The Clown Service (15 page)

‘Hooray.’

‘The longer we push the quantum state into flux …’

‘The words are getting a little long.’

‘The more we screw with probability, the more changes could actually take effect. I’m loosening the actual timeline in order to see the probability wave. Do that for too long and the whole lot could unravel: history rewriting itself from the point of intrusion.’

‘Which would be bad.’

‘Potentially catastrophic.’

Toby turned to Shining. ‘I hope this is worth wiping out history for.’

Shining smiled. ‘On the plus side: if it all goes wrong we won’t know a thing about it.’

It took Derek about an hour to get set up. What looked like cone speakers surrounded the ground floor of the warehouse,
wires running from a portable generator in the back of the van to the various piles of equipment. Derek was established behind a bank of controls – everything from what looked like a portable recording studio to a very battered netbook balanced on top. Toby noted that the desktop wallpaper was a picture of the car from
Back to the Future
. He hoped he wasn’t about to die horribly as a pawn in the most dangerous game of live action role-playing ever played.

‘Nearly ready,’ said Derek. ‘Normally the focus of the machine would be a single object, not a whole room, so I’m hoping it’s not going to blow us up the minute I turn it on. Could one of you do me a favour and fetch the small, pink box from the passenger’s seat of the van?’

Toby obliged. ‘Will this make it safer?’

‘Not really,’ said Derek, opening his lunchbox and taking out an apricot. ‘The doctor tells me to eat little but often.’

Derek reached out to the netbook and opened a program on the desktop. Slowly, the equipment around them began to hum. Derek picked up a stopwatch from the desk and slung it around his neck.

‘Now remember,’ he said, ‘we have limited time to do this and we’re dealing with two sets of unreliable factors: quantum probability and a recording method that only registers certain events. What we’re about to see will not be linear, nor will it necessarily be the specific events you’re hoping for. It is what it is, gentlemen, and I hope it’s of use. One final warning: you must not get too close to the probability field. Your presence could contaminate the past, could change something. Basically, lads, it’s bloody dangerous – so keep behind the desk.’

He started the stopwatch while simultaneously triggering the program he’d opened on the netbook desktop.

At first nothing happened but an increase in the noise from the equipment. Toby grimaced as the hum from the speakers became so intense he was sure something was likely to break.

Then his vision skewed, as if everything in front of him had shifted to the left, distorting and stretching. Rubbing his eyes didn’t help. He felt his balance go, as his brain reacted to what he was seeing and was unable to find its equilibrium. Derek grabbed his arm.

‘It’s not your eyes,’ he shouted. ‘It takes a minute for the brain to compensate – should have warned you. Hold onto something.’

Toby did so, gripping the edge of the desk in front of him.

Despite the disorientation, he couldn’t bring himself to close his eyes or look away.

The light falling in from the windows began to snap on and off, day to night, night to day. Flashes of orange street-lighting strobed across the walls, making it look like the place was in a state of emergency.

He watched as a pile of dried leaves shifted around the floor. They moved as one, skipping forward and back across the dirty concrete. Life rendered as bad stop-motion animation, jerky and non-cohesive.

Suddenly, a young man appeared in the centre of the room. In one hand he held a large torch, in the other a heavy revolver.

‘That’s you!’ said Toby.

‘It is,’ Shining agreed.

The young August vanished, and the inside of the warehouse was flooded by daylight once again. Over by the door, Shining
and Toby stood face to face as they were circled by a dangerous force left there to kill them.

‘You can’t see it,’ said Toby. ‘The Angel of Death isn’t there.’

‘I’m not sure I want to know what you’re talking about,’ said Derek.

‘It exists outside time,’ explained Shining, ‘never quite in line with our physical world.’

‘As a physicist, can I just say the phrase “outside time” is setting my teeth on edge?’ said Derek.

The earlier Toby and Shining vanished and it was night once more. A large rat worked its way along the path created by the beam of street light shining through a window.

Daylight again and the room was a hive of activity: men in plain suits moving to and fro, filling packing chests with small glass bottles.

A cracking sound and a flash of sparks came from one side of the room.

‘Forty-five seconds – the equipment’s struggling,’ said Derek, checking the stopwatch. ‘I may not be able to keep this up for much longer.’

‘You have to,’ insisted Shining. ‘We’ve learned nothing of use so far.’

Was that true? Toby was staring at one of the men. ‘Him,’ he said, ‘the one on the left … there’s something familiar … I know his face, don’t I?’

Abruptly the image changed again. Night-time and the young Shining had returned, backing away from a figure that was descending towards him down the stairs.

‘Well, this rings a bell,’ said Toby. ‘Maybe I’ll get to find out how it panned out after all.’

The view changed again.

‘Or maybe not …’

It was still night-time but the warehouse seemed empty. Then, slowly, moving towards them from out of the darkness of the opposite wall, came a solitary figure.

‘Krishnin,’ said Shining.

This was Toby’s first look at the man he’d heard so much about. He was reminded of Shining’s description: the normality that hung over this man without quite managing to obscure what lay beneath. His eyes were slightly too narrow, his mouth slightly too wide. He seemed to be looking directly at them.

‘I thought we were just observers,’ said Toby.

‘At this distance, we are,’ Derek replied.

‘Then how come he sees us?’

Krishnin continued to walk toward them.

‘He can’t,’ insisted Derek. ‘It’s coincidence – he’s looking at something else, he …’

The image in front of them changed yet again: the young August Shining had returned, still backing away from whoever it was on the stairs. He raised his gun …

Daylight again, the skeletal rat, spinning around and around, becoming dust that spiralled in a tiny cyclone around its dwindling cadaver.

‘One minute!’ shouted Derek. ‘I’m going to have to power down. We’re hitting the breaking point of causality.’

Then night again, and they were gazing out into what seemed like nothing but darkness. More sparks, and the whining from the speakers grew louder.

‘But we’ve found out nothing we didn’t—’ As Shining suddenly stopped talking Toby turned to look at him. Shining wasn’t
alone: one gloved hand was clamped over his mouth, another held a knife to his throat.

More sparks.

Derek didn’t know whether to tackle the theoretical danger surrounding him or the very real threat standing next to him. In the end, the safety of history won out. He reached for the netbook.

‘Wait!’ Toby shouted, because he had recognised the figure holding Shining, seen his face in the glow of the netbook’s screen as it turned towards him, nudged by Derek’s hasty fingers. It was Krishnin.

‘I can’t … I have to—’ Derek yanked the netbook free from its cables and the room was filled with daylight and the sound of the speakers winding down, a long electronic sigh.

Shining had vanished.

‘Where’s he gone?’ Toby asked.

Derek was in a panic, his eyes darting everywhere, a confused giant, with the little netbook still in one hand. ‘He can’t have … he
can’t
just vanish.’

‘He didn’t “just vanish”,’ Toby insisted. ‘He was taken, by Krishnin.’

‘Taken where?’ Derek looked incredulous. ‘There’s no way that the past could interact with us. No way at all. It’s like expecting your TV to talk back to you.’

‘You said that if we got too close we could affect it.’

‘Yes, but we’re the active part of that. We’re the observers;
they
have no idea we’re even here. Honestly, it’s impossible.’

‘That word …’ Toby sighed, ‘used to mean something. Over the last twenty-four hours it’s become hollow bluster. Turn that thing on again.’

‘I can’t.’ Derek shook his head, holding up his hands placatingly. ‘Even ignoring the risks of using it again so soon, the equipment has to cool down and reset. You may have noticed the odd explosion here and there … There are bound to be repairs needed. It wouldn’t help Leslie one bit if we blew ourselves sky high. Besides, I’m telling you … wherever he went, it wasn’t into the past. It’s just not possible.’

‘I know what I saw and from now on that’s all that matters. I’ve got to get him back.’

‘And I’ll help in whatever way I can, though right now there’s nothing we can do.’

Sometimes
, Jimmy thought as he made his slow, spiralling way along the street,
they move the fucking bus stops
. It was the only explanation he could come up with. He had given it considerable thought as he trudged along stretch after stretch of unfamiliar pavement. It had almost displaced in his mind his own behaviour over the last couple of hours. Tomorrow morning, once the texts and emails began to pour in, the pictures, the proof …
then
such things would be part of his mental furniture. Until then, he’d ignore them. But
now
was all about bouncing along this road looking for bus stops. And needing a piss. Yes. Very much about that too.

Taking a short break from pondering shifting bus stops, Jimmy redirected his mental focus towards the possibility of those bastards at Stella Artois (or perhaps the good lady herself) putting something in their brew that fucked up your bladder. He was wrestling with how such scurrilous behaviour could be monetized when he spotted a church ahead. He immediately decided the only thing to do was to hop over the wall into its graveyard and deal definitively with at least one of his problems.

In his drunken state, Jimmy managed the leap over the wall perfectly but struggled on the flat, ending up lodged against a gravestone. Gravity, equilibrium and ancient stone briefly conspired against him.

Finally, escaping the gravestone, he marched forward assuming all would now be well. It wasn’t. After a few seconds the world around him turned on its axis. Jimmy thought he was still walking in a straight line, legs rising and falling, arms swaying by his side. However, his face was recognising it had just been whacked by the ground – which simply didn’t happen when you were walking properly.

It took time for Jimmy to accept that he must have fallen over. He pushed that thought to one side and concentrated on how incredibly sick he felt. It became dominant, he could consider nothing else. Had anyone ever felt so wretched? Jimmy felt a wave of self-pity, so strong he would have burst into tears if he hadn’t suddenly been so busy emptying his stomach’s contents onto the grass that lay above ‘Gladys King, (1919 – 1983) “Alive in our memories” ’. If Ms King objected to this roaring donation of stuffed-crust Pepperoni Bonanza and Belgian lager she kept quiet about it.

Eventually, spent, wet-eyed and feeling as close to death as a person can when there’s absolutely nothing wrong with them that twenty-four hours rehydration won’t fix, Jimmy rolled onto his back and looked up at a starless London sky. He had entered that stage of drunken dejection where pride is meaningless. He had neither the will nor the strength to deal with anything more complex than simply existing.

Hearing a scrabbling noise a few feet away, Jimmy decided it was probably a rat come for its nightly prayer. Perhaps even
visiting a loved one in a small area of the graveyard especially dedicated to rodents? This struck him as absurdly funny and he spluttered saliva-soaked amusement for a few moments before rolling onto his side to look towards the source of the noise.

His eyes were slow to focus because they were filled with tears. The street lights shed diffused light across the world like a shower of insipid fireworks. The scrabbling noise continued. A sound of dislodged earth. Perhaps it was a badger, Jimmy thought, then asked himself whether badgers lived in cities?
Why not?
he generously concluded.
Everyone else did
. Maybe it was building a sett? Burrowing its way through soft soil and old bones. A Gothic lair constructed from ancient remains, a gloomy cathedral roofed with rib cages. Jimmy decided this was a good thing.

Scratch, scratch, scratch
…

What
was
that? It didn’t sound like a badger. Not that Jimmy knew what a badger
should
sound like, but in the barely used mental file he possessed marked ‘Badger – Likely Sounds’ there was no correlation with this unrhythmic, lazy scrabbling. A fox? A cat? Oh, who knew?

If only he could see properly. He listlessly brushed away from his hands the remains of dead leaves and dirt, smearing his jacket with soil, and rubbed at his eyes. That sorted out the tears but it didn’t help with the lack of light.

‘Hello?’ he called. At least that was what the word had looked like when it had been in his head, by the time it fell out of his drunken, slack mouth it was entirely different. A useless, incomprehensible thing fat with vowels. The scrabbling continued undeterred until, with a larger sound of spilling earth, a shadow bled out across the street-lit sky right in front of Jimmy’s eyes.

‘Big for a badger,’ he said, just before the stench of an open grave washed over him.

Then the large shadow picked up a hefty stone and beat his skull in.

The Fear never really hit me until 2008. I’m not talking about being scared; I’ve been that many times in my life, not least during that spring in Basra when the air was filled with fire and the world a place of smoke and the dead. I’m talking about The Fear. It has capitals. It has teeth.