Restoration (2 page)

  "We should get somewhere a bit safer." Penelope suggested. "While we decide what to do."

  "How about a coffee shop?" Miles asked.

  "I'm not sure anywhere is safe at this juncture," said Carruthers. "But I agree we should take stock."

  "And eat a cinnamon swirl," Miles added, "to help us focus."

  "You're obsessed," Penelope smiled.

  "About lots of things, can't deny it."

  "We need to get away from the glass roof," Ashe mumbled, "and if it shuts him up…" He marched towards a nearby crêperie.

  Miles and Carruthers stared at the bodies of Alan and Tom, one portly, one skeletal. "Toss you for it?" suggested Miles.

  "Allow me," Penelope grabbed Tom under the arms and scooted him off towards the cafe.

  "You get his legs," said Carruthers with a smile.

  "Fine," Miles agreed, "you get his pies."

  Stepping through the door of the cafe, Ashe glanced up at the roof. "Should provide a little more cover," he said, "keep away from the front window though, no point substituting one hail of glass for another."

  "Yes boss," Penelope muttered, pushing past him and dragging Tom over to the far corner, "we know you have our best interests at heart after all."

  Ashe didn't rise to the bait, he was far too concerned with Sophie, brushing the hair out of her eyes and whispering reassurance. It seemed bizarre to Penelope, the mental image she held of Ashe as a young man was completely scotched by this aging version. Before proven otherwise she had always seen Chester as gentle but cold. This man was filled with emotion and so utterly in control of himself that – even in his dotage – he screamed alpha male the minute he walked into a room. She wondered for a moment what it was that had changed him but then realised they were living it.

  "I've been thinking," said Miles as he and Carruthers carried Alan inside.

  "About time you started," Ashe mumbled.

  "If we're dealing with time travel then the key to stabilising this place isn't so much in act as intention."

  "What do you mean?" asked Penelope.

  "We need to agree, and stick to, our plan to get everything back on track. That first step alone should buy us time."

  "Explain," said Ashe, attentive to him for once.

  "You need to go back in time and ensure the box travels its pre-ordained path, yes?"

  "It seems we have little choice."

  "Then you'll do it?"

  "Like I said… there's not a lot of options."

  From outside the cafe there was another crack as the roof continued to give way. A large triangle of glass dropped towards the floor and then froze, at midpoint, hovering in the air.

  "That's it!" Miles shouted. "It works."

  "I don't follow…" admitted Carruthers.

  "You have to think about time in the right way," Miles explained. "Ashe has committed to ensuring our recent history stays on track. At this point he will either succeed or he won't. It's all up in the air. If he succeeds the damage ceases, if he fails it will complete itself."

  He stepped out of the cafe and looked around, the others following. "We're living alongside Schrödinger's cat."

  "Has he gone mad do you think?" Carruthers asked.

  "No," Ashe replied, "it's a thought experiment devised in the 1930's. On a quantum level, everything is governed by probability and it is only in the recording – the observation – of events that probabilities resolve into certainties."

  Carruthers glanced at Penelope. "Seems to me they've both lost it now."

  "A man takes a cat," Ashe continued, "and places it in a sealed box alongside a Geiger counter, a small amount of radioactive material and a flask of poison."

  "What on earth would someone do that for?" Penelope asked, "Did he have a pathological hatred of cats?"

  "The cat is unimportant," said Miles.

  "Not to the cat, one imagines." Penelope replied.

  "It's purely hypothetical!" said Ashe, "he didn't do it for real… The point is this: the radioactive substance is tiny, chosen for its equal probability to decay or not over a given time period. In that period – say an hour – it will either trigger the Geiger counter or it won't. If it does then the counter trips a system that will shatter the flask of poison killing the cat. If it doesn't… well, then it won't. After that hour has elapsed the probability of the cat being alive is equal to the probability of it being dead."

  "So the cat is both alive and dead." Miles continued, "the only way of resolving the probability waveforms is by opening the box and observing one way or the other."

  "That's silly," said Penelope.

  "According to Schrödinger, so was Quantum theory, that was his point." Miles replied.

  "Forgive me," said Carruthers, "but I'm completely at a loss as to how this is relevant."

  "I will go back in time with the box," explained Ashe, "and the probability of my succeeding or not is in balance, the outcome unknown. The house is therefore in a state of stasis until the probability is resolved one way or the other."

  "Exactly," said Miles, "so can we have a latte now?"

 

They settled around one of the larger tables.

  There was a frantic hammering from the direction of the coffee machine as Miles tried to make it bleed hot beverages.

  "What's happening?" Alan shouted, snapping awake. He thrashed around in panic and sent a couple of chairs careering across the floor. "Sophie?"

  Ashe was straight to his feet. "She's okay," he insisted, grabbing Alan and trying to restrain him. "You're safe, calm down."

  "Not altogether sure I agree with anything he's said to him so far," Carruthers whispered to Penelope.

  "Where is she?" Alan shouted. He jumped to his feet and over to where Ashe had laid Sophie across a sofa. "What happened?" Alan asked, checking Sophie's pulse and pupils. He held his face close to hers. "'Build not break?'" he repeated, "What's that mean honey?"

  "She's connected to the house," Ashe explained, "she's part of the place now, her thoughts are helping to keep it together."

  "And that's a good thing?" Alan asked looking around. "Who are you all? Last thing I remember…"

  "You heard a voice on the other side of a door, asking for help," said Ashe, "you opened it. The man who stepped out was more than he seemed. He's to blame for the current situation."

  "Him and that bastard Chester," said Tom, having also woken up. "Let's not forget that little shit."

  There was an awkward silence at that, broken by Miles as he shuffled over with a tray of coffees. "Oh," he said, "don't tell me I have to wrestle another two mugs out of the bloody thing."

 

For a while there was nothing but chaos. Contrary opinions, heated voices, fear and distrust. This can have surprised nobody, however frustrating. Everyone sat at the table, now that the chaos had been put on hold temporarily, had a head full and ready to boil over.

  Tom – by nature a man given to going with the flow, most especially if it was Vermouth that was flowing – was the hardest to quell. It's hard to think reasonably when the cold, dead face of a woman you loved is hovering in your mind's eye like the after-shadow of a lightbulb. Tom could think of nothing else.

  No. That wasn't altogether true. He could think how it would feel to neck a scotch on the rocks, or a Martini so cold it coated the glass in condensation. He could think about that pretty fucking well. Tom didn't like to drink, he
needed
to drink. He had crossed the fine line between hobby and addiction long ago and that was a line that was only easily crossed in one direction.

  Penelope was also suffering. Though she would never admit as much. The sight of Alan and Ashe together was enough to break her resilience. She accepted they may not share the attitudes (or perhaps perversions would be a better word) of their younger counterpart but that didn't shake the fear and disgust she felt when looking at them. Carruthers had made a point of pulling her and Miles to one side as soon as he was able, insisting that no good would come from making the relation between Chester and the other two clear to Tom (or Alan for that matter, after all they could only assume he was in the dark as to his identity). She had agreed to this, things could only be worsened by Tom exacting revenge. Though, if she was honest, the idea was attractive to her. When she looked at Alan she was struck by the smell of leather upholstery and the taste of blood in her mouth. It was an association that would take some time to fade.

  Penelope was wrong to assume Alan hadn't recognised Chester as his younger self. After all, memory loss or no, he knew his own face well enough. Back in the "real" world – a place that seemed absurdly distant given that he had only been gone from it a handful of days – he had been convinced that the block on his memory hid a past that was unconscionable to the man he had become. Given the accusations Tom had made it would seem his instincts had been right. As to what he should do about it… well, that was a different matter entirely. If there was one thing that could save him from Chester – and however hard his subconscious preached otherwise Chester would always be a separate person – it was Sophie. He looked at her while the others argued about their plans. It was clear to him that she was beyond his reach, muttering the same phrase over and over again. "Build not break". But he
would
reach her, somehow...

  Ashe knew this devotion of course, after all it was what had brought him back to the House in the first place, determined to rescue Sophie from the position his younger self had inadvertently placed her in. He had been too late for that, circumstances – or perhaps the unbeatable forces of cause and effect – had insisted she play her part as she always had. He had his own part to play now and if these damned fools would stop their bickering maybe he could get on with it.

  In the end it was Carruthers who managed to bring order. "This is getting us nowhere," he announced, and with that everyone had to agree. "We need to work together, make our plans and then act on them. All of this…" he struggled to think of a polite word, "…bickering should be beyond us."

  "Agreed," said Ashe, thankful that at least one of the others seemed as driven toward action as himself.

  "Let's try and gather what we know," said Carruthers, "I'm sure I'm not the only one still baffled by our circumstances."

  "It's certainly beyond me," agreed Penelope.

  "It's beyond any sane mind, my dear," Carruthers assured her, "which is why our first step must be to lay it all out and try to gain perspective on the situation."

  Everyone else was quiet now, happy to give Carruthers the floor. For all their anger or impatience not one of them truly understood what had become of them.

  "Very well," Carruthers continued, "let us first deal with the House."

  "You can hear the capital a mile off," said Miles. "No ordinary house this…"

  "Indeed not," agreed Carruthers, "from what I understand from Ashe and that hateful fellow who just abandoned us here, this building exists through the power of thought."

  "It's imagination that fuels it," clarified Ashe, "though it's a mistake to think that makes it any less real."

  "A mistake none of us could make given the threats to our safety we have all endured," agreed Carruthers. "It exists outside of what we know of reality – which I begin to suspect is very little – an almost infinite labyrinth of dangers that has grown strong through its attachment to our world."

  "It started as a small prison," said Ashe, "supposedly unreachable, existing in a pocket reality of its own. It was built by…" here he struggled to think of a word to describe the architects of the House.

  "Aliens?" suggested Miles, always happy to lean toward the fantastical.

  "I don't know that they come from outer space," Ashe replied, then shook his head, "I don't know where they come from…"

  "And, for now," Carruthers chipped in, "we will have to accept that it doesn't matter. Whoever they are their abilities are far beyond our own, able to fashion a solid reality from nothing more tangible than thought."

  "This is bullshit," Tom whined, "
Twilight Zone
stuff."

  "It's fact," countered Ashe, "however hard to swallow."

  "Indeed," agreed Carruthers. "As I've said countless times: there is no limit to what mankind does not understand, but when faced with inarguable evidence he can do little but accept it."

  "'When you've eliminated the impossible'," said Miles, "'whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth'." The others stared at him. "Sherlock Holmes," he admitted.

  "That's the first reference from you I'm actually familiar with," admitted Carruthers with a brief smile. "So," he continued. "Through its link to mankind – using the focal point of the library – the prison fed off our worst nightmares, taking every imagined scenario and letting it flourish here."

  "Meanwhile," said Ashe, "the prisoner was making plans of his own."

  "We need to give him a name," suggested Miles, "we can't just keep calling him 'the prisoner'."

  "Does it really matter?" asked Carruthers, determined not to let the conversation become too distracted.

  "Just makes things easier," said Miles, "give him a name and he becomes more real, not so much of an abstract."

  "Well…" Carruthers scratched at his moustache, "what do you suggest?"

  Miles foundered, having not really thought the situation through.

  "It's hardly a priority," said Ashe, fixing the young man with an angry stare.