“Not so fast,” said the ancient. “I haven’t given you what you came for.”
Russell’s brain was all fogged up. All he wanted was to get out. To get away from this place. “What I came for?” he asked.
“You came for these, didn’t you?” Mr Fudgepacker produced two black leather belts with complicated dials set into the buckles.
“What are those?”
“For your journey home. To get you back safely.”
“The time devices.”
“Modern technology,” said Mr Fudgepacker. “An improvement on the old Flügelrad. I designed them myself.”
With whose, or what’s, help? thought Russell. As if I didn’t know.
“Just set the time and press the button,” said Mr Fudgepacker. “But they’ll only work the one way and that’s backwards. Time isn’t for fooling about with, Russell. It’s best left alone.”
“Goodbye then, Mr Fudgepacker.”
“Goodbye, Russell.”
It is often the case that after experiencing unspeakable horror, people unaccountably burst into laughter. It happens in wartime and my father told me that when he served as a fireman during the blitz, he often came upon people sitting beside the burned-out shells of their houses, laughing hysterically. He said that he was never certain whether it was simply through shock, or something more. A burst of awareness, perhaps, that they were alive. That they had survived and were aware of their survival, probably aware of their own existence for the first time ever.
As Russell left the Emporium and walked back along the track that had once been the Kew Road, he began to laugh. It started as small coughs that he tried to keep back but it broke from him again and again until tears ran down his face and his belly ached.
Russell had this image in his mind. An image both farcical and absurd. But he couldn’t shake it free. It was a newspaper headline, splashed across a Sunday tabloid.
It read:
ASSASSIN CONFESSES:
“I SHAGGED HITLER’S GIRLFRIEND”
20
Aryan 3
Russell returned to the Schauberger Memorial Mall, but he did so via a different entrance, purchased several items from one of the gift shops and slipped these into an inner pocket of his sharp black jacket. Then he strode at a brisk pace towards the electrical store and Julie.
Julie wasn’t there.
Russell checked his watch, he was rather late. But she’d have waited, surely? She’d have had to wait. Russell looked up and down the shopping mall, no sign of her.
What to do? Go back to The Flying Swan? See if he could tease where to go next from Jim Pooley? Stay here? Wait outside?
Wait outside, Russell decided. This place depressed him anyway. Wait outside it was. Russell walked down the arcade, under the big golden arch and out through the glass revolving doors.
“Russell!” A harsh stage whisper.
“Julie?”
“Over here.”
Russell turned, Julie’s hand beckoned to him from behind one of the chromium portico columns that flanked the entrance.
Russell wandered over. “Why are you hiding?” he asked.
“Why are you late?” was Julie’s reply. “I’ve been waiting for an hour.”
Russell began with the first in a series of carefully rehearsed lies. “I was held up,” he said. “I was only able to acquire one time belt.”
Julie didn’t seem unduly miffed by this. “Only one? Well, give it to me, give it to me.” Altogether far too eager. Her glance met Russell’s. “I mean, well done, Russell. I knew you could do it.”
“It wasn’t easy. There’s all the big celebrations going on.”
“Celebrations? What celebrations?”
“For the return of Hitler. He must have come in the Flügelrad. He materialized in Berlin an hour ago. There’s huge rallies and firework displays. I saw it on a TV in one of the shops.”
Julie looked as bewildered as Russell had hoped she would. “That isn’t right,” she whispered. “He’s not due until tomorrow.”
“Sorry?” said Russell. “I didn’t catch that.”
“Nothing. Nothing. Give me the programmer.”
“We’re supposed to do this outside the electrical store, that’s the way it was done in the movie.”
“Well, this isn’t a movie. Give me the programmer.”
Russell took the programmer from his pocket. Julie dug into a carrier bag and brought out the gift box.
“Here, let me put it in,” said Russell, taking the box from her hands. “I can pack it in the way I remember it being packed when I unwrapped it. If you know what I mean.”
“I do, but just hurry.”
Russell turned away and fiddled about.
“Are you done? Come on, give it to me.”
Russell turned back and presented Julie with a neatly wrapped parcel. “There,” said he. “Done.”
“And the time belt?”
“Yes, of course.” Russell took one of the time belts from his jacket pocket. Julie strapped the belt around her slender waist. “How does it work?” she asked.
“I’ve set the time and the co-ordinates. You know what to do, go back to the date and the time. I will be in The Ape of Thoth with Morgan. Give the programmer to me and let me do the rest.”
Julie looked up at Russell and for one terrible moment Russell thought she was going to ask the obvious question: why are you doing this? Russell did have an ingenious answer worked out. But he was not called upon to use it.
“What are you going to do?” Julie asked.
“I can’t leave,” said Russell. “I’m trapped here. But He is here, Hitler. Maybe I can raise an underground resistance movement, or something.”
“Fat chance,” whispered Julie.
“Sorry, I didn’t catch that.”
“I said, I hope you get that chance.”
“Thank you.” Russell recalled in the movie there being a bit of passionate kissing and the words “I love you” being bandied about. Russell stuck his lips out for a snog.
But he didn’t get one.
“Right,” said Julie. “I’ll be off.”
And pressing the button on the buckle of her belt.
She was.
Russell stood on his own, cocked his head on one side and listened. According to what he’d seen in the movie and back at The Ape of Thoth, the big metal clanking things with the terror weapons should now be making an appearance to chase Julie through time.
But they weren’t, were they?
“No,” said Russell. “They are not. Because that was just another trick, probably done with the Cyberstar machine, to make me trust and be protective to Julie from the very first moment. Boy, did I get taken for a sucker. But, however.” Russell delved into another pocket and brought out a package. It was identical in shape and form to the one Julie had taken back into the past.
Russell had switched them.
Russell grinned and unwrapped the programmer. Julie would be delivering the package to the Russell of the past in The Ape of Thoth, but this time, when the Russell of the past opened it, it would not contain the programmer. It would contain a nice fresh ham roll. After all, Russell had been eating that stale ham sandwich when he opened the package in The Bricklayer’s Arms, hadn’t he?
“I had,” Russell grinned. “You sly dog, Russell. You have pulled it off. No programmer, no movie, you’ve beaten the buggers.” Russell dropped the programmer to the marble paving and ground his heel upon it.
That was a job well done.
Russell stood on the steps of the shopping mall, a smug little smile on his face. He had got it done, he really had. He’d stopped the movie getting made and the world getting changed. He looked up at the monolithic building, all this would soon fade away. How long? Russell didn’t have a clue. But it would, he knew that it would.
So what to do now?
Another pint at The Flying Swan? That was tempting.
Return at once to the past? He still had to deal with the ultimate evil. The red insect thing in Fudgepacker’s basement. But he would deal with that. He felt certain he would.