Of course this was just quantum-jecture, another of Professor Smart’s terms. There could never be any proof of these brief moments of oneness, as they dissipated almost instantly and were all but impossible to record. Nevertheless, Professor Smart was correct: the “Zen Ten” does exist and was being experienced by the hazmat team as their bodies solidified and left them standing in short-lived awe, like kids at a fireworks display.
The team stood on the bed, which Charles Smart had rigged as a receiver, wreathed in a wispy curtain of orange light that jerked back toward the wormhole that hovered behind them like a floating diamond.
“Hey,” said the point man, crossbow dangling loosely from his fingers. “Do you guys see the parallels between Einstein and Daffy Duck now? That duck knew what he was talking about.”
There would have followed another eight seconds or so of cosmic wisdom had not Garrick realized intuitively that fate would never again drop such a ripe opportunity in his lap. He attacked like a death-dealing dervish, springing from his hiding place onto the four-poster bed, where his opponents stood like cattle in the slaughterhouse pen.
Use yer bows now, my boys , he thought.
Garrick’s arrival on the receiver bed smashed the cocoon of bliss, and the hazmat team was instantly vigilant—all but Smart, who was still shrouded in quantum particles, which caused his extremities to warp and shudder as though underwater.
Garrick’s first strike was the sweetest, as it drew hot red blood. He had been anxious that his steel might encounter armor of some kind, but though the material was exceptionally hardy, it could not resist the singing sharpness of his trusty fish knife. The man who had spoken of ducks sank to the sheets, his heart popped in his chest. A second black-clad newcomer arranged his fists in an approximation of a boxer’s stance and delivered a lightning hook to Garrick’s solar plexus.
The assassin grunted in surprise, not pain. These dark demons were fast, but not magically so, and it would take a sight more gumption in a blow to penetrate the flat boards of muscle on Garrick’s torso.
Garrick had studied many of the fighting arts, from Cornish wrestling to Okinawan karate, and chosen what he wanted from each one. These skills he augmented with his own speciality: sleight of hand. His was a style that could not be clinically recognized and defended against, as there was only one master and only one pupil.
The magician engaged his unique skill and palmed the blade across to his left hand. The second man in black followed this move with a tilt of his head, but he did not cotton to the throwing spike that sprouted in Garrick’s right hand as though growing from the vein.
By the time the man in black caught the deadly glint from the corner of his eye, it had already begun the flashing flight toward its target. Not toward the second man, but toward a third while the second was distracted by Garrick’s left hand, which held the fish knife.
The second man realized this too late and had barely time to watch the throwing spike puncture his comrade’s chest before the fish knife slashed across his own jugular.
So much blood, thought Garrick. An ocean of blood.
Three of the hazmat team were down. The fourth opted to attack rather than be slaughtered where he stood. This guy was a real bruiser, who was famous in the FBI for having punched out a world boxing champion in a Vegas bar fight. He sent out a lightning right cross that would have floored an elephant and mentally mapped out his next three punches.
He would not need them. Garrick ducked under the punch, rolled the man across his back, and met him on the other side with a prison shiv. The agent did not die immediately, but he would not tarry long.
One left now, the one clothed in magical light. The man with true power. Garrick felt himself salivate.
How to steal the magic? What was the technique? An incantation, perhaps? Or did they need a pentagram? Everything Garrick had tried in the past to suck even a spark of power from the ether now seemed garishly jokish. Candles and weeds, animal sacrifices. He had been a mere child scrabbling around in the dark. Here was true power in front of his eyes, if he could take it.
Garrick pocketed the blade and dipped his icicle fingers into the orange light until he found the man’s neck. The tendons looked taut as gibbet ropes, but to the touch they were softer than butter. Garrick saw his own fingers somehow merge with the stranger’s body, and with the merging came a sharing of souls.
I know this man, he realized. And he knows me.
With his free hand Garrick ripped off the man’s mask, to demand the knowledge that he could not find in the man’s mind.
“Tell me how to take your magic,” he demanded. “Give me your secrets.”
The man seemed in a stupor. He saw but did not see, his gaze soft and blotted, a look Garrick had seen on the faces of soldiers emerging from chloroform.
I know you, Albert Garrick, said the man, though his mouth did not move. I know what you are.
It seemed to Garrick, as he listened to Felix Smart’s thoughts, that he had joined utterly with this man. Smart’s entire life was compressed into a bitter capsule and shoved down his throat. Memories exploded inside him, more vivid than his own. He tasted blood and sweat, smelled gunpowder and rotten flesh, and felt his own secret shames and regrets that he had never dared acknowledge.
This is the magic, he realized, even as his past life crawled into his gut like a worm. To see, to know.
“Give it to me,” he said, tightening his grip around the man’s neck. “I want it all, d’you hear?”
“They sent you to Afghanistan,” gasped the man, the words grunting out of him.
So surprised was Garrick to hear this that he actually engaged.
“Not many know that, Scotsman. I took up the queen’s rifle, killed my share, and came back a hero.” Garrick shook his head, dislodging the orange man’s probes. “Quiet with your talk, man, unless it is to divulge secrets.”
The man closed his eyes—sadly, it seemed to Garrick. “I can’t. And I know what you intend to do, so . . .” His hand moved toward a red button on his belt, and Garrick gripped the wrist in his fingers.
A quantum circuit was completed and information exchanged on every level. Knowledge, secrets, and the very essence of being—all whipped between the two men, locked in grim combat. Garrick struggled to hold on to himself in this blizzard of awareness. He saw and understood everything, from amoebas to microwaves. He felt his own self as a collection of jittering neutrons and understood the concept. He saw the surface of the moon, an earth ruled by dinosaurs, matchbox-sized computers, the Scottish man of science, the little Shawnee lass, and the boy Riley.
Riley, he thought, and the thought skittered away from him on a tide of quantum foam. He cocked his head to follow it, and the Scotsman used the distraction to press the red button on his belt.
Garrick felt mercury shift and smelled the explosives and knew that there was only one way to perhaps escape death. He crushed Felix Smart’s barely solid windpipe in his fist, then tumbled them both into the tiny pulsing circle of light that lay in the center of the mattress.
It did not seem possible that two grown men could fit into that tiny space, but the wormhole was pure physics and so did its work, dematerializing the battling pair just as the tiny suitbomb exploded.
Charles Smart, the godfather of time travel, had speculated in his famous Columbi
a lecture that if a spontaneous energy shift were to be introduced into the quantum stream, then the effects on local travelers could be spectacular, producing, in theory, a being imbued with all the powers not yet granted to humanity by evolution. Or, as he put it, Clark Kent could indeed become Superman.
The world could see superheroes.
Or supervillains.
BEDFORD SQUARE. BLOOMSBURY. LONDON. NOW
Chevie Savano plugged Charles Smart’s Timekey into the weirdly pronged socket on the bank of antique computers in the pod room.
A message appeared on the screen: warming up. Warming up? What was this? A photocopier?
Alt-tech was a term Felix liked to bandy about. Alternative technology. What he meant was old junk that didn’t work properly anymore.
Warming up? The next thing you knew, this contraption would ask for more gas.
Eventually a menu shuddered into life on the small convex screen. The kind of screen nerd grandpas collected to play Pac-Man. The operating system was unfamiliar to her, a set of consecutive menus that reminded her of a family tree.
Well, I guess even Apple and Microsoft can’t control the past, she thought, smiling.
It did seem as though everything was on this Timekey. The entire history of the project, including previous jumps, personnel files, pod locations, and, of course, Professor Smart’s video diary.
Chevie selected the proximity-alert recordings with an honest-to-God wooden mouse, and scrolled through to the last couple of minutes.
It was a grainy picture, colors muted by the darkness, but she could clearly see the boy Riley approach stealthily, eyes and teeth shining out of his blackened face. The blade in his hand was visible too, just the top edge where the soot failed to cover it.
Suddenly the screen glowed green, and Riley’s features were underlit like a Halloween campfire storyteller. The boy looked pretty guilty, it had to be said: sneaking into an old man’s house in the dead of night, armed with a wicked-looking blade. The alert changed from green to red as Riley drew closer, and the view flipped as Professor Smart sat up.