avevale_intelligencer | Stickytape and String, part three

“The whole idea is completely ridiculous.”

“I await your alternative theory with considerable interest,” Silver said mildly.

They had brought the still unresponsive Sapphire in from the lobby and seated her at one of the tables. Stickytape was still staring in dumbstruck agony at the place where String had been. Steel was pacing angrily, while Silver leaned against another table and watched him.

Steel rounded on Silver. “Sapphire simply does not have the capacity to take time back more than a matter of minutes, hours at the most.”

“True, in the ordinary way. All Operators' abilities are limited by design. It's a matter of location.” Silver smiled. “The bouncing ball analogy.”

“Exactly. All she can do is sustain the bounce for a limited period.”

“And how would that work on the moon?”

Steel stared. “You're raving.”

“Not at all. The--” Silver grimaced. “The corridor exerts a force like gravitation to keep time moving at a constant linear acceleration, and that's what Sapphire is fighting against when she takes time back. Outside the pull of that gravity--”

“There is no 'outside,'” Steel scoffed. “The whole 'corridor' analogy is a convenient fiction for the benefit of trainees and other limited intellects.” He looked hard at Stickytape as he said this, but the boy was too distracted to hear him.

“I'm afraid you're mistaken,” Silver said.

“It's my fault,” Stickytape said almost inaudibly.

“What?” Silver turned to him. “No, no, of course it isn't. You both did the best you could.”

“And it wasn't good enough,” Stickytape retorted. “We weren't good enough. String knew. She tried to persuade me, to stop me taking on the assignment. But I was so confident, so full of myself, so sure I was right--”

“Sounds very familiar,” Silver murmured, glancing sidelong at Steel.

“And now she's gone,” Stickytape said wretchedly. Then he made a valiant effort to take himself in hand. “I know I shouldn't be upset. I know emotional attachments can jeopardise the success of an operation.”

“They tell us all that,” Silver said, “and it never stops any of us. We're not so different in that respect from those whom we protect, a fact which I find quite reassuring.” Ignoring the eloquent look Steel hurled at him, he got up and took Stickytape by the shoulders. “String is the safest of all of us now. She's back at the café, in two thousand and eight, safely inside the corridor. She's young and resilient, she'll recover from any backlash there might be, and nobody will threaten her.” He frowned. “The problem with that is that, unless we can revive Sapphire, String is the only one who could get us back.”

“The stars,” Steel said triumphantly. “If you were right, if we were travelling back in time, the stars would be moving.”

“Those aren't stars,” Silver said quietly. “Take my word for it, Steel, I have been here before. We are outside linear time.”

“You've been--”

“All Technicians are taken outside, once, very briefly, during advanced training. Once was quite enough for me, I can tell you. Each of those lights out there is a separate bubble of linearity—from the inside it would seem like a corridor, as ours does, but in fact it's folded in on itself many times. Some are protected by beings like ourselves. Others are not, and Time finds its way in and collapses the bubble.”

Steel threw up his hands. “This is beyond me.” He turned on Silver again. “All right. One thing we can agree on is that we need Sapphire. Do you have any ideas about that?”

“Well, as the mule driver said when he picked up the two-by-four, first you have to get their attention.” Silver bent down to look into Sapphire's impassive face. “At which, so far, we have signally failed.” He touched her cheek lightly. “And it's hardly surprising. She's travelling faster and further than she's ever been allowed to go before.”

“I should--” Steel broke off. “We should matter more. To her.”

“Yes,” Silver said sadly, “but we don't. At least not at the moment.”

“Is there anyone else?” Stickytape said unexpectedly. “Who matters to her?”

“More than Steel and myself?” Silver looked a little affronted. “I would hardly have thought so.”

“Everyone matters to Sapphire,” Steel grumbled.

“In any case, we have a rather limited cast of characters at our disposal at the moment,” Silver pointed out.

“Not necessarily,” Stickytape said. “Silver—you can make reproductions of things, can't you?”

“Well, yes.”

“Including people?”

“Well...” Silver hesitated. “Yes, but it's a lot more difficult. Intelligence, volition, memories...it takes a great deal of effort. And they don't last long.”

“That doesn't matter,” Stickytape said excitedly. “Leave that part to me. Could you reconstruct a person from Sapphire's past?”

“What are you suggesting, boy?” Steel demanded.

“You said everyone mattered to Sapphire.” Stickytape began to pace up and down. “You're the two individuals she knows best...but you're like her. Like us,” he added, a little defensively as if expecting to be contradicted. “You're in no real danger here. If I could...if we could create an image of someone from her past, someone she's known in danger...”

“She would be able to tell it was a reproduction,” Silver said.

“Not if she's not paying attention,” Stickytape said. “And as soon as she does, we have her.”

Silver turned to Steel. “You know, I think the lad might have a point,” he said.

“If you can create the reproduction, I can bind it in existence for a little while at least,” Stickytape went on, warming to his theme.

“There is a problem,” Silver said. “I can't access Sapphire's memories.”

“Then use mine,” Steel said. “I've been with Sapphire on all our recent operations. I knew the same people she knew. Not as well, but...” He shrugged. “If this is the best plan we can come up with, then let's do it.”

“All right then,” Silver said. “There's no point in me picking and choosing, so I'll just search for the person with whom Sapphire had the closest interaction. Apart from your good self, of course.” He looked at Stickytape. “Ready?”

The boy nodded. Silver rubbed his hands, cracked his knuckles, closed his eyes and concentrated.

A blurred shape formed in the air in front of Sapphire and solidified into a tall sandy-haired man with bushy eyebrows and slightly protuberant blue eyes, dressed in full evening dress. Stickytape raised his hands and held them out in front of him, fingers spread.

“What do we do?” Steel whispered.

“Well, talk to him, I suppose,” Silver replied. “He won't get a response just standing there.”

“I say,” said the man, “it's you, isn't it? Steel. And Miss Sapphire.”

“Yes,” Silver said. “And you are?”

“Felix Harborough,” said the man. “Brass, for a short time.” Steel was looking blank. “I died, old chap, don't you remember? Overcome by whatever foul pestilence old McDee was cooking up. And you ignored me.” Harborough's tone was light, but there was an edge to it. “The last words one hears in life stay with one, you know. 'Not now, Felix.' Hardly the ideal sentiment to take into the final darkness.”

“You didn't really die, you know,” Steel said.

“Oh, didn't I? Well, I'm sure that's very gratifying to the real me. But I'm the one you remember. The one you sent to his death. Treated me like an irritating child. Gave me some toys to play with and shooed me away to play in the traffic.”

“Is he supposed to be doing this?” Steel hissed to Silver.

“My dear fellow, I don't have any control over what he does.” Silver seemed amused by the whole thing. “If anything's governing his mental and emotional state, it's your memory of him.”

“That's true,” Harborough confirmed. “Little touch of guilt there, perhaps?”

“Let him go,” Steel snapped. “Dispel him. This isn't working.”

“I can't,” Stickytape said. “I'm not sustaining him any more.”

“Guilt?” said another voice. “Oh no, not him. Not Mister Steel.”

“Silver!” Steel exclaimed, as a thin girl with short, close-cropped dark hair and a lopsided, sardonic smile strolled out from behind Harborough.

“Remember me, Mister Steel?” she said. “The one you saved from the man with no face?”

“It's not me,” Silver protested. “I didn't--”

“After you left,” the girl said, “I spent twenty years in hell. Burned my passport. Couldn't get a driving licence after they went photo ID only. My friends got married. I didn't dare even go, because there was bound to be a photographer.”

“This is wrong,” Steel insisted. “My memory doesn't include any of this.”

“Not difficult to work out, though, is it? After the first ten years it got worse. I couldn't look at myself in the mirror. I thought any image of my face might be a way for It to get at me. Once at the beach one of those lightning artist blokes did a sketch of my face and offered it to me. I almost killed him.”

“Ah, but none of that matters, does it,” said Harborough. “It's all the greater good for these two.”

“Silver!” Steel ground out.

“I think,” Silver said, “we might have made a bit of a tactical error.”

The same thought had occurred to Stickytape. He went white and sagged into a chair.

“I'm Liz, by the way,” said the girl to Harborough, “though I wouldn't expect His Nibs here to remember that.”

“Felix Harborough,” said Harborough, “at your service.” He bent over her hand and kissed it, and she bobbed a mock-curtsy.

“The worst of it is, though,” Liz went on, in the same light conversational tone, “It got me in the end anyway. Closed circuit security camera. What Mister Steel never told me was that my fear, the fear he put in me, attracted Its attention. I went out for some groceries, happened to look up, and that was that. Next thing I knew I was locked in the dark. Forever, in the dark, with It.”

“You think you have problems?”

Steel was backing away as the balding man in the heavy overcoat emerged from the shadows that had imperceptibly engulfed the corners of the room.

“You were just a casualty, young lady. I was a sacrificial victim.” The newcomer pointed at Steel. “George Tully. Ghost hunter. And now ghost, it seems.” Tully advanced on Steel, who flinched away. “A bit too strong for you, wasn't It, that night in Dowerston station? You couldn't beat It. Couldn't even escape It, not without Its co-operation. So you negotiated a draw, with me as the price. You thought I didn't know, but I did.”

“Steel, you didn't,” Silver said in shock.

“Don't you start,” Steel snarled. “We did what we had to do. To keep order.”

“Ah, yes,” Harborough said. “Order. Order at all costs. Never mind how many may be suffering, dying, living in terror, as long as it's all neat and tidy. One moment following another, on and on till the end of time, and nothing out of place.”

“That is our job,” Steel said flatly.

“Wouldn't be so bad if you were any good at it,” said Liz.

“He had me marching up and down the platform singing 'Pack Up Your Troubles' and beating on a saucepan,” said Tully. “To make It angry. Very professional.” He shivered. “Though we definitely succeeded in doing that.”

“We saved millions of lives,” Steel grated. “At the cost of one.”

“You murdered me,” Tully said with simple dignity. “The end, whatever imagined goal you were serving, is irrelevant. My blood is on your hands. Nothing justifies that.”

“There is no blood on my hands!” Steel shouted.

“It's all around us, Steel,” said Silver. “Surrounding this room.”

“My fault,” Stickytape moaned.

“Yes, I'm afraid it is, young fellow-me-lad,” Harborough remarked. “Criminal stupidity, calling up images from the past in, as it were, the very belly of the beast.”

“Poetic justice, I call it,” Liz said.

“A little late, perhaps,” said Tully, “but none the less welcome.”

“You all got off lightly,” said a new voice. “You died.”

“Oh, no,” Steel breathed.

“String...” Stickytape whimpered.

*

String opened her eyes. She was lying on the ground, surrounded by trees, with a noise of traffic somewhere very close by.

“Oh, good, you're awake,” said a voice. Young, female, human. String sat up as the speaker came into her field of view: dark-haired, with elfin features, dressed...oddly.

“Who are you?” said String.

“A friend,” said the young woman, “and someone who can help you. My name is Rothwyn.”

“You're not from this time period, are you?” String backed away.

“No, you're right,” Rothwyn said quickly, “but then I'm not strictly speaking here. It's all right, I'm not part of the time-break.”

“Incursion,” String corrected her absently. “How do you know about that?”

“Never mind that. You're needed.” Rothwyn began walking briskly back towards the service station, and stopped when she realised that String was not following. “Well, are you coming?”

“Needed for what?” String said.

“To help your friends, of course. They're caught in the same trap as Sapphire and Steel. They need you to help them escape.”

“I couldn't reach,” String said. “It was travelling back in time too fast...”

“Well, then of course you'll need to go there first. I can send you. They'll tell you what to do when you get there.”

“How do I know that I can trust you?”

“You don't have a lot of choice,” Rothwyn pointed out with a small smile. “Come on, they really do need you.” She turned away again and walked off.

String stood irresolute for a moment, then followed Rothwyn.

*

“Remember me, Steel?” said the man. He looked to be in his forties, running to fat, with thinning hair and a perpetually lugubrious expression. “Robert Jardine? Rob?”

“I deny you,” Steel said loudly. “You are nothing but illusions.”

“And you know all about illusions, Steel, don't you?” said Rob. “I'm sorry my sister Helen couldn't be here to say hello as well—she's been in a mental home for eighteen years, incurably insane—but you don't even remember her well enough to construct a stable image.”

“I do not remember you at all,” Steel said doggedly. “The Rob I knew was twelve years old.”

“Yes, well, times change,” Rob said, “and It has helped me to appear to you as I am today. This--” He gestured down at his body. “This is partly your handiwork, Steel. I am what you made me.”

“What on earth did you do to him, Steel?” Silver asked.

“I saved his parents and his sister, and by extension himself,” Steel said, “from a very dangerous incursion. That is all.”

“You destroyed everything old in our house,” Rob said. “You would have destroyed the house itself if you had believed it necessary. You burned books, pictures, priceless antiques that were my father's fortune. You said they were triggers, that anything old could allow It to break in again.”

“Everything was replaced,” Steel said.”Nothing was truly lost.”

“But I learned,” Rob said vehemently. “I learned my lesson well. Ever since then, I have never owned, handled, or willingly gone near anything old. I change all my possessions every year for new ones, and towards the end of the year I have no hope of sleeping, in case a year is old enough. I live in Milton Keynes, for God's sake, and that is getting older with every passing year.”

“Same as me,” said Liz. “Jumping at shadows, never daring to relax, waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

“Every year that nothing happens is a year I could have spent living normally, like any other human being,” said Rob. “But I never dare. And now my life is more than half over, and I have lived no more than twelve years of it without fear. Your doing.”

“Your doing,” Tully proclaimed.

“Your doing,” Liz spat.

“Your doing, old chap,” said Harborough.

“He's not the worst, though,” Liz added offhandedly.

“I say, don't look at me,” Silver said nervously.

“If you ask me,” Liz continued, “she's the worst of all of them.” She cocked her head at Sapphire, sitting obliviously in her chair. “He's cruel, and he doesn't care who he hurts, but she makes you like it.”

“She lets him do the things he does, and twists us around till we don't know what's right or wrong,” said Rob.

“She is the smiling face that conceals his cruelty.,” said Tully.

“Maybe we should kill her first,” Harborough suggested.

*

“This'll do,” Rothwyn said, pausing in the middle of the café floor and pirouetting. “Come here, String.”

String obeyed.

“Now kneel down in front of me,” Rothwyn commanded.

“Kneel down?” String said.

“I have to touch your head, and if you're standing up I'll lose the circulation in my arms,” Rothwyn explained. “You really are very tall.”

“I could sit...”

“No, it has to be a stable position without external aids. Come along, do, there isn't much time left.”

String knelt down in front of Rothwyn. The woman placed her hands on either side of String's head, and exerted a slight pressure.

“Now, keep quite still,” she said. “This may hurt a bit...”

*

“No!” said another voice, a familiar one. Steel looked up at the new arrival, and uttered a harsh bark of laughter.

“You're getting confused,” he challenged the room in general. “Losing your grip. Do you really expect to fool me with a cheap reproduction of Silver?”

“Actually, Steel,” said the new Silver, “I think you'll find that he's the reproduction. Lasted well, hasn't he? Amazing what you can do with the right allies.”

“Now, wait a minute--” the first Silver began.

“I'm so sorry,” the second Silver said in a tone that oozed false sympathy. “I can't deceive myself any longer. You were my bait, my dear chap. Your job was to lure these two into the trap and then keep them there.”

“Did you know any of this?” Steel demanded of the first Silver, who sighed wearily.

“No, of course I didn't,” he said. “Of course, he would have rearranged my memories so that I couldn't reveal his plan to you. At least, that's what I would do.”

“And what was the plan?” Steel went on. “What possible reason could anyone have to ally themselves with the force of random Time?”

“I have my reason,” the second Silver—the real Silver—snapped. “You don't need to know what it is. Not yet. Take him.”

Harborough and Rob grabbed Steel by the elbows and forced him back against the wall.

“Time to make amends,” Rob hissed.

“All of you,” Harborough said. “All the Operators who try to perpetuate the abomination of linear time. All the Specialists who help them.”

“All the cold, peremptory angels who deem themselves beyond good and evil,” Tully intoned.

“Oh, just kill him,” Liz snarled.

“Why, Silver?” Steel's voice held a note of pleading for the first time since Stickytape had met him. “You owe me that at least. Why are you doing this?”

“Well,” the real Silver said, “quite frankly I couldn't care less about linear time or its opposite. Once you've seen the void between, and all the countless points of infestation, one more or less hardly matters. But I couldn't risk any of the other Operators finding out what I was planning.”

“If you want to hide a corpse,” the false Silver said, “hide it on a battlefield.”

“A very apt quote,” said the real Silver, beaming. “It will be a shame to dispel you. Yes, Steel, this entire plan has been conceived for one reason and one reason only, to get rid of you. My only rival. Time has promised me that—when it's all over—there will be an unthreatened domain of linear time for Sapphire and myself to occupy and rule.”

Stickytape's head jerked up. He gaped at the Silvers.

Steel tried to laugh, but his voice was not co-operating. “Jealousy?” he chuckled dryly. “Is that it? You're destroying the entire universe because you want Sapphire?”

“Because I love her,” Silver said. “Can you think of a higher motive? With you out of the way, she will have no reason to reject me again. Especially after I tell her how we battled bravely to save her, and you fell gallantly in the final charge.

“You can kill him now,” he added casually, and turned away as Harborough, Liz, Tully and Rob advanced on Steel.

Oops, forgot...to be continued...