No True Echo (14 page)

I was struggling to tell what was a dream and what was real but, when I heard the front door slam and saw the time on my bedside clock, I knew I was awake and that I had overslept. I got up and quickly dressed. I could hear Ruby snoring but Melody's bedroom door was open. She had gone out. I wolfed down some breakfast and ran to the bus stop, getting there as the bus was arriving. For the first time, I dodged the splash.

‘Ready, Eddie? Then jump on board and hold on steady, Eddie.'

Angus was waiting in his usual seat.

‘I've got a message for you,' he said.

‘Who from?'

‘Take a look.'

He pulled out his copy of
Frankenstein
, which had a green cover with the title printed in black. Why did everything have to be about this book? He turned to the back pages where someone had written,
Warn me about her.

‘What does that mean?' I asked.

‘Don't you recognise the handwriting?' said Angus.

I looked again and understood, except I didn't understand because it was my handwriting. Or at least, I think it was. No, I knew it was. The more I thought about it, the more I could imagine my hand forming the letters, almost as if it was a memory, of something that had not yet happened.

‘When did I write it?'

‘You in the future travelled to the past and wrote it so that now you would know not to trust her.'

‘Who?'

‘You know who. I don't know what name she's using here but her real name is Lauren Bliss.'

‘Scarlett? Maguire called her Lauren. Is she here?' I asked, trying not to sound too excited.

‘Apparently there's a good chance she will be soon and when you see her you can't tell her about me. She can't know what I'm doing here.'

‘I don't know what you're doing here.'

‘The less you know the better.'

‘Then I'll be fine. I don't know anything.'

‘You know more than you think you know, but don't let on you know anything except the things you know she knows you know.'

‘Angus, have you heard yourself?'

Angus smiled. ‘I agree. It sounds mental, but it's important.'

Bill slammed his foot down on the brake and the bus screeched to a halt.

‘One of these days he's going to kill us,' I said.

‘Surprisingly not,' replied Angus. ‘Why have we stopped here?' He wiped the condensation from the window to reveal Scarlett standing at the bus stop. Her hair was red again and she was wearing the same yellow raincoat she had worn the first day we met. When the bus doors opened she got on.

‘Wellcome Valley School?' said Bill.

‘Yes, which is lucky because it's the only place you go,' she responded.

Bill laughed at what he obviously considered to be a very good joke. ‘What's your name, then?'

‘Scarlett White. Should I take a seat and hold on tight?'

‘Not a word,' Angus whispered urgently.

Scarlett took her seat in front of us, then turned around.

‘Hi, Eddie,' she said.

‘Do you two know each other?' asked Angus.

‘Yes, we met on holiday last summer,' she replied. ‘Remember, Eddie? My parents rented a cottage down the road from you. I'd got lost on my way to the shop and you cycled past. I asked for directions but I'd forgotten the name of the place I was staying. It took us ages to find the right cottage.'

‘You never mentioned that,' said Angus.

‘You were on holiday in France,' I said.

The lie came so easily that I felt almost as though I could smell the freshly cut summer grass as we crossed a field of sunflowers under the clear blue sky.

‘So what are you doing here now?' asked Angus. ‘Not still looking for your way home, are you?'

‘We just moved here. Listen, Angus, do you mind if I have a word with Eddie in private?'

‘How do you know my name?' asked Angus.

‘You're Eddie's best friend,' said Scarlett. ‘You can't spend very much time with him without hearing about you, but I really would like to talk to him alone.'

‘Don't mind me. You two obviously have a lot to discuss.' Angus squeezed past me to find a seat further down the bus. Scarlett slipped into my seat while I moved next to the window. She looked at me in a way that suggested it had been some time since our last meeting. I couldn't tell whether she was happy or sad to be back but I knew how I felt.

‘Why's your hair keep changing colour?' I asked.

‘After all that has happened, are you entirely happy with that as your question?' she said.

‘Only it was blond last time.'

‘All right. We can talk about hair if you like. My hair is blond. This is a wig. Happy now? Have you any more hair-related questions?'

‘No.' I tried not to show my disappointment. ‘Where have you been?'

‘A lot of places and a lot of times,' she replied. ‘Now, I take it Angus has told you he's mid-echo jump?'

‘Er  … '

‘He told you not to tell me. That's fine. You don't have to say anything you don't want to.'

‘How did you know? Have you got a zappy time device that tells you where people are from?'

‘No. Angus isn't a very good actor. Has he told you what he's doing here?'

‘Of course not. Telling me what's going on is against everyone's rules,' I said pointedly.

Scarlett put her hand on my arm. ‘I'm really sorry, Eddie. I never wanted to drag you into all this.'

‘Was it you who sent me back both times?'

‘Yes, but you did keep getting shot. I used Maguire's time particle accelerator to send you on an echo jump.'

‘How come you can tell me all this now?' I asked.

‘Because things have changed since we first met.'

‘Why did you send me back?'

‘I needed to preserve this version of you.'

‘Why?'

‘I'm a senior echo time agent. I investigate crimes committed using echo technology. If a jump cord is left unbroken it usually means that someone is doing something they shouldn't.'

‘What are you investigating now?'

‘My investigations rarely involve one thing at a time. It's what makes it such an interesting job. By my calculations, this is the third time I've met this version of you and each time I've been looking into something different.'

‘What?'

‘I can't go into details, especially since these things tend to be connected and this is an ongoing investigation.'

‘So what's it got to do with me?'

‘What do you think it's got to do with you?'

‘It's something to do with Melody.' I pulled out my copy of
Frankenstein
and showed her the back pages. ‘You wrote this, didn't you?'

She examined it. ‘It looks like my writing,' she said. ‘Those circles over the
i
's are what I use to identify writing as my own, which means if it isn't me, it's someone pretending to be me. Either way, it's best not to put too much faith in stuff written at the backs of books. Far too unreliable. Too easily intercepted.'

‘Don't you know if it was you who wrote it?'

‘I know I haven't written in that book yet, but I don't know what I'll do in the future.'

‘But  …  Hold on. Er  … '

‘Eddie, there's going to be a lot you don't understand. Some people would argue that simply the fact that we are now having this conversation increases the chance of me writing in that book. Personally, I think it makes it less likely, but it doesn't matter.'

‘Yes, but  …  What if  …  But  … ' I fumbled, trying to order my jumbled thoughts.

‘Eddie, time is a complicated business. The general rule is that if your head isn't hurting, you're not thinking about it hard enough.'

‘I don't want any more riddles,' I said.

‘I know, and I'll answer your questions soon enough, but at this stage, you only need to know one thing and that is that you shouldn't trust anyone.'

‘If that's true, how can I trust you saying that?' I said.

‘You shouldn't, but nor should you trust Angus, no matter what he tells you. Also, while we're at it, I'd rather he didn't know that I know that he knows about me.'

‘I'm not sure I could explain it even if I wanted to.'

The bus pulled into the school car park and Angus joined us.

‘Have you two caught up on everything?' he asked cheerily.

‘Everything we can catch up on,' replied Scarlett.

‘Well, another day in the centre of the universe awaits,' he said.

The morning's repetitions were like the ticking of a grandfather clock. Occasionally I noticed them but mostly they blended into the background. Scarlett proved as popular as ever on her second first day at school, so at break-time, it was just Angus and me. We stopped by the Picasso portraits.

‘Does she know about me?' he asked. ‘She does, doesn't she? Well, don't let her know I know that she knows. Okay?'

‘Angus,' I cried, louder than I had intended. ‘Enough.'

Angus looked up at the portraits and said, ‘I remember these. I remember laughing about them. It feels like a lifetime ago. It's funny the things that get stuck in your memory.'

‘I don't think we have the same memories,' I said. ‘We're from different versions, aren't we?'

‘I suppose.'

‘So am I different where you're from?'

‘Not at this point but you do change. I suppose we all do. It's weird, all this echo stuff. I mean, is there a version where we didn't laugh at these pictures? Maybe there's a version where they weren't painted, or where they were done as normal pictures.'

‘Maybe there's a version where we're not friends,' I said.

We both stared at the portraits in silence for a moment, then Angus said, ‘She works for Maguire. Lauren, Scarlett, whatever you call her, she works for him.'

‘The last time they were together she was trying to arrest him.'

‘I swear to you, Eddie, it's true.'

‘She said she was investigating crimes.'

‘She works for the Echo Time Agency, which Maguire set up. She's here to make sure he gets away with it.'

‘Gets away with what?'

‘Come on, Eddie. Think. How is it possible that there is one version in which Melody died and another in which she is alive? David Maguire went back in time and killed your mother.'

‘How?'

‘I don't fully understand it myself but, according to you in the future, he'll travel back to the past to kill her. Except, for me, it's all in the past. Well, it was before I came back here. Now it's in the future again.'

‘That makes no sense.'

‘I totally agree, but you're proof that it's true. You've grown up in a world in which Melody died.'

‘Why would he do it? Why would he kill her?'

‘To create a second version of events in which he discovers echo technology all alone. He didn't like sharing the glory with your mum, I guess. That's why Scarlett is trying to control you. Right now – in the future right now, that is – there's this big trial to decide which version of events is the originating and which is the echo. You're the witness that proves that Maguire is guilty.'

‘Me?'

‘Yes, because the world you grew up in was created when he killed her.'

‘How can that be possible?' If Angus was telling the truth, then the world I knew was a lie created by a murder. My whole life was an echo. Maguire had said that the term real was unhelpful, but if Angus was telling the truth, my whole life had been unreal.

‘I'm only telling you what you told me to tell you,' said Angus. ‘Later on tonight, Maguire and Melody will discover the truth about the time particle accelerator. Shortly after that they'll go public. There's this experiment they put online with a book.'

‘I've seen it,' I said. ‘Well, a version of it.'

‘It's not long before things get pretty crazy after that because, well, they've invented time travel, haven't they?'

‘I thought they didn't call it time travel,' I said.

‘True, but people are going back and forwards through time, so it is time travel really, isn't it? Anyway, soon after this, Maguire and Melody go their separate ways. Maguire sets up a government agency so he can control everything while Melody starts a private company called the Echo Corporation. That's when she and you start making some serious money.'

‘What does this company do?'

‘It's a kind of travel agency, only it's a time travel agency.'

‘Like a holiday company?'

‘Basically, yes. The super-rich pay millions to take holidays in time.
Holidays of the future are a thing of the past.
That's the slogan. Apparently you came up with that. Because they break the jump cords after each echo jump, your customers can go back and dabble in the past without it affecting their futures.'

‘This is all about holidays?'

‘No, Eddie, it's all about money and power. Maguire gets jealous of Melody's success, not to mention her money. His agency is always investigating what the Echo Corporation is up to.'

‘Why?'

‘There's this story that you and Melody allow your richest customers to keep their jump cords unbroken so they can go back and live their lives over again in other versions of reality, but really he's just jealous.'

‘How do you know all this?'

‘One day you ask me to this fancy restaurant and, over dinner, you tell me what Maguire's up to.'

‘Which is what?'

‘He's gone back and killed Melody, and now he's intending to wipe away the timelines in which she exists. That way, the version where she dies will be the only version left. He's trying to wipe her off the timeline altogether.'

‘Can he do that?'

‘He can once the rest of the world decides that the timeline is becoming too fragmented. The ETA launches an investigation into every remaining line to shut down all the altered versions, leaving only the original one, but Maguire is trying to control which one remains. And he wants it to be the one you started in, the one without Melody.'

‘And I told you all this?'

‘Yes.'

‘Did I look like I understood it?'

Angus laughed.

‘Why did I tell you?' I asked.

The bell rang to signify the end of break.

‘I'll explain later. Come on, we'd better get to class.'

Before I followed him down the corridor, I looked up at one of the portraits, in which one of the students had painted himself with two faces pointing in different directions. I didn't recognise the face but I understood the feeling.