A Time-Traveller's Best Friend: Volume One Read online

  A Time-Traveller’s Best Friend

  Volume One

  By

  W.R. Gingell

  A Time-Traveller’s Best Friend

  Copyright W.R. Gingell 2014

  ISBN-13: 978-1508727316

  Cover Art By Josh Atkinson

  Web: joshatki.co

  Dedicated to my sister, Naomi: who has to read everything I write but seems to enjoy it anyway.

  And to Vic, Marion, and Josh. You guys are brilliant.

  A Time-Traveller’s Best Friend

  “Fuel approaching empty,” said the computer. Marx thought it sounded smug. It’d been giving him warnings every half hour since he exited the time stream and he’d ignored every one of them. The exit from Third World had been hasty and extensively damaging: it was likely that he’d left a trail of fuel all through the Other Zone.

  There were too many lights flashing on the console: more, in fact, than Marx knew what to do with. One of them was the empty tank warning, and three were for the dampers, but of the plethora making a light show above his head, only two more were familiar.

  A beep presaged the computer’s impersonal voice: “Preparations for re-entry into the time stream could not be completed.”

  “I know, I know,” muttered Marx, rummaging in the console’s bottom drawer for the time-traveller’s best friend: his trusty shifting spanner. Tools had changed times out of mind, but a shifting spanner could still fix almost any problem.

  An alarm went off overhead. Marx jumped, beaning himself on the open instrument panel, and spent the next minute yelling the worst words he knew in Third World dialect. Since his grip of Third World wasn’t the most exhaustive, these consisted mainly of words like ‘cabbage’, ‘freight train’, and ‘eggs!’; but Third World Dialect had a bite to it that made even commonplace words sound rude, and the exercise was satisfying.

  “Turn that flamin’ alarm off!” he ordered the computer, rubbing his head; but the computer, as he’d known it would, merely replied with the formal ‘unable to comply with your request at this time’. And when he said ‘primrose!’ at it in Third World, the word angry and sharp, the computer added reproachfully: “Alarms are for your protection, and cannot be manually over-ridden.”

  “Like heck, they can’t!” said Marx, and gave the console a good wallop with his shifting spanner. The alarm gave a single, warbling death rattle, and ceased, bringing a moment of silence to the flashing cock-pit before the computer informed him primly that the Tesseract engine was going into overload status.

  “I know,” Marx told it.

  “All time and distance machinery is now off-line. We will enter the time-stream at an unknown point in time.”

  “Yep. Saw that, too.”

  “Please repair all systems when ship has docked successfully.”

  “Thanks. I’ll do that.”

  “Remember to consider causality and the environment when attempting repairs in earlier time-streams. Dispose of all waste thoughtfully.”

  “Well, heck, I thought I’d just blow the planet up,” Marx said sarcastically. He nudged his aching head into the head-rest, and wondered which of the warning lights he should attend to first. The dampers, probably, since he’d need them for landing; and the Pauli driver should be fixed unless he wanted to prove that no two bodies can occupy the same space at the same time.

  “Spatio-temporal incurrence imminent.”

  Marx sat up. “Hang on, that’s new.”

  “Entering time stream.”

  “Wait, what? It’s too soon!”

  “Pauli driver off-line,” added the computer, its emotionless voice making Marx wish a little wildly that he knew how to say the really bad words in Third World. “Spatio-temporal incurrence imminent: please brace for impact.”

  “What the flaming heck is a spatio-temporal incurrence?” howled Marx, grabbing at anything remotely stable to brace himself against.

  It felt like his atoms were briefly taken apart and put back together. Perhaps they were. When Marx could think coherently again, the first thing he noticed was that his console had sprouted a grey stone-work gargoyle and two decorative pillars, which immediately brought into question the idea that he was thinking coherently in the first place.

  “Computer, when and where are we?”

  A weak blooping noise was his only reply, and his first vindictive pleasure that the computer must have been taken apart and put back together, too, vanished as the implications of its loss hit him. The output screen on the console was flashing a few words in time with the stutter of the dying engine.

  Second…World…War…

  Marx groaned. World War Two! How had he managed to go back so far? Time Corp put blocks on the Other Zone to prevent travellers going back to any point in time before time-travel was operational, and travel within the unenlightened past was glaringly illegal.

  Well, thought Marx, he had stolen a time craft, after all. Time Corp were already looking for him. Maybe it was a trap. He looked at the gargoyle again, and thought he knew what it meant: with the Pauli Driver off-line, he had slipped into an occupied point in the time stream, and was now accidentally using the same space and time as the corner of a building. He was lucky that he hadn’t merged with the gargoyle.

  The first thing was to check the worst of the damage to the ship’s hull. Fortunately the ship’s wardrobe was fully stocked, right down to the gas-mask that lent an air of authenticity to his disguise, and the shifting spanner didn’t look out of place with the drab work trousers. He debated the suspenders for some time but eventually put them on, muttering, and was surprised at how much more comfortable they were to wear than a belt. Ah, belts! Now there was an old-fashioned and annoying accoutrement for you!

  The sun was in his eyes as he climbed out onto the hull, and he’d walked the few steps forward to where the building roof merged with it before he saw the danger. There was a kid there, sitting on an ancient chimney pot and watching him with bright, determined eyes that seemed by far too big for her face. She had a dirty cut on one cheek, a ladder in her stockings, and, most importantly, she had a gun pointed somewhere at the region of his stomach.

  His hands went out slowly, automatically, fingers spread wide. “Careful, kid,” he said. “You could kill someone with that thing.”

  The girl considered this and then said judiciously: “Yah. That’s why I picked this one. You’ll die ’orribly.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re not from here,” said the kid, as if it answered the question. “Not here, not now.”

  “Neither are you,” Marx said, making a discovery. The gun wasn’t the bullets or powder version he was hazily sure belonged to this point in time, and her stockings were in fact First World light armoured leggings. A ladder in light armoured leggings was a matter of grim determination, not casual mischance. “Is that plasma bolt tech?”

  She gave a quick, grim nod, flexing her fingers over the trigger, and Marx hoped, with a suddenly dry throat, that she wasn’t the clumsy sort of little girl. A plasma bolt from that would cut him in half.

  “I just wanna fix my ship,” he said.

  “’Course you do!” the girl said scornfully. “And you wouldn’t never kill a little girl, either, I s’pose.”

  “Kill you?” said Marx blankly. “I’m more likely to spank you! Give me that gun!”

  The girl’s grubby chin went up a little. “Stay where you are! Cor, you don’t even have the proper clothes! What kind of assassin are you?”

  “Assassin?” repeated Marx, irritated to find that his conversation seemed to have deteriorated to a s
eries of repetitions. “Look, you’ve– knife, kid! Knife!”

  She looked at him scornfully, unaware of the First World hunter stalking her from behind, his long legs quick and lithe, and a hunter’s knife in one long-fingered hand. “I won’t fall for that one again.”

  Three things happened very quickly. Marx leapt for the girl, fatalistically waiting to feel the heat as his body was cut in half via plasma discharge, but unable to make himself do anything else. The girl fired, her aim suddenly unsure and too far to the side to do more than vaguely scorch him on its way through. And the hunter leapt, knife cutting a piece of sunlight to dazzle Marx, his slit eyes intent on the girl.

  Marx was there first, and when he snatched the plasma gun from the girl’s hand, she didn’t resist. She even rolled with him when he swept one arm around her and hauled them both to safety, her head tucked into his chest and two thin hands clinging grimly to the sleeves of his shirt. The hunter followed in two swift bounds, slashing wide and low with the curved edge of his knife, and Marx met it with his shifting spanner twice, wildly.

  “Gun!” said the girl in a tight little voice; and Marx, amazed, found that he was still holding the plasma gun. It was even pointing in the right direction. He looked at the assassin, and the assassin looked at him. Then there was a bolt of white, and no more assassin from the waist upward.

  The little girl, shivering, pulled herself off him, and said in a scratchy voice: “Give me my gun back.”

  “You’re welcome,” said Marx pointedly, keeping the gun.

  “I can take care of myself!”

  “Yeah, I saw that. Why are there assassins trying to kill you?”

  “They’re not all trying to kill me,” said the girl, tugging at her leggings to straighten the wrinkles. “Some of them are trying to take me alive.”

  “Misdirection noted. What did you mean when you said I’m in the wrong clothes?”

  “Well, you’re all twenty-first century. This is Second World. Don’t know when.”

  “Flamin’ heck!” said Marx, going cold. The computer display came to mind, flashing Second World War into his mangled cockpit. Not World War Two. The war of Second World. The War on Second World lasted exactly one day. One day, and then the planet went boom!

  “I need two lemons and a tub of glucose.”

  “Your problem,” said the girl, with a sharp glance at him that made him wonder if she really was ignorant of the date. She made a grab for her gun, and when he holstered it at the back of his waistband with one hand while pushing her away with the other, she bit his finger, hard. Marx gave a snarl of pain and grabbed her by the scruff of the neck, wrenching his finger from between her teeth.

  “Why’d you rush me?” she demanded, wriggling furiously. “I shot at you. Could’ve killed you!”

  “I didn’t fancy the idea of watching your severed head bounce across my hull. I’d never get the blood off.”

  To his surprise, she stopped struggling. “Whaddaya need lemons and glucose for?”

  “I need a tiny electrical charge to re-boot the starter engine on my Pauli Driver. Second World doesn’t use batteries since everything is organically based. Hence, lemons. Once it’s up and running it can repair itself and hopefully separate from the roof.”

  “What’s the glucose for?”

  “Fuel. It’ll work for long enough to get me away from Second World, but after that I’ll have to get real fuel.”

  “Oh. I’m Kez. Who’re you?”

  “Marx. Why are there people trying to kill you, Kez?”

  “I know where you can get lemons,” said Kez, wriggling away from his loosened fingers. He let her go but followed, and was led into a drop chute that had them at street level in three nauseous seconds. A few blocks away was what looked like an ancient farmer’s market, complete with carefully rustic outdoor stands of produce and old-fashioned canned goods, and it was toward this particular store that Kez was leading him.

  “Watch out for the salesgirl,” she muttered, popping her head around the corner to rake the store with a sharp look. “She’ll try to pat you on the head.”

  “Not the most common reaction I get from people,” admitted Marx. “Still, I can’t imagine anyone trying that twice with you.”

  Great was his surprise, therefore, when the shopgirl smiled brightly at them both as they walked through the entrance. She even took a step towards them, flyer in hand, prompting Kez to scowl and produce a sound very similar to a growl.

  “I wouldn’t get too close, if I were you,” Marx warned, displaying his swollen finger. “You don’t want her to break skin: I think she’s infectious.”

  The salesgirl’s eyes went even wider, if possible. “What’s she got?”

  “Don’t know,” said Marx reflectively. “The tests haven’t come back yet. But I’m beginning to feel restless at full moon.”

  He propelled Kez away while the shopgirl was still opening and closing her mouth, and went in search of the lemons. He found them without trouble: as well as the two First World hunters who were prowling the area without even the pretence of examining the produce.

  Kez didn’t whimper, but Marx heard the sharp sound of her breath between her teeth and saw the brief flash of panic in her eyes. It occurred to him suddenly that she thought he’d hand her over in order to clear the way for himself, and that made him so angry that when he whirled Kez back around the first aisle she had to punch him in the arm before he realized his fingers were digging into her neck.

  “Sorry, kid. Someone really doesn’t like you, eh?”

  “Yeah, I got that,” Kez said gruffly, but her eyes were still big and surprised. “What will you do now?”

  “Find a replacement. And the glucose.”

  They had to sneak around two more aisles before they found the glucose. One of the hunters was sweeping the front of the store as well as the produce section, and there were a few, heart-pounding moments while they squeezed just out of sight behind a colourful display of self-heating travel-meals, Kez’s white fingers gripping his shirt. He half-expected her to reach for the plasma gun that was tucked beneath his shirt, but again she surprised him.

  She waited, jaw tight, until the hunter patrolled back the way he’d come, then flexed her fingers free of his shirt as though surprised to find them there, and said in a rush: “I can get the lemons for you.”

  “That’ll be a heck of a trick,” said Marx dryly, stuffing tubs of glucose into his pockets. “Got any money, kid?”

  “No.”

  “Me either. Oh well, it’s not as if we’ll be able to leave out the front door anyway. What are you doing, kid?”

  “Getting lemons,” said Kez. Her fingers were damp where they wrapped around his, and the lights seemed to be flickering oddly. Marx glanced up at them, frowning, but their glowing flower-faces only gleamed smoothly back at him while Kez said: “There we go.”

  “Go where?” he asked, but Kez was already darting back toward the produce displays, heedless of where the hunters might be, and he had to run to catch up.

  “Kid!” he hissed. “You’ll get yourself killed!”

  “It’s all right,” said Kez briefly, snatching two lemons from a display. They made her pockets bulge, but she stuffed another two in anyway. “They aren’t here yet.”

  Marx’s eyes followed the line of the produce displays and right on past them to see the dawning day beyond the ‘closed’ sigil in the entrance. Now that was odd. He’d emerged from the Other Zone and into Second World in the early afternoon.

  “Yet?”

  “Didn’t Kez tell you her little secret?” said Someone.

  Kez gave a little scream, cut off short; and when Marx shoved her behind him he could feel her trembling. It was funny, he thought, looking at the slightly plump, ordinary-looking man who had emerged from the staff-only section: the hunters made Kez run and fight, but this man, this man made her tremble and hide.

  So while the Someone said: “Time-travel at will. Imagine it! She’s the on
ly human on twelve known worlds who can travel through time and space unaided,” Marx was becoming very, very angry.

  “How did you find me?” asked Kez. Her voice was tight and choked.

  “I managed to get my hands on the action reports after you and your friend got away,” said the Someone pleasantly. “First World knew you’d be here, but not why or when. They’re an unimaginative lot, by and large- well, just consider the fact that they’re trying to kill you! No, no, you’re much more use alive. As to the specifics, it seemed obvious to me that you’d done a little, shall we say, rearranging? and fetched what you needed earlier in the day. After all, you could hardly come back later, could you? Lemons, is it? You must have damaged your craft rather badly if you need to jump-start your engine with the starter.”

  “You know, I’m finding this all very interesting,” said Marx, edging Kez toward a display of mirror-ball confectionary. Inedible to anyone outside Second World, and it would play havoc with almost any kind of light-discharge weapon. “But we’ve got things to do, drivers to repair…”

  “Stay a while,” invited the Someone, and when he brought one pudgy hand out of his pocket Marx saw with a gloomy lack of surprise that it wasn’t light-discharge weaponry he held. It was a small-calibre, armour-piercing projectile model that looked old-fashioned but wasn’t, and mirror-ball confectionary would do nothing to deflect it.

  “I assume that’s for my benefit, since you don’t want the kid dead,” said Marx. Kez’s fingers were digging in his pocket; though for what, he didn’t know. His own hand was reaching for the plasma gun that was still tucked under his shirt, but stopped abruptly when the Someone tsk tsked at him chidingly.

  “Take it out slowly and put it on the floor. I become nervous around guns– I’d hate to accidentally pull the trigger.”

  “Got it,” Marx said, leaning over with studied slowness to place the plasma gun on the floor between them. As he did so, he felt Kez slip his shifting spanner into his other hand, and when he straightened he said to her: “He’s not going to kill you, kid. If he shoots me, run. If I give the word, run.”