Child of Time Read online

  'I know they're out to kill me,' the woman replied. 'That's why I'm hiding here. They're worried their experiment is going to cause them too many problems.'

  'Experiment?' Emily asked, quizzically.

  Maria indicated her scars. 'They... did something to me. Back in Venice, when I was a girl. They abducted me, told me I had special powers, then did this to me. Months and months of torture. I'm not sure how exactly it affected me, but I can't seem to control it now.'

  'What do you mean?' Honoré was appalled. 'Control what?'

  'I'm like you. I can see time. I mean, really see it. I can watch the ebb and flow of history; see how people leave impressions behind them in their wake. Well, most of the time.' She glanced at Emily. 'But ever since they cut me with these runes, I've been able to step into it too, to move about through time like it's a river I can swim through.' She paused. 'It usually takes two of you, doesn't it? A time channeller and a time sensitive, working together.' She smiled at Honoré. 'But I can do it by myself. I just don't have any control over when and where it happens.'

  Emily looked shocked. 'So you just shift through time at random? How do you get home?'

  'It's not that simple. I'm tied to two time periods: this godforsaken ruined future and 16 Century Venice, where I was born. That's how I got away from them, the Sodality. I phased right out of my bed in the cells and ended up here. I've no idea why. Had a brief run-in with one of those gargoyle things, but managed to get away. It's taken me years to adjust. Years of avoiding capture, trusting no-one. It's getting harder now, though. Their agents are hunting me through Venice. They're pretty active in that time period. Something big is about to happen there.'

  'What?'

  'I don't know.' The kettle was boiling on the stove with a shrill whistle. Maria lifted it off the heat and began pouring the steaming water into a teapot. 'But it might be related in some way to how the world ends up looking like this.' She'd finished with the kettle and was rubbing her arms, as if cold. 'Or it might not. It's hard to tell.'

  Honoré caught Emily's eye. Finally, they seemed to be getting somewhere in this twisted version of the future. He accepted the warm mug of tea that Maria handed to him. It was black, and weak, but he was thankful for the draught nevertheless. 'Tell me more about this Sodality then, Maria,' he said.

  She raised an eyebrow. 'They're a cult of magicians. They started out as a band of Vict...'

  There was a sudden rush of air. The fire guttered and spat. Maria's mug hit the marble floor, spilling its contents everywhere. Wisps of blue electrical energy danced over the ground all around the woman, then she abruptly vanished.

  Emily sat dumbfounded, staring at the space where Maria had been. 'She's phased back to Venice.' she said.

  'Incredible,' muttered Honoré.

  'What do we do?'

  'We wait until she phases back here again.'

  Emily picked up her tea. 'I suppose we could be here for a while,' she said, downing a mouthful of the bitter liquid.

  10

  Honoré woke with a start. An unfamiliar face was hovering in his field of vision, smiling. A woman – a pretty woman. He blinked himself awake. Then the world seemed to suddenly rush in on him and reality blossomed with a cold realisation. He recognised the scars on the woman's face. Maria! He sat up, angry with himself that he had missed her arrival.

  'I...' She stopped him short, pressing a finger to his lips.

  'Shhh.' Grabbing his hand, she pulled him unceremoniously to his feet and led him away from the campfire, which was starting to burn low. 'Come with me.' He noticed she kept hold of his hand as she walked him through the transept and into the north quire. Once there, she let go of his hand and turned to face him.

  'Where have you been?' he asked.

  'Venice. I've been gone for three days.'

  Honoré checked his watch. He wrinkled his forehead. 'According to my watch, it's been only about two and a half hours.'

  'But time is relative, Honoré, you should know that. I could have been in Venice for a year and still returned here only five minutes after I left.' She smiled. 'Anyway, I wanted to get you on your own for a while so we could talk freely about your friend.' She lifted her eyes from his face for a moment and glanced back towards Emily, who was still asleep beside the fire. 'Who is she? Is she Sodality?'

  Honoré shrugged. 'To be truthful, I don't know who she is. She kind of fell into my life a couple of years back. She doesn't really know who she is, either, or what her life was like before she arrived in London in

  1949. But I know she's not mixed up in this Sodality stuff. She's a good person. I've got to know her, as best I can. She lives for the moment.' He glanced back at Emily's resting form. When he spoke again, it was as much to himself as to Maria. 'In truth, I'm not sure how I'd cope without her. We're a good team.' He searched Maria's face, trying to read

  her intentions.

  'It's just, when I look at her, I see emptiness – like she's got no history of her own. And usually that means only one thing...'

  Honoré's nodded. 'Me too. It's connected to her amnesia. Like I said, she lives for the moment. But she is nothing to do with this Sodality, of that I'm sure.'

  Maria nodded. 'I'll take your word for it. You don't seem like the typical sort of Sodality lackey anyway.'

  'I guess I should take that as a compliment.'

  He watched Maria as she wandered back towards the campfire once again. He could feel the adrenalin pumping through his veins. Another time sensitive! Someone who seemed to know a lot more about what was going on than either he or Emily. Someone who might finally be able to help Emily find out more about her past. He moved after her, intent on getting some answers before she disappeared again.

  Emily woke to the clatter of pans. She sat up, and was startled to see that not only had Maria returned, but Honoré was now apparently helping her make breakfast by splitting open packets of vacuum-packed food and handing them to her to cook over the fire. It was obvious they'd stoked the fire, too; where there had been only dying embers an hour ago, there were now bright flames licking vigorously at the remains of another pew.

  'Why didn't you wake me?'

  Honoré looked up from another pack of food. 'We thought we'd let you rest. How are you feeling?'

  'Groggy. I'm still a little tired from all that rushing about through the sewers.'

  Maria placed another pan on the makeshift stove and sat back, regarding Emily. 'Sewers?'

  'Oh, yes. Sorry. When we first arrived, we were attacked by one of those gargoyle creatures, and some soldiers came to our rescue. We followed them through the sewers back to their base, but we weren't

  made particularly welcome.'

  'Houses of Parliament?'

  'You know those guys?' Honoré asked.

  'Not really. I've traded with them a few times. I bring stuff back from Venice, sometimes. They don't like me much, freakish as I am, but it's not enough to put them off a packet of fresh meat or cheese. They don't know where I live, though. I meet them in secret locations around the city, and I'm always careful never to be seen coming or going from here.'

  'What do you get out of it?'

  'Radiation drugs, mostly. The occasional round of ammo, just to keep my supplies up.' She sniffed. 'Honoré, could you pass me those plates from back there?' He reached over to where she was pointing and pulled them down from one of the pews. They were dusty and covered in grime. 'Don't worry, I'll give them a wipe. I don't normally get visitors, so I'm not really prepared for this kind of thing.'

  Emily was more awake now. She sat up, straightening her coverall, which was still irritating her. 'Is there anything I can do to help?'

  'With breakfast? No, it's all under control.'

  'Okay.' She hesitated. 'So, if I remember correctly, you were about to tell us about the Sodality. Before you phased out of existence, I mean.'

  Maria pulled a face, as if disconcerted by the question. Emily quickly continued. 'Sorry if that was a little to
o forward. It's just – I'm trying to work out what's going on out there, and whether or not it has any relevance to what's happened to me.'

  'Your amnesia? Honoré told me about that.'

  Emily shot Honoré a stern glance. There were too many undercurrents here, and she still wasn't sure about this woman. 'Yes, exactly that.'

  'Well, I'm not sure it's going to help you much, but you should know. You're bound to be targets too, given your abilities.' She curled back on a cushion, leaving the frying food to spit and hiss in the pans. 'It started in Victorian London. A group of Devil worshippers who called themselves the Cabal of the Horned Beast.' She stopped when she saw the look on Emily's face. 'What is it?'

  'The Cabal of the Horned Beast. Oh my God, Honoré!'

  Maria glanced over at Honoré, waiting for an explanation.

  'We ran into them once,' he said, his voice low6. 'Back in the 19th Century. We were trying to help out a friend. It got very messy.'

  'Then you'll know what sort of people they were,' Maria continued. 'The Cabal was harmless at first, an excuse for middle-aged men to prance around in costumes and deflower virgins, all in the name of some grand scheme; the betterment of mankind. Only, somewhere down the line, some of them began taking it seriously. They started believing their own rhetoric. Their ambition grew, and they became fascinated by the arcane. Somehow, one of their number got hold of an ancient book, a tract of some kind. The work of the Devil, supposedly.' She was in full flow now, and Honoré and Emily were both enraptured. 'Their legends say that it was stolen away from them in the 20 Century by an evil stranger who wormed his way into their ranks, became their first Grand Master and then betrayed them. They'd already deciphered enough, though, to know that it held secrets of great power.

  'Anyway, they spent the next five hundred years or so searching for that book, generation after generation of them, and eventually they found it again. They began learning its secrets and dabbling with psionic science, remaking themselves as the Sodality. Most importantly, they discovered how to open gateways in time, through which they could travel back to certain psionic nexus points throughout history. Then they flooded those nexus points with their agents and acolytes, setting up bases there.' She paused, visibly choked. 'One of those nexus points is Renaissance Venice, 1586, where I was born. They took me, and many others like me – adults, children, babies – even pregnant women – and started to experiment on us, subjecting us to bizarre hermetic tortures, trying to gain full mastery over time, so that they wouldn't be restricted to just the nexus points. Eventually, through a combination of conventional and psionic science, they found out how to do it. They went far back in history and somehow changed the course of human development, so that it led to the birth of time channellers and time sensitives: the keys that enabled them to move freely through time and space.' She let that sink in for a moment, then continued. 'There was no stopping them after that. They went back to their origins in Victorian London and infiltrated the Cabal, giving them greater wealth and influence, arranging things so that the once-harmless cult developed into the dominant power it is now. The only thing they can't do is to see their own futures... though I know they've tried. Something stops them doing that. But anyway, many of their scriptures and beliefs became self-fulfilling prophecies – they altered their own history to ensure their dominance. And then, not satisfied with what they had, they began reshaping the world to their own design.'

  Emily was trying to take it all in. 'So how did things end up like this? Was there a war?'

  Maria shook her head. 'A little power in the wrong hands... They destroyed history. Too many changes wrought too quickly. Too much twisting of events, toying with causality. They went too far, played too fast-and-loose with history. They created feedback loops, paradoxes everywhere. Human history become a honeycomb. In the end, it just imploded.'

  It was Honoré's turn to ask a question. 'Let me get this straight. The Sodality went far back in history, to one of these nexus points, and tampered with human development so that time channellers and time sensitives – people like Emily and me – would one day be born? So that they could use us?' Maria nodded in confirmation. 'So, what are they up to now? Why are they trying to hunt us down and kill us?'

  'I'm not sure,' admitted Maria. 'Something's changed. I think they might be trying to undo what they've done, so they can restore the world to how it should be, or at least how they think it should be. Instead of trying to capture us and use our abilities, like they did before, now they seem to be trying to wipe us out, one by one. Different factions within the organisation pull in different directions. At its heart, the Sodality is still a cult of Devil worshippers, and it wouldn't surprise me if the pseudo-religious faction is gaining the upper hand again. They've already created a hell on Earth. The only thing that's missing is the Devil.'

  'How do you know all this?' asked Emily. The scent of the cooking food was starting to make her stomach growl.

  'I spent years in cells and recovery rooms while they were experimenting on me. Even the most conscientious of guards took pity on me when they became bored. They taught me English and told me stories, about the future and the past. Eventually I was able to piece together the jigsaw and work out what was going on. Since then, I've made it my business to keep tabs on them. It's the only way to survive.'

  Honoré whistled. 'That's quite a story.'

  'It has to be related to what's happened to me!' Emily's face was flushed with excitement. 'Perhaps I'm one of their experiments too?' She shivered at the thought. 'Or perhaps they're the ones who took my memory away?'

  She took a plate from Maria. It was the closest they'd come to real food for at least a day, and although she wasn't sure what the meat was, it smelled a lot more appetising than the stew they'd eaten back at the soldiers' mess.

  Honoré spoke around a mouthful of the chewy meat. 'So, what next?'

  Maria poked at the fire, her olive eyes glittering in the flickering light. 'Keep on living. That's all we can do.'

  Emily dropped her fork onto her plate with a clatter. 'We can do more than that. We can try to put things right.'

  Maria shook her head. She wouldn't meet Emily's eyes. 'It's too little, too late. The Sodality are like a massive grinding machine. They hold dominion over the nexus points in history. They're an immovable object; we'd just bang against it to no avail.'

  Honoré didn't agree. 'Maria. You're wrong. It's never too late. We start small. We start by trying to find out what those bastards did to you, to help you get control of your powers. Then we work out what their weak spot is and exploit it. We can make a difference.'

  Emily was frowning. 'Where have I heard that before?'

  Honoré shrugged. 'It doesn't matter. Right now, we need to work out the best course of action. There's nothing more Emily and I can do here, in this broken future. We need to nip this in the bud early on, before it gets this far. And we can't go anywhere without you...'

  'What do you mean?'

  Honoré looked uncomfortable. 'Umm. It's just that, you're the only person we've met with any history. The closest we've come before now was a medic, back at the Houses of Parliament, but following his timesnake would get us back only about 60 years. If we're going to make a difference, we need to go back a lot further than that.'

  'How did you end up here in the first place, then, so far out of your own time zone?'

  'It's a long story, best saved for another day.'

  Emily wondered if he'd eventually tell Maria – that it was her history they'd followed to get to this place, that in 20 Century London, her bones had been found trapped underneath a collapsed building near Spitalfields market. How would she take it, knowing the circumstances of her own death? But then, how could she be dead in 1951 and yet alive now? It was just too bizarre to think about, and yet she had to, for she was more certain than ever that Maria was the key to her amnesia. So despite the fact that she still didn't like the way the woman looked at Honoré – her Honoré – she
knew she had to keep the peace, come what may.

  Before Maria could ask further questions, she jumped in with one of her own. 'So what do you suggest we do next, Honoré?'

  'I think we should try to accompany Maria back to Venice when she next has one of her phasing episodes.' He pursed his lips. 'That way, we can try to get to grips with what the Sodality are doing in that time period and see if we can do anything to stop them. At that point, we may be early enough to cause them a few problems.'

  Maria was nervous. 'I don't know. It sounds risky to me. Like the beginning of the end.'

  Emily looked her straight in the eye. 'Perhaps that's exactly what it is. But the end of what?'