The Fleeting 2/3

[cleodoxa]

Part One

The night doesn’t take too long to move on - Gerard remembers nights from his childhood that didn’t go until nobody could really believe it had ever been different. The last time box had done some good stuff. They’re gladder than usual to get down into the forest and stretch their legs. It’s not long before they’re faintly surprised to discover an actual small town. Their buildings all look morphed, boxy with neat sharp edges like they started off with a definite attempt to withstand shift, to represent certainty, but in weird pulled geometric shapes. The trees look more sinister from here, a dark enclosing circle.

“What are you looking for?” asks a passer-by as they walk up and down the main street, wondering if they should explore the town or bypass it. Gerard knows it’s childish but he feels disappointed by the man’s tone, as if looking is quite routine and unrelated to finding anything.

Ray interrupts Gerard's usual do-you-know-how-we-might-find-a-time-box? routine with “I think this is a device district! How weird to see it on the ground.” So they have a look round the engineers’ shops before they go and then Ray gets caught shoplifting a small (but rare, he tells them later) mechanical item and put in the town jail.

It’s all very alarming at first, Ray’s stricken face as he’s marched off. They run after him and the guards or whatever they are shouting “Hey! Hey! What’re you fucking doing?” When they get to the jail things get clearer and more official, and it’s hard not to be annoyed with Ray.

“I’m sorry,” says Ray, looking hangdog. “I just get so frustrated that I can’t try anything out properly. What are they saying? If it’s money or a jail term you know, we can’t really afford it and it probably wouldn’t be that long ...” Gerard doesn’t think Ray means this in the sense he won’t feel a decided pang if they do deliberately leave him in jail. They’d have to hang around here for the duration or probably lose him for good, anyway - there wouldn’t be much hope of them finding their way back here.

“Can’t lie, I wish you were a slicker thief. But we’ll sort it, don’t worry about it. Yet,” says Frank.

They go and talk to a lawyer. Lawyers are creepy; no one ever heard of anyone going through a lawyering process, they just are, like they came with the world in the same way clothes and trains do. This one, like all the others has a tapering white beard, clothes with a black-green sheen, heaps of papers clutches to his chest and a querulously strict manner. There is indeed a fine - a sum they can’t pay - or a jail term.

“How long?” asks Bob.

“I couldn’t say at this stage. The details are not yet defined.”

They stand about at the front desk, police officers bustling about purposefully making them aware they’re in the way.

“We’re not leaving him, right?” asks Mikey in sudden alarm.

“No, no,” says Gerard. Sometimes he tries not to get too attached to the other guys. People get lost and vanished and Metamorphosed all the time and it’s so much better if you can be easy come, easy go and don’t have to think what if, what if, how will I feel then? He guesses he learnt that early. He remembers a time when he remembered their parents, but no impression of them is left with him now, not even what happened to them in the end. But he likes being a group, he likes how they’re good at different things and teaming up for a purpose makes them all stronger and it feels like they don’t all have to be just themselves. So not to put too fine a point on it, he hasn’t managed to achieve a placid, indifferent state he can maintain no matter what happens to anyone. And of course he’s got attached to Ray.

They’re not allowed to see Ray again except to yell through the hole in the cell door that they will get the money for the fine somehow and will be back tomorrow. After that they gloomily mooch off.

“Do we just go back to the ship now?” asks Bob.

“I think we ought to find out more about this place. How we can earn some money,” says Frank, so they find a hostel type place to spend the night, though they’re aware that this is coming out of their limited funds. It isn’t a bad move though because before they even talk to anyone they’ve gathered that this place is into inventions. Everything is automated, anything that can have feet has feet and walks on them. Their rooms have a curious spinning wheel/treadmill effort in them that makes a frenetic but rhythmic metallic clanking sound with sudden high sweet pure notes; not entirely without interest. Gerard turns the fancy barometer to the wall; he’s sure they’re no way they can predict the way time is going to go when it hasn’t decided itself yet, but it freaks him out. All things considered it’s a shame Ray didn’t get to see more of the town before he succumbed to technology’s more minor temptations.

Talking to the other guests and the staff confirm the focus of this place. They don’t have any manufactories so it’s not like they could scrape a little cash with unskilled labor. The only industry is in advanced curiosities and putting up strangers like themselves.

“Maybe we should see if anyone wants to buy Ray’s plans. I mean, lots of them are supposed to work if he could get the right stuff,” says Gerard.

“Or we could always try and sell the air-ship,” says Bob. They all twist their mouths, undecided. It’s not like they want to part with it, and it’s extremely doubtful anyone would want it. “It is rare,” he says.

“You’re good at drawing,” says Mikey to Gerard. “I bet someone would employ you to do plans or something.”

*

They go back to the jail when they’ve had a night’s sleep, though it takes forever to get there because time keeps reeling back a couple of minutes. It always takes a couple of times to notice what’s happening, because somehow you forget there’s probably a reason for that odd sense of familiarity. Then it’s like being jerked back on elastic over and over again and Gerard gets so fucking sick of this stretch of road. He can hardly believe it when they actually do make it to the jail; it’s like stepping inside a mirage.

They can’t see Ray right away; he’s conferring with a lawyer. He’s smiling when they enter the cell, though. “I’ve made a deal,” he says. “That lawyer asked me if I was any good at inventions by any chance so I told him about a few of my ideas and did some sketches. Then he went away for ages and came back and said I’m sort of out on bail. I’m free if I can invent an automaton that’s actually real, like a person.” He looks a little less cheerful. “Which, you know, they’re only doing it because they think I can’t manage it so it’s a bonus if I do. But I’ll try.”

“So it’s got to have a personality? And think for itself, with a brain and everything?” says Gerard.

“Yeah. It’s a big deal for inventors, people are always trying to make it happen because it’d be a Persistence Cause thing, wouldn’t it, if we could make our own people?”

“They’re letting you out to work on it?” says Frank. Ray nods. “If it doesn’t work out you can run, can’t you?”

“I get the idea they’re going to be tracking me. But yeah, I’m sure I can sort it out one way or the other.” His confidence is a little forced and Gerard hopes Ray is really really good at inventing, but it’s better than nothing.

Ray is set up at one of the best master engineers’ in town with full access to all the parts and advice, though it highlights the question of how Ray is supposed to do something if he can’t.

“I think what I’m going to do first is just to build a lot of robots, doing different things, and see what’s not human about them and maybe they’ll be human and not human in different ways and I can collate the evidence,” says Ray. He’s almost rubbing his hands and though Gerard can see it turning into a hopeless task and Ray panicking, he’s glad he’s having fun.

*

Robots are quite a new thing, though they’re spreading; some manufactories are starting to use them instead of workers and some air-ships have them as drivers. They’re taking off slower than they would because they don’t last long; one Metamorphosis is usually the end of them and Neutralisers and Readjustors don’t work on them. Ray’s start off pretty standard; Frank says they’re like ones he’s seen. Gerard earns a few pennies by painting them to look more like people though he can’t seem to make them look like cheerful people. Due probably to the uncertain circumstances, he finds it hard to curb his imagination of melodrama and even when he makes a conscious effort not to make them look consumptive they come out brooding. The town soon fills up with them, serving in shops and doing unnecessary work on the roads. Then Ray has to think how to make them more human, and settles on intelligence first. Language is a priority and it’s very delicate work fitting that many words inside a metallic brain.

“And I guess it should understand the meaning behind the words,” says Ray, enthusiastic but frazzled. They’d all said the most important part was convincing law and order Ray had created a mechanical human, not necessarily creating an actual mechanical human. It’s hard not to get into the spirit of the thing, though, and talk as if he’s not just after a facsimile.

“Can you make it so that every time it says a word it sets off a reaction related to the word, like a picture or a feeling, so it would understand when it’s been using them, at least?” suggests Frank, leaning an elbow on the mantelpiece and rubbing his face against the wall in an instinctive tired-of-the-subject gesture.

“Well, I’m going to have to. But you have to attach wires to the back of every word and it’s so fucking fiddly. I think I’ll make one with easy words first and get it to understand grammar later.”

They all feel a bit useless hanging about the town. Bob seems particularly anxious and keeps going off into the woods with his time bomb, just in case. It helps when they remember that being able to create their own people really would be one in the eye for god and sloping around here might turn out to be just as significant for the Persistence Cause as continuing questing. Gerard cheers up a lot when, as Mikey suggested, he gets a job drawing up plans. It’s with Lyn-Z, the toymaker. She makes flying and talking animals and dolls and clockwork puppet theatres. Gerard arrived when she was getting a bit more ambitious with the puppet theatres, programming the puppets with little plays. She’d come up with a way of folding one scene up like tissue paper and putting into a pocket so that a lot more scene changes were possible quicker than with a real play. She wanted Gerard to copy the designs for each prototype, the originals being too much like a first draft to continue working from. He takes an interest in the finished product, they get talking and it isn’t long before they’re sitting around making up stories and pushing drawings across the table at each other all day.

“You’ve got a good imagination,” says Frank when Gerard’s telling him about it. It’s more a matter-of-fact tone than a boosting or admiring one, and the remark’s rather sudden. “So you like Lyn-Z then?”

“Yeah. I like her a lot.”

“That’s good,” says Frank, holding Gerard’s gaze before dropping his eyes.

Frank, Mikey and Bob find work as bar or shop staff. No one’s making much money but they haven’t lost all hopes of paying Ray’s fine if it comes to it. Mikey seems okay but he has a placidity that makes it difficult to tell sometimes. Frank is irritated and moody and feels cooped up. Gerard always thought he was running away from dead-end jobs if he was running away from anything, so it’s not surprising. He stomps about and flares up in the middle of conversations and makes jokes that might not be jokes. The one good thing is that Frank kind of enjoys being angry; he gets an “I just said that!” look of startled glee after being obnoxious and he kicks things in an almost cheerful way. If he doesn’t engage on a certain level Gerard finds it easy not to let it bother him.

They all get used to things, Ray’s work on robot after robot forming a backdrop. Ray thinks he’s got the intellectual side down pretty well and starts on emotions. This is difficult. There’s no room for anything else in the head so Ray decides to situate the emotions in the heart, nice and symbolic. The problem is he can’t even tell what the effect of his work on the heart is because of difficulties connecting it to the brain and making the brain and heart work in tandem. If the brain won’t work the thing won’t go at all.

“And,” says Ray when he thinks he’s solved that, “I’m not necessarily going to know if it feels or not if it does work. I mean, there’s a sad robot but it hasn’t got eyes. It’s not going to cry and its face isn’t that expressive. And the loving robot. It hasn’t given me a hug yet but that doesn’t mean it’s not sitting there loving everything.”

“And now we’ve got to feel bad about the sad robot,” said Bob. “This shit is complicated.” Gerard felt a momentary jump of horror at the thought of the robots, pitiful and loving forced upon them and not knowing why or how to alleviate their feelings. But is it really any different to creating humans, that inconceivable achievement of responsibility? And that’s the whole point of this scheme.

The angry robot, when Ray makes one, is most decidedly angry. It does substantial damage to the workshop only then it morphs into a Murderer with a cloak, its fist clenched round a dagger. Ray and everyone who works there run out into the street. Everyone else, when they see the Murderer, runs indoors and lucks the door; the workshop refugees manage to dash in somewhere just in time.

Gerard and Lyn-Z don’t see any sign of the Murderer from the toyshop window. They hear some slammed doors and general kerfuffle and go to look but all they gather is that the street is mysteriously empty. It’s unsettling not to know what’s happening and Gerard says, “I think I need to check at least Mikey’s alright.”

They have a scuffle in the doorway about whether he should go alone which is resolved when Gerard says, “You should be here to open the door for me in case I need to run back.”

He ventures out into the street, looking all about him. His eye meets nothing but empty street, then he sees something black rounding the corner. It only takes him a moment to ascertain that this is the billow of a Murderer’s cloak and then it’s bearing down on him, and across the road at the Department of Records they’re holding the door open and making frantic gestures at him. The next thing he knows he’s on the other side of the door, clutching his heart. Then he has to hang around making casual conversation with the archive workers for a couple of hours hoping everyone else is alright. Gerard never heard of such a place before he came to this town and he’s still bemused now. It’s almost always pointless trying to keep records of the past, which seems to change when you leave it long enough.

After a couple of hours everyone is almost sure it’s safe; Murderers don’t linger. Gerard looks in on Mikey, Frank and Bob’s workplaces but finds them all at Ray’s workshop.

“Is everyone okay?” he asks, though they all look whole and everything. Ray and everyone who works in the workshop is off to one side, holding up plans and shaking their heads. “Hey, what happened in here?” as he sees the splintered doorframe, the crumpled robots, the table almost snapped in the middle and, as Ray turns, Ray’s bruised face.

“The angry robot just got angry,” says Ray. “I think it was trying to escape. Then just as it got out of the door it turned into a Murderer.”

“Inexplicable, obviously,” says the engineer to whom the workshop belongs. “But law and order’s still going to be in here asking why.” He doesn’t seem to wish Ray ill, or think he’s up to something, but there’s a definite air of lugubrious anticipation in the room.

Ray manages to get away and they all go back to the air-ship.

“It is weird,” Frank says. “I never heard of something turning into a Murderer.” Murderers are like ghosts, but worse.

“Either it just happened,” says Ray, “Which, you know, things do. Or it’s something to do with it being a robot. Maybe that’s what happens when robots start to feel, all they can be is unquiet, wicked spirits.” There’s a pause. “It’s starting to get, I don’t know, sticky, the further I get with this robot stuff.”

Gerard has also increasingly been feeling like it would be better to leave all this alone.

“It’s starting to get old, staying here,” says Frank.

Gerard goes back to finish up work with Lyn-Z. He takes a little walk in the woods on his way back to the ship, just a dabble in the edge of the forest. Then he sees the white glimmer of a unicorn through the trees, darting off as it notices him before he notices it. Gerard has to run after it though he realises as he does that going off on your own like this is how is how people get lost and never heard of again. He feels something roll under his foot and in the time it takes to look down and see a bottle on the ground the unicorn is out of sight when he looks up. Looking down at the bottle again he sees it has a piece of paper in it.

TIME WILL TELL. POSSIBLY.

Well. It’s not what Gerard hoped for when he drew the paper out, no clue for a treasure hunt. It’s more a smug, trite leading on than a deep oracular pronouncement, whichever way you look at it.

“But at least it’s like something or someone has noticed me,” says Gerard breathlessly, waving the paper at the others back at the air-ship.

“I think it’s a sign we should leave,” says Ray. He rummages in a bag. “I managed to get hold of these.” He holds up what looks like a pair of shears with a faint blue light about them. “If everyone’s agreed I’m gonna try cutting my cuff.”

“Wait,” says Bob. He thumps down on the bench next to the steering wheel. “We should take off as soon as you do it, they can probably tell.”

The two halves of the metal cuff go pinging across the ship as it shudders into the air. Gerard clutches the piece of paper and smiles. Time will tell something in the end. Then he feels a twinge. “I wish I’d said goodbye to Lyn-Z,” he says.

Frank, who has his head stuck out the window, turns round. “You can always try and send her a letter.”

*

Their decision to leave seems justified when, cruising along, the forest far beneath them, Mikey lets out a yell. “Something just happened,” he says when they rush over. He points vaguely. “A whole lot of trees - the space just went black and blinked out. That could be an angel, couldn’t it?”

They all stare out of the window. Gerard can hear his breath in the silence as he leans over Mikey’s shoulder. The anticipation fades to boredom and Ray says, “I don’t know - oh wow it’s like it’s being eaten.” A whole section of the forest - and more to the point, a whole section of time - just goes.

“Mikey,” says Bob, and Mikey slides off the control bench to let Bob sit down. The ship accelerates as fast as it can get. Gerard’s hanging out of the window, scanning the forest for any sign of disturbance. He’s excited to be on to something, but then comes a sudden awareness of danger that shouldn’t come as a shock, a waiting vibrating through his body. They’re heading straight for the threat, there could be waves of disappearance emanating from the wiped out areas.

“Is that-” says Ray and Gerard is at the window on the other side as something zooms past. He looks down for a moment; Frank’s clasping his hand, fingers warm and firm on his palm.

“Out of our league,” says Frank, and Gerard’s looking at the exhaust left by the other air-ship as it outstrips them by miles. It’s a heavy duty, powerful looking thing. Bob half rises in exasperation but sits down again, his hands alternately on the steering wheel or in frustrated frozen motion over the control panel, where the faster, faster button he wants isn’t. Gerard can see something happening at the bottom of the other ship as it approaches what would have been the border between the forest that is there and the forest that now isn’t; a hatch is opening and a couple of people slide out attached to parachutes. He fixes his eye on them, waiting for them to vanish.

“Up, up,” yells Bob in his anxiety to be where he wants to be, though of course he is in charge of the controls and is hitting up as he speaks. It’s like a comet, a streak of fire instead of ice, shooting up from the forest, past the parachutists who punch the air in rage, rising almost level with their ship for a few moments so Gerard can discern a tall, human-like figure inside the enveloping flame. Frank lets go of his hand and scrambles out of the window. Gerard can hear him scrabbling onto the roof even while the bright figure gets smaller and smaller until it could be a gold balloon or something, or a dot, and is swallowed up altogether. Bob takes his hands off the control panel and lets out a heavy sigh.

“At least they didn’t get it,” says Gerard. It’s hard not to feel resentment for the more competent would-be angel capturers, with their fancy air-ship and parachutes. The other ship is now lowering itself down to go and fetch the parachutists.

“Well, now we’ll go the other way, avoiding the danger zone,” says Bob, putting his hand back on the steering wheel.

“Frank!” Gerard calls out of the window. “You can see it’s gone, come back in.”

Frank jumps down from the window and lands on his hands and knees, grinning. “If we get rich the first thing we should do is upgrade,” he says. “Still, it’s something to see one. And it must have been running scared of us - well, and them - or it would have smote us on the way.”

Gerard is glad to have seen an angel at such close quarters, and even gladder to have come to no harm, but now he’s all excited and nothing’s happening anymore. He slumps down in the corner and tries to make his body feel tired in reaction to the adrenaline. He wishes he could jerk off. Frank sits down next to him, crossing his arms on his knees and leaning his chin on them. He’s humming, seeming surprisingly cheerful - Gerard might have expected him to feel more impatient. Gerard finds himself looking at Frank’s face too closely when Frank has his eyelashes lowered and has to look away quickly when he looks up.

“In a bit we’ll go down to the forest again,” says Frank. “And we’ll find something.” Gerard wants to say he doesn’t need to be promised things, like he needs to be kept from losing heart, like he’s doing this for himself in ways he isn’t, but he feels that might be patronising. And he does want that feeling he had when he saw the angel, like everything he ever had in his head is really real and possible.

*

Gerard wakes up when he hears the word “time storm.”

“No,” says Frank. “It’s just me. I’ve always been prone to Metamorphosis and sometimes I get it when no one else does.”

“What’s wrong?” says Gerard, sitting up.

“My ribcage isn’t itself today,” says Frank. His torso seems to have gone missing, replaced with an actual cage, quite a twirly one, in which three little birds twitter and hop about. “I’m wondering if there’s three of them to represent my lungs and heart. That’s about all you have in your chest, isn’t it?” He already has a Readjustor round his wrist and Mikey’s handing him a Neutraliser. “I’ll go up on the roof; they work better in fresh air.”

Gerard follows him. He likes sitting on the roof because though it’s terrifying getting up and down it feels surprisingly secure when you’re up there. He likes watching the wings’ slow rise and fall, like he’s on the back of some great animal. It’s a weird disconnect, looking at Frank, because from the shoulders up and the waist down he looks so normal. Frank carefully places his feet on the ridge at the bottom of the roof so that his head rests just before the peak. He hangs the Neutraliser round his neck so that it clangs once against the metal ribs and the birds jump around extra fast, puts his arms behind his head and closes his eyes. It’s not a particularly nice day; the sky’s white with cloud and there’s a breeze in the air. Gerard knows Frank can’t feel anything at all in the rib area, but it seems like he ought to feel cold, the metal chill.

*

They climb up and straddle the peak. Gerard crosses his legs on top of it and balances quite well; if he looks at the blankness on either side of his knees it’s like he’s balancing on nothing. But it’s too easy to topple if the ship shakes at all and he puts a leg down to grip the side of the roof. Frank puts the Neutraliser in his lap, gently humming, and removes it with a slightly awkward look a moment later. He looks down at his birdcage and cautiously touches the metal.

“Can you feel anything?” asks Gerard.

Frank waggles his finger through the bars. “No. Oh!” A bird perches on his finger for a moment.

Feeling a little odd, Gerard leans over and says “Tch tch,” to Frank’s birds. One comes to sit on his finger when he pushes it through, too. They’re tiny, so constantly on the move that Gerard peers at their beady-eyed faces whenever they’re still because it’s hard to believe such detail can emerge out of the flurry. Frank laughs so that it catches a little, as if something tickles.

“This would feel so weird if I could feel it,” Frank says. Gerard withdraws, feeling perhaps he was intruding on his personal space, and smiles at him before clasping his fingers and looking away.

*

Frank pulls himself up to the peak then stands on it. He’s showing off, trying to get Gerard to tell him to be careful so he sits himself down and says nothing instead. “Ha! Ha! Ha!” says Frank, pushing the sound out on his breath deliberately. “When you think about it, I’m breathing and talking out of nothing.”

Gerard didn’t think of that and he looks at the birdcage with redoubled alarm. He frowns at the little blue and brown birds. “Didn’t we come up here before? I’m sure I remember you sitting down looking at me.” Frank screws his face up, hesitates and shakes his head. “Maybe it’s because the birds are breathing. Presumably.”

“Wonder what would happen if I took one out,” says Frank.

“Yeah, better not,” says Gerard and pats the roof next to him. They both look straight ahead; Metamorphosis never seems to come undone when you’re looking at it - or happen in the first place, come to that.

“You look,” says Frank after a while.

At first Gerard thinks nothing’s changed but then he sees that the bars are white. “They’re getting more bone-like!” It’s a bit more unsettling when the space between the bars begins to be covered. From the inside it looks like skin but when Gerard (very gingerly) prods it from the outside it feel like solid flesh. “I’m a bit worried about the birds,” he says. They don’t seem to be changing into anything.”

“Maybe they’re in there all time,” says Frank, but they fly out when there’s only a few gaps left. Frank cups his hands and tries to catch one as it flies away but they’re all too quick as they scatter in three directions and soon disappear from sight.

“So now you’re all there,” says Gerard, feeling almost as if it’s some kind of shared achievement.

*

Everyone’s awake and Frank has his shirt on and everything, so they choose a place to land that looks like a small clearing. When they get nearer it becomes apparent that there’s another air-ship already there, and loud voices can be heard.

“Want to go somewhere else?” asks Ray, but they’re already close enough it’ll be awkward getting up through the tree tops without more momentum, and maybe it won’t hurt to see what’s happening.

They wish they hadn’t when a lawyer hops out of the ship and says “Ah! We can always do with more witnesses, come along.”

“What for?” Gerard asks suspiciously.

“A tea party. Come in, come in.”

The words tea party only makes Gerard think, Who eats? Who drinks? Until he gets inside the air-ship and finds a group of guys sitting at a table looking oddly prim, with lots of documents scattered before them. “You’re having a tea party to solve an argument?” he asks to confirm.

“Yes, have you come to help settle it?” says a guy with long brown hair, tucking it behind his ear as he speaks.

Gerard isn’t sure about that but the lawyer says, “Yes indeed,” and pulls out chairs for all of them. A tea party is an old fashioned legal procedure developed as a highly passive aggressive way of solving arguments. Someone who had a bone to pick would invite the source of their annoyance to a tea party as the flimsiest of excuses and politely haul them over the coals while dropping pretend lumps of sugar into pretend cups of tea and slicing pretend cake to distract them. Gerard supposes there must at some point have been a fashion for pretend tea parties in all sincerity. The concept became ritualized so that the imaginary refreshments became documents and items of law.

The lawyer formally introduces the members of the tea party and says, “These gentlemen are on a search for the phoenix, the bird which never dies without being reborn and exists throughout all time. Finding this bird would prove that time is not technically ended, not to mention that it is no doubt very wise. Now, there is a movement to expel one of these gentlemen from the hunting party, one Mr. Conrad. As I understand it, you have refused to pass the cream jug, is that correct?”

Mr. Conrad has his arms crossed and looks more than a little sullen. “It’s not in my power to pass the cream jug, they can pass it if they like, I can’t stop them,” he says.

“Are you in fact protesting the cream jug? In that case may I venture to suggest it would be in your interest to take up the sugar tongs?”

Mr. Conrad shrugs. “Not much point taking up anything when people are trying to pass me the cream jug,” he says.

“But you see, he as good as promised about the cream jug earlier,” says William, exasperated. “I just think it would be better for everyone.”

It’s not as dull as Gerard had feared it would be. It’s hard not to look back and forth at each speaker and try to decode the argument, though he and the others can do nothing more than stare in alarm when appealed to for back-up. Finally they seem to agree that Mr. Conrad will drink tea without cream or sugar and leave the table and the others, as a token gesture, will eat their cake and not have it. Mr. Conrad does not look happy by any stretch of the imagination but he doesn’t protest the motion, to which they all have to say aye to, and sign a cup of tea each.

Then the lawyer says, “I’ll just examine your air-ship license, if I may.”

“We don’t - do we?” says Gerard.

Ray splutters, temporarily unable to voice his startled indignation. “You don’t need a license.”

“You do now,” says the lawyer. “I’ll need to inspect this vehicle. Can you tell me about the circumstances in which you obtained it?”

“We found it up a tree,” several of them say at once.

“Did the tree seem sentient in any way? Because otherwise I’m afraid it did not have the legal power to give you the air-ship, in which case it belongs to no one.” Gerard opens his mouth to argue and the lawyer carries on, “And if it belongs to no one then no one can sell or give it, and no one can possess something they didn’t buy that wasn’t a gift.”

They’re in the doorway of the phoenix hunters’ air-ship and with that the lawyer sets off across the grass to their creaky old flying house, draws a piece of cardboard out of his coat and writes OUT OF ORDER on it before propping it up in the window.

“Fucking - well I guess that’s that,” says Frank, glaring at the lawyer. The law is as unruly as time; whatever’s happening right now is happening and there’s not much you can do about it.

They go and get their things out of the ship and stand about in front of it, looking from one direction to another, deliberately lost.

“Sorry about that,” says William, lounging in his doorway. “Awful, aren’t they? You don’t really need a ship though, hardly anyone round here does. And you’re looking for something too, aren’t you? There’s lots of people like that roaming about, some of them keep a look out for other people’s stuff as well which is a help. And the more searches you know about, the more it seems like things get found.”

They set off into the forest. They’re not used to carrying their baggage rather than leaving it in the ship and altogether they’re more sullen than they imagined they would be on getting back on the trail. There are more people in the forest than they’re used to and a group of people holding a big treasure chest between practically canters across their path in glee. The sight of other people finding things does have an enlivening effect and after Mikey and Gerard wander into the remains of some old conversation and talk in a language none of them understands for ten minutes, Ray has an idea.

“We’ve probably got enough money for me to make some of those inventions to help finding things I was working on before,” he says. There are ships in the sky but none of them have a ladder down so they stand about yelling up at them until someone lets one down. They’re all personal air-ships, no shops or workshops here so they have to pay someone to give them a lift even though there’s a ship with a promising looking sign just within sight.

“Before I get all excited let’s see how much money there is,” says Ray, and they have to take their bags off their backs and dump them all on the shop floor. None of them have put their money all neatly in one place so they have to rummage through their clothes and baggage unearthing little heaps of coins as they go. It looks like a surprising lot piled up on the floor and the shopkeeper casts an amorous gaze over it before looking away.

“I’ll start small,” says Ray.

*

There’s a bit of a conflict of interests when Ray gets to work; it’s hard for him to tear himself away from putting things together, taking them apart and putting them back different and the others are wary of going off by themselves in case they become separated. They risk a short inspection of the immediate vicinity once they’ve got bored of annoying Ray with questions.

There’s a crashing sound, not a disastrous crash but the sound of something colliding firmly with something else. They follow the path round a corner and find two skinny people trying ineffectually to push a printing press back onto a trolley with a large platform. Gerard, Mikey and Frank look at Bob who rolls his eyes and goes forward to help. There’s a small boy sitting on the other side of the trolley and the young man makes haste to say, “He’s not ours. He used to be a grown-up and we’re not even really friends anymore. But then he got younger so we’re kind of stuck with him. So if you come across a guy called Spencer could you tell him Ryan and Z have Brendon and they’re ready for Spencer to come collect him any time?”

Brendon turns his bottom lip inside out. “You like Spencer,” Ryan tells him crossly.

Z whips out a notebook. “So what are you looking for?”

“A time box,” says Gerard.

“Ah, so we can’t offer you finders-not-keepers on that one. It’s not the kind of thing you do something with yourselves, is it, it effects everyone. But here’s a list of things and people that people are trying to find, so if you come across any of them do try and put word out.”

“Would you like a newsletter?” says Ryan.

“Oh, I always wondered where they came from,” says Gerard, looking at the printing press again.

*

They’re never sure if Ray’s Attractor of Significant Circumstances actually works. After all, things usually manage to happen by themselves. But the walking clocks do swarm the day he finishes it. They’re all just sitting around when they hear a voice say “Tick tock, tick tock.” Gerard freezes and looks around, fearing that it’s an angel taunting them, come down to announce that time is at last finally and irrefutably over.

“Tick tock, tick tock,” say other voices all at once. It’s Mikey who sees the first clock up a tree and grabs Gerard’s arm and points. It’s in the act of scrambling down, grasping the bark of the tree with clawed feet. Gerard can see it has a mouth, a triangular opening showing paler wood, that opens and closes with the words. The trees ahead rustle and now Gerard can see more clocks the more he looks, wood and metal and stone, all shapes and sizes - there’s a grandfather clock being carried down the tree by smaller clocks. A clock lands on his back; he yells but can’t bring himself to touch it to try and pull it off. It grasps at his clothes, nearly painfully firm, as it climbs down him. They’re landing on the others too, just marching over them as if they were inanimate.

Frank rummages in their bags and finds a parasol. He puts it up and punches upwards when clocks land on it so they fly off, one of them hitting Bob in the chin.

“I heard once all the air-ships in one part of the sky came alive,” says Bob. “But never anything about clocks. Where did they come from?”

“Maybe they escaped from a time mine chamber,” says Gerard. The time mine is where a lot of vanished things and people go. If you really want them back you go to look there, via a room or air-ship filled with clocks. The presence of so many clocks all showing different times that don’t exist does something strange. “Or more than one,” he adds. He’s never seen a time mine chamber but there are legions of clocks here; the forest floor looks like it’s moving.

“Does it mean something? Should we be worried?” asks Mikey.

No one answers because they don’t know. “If it wasn’t clocks you’d just think well that’s annoying and wait for them to go away,” says Gerard.

“I wish they weren’t going tick tock,” says Frank.

When the horde of clocks coming out of the trees starts to thin they follow them through the forest at a distance. They come across a few people on the way, either running in horror, up to their shins in clocks or up trees. They see Ryan trying to climb a tree and give him a leg up to where Z and Brendon sit, Z trying to stop Brendon from yelling “Tick tock tick tock!”

The clocks have got a little way ahead of them; they aren’t trying to eat anything, nothing’s disappeared and time’s been running smoothly so Gerard is about to agree with Ray when he says, “Maybe we should just leave them to it.” Then they hear the tick tock sound, which had been fading, thicken behind them. There’s a rustling and the head of the clock army appears, having apparently looped its way round the trees to follow them. They walk backwards staring at the oncoming clocks; it’s alarming to see all those faces, no features except the mouth unless you counted the numbers and the twitching hands, but not blank enough when you were wondering what was happening behind them. Then they run, trying to make for the tail of the army so they are once again following them.

This happens at least a dozen times, the people stuck in trees able to do nothing more than watch them race round yet again. In the end the clocks try to change direction to catch them out but that confuses them and they start attacking each other. Finally safe from being followed they go back to their camp for a rest. After a while they start to wonder if they did it wrong.

“Perhaps they were trying to tell us something. They could obviously talk; maybe they’d have said something other than tick tock if we asked them a question. Or we could have seen what would happen if we let them catch up when they were following,” says Gerard.

“Let’s go back and see what they’re doing,” says Mikey. There are only a few clocks left when they find them again, mostly hopping about in the trees, and a lot of clock parts lying around, though not as many as would account for all the clocks there had been.

“I think they’ve eaten each other,” says Frank, which makes them feel glad they did get away. There’s not much they could have done if the clocks had tried to eat them.

*

“Aaargh!” says Frank as they’re battling through the forest and he slips down an unexpected slope. Gerard leans over and tries to see him though the greenery, unwilling to venture forwards. “Hey,” comes Frank’s voice. “There’s a cave at the bottom of this slope, we should go look in it.”

“Are you sure you’re Frank?” asks Bob, because you shouldn’t really let anyone tempt you off your path.

“Yeah yeah.”

Leaves get up in Gerard’s face when he’s inching his ass down the slope; the only clear place is right at the bottom where Frank is waiting at the mouth of a cave. Ray gets out a lantern and they venture in. The lantern immediately lights up a small chamber.

“Oh, is that all?” says Frank, but there’s a shadowy corner and when Ray swings the lantern closer it’s revealed to be a passage. It’s very narrow and in some places Gerard can feel it brushing both his shoulders. It has steps leading down which makes Gerard wonder, as he hasn’t before, about what lies underneath the forest floor. What would happen if you dug and dug?

They’re in the cave at the bottom of the steps before he realises it and just as he does there’s a group of people stepping out of the shadows. It honestly takes him a couple of moments to realise why they’re familiar. They’re them - a double for each one of them.

“Who are you?” asks Bob.

“I’m you,” says Bob’s double. “Except, only one of us can really be you. We’ll have to fight for it.” His hand goes to his hip, and the other doubles follow suit and draw out swords. They go to the other hip and draw out a second sword. The five doubles stand in a row, each holding one sword out so that light catches the blade, serious faces and raised eyebrows.

Gerard’s double pushes a sword at him; he doesn’t want to take it but he has to unless he wants it to fall on his foot. “Only one of us can go back up into the air,” he says, deliberately looking Gerard right in the eye. “If you want it to be you have to win a duel against me. But it’s not terrible if I win, you know, I really am you.”

His double steps back and puts up his sword. Gerard just looks at him but then the sword darts at him so he has to force it back. This is not the place he’d have chosen to have a sword fight; he can’t even really see his blade or the double’s except as gleams of white where they catch the light. He keeps his eyes fixed on the gleams, so fixed it makes them blur. He hears the sound of swords clashing all over the cave and he wishes he could see what’s happening but all he can do is try and bat the gleam as far away from him as he can. Finally his sword sort of slides on the other’s and the gleam spreads down the blade as he thrusts it out at arms’ length and it comes to a sudden halt because it’s stuck in his double’s chest.

“Oh,” says the double, and that’s his own face looking sad and surprised. It’s odd to see himself looking pitiful, to feel that flicker of compassion at his own face - it’s not the sort of face he makes in the mirror. Gerard looks at the other’s chest; he sees red begin to spread across his shirt and then he’s falling backwards. He’s vanished before he hits the floor.

Gerard looks around. There’s only one double left and Frank’s just got him. Then it’s just them, and Gerard feels the back of his neck prickle when he realises he has no way of telling whether they’re the people he came in with or not. That’s the point of doubles, you can’t tell the difference. By the way they’re staring around quietly, the others are thinking the same thing.

“I’m pretty sure we’re all the right ones,” says Mikey. “I’m me, I promise.” His tone is trying to reassure and, really, to seek reassurance himself, not to persuade, and Gerard pats his cheek.

“So we’re agreed that we’re us?” asks Ray, and Gerard knows the agreeing is more important than actually knowing. Because they can’t know, and they can’t feel that sinister creep of doubt either.

“Was that table there?” asks Frank. Gerard turns and sees a table with boxes on it. There’s a note. You can open one box and only one. Choose wisely.

Gerard fingers the boxes. One is made of gold, one silver, and one lead.

“Well, we’re not stupid,” says Frank. “It’s the lead one, right?” Because you’d go for the gold or silver if you were greedy or thinking obviously.

“All agreed on the lead?” asks Gerard. His breath comes fast, his fingers almost itching where they rest on the lead box’s lid. They all nod and he opens the box. It’s empty and nothing happens. He’s heard time boxes have a kind of cube of light in them and although he’s open to possibilities he’s pretty sure this box isn’t it.

“So not the lead box then,” says Frank. “It must be a reverse psychology thing. I guess we shouldn’t try another?”

Gerard toys with the catch of the silver box. Perhaps after all that is the least obvious and therefore the right one. “No,” he says, taking his hand away before the urge overtakes him. “Best not."

Part Three