Fixer (38 page)

So on the great/horrible day two cold cycles past, the Kilroy Prime of the River Tribe Kilroys knew/understood what it meant that one of the Echo People spoke to him. They were trying to turn themselves into Sees with one of their Echo machine/devices. He knew/understood what he had to do.

The killing of Echo People was an idea/notion the Prime had never entertained before that day. Everyone in the Tribes knew the Echo People were best left alone. They were Primitives and worthy of no more than pity/scorn. But sometimes, when they acted foolish and forgot their place/role in things, they needed to be punished.

What the Kilroy Prime never imagined/thought was how much he would enjoy this. The Echo People were stupid, more stupid then the lowest of the Menials, and so easy to frighten/terrorize. In fulfilling his duty/oath to the Tribes, he had stumbled/discovered a greatness. He, Kilroy Prime of the River Tribe Kilroys, was the bringer of death himself, a god-thing to the lowly Echo People. So he gave them his name that they might know who had smote/punished them.

For his arrogance, Kilroy Prime of the River Tribe Kilroys was himself punished when the true See, bringer of darkness/pain, revealed himself in the well-making room of the final Echo. The Prime should have known when he first saw Kora-gan that he was different. Others of the Echo People appeared fuzzy/rough, but Kora-gan looked crisp/solid. And then the Prime saw how Kora-gan could move. When the Kilroy Prime swung his great stick at Kora-gan, he saw/felt the stick hit Kora-gan’s face. And then in blink-time Kora-gan was not there anymore, he had moved aside. Nothing but the See could have done such a thing.

To his shame and the shame of his ancestors, Kilroy Prime of the River Tribe Kilroys was afraid. He ran. But then he realized that as much as the legend/myth/story of the death of the Kilroy Prime of the Hill Tribe Kilroys needed to be chewed upon for the truth to be divined/understood, so, too, did the legend/myth of the See itself. Kora-gan, Seer of all, the destroyer from the Void Beyond was still only an Echo. And Echo People could die.

Yes, it was true that Kora-gan had the power of the See. The Prime saw/felt what happened when the See called forth the horror of the Void Beyond, but while it was truly horrible/painful, it was not permanent/fatal, as he had been led to understand/fear it would be. Getting struck by the Echo machine/device in the road almost hurt more, and he was nearly recovered from that blow.

No, Kora-gan the See was no more worthy of his fear than any of the Echo People. He could be killed/defeated. And when that happened, the legend of the Kilroy Prime of the River Tribe Kilroys would be greater than that of any of the heroes of old.

The Prime smiled some more.

*  *  *

Now

“Didn’t I tell you they always travel in packs?” Harvey was saying.

“No, Harvey,” Corrigan said. “You never mentioned it.”

“How do you suppose they did all that damage in the hospital? Those things were all over the place.”

“But you only shot one of them. Why didn’t they keep attacking?”

“I shot the leader,” Harvey said.

“The one in the overalls,” Corrigan said. “So, I take care of him, maybe the other two leave me alone?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

The other two looked nearly identical to the first, except for their clothing. One had on jeans and a torn brown sweater, the other, a navy blue suit and a T-shirt. Both looked like they did their shopping at the Salvation Army, which was probably exactly the case.

More important than their clothing, was that both had weapons. The sweater guy had what looked like a policeman’s nightstick, while the one in the suit had a—

“A sword?” Corrigan said. “Are you fucking kidding me? Where did you get a sword?”

“Seemustdie,” the first Kilroy—
the Alpha Kilroy
—said, still smiling. 

They closed in on Corrigan, showing a coordination that indicated this wasn’t the first time they’d worked together. The Alpha appeared to have generalship over the other two, as he communicated positioning to them via a series of short chirps and head bobs. Corrigan did his best to keep all three of them in sight without having to turn his head, but the closer they got, the harder that became. 

Now,
he thought. In the future, he felt the nightstick—from his left—crash down on the side of his head. He ducked away from that and right into the swing of the sword, which was coming in low. His only safe dodge was to fall to the ground and roll, which took him right into the path of the baseball bat.

He swatted the bat away at the last second with his forearm, but this opened him up to a vicious shot in the ribcage from the nightstick. Still on the ground, he rolled away from that attack and managed to regain his feet outside the circle of attack. 

Rib’s busted
, he thought.
Might be time for me to run.
But the three Kilroys repositioned themselves with impressive speed and precision—or so it seemed given they were still ahead of him in the timeline—and in another second he was surrounded once more and facing the sword, which was whistling at his face.

Above all else, avoid the sword,
he reminded himself. It was the most dangerous of the three weapons, for while blunt-force trauma was no picnic, at least the bat couldn’t chop him in half. It seemed the Kilroys understood this, too, for as he stepped to the side before the sword hit home, he found himself occupied avoiding swings from the night stick and the bat. That gave the one with the sword a chance to swing at him again, and this time he had no chance to avoid it, unless he went
through
the swordsman.

It made perfect sense and probably should have occurred to him earlier. They weren’t in his present, even if the things they were swinging were. Corrigan couldn’t hope to understand why that was, but he didn’t need to. He just had to know it to be the case.

His present-tense self dove through the future-tense swordsman. In one of his futures, this resulted in him passing directly through the unmoving sword-wielder—diving through his midsection like a linebacker executing a tackle—and getting a mouthful of suit. It was like running through somebody’s closet. In the other future—the one that stuck—the Kilroy with the sword reacted and stepped aside. And that was all he had time to do. Corrigan landed safely outside of their attack circle.

Corrigan should have had time to get to his feet after that, but by the time he got his bearings, the Alpha Kilroy was already upon him, swinging the bat.

That was much too fast,
he thought, just as the bat connected. The side of his face exploded in a shower of flashing lights and thudding pain.
What’s going on?

He rolled away awkwardly, and then tried again to get to his feet, but found that this was not a simple matter; the shot to the head had messed up his equilibrium. He fell back over. Then nightstick guy hit him in the arm, and the Alpha took another swing at his head, which he was now covering with his hands. More swings followed, to the chest and legs. And the one with the sword was coming around to deliver what would probably be a deathblow. 

Corrigan, reduced to ducking and covering, couldn’t understand what was happening. It was like all three of them had suddenly started moving in fast-forward, and he had no idea where the rewind was.
Are they really this fast?

He was going to have to do something about the sword first and worry about the rest of it later, even if it meant being brained. In the temporary lull—the others had stepped back so the swordsman could administer the fatal blow—Corrigan slid his hand into his pocket and pulled out the gun. He knew the Kilroy would dodge it before it did any damage, but maybe, if he was supremely lucky, he could hit the sword.

He took aim and fired at right around the same time the Kilroy raised the sword over his head. Corrigan meant to hit the handle, but none of his attendant body parts—hand, arm, head, eyes—were entirely up to the task thanks to a sound pummeling. The gunshot missed low and hit his attacker squarely in his gargantuan forehead.

He didn’t dodge it?
Corrigan thought.
I can’t be that lucky.

The Alpha Kilroy knocked the gun from Corrigan’s hand before he could try another shot, but that was okay; the damage had been done. Mr. Blue Suit staggered backward, dazed, possibly wondering where the bullet hole above his eyes had come from and how he hadn’t expected it. He made a noise that sounded a little like a disappointed kitten, then fell to his knees, and collapsed awkwardly onto his back. The sword fell to his side.

Okay, I think I get it,
Corrigan thought.

Breaking his silence, the Alpha shrieked madly and swung at Corrigan’s face with the bat. But Corrigan anticipated the move. He rolled to his right so that the head of the bat struck the ground harmlessly. Then, once the head of the bat was grounded, he rolled left and pinned the bat under his left arm and torso. This brought the Alpha’s face closer to the ground—he didn’t want to let go of the bat—and within striking range. Corrigan swung his right fist at the creature’s nose with as much force as he could muster. There was a loud crack from the impact. The Alpha squealed in pain and jerked backward, upending Corrigan and releasing the bat from its temporary confinement

“Hah!” Corrigan said, ignoring the significant pain in his knuckles. “Guess who just arrived for the party?”

*  *  *

Now

Something weird was going on with Corrigan. Maggie noticed it when he stopped in the grassy park a stone’s throw from the river and fired the gun. There was absolutely no question whatsoever that he had fired it because the gun lit up the night with its discharge. She’d been around enough handguns in her lifetime to know there was nothing else a gun could do that might be mistaken for it. Yet, it didn’t make a sound.

And that wasn’t possible. Even silenced guns make a little noise when they fire, and there was no way the service revolver was silenced. All the laws of physics with which she was personally familiar required that there be a loud
BANG!
involved. As there was not, she was forced to conclude that perhaps there were some laws with which she wasn’t entirely familiar.

“How would he go about doing that?” Maggie asked Archie Calvin. “Go ahead in time, like you said.”

“I suspect he has always done so in small increments and not realized it,” he said. “All of the people I spoke to who are familiar with him explained that there are occasions in which it seems he is not really there. They described it as a lack of concentration on his part, which is about how I would expect it to happen. It’s not that he loses track of the present. He quite literally
drifts out
of the present.”

“But I’ve seen that happen,” she said. “And he doesn’t disappear or anything.”

In front of her, Corrigan had begun a complicated dance, looking as if he were avoiding attacks from a number of invisible assailants. 

What is he doing to you, Corrigan? 

She knelt down behind a shrub that divided a small children's play area from the space Corrigan and Kilroy occupied, hoping to go unnoticed.

“He wouldn’t disappear,” Archie said. “Part of him still occupies the present; it’s only that the driver is missing. Look at it as a mind-body problem. Where does the mind end and the body begin?”

“I . . . um . . . Isn’t the brain part of the body?”

“Not the brain. The mind. The part of us that is
us
, that thinks and reasons and is self-aware. In most of us it’s located in the same temporal space as our body, which is also stuck in that one space. In Corrigan, the mind can be anywhere along his future timeline.”

Corrigan dove, fell on the ground and covered up. His head got rocked hard to one side. Kilroy was absolutely whaling on him.

“Can I still communicate with him?”

“Well, yes. He still occupies a space in our present. He should also hear your words spoken in the future.”

Looking pretty ragged, Corrigan drew the gun from his pants and fired a desperation shot. Maggie was only a couple dozen feet away.
Still no sound.

“He just shot a gun, and I didn’t hear it. Explain.”

“He’s gone ahead, then!” Calvin said excitedly.

“Shouldn’t I hear the gunshot when I catch up to it?”

“This is where it gets somewhat complicated. In a sense, there are two kinds of ‘now’ in play here. There is your ‘now,’ which has caught up with Corrigan’s former ‘now.’ And there is the ‘now’ that he and the creature occupy. The two are not the same, as should be apparent since we cannot ever see the creature. He fired the gun in the other ‘now,’ and every non-object-related thing associated with that act—like the sound of the gunshot—is gone by the time your ‘now’ catches up to it, for the same reason the creature and the sound he might make are gone by then. This is a non-symmetrical arrangement. The sounds you make will be heard in their present, but the sounds they make will not be heard in yours. It gets even more complicated from there, but—”

“Skip it,” she said. “How come I can still see him when I can’t see the thing he’s fighting?”

“The creature has no presence in our ‘now.’ Corrigan does. It’s what makes him unique.”

Maggie had more questions but her phone had just beeped loudly, curtailing a more extensive discussion that would probably have not brought her any closer to a full understanding anyway.

“My battery’s low,” she said. “Tell me, does Corrigan even know he’s been jumping ahead?”

“I imagine not. His grip on the present is usually very firm, from what I’ve been led to understand.”

“Yeah, unless he hasn’t gotten a lot of sleep.”

“What was that?” Calvin asked. The beeping had gotten more persistent and was affecting the audio.

“Nothing. I’m losing you, Professor. I’ll have to call you later, when it’s over.”

Provided,
she thought,
we’re still alive.

*  *  *

Now +