Downtime - Marc Platt [74]
‘I had other responsibilities,’ he said to her.
‘Who to?’
He smiled. How could he explain? ‘To...everyone.’
‘What?’
‘That’s all.’
There was a woman in a dark cloak standing on the other side of the canal. A solitary figure like a ghost risen from the cemetery.
‘Who do I trust then?’ said Kate.
She was there alone among the gravestones. Another memory. The woman who had been plaguing his thoughts.
‘Who do I trust then?’
He turned back and found that he was standing with young Hinton. The world was misty, lowering, turning into a bowl in which he was trapped. The trees were leaning in over him.
Hinton seemed frightened and spoke urgently. ‘Don’t trust anyone, sir. I told you, no one at all.’
He was no longer dressed in his school gear. He wore a dark coat and under it there was a flash of green and yellow.
‘Trust no one at all.’
The cloaked woman was suddenly there behind Hinton. Her clear eyes pierced him. He shuddered under their assault. He put them out of his head. The world opened out again.
‘Well?’ said Kate.
Confused, he snatched at a straw. ‘Are you sure you don’t want any money?’
A look of sickened despair settled over her face. ‘Just forget it,’ she said and started to walk away.
‘Kate!’ When he shouted her name, she started to run. She was already disappearing up a side track. He tried to follow, but could not begin to match her pace.
As he ran, two familiar figures in Chilly uniforms emerged ahead of him from the side of the towpath. The first blocked his way with a surly grin.
‘Hello, grandad. We want you.’
The Brigadier felt himself grabbed from behind. Arms pressed in on his chest. He struggled as the first Chilly raised his spare set of headphones and advanced on him. He recognized the repeating bleep from the speakers. A sound that had once accompanied the Yeti when their forces occupied London.
The Chilly started to force the phones over his head. The signal began to swamp his thoughts. He fought to keep his own will. Swooning, he reached out with his hand and yanked the Chilly’s own headphones off his attacker’s head.
The youth gave a yell of pain and his knees gave way. He sprawled on the path, shaking his head in shock.
Somewhere in his head, the Brigadier heard a shout. He staggered and saw both the Chillys taking to their heels along the towpath.
His head was going numb. He dropped to his own knees, unable to catch his breath. He fell sideways supporting himself on one hand. Kate. He wanted Kate.
There was a figure running towards him, running downwards out of the sun, scuttling down the side track, a heavy coat flapping round it, a dark scarf flying behind it. The light made a halo of wild curls round its head. And the face, the nut-brown face, was too close, staring too hard. He couldn’t make out the face in the shadow of the golden halo. It could be anyone he was half expecting.
‘Good Lord,’ he slurred. ‘Is that you? Have you changed yourself again?’
Too much light. Too much. He couldn’t make out the face.
He keeled over into darkness.
22
Light of Truth
he mix of dream and reality that she had learned to juggle, T slid between her fingers. The canal snaked away below.
The silver cord that anchored her astral body to her physical shape stretched, threatened to tear. Faster and faster. An irresistible current was dragging her down into a Charybdis vortex of flying faces and flying mountains. Victoria was carried in the grip of a wave of her own despair. The lost shapes of things never born snatched at her; ideas yet to find thoughts; shadows hungry to be cast. All the hidden life that waits to squirm and wriggle through any crack into reality.
The wave broke and washed her like jetsam onto the empty beach. Endless fields of computer data scrolled across the livid sky. The wind flung squalls of sand in her face. The dark shape of her despair still gripped like a vice, a clawed hand, wreathed in web, clamped at her arm. She struggled to escape as its shadow rose above