TIME QUAKE (44 page)

‘
Gideon?
’ he cried.

Instinctively Lord Luxon raised his arms to protect himself against imminent attack. But at the very moment that Gideon was reaching out to grab hold of Lord Luxon’s shoulders, the hour
struck
. It was not for nothing that this collection was so renowned: hundreds of clocks all over the building were synchronised so that they all chimed the hour in perfect unison, like an orchestra coming to life in reaction to a tiny movement of a conductor’s baton. It was so loud you could
feel
the vibrations. It was so loud it
hurt
. Without thinking, Peter, like so many others in the room, covered his ears with his hands, an action he regretted as soon as he had done it.

Kate’s grip on her own time was by now so tenuous that she fast-forwarded the instant Peter removed his hand from hers. She tried to fight the distress that flooded over her as she held up a hand to see what more damage had been done. It was difficult to tell. This time the shapes she saw floating in the air around her were much clearer. In fact, if she compared her own flesh with the shapes, as she was becoming more transparent, they appeared more opaque.
She was convinced that they were alive. There must, she thought, be worlds whose very existence we don’t even suspect because they move so much faster or slower than us, or because our senses just can’t detect them. She wondered if the shapes were aware of her.

Unlike her own clothes, Peter and Gideon’s jackets did not move when she did, so it was with relief that Kate found that she could just duck down and creep out of the stiff tent formed by them. She looked up at Peter. His face was screwed up and his hands were clapped over his ears. The jackets floated next to him, the contour of her own head and shoulders still clearly visible. Kate realised how much easier it was to move in this world now, as if her body was better adjusted to life at this speed. She also realised how much effort just walking or keeping upright had been taking.

She looked over towards Gideon. It was a striking scene. Every eye in the room was trained on the two figures, frozen in a dramatic tableau in front of the water clock. Kate’s experience with the Tar Man had made her wary of touching anyone, so she wove a very careful path between the visitors to Tempest House. She wafted the indistinct and floating shapes out of her way as she went. Did they remind her of thistledown or butterflies or jellyfish? She wasn’t quite sure.

When she reached the water clock she saw that Gideon was in full flight and that neither of his feet was actually touching the ground. He was reaching out to grab Lord Luxon with both hands. Lord Luxon was gawping at him in alarm from behind arms crossed defensively in front of his face. Poor Gideon, thought Kate, looking at his bad eye. It was still very swollen and red, with a halo of purple and yellow bruising. Kate slowly circled Lord Luxon as if he were a statue in a museum. She had never come across a man who took this much care of his appearance. How vain he must be, she thought.

Lord Luxon’s ivory jacket was hanging open. It was lined with matching silk, and a small black object, protruding from an inside pocket, caught her eye. It wasn’t a wallet. It was made of metal. Being extremely careful not to touch Lord Luxon, Kate drew closer. It couldn’t be a gun, could it? Not that she had ever seen a real gun, but it seemed to Kate that it could potentially be the barrel of a small gun. Taking a step backwards, she scrutinised Lord Luxon’s body language – was he preparing to reach for a weapon? It was possible, she supposed. She decided that she had to investigate. If Gideon was in danger she could not take any chances.

Kate stood uncomfortably close to Lord Luxon. Very slowly she placed thumb and forefinger around the small metal cylinder and pulled as hard as she could. It was to no avail. Then she tried pulling with two thumbs and two forefingers but she still could not budge it at all. The object might just as well have weighed a ton. She felt frustration and panic in equal measure. If it
were
a gun and Lord Luxon
did
intend to use it she would not be able to warn Gideon in time. By the time she had touched Peter and stopped fast-forwarding and shouted to Gideon to be careful, he could already be shot and bleeding on the floor.

What should she do? Or, rather, what
could
she do in the circumstances? It then occurred to her that this was not only about Gideon’s safety. If Lord Luxon got away, and continued to use the anti-gravity machine, there would be more parallel worlds and more time quakes until . . . who knows what might happen. The weight of responsibility on her shoulders made her feel tearful and afraid. She looked at her hands again. Didn’t she have enough to deal with?

Kate observed the water clock and at the ropes of sparkling water pouring off the top of the golden wheel and hanging in
mid-air. She sat down next to it and patted the spongy surface of the water. The memory of the Tar Man’s horrified face when she had grabbed hold of him by the Thames was still vivid in her mind. And though she recoiled at the thought, this
was
a possibility . . . If she frightened Lord Luxon enough, it would give her a few more precious seconds to warn Gideon about the gun. Meanwhile Gideon would be able to grab Lord Luxon and wrestle him to the floor – and then Peter could help, too . . .

But such a course of action made her anxious and Kate procrastinated for a while. But then a calmness fell over her and her courage returned. Suddenly it seemed that this was the way it had to be. If Peter had not taken his hand from hers at that precise moment they would all be in a much worse position. She searched her own future again and still saw nothing. She searched Peter’s future and still saw him distraught at the top of this very building. There were no easy answers for her, there were no instructions to be plucked out of the sky. All there was to rely on was her own intelligence and her own judgement. Her father always told her to trust herself and that was all she could do. If anyone else had tried to stop Lord Luxon, they had clearly failed. She now had a chance to stop him – and she was not going to turn away from it.

Kate marched straight up to Lord Luxon and, without hesitation, grabbed him by both wrists. Nothing happened. His flesh felt hard and smooth. She stared into his face.

‘Come on,’ she cried. ‘Surely you can feel that!’

She carried on gripping him, indeed, she gripped him for so long that she grew bored, but then, all of a sudden, she realised that his hands had grown soft and then she saw his face crease in a violent spasm. Lord Luxon’s eyes, already open wide, opened even wider, and he turned to look at her. He opened his mouth to cry out but no sound came. Although she had willed it to happen, now
that it had, she had the impression that a corpse had come to life. But when Kate tried to remove her hands from his wrists she could not. The two of them were stuck together like opposite poles of a magnet. She pulled and tugged and shook her hands and soon Lord Luxon was doing the same. When she looked down she saw that not only was her flesh transparent, now, so too was Lord Luxon’s. Her Law of Temporal Osmosis had proved all too accurate – she and Lord Luxon were accelerating through time together. Both of them struggled uselessly against invisible forces that fused them together.

‘Why can’t I take my hands away?’ cried Kate.

It seemed to her that they were travelling through time faster and faster, and faster. Soon they were surrounded by a carapace of light. Lord Luxon tried to run away from Kate and his terror was so great he could not stop even though he saw that he was pulling Kate along with him.

‘Stop it!’ Kate screamed. ‘I can’t keep up with you!’

But he continued to stagger sideways, dragging Kate alongside him when she lost her footing. They knocked into people and clocks and tumbled into the long gallery where Lord Luxon’s father and ancestors stared down at him from their portraits, as disapproving as ever. Now they were moving much faster than the floating shapes, and the crackling light that emanated from them was growing more intense. Around and around they went, leaving the long gallery and entering the Hall of Mirrors. Kate no longer had the strength to struggle against Lord Luxon and allowed herself to be carried along in this macabre dance. They were spinning around now at much greater velocity, though whether this was due to Lord Luxon or the force that held them Kate could not tell. Slowly but surely Kate was beginning to lose consciousness. Slowly but surely Kate sensed that she was drifting apart. Through
half-open eyes Kate saw their dazzling double silhouette reflected from one mirror to another in an infinite crescendo of light. The Hall of Mirrors started to fade. Soon it disappeared altogether. Now they were lost in an unfathomable darkness. Kate struggled to keep awake for she was beginning to sense a change in the force that held them together. Lord Luxon must have felt something, too, and as he stared in horror into Kate’s eyes a final time, the force abruptly
stopped
. Lord Luxon fell away from her into the void. Her eyes followed his trajectory. He was a spark from a bonfire that rises into the night sky, caught by the wind, swirling, falling, burning more brightly for an instant, and then vanishing for ever in the velvet blackness. Kate’s eyelids closed. It was over.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-S
IX

A Perfect Day

In which all is lost for Kate

The diaphanous shapes floated by. Sometimes a cluster of them would gather around her and she had the impression that they were tasting her, much as butterflies might sip nectar from a flower. Soon she would have so little substance that she doubted even she could see herself. She felt her eyes sliding shut.

Then the memory came to Kate like a benediction. It was so strong it blotted out everything else. It was during those carefree days when the door of the future was still closed to her. It was the last day of the autumn half-term holiday, only a few weeks before the day that Peter Schock arrived in her life.

She was perched on the narrow bench in the back of the ancient Land Rover, squashed up between Sam and Sean. She was so cross at being dragged off on a family outing when she had already made plans of her own. Kate felt every jarring stone and pothole as the Land Rover juddered up the rough track towards the main road, throwing her brothers and sisters around so that their shoulders thumped one against the other. All Kate’s friends had proper cars
with springs and everything. Why did
her
family have to ride around in this bone-rattler?

She had been feeling put upon all week. As the eldest, she felt she had done more than her fair share of the chores and the boring stuff and she had tons more homework than anyone else. Somehow, being deprived of her freedom on the last day of the half-term holiday before school started again was the final straw. She had upset Sam by stomping off up the stairs and slamming her door. Sam could not bear it when Kate and their mum fell out. They were each as strong-willed as the other so that when Sam tried to get them to make up, mother and daughter just got cross with him as well. Kate felt bad about it but was definitely not going to say sorry. She was entitled to her own personal space! Anyway, it was no big deal. Just a family squabble. A case of people getting on each other’s nerves. But now that Kate’s temper had cooled she was starting to feel miserable.

‘But it’s such a beautiful day!’ Mrs Dyer insisted as she drove them out of their valley. ‘Just look how blue the sky is. It’ll be winter soon. Let’s not waste this lovely sunny day. You never know how many days like this you’ve got.’

‘Don’t say things like that!’ exclaimed Sam. ‘I hate it when you say stuff like that!’

Kate looked at him. He had tears in his eyes. The twins rolled their eyes theatrically towards heaven.

‘Poor ’ickle Sammy, he’s
so
sensitive,’ said Issy.

Sam reached over and slapped her hand hard. ‘Shut up!’ he shouted.

Issy burst into tears. He had hurt her.

‘Calm down, for goodness’ sake, Sam,’ growled Dr Dyer. ‘We do
not
– even when provoked – hit each other in this family.’

Kate’s dad had not felt like a trip out either. He was in the middle
of emailing a NASA colleague with some complicated data but he had come along because he did not want to disappoint Kate’s mother.

Issy sniffed and Kate passed her a tissue.

‘For goodness’ sake!’ exploded Mrs Dyer. ‘I only wanted all of us to go on a family outing for a change. Is that too much too ask?’ No one answered. ‘Clearly it is!’

The path that led from the gardens at Chatsworth House to the Hunting Lodge was very steep. Dr and Mrs Dyer walked ahead, holding hands and talking. Sometimes Mrs Dyer rested her head on her husband’s shoulder. Kate was on sheepdog duty, as usual, rounding up the four younger ones and giving Milly a piggy-back when she needed it for she was going through a stage of refusing to sit in the buggy. The atmosphere was still tense and Sam, who would normally help her, was dragging behind looking sad. Kate put her baby sister down and stood still for a moment to get her breath back. She looked down at how far they had climbed. She was beginning to feel better despite her mood. Her cheeks had turned rosy. Below them Chatsworth dominated the valley. The trees were fast losing their leaves and had turned shades of yellow, red and brown. The great fountain gushed forth a plume of white water high over the lake and, beyond, a silver river slid under the arched stone bridge.

Suddenly Milly, exhausted from the climb, sat on her bottom and refused to budge. She started to cry. Shrill, piping sobs echoed through the woods and the whole family stopped in their tracks and looked over at the tiny figure, her golden curls blowing in the breeze, her red corduroy trousers bulging with a nappy that no doubt needed changing, her podgy arms raised in the air waiting for someone to pick her up and make her feel better. There was a slight pause and then, moving inwards like the spokes of a wheel, everyone approached the toddler at the centre of the circle. Dr and
Mrs Dyer started to jog towards Milly, Sam slid off the iron cannon at the foot of the Hunting Lodge and the twins and Sean abandoned their game of tag. Kate reached her tiny sister first and picked her up, holding her soft, wet cheek against hers. Mrs Dyer got there next and Kate realised that, inexplicably, tears were running down her own cheeks, too.