“Come on,” I say to Clyde, “out with it.” For a man without a face, he certainly can pout.
He maintains the silence that’s lasted through the London suburbs and halfway around the M25 ring road. The Mini’s wheels thrum over potholes. A chirpy woman on Radio Four tells us that rain is coming, and it’s going to stay until sometime around the apocalypse.
I turn the radio off.
“Talk to me, Clyde,” I say. “We’re on the same side, remember. Team members. Friends.”
Clyde nods his head. Once. Twice.
“Arthur,” he says eventually, “I completely understand, you know, full three hundred and sixty degree perspective on the subject, and I know you’re trying to do the right thing…”
There’s a “but” heading towards me like a jack-knifing truck.
“But there are things you don’t know.”
“Such as?” I’m caught between defiance and trepidation. This is going to be about the Weekenders, I know, and I think MI37’s official attitude so far has been unfair. But Clyde is not a person who naturally tends toward chewing others out, so if he feels the need to speak up, there’s the serious possibility that I’ve taken a misstep somewhere.
Clyde sighs and switches into a slower lane. “The Weekenders,” he says, “have existed in some variety since the seventies. Obviously not the same folks we saw today. That would be absurd. Or the product of some sort of phenomenal skin cream. And, well, most experimental thaumaturgists through history have been men. Not an observation on gender that, just testament to a biased system. But yes, crinkly old men—not big on the whole magic skin cream research as far as I’m aware. But, basically, what I’m getting at is that only that Malcolm chap has been doing this Weekending thing for any length of time, and that only dates back to the millennium according to records.” He gives a little shiver on the word “records.” I think he’s pulling this data from somewhere.
“Anyway, going back to my whole, you know, point, the original seventies group was founded by some folk who didn’t make it all the way through the vetting process for MI37. The Magic Arms Race was heating up, and our side was recruiting with a certain… well, I don’t want to speak ill of people who aren’t here to defend themselves, though, I mean, that does put certain unrealistic limitations on speaking ill of people. Because, really, some people deserve it whether they’re present or not. I mean, take Hitler, for example. Not that I’m trying to compare anyone in MI37 to Hitler, just trying to say that maybe if you’re recruiting people to become participants in a clandestine cold war, then maybe an anyone-will-do attitude isn’t a solid strategy. And so they basically let some ill-equipped people find out too much before cutting them loose. And some individuals are of a disposition—and this isn’t a criticism, just an observation—but once certain people know a little bit about the certain sort of stuff we deal with, well they certainly won’t give up on it.
“Anyway, these folk had all failed the vetting for, and this is important, I think, for a reason. It wasn’t just, you know, random capriciousness. Significant factor in the universe though it may be. But there were reasons. And those reasons, well it’s why we don’t know anyone who was on that original Weekenders team. They’re not in the fight anymore. Not because they stopped believing. Not because they got tired. They died, Arthur. They were killed. Not metaphorically, or in a manner of speaking, or as an exaggeration. It’s just, this is a dangerous job. I know you know that. I’m not trying to speak down to you. I mean in a literal sense, yes, given my height, I am speaking down, but now I’ve gone back to colloquialisms and idioms and all that. And, what I’m trying to say is that the people in the Weekenders, they’re not right for this sort of work. It kills them.
“And—and this is really my point, Arthur, I’m getting there in the end—every time, every single time they’ve been involved in an MI37 operation, one of our people has died too.”
He takes his eyes off the road, looks straight at me. I can feel the gaze through the mask. “They kill us, Arthur,” he says. “They don’t mean to. They have the best of intentions. But they mess up. And they die. And we die. So the only decent thing to do, the only right thing to do, and that’s why I started this whole thing by saying you’re a good chap, a chap trying to do the right thing, but the only thing to do is to try and stop them.”
Finally he falls silent. He stares at the road. After a minute’s silence he puts the radio back on. Someone talking about the best way to baste a turkey.
They die.
We die.
I don’t want to die. I don’t want anyone to die. But—and I’m probably going to regret this… But I’ve never in my life trusted absolute statements. In this world, it seems to me, there is nothing that is totally certain. Especially these days, when reality seems to break every five seconds.
“Look,” I say, “you’re telling me Aiko, Jasmine, Malcolm—they’re all brand-new Weekenders, pretty much.” I suspect I sound like I’m grabbing at straws. Maybe I am. “So how do we know working with these ones is going to kill us? It’s a generalization. It doesn’t take the individuals into account.”
What pass for Clyde’s eyes leave the road again.
“The individuals?” he says. He sounds slightly incredulous. “Arthur, I mean, again, not to condescend, but that girl Jasmine, she’s seventeen years old. She’s not been to school since she was thirteen. Malcolm West—”
Another tremor in his arm, I note.
“—was dishonorably discharged from the military, and then was kicked out of Blackwater in disgrace. You know how messed up you have to be for Blackwater to declare you a disgrace?”
I do have to concede the straws are beginning to get a little harder to grab now.
“What about Aiko?” I say. Of all of them, it seems hard to object to her.
Another violent shiver from Clyde. “Honestly? I’m surprised they let her near children.”
“What?” Are we talking about the same woman?
“She’s a total conspiracy theory nut. And, well, I realize ‘nut’ is a pejorative term, and maybe I should be more understanding, but she logs an average of sixty hours a week on internet forums and chat rooms talking about how JFK and Elvis are the same person.”
“Oh.” Not the most reassuring things to hear. And, well, Clyde does have a case against them. A good case even. Might even hold up in court.
But it’s not like MI37 is made up of the most balanced people either. And they helped save my life. Clyde’s life too. So I remain that obstinate juror demanding a smoking gun.
“What about time magic?” I say.
“It’s impossible, Arthur.” Clyde sounds almost exasperated. Like he thought better of me. “It’s just another form of intradimensional magic. Trying to punch out of a reality’s timestream and then into the same reality’s timestream further along. Trying to change time within one part of one reality. It’s not possible. It was all part of Chernobyl. It all ended in a big smoking hole that no one can live in and which causes terrible things to happen to wildlife. Sort of like the anti-RSPCA. Apart from the smoking hole bit. I don’t know what the opposite of that would be. Maybe if the RSPCA started building mountains. But, what I’m saying is that sort of magic doesn’t turn back time or turn shelves into trees. It just kills people.”
Jesus. With that sort of glass-half-empty attitude, no wonder he looked so grumpy.
I shrug, still not entirely cowed by logic. “It just seems like we’re making a lot of generalizations without taking the specific events into account.”
“Crazy people,” Clyde says. “Illusion magic.” It is a remarkably succinct summary of his arguments. If he wasn’t using them to argue against me, I’d compliment him.
“Illusion magic,” I argue, “is like an argument get-out-of-jail-free card. You didn’t break into the bank, some other guy did it, it just looked that way because of illusion magic.”
“Time,” Clyde informs me, “was concretized back with the establishment of Greenwich Mean Time as an international standard.”
It seems a mean debating technique to just go and pull reality out from under my feet again.
“Time was concretized?” I ask. I almost don’t want to, but in the end not knowing this stuff just leads to… well it leads to this sort of conversation.
“Oh.” Clyde shakes his head. “Well, you see, when Greenwich Mean Time was established as an international standard there was this clock built. Ceremonial thing. But time sort of got tied to it. Still not wholly sure how that happened. Poses some interesting questions about collective perception and the nature of reality. How expectation influences probability. Really interesting fringe math in that area actually. Maybe I can access a few papers…” His right leg starts to quiver and we veer slightly.
“Clyde…” I’d rather his leg tremors didn’t send us into oncoming traffic.
“Right.” Clyde nods. “Read those later. But yes. Time. Concretized. In a clock. Called the Chronometer, actually. Not the most original name really. Might as well just have called it ‘The Clock’ and be done with it. But polysyllables make some folk feel smarter I assume. Anyway, yes. Time. The Chronometer. Inexplicably linked. Wind the Chronometer forward, time goes forward. Wind it back, time goes back. So nobody does really.”
I intend to say something like, “What?” or possibly, “Why?” but instead I let out an ugly sort of grunt. I’m beginning to notice that having my preconceptions beaten out of me seems to affect my speech centers first.
So… time travel is possible. And we haven’t…
“Hitler?” I manage to say.
“Yes,” Clyde says and leaves it at that.
“Why didn’t we…?”
“Oh! Sorry.” Clyde shrugs twice. “I meant, yes, that is the obvious application. But, well, you know, the possibility of reality-annihilating paradoxes causing the Chernobyl explosion to happen at an atomic level throughout the entire universe. That sort of thing.”
Which does seem like a good reason really.
“Where is it?” I ask. Because it’s as good a question as any I have.
“They put it in Big Ben,” Clyde says. “Sort of symbolic I suppose.”
“Wait.” I try to wrap my head round that one. “Big Ben? The tourist attraction? The first thing to get blown up in every terrorist movie set in London ever?”
“Well,” Clyde says, “to be fair to the chaps that put it there, it’s in a massive, lead-lined titanium room, with its own anti-magic field, surrounded by about a hundred fully-armed SAS ninjas.”
“We have ninjas?” It’s possible that’s not the most important point, but I just have to know.
“Oh,” Clyde says. “I just sort of figured. I mean, if you’re an international power player, shouldn’t you have ninjas?”
That’s something I would have dismissed out of hand not so long ago. Now I’m genuinely worried he may have a point.
Actually, I’m a little worried he’s right about everything. Time magic. The Weekenders. I could have put them in danger. Put M137 and my friends in danger. My girlfriend.
George Coleman can be in danger. I’d be fine with that.
But, Jesus, can I be so off on this? I was never a cop to go on gut instinct. Follow the evidence. Follow the paperwork.
But there’s something about this… I don’t know. I just don’t know.
Clyde drives on, and the rain begins to fall.