Epiworld (18 page)

It’s the first time I’ve ever heard her call him ‘Chase’.

I wake up later in the same room, raise my head, and take in my surroundings. The light is still on, and the old wooden door is ajar. There’s a landing, and a stair banister, shrouded in shadows. Next to the door is a sack; I recognise it, it’s from the hut. A table sits in the middle of the room, and a tatty, worn-looking old chair is next to it. Demi is lounging on the chair, sleeping. She hears me stirring, and sits up quickly.

‘Travis, you’re awake. Are you in pain?’

‘Yeah, a bit.’ My neck and leg are throbbing, and I have a bad head. ‘Where’s your friend?’

‘He’s gone to get food.’ Demi tucks my blanket firmly around me. ‘We’re safe here, miles from anywhere.’

‘Where are we?’

‘In an empty farmhouse. There’s a gas stove downstairs which still works, and the lights work, too. The house is hidden away from the main road. There’s no one here but us, and a few sheep.’

‘Still in that war, then.’

Demi nods. ‘We’re in nineteen forty-two now. The portal brought us forward two years. According to Alex – that’s his name – we were in nineteen forty when he found us.’

‘Alex.’ Sounds familiar, but I can’t think where I’ve heard it before, because my brain is all muddled up. ‘So how did I get here, Demi? I know the portal got you and him out, but I was trapped underneath the bike, and Chase and the guard had me – then suddenly I was with you.’

Demi sighs. ‘You were fitting when we found you. Alex says you called up a portal.’

I look blankly at her.

‘According to him,’ says Demi patiently, ‘that’s what your seizures do. They bring portals to get you out of situations.’

‘How would
he
know about portals?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Is he a doctor?’

‘Yes,’ Demi says promptly. ‘He’s specialises in psychotherapy.’

‘Psychotherapy.’ My eyes drift to the light. ‘Alex, a doctor in psychotherapy.’

Demi shakes my arm. ‘Travis, you’re staring!’

‘He was a psychotherapist,’ I mumble. ‘Dr Alexander. He got me out of the institution.’

I wince; my neck is throbbing. The probe...I’m cutting my flesh, pulling it out... 

‘Don’t, Travis!’ Demi pulls my hands away. ‘Alex has stitched it up.’

‘The probe,’ I butt in, ‘it’s gone, right?’

Demi shivers. ‘You cut your neck open. I didn’t know what you were doing until Alex appeared. He told me. It really spooked me!’

‘And I bet you’re going to ask how I know about your probe, eh, Travis?’

Alex enters the room, carrying a sack. He dumps it on the ground at Demi’s feet. ‘Sorry, couldn’t get any milk, and I couldn’t find an obliging cow, either. The sheep have gone up to the hills, so mutton is off the menu. I found carrots, though, and some potatoes, and I managed to steal a bit of bread.’

Demi sighs. ‘Well, I could try making soup, I suppose.’

Alex bends down next to me, and pulls back the blanket gently. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Tired, and a bit sore.’ My cough hurts. ‘How long will I be here?’

‘It can take weeks for a broken leg to mend.’

‘The last time I was injured in twenty fourteen, when we first ended up in the Nazi world, I came through the portal unscathed. All my wounds were healed. Maybe that’ll happen again.’

‘It didn’t happen this time,’ he points out. ‘You got these injuries in nineteen forty. Anyway, you can’t leave yet. You’re not well enough, and there’s something you need to do first.’

‘What?’

He doesn’t answer, just unties the bandage on my neck. It’s soaked in blood. He throws it into a bag, and picks up what looks like a large sheet which he tears into strips. He dips one of the strips into a small bucket of water lying beside him. He wipes my neck, saying to Demi, ‘The bleeding has eased slightly, but I haven’t got any proper dressings. I’m going to have to change these strips at least three times a day. I’ll get more cloth when some obliging Frau next does her washing.’ To me he says, ‘It was a stupid thing to do! You could’ve bled to death!’

‘You know what probes are, then, and what they do.’

He starts to tie the clean, makeshift bandage around my neck. ‘Yeah; I know what they are.’

‘So you must know about my world in twenty ninety-nine.’

‘You could say that.’

‘Were you there?’

He ties a firm knot at the end of the bandage. ‘You ask a lot of questions.’

‘That’s because I want to know the answers.’

He sighs. ‘Look, Travis, it might unnerve you if I tell you, and right now I’m not sure you’re strong enough for any more surprises.’

‘Ha!’ I snort. ‘I’ve been catapulted ninety years back from my own time into a world I know nothing about; I’ve been followed by a man called Chase, who I know well from my own time, who’s made himself younger, and who’s trying to kill me; I’ve had seizures and lost time, watched Demi grow older when I’ve stayed the same; I’ve been accused of a murder I didn’t commit; I’ve passed through portals with injuries which have miraculously healed; I’ve been attacked by a guard which suddenly appeared out of nowhere in the middle of a war I didn’t know about, and then I suddenly appeared here, injured, confused, but alive, with no real explanation as to how I got here! So, Alex or whatever your name is, any more weirdness you may have in store for me won’t make that much difference!’

He moves closer. ‘Don’t you recognise me, Travis?’

‘No.’ 

‘Let’s see if I’m able to jog your memory, then.’

He puts his finger on my forehead! This stranger knows Chase’s hypnosis trick! What’s he going to do, bend me to his will to keep me quiet, stop me from asking more awkward questions? I’m too weak to resist him. A mist develops, and suddenly two faces I know well appear before me, one with a wide grin, and the other with a friendly, encouraging smile. Hudson! Alexander! They’re real! They’re here! I’m in Dr Alexander’s office! I can’t stop myself from calling out to them.

I reach out, trying to touch them, but my hand goes through Hudson’s face, and he disappears. He’s not real after all!

‘You’re using my memories to torment me!’

He presses his finger more firmly on my brow. ‘Look more closely, Travis.’

I’m back in Alexander’s office, and this time I’m staring straight at his photograph on the wall, watching as Alex’s young face moulds almost perfectly onto his older features.

‘
No
! It can’t be true!’

But it is.

––––––––

‘I
used the Deprovine,’ he explains. ‘I didn’t want Chase to recognise me, and I needed to be young and agile. You’re going to need all the help you can get!’

I grab his hand to see if he’s real. He’s smiling, happy I’m alive. Demi has left us to talk; she’s downstairs preparing the soup.

‘How – how did you...?’ I begin.

‘We were trying to revive you back at the institution,’ he replies, ‘but we couldn’t bring you back, so I decided to try to find you, to see if I could possibly help you come back to us. You’re losing the will to live, Travis. The operation on your brain went ahead just after I sent you away. When you left your body behind Chase told the nuns take you to the operating theatre. I told him epilepsy surgery was dangerous. It hasn’t cured you, anyway. You’re still having fits.’

‘So he went and did it!’ I exclaim angrily. ‘He messed with my brain, left me for dead!’

‘You’re not dead yet, Travis. There’s still a chance we can bring you back, if that’s what you want.’

‘I
do
want to go back,’ I say desperately, ‘but not to that place. I want to be with my mates, in the gang.’

‘You’d stand a better chance of that if you were back with us.’

‘No, I wouldn’t, because Chase would never let me go. I – I heard you and Hudson calling me,’ I take a deep breath to hide the emotion in my voice, ‘and that made me want to go home, but first I need to deal with Chase!’

‘You do want him dead, then?’

‘He has to die,’ I say firmly, ‘before he kills me!’

Demi is singing downstairs. ‘Does she know?’ I ask.

‘She knows who I am. I told her about twenty ninety-nine, and how I got you here.’

‘She believed you?’

‘Yes. She said you’d told her some of it when you first met, and she didn’t believe you then, but after all she’s seen since she said she was ready to believe in someone called Father Christmas, whoever he is. Will you tell her about the surgery?’

I shrug. ‘If I think she needs to know.’

There’s the sound of feet on the stairs, and Demi runs in.

‘Well,’ she says doubtfully, ‘it’s ready, I haven’t tasted it, but it looks cooked. You might want to close your eyes while you eat it, mind!’

‘You both have yours first,’ I tell them. ‘I can wait a bit.’

While I’m alone I have time to think about the epilepsy surgery. It won’t do any good to shout about it, much as I want to. It’s done now. In fact it’s made me more determined than ever to track down Chase, and make him pay.

Soon Demi comes back with soup for me. It looks like cess water, but it tastes all right, and it warms me up.

‘Well, we’re all still here, so I didn’t poison us,’ says Demi, laughing, as I finish the last spoonful.

‘Are you all right, Travis?’ Alex asks when he returns to the room. ‘I could give you more of that willow bark potion if you’re really uncomfortable. It’ll help you to sleep.’

‘No.’ I pull a face. I don’t want any more of that horrible spew, and I don’t want to be knocked out; I still have questions to ask. ‘I want to talk some more about what’s been happening to me.’

‘Very well.’

‘Chase told me about the portals, and said he came after me because he wanted to kill me before I killed him. I force fed some of the truth drug to him that he used on Demi to get answers, how he followed me, why he followed me, why he was younger, what he’d done to Demi. The fact is, though, I don’t know why I’m supposed to kill him, and he never said. Do you know?’

‘Yes,’ Alex says promptly, ‘you have to kill him to stop him from destroying
your
life in our world. You’re going to try to stop him from existing. He’s seen his own death at your hands, so he wants to prevent it. That’s why you have to stay here, in nineteen forty-two, because here your paths will cross, except he knows what’s in store. He told you he used the cortexoscope to read your thoughts before he left the institution. You know how those scopes work, but for your benefit, Demi, I’ll explain. They read what’s happening in the subject’s real time, but whoever sees the images can also have a fast forward picture of what’s going on, what your future plans are, before the subject himself knows what they are. The problem is that the images can be patchy, that is, they don’t always show the whole picture. I think this was so in your case, Travis; you were ill, your brain wasn’t working properly.’

I swallow hard. ‘So if he knows I plan to kill him why didn’t he just do away with me when he first found me, on the beach on Barrasay that night, or later when he returned to the island? He had plenty of opportunities. It wasn’t until I dragged him off to the cave that he first tried it.’

Alex sighs. ‘You think Chase is an evil man. You’re right; but give him some credit of feeling, Travis. It isn’t an easy decision to do away with your own son.’

The silence which follows this statement is electric, until Demi blurts out, ‘
Chas is Travis’s dad
? Nah; ha-ha, you’re having us on!’

Alex looks straight at her. ‘Do I look like I’m joking?’

The colour has drained from her face. My heart is thumping so hard I’m waiting for it to jump out of my chest, and my head is starting to swim.

‘Back in the cave,’ I’m saying, ‘when I killed him – or thought I had – I felt a bit – sad. Do you think I knew?’

‘I don’t know. It’s possible.’

‘How did he know who I was?’

‘He recognised you when you came to the institution. When he had you sedated that time to keep you quiet, he had Sister Augusta take a sample of your blood at the same time, and he compared it with his own. There was no mistake, the nun said, and you know droids can’t lie.’

‘Yet he still operated.’ I’m a mix of emotions – depressed, regretful, angry. ‘He still wanted me dead.’

‘He was also ashamed to have a son born unclean.’

‘He should’ve just smothered my face with a pillow!’

‘He’s probed, like we all are,’ Alex points out. ‘The act will have been detected. You know the penalty for murder, and as important as he is, he wouldn’t be immune from prosecution.’

I exhale slowly, trying to calm myself down. ‘Did he – did he mention my mother?’

Alex hesitates before answering, ‘No.’

‘Do you know where he is now?’

‘I have an idea.’ I open my mouth to speak again, but he puts a hand on my shoulder. ‘No, Travis. We can’t start looking for him until you’re fully fit.’

I lie back, frustrated, but I know he’s right. ‘Explain about the portal, then, and how I managed to escape the guard.’

Alex leans comfortably against the wall and pulls a blanket over himself. ‘You were fitting when we found you.’

‘That’s what Demi said,’ I’m impatient now, ‘but that doesn’t explain how I was stopped from being crushed to death by that robot. I was trapped under the bike, no way could I have got to that portal.’

‘What usually happens when you have a seizure?’

‘The same thing: the warmness in my head, being unable to focus, passing out, waking up with heavy limbs. It’s only the portals which are strange, and the time shifting. Demi has aged about ten years since I’ve known her.’ Demi isn’t taking any notice. ‘I don’t suppose you know what’s going on with the age thing, Doc?’

He nods slowly. ‘I think you’re shifting through time for a reason. You’re calling up portals, so you can move through them into new time dimensions. You also call them when you’re in a bad situation to get you out of it. That’s how you got away from the guard. There’s a good reason why you haven’t aged; time hasn’t moved on for you, because it’s not supposed to. You’re going to end up back in twenty ninety-nine, back where you started.’

‘That’s crazy!’ I begin, and stop short. Hasn’t my life been crazy up to this point, jumping through portals into different worlds, and now finding out that Professor Chase is my father? ‘How do you know all of this?’