The Mammoth Book of New Comic Fantasy Read online

  It wasn’t there. Under Fiction: Paper Relics: 20th Century, sub-section Magazines, American, there was shelf after shelf full of Amazing Stories, Astounding, Analog, Weird Tales and Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, but not one single copy of Woman’s Secrets.

  Well, he thought, if the magazine isn’t there, I guess I never made it after all. Maybe it’s better that way. Then he thought, but if I never made it, how can I be looking for the story? I shouldn’t even know about it. And then he had another thought.

  “File,” he said. “Information required: magazines on loan.”

  “Display?”

  “No, just tell me.”

  “Woman’s Secrets, date 1973. Astounding, date . . .”

  “Skip the rest. Who’s got Woman’s Secrets?”

  “Checking. Signed out to Project Control through Joe Twofingers.”

  Project Control was on to him! If he didn’t act quickly, it would be too late.

  It was amazingly easy to get into the lab. He just walked in. The machines were all lined up against one wall, and there was no one around to stop him. He walked up to the nearest machine and sat down on it. The earliest model developed by Samuel Colson had looked like an English telephone box (he’d been a big Doctor Who fan), but it was hardly inconspicuous and extremely heavy, so refinements were made until the latest models were lightweight, collapsible, and made to look exactly like (and double up as) a folding bicycle. The control board was hidden from general view, inside a wicker basket.

  None of the instruments were labelled. Alan tentatively pushed one button. Nothing happened. He pushed another. Still nothing.

  He jumped off and looked for an instruction book. There had to be one somewhere. He was ransacking a desk when the door opened.

  “I thought I’d find you here, Alan.”

  “Joe! I . . . uh . . . was just . . .”

  “I know what you’re doing, and I can’t let you go through with it. It’s against every rule of the Institute and you know it. If you interfere with the past, who knows what harm you might do?”

  “But Joe, you know me. I wouldn’t do any harm. I won’t do anything to affect history, I swear it. I just want to see her, that’s all. Besides, it’s already happened, or you couldn’t have read that magazine. And that’s another thing! You’re the one who showed it to me! I never would have known about her if it hadn’t been for you. So if I’m going now, it’s down to you.”

  “Alan, I’m sorry, but my job is on the line here, too, you know. So don’t give me any trouble and come along quietly.”

  Joe moved towards him, holding a pair of handcuffs. Attempted theft of Institute property was a felony punishable by five years’ imprisonment without pay. Alan picked up the nearest bike and brought it down over the top of Joe’s head. The machine lay in pieces and Joe lay unconscious. Alan bent down and felt his pulse. He would be okay. “Sorry, Joe. I had to do it. File!”

  “Yes.”

  “Information required: instruction manual for usage of . . .” he checked the number on the handlebars, “Colson Model 44B Time Traveller.”

  “Checking. Found. Display?”

  “No. Just print. And fast.”

  The printer was only on page five when Alan heard running footsteps. Five pages would have to do.

  Dear Cher, My name is Cecily Walker and all my friends tell me I look just like you. Well, a little bit. Anyway, the reason that I’m writing to you is this: I’m starting my senior year in high school, and I’ve never had a steady boyfriend. I’ve gone out with a couple of boys, but they only want one thing, and I guess you know what that is. I keep thinking there’s gotta be somebody out there who’s the right one for me, but I just haven’t met him. Was it love at first sight for you and Sonny?

  Alan sat on a London park bench with his printout and tried to figure out what he’d done wrong. Under Location: Setting, it just said “See page 29.” Great, he thought. And he had no idea what year it was. Every time he tried to ask someone, they’d give him a funny look and walk away in a hurry. He folded up the bike and took a walk. It wasn’t long before he found a news-stand and saw the date: July 19, 1998. At least he had the right century.

  Back in the park, he sat astride the machine with the printout in one hand, frowning and wondering what might happen if he twisted a particular dial from right to left.

  “Can’t get your bike to start, mate?” someone shouted from nearby. “Just click your heels three times and think of home.”

  “Thanks, I’ll try that,” Alan shouted back. Then he vanished.

  “I am a pirate from yonder ship,” the man with the eye patch told her, “and well used to treasure. But I tell thee, lass, I’ve never seen the like of you.”

  Cecily groaned and ripped the page in half. She bit her lip and started again.

  “I have travelled many galaxies, Madeleine,” the alien bleeped. “But you are a life-form beyond compare.”

  “No, don’t. Please don’t,” Madeleine pleaded as the alien reached out to pull her towards its rock hard chest.

  Her mother appeared in the doorway. “Whatcha doin’, hon?”

  She dropped the pen and flipped the writing pad face down. “My homework.”

  The next thing Alan knew he was in the middle of a cornfield. He hitched a lift with a truck driver who asked a lot of questions, ranging from “You work in a gas station, do you?” to “What are you, foreign or something?” and “What do you call that thing?” On being told “that thing” was a folding bicycle, the man muttered something about whatever would they think of next, and now his kid would be wanting one.

  There were several Walkers listed in the Danville phone book. When he finally found the right house, Cecily was in the middle of her third birthday party.

  He pedalled around a corner, checked his printout, and set the controls on “Fast Forward”. He folded the machine and hid it behind a bush before walking back to the house. It was big and painted green, just like in the story. There was an apple tree in the garden, just like in the story. The porch swing moved ever so slightly, rocked by an early summer breeze. He could hear crickets chirping and birds singing. Everything was just the way it had been in the story, so he walked up the path, nervously clearing his throat and pushing back a stray lock of hair, just the way Cecily Walker had described him in Woman’s Secrets, before finally taking a deep breath and knocking on the door. There was movement inside the house. The clack of high-heeled shoes across a wooden floor, the rustle of a cotton dress.

  “Yes?”

  Alan stared at her, open-mouthed. “You’ve cut your hair,” he told her.

  “What?”

  “Your hair. It used to hang down to your waist, now it’s up to your shoulders.”

  “Do I know you?”

  “You will,” he told her. He’d said that in the story.

  She was supposed to take one look at him and realise with a fluttering heart that this was the man she’d dreamed of all her life. Instead, she looked at his orange jumpsuit and slapped her hand to her forehead in enlightenment. “You’re from the garage! Of course, Mack said he’d be sending the new guy.” She looked past him into the street. “So where’s your tow truck?”

  “My what?” There was nothing in “The Love That Conquered Time” about a tow truck. The woman stared at him, looking confused. Alan stared back, equally confused. He started to wonder if he’d made a mistake. But then he saw those eyes, bigger and greener than he’d ever thought possible. “Matrix,” he said out loud.

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry. It’s just that meeting you is so bullasic.”

  “Mister, I don’t understand one word you’re saying.” Cecily knew she should tell the man to go away. He was obviously deranged; she should call the police. But something held her back, a flicker of recognition, the dim stirrings of a memory. Where had she seen this man before?

  “I’m sorry,” Alan said again. “My American isn’t very good. I come from English-speaki
ng Europe, you see.”

  “English-speaking Europe?” Cecily repeated. “You mean England?”

  “Not exactly. Can I come inside? I’ll explain everything.”

  She let him come in after warning him that her neighbours would come running in with shotguns if they heard her scream, and that she had a black belt in Kung Fu. Alan nodded and followed her inside, wondering where Kung Fu was, and why she’d left her belt there.

  He was ushered into the living room and told to have a seat. He sat down on the red velveteen-upholstered sofa and stared in awe at such historical artefacts as a black and white television with rabbit-ear antennae, floral-printed wallpaper, a phone you had to dial, and shelf after shelf of unpreserved books. She picked up a wooden chair and carried it to the far side of the room before sitting down. “Okay,” she said. “Talk.”

  Alan felt it would have been better to talk over a candle-lit dinner in a restaurant, like they did in the story, but he went ahead and told her everything, quoting parts of the story verbatim, such as the passage where she described him as the perfect lover she’d been longing for all her life.

  When he was finished, she managed a frozen smile. “So you’ve come all the way from the future just to visit little ole me. Isn’t that nice.”

  Oh, Matrix, Alan thought. She’s humouring me. She’s convinced I’m insane and probably dangerous as well. “I know this must sound crazy to you,” he said.

  “Not at all,” she told him, gripping the arms of her chair. He could see the blood draining out of her fingers.

  “Please don’t be afraid. I’d never harm you.” He sighed and put a hand to his forehead. “It was all so different in the story.”

  “But I never wrote any story. Well, I started one once, but I never got beyond the second page.”

  “But you will. You see, it doesn’t get published until 1973.”

  “You do know this is 1979, don’t you?”

  “WHAT?”

  “Looks like your timing’s off,” she said. She watched him sink his head into his hands with an exaggerated groan. She rested her chin on one hand and regarded him silently. He didn’t seem so frightening now. Crazy, yes, but not frightening. She might even find him quite attractive, if only things were different. He looked up at her and smiled. It was a crooked, little boy’s smile that made his eyes sparkle. For a moment, she almost let herself imagine waking up to that smile . . . She pulled herself up in her chair, her back rigid.

  “Look,” he said. “So I’m a few years behind schedule. The main thing is I found you. And so what if the story comes out a bit later, it’s nothing we can’t handle. It’s only a minor problem. A little case of bad timing.”

  “Excuse me,” Cecily said. “But I think that in this case, timing is everything. If any of this made the least bit of sense, which it doesn’t, you would’ve turned up before now. You said yourself the story was published in 1973 – if it was based on fact, you’d need to arrive here much earlier.”

  “I did get here earlier, but I was too early.”

  Cecily’s eyes widened involuntarily. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I was here before. I met you. I spoke to you.”

  “When?”

  “You wouldn’t remember. You were three years old, and your parents threw a party for you out in the garden. Of course I realised my mistake instantly, but I bluffed it out by telling your mother that I’d just dropped by to apologise because my kid was sick and couldn’t come – it was a pretty safe bet that someone wouldn’t have shown – and she said, ‘Oh, you must be little Sammy’s father’ and asked me in. I was going to leave immediately, but your father handed me a beer and started talking about something called baseball. Of course I didn’t have a present for you . . .”

  “But you gave me a rose and told my mother to press it into a book so that I’d have it forever.”

  “You remember.”

  “Wait there. Don’t move.” She leapt from her chair and ran upstairs. There was a lot of noise from above – paper rattling, doors opening and closing, things being thrown about. She returned clutching several books to her chest, her face flushed and streaked with dust. She flopped down on the floor and spread them out in front of her. When Alan got up to join her, she told him to stay where he was or she’d scream. He sat back down.

  She opened the first book, and then Alan saw that they weren’t books at all; they were photo albums. He watched in silence as she flipped through the pages and then tossed it aside. She tossed three of them away before she found what she was looking for. She stared open-mouthed at the brittle yellow page and then she looked up at Alan. “I don’t understand this,” she said, turning her eyes back to the album and a faded black and white photograph stuck to the paper with thick, flaking paste. Someone had written in ink across the top: Cecily’s 3rd birthday, August 2nd, 1951. There was her father, who’d been dead for ten years, young and smiling, holding out a bottle to another young man, tall and blonde and dressed like a gas station attendant. “I don’t understand this at all.” She pushed the album across the floor towards Alan. “You haven’t changed one bit. You’re even wearing the same clothes.”

  “Did you keep the rose?”

  She walked over to a wooden cabinet and pulled out a slim hardback with the title, “My First Reader”. She opened it and showed him the dried, flattened flower. “You’re telling me the truth, aren’t you?” she said. “This is all true. You risked everything to find me because we were meant to be together, and nothing, not even time itself, could keep us apart.”

  Alan nodded. There was a speech just like that in “The Love That Conquered Time”.

  “Bastard,” she said.

  Alan jumped. He didn’t remember that part. “Pardon me?”

  “Bastard,” she said again. “You bastard!”

  “I . . . I don’t understand.”

  She got up and started to pace the room. “So you’re the one, huh? You’re ‘Mister Right’, Mister Happily Ever After, caring, compassionate and great in bed. And you decide to turn up now. Well, isn’t that just great.”

  “Is something the matter?” Alan asked her.

  “Is something the matter?” she repeated. “He asks me if something’s the matter! I’ll tell you what’s the matter. I got married four weeks ago, you son of a bitch!”

  “You’re married?”

  “That’s what I said, isn’t it?”

  “But you can’t be married. We were supposed to find perfect happiness together at a particular point in space that has always existed and always will. This ruins everything.”

  “All those years . . . all those years. I went through hell in high school, you know. I was the only girl in my class who didn’t have a date for the prom. So where were you then, huh? While I was sitting alone at home, crying my goddamn eyes out? How about all those Saturday nights I spent washing my hair? And even worse, those nights I worked at Hastings’ Bar serving drinks to salesmen pretending they don’t have wives. Why couldn’t you have been around then, when I needed you?”

  “Well, I’ve only got the first five pages of the manual . . .” He walked over to her and put his hands on her shoulders. She didn’t move away. He gently pulled her closer to him. She didn’t resist. “Look,” he said, “I’m sorry. I’m a real zarkhead. I’ve made a mess of everything. You’re happily married, you never wrote the story . . . I’ll just go back where I came from, and none of this will have ever happened.”

  “Who said I was happy?”

  “But you just got married.”

  She pushed him away. “I got married because I’m thirty years old and figured I’d never have another chance. People do that, you know. They reach a certain age and they figure it’s now or never . . . Damn you! If only you’d come when you were supposed to!”

  “You’re thirty? Matrix, in half an hour you’ve gone from a toddler to someone older than me.” He saw the expression on her face, and mumbled an apology.

  “Look,” sh
e said. “You’re gonna have to go. My husband’ll be back any minute.”

  “I know I have to leave. But the trouble is, that drebbing story was true! I took one look at your photo, and I knew that I loved you and I always had. Always. That’s the way time works, you see. And even if this whole thing vanishes as the result of some paradox, I swear to you I won’t forget. Somewhere there’s a point in space that belongs to us. I know it.” He turned to go. “Good-bye, Cecily.”

  “Alan, wait! That point in space – I want to go there. Isn’t there anything we can do? I mean, you’ve got a time machine, after all.”

  What an idiot, he thought. The solution’s been staring me in the face and I’ve been too blind to see it. “The machine!” He ran down the front porch steps and turned around to see her standing in the doorway. “I’ll see you later,” he told her. He knew it was a ridiculous thing to say the minute he’d said it. What he meant was, “I’ll see you earlier.”

  Five men sat together inside a tent made of animal hide. The land of their fathers was under threat, and they met in council to discuss the problem. The one called Swiftly Running Stream advocated war, but Foot Of The Crow was more cautious. “The paleface is too great in number, and his weapons give him an unfair advantage.” Flying Bird suggested that they smoke before speaking further.

  Black Elk took the pipe into his mouth. He closed his eyes for a moment and declared that the Great Spirit would give them a sign if they were meant to go to war. As soon as he said the word, “war”, a paleface materialised among them. They all saw him. The white man’s body was covered in a strange bright garment such as they had never seen, and he rode a fleshless horse with silver bones. The vision vanished as suddenly as it had appeared, leaving them with this message to ponder: Oops.

  There was no one home, so he waited on the porch. It was a beautiful day, with a gentle breeze that carried the scent of roses: certainly better than that smoke-filled teepee.