TIME QUAKE (37 page)

Peter pushed himself up a fraction and muttered: ‘Could you tell him we’ll be down in a minute?’

Kate kept her head buried in the mattress. All she could manage was a groan. Hannah was, herself, too tired to cajole. ‘Very well,’ she said, closing the door, ‘I shall tell the Tar Man you will join him presently.’

When Peter tried to get up he discovered that he was tied to Kate. All of this was really getting to her. He untied the
fichu
and got up as quietly as he could. He splashed his face with the hot water. He looked down at the sleeping Kate and then dried his face with the linen cloth. When he took the towel away from his eyes, a second or two later, he was shocked to see Kate standing next to him, touching his hand.

‘I didn’t see you—’

But Peter stopped mid-sentence and stared at Kate open-mouthed. His hand flew to his mouth. Suddenly Kate vanished and reappeared simultaneously on his other side. Peter cried out in shock.

‘
Don’t
let go of me,’ she said. ‘Every time you do I fast-forward.’

‘Fast-forward?’ Peter just stared at her. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Why are you looking at me like that?’

‘You . . . I . . . I think you’d better look in the mirror . . .’

There was a small, oval mirror in a gold frame above the dressing table. Kate looked into it for a long moment. Her contours were hazy, and the colour of her skin, and even that of her hair, was as diluted and delicate as the finest silk chiffon. A single ray of afternoon sunshine penetrated the room through a high window and passed right through her shoulder. Kate showed no expression but hot tears started to flow down Peter’s cheeks. His friend could no longer be said to be solid.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. ‘I can’t help it. You look . . . like a ghost.’

Kate merely nodded in agreement.

‘What’s happening to you, Kate? I don’t understand!’

And so the conversation that Kate had been dreading for so long took place. Things had gone too far for it not to. She could no longer pretend that nothing was wrong – either to herself or anyone else. Something was very wrong indeed. They sat down side by side on the mattress and Kate told Peter about fast-forwarding and seeing the future and what had happened when she touched the Tar Man and about being able to talk with Dr Pirretti – or at least an alternative Dr Pirretti in a parallel world. At first Peter just listened but soon the questions started.

‘You mean you were fast-forwarding and seeing the future when you were with my dad and the grown-up version of me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did
I
know what was happening to you?’

‘A little . . . not everything.’

‘Well, why couldn’t you tell me? It was obvious something was
wrong, that you were beginning to fade. Did you think I was too stupid to understand?’

‘I’m telling you now . . .’

‘I might have been able to help!’

‘This isn’t about
you
! I didn’t
want
to talk about it! I thought I might stop doing it, acclimatise, or something. Like getting used to the heat on holiday . . . We stopped blurring after a while, didn’t we?’

Peter nodded miserably.

‘And anyway, you’re the only one who
can
help.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You’re my lightning conductor. You ground me.’

‘Is that why you won’t let go of me?’

‘Yes. Why do you think I tied our wrists together? Without you I just spin off at a million miles an hour. It might seem like one night to you. For me these past twenty-four hours feel like a year. I lost count of the number of times I fast-forwarded before I tied us up. I was talking to Dr Pirretti during the night and—’

‘Can you hear her now?’

‘I only hear her while I’m fast-forwarding.’

‘But why?’

‘She’s got a theory – which I couldn’t follow. Something to do with parallel worlds and dark energy. I can see the future much more easily when I’m fast-forwarding, too.’

‘Can you see my future?’

Kate nodded. ‘I’ve seen something. I didn’t understand it – you were upset. You were standing on a tall building with a city in the distance that looked a bit like London but I’m not sure.’

‘Eighteenth or twenty-first century?’

‘Definitely not eighteenth . . .’

‘But that’s fantastic! It means we get back! Can you see your future?’

‘No . . . I’ve tried.’

‘Maybe no one’s supposed to see their own future.’

Kate shrugged. ‘Maybe I don’t
have
a future.’

‘Don’t talk like that!’

Kate shrugged again and turned to look at the fluffy clouds through the high window. Peter heard the call of swallows and observed the light penetrating through Kate’s skull. He could scarcely feel her hand. Her touch was feather-light. Peter squeezed Kate’s hand very gently. Kate turned around and shot a look at him. She knew what he was doing. She squeezed back. Peter looked down and saw how she was straining – Kate was gripping him as hard as she could and yet he could barely feel it.

‘Maybe another Kate Dyer has a future—’

‘Stop it!’

‘No, no I mean it! I saw myself. I guess I saw a version of me from one of Dr Pirretti’s parallel worlds.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘I was terrified.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I hid. She – I – was moving at a slower rate than me. It was funny, I looked like I was gliding on ice skates or something. If I hadn’t been so scared I would have laughed. But seeing yourself like that, like others see you, but being on the outside looking in, not being able to know what’s going on in your head . . . it’s weird. Horrible weird. The other me had an expression on her face like Sam when I told him I’d put his name down for a bungee jump from the church steeple on April Fool’s Day . . .’

‘If there’s an alternative Kate Dyer out there . . .’

‘Not just one, loads of them if Dr Pirretti’s right.’

‘All right, if there are loads of Kate Dyers out there, does that mean there are loads of Peter Schocks, too?’

‘Of course! But she says that the important thing to get clear in your head is that all the other Peters and Kates are in parallel worlds – the duplicate worlds created at the precise moment a time event happens. But
this
is the original world. It is in only in
this
world that it is possible to put things right . . .’

‘So your Dr Pirretti in her parallel world can’t do anything to help?’

‘No. Do you remember what the Marquis de Montfaron said? If you want to cut down ivy from a house, you don’t snip it off a leaf at a time, you just cut through the trunk at the base. We’re the trunk of that tree . . .’

Peter got up, inadvertently dragging Kate along with him, with no more effort than pulling a balloon on a string.

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I forgot. I wanted to pace up and down a bit.’

‘That’s okay.’

Peter looked down at Kate’s gossamer hand holding on to his. ‘I guess it’s going to be like this from now on.’

‘You do understand? I
need
to hold on to you. Each time I fast-forward I think I’m accelerating through time. I see shapes in the air now. I don’t know what they are but I think they’re alive. At first they moved about so fast I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. Then it was like seeing insects flitting past. Now they float and drift around like thistledown or something.’

Peter nodded and remembered the thistledown floating in the valley in Derbyshire the first day they were catapulted back in time. How could it possibly have all come to this?

‘Now, each time I stop fast-forwarding,’ said Kate, ‘I look at my hands . . . and each time it looks like there’s a little bit less of me.’

Peter looked away.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Kate.

‘It’s not your fault!’

‘Touching you is the only way I can stop it . . . I feel so alone when I’m fast-forwarding . . .’

Peter squeezed Kate’s hand. ‘Have you asked Dr Pirretti why you’re . . . fading?’

‘She reckons it’s to do with dark energy.’

‘A guess or is she sure?’

‘A guess, I think. You know how some materials conduct electricity better than others? Like copper’s brilliant but rubber’s useless?’

Peter nodded. ‘I think so.’

‘Well, when it comes to conducting dark energy, I’m copper. She thinks the Tar Man is a good conductor, too. But you . . .’

‘I’m rubber?’

‘Yes. And my dad. Dr Pirretti reckons that it is the way dark energy and time react with each other that caused us to shoot off to 1763 in the first place. She thinks the accidental discovery of time travel is partly my fault for being such a good conductor of dark energy . . .’

‘I don’t get it. Is that what’s making you fade?’

‘You know how gravity attracts one thing to another, holds us down to earth and stops us floating off into space?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well dark energy does the opposite. And you know how too much gravity is not good. Like with black holes. Everything being sucked in until even time itself stops . . .’

‘Time stops in a black hole?’

‘Apparently. But dark energy does the opposite – it pushes things apart. Dr Pirretti says it’s gravity that keeps things together
and dark energy that keeps things apart. And as the universe is expanding it looks like dark energy is winning out . . . So it’s the
balance
between gravity and dark matter that makes the universe the way it is. Do you see what I’m saying?’

Peter pulled a face. ‘Don’t ask. But you still haven’t said why you look like you do.’

‘Do you want me to explain again?’

‘No!’

‘Well, anyway . . . She says that what is happening to the galaxies in space is happening to the atoms in my body.’

‘What?!’

‘It does make sense if you think about it. You know how there’s a nucleus at the centre of every atom with loads of electrons spinning round it and empty space in between?’

‘Not really.’

‘Imagine some planets revolving around a sun.’

‘Okay.’

‘Well, it’s the same sort of thing, only instead of space and massive distances, we’re talking atoms and tiny distances.’

‘So what does Dr Pirretti say is happening to your tiny suns and planets?’

Kate opened her mouth to answer but stopped. They heard footsteps approaching up the hallway and there was a knock on the door.

‘I’ll tell you in a minute . . .’

Hannah opened the door.

‘Master Blueskin is growing impatient, he asked me to—’

It was then that Hannah caught sight of Kate, standing next to Peter in front of the window. She screamed and ran out of the room. Peter and Kate looked at each other.

‘I’ll tell you about my planets later,’ she whispered to Peter. ‘I
think we’d better get dressed and go and frighten the Tar Man next . . .’

‘I can guess what’s happening to your planets,’ said Peter quietly. ‘You’ve got too much dark energy in you – your atoms are drifting apart . . . Aren’t they?’

Kate held up her hand to the light. ‘And having your atoms drift apart is definitely not good.’

‘Have you asked her how you can get better?’

Kate looked at him. ‘Don’t you think she would have told me if she knew?’

They got dressed back to back and somehow managed never to lose contact, even if it was just their heels touching. And even in such dire circumstances they could not help laughing. Hannah found a veil and a pair of gloves to disguise Kate’s increasing transparency but if she had been brave tending Sir Richard, Kate’s condition terrified her. She was still trembling half an hour later when she opened the door to Sir Richard’s drawing room. They were expecting to find the Tar Man but it was empty save for Parson Ledbury who stood up and bade them all a good afternoon.

‘Ah, Mistress Kate,’ he said, approaching her and taking her gloved hand. ‘Hannah has told me of your condition. Do not feel you have to hide yourself behind a veil. We are friends, are we not?’

Kate slowly pulled off her veil and Parson Ledbury’s expression did not change except to smile at her. ‘That is better. Now I can see your pretty face.’

Hannah drew out her handkerchief and wiped her nose and damp cheeks.

‘The Tar Man was anxious to depart for Tempest House and would wait no longer. He was anxious to arrive before nightfall.
Gideon has accompanied him. They have taken the cart in order to transport the device—’

‘But do you think we can trust him?’ interrupted Peter. ‘You remember what happened the last time Gideon and the Tar Man rode off together to Tempest House—’

‘True, Master Schock, Gideon was lucky to come out of it alive. But as
we
have something he needs, and
he
has something we need, what alternative do any of us have? Mistress Kate, forgive me for putting the question to you – but tell me that it was not a ruse. You do possess the code, do you not?’