she tells me to stop. But I can't. She is my world.

I'm going to be a dad!

I was giddy all the way back to Islington. All Michael's emotions were reverberating around inside my skull like waves of chaos. They were so strong. I could believe I was in love with Jyoti, too. And a baby's on the way, which is genuinely wonderful. Just thinking about that made me smile like some gormless stupid.

Seriously weird.

When I got back to the flat, I had to sit down and try to get my head calm. That turned out to be uncomfortably easy. I thought about what Vladimir would do when he found out and my skin went cold. He'd gone full-digital-berserk just from Big Russell's innocuous deflection message. This was off-the-map psycho territory.

I opened the MacBook and looked up when the opening night for
Nobody's Freedom
was.

I said seeing Vladimir at Jubilee Park was frightening. I was wrong. That was nothing. Not compared with this.

The opening night for
Nobody's Freedom
was tomorrow.