“‘You must kneel,’ he cried, ‘kneel before your God.’

“I fought, but he forced me before it. It glared down at me and it spoke. The voice was like a thousand voices. Like a stadium chant. ‘You wanted more time,’ it said.

“‘But I have your time, your real time. The time you had to come. And now I will have all your time. You have seen me and so I must have all of your time.’

“And it opened its horrible mouth. Wide, huge and it sucked in. And I knew it was sucking me in. Sucking in my time. All the time I’d already had, all my life. That’s what it did, you see, father. From the spines. It had my real future time and now it was sucking in my past. It was taking all the time I’d had before. The time of my childhood, my youth. It was taking all that. And it wasn’t fair, father. It wasn’t fair.”

“It wasn’t fair, my son.” The priest was weeping now. “It isn’t fair.”

“It took my time, it took all my time.”

The pub had gone rather quiet. As Sean had been telling this tale to me more and more folk had been gathering around to listen. And they were listening intently, as if somehow they knew the truth of this tale. Or had heard something similar. Or knew of someone who had told such a tale to someone else.

“Is that it?” I asked Sean, when finally I found my voice.

“Not quite,” Sean took a pull upon the pint of beer that had grown quite warm, while the listeners’ hearts had chilled. “The priest was weeping, crying like a child and he ran out of the cubicle. He ran right past me, he looked terrified. And I sat there, I could hear the old man wheezing, he was dying. He had told his awful tale and now he was dying. He had lost all his time and now he was going to die alone. Utterly alone.

“I sat there and I thought, I can’t let this old man die like that, it’s so wrong. Someone should be there with him, to hold his hand. I should be there with him. I heard his tale too.

“So I got down from my bed and I limped around to his cubicle. My ankle didn’t hurt because of the injection, but even if it had hurt, I wouldn’t have cared. I pushed back the curtain and I went inside. He was lying there on the bed and he smelled really bad. The smell of death. I smelled that on my Gran when I was a child. The man was about to die.

“He was all covered up, except for his head and his face looked old. Like really old. Like a hundred years old. It made me afraid just to look at him. I pulled down the cover so I could get at his hand, he was pretty much out of it by then, he probably didn’t even know I was there. But I pulled down the blanket and I took hold of his hand.

“But it wasn’t a man’s hand. It was a child’s hand. A little child and when I pulled the blanket right back I could see his body. It was a baby’s body. This old man’s head on top of a baby’s body. And as I took hold of the hand, this little hand, it was shrinking. Shrinking and shrinking. His time had been stolen, you see, his previous time, his past time. The thing had stolen it all from him and he was going back and back until he wouldn’t exist at all, would never exist at all. I tried to hold the hand, but I couldn’t. It just got smaller and smaller. All of him, smaller and smaller, his head was the size of a grape and I saw the eyes look up at me and the mouth move. And he spoke.”

“And what did he say?” I asked Sean.

“He said, ‘help me, help me,’ and then he just vanished.”

13

Accidental Movements of The Gods

Three months have passed since Russell parted with his life’s savings, thus depriving his poor mother of the stair-lift for her bungalow. Three months that have seen great activity in Hangar 18. Russell, who had never actually watched a movie being made, would have loved to have stood quietly by and done so. But he did not.

Russell’s days of standing quietly by were gone for ever. Russell had to find more money. Much more money.

And he’d done just that. Because, as has been said (to the point of teeth-grating tedium), Russell was a hard worker and when he was given a job to do, he did it. And he did it to the best of his abilities. And so if he was producer, then he would produce.

Armed with a carrier-bag full of videos (the ones he and Bobby Boy had made) he’d set off “up town”, which is to say “towards the West End”, which is to say, London. And there he’d made appointments, shown his videos and eaten many lunches. And being what is known as “an innocent abroad”, he had signed a number of rapidly drawn-up contracts and been “done up like a kipper”, which is to say, “taken to the cleaners”, which is to say, swindled.

It became clear to Russell at an early stage, that the backers (or “Angels” as they preferred to be called), were far more interested in acquiring a share of the Cyberstar technology than Mr Fudgepacker’s movie. And that wasn’t Russell’s to sell.

But he sold it anyway. Many times over. Reasoning, that if the movie was the great success he was sure it would be, he could just pay everybody back what they’d lent and a bit of a cash bonus on top and all would be happy.

Oh dear.

So he had raised a considerable sum. More than sufficient to finance all the great activity in Hangar 18 that he would have loved to have watched, but could not.

They kept him at it from morning till midnight. Mr Fudgepacker shot the movie during the day, while Russell was out doing the business, then he locked away all the test videos and technology and what-nots in his big safe before Russell got back to spend the evening trying to figure out the accounts. It just wasn’t fair.

And so now, at the end of a particularly tiring day, Russell sat all alone in Bobby Boy’s suitably grim office, that was now Russell’s suitably grim office, with his head in his hands, in a state of stress.

A state of stress and one of worry.

Russell worried about everything. He worried (not without good cause) about all the deals he’d made, but that was the least of his worries.

Russell worried a lot about the Flügelrad. For one thing, where was it now? Bobby Boy had shifted it out of Hangar 18 before anyone else got a look at it. But he wouldn’t tell Russell where he’d shifted it to. All he said was that it was in a very safe place and that Russell should remember he was sworn to secrecy about it.

“It doesn’t matter,” Bobby Boy told him. “It is no longer important.”

But it did matter and it was important. That thing had brought Adolf Hitler into the present day. And where was Adolf now? Lurking somewhere close at hand? Plotting and planning? Committing unspeakable acts? It didn’t bear thinking about. But Russell thought about it all the time.

And what about the future? That Nazi future Bobby Boy claimed to have seen? And what about the beautiful Julie? She had somehow come back from that future to give Russell the programmer, kiss him and tell him she loved him. How had that come about? She’d vanished with two evil clanking things in pursuit. Things that had followed her from the future. And neither she nor the clanking things were travelling in Flügelrads. What did that mean?

Was time travel commonplace in the future? Did folk from the future come back and tamper with the past?

Russell raised his head from his hands and gave it a dismal shake. And what about the movie? If it was made using technology stolen from the future and was a great success, then copies of it would exist in the future. Therefore someone in the future would be able to trace where and when the movie was originally made and dispatch a couple of evil clankers to reclaim the technology and therefore stop it being made. But of course if they did that and the movie didn’t get made, then copies of it could not exist in the future, so someone wouldn’t be able to trace where and when it was made and send back the clankers. But what if –