Paths Not Taken Read online

  “Time travel,” the sphere said suddenly, and we both jumped a little. The artificial voice sounded distinctly smug. “A fascinating subject, with more theories than proven facts. You probably have to be able to think in five dimensions to appreciate it properly. We won’t talk about Timeslips, because their very existence makes our head hurt, and we don’t even have a head. The only reputable source for controlled travel in Time is the Time Tower. Which is not natural to the Nightside. Old Father Time brought it here from Shadows Fall, just over a hundred years ago, saying only that he thought it would be needed for Something Important.”

  “Shadows Fall?” said Cathy, frowning.

  “An isolated town in the back of beyond, where legends go to die when the world stops believing in them,” I said. “A sort of elephants’ graveyard for the supernatural. Never been there myself, but apparently it makes the Nightside look positively tame. And boring.”

  “I’ll bet they have great clubs there,” Cathy said wistfully.

  “If we could stick to the subject at hand,” the sphere said loudly. “We will not discuss Shadows Fall because it makes the head we don’t have hurt even worse than Timeslips. Some concepts should be banned, on mental health grounds. Let us discuss Old Father Time. An enigmatic figure. No-one seems too sure exactly what he is. An incarnation, certainly, and immortal; but not a Transient Being. Some say he is the very concept of Time itself, given a human form to interact with the human world. Why this was ever considered necessary, or even a good idea, remains unclear. Humans do enough damage in three dimensions, without giving them access to the fourth. Anyway; the one thing everyone agrees on is that he is extremely powerful and even more dangerous. The only person ever to tell the Authorities to go to Hell on a regular basis and make it stick. You don’t argue with someone who can send you back in Time to play with the dinosaurs. Well, not more than once, anyway. Old Father Time is a native of Shadows Fall, and still lives there, but he commutes into the Nightside when he feels like it.

  “It takes a lot of power to move someone through Time. All the Nightside’s major players working together would have a hard time sending anyone any when with any degree of accuracy. That’s if you could get them to work together, which you almost certainly couldn’t. So the only way to travel safely through Time is via Old Father Time’s good offices, by convincing him that your trip is in everyone’s best interests. Lots of luck selling him that one, Taylor. Right; that’s it. Anything else we might have to say would only be guesswork. So off you go, run along, and be sure to give Old Father Time our warmest regards before he throws you out on your ear.”

  “You know him?” said Cathy.

  “Of course. How do you think we got here in the first place?”

  I was about to follow that one up with a whole series of probing questions when we were interrupted by a polite knock at my door. Or at least as polite as any knock can be when you have to hammer on solid silver with your fist just to be heard. I looked sharply at Cathy.

  “Are we expecting anyone you might have forgotten to tell me about?”

  “There’s no-one in the diary. Could it be Walker? Last I heard, the Authorities were seriously upset with you.”

  “Walker wouldn’t bother to knock,” I said, standing up and staring at the closed door. “If he even thought I was in here, he’d have his people blow that door right off its hinges.”

  “Could be a client,” said Cathy. “They do turn up here, from time to time.”

  “All right,” I said. “You open the door, and I’ll stand back here and look impressive.”

  “I wish you’d let me keep guns in here,” said Cathy.

  She moved warily over to the door and spoke the Word that opened it. Standing outside in the corridor, and looking more than a little lost, was an entirely ordinary-seeming man in a smart suit and tie. He peered hopefully at Cathy, then at me, but didn’t look particularly impressed. He was average height, average weight, somewhere in his forties, with thinning dark hair shading into grey. He edged into my office as though expecting to be ordered out at any moment.

  “Hello?” he said tentatively. “I’m looking for a John Taylor. Of Taylor Investigations. Have I come to the right place?”

  “Depends,” I said. Never commit yourself to anything until you have to. My visitor didn’t seem too obviously dangerous, so I came out from behind my desk to greet him. “I’m Taylor. What can I do for you?”

  “I’m not entirely sure. I think… I need to hire your services, Mr. Taylor.”

  “I’m rather busy at the moment,” I said. “Who sent you to me?”

  “Well… that’s rather the point. I don’t know where this is, or how I got here. I was hoping you could tell me.”

  I sighed heavily. I knew a setup when I saw one. I was being made a patsy, I could feel it; but sometimes the only way to deal with cases like this was to walk right into the trap and trust that you’re bad enough to kick the crap out of whoever it was behind it.

  “Let’s start with your name,” I said. “If only so I know whom to bill.”

  “I’m Eamonn Mitchell,” my new client said nervously. He ventured a little further into my office, looking about him dubiously. Cathy gave him her best welcoming smile, and he managed a small smile in return. “I appear to be lost, Mr. Taylor,” he said abruptly. “I don’t recognise this part of London at all, and ever since I got here … strange things have been happening. I understand you investigate strange things, so I’m come to you for help. You see … I’m being haunted. By younger versions of myself.”

  I looked at Cathy. “You see? This is why I never come to the office.”

  Chapter Two

  Paths Not Taken

  So we sat Eamonn Mitchell down, after I cleared off a chair, and Cathy poured some of her life-saving coffee into him, and bit by bit we got the story out of him. He relaxed a little, once he realised we were prepared to take him seriously, no matter how strange his story seemed. But he still preferred to talk mostly to his coffee mug rather than look either of us in the eye.

  “My… hauntings weren’t exactly ghosts,” he said. “They were quite solid, quite real. Except… they were me. Or rather, myself at a younger age. Wearing clothes I used to wear, saying things I used to say, used to believe. And they were angry with me. Shouting and pushing, haranguing me. They said I betrayed them, by not becoming the kind of man they’d intended and expected to become.”

  “What kind of person are you, Mr. Mitchell?” I said, to prove I was paying attention.

  “Well, I work for a big corporation, here in London. I’m quite successful, I suppose. Good money … And I’m married, with two wonderful children.” And then nothing would do but to interrupt his story to get out his wallet and produce photos of his wife Andrea, and his two children, Erica and Ronald. They seemed nice enough, good ordinary people just like him. He smiled fondly at the photos, as though they were his only remaining life-line to a world he knew and understood, then reluctantly he put them away again. “I was coming home from work this evening, on the tube, checking over some last bits of paperwork. I was mentally counting off the stops, as usual, and when it got to my turn I got off the train. Only when I looked around, it wasn’t my stop. I’d disembarked at a station I’d never seen before, called Nightside. I turned round to get back on the train, but it was already gone. I hadn’t even heard it leave. And the people on the platform with me…” He shuddered briefly, looking at me with large, frightened eyes. “Some of them weren’t people, Mr. Taylor!”

  “I know,” I said reassuringly. “It’s all right, Mr. Mitchell. Tell us everything. We’ll believe you. What happened next?”

  He drank some more coffee, his lips thinning from the bitterness, but it seemed to brace him. “I’m ashamed to say I ran. Just pushed and forced my way through the crowd, up out of the station and onto the street. But things were even worse there. Everything was wrong. Twisted. Like walking through a nightmare I couldn’t wake up from. The streets were
full of strange people, and creatures, and… things I couldn’t even identify. I don’t think I’ve ever been more scared in my life.

  “I didn’t know where I was. Didn’t recognise any of the street names. And everywhere I looked there were shops and clubs and… establishments, offering to sell me things I’d never even thought about before! Awful things … After that I stared straight ahead, not looking at anything I didn’t have to. All I could think of was to get to you, Mr. Taylor. Somehow, I had your business card. It was in my hand when I got off the train. It had your address. I nerved myself to ask some of the more ordinary-seeming people for directions, but no-one would talk to me. Finally, a rather shabby and intense gentleman in an oversized grey coat pointed me in the right direction. When I looked back to thank him, he’d already disappeared.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Eddie has a way of doing that.”

  “All the way here, it felt like someone was following me.” Mitchell’s voice dropped to a whisper, and his knuckles whitened as he gripped his coffee mug. “I kept looking back, but I couldn’t see anyone. And then a man jumped out of an alleyway and grabbed me by the shoulders. I started to cry out, thinking I was being mugged, but then I saw his face, and my throat closed up. It was my face … only younger. He grinned nastily, enjoying the shock he saw in my face. His fingers were like claws digging into my shoulders.

  “Did you think you’d get away with it? he said. Did you think you’d never be called to account for what you’ve done?

  “I didn’t understand. I told him I didn’t understand, but he kept shouting into my face how I’d betrayed everything we ever believed in. And then someone pulled him away, and I thought I was being rescued, but it was another me! Older than my attacker, but still younger than I am now. You can’t imagine how terrifying it is to see your own face, looking right at you with hate in its eyes. He was shouting, too, about the waste I’d made of my life. His life. And then there were more of them, these doppelgängers, all of them from different periods in my life, pulling and yelling at me and at each other, fighting each other to get to me. A whole crowd of shouting, struggling people, and all of them me!

  “I ran away. Just put my head down and ran, while they were distracted with each other. I never thought of myself as a coward before, but I couldn’t face all those other versions of me, saying such hateful things, blaming me for doing something … terrible.” He took a deep breath, and looked at me with a strained smile. “Tell me the truth. Please. Am I in Hell? Have I died and gone to Hell?”

  “No,” I said quickly. “You’re still very much alive, Mr. Mitchell. This isn’t Hell, it’s the Nightside. Though sometimes you can see Hell from here. Basically … may I call you Eamonn? Thank you. Basically, Eamonn, you have stumbled into a place you have no business in. You don’t belong here. But not to worry; you have fallen among friends. I’ll get you back where you belong.”

  Eamonn Mitchell actually crumpled in his chair, as relief flooded through him. Cathy had to grab his coffee mug as it slipped from his fingers. She patted him comfortingly on the shoulder. And then my solid silver, reinforced, security-spelled office door banged open, catching us all by surprise, and two more Eamonn Mitchells stormed in. It was quite clearly the same man, at different ages. The youngest looked to be about twenty, probably still a student, with a save the whales T-shirt, bright purple bell-bottoms, long hair, and an unsuccessful beard. He would have seemed ridiculous if he hadn’t looked so angry and so dangerous. The other man was maybe ten years older, in a sharp navy blue suit, clean-shaven, with seriously short hair. He looked just as angry, and perhaps even more dangerous because he was more focussed, more experienced. I decided to think of them as Eamonn 20 and Eamonn 30, and my client as Eamonn 40, just to keep my head straight. I moved to stand between the newcomers and my client, and they transferred their angry gaze to me.

  “Get out of our way,” said Eamonn 20. “You don’t know what this bastard’s done.”

  “Get out of our way, or we’ll kill you,” said Eamonn 30.

  “Oh, Security!” said Cathy.

  A closet door I hadn’t noticed before sprang open, and a huge and impressively hairy hand shot out of the closet and wrapped itself firmly around both the invading Eamonns. They struggled fiercely against the great gripping fingers, but with their arms pinned to their sides, they were both quite helpless. They shouted and cursed until I strolled over and gave them both a brisk warning slap round the back of the head. A thought struck me, and I looked back at Cathy.

  “Can I ask what’s on the other end of this thing’s arm?”

  “I find it best not to ask questions like that,” Cathy said, and I had to agree with her.

  I gave the two intruders my best intimidating glare, and they glared right back at me. Proof, if proof were needed, that they were newcomers to the Nightside. Anyone else would have had the sense to be scared.

  “Look,” I said patiently. “You are currently being held by a hand big enough to give all of us seriously worrying thoughts about what it might be attached to. A hand that will do whatever I tell it to. So not only are you not going anywhere anytime soon, but if I were you, I’d be giving some serious thought about what might happen if I don’t start getting some answers out of you. Words like crunch and squish should be echoing uneasily through your heads. So, why not tell me what it is you’re doing here and what you have against my client? There’s always a chance we can work this out peacefully. Not a very big chance, admittedly, this is the Nightside after all; but I feel we should make the effort.”

  “He betrayed me!” said Eamonn 20, almost spitting out the words, his face dark with rage. “Look at him! Just another faceless drone in a suit and tie. Everything I ever hated and despised. I was never going to be him! I had dreams and ambitions, I was going to go places and do things; become someone who mattered, doing things that mattered! I was going to change the world … live a life I could be proud of…”

  “Dreams are nice,” said Eamonn 30, his voice cold but controlled. “But we wake up from dreams. I had drive and ambition. I was going places, going to make something of myself. Be a mover and shaker in the business world. I never intended to settle for being just another cog in the machine, like him! Look at him! Middle-aged middle-management, filling in his days till his pension.”

  “I was going to be an ecowarrior!” said Eamonn 20. “Fight the good fight for the environment! No compromise in defence of Mother Earth!”

  “Causes!” sneered Eamonn 30. “Just more dreams, more illusions. I’d had enough of living on pocket change and good intentions. I was going to be rich and powerful, and force the world to make sense!”

  “So,” I said to Eamonn 40. “What happened?”

  “I fell in love,” he said, in a quiet, almost defiant voice. “I met Andrea, and it was like finding the one part of my life that had always been missing. We married, then the children came along; and I was never happier. They became my life. Far more important than the vague dreams and ambitions of my younger days that I never would have achieved anyway. Part of maturity is learning to recognise your own limitations.”

  “That’s it?” said Eamonn 20. “You threw away my dreams for some bitch and a couple of snotty-nosed brats?”

  “You got old,” Eamonn 30 said bitterly. “You found the world too hard to cope with, so you settled for suburbia and apron strings.”

  “Neither of you has ever been in love, have you?” said Eamonn 40.

  Eamonn 20 snorted loudly. “Women? Love them and leave them. They just get in the way.”

  “I had more important things in mind,” said Eamonn 30. “Marriage is a trap, an anchor holding you back.”

  “I can’t believe I was ever you,” said Eamonn 40. “So small, so limited. Thinking of no-one but myself. For all your great dreams and ambitions, can either of you say you were ever really happy? Content? Satisfied?”

  There was a strength and conviction in his voice that gave his younger selves pause, but only
for a moment.

  “You won’t get away with this,” said Eamonn 20. “We have been given power; the power to change things. To change you! To remake our life into what it should have been.”

  “Probability magic,” said Eamonn 30. “The power to rewrite history by choosing among alternate timetracks. You’re a mistake, a stumble that should never have happened.”

  “I’m going to undo all your decisions,” said Eamonn 20. “Snuff you out with my magic!”

  “My magic is more powerful than yours!” Eamonn 30 snarled immediately. “My future will prevail, not yours!”

  And then somehow they’d both worked a hand free, and each of them was brandishing a magic wand. I was so surprised I just stood there for a moment, and gaped. No-one’s used a wand in the Nightside for centuries. Wands went out with black cats and pointy hats. (All right, the Faerie Court

  still use them, but the Fae have always been weird.) And then Cathy and I had to jump for our lives as both the younger Eamonns started blasting probability magics at each other, and around my office in general. Beams of pure chance energy shot out of the wands, spitting and crackling on the air, full of the power that runs through rolling dice or a tossed coin, power to change the outcome of any decision in favour of the magician’s will. Except these were a couple of amateurs with wands, so all they could do was unleash the magic and let it run wild, changing whatever it touched. I pushed Cathy to safety behind the heavy oak desk, then realised Eamonn 40 was still sitting in his chair, staring open-mouthed at what was happening. I scuttled across the carpet on all fours, keeping my head well down, hauled Eamonn 40 off his chair, and drove him to safety behind the desk with encouraging words and harsh language.

  Both the younger Eamonns turned their attention to the giant hand still holding them. They blasted it repeatedly with their wands, and there was a flurry of coruscating energies as the hand changed colour several times, then was suddenly and quite definitely female. Right down to the pink nail varnish. The fingers snapped open, and the hand shot back into its closet, probably in shock. The two younger Eamonns staggered free, blasting everything they could see with their wands, searching for Eamonn 40. They might have done some serious damage if they hadn’t been compelled to spend most of their time dodging each other’s magics.