Sand Glass (27 page)

‘Stop it! Both
of you!’ Marcia shouted. She pulled Janey back, out of the way.

I sprang up
facing Jared, who was scrambling to his feet.

‘What is
wrong?’ I yelled ‘Tell me please!’

‘You betray us
and you ask me what is wrong?’ he circled round me, ‘when all I
have ever done is help you!’

‘I haven’t… I
didn’t. Please…. Jared, you warned us this would happen… the last
time we were here. You said it might affect it us…. Paranoia,
hallucinations, other things. You warned us…. Please stop….
Please!’

Janey stood
frozen and terrified. Marcia shifted her weight slightly ready to
move; yet looked from His face to mine with a confused pain in
those hazel eyes. Jared stepped towards me, his expression
completely unreadable.

‘Take Janey
out.’ I said.

Marcia took
hold of her, but Janey wouldn’t budge; her face was pale and she
gasped with emotion; ‘Please, don’t hurt him…. Don’t….’ I wasn’t
sure who she was speaking to.

Jared came
closer. He blinked and stared at me, as if he didn’t know me.

‘Jared…’ I
said, ‘remember who you are. Before all this. Before we were all
trapped here. Tell me who you know yourself to be. Tell me!’

‘I am…..’ Jared
pushed me back his right forearm against my chest. He leaned his
whole weight into me. I was crushed against the rocky wall,
‘….still waiting. Who have you been talking to?’

It snapped into
my mind then that this was one situation that I hadn’t allowed for.
There was no clever way out of this one. I would not be compelled
to hurt him. Because whatever else was true, he had already saved
me.

‘Jared…,’ I
tried to keep my voice calm, ‘do you remember the times we’ve had?
I do. If you want them to end now…. I accept that…’

His eyes looked
into mine for a second and then away; I could barely breathe, I
reached my hands to his shoulders, but I had no leverage, jammed as
I was against the rocky wall.

‘Jared! You’re
going to kill him!’ I thought it was Marcia’s voice but I wasn’t
sure. Where this would end? I was unable to draw anything but a
small gasping gulp into the top of my lungs. I started to feel
swimmy and odd, so I let my body relax.

We both began
to jarringly crumple down towards the floor. Suddenly I was in a
position to bend from the waist. I sucked in a lungful of air and I
pressed down on his shoulders with all my might. I was fighting to
breathe in again; and like a terrible film that is running too
slowly, with all that resistance he was forced to his knees. I
thought he would struggle or lash out, but quite suddenly he
stopped trying to hurt me. His arms dropped and his head bowed
against me.

‘Take Janey
out.’ I said to Marcia again. This time she obtained compliance
from Janey by grabbing her round the waist, and lifting her bodily
through the gap into the tunnel. They were still in earshot. I
could hear a mewling sound. It was like an animal in pain. Tiny and
helpless. But I had a more immediate concern for Jared. He gasped
once, and then coughed.

‘Davey….’ He
was still leaning against me, ‘I….’ he coughed again. This time
there was blood in it.

‘It’s okay. I’m
here.’ I took a hanky from my pocket and held it to his mouth. I
slowly lowered myself to the floor. We sat there as he leaned
against me and carried on coughing like a hiccup every moment or
so.

Eventually it
stopped. He looked at me. So close, and now so near.

‘Forgive me….
Please.’ He looked like one who knows they are doomed and only
wants to lessen the limit of that doom.

‘Jared, I
do.’

I found the
water bottle and another clean square of cotton. I wiped the blood
away from his face. He had gone deathly pale as that wild insane
strength drained away. It left behind a failing creature who was
weak and sick. He faded before my eyes into a lonely young man
longing for help to come out of the darkness. Seeing the stars
scarring the night above him, as he and his sister lay there
waiting….

‘Oh no!
No….dear God what Have I done? I tried to hurt you…. I was thinking
such terrible things. I don’t know what is happening Davey.’ He
shivered and bent forward looking sick, ‘forgive me!’

‘Come now…. I
forgive you. I am your friend, and I won’t leave you.’ I wanted to
stay calm, but I thought I was beginning to lose my grip on what
was real. Jared needed me to be strong, and I jolly well gritted my
teeth and decided to keep being that. He mumbled something I could
barely make out, then clearer, but hoarsely: ‘It was like my mind
was inside out and the darkness was in here with me.’ He slid
further down into a half curled and crumpled position. I put my
hand to his forehead, it was clammy. ‘You told us what this place
did to us; you know, the last time we were here.’ I tried to keep
it light and matter of fact; the opposite of what I was actually
feeling, ‘All sorts of things can happen in this place.’

‘Yes. I know.’
Jared pushed himself up and looked at me steadily, those eyes were
dark and wide in the dim light and seemed filled again with that
old kindness that made me forget my own weakness, then he spoke and
sounded like the man I had always known, with that half smile
resting there; ‘I said that, and it is so true… a question David.
What do you want to do with me? What do you want to do now? I will
do as you wish. I cannot trust myself today.’ The smile started to
fade and he pressed his hands together then.

‘We need to get
home.’ I said firmly, ‘We must go back to where we started to go
wrong. I mean all of us.’

‘Davey…. I’m
afraid…’ he clutched me and bowed his head into my lap where we sat
sprawled on the floor.

‘Jared?....
Jared?’ I took his left hand. His grip was suddenly tight and
painful. He tensed and clung on to me, making a sound in his throat
that was eerily like the one I heard from the tunnel a moment
ago.

He spoke then
in barely a whisper ‘I hurt….’

I saw to my
horror a dark bruising on his arms and on his shoulder where the
neck of the shirt had fallen open as he struggled with me. He
turned his head slightly and looked up at me. ‘Help me.’ He said.
His eyes closed in a faint or something similar. Marcia was at the
entrance with Janey. She carried her now limp body to where our
packs lay, and curled Janey round so her head was resting on one of
them. Marcia turned to me. ‘It has started.’ she said, and burrowed
in the nearest pack for the microfibre blankets, and the compact
airbeds.

A little while
later, we had made them both as comfortable as we could manage.
Marcia was admirable in her practicality. I was still shocked from
what happened to Jared right in front of me. But she immediately
got out the med kit and looked for something to help. She gave them
both a shot of one of George’s famous concoctions. We then checked
them both every few minutes. There wasn’t much else to be done. We
couldn’t go anywhere. And if we could get back out there somehow,
it couldn’t change what was happening.

Marcia
instructed me to make strong tea for us both. She went out for a
minute to the place assigned for the girl’s bathroom.

She came in and
sat by me; ‘This is all going to hell.’ She said.

‘Is Janey
bruised as well?’ I asked.

‘It seems so,
from what I can see.’ Marcia took the cup from me with a firm and
steady hand, ‘we are in the middle of something. And we need to
make some decisions soon before we end up sitting here with a
couple of dead people.’

‘I won’t leave
them again.’ I said shocked by her forthrightness.

‘No. Of course
not. Not now.’ Marcia paused, ‘I would hazard a guess that using
your silver blade would not solve the problem either.’

‘No. They are
not in a stable state. There is no knowing where they might end
up.’ I took my own cup, with not such a steady grip I realised, ‘I
think that there is something we could do….’

‘What are you
thinking?’

‘One of us
could go back. And one could stay. We are the only ones who can do
it.’ I looked to her to see what she would say.

‘What about our
meet with Elland?’ she reminded me.

‘That could
still happen,’ I said, ‘that person, on their return; they would
have to make the meeting. And then after that find who has stayed
here with the twins.’

‘You don’t say
it normally.’ Marcia was very serious, ‘why now acknowledge their
fraternity?’

‘Because that
is the connection that cannot be broken.’ They are trouble for this
“Mad Man” Alexander, or Rimmington as he is otherwise known. And
Jared knew him. He recognised him from long ago… don’t you see.
This goes back before the experiment. It goes back to the
beginning.’

‘You mean when
they were born?’

‘When we all
were born.’ I reminded her.

‘Yes. Yes of
course. The birthday…. So how is it possible to stop something that
started at a point before you had any power to do anything?’

‘We don’t. We
chose the track. And we make history jump to that track.’

‘What?’ Marcia
seemed torn between hope and fear, ‘Tell me how we do this.’

‘We need Jules
to go in and change the Modulator. Change the settings. Or you do.
Somewhere inside your mind, there could be the passcodes for the
place it’s kept in. It cannot be something that changes or they
wouldn’t be able to do a “reset” and wipe… or think they wipe
everyone’s timeline clean again. You must know what it is! Do you
think you can find it?’

‘Yes. Yes I
think so. My mind is like a jumble sale though. It may take a
little time. But tell me what I need to do when I go back to
Base?’

‘I’m working on
it.’ I said.

After an hour
we had both completed our notes. I tried to keep it simple. That
way it wouldn’t be difficult to explain to any of the others in a
hurry.

I checked Jared
again. There seemed to be no change. He was just asleep. The
bruising was still visible. On Janey too.

‘The accident.’
said Marcia, ‘Can we stop it from ever happening?’

‘I’m not sure
if we can. You could have done…. maybe. But Jared is stubborn. And
we can’t perhaps stop the outcome that way.’

‘So what do we
do?’

‘I have three
suggestions,’ I held out the paper.

‘Just say it.’
Marcia waved the paper away.

‘The first: We
change the start point, to the day we started the expedition. That
might take some of the people out of the situation…. Therefore
simplify it. Second: we put it back to what it should have been
this year for the start date, instead of our actual birthday….’

‘And?’ Marcia
was waiting.

‘’You might
think me crazy.’ I said.

‘I’ve thought
that for a long time already,’ said Marcia with the first light
hint of humour I’d felt in a while, ‘and it won’t change the
validity or lack thereof of the idea you’ve come up with.’

‘Alright then;
Third: we switch the end and start points.’

‘What? Are you
crazy?’

‘I told
you.’

‘Yes but I
didn’t think you’d suggest something like that!’ she went quiet for
several minutes.

‘I get it,’ she
said at last, ‘I think I get it. But I’m not sure exactly. We start
at the end; and we end at the beginning?’

‘Yes.’

‘But it’s not
possible.’

‘Is any of
this?’

‘You’re right.
I’m not too good on the science bit of it all. Are you?’

‘Not
really.’

‘So how can the
crazy flipping idea be expected to work?’

‘I don’t
know.’

‘You don’t
know.’

‘Have you got a
better idea?’

‘No…..’ Marcia
considered it for only a moment longer then shook herself, ‘I think
we need to do this. Anything else is just a waste of time.’

‘You mean
option three?’ I checked I’d heard her right.

‘Third time
Lucky!’ she said, ‘let’s do it!’

‘Do you have
the passcodes here?’

‘I wrote them
all down for you. Train. Base. Modulator. Central control access
point.’

‘Is the last
one at Base too?’

‘Yes. Oh and
one last thing.’ Marcia took the pen and wrote on the paper another
six digit number.

‘What’s
this?’

‘That is the
tag code override key. Only use it if you really need to. And if we
don’t see each other, or it all goes wrong then….. Davey,
Thanks.’

I was kind of
stuck for anything to say. So I go the silver knife out.

‘Are you sure
you aren’t able to do this by jumping?’ I said.

‘No. I need to
be falling.’ She held out her arm, ‘I say do it. And don’t worry. I
can handle the pain.’

‘I doesn’t
hurt. Heelio said.’

‘I wasn’t
talking about the knife point on my skin.’ She looked at Jared,
then back at me.

‘Hold it
steady,’ I said as she held her left forearm out to me.’

‘I’m ready.’
She said.

I pressed the
tip of the knife lightly along her arm just to the right of the
tattoo. It was barely a graze. I looked up at her. She smiled, and
then quite suddenly, she simply wasn’t there.

I was alone
with my two charges. I sat back on my heels. I wondered how long it
would take. How long it would be before I succumbed in the darkness
and the silence to some strange madness. I carefully put the small
silvery blade away, and prepared myself for a long wait.

There is a
place that everyone reaches sooner or later. The outer limit of
endurance; whether that is physical, mental, or any other thing.
After about six hours my mind ground to a halt on the shore of this
particular sea. I wanted to see some action. I lusted after it;
like a drunk wants another drink. I saw my objectivity begin to
erode with the hours that had passed in this underground place. We
had arrived here at what would be on the outside two o’clock in the
afternoon, and even not taking into account my and Marcia’s hour
out with Elland’s tribe, the time had now ground round to about
eight in the evening. I checked on Janey and Jared every fifteen
minutes. In a way I wished I could sleep, but I was strung out in a
way that made rest quite out of the question. Jared was the worse
of the two. Janey’s breathing had slowed and become regular and
even. She slept perhaps for the first time, in a silence and
without disturbance since maybe the night the science dome
experiments were wreaked. That was weeks… or was it months ago. In
sleep the pale complexion assumed an ethereal beauty; and her
body’s tension was relieved. George’s mixture had done its good
office. I carefully turned back the edge of her blouse and examined
the bruises that had flowered on her skin, banding it with a
pattern of the obdurate inner furniture of the car that Jared had
been driving. It was turning to every colour. As hours were like
days, and something swayed in the balance between living and
thinking of dying. She was a fragment of another soul. But perhaps
she was the most precious part. If determination could bring back
one from the greatest limit of enduring all things, then surely she
could not be defeated. But I did not touch her, except to examine
the state of the progress of this injury pouring out of the port of
some time span.