Broken Hero (43 page)

I decide not to push that point too hard. The ring of Uhrwerkmänner looks decidedly thinner than last time we were here. “You can beat these bastards. You can fulfill the promise of your rebellion against Lang.”

For a mercy, nobody takes the opportunity to tell me how useless they all are. I seize the moment, march toward one corpse, swing myself up to stand on its chest.

“You started this fight seventy years ago,” I say. “You thought it was over, but Friedrich’s here for round two.” I survey them all. “But you can finish him. You can end Lang’s poisonous legacy. You can prove you are… Hey, wait a minute, what’s that?”

OK, not my most rabble-rousing finish. Except maybe I just saw something more important than an army. Maybe I just saw the answer I came here for.

I stare closer. The way the Uhrwerkmänn is designed… It’s not exactly a utility belt, more a string of boxes and compartments at its waist. But jutting from one small metal box—it looks exactly like the desk ornament we rescued from Lang’s office in Summertown. A dull black oblong with a staggered grooves running down its side.

I bend, pluck it from the Uhrwerkmänn, oblivious to my audience. I stare at it. More than a desk ornament. A reality key. It unlocked a pocket universe. And is this the same as the one we found? It looks the same…

I jump down off the Uhrwerkmänn, hustle toward another corpse.

“Where are you going?” I hear Hermann spit from behind me. “Come back here.”

Funny, I could have sworn he was trying to get rid of me a moment ago. Anyway, I have bigger concerns than Hermann right now. What the hell is one of Friedrich’s men doing with a reality key? Is that how they’re getting about? Or hiding? Is that his secret?

I reach the next Uhrwerkmänn. There’s nothing at its waist. No compartments at all. Then I remember Hermann stowing Lang’s notebooks in his leg. Their storage compartments aren’t always in plain sight. I start banging panels while Hermann harangues me from a distance. He seems unsure if he should chase me out or demand I come back to him. A panel pops open. I reach into the compartment.

“So,” Kayla walks up to me, “is this the part where I realize you’ve lost your feckin’ mind, club you over the back of the head, and drag you off for the straight jacket and the little padded cell?”

I pull out a second reality key from the Uhrwerkmänn’s storage compartment.

“No,” I tell her, “this is the part where we start worrying.”

“To be totally feckin’ honest with you, Arthur,” Kayla says, “I’m a wee bit feckin’ far past starting to worry. It’s more a way of feckin’ life, truth be told and all.”

“Worry more,” I tell her.

“You keep this sort of encouragement up,” she tells me, “I might start to agree with Hannah about what a feckin’ shite field lead you are.”

Oh God… Hannah… Oh no.

“You will listen to me!” Hermann screams across the room. He stamps toward me. “You will—”

“No,” I cut him off. “You will listen to me. Friedrich just came here and raided you for spare parts. He stole your family from you. Because he’s going to use them to make his bomb.” I wave the reality keys at him. “And no thanks to you, I think I finally know where.”

“Wait,” Kayla says. “You do?”

And deep underground, in the cloying smoke, massive robotic figures hazed by still-billowing dirt ringed around me, I do suddenly see very clearly.

“London,” I say. “Lang’s pocket reality. Because they’re all carrying the keys to get in.”

Kayla gets to the next step quicker than I did.

“You feckin’ sent Hannah there.”

“I know.”

Hermann seems nonplussed by all of this. He stares back and forth between the pair of us. “You…” he starts, less certain this time.

“No, you.” I’m sick of Hermann and his bickering. “This is it,” I say. “Unless this is an especially great day for porcine aviation fanatics, Friedrich just finished up amassing all the pieces he needs for his apocalyptic jigsaw puzzle. And now he’s hiding in a pocket reality in London sorting the corners from the edge pieces.”

I sometimes wonder if metaphors are not my strong point…

“I’m going there now. To save my team. To try and save the goddamn world. To do anything and everything I can, no matter how small and meaningless it may end up being. If you are even an echo of the people you used to be, the people you were trying to preserve, then you will come with me. Or you can sit on your hands and diddle yourselves. Quite frankly, I no longer care.”

And with that I turn on my heel and march away.

A moment later Kayla is at my elbow. “Not exactly General feckin’ Patton, are you?”

I shrug. “General Patton probably didn’t ever head into a fight that the universe had promised him he was pre-destined to die in.”

Because there’s no doubt in my mind now. These are the moments the future echoes foretold. This is the day. This shitty, hungover day. Today I die.

On the plus side, Kayla doesn’t have a pithy comeback to that one.

I let Kayla drive. Her reflexes are better suited for the speeds we’re going to need to hit. And I need to make phone calls.

First up is Hannah. I need her to get the hell away from the London Underground. If I’m right, I just sent her wandering into a death trap, and while she’s not exactly my BFF, we’re still several notches of antipathy away from me wanting robots to tear her limb from limb.

She doesn’t answer. Which, to be fair, is a reasonable reaction given our working relationship. Still, frustration has me flinging my cellphone into the footwell. “You call her,” I tell Kayla. “She might actually talk to you.”

It’s a mark of Kayla’s concern that I get no back-chat. But she gets no more of a response than I do. Which probably means that Hannah is underground already.

Shit.

I retrieve my phone, leave a message. It is slightly panicky and mostly consists of the phrase, “Get the hell out of there before something turns you into a person patty!” Hopefully it makes up in urgency what it lacks in eloquence.

“An ear bud,” says Kayla, apropos of nothing.

“Is this an artificial insemination thing?” I ask. “Because now may not be the time.”

“The feckin’ things we use in the feckin’ field to talk to each other, you dumb feck.” I think it’s a good thing I had Kayla drive. It hampers her ability to skewer me.

“Oh right.”

I speed-dial Tabitha.

“What?” she says as she picks up.

I think, if the world survives I should talk to Felicity about MI37 getting a slightly better receptionist. Then I remember that Felicity has stormed off and MI37 is destined to die even if the world chooses not to do an impersonation of a wet tissue meeting a bullet today. So maybe a receptionist isn’t our top priority.

“Has Hannah got an earbud?” I ask. Then for clarity, “Something she can put in her ear. Something you can talk to her through.” And then for good measure, “Nothing to do with artificial insemination.”

There’s a chance I need to calm down a little.

“Jesus,” I hear Tabitha say. And then something like, “Need to include an instruction manual with them.” Then she says more clearly, “No. Range is only a few miles. She’s in London. Me: Oxford. So, pointless.”

I curse. “Can you try her mobile?”

“Oh sure. Was doing important work to determine fate of the universe. But a secretary. Yeah, can totally be that.”

I almost check to see if the venom coming through the phone has damaged the touchscreen.

I try to remember what I’m interrupting. Tabitha had an idea, was doing research. About… About… About the damned bomb.

“What did you find out?” I ask.

“Oh,” Tabitha switches from acidic to petulant with the ease of a teenager. “Now you want to know?”

“I know where the bomb is,” I say. There is a satisfying pause after that.

“For sure?” she asks.

I need Clyde to answer that exactly. But I’m building my way up to Clyde, maximizing the time he has to cool off. I imagine Clyde loses his shit about as often as Halley’s comet passes the earth, so it might take him a while to put the pieces back together. I will have time for just one shot to get him back on board with us, and I don’t want to waste it. Still, Tabitha won’t benefit from any of that information, so I go with, “I’m certain enough.”

“OK,” Tabitha says. “So… what I have. Theoretical. Not as rigorous as I’d like it to be. Needs confirmation.” Despite the staccato rhythm she’s waffling as much as Clyde.

“Just hit me with it,” I tell her.

“This is weird.” Weird enough that she’s still hedging. Which is worrying.

Still, “I’ve dealt with weird before,” I point out.

“OK.” Tabitha takes a deep breath. “Bomb goes off. Massive damage. Damage so monumental it causes echoes in reality.”

“Intimately aware of that,” I point out. My sinuses are still stinging from my last encounter.

“Except the bomb never goes off.”

“Say what now?”

“Manipulating realities. Playing with them. Lang’s whole thing. The Uhrwerkgerät—his biggest plaything. See, the echoes get larger and larger closer we get to the big boom. Eventually it causes one so large, it destroys the Uhrwerkgerät itself.” She pauses for effect. Because despite herself, Tabitha, loves a little drama. “Destroys it before it goes off.”

OK, I concede the point. That’s weird.

“A future echo of the Uhrwerkgerät going off destroys the Uhrwerkgerät
before
it goes off,” I say, just to make sure I’m still playing along at home. From the driver’s seat, Kayla gives me an odd look.

“Yes.”

“But that’s—” I start.

“A paradox,” Tabitha finishes. “Fucking huge one.”

And that does seem a fair assessment of the situation.

“Nature hates a vacuum,” Tabitha states. “Reality hates a paradox. Same thing. Making an analogy. But our reality is actually a composite reality. Made of many realities. We perceive the most likely realities. But have spare ones. So to fix the paradox the composite brings less likely realities forward to plug the hole.”

“OK,” I nod. “So no problem.” But even I can’t deny that sounds like wishful thinking.

“Right,” Tabitha agrees with me for about half a second. “Except paradox is too big.” Another deep breath. “The Uhrwerkgerät—Lang designed it to be highly reality permeable. Exists in many, many realities. So it causes paradoxes throughout all of them. So finding an undamaged reality in the composite to fix things is hard. Means the solution is a really unlikely reality. Means bringing it forward ends up being worse than the original problem. Causes more paradoxes. And the composite tries to fix them. Brings forward more realities. Even more unlikely ones. But just makes more paradoxes. And more. And more. Keeps trying to fix them, keeps making it worse.”

I picture it like a tear in cloth. The Uhrwerkgerät ripping through the weave and weft, leaving a ragged hole in its wake. So you try to patch the hole, but the cloth is too weak to hold the thread. And the rip gets worse. So you bring in more patches, more thread. But everything keeps ripping, and ripping, tearing itself to shreds. Except it’s not cloth. It’s reality. It’s everything I live and breathe. Tearing itself to shreds.

“How bad does it get?” I ask.

Kayla looks over at me again. Considering she’s going in excess of a hundred and twenty miles per hour, I wish she’d keep her eye on the road more.

“Everything ends,” Tabitha says. “Everything. Just gets worse and never gets better. Until there’s nothing.”

Shit. Shit and balls. “Lang designed this thing?” I check. “Designed it to do exactly that?” The mentality behind that decision is beyond me.

“Total Nazi fucker with a hard-on for mass destruction. Saw humanity as tainted. This was the ultimate purge.”

I’ve actually tried time travel before, and I know how awful and dangerous it is, and how, in the long run, it would probably cause the same sort of damage as Lang’s bomb. But still, I would so sorely like to go back in time and neuter Lang’s father with a handsaw.

Not a helpful thought, unfortunately. I reach for something more relevant. “How do we stop it?” I ask.

“Actually,” Tabitha says. “Opposite problem. You have to make sure it goes off. Only way to stop the paradox.”

“The huge bomb that causes a detonation so large it ripples backwards and forwards in time? The bomb that is going to kill me? I have to ensure it goes off?”

And for a moment I really do think Kayla is going to take us off the road.

“Echoes have already happened. Means it’s gone off. Only way to stop the paradox is have that happen.” There is no give in Tabitha’s tone. Ugly little truths handled with professional dispassion.

And… Shit, she’s right. That is the only way. Sacrifice this… what? City? Country? Continent? But save something. Maybe not all the world, but at least part of it.

Just not my part.

“Brilliant,” I say. “Just brilliant.”

Kayla keeps driving, but part of me wishes she’d take us to our destination just a little slower.

I try Hannah again, though I don’t even know what to tell her now. Head to the southern hemisphere for a while? She doesn’t answer anyway, so I don’t have to work it out.

Clyde is next. He lets it go to voicemail. Unless he’s underground—or being beaten to a pulp by a World War II-era robot—as well. I almost fling my phone out the window at that point, but I give him one more shot.

He picks up on the sixth ring.

“I really don’t want to talk about it, Arthur,” he says before I can even say hello. “I know that’s probably very rude, but I really am very upset about the whole thing. About my own behavior as much as anything else. Really an unforgivable way to act. Not to say that I am the only guilty party. See, I don’t want to get caught in that trap. You see, I know myself, Arthur. I know what happens when I get to talking. I’ll end up talking myself into coming back and making apologies that really I’m not sure I’m ready to give, or really should give. But if we get engaged in this whole thing, well that’s what will happen. And sometimes a man just needs to let himself stew for a bit, get it out of his system. Well, I say man, but really it could be anyone of any gender. Or of indeterminate gender. Though I don’t think that’s the term. My upbringing was rather conservative, and sometimes it means my terminology is a little south of the politically correct term. But hopefully you catch my intent.”