The Time Gene, page 58
Murdo’s cackle turned into a hacking cough. “Don’t insult me, Pro. Is a’ these years o’ friendship no’ worth more than that to you? Ragnarok would never have gied me that pardon. Gung-ho, warmongerin’ Old Harrovian. Hated me an’ everythin’ I stood for.” Bitter anger tinged his words.
Prometheus wiped the sweat from his forehead and sat down at his friend’s bedside. “We…at least Ragnarok and I…know about the SolTach.”
Murdo tried to sit up, which resulted in another fit of coughing. Then his mouth twitched into something between a smirk and a grimace. “Strange, yon, seein’ as how it only ever existed up here.” He pointed to his head. Prometheus took a step back. “Aw, you didnae carve up my brain. You didnae...”
Prometheus had seen cities crumble to rubble in seconds, had survived a nuclear bomb attack, had witnessed people being shot dead or burned alive. But nothing prepared him for the surrealness of carving up his friend’s brain like a lump of meat, and then having a conversation with him about it.
Prometheus stared at the dry rot on the sanatorium wall.
Murdo raised a limp hand to pat Prometheus on the back. “That’s all righ’, I kenned you would.” Sadness darkened Murdo’s face. “I s’ppose you got that cipher?”
Prometheus nodded. “We found it just before we performed the time-reversal. The Crystal of Cathbadh has been re-activated. Not that it makes much difference. The war’s all but over.”
Murdo recoiled. “But don’t you see? As long as that damn Crystal exists there’ll be wars unto infinity. Or until we manage to become extinct. An’ another thing: what did you find out about me? In peacetime I’d have an iron-clad case for invasion o’ privacy.” A glimmer of mirth cracked onto Murdo’s lips. He had known all along that they would dissect his neurons, scrutinising and probing and scapelling until they found the key to unlock Cathbadh and plunge humanity into an interminable cycle of war.
But he had also always known that, if he got killed, they would reverse his death. For two reasons. One, because they needed him to build the SolTach. His Magnum Opus. And two, because the tide had turned. The head jailor, Sir Porphyrous Rauchmann, had recognised Murdo’s mugshot of Roxanne as a pop singer he had liked as a youth – although he had later denied it. “But it’s no’ just Rauchmann, Pro. Perun saw somethin’ as well…that’s why he tried to save me. That’s why he rushed home from Damascus. It’s because we won, Pro. The Tweener was real. He saved Roxanne and set her on the path to success. She used her time-travel talents to become a star.”
An uneasy pallor crept into Prometheus’ face. “No, no. She didn’t, Murdo. The Anchor’s death occurred later than we thought, and from drugs, not fire. But she still died young. She didn’t rise to fame. She didn’t become a celebrity.” He swallowed hard, before adding, albeit in a wisp of a voice, that Tweeners did not exist. But, truth be told, Prometheus’ unshakable certainties about time and space had taken a bashing.
Disappointment clouded Murdo’s gaze, but after a moment’s soul-searching he added: “Then I guess the change must be a process, not a reversal. Evolution, not metamorphosis. If the Tweener has altered Roxanne’s death date, his medicine is working.”
Prometheus frowned. “I am afraid it is far more probable that our original data was flawed.”
Murdo sat up in alarm, but the pain from his injured shoulder dragged him down. A baffled glower froze onto Murdo’s face. “That’s not possible. Perun compiled that data, and he’s more accurate than an atomic clock. It’s like accusin’ the tides themselves o’ poor timekeepin’. He’s infallible, is our Perun.”
The last hues of colour drained from Prometheus’ cheeks. His eyes looked as dead and listless as a dying moth. “There is something else I must tell you, Murdo.”
Something in Prometheus’ tone spooked Murdo. “What…? For God’s sake, what?”
“Agent Perun was arrested this morning for High Treason.”
Chapter Fifty-five
The Philanthropist
Cromwell Military Prison, December 27th, 2051
The pain in Murdo’s shoulder half-blinded him. Icy barnacles of terror grated into his skin. But he’d learned to ghost out pain, levitate out of his own body like mist rising from a frosted lake. Yet there was a writhing in his gut, as if frozen eels twisted and somersaulted beneath his skin. Every morsel of his body begged him to turn back, to sink into the softness of his concrete bed. But the only way to save others from the fiery lake was to dive into it head on. His sweaty fingers rapped on Rauchmann’s door.
The governor’s voice rumbled a shrill “Come in.” Murdo’s heart thudded. His fumbling fingers moistened the doorknob, and it would not turn. Why had he always been such a coward? Why couldn’t he march in there with the swashbuckling poise of a sergeant-major and not buckle like a drunk soldier in a mustard gas raid? To his horror, he stumbled on a crinkle in the governor’s shag pile.
Every strand of his pacifist DNA fought against him, as he battled to awaken the lion in his lamb’s clothes. If he could not find a warrior’s heart within his Quaker chest, how could he save Matas? Murdo could not blink without seeing that stricken face, pale as ivory, and those white eyes, lolling like snowdrops in a blizzard. But it wasn’t just about Matas. Try as he might, Murdo could not erase them from his mind’s eye, all those haunted, chained-up wretches clanging down the prison’s squalid passages. No-one spoke for them now, nor even remembered them. They were as ghosts: dead and disappeared. If Murdo didn’t fight for them, who would?
Murdo stood before the governor, desperate to keep his lips from quaking. Sir Porphyrous swivelled in his leather chair, belching out blue smoke from his cigar. The governor listed to one side – was he hurt? Closer inspection revealed the lurch was the result of a strategically placed footbath. A lime-green spreadsheet gleamed from his computer, immersing his fourteen different salves and ointments in an eerie jade glow. They could have been serpents, coiling, spitting, and writhing, biding their time as they waited to strike. The governor closed his eyes as he basked in the undulations on his feet. “What do you want?”
“Sorry to interrupt your footbath, Sir Porphyrous,” said Murdo, trying to cough up some joviality. “Personally, I used tae find exercise bikes the best way tae unwind. But no’ these days, now I’m older an’ portlier. Wouldnae you say so, Sir Porphyrous?”
A bomb dropped inside Murdo’s chest. His breathing muscles stalled as he probed the governor’s face for the merest tremor.
There had been a jolt. Tiny, stifled, but the governor’s limbs had seized up the moment Murdo uttered the words ‘exercise bike’. His hunch had been right. The tension in his muscles slackened. “There again, Sir Porphyrous…don’t you think an exercise bike is good for a young lad who’s stuck at home and can’t get out much?”
Rauchmann’s jaw sagged like a catfish. His mottled hands ferreted in desk drawers, raked under the wastepaper baket, burrowed into the filing cabinet. Something had changed. The cold wind of fear swept through the air. Sweat glistened on the governor’s brow.
“The commutation of my sentence was an unexpected boon, Sir Porphyrous,” Murdo said, his voice quavering, but with growing confidence and alacrity. “I suppose they told you I got pardoned because I work for MI8, an’ I know stuff.” Murdo sensed a chill ripple though the room, and the governor stiffened. “Pretty dangerous stuff, actually. Director-General Cartwright has updated me on our latest mission, now that the war is all but over. Do you know what that mission is, Sir Porphyrous?”
Rauchmann’s fat fingers clutched at the unguents spread across his mahogany desk, shovelling them together – as if he wanted to build a wall between himself and Murdo. “Look, Ironside, I have no time for this claptrap. I’m seeing my masseuse at twelve, I’m lunching with the Minister for Defence at one, and I’m chairing a prisoner tribunal at 2:30 on the dot...” Rauchmann’s voice would have corroded metal, yet dread pooled to the surface like oil on water.
Murdo feigned a wry smile. “We’ve taken a leaf out o’ your book, Sir Porphs,” he said. “The hush-hush stuff’s old hat these days. MI8 has a new calling: we’re roundin’ up all the cowards who wouldnae sign up. Isn’t that great? I know this is one area where we’ll count on your support. After all, why should a few preppies sit in their cosy armchairs for nine odd-years, while everyone else tears themselves limb from limb for king and country? Have not these cowards renounced their claim to manhood? You were right all along, Governor Rauchmann. What right has a posh elite to shirk duty? You’re pretty upper crust, and you never would have done. But you know me, Sir Porphyrous. I opposed re-introducin’ the death penalty, but now I must say I’m comin’ round to your way o’ thinkin’. Our position at MI8 is that they gotta die, an’ painfully, as a deterrent. Wouldn’t you agree, Sir Porphyrous?”
Rauchmann’s face had turned a chalky white, and he mopped his brow with a silk handkerchief dappled with sweat. He mumbled a few nonsensicalities.
A firestorm had gripped Murdo. Even as he railed at himself in shock and disbelief he became a wrecking ball, dashing Rauchmann’s quivering head, exposing his darkest secrets like bombs crashing through upholstery. “Course, we’ll be checkin’ death certificates, and we have trailblazin’ methods for spottin’ forgeries. Medical records will be verified also. Where we can find no obvious reason for a person not tae have enlisted…but pray, tell me, what should we do, Sir Porphyrous?”
The colour drained from Sir Porphyrous’ cheeks. He took a drag on his cigar and slugged from his hip flask. A cloying silence smote the air. At length the governor spoke, in a voice that chafed like steel wool, yet choked with fearfulness: “the standard penalty would be to be shot at dawn, but really, I don’t see…”
The standard penalty…so typical of these times. Win the war by weight of numbers, by killing all who refused to plunge into it. Yes, that was what had dragged the world into this churning abyss. Murdo was breathing fire now. “Oh aye. Shot at dawn. We cannae suffer a coward tae live.” Murdo’s sealed magma chambers had opened, unleashing the lava within. “Mind you…shooting’s a bit on the lenient side, wouldn’t you agree? An’ their families too…a traitor’s kin…must perish. But, don’t worry, Governor, we’ll nail the treasonous scum. Never fear, lest we should spare the cowards’ protectors in our zeal for justice. Let me be absolutely clear: if you are found guilty o’ harbourin’ a shirker, then you, too, must die for your treachery. The selfish and the spineless, and their accessories, are a canker upon the vine that must be culled. Right, Sir Porphyrous?”
Murdo was choking on his own bitter pill. His stomach churned at the brutality of his own words. Yet the poison seemed to be working. His battering ram was shattering Rauchmann’s fortress. Murdo was glad, finally glad, to let Rauchmann writhe under the blade from his own sword. For Murdo might only have been an oik from Glasgow, but he wasn’t going to be trampled on.
Within a split second’s warning, Rauchmann whipped a pistol from his mahogany desk drawer. He cocked it, pointing it straight at Murdo’s left eye. A tsunami of panic crashed through Murdo as his life, once again, flit before his eyes. So that was what Rauchmann had been ferreting for. But, as he gazed down the gun barrel, Murdo’s muscles slackened. What, after all, could Rauchmann really do? For, if Rauchmann pulled that trigger, the League of Kairos would bring him back. Wouldn’t they?
Well…Hardwin was on the verge of a nervous breakdown and Gordonstoun was languishing in his hospital bed. An icy wave engulfed Murdo. But his face betrayed no fear.
Murdo stared down the chamber of the gun. “I wouldnae bother, Sir Porphyrous. I told everythin’ to Agent Perun...”
A callous mirth unfurled on the governor’s face. Murdo didn’t doubt the governor’s dark thrill at the prospect of Perun burning alive. “Who do you suppose would believe lies pedalled by that filthy traitor? And as for MI8…who will entertain your lurid theories now? What a merry joke that you sultans of espionage failed to spot that your own chief was living in Titov’s pocket! It was so obvious too – he was more Russian than the bloody tsars. Come on - that ‘defection’ was about as convincing as Titov joining the Sally Army. And yet you fell for it, hook, line and sinker, poor wretched dupes. But don’t worry, there’s a nice warm oven for him at Cromwell...”
Perun. His friend. Murdo fought with flesh and bone to stem his tears. This wasn’t right...it just wasn’t right. True, the evidence against his ex-boss was overwhelming. And yet Murdo could not bring himself to believe Perun a traitor. It galled him how easily Pro and the others had cast him aside. But Murdo? No. Against all reason, against all rationality, he still believed in his friend. Perun had been burned down to a charred husk of a man. He had sold his soul to the devil not for fortune, youth or power, but to escape the pain. Traitor or not, Perun had staked his heart to the dream of a better world, and poured his life’s blood into it.
Rauchmann’s tirade continued. “Tell the world what you will, Ironside...assuming I let you live, which is not looking likely. Tell them I’m a dragonbot. Tell them I masterminded 9/11 aged ten. Tell them I’m the ghost of Donald Trump. And good luck...” He grit his teeth and gently stroked the trigger...
But Murdo pressed on, a calm steel in his voice: “The allegations against Agent Perun may weaken his testimony. But don’t go thinking you’re out of the woods. He forwarded that info to Ragnarok...”
The gouty governor choked with laughter. “Oh, Raggy? Used to shine my shoes for me at Harrow. One of the things I find most endearing about you, Ironside, is that while life has not sheltered you, you remain so captivatingly naïve. Rules are applied differently between oldest chums. Raggy and I have an...” Rauchmann waltzed his pistol through the air, as though it had been a champagne flute.
“Understanding?” Murdo pondered. “Old School Tie. I completely understand. But Perun...you see, before he was arrested, before he told Ragnarok, he called his solicitor. A media law expert, Sir Porphyrous, and a close friend of mine, He’s got the editors of five national newspapers on speed-dial. And I don’t think any of them fagged for you at school…”
Rauchmann’s face blanched from a rich garlic purple to a deathly pallor, his toes frozen solid in the scalding foot bath. The taste of blood made Murdo gag. But, when you’d snared a slippery shark like Rauchmann between your jaws, you had to make the killer bite. “I’ve told him to keep mum for now, but, you see, we’re as close as two peas in a pod, and if anything happened to hurt me, he’d get...well...upset.”
Rauchmann clutched at the chair arms. He backed into the wall, pale as bone. He swerved round in his leather chair, sweating like a pig. “Look. Ironside...” The governor’s hollow staccato reeked of bitter defeat. “You know that I can get you... anything you need? I have contacts. Hundreds. Just say the word. How much...how much do you...?”
Murdo’s mouth quivered inches from the jailor’s face. “You can stick your money, your cognac an’ your pumpkin lasagne where the sun don’t shine. But things are gonna change around here, I promise you. You can pardon Matas. You’re gonna clean up this nick, pal. Else I’ll be takin’ you…and yours…to the cleaners.”
Yet Murdo was willing to offer the crumbling megalomaniac one last shot at glory. A chance to be remembered not as a warmongering tyrant who persecuted pacifists, but as the most benevolent philanthropist of all time.
Cromwell, Essex, 9th August 2052
Skegness pressed the glass to his lips and inhaled the heady aroma of the rich South African red. “Blimey, this is the real McCoy. I haven’t tasted a wine this fine since university. I didn’t drink, but Vally-Blake always spiked my lemonade.”
Murdo clutched his grape juice, as his palms drew the condensation droplets from the glass’ cloudy surface. He drew out a laugh, perhaps a little too high-pitched. “Sincerest compliments o’ my new boss, Sir Porphyrous Rauchmann.”
A hearty laugh thronged the air. The genuine, not the forced kind. Even Agent Loki stifled a chuckle. MI8’s enigmatic new head rarely let his lips twitch. Still, Skegness seemed determined to ply him with as much wine as possible. Maybe that would lighten him up a bit. After all, they’d been boys together at Eton, both notorious for playing pranks on the Masters. And who could blame them for savouring the Kaironians’ first real chance at conviviality in donkeys’ years? Why not savour the bonhomie that had swept the country since the surrender? And yet this jingoistic spirit, with all its flag-waving, neo-imperialistic pomp deeply distressed Murdo. In the first place, how could they condone such frivolity, while the rainforests burned, the air poisoned children and the plants wilted? Hadn’t a surfeit of national pride lurched the world into a ten-year firestorm? Then again, could you begrudge the survivors their Indian summer? You never knew how long you’d got, so why not party while you were still standing?
“Murdo, if you weren’t such a spiffing fellow, I’d ask you who you slept with,” Hardwin Hathersage remarked. “This place is practically the Ritz.”
A wistful grin slipped onto Murdo’s lips. He could not help but exude proprietorial pride in his new abode. He had running water, storage heating, and – the height of luxury - a coin-operated electric meter. He even had an electric shower, although it hissed like a laryngitic rattlesnake. His former League of Kairos comrades surveyed the apartment with covetous awe. Even Agent Loki had not such a fine pad.
No-one before the war had deemed Murdo a wealthy man. Yet, these days they thought you rich if you slept less than four to a room. Murdo owned nothing. He had but the complimentary lease of Deputy Sewell’s cast-offs. Yet even a lame lion is king among beasts. A rich mahogany suite framed the sitting room, drowned in gaudy floral upholstery that reminded Murdo of his Great Aunt Fotty’s nightgown. Mauve brocades and lacy antimacassers skirted the sofa, the pattern broken by stains and the occasional cigar hole. Richly embroidered, fusty-smelling cushions lay slumbering in the faded upholstery. But Murdo had added the hand-woven ferns on the mantlepiece. Best to let the real ones grow free. Those that were left.
