45

And “No!” once more cried Hugo Rune in the sawdust ring of Count Otto’s flying circus.

“But yes,” said Will’s other self, all present once again.

“What has happened?” Will asked Rune. “What did he do?”

“He returned to the past. He changed history. He stopped me from introducing Babbage to Her Majesty the Queen. He’s effectively wiped out every piece of Victorian supertechnology as if it never existed.”

And all over London the lights were going out, the electric lights. And one by one the Tesla towers and each and every bit of technology that had come into being through the work of Charles Babbage vanished away and was gone. And then the lights of London returned, the gaslights of London, that is.

“Do something, Barry,” whispered Will.

“Take you home, chief? It’s all I can offer you.”

“Take me back in time. Let me put this right.”

“No can do, chief, not in my remit. You know that.”

“Mr Rune,” Will whispered. “Now would be the time for you to finally demonstrate your magic”

“Yes,” said Rune. “Indeed,” and he twiddled his thumbs.

Will’s other self took the athame from Count Otto’s hand, knelt over the Colonel and cried aloud, “Great Satan, God of this world, accept the sacrifice and hearken to these words. The future is yours through me. I will be your power on Earth. The Loved One, adored by all. I will cast down every other church but yours. Hearken to these words, these perfected words. Accept the sacrifice and bring the love to me.”

And words spilled from the mouth of Count Otto Black. The words of the Great Spell, the Big Magic Spell, the spell that moulded time and space, the spell that had been brought to absolute perfection through computer technology. And the awful words jarred the air, sending terrible vibrations that rattled the teeth of the rich and famous and knocked the lady’s straw hat off.

“Do something!” Will shouted at Rune. “Employ your magic”

“It’s not quite as simple as that.” Rune’s raiment flapped about him now, as an evil wind whipped up from nowhere, blizzarding the sawdust and bringing Rune’s generously proportioned belly into startling relief.

“And die that I gain all!” The other Will drove down the athame.

Rune raised high his hands. The athame halted in midswing.

The other Will struggled to push it home but an unseen force held it back.

“Bravo,” said Will.

But a look of puzzlement was to be seen on the face of Hugo Rune. The other Will fought and struggled. Hideous words issued from the mouth of Count Otto Black. Pinch-faced women cowered and fretted. Tim all but vanished beneath his hair. Automata braced themselves against the growing force. The crowd, who’d had more than enough, took to mass panic and took to the exits, screaming and clawing and climbing one upon another.

And then a blinding golden light beamed down through the great glass dome. The blade of the athame, lit by the golden radiance, pressed closer to the chest of Colonel William Starling.

The words that poured from Count Otto Black’s mouth, poured forth faster and faster: ancient words of power, the formulae of sorcerers and maguses and warlocks, brought to hideous reality.

The minute hand of Big Ben clunked to the hour of twelve.

And the golden light, the golden light.

“They come,” crowed Joseph Merrick, rising from beneath his seat and making a fist in the air with his one good hand. “The strike force of the Martian invasion fleet. Right on schedule. Let’s get a Mexican wave going.”

“What?” went Will, as well he might.

The blade of the athame struck the chest of Colonel William Starling.

“No!” shouted Will, as a maelstrom tore about him.

“Sorry,” came the voice of H.G. Wells, but faintly in the tearing and rending of elements. “I tried to hold the knife back, but he was too strong.”

The blade pressed into the chest of Colonel Starling.

“No!” Will sprang forward, hurled himself at his other self.

“No!” cried Barry. “No, chief, don’t forget David Warner. You mustn’t touch him, you mustn’t.”

“No!” cried Will’s other self, who had also seen Time Cop.

But Will threw himself forward. He knew what it meant for him; it meant certain death. And Will was young and had no wish to die. That it should end like this, so suddenly, after all he had been through, all he had seen and done and experienced, seemed nothing less than absurd. There should have been more, much more: the Lazlo Woodbine final rooftop confrontation, with the villain taking the big fall to oblivion and Will surviving as the hero. And although this wasn’t original, it would have done for Will.

But it wasn’t to be. There would be no eleventh hour reprieve, no twist in the tail, not even a deus ex machina ending, with God stepping in and putting the whole thing right. There would be only this. It would end here and end now, with Will and his other self, the meeting of matter and anti-matter, of Will and Anti-Will.

It is a fact well known to those who know it well, although how they know it well remains unclear, that at the very moment of your death, your entire life flashes right before your eyes: like a movie, like a biopic, the director’s cut. And as Will plunged forward, he viewed it, as from a plush comfy seat in a private screening cinema.

He saw himself as a child and a youth: the thin lad amongst the fat, the freak, the outsider, like Master Scribbens and Mr Merrick and Mr H.G. Wells. Alone, no matter in whose company he was.

And he saw himself in his orange-walled housing unit in the Brentford sky tower of the twenty-third century, breakfasting with his parents. And at the Tate, discovering the wristwatch on The Fairy Feller’s Masterstroke. And being attacked by the robots from the past. And travelling into this past, this hidden past with its countless marvels.

And he saw his meeting with Hugo Rune, and the year that he and Rune had spent together wandering over the Victorian world, the sights he had seen in foreign parts and the folk he had met: the Dalai Lama, the Tsar of Russia, the Mandarin and the Pope. And Will knew now why Hugo Rune had taken him upon these travels. Rune had known that Will’s time was short. That he was doomed to die, now, at this very moment. Rune had wished to show Will all he could, allowing him to experience all he could, to taste the finest foods and drink the finest wines and stay at the finest hotels there were, and yes, to have had the finest sex also, with many exotic women, in many exotic parts. Which indeed Will had done, although he hadn’t mentioned it to Tim, because he hadn’t wanted Tim to be jealous.

And Will relived his meeting with Sherlock Holmes and with Barry, the time-travelling Holy Guardian sprout, and Joseph Merrick and Will’s other self. And he remembered how he had returned to the future and told of his adventures to Tim and brought Tim back to this age; and the courtroom siege and the moonship disaster at Crystal Palace, and all that had led him to this moment, this moment when he would die.

All of this as seen by Will and re-experienced: the wonder, the excitement, the laughter and the pleasure. And there was a sense of satisfaction here, of closure.

He had lived a life, which though short, had been filled with adventure, fantastic adventure, with risk and adventure, with all that he had ever really truly wanted, and if it was to end here and end now, then so be it. Perhaps it wasn’t so bad. Perhaps, indeed, this was how it should be, how it was meant to be.

And as Big Ben chimed in the dawn of the twentieth century, Will fell upon his other self. Fell into his other self. Matter, anti-matter, Will and Anti-Will. The two merged into one, became one and the same. Which cannot be, because it buggers time and space and sets the cosmic cats amongst the pigeons.