Yesterday's Hero (9 page)

There’s something off about the way he’s saying that word, but without an expression to go off I can’t quite work out what the problem is.

And I was so totally planning to use this time to be weirded out about him just being a mask now… I’m going to have to make time in my busy freaking-out schedule to gibber about this too now.

“It’s amazing,” Clyde is saying, “how many people use 1-2-3-4 as their computer password. Tabby told me about it, but I didn’t imagine they’d all be such silly buggers.”

Looks like I’m going to have to revise my computer security plans then…

Clyde twists his head sharply to one side, looks up, then back at me. “There we go.” He gives a satisfied nod.

“You sure you’re alright?” I ask him. I seem to be asking that too much recently.

“Of course.” Clyde pops the car door, bounces out. “Now let’s get Winston loaded up. We have a delivery to make.”

T
hat definitely should have been harder. The security guard at the service entrance barely looked at us. I mean, admittedly, it’s not like we’re breaking into Fort Knox, we’re pretending we’re returning books to a library, but still… well maybe it shouldn’t have been harder.

Clyde is wearing his hoody again, head bowed to hide everything in its shadows. I trail after him with the handcart. He stops suddenly and I almost rear-end him with Winston. “Oh wow,” he says.

“What is it?” I spin round, trying to work out what he’s looking at. It’s tricky when the gaze you’re following doesn’t actually originate from eyes.

“Oh. Sorry.” Clyde pulls his head down between his shoulders. “Rude of me. It’s just… Well, I was still on the servers for the British Museum. And, well, there’s some first-rate scans of some really rare Dickens on there. Obviously a terrible time for it. Realize that now. Like reading at the table. Terrible habit. My mother was always on at me about that. Definition of rudeness she called it. There again, she never had an alien take over her body and lay its eggs in her mind, so her frame of reference might have been smaller than mine. But definitely up there with the ruder things one can do.”

I close my eyes. I don’t know why this bothers me so much. Why should a wireless internet connection be more upsetting than violating reality at its most fundamental levels?

Except, violating reality seems at its core a human skill. The mind and the words intersecting with power. A wi-fi connection is so much more… mechanical. Inhuman.

I think I’m going to have to find a better word than that.

Clyde looks around. “You know, I’ve no idea where we should be going. Do you?”

“Again my original plan had been to go in the front door,” I say. A bit catty of me, but I’m never at my best when people are rearranging my view of reality.

“Ooh!” Clyde’s hand shivers and he cocks his head. “Blueprints.”

Post-human?

Superhuman?

Somehow, no name for it makes me feel even slightly more comfortable.

The Reading Room

The sense of history is palpable in the room. It seems to bow heads over books, to color the light that slants in from the high windows. Gandhi studied here. Mark Twain. Karl Marx. H. G. Wells.

“Lovely librarian ladies,” Winston mutters to himself. “Glasses and skirts nom nom.” A copy of
Lady Chatterly’s Lover
has worked its way loose from his pile of books and is waggling lewdly.

“Jesus,” I say.

“That’s what all the ladies say.”

I am sorely tempted to slap Winston, but there’s a slim chance that might look odd in public.

“OK.” Clyde nods at a balding man behind a counter polishing his glasses on a maroon vest. “That guy should have a backdated email from George Coleman with the request for the papers.”

“And reason why it’s him?”

“Oh,” Clyde digs deeper into his hoodie. “Slim chance that perhaps, I found someone on the email server talking about their cat a lot. And then, you know, hypothetically the cat’s name was that person’s password. So, again, it would be within the realm of possibility that it was easy enough to get into his account.”

Again there’s that creeping sense of wrongness. “So, basically,” I say, “you’re saying it’s within the realm of possibility that you broke a bunch of privacy laws.”

“Just,” Clyde hesitates, “trying to be useful.” He shrugs with a certain amount of violence.

That word “useful” again…

“Greasing wheels is all,” Clyde continues. He is, at least, reassuringly bad at being succinct. “But totally see your point. Like reading at the table.”

Like reading someone else’s book that you stole at the table. But I don’t say that. Instead I go to the desk, ask for the material, reference the email, and the man says he’s sorry he missed it, and he’ll have stuff pulled right away.

Again, easy. Even if Clyde does look like he’s trying to work out where the metal concert is, and Winston is singing Hot Chocolate’s “You Sexy Thing” under his breath.

And then someone catches my arm and says, “Well fancy seeing you here.”

My hand immediately goes for my gun. It’s a slightly frightening instinct to have developed. There again, my left side still stings from being electrocuted.

But the voice doesn’t belong to a cyborg Russian schoolmarm. Instead it’s a pretty, smiling Weekender from the Natural History Museum. “Aiko?” I say.

She nods. “Nice to see you again, Agent Arthur.”

I let go of the gun, but not before her eyes travel to its momentarily exposed butt.

“Paranoid moment?” she asks. “Totally understand. Happens to me in the classroom all the time.”

I smile at that. Clyde stands a few yards away, shaking his head. Winston is waggling
Lady Chatterly
again.

I ignore both of them. If I’m the lead field agent, and I believe I am, I’m not going to lead with rudeness. “So,” I say “what brings you here?”

“Oh,” Aiko grins, “Chernobyl. Same thing as you, I imagine.”

Clyde starts shaking his head more violently. I can almost hear Felicity enunciating, “Official Secrets Act.”

“No,” I say, jumping for the nearest denial. “Totally different reasons. Totally.” I’m not completely convinced the academy is going to give me the Oscar for that one.

“Yeah,” Aiko gives me the look a first grade teacher gives to the innocent-eyed child with the crayon and the wall covered by a Jackson Pollock interpretation.

Clyde steps forward at that. “Different reason,” he says. He sounds nothing like himself. Harsh and sharp.

It is not a mechanical glitch, I tell myself. It’s just the Weekenders. They just did something that got them enormously deep underneath everyone’s skin.

But what the hell was it?

Aiko just gives Clyde the same indulgent look. “So,” she says, “just trying to pump me for information, Agent Arthur? Shame on you.”

There’s an edge to the question I can’t quite read.

“You know I can’t tell you why we’re here,” I say. While I refuse to be openly rude, I should probably tow the party line.

“Fine then.” Aiko rolls her eyes. “We’ll do our time magic research, you do yours.”

“Time magic?” That one genuinely is new to me. And I totally get that I’m not supposed to like these people, but they do seem all kinds of helpful.

“Sure.” Aiko nods, though I get the impression she still thinks I’m playing the fool. “Zombie dinosaur regrowing its skin,” she says. “Russian magician. Chernobyl is the biggest space-time experiment of them all. We may not make a living doing this, Agent Arthur, but we know what we’re doing.”

I’m about to explain that I’m genuinely confused, but a new voice interrupts.

“Oh, totally,” says someone behind me. “Totally just hit on guys and let me do all the work. Because you know how much I just love analogue research. Urban ninjas in the library. Totally where it’s—”

I turn round and see Jasmine, the blond, pigtailed girl from
the Natural History Museum. She’s still got headphones on, these ones pink and emblazoned with a stylized skull. She’s added a pair of reading glasses and a Hello Kitty T-shirt. Malcolm, the large black man, stands behind her looking like he’s been listening to this monologue since approximately the dawn of time.

Then the girl sees my face.

“Oh. My. God!”

I wince a little as the girl hits the high note at the end. People look up from their books.

“You guys! I love you guys!” She rushes Clyde and clasps him in a sudden hug. He stands startled, hands trapped down at his sides by the embrace. Some onlookers start to glare. Clyde tries to bury his head deeper into his hood.

“Jasmine,” the black man behind the girl finally rumbles. “Let him be.”

“Has your therapist talked to you about repression, Malcolm?”

The big man shuffles his feet. “I don’t… Not the therapist. Not to strangers.” He sounds embarrassed, avoids our eyes.

“They’re not strangers!” Jasmine squeaks. “They’re,” she looks around warily then lowers her voice, “MI37.” The word sounds hallowed in her voice.

The big man looks back and forth from me to Clyde then back to me. He holds out a hand. “Good to see you,” he says. My hand disappears into his, but he shakes gently.

“So,” Aiko says, “if we’re being all friendly, is there anything you can tell us?” She has a sweet, hopeful smile.

“Official Secrets Act,” Clyde intones.

I shrug.

“Fine then.” She waves a dismissive hand. “We’ll try not to get in your way.”

I seem to have ended up being rude without meaning to. And I still feel like these people, these Weekenders, could be useful allies.

“It’s not like that,” I say.

“Is it like something you
can
tell us?” She cocks her head to one side.

“You know I can’t tell you anything.” I try out a smile on her. Try to get the tone right. “It’s the law, and it’s my job.”

“So we should piss off and leave you alone.” Aiko smiles with her mouth but her eyes have gone cold. “I get it.”

“No,” I say. Why is it so hard to get myself understood some days?

“No?” Aiko’s eyebrows are doing the yo-yo thing I feel mine do.

“No?” Clyde echoes Aiko, only he doesn’t sound so pleased.

“All I’m saying is I can’t help. Everyone else is telling you to piss off. I figure that’s more than enough people without me needing to chip in.” And God knows if that’s the smartest thing to say, but it’s the most honest. I feel she deserves that at least.

Aiko seems to weigh that for a while. Then, “All right,” she says. “All right, Agent Arthur. You get a pass this time.”

“You seem like a nice person,” I say. “All of you.” I nod at Jasmine and Malcolm. “I honestly think you can help with this. I just can’t help you. My hands are tied.”

“Nice?” The edge I don’t quite understand is back in her voice. “You think I’m
nice
?”

I shrug. “Am I wrong?”

She smiles at that, then reaches into a pocket and pulls out a notepad and pen. She scribbles something and hands a page to me. “My number, if you ever want to play with other kids.” The edge to her voice is still there. She smiles. “Good luck finding whatever it could possibly be that you’re looking for.”

I am, most definitely, in the process of getting myself in trouble. I can just feel it.

But then, just like that, the balding man with the spectacles and the maroon vest is back with a stack of manila folders, saying, “Here it is,” and I smile, and Aiko smiles—

—and then a Russian voice says, “Well fancy seeing you here.”

I turn, already reaching for my gun. She’s standing there, short, heavyset, steel glistening along her jawline. Beside her stands a taller man, dark-haired and pale-skinned. He has hangdog eyes, hollow cheeks, and more stubble than a rock star. His smile reveals chrome-coated teeth.

I’ve got the gun halfway out of its holster. The tall Russian tutts. The short one mutters. Then the world goes white. Gravity goes away. And I sail through the air as the room around me explodes.

I
remember hearing once that one of the worst things to drive your car into is a tree. Worse than a brick wall or sheet glass. No give in trees apparently. Big thick oak buggers just stand there and take it and laugh at your crumple zones.

Apparently it’s very much the same sort of situation with people and bookshelves.

For a minute I do a very clever impression of a man lying on the ground incapacitated by pain. In the mean time, the British Museum Reading Room takes the opportunity to pretty much go to hell.

People scream and run. Light flashes. Wood splinters.

If you ask me, the bookshelves had it coming.

I manage to make it to all fours, breathing hard, spitting blood. The world tilts and I haul on the bookshelf that did my spine in, grasping for my bearings.

Then there’s a sound like the world grinding to a halt. A deepening “bwoom” of sound like the audio track on a video slackening to a quarter speed. I see the tall Russian standing, metal arms stretched out toward me. Between him and I is a great ball of rippling space. A bubble of heat shimmer.

I dive sideways, crash over chairs. The ball rolls past my head. Missed me, you bastard.

But the Russian is smiling. And I start to worry, but then he disappears as Malcolm West pile drives him to the ground in a flying tackle. And special government training be damned, that is how you solve a problem.

“Arthur! Get down!”

I spin to see who’s yelling at me. Aiko, I realize. And then I think that instead of working that out, I probably should have gotten down.

Something crashes into my shoulder. I spin across the floor. I slam down on my back. The world shudders and shakes as my head bounces off the floor.

Apparently, the bookshelf hasn’t finished with me yet. Wooden spikes are growing from its shelves, its sides. One lances out, spearing the ground between my legs. It is inches away from putting a serious crimp in my relationship with Felicity Shaw.

The spike shudders. Its surface fractures. Tiny thorns burst forth, stretching out.