“See to the console,” said the same faint, unfamiliar voice. “Get it open. I don’t know what he’s got in there, but it’s pulling time and reality out of place. If we don’t stop this, Auntie Li will have our heads.”

  “She’ll have our heads if you’ve killed him,” said another voice.

  “Not this time,” said the first voice, and Kez heard Tuan give a small, snuffly laugh. “Uncle Cheng offered a good deal: she said he’s collateral, this time. If he moves, kill him.”

  “Kez,” said Tuan’s voice in her ear, breathless and laboured. “There’s another Fixed Point you’re going to have to worry about now if you want to put everything back together. They’ll go for that one for sure, after this.”

  “Tell me ’bout it when I get back from zippin’ stuff up,” Kez said mulishly. “Don’t wanna know right now.”

  He laughed, thready and wet at the same time. “I’m not going to be here when you get back, Kez. That Fixed Point you said is attached to me—there are some memories coming back from the institute. Some things in my head that shouldn’t be there. If your Tuan didn’t have a collar, that’s where it started.”

  “Stoppit, TuanTuan,” Kez said uncertainly. “You’re gunna help me wiv that one, too. I’ll get back real quick, promise. It’ll take a bit av time for the universe to zip back together, see? I’ll come back and get ya: make sure I come back before they shoot ya, like.”

  “The Institute,” he said again, his voice weaker than before, “where we should have met and didn’t. That’s where—that’s where—”

  Kez screamed in rage and kicked the maxiplex, but it barely made a sound on her side. On the other, it must have been altogether soundless, because she didn’t hear the security men react. She could hear them through Tuan’s comms, some of them still trying to find a way into the training module; some of them complaining about having shot Tuan too quickly.

  “Save me, Kez,” said Tuan breathlessly. “Save the other one of me that’s worth saving.”

  She heard someone in the background say, “He’s communicating with someone, sir!” then Tuan gasped once more and was silent.

  Above, the light stopped flashing and glowed, continuous and strong.

  Kez shifted in space, wrapped in a sticky, extra something that followed her and trailed its edges through the Other Zone; and with rage in her heart, she brought herself back into reality in the quarters of one Sergeant Gormley.

  One Sergeant Gormley who, now that Kez had arrived, bringing with her another, sticky reality, would have to pass through a state of being two Sergeant Gormleys before he could hope to return to unification.

  It was time to zip up an unzipped Fixed Point.

  Fallout

  It was early morning, and Lieutenant Tuan Li had just sat up in bed, yawning. There was nothing very much to be done today, so Tuan allowed himself to stretch and sit where he was for a few sleepy moments longer, wondering when the lingering sense of melancholy that clung to him would dissipate.

  He yawned and pushed back the slightly-too long hair from his eyes, then stretched once more. As he did so, a pair of small, wiry arms wrapped themselves around his neck, nearly strangling him in their enthusiasm, and across the room, something small and piercing said ting! as it registered a presence for which it continuously searched.

  A broad, glad, utterly joyful smile spread across Tuan’s face, banishing the melancholy in a moment.

  “Kez!” he said. “Why are you strangling me? You can’t keep going back to times before I know you and then coming to strangle me for things I did when I didn’t know you.”

  “Ain’t stranglin’ you,” said the sharp, snubby voice he knew so well. “I’m huggin’ you.”

  “Oh?” he said invitingly. This was a younger version of Kez, perhaps only a year after she’d met him for the first time, and if he was not mistaken, a more-than-usually traumatised version of her. “What happened? You can sit next to me, you know; tell me what happened.”

  “No,” she said, clinging tighter. “Ain’t lettin’ you go.”

  “You might as well get used to it,” said a male voice, from across the room. “She’s probably going to perch there for the rest of the day.”

  There was Marx, short and nuggety, with his usual grease-stained coveralls and tough, stubbly face. Tuan very nearly asked him what he’d done to Kez, but since that would probably have called down punitive measures from Kez as well as her protector, and Kez was still very close to all of his main arteries, he refrained.

  “What happened?” he asked, instead. He would have patted Kez on the head, but she avoided his hand and tucked her head in to bite his shoulder instead. Tuan said a mild “Ouch,” more from habit than conviction, and heard a small snuffle from the general vicinity of his left ear.

  Since it didn’t seem likely that she was about to let go any time soon, Tuan gave up on his original plans for the morning—plans such as having a shower and getting dressed—and got up to wander across the room toward his small kitchen. He’d bought a package of red gummy frogs for just such an occasion: Kez loved soft textures to touch, and gummy textures to chew on. If given both, she was inclined to linger and even chat in her scattershot way, perfectly content to pull on his hair and natter in his ear, whether or not he was listening.

  It wasn’t a surprise to find that Marx had disappeared when Tuan turned around with Kez still clinging to his back.

  Of Kez, he asked again, “What happened?”

  “TuanTuan,” she said in his ear, her voice scratchy, “reckon you could stop dyin’ an’ stuff?”

  Tuan might have been chilled if it wasn’t for the warmth clinging around his neck.

  “I’m alive,” he said to her. Kez at this age was far too fragile for anything but gummies and soft fabrics, and the few, soothing words that a person might say to a skittish Fifth World fleece-bird perched on one’s shoulder and far too easily spooked into pooping.

  “Yeah,” she said in his ear. “Saved ya.”

  “Oh,” he said, wriggling the bag of red gummy frogs in the general direction of his left shoulder. “Are you sure I didn’t help you with that? Ow!”

  This time, she bit him harder. A moment later, a skinny arm snaked out and grabbed a fist-full of red frogs, and Tuan couldn’t help smiling. He wasn’t bleeding, and Kez was eating; a fairly good sign that she was beginning to calm down.

  “All right,” he said. “You did it by yourself. You can tell me about it while I clean.”

  There was the sound of gummy chewing near Tuan’s right ear, and one arm gripped more tightly as the other hand was fully engaged with a handful of gummy frogs, the elbow of that arm digging into his shoulder.

  He tried to think of it as a rather more rabid form of massage, and began his day-off cleaning to the accompaniment of a series of raspberry-scented questions.

  “Wot’s that?”

  “It’s a duster.”

  “Hungry beggar, ain’t it?”

  …

  “Wot’s that?”

  “A handheld dry-cleaner.”

  “It’s makin’ weird noises.”

  “It’s just talking to me.”

  “’F someone dropped a gummy in there—”

  “Don’t drop a gummy in my dry-cleaner.”

  “Orright. But next time I’m gunna. Wanna see if it burps.”

  …

  And finally, after Tuan had gone through his tiny living room, kitchen, and bathroom one by one, there was another huff of raspberry gummy air over his shoulder.

  “Glad you ain’t dead, TuanTuan.”

  The Marriage of Mikkel

  Mikkel hadn’t expected to get married. He had expected, like many other Time Corp officers, that he would remain wedded to the job until retirement age; by which time he would be too old and set in his ways to settle down with anything other than a dog or a particularly patient robot.

  It was somewhat stunning, therefore, at the relatively early age of thirty-eight, to find himself waiting in the special transport carrier that was to carry himself and his newly married wife back to his ship.

  Traditionally, this would be the time when he would introduce her to his quarters, his men, and his ship. That made Mikkel snort just a bit. He doubted there was an area of his ship his bride didn’t know better than he did—up to and including his quarters—and he was quite sure she had either bribed or threatened most of his men at some point.

  Still, one had to observe the formalities.

  “What’s wrong?” asked a voice that still made Mikkel’s heart jump.

  Arabella, tidy but for the curls that never quite seemed to stay in place in her bun, slipped out of the bathroom and manoeuvred around him with the same deceptive ease that she always did, despite a form that was both plump and petite.

  Mikkel very greatly appreciated that plump and petite figure; he also had a rueful appreciation for how quickly Arabella could best him in any kind of physical confrontation.

  “Nothing at all,” he said, turning to slip his arms around her. “Life is as close to perfect as I could hope for, as a matter of fact.”

  Arabella allowed the embrace and returned it with heart-warming strength, but when he tried to kiss her she turned her head and let his lips graze her cheek instead. She gently freed herself as well, and his heart dropped.

  “You’re going to ruin my hair, I think,” she said. “And I really need it to be tidy for just a little while longer. I’m afraid I have to leave you alone now, Mikkel.”

  She turned to go while he was still frozen with the suddenness of it all, and Mikkel caught her wrist, surprised by a wild panic that sprang up, swift and overwhelming. He had expected so much more time before she had to be off again on errands for her shadowy employers.

  Carefully light, he asked, “Regretting it already?”

  “No,” she said. “An er, important appointment is upcoming. I’ll be back.”

  “An appointment?” Mikkel knew how that went: Arabella was with him until she wasn’t. That was the way it had been since he’d met her. She could stay by his side for months, assisting him here and there with his own work and using him to assist, he was quite sure, with hers. Then she would be off again; off for a day, or a week, or a few months. It was always somehow approved in the system and the logs, but Mikkel didn’t know how: he wasn’t the one approving her secondments to other ships or organisations.

  “A necessary one,” she said, freeing her wrist from Mikkel’s grasp to ineffectually smooth back the errant hairs that curled around her ears. “You know how sensitive these things are.”

  “I thought you’d at least stay for the wedding night,” he said quietly as she turned once more to leave.

  Arabella stopped and stared at him. “I think you may have gotten the wrong idea,” she said. “I’ll be back very shortly. This appointment is necessary but not lengthy: I’ll be back before the transport starts moving.”

  “We haven’t even picked out pet names,” protested Mikkel. He knew it was no good, but he felt as though he had to do everything possible to stretch out the time with her. Perhaps part of him didn’t really expect her to come back. “Don’t you think we should settle on that before you go trotting off to appointments?”

  “If I can’t have my wedding night before the appointment, what on earth makes you think we’ve time to decide on pet names?” Arabella said, laughing. “Tell me what you’ve decided when I get back.”

  “I haven’t even told you my Core password,” he said, aware that he was very nearly pleading. “Is it such an important meeting? Can’t your employers wait another day or two?”

  Arabella hesitated—hesitated, and, he thought, smiled slightly. “Tell me that when I get back, too,” she said, as if she had struggled with herself for a moment before coming to that answer.

  She exited then, just as he’d known she eventually would, and Mikkel was left to loose his sighs upon the room.

  “Reckon we should say congrats or summink,” opined Kez.

  There was a gleam to her eyes, so Marx said with finality, “Absolutely not. Tuan already said that we have to be careful how we approach them, and if you think I want to clean wedding cake off the ceiling, you’ve got another think coming.”

  “’E only said we gotta be careful ’bout bein’ friendly wiv ’em,” objected Kez. “Ain’t ever been exactly friendly, ’ave we?”

  “I’m not the one who stabbed him,” Marx pointed out. “And besides that, there isn’t a man alive who wants to be bothered on his wedding day. We’ve managed pretty well with Mikkel so far, but if we disturb him today, he’s likely to turn nasty later.”

  Kez mumbled, “Maybe we can just set off a cracker or summink. So they know we’re thinkin’ of ’em.”

  “Listen, kid: if I knew you were thinking about me, I wouldn’t be able to sit down without twitching. Leave them alone.”

  There was a rather sulky silence, then Kez brightened. “Oi,” she said. “Forgot! We already said hi.”

  There was only so long that he could sit sighing at the ceiling, so Mikkel eventually rose to make himself a cup of coffee and pinch some of the icing off the wedding cake. Everything they needed had been loaded into the transporter—it would also, if tradition were to be followed, take the long way around on the way back to the ship.

  He would have taken a bite of that cake, but he was fairly sure Arabella would have something to say about it if he tasted it without her. It was safer to refrain. Arabella was very fond of chocolate: particularly chocolate and orange together, and this cake had both.

  Still, he couldn’t be expected to wait for mere icing, and as the coffee maker did its little burbling thing, Mikkel swiped a decent amount of it from the edge of the plate. Since it paired well with the sip of coffee he had afterward, he repeated the happy accident after filling his cup.

  Engaged in so doing, Mikkel didn’t hear the hatch open, but when he turned at a whisper of sound, cup of coffee in one hand and licking the icing from his forefinger, Arabella was back again. She looked as though she had come back in a hurry, too: her cheeks were slightly flushed, and there were a few more curls floating free than there had been several minutes earlier.

  “Forget something, did you?” he asked. “Or is your appointment later than you expected?”

  “The appointment?” asked Arabella, twisting her marriage ring on her finger. “Oh yes; didn’t I tell you it was a short one?”

  “I didn’t start the cake without you,” he said guiltily.

  A smile sprang to her lips, and as soon as he saw that smile, Mikkel knew it wasn’t just her hair that seemed so different. That smile was the first real, spontaneous emotion he had seen from her since she came back into the room. Arabella had always been straightforward and reasonably comfortable with him, so he hadn’t realised how much more comfortable and straightforward she had become with him over the two years he’d known her, until he saw her again now as she had been when he first met her.

  This Arabella, just slightly off balance—and wearing, he now noticed, a very slightly older version of the Time Corp hat she had been wearing just a few minutes earlier—was not the Arabella who had just married him. This Arabella was a younger Arabella; two years younger, if he was correct.

  “We can save it for later,” she said. “But if you happen to have another cup of coffee at hand—”

  “Always, for you,” said Mikkel, and filled a second mug. From the corner of his eye, he saw her sit down on the couch, and said affably, “Why don’t we use the love-seat? It’s a bit more cosy, don’t you think? And they put it in here just for us—it isn’t requisition for transporters.”

  He could have imagined the very faint sigh that huffed out in the cool air, but Mikkel didn’t think so. Nevertheless, Arabella changed seats, the blue of her dress uniform dusky against the white faux fur, and settled herself as far back as possible in it. Not to take advantage of what seemed, frankly, a very uncomfortable curved chair arm, thought Mikkel, but to remain as far away from him as possible.

  Mikkel watched that in the reflection of the tiny galley’s faux-tiles, then banished his grin and turned with both mugs.

  As he did, she said, “I just remembered that you haven’t given me your code yet.”

  “Ah, the code,” said Mikkel; startled, disbelieving, and fascinated.

  For the first time since he had met Kez and Marx, he felt that he finally understood what was happening. More: he understood his own part in it. The exhilaration of that understanding brightened the smile that had sprung to his lips, and the deepening flush of red across the younger Arabella’s cheeks at that smile set his heart thundering in his ears.

  Not just today, but when they first met, she had loved him.

  For Mikkel, who had never been sure where her job for her mysterious employers left off and where her (hopefully) real regard began, it was a balm to the soul.

  And today, he was quite certain, today, she had come for the single purpose of finding out his Core password: that code that was particular to him and to be shared with no-one but a legally bound partner who would be considered by the Time Corp as one and the same as himself.

  Right now, this Arabella, under compulsion from two rogue time travellers, was here to pilfer from him his Core password—and how she would go about doing that was something he was very curious about.

  “You’re always so business-minded,” he said as he sat down, playfully reproachful. He made sure to sit closer to her than to his own armrest; close enough to feel the warmth of his arm against hers. Close enough so that when he leaned forward to put her cup of coffee on her side of the coffee table, he briefly felt her breath tickle the hair at his temples.

  There was no reason for him not to have a bit of fun with the interview: both of them knew what she was here for, but for what felt like the first time since he’d known her, Mikkel felt that he had the advantage—two, in fact. Firstly, he knew the outcome of this particular situation. Secondly, although Mikkel knew what Arabella had come for, she didn’t know that he knew.

 

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