Tanglewreck Read online

  They jumped. They jumped into the silent floating world on worlds, and, for a moment, they hung there together, like two surprised angels, and then there was an intense burst of sparks, pale and strange, and they vanished for ever.

  Suddenly Silver realised what was happening. These people weren’t being Deported. They were being Atomised.

  She looked around her hiding place, desperate for anything she could use to cause confusion, and then she saw an Emergency button behind a glass window, like on trains. There was a coded keypad to open it, but Silver took out her axe, smashed through the glass in one clean strike, and plunged the blade right into the button.

  Immediately a wailing siren sounded so loudly that she covered her ears as she dropped back behind the cylinder. The orderly leapt up and out of the van.

  Silver jumped out the way she had come in and ran to Toby among the milling panicking crowd. Guards were arriving.

  ‘Hide in the crowd,’ said Silver. ‘Wait for our chance. You have to get to the kids.’

  A guard came past them. He leaned down to Silver and whispered, ‘I work for the Resistance. Follow me.’

  Without a word they fell in line behind him.

  ‘Ora knew you would come here,’ said the guard. ‘I’m going to get Toby and the other kids away. Come on.’

  ‘I’ve got to find Gabriel,’ said Silver stubbornly.

  ‘You’ll never find him,’ said the guard. ‘Now come on, there isn’t much time. Usually they Deport. Today they’re Atomising. Security. Red Alert. No prisoners. Atomising. Understand?’

  Silver nodded. Regalia Mason must be nervous. She wondered why.

  ‘Look out, man!’ said Toby. ‘The kids is comin’ down this way right now!’

  The guard set off quickly, Toby following him at a run. Silver took her chance to dart off the other way, back into the milling confusion.

  Her mind was racing. She was at the Atomic Fence. The entrance to the Black Hole was here somewhere.

  ‘Micah,’ she said out loud, ‘show me where to go.’

  She closed her eyes and concentrated on the medallion in her hand. She saw Micah’s face. When she opened her eyes again, she was looking directly at a big rough shed. The shed was unmarked; no guard, no barrier, but she knew this was it. Slowly, as though she were the last person alive, she walked towards the silent door.

  Gabriel was almost done now. The ledge that held him was giving way as Micah’s own strength faded. He lay flat, quiet, his face in the dirt, aware of long loops of flesh lassoing him down.

  There were three pictures in his mind. Three pictures that told him he still had a mind; that he was Gabriel.

  The first was Micah, eyes closed, hands outstretched, every sinew trembling as he struggled to hold the boy he loved. The second was Goliath, his strong body bent under the boy, trying to push back gravity, as he had once bent his huge head and pushed out of his ice prison.

  The third was Silver, so serious in her face, never laughing at him even for a second, but smiling at him for what felt like his whole life. He had known her for ever. Somewhere. Not here.

  He smiled in return.

  ‘GABRIEL!’

  What? Could he hear her? His name again, and her face very close to his, but she couldn’t be here. With pain and struggle, because one of his shoulders had dislocated, he raised himself up, risking the ledge, which sank a little more under the movement.

  ‘JUMP UP!’

  What? He couldn’t do that. He couldn’t jump up; he could only spin down.

  ‘COME ON, GABRIEL. I’M JUST HERE. NEAR.’

  Silver had opened the door, and she felt the wind roaring through the End of Time. She didn’t step forward. She knew there was no floor, nothing at all, she knew this was where he was. She lay down on her tummy and she put her hand down into the Black Hole.

  As she lay there, imagining light spinning at such speed through the Universe, she saw in her mind, very clearly, the first time she had met Gabriel, on the banks of the Thames, and he had saved her. Something had passed between them, and from then on, something always did, some understanding, some recognition. Love, it was – yes, love. Instantly love. And she saw a light-beam racing away through Time, and then she saw love like a rope thrown out – as bright as a light-beam, as fast as light – a rope across Time.

  In the Black Hole, Gabriel’s mind began to clear. It was Silver calling him. He sat up. He stood up. He was on his feet, though his feet seemed miles away.

  ‘JUMP, GABRIEL – I CAN REACH YOU.’

  The ledge was crumbling. Underground, light years away, Micah fainted and Goliath roared. A great wind swept through the Chamber. Swept across Gabriel. It was now, now, or …

  He jumped. He jumped with all his remaining strength, and what happened, happened. He did not fall back. He rose up, spinning through the black air, the warm lassos around his body loosening, the sound of Voices, babble of Voices. THE BODY CAN’T ESCAPE.

  But he was escaping. He was travelling faster than light, because he was travelling at the speed of love.

  The Walworth Hole

  Mrs Rokabye was enjoying life at Tempus Fugit since Abel Darkwater had fastened his cloak and left. Every morning Sniveller made her breakfast in bed, and every evening they plotted their plan.

  Mrs Rokabye thought of her plan with a capital P. It was a Plan. It was a Masterplan. Soon she would be living in a brand new Executive Home on a gated estate near Manchester. It was all she wanted; it wasn’t much, but if she had to destabilise the Universe to get it, then she would.

  Sniveller was less sure of Mrs Rokabye’s Plan, but he was prepared to help her because he longed to escape from Abel Darkwater’s service. He had worked for him for over three hundred years, without a day off.

  It was night, and the two of them were sitting in Abel Darkwater’s drawing room by a roaring fire. Sniveller had what looked like a set of Scrabble letters on the table in front of him, and he was rapidly spelling out words with them.

  EINSTEIN LINE. BOTH NO. YES.

  This meant nothing to Mrs Rokabye.

  ‘The Control tells me that Silver and her friend the Throwback are at the Einstein Line, that they are not together, and that Silver is moving towards the Timekeeper.’

  ‘Who exactly are you talking to?’ asked Mrs Rokabye, who had assumed they were alone in the room.

  ‘My Control. His name is Saul and he tells me all.’

  ‘Does it always rhyme?’

  ‘No it doesn’t, but I do.’

  ‘Well, ask Saul how we get to the Einstein Line.’

  ‘I don’t have to ask him, I knows the way myself. A map is better than a slap.’

  ‘Then we must go to the Washing Line, wherever that is, and rescue Silver as soon as she has rescued the Timekeeper. When will that be? Ask him.’

  Sniveller muttered something under his breath, and his fingers flew over the letters, forming the word SOON.

  Soon! Mrs Rokabye was excited. At long last the wretched child was going to do something useful and make Mrs Rokabye rich.

  ‘Put on your shoes, Sniveller – we must set off at once.’

  ‘It’s gone eight o’clock,’ objected Sniveller.

  ‘Everyone in this house is obsessed with Time,’ said Mrs Rokabye, unreasonably, as that was why she was here.

  ‘If I puts on my shoes after eight o’clock I will run away. Never run away in the day. Flight at night.’

  ‘You didn’t run away when we went to see The Lion King.’

  ‘I was on a lead,’ explained Sniveller. ‘Invisible to your eyes, but a lead nonetheless.’

  ‘But you don’t want to run away from ME, do you?’ asked Mrs Rokabye, batting her few eyelashes.

  In truth Sniveller didn’t want to run away from Mrs Rokabye because he had quite fallen for her. Yes, in his own way he loved her, even though she was a foot taller than him, with a face sharp as a saw.

  But he knew that if he put on his shoes he would run and run and never com
e back. That’s what happened if you had been in Bedlam for too long.

  Mrs Rokabye was already putting on her hat and coat. She went downstairs to the little kitchen and filled her coat pockets with tins of sardines, packets of salted peanuts, and teabags. Then she borrowed a very long scarf from the coat rack, and whistled up the stairs for Sniveller.

  He appeared in his greatcoat, feet bare.

  ‘Ready steady, don’t think twice, but treat me nice.’

  ‘Are we going by taxi?’ asked Mrs Rokabye hopefully.

  ‘A short stroll then straight down the Hole.’

  Mrs Rokabye’s suspicions were aroused.

  ‘What hole?’

  ‘The Walworth Hole. It’s the quickest way to the Einstein Line.’

  ‘Just where is the Einstein Line?’ asked Mrs Rokabye, who had been vaguely thinking about Morecambe Bay.

  ‘It’s on the other side of the Milky Way, in our solar system, and three hundred years off. I swear the Walworth Hole is the knack of there and back.’

  Disquieted but resigned, Mrs Rokabye walked the necessary miles to Walworth. In a dark and gloomy side street, Sniveller glanced round, then pulled a jemmy wrench from his greatcoat, and levered up a paving stone.

  Underneath was a cast-iron grille made in the eighteenth century. This he pulled aside with both hands, then, fiddling in his coat once more, fished out two miner’s helmets with lamps. He offered one to Mrs Rokabye, and strapped the other on his own bald head.

  ‘Down the Town!’ he said cheerfully.

  Mrs Rokabye looked into the hole. There was no ladder, no rope, no stairs, no lift.

  ‘What do you expect me to do?’

  ‘Where there’s no stair, it’s both feet in the air. Jump!’

  ‘JUMP???????!!!!!!!!!!!’

  Sniveller recalled that ladies are the fairer sex, and fainthearted, and in need of encouragement and support. He had never been married but he knew his manners. Bowing slightly, he arranged himself at the edge of the black yawning gap, with the flourish of an Olympic diver.

  ‘Dear lady, away I go, and don’t be slow.’

  Without hesitation, Sniveller leapt down the Walworth Hole.

  Mrs Rokabye waited for the scream and the crash. She waited and she waited and after five minutes she reasoned that Sniveller could not be dead. She considered her options; she could go back to Spitalfields, but she didn’t know the way and she didn’t have a key to the house. She could go back to Tanglewreck, but there were two dead men there already, and besides she didn’t have a train ticket.

  What did she have? Sardines, peanuts and teabags. They wouldn’t last long in this cold cruel world. She felt the pin in her pocket. She could sell that, but she had to be careful, someone might think she had stolen it – which she had done.

  Very well, then. So be it. Chin up. Best foot forward. Stiff upper lip.

  She fastened the miner’s helmet over the top of her hat, and tied the borrowed scarf all the way round her, to stop her coat flapping open. She had read somewhere that parachutists are always streamlined.

  Stuffing her handkerchief in her mouth to stop herself screaming, Mrs Rokabye jumped.

  There she goes, speeding faster and faster through infinite blackness. She seemed to be dropping through the weight of the world. She had a sense of nothing around her but open air, except that it was closed air, with a texture to it, like cloth – yes, she felt as though she was falling through cloth.

  Then she felt herself start to spin. She was no longer hurtling downwards, she was spinning round and round like a corkscrew, and she was getting dizzy. She could hear voices. She closed her eyes.

  Her last thought as the freezing air numbed her into unconsciousness was of Bigamist. Would she ever see her beloved rabbit again?

  Bethlehem Hospital

  At the Caffè Ora, Gabriel was lying on a camp bed under a thick blanket. Ora called a doctor, who clicked the dislocated shoulder back into place, and bound up the cuts and bruises that covered poor Gabriel’s body.

  Silver, Toby, Ora, Serena, everyone wanted to know what had happened to Gabriel in the Black Hole, but he was too weak to speak, and somewhere in his exhausted mind, he wasn’t sure that he wanted to tell them. Troubled and sore, he drifted off to sleep, with Dinger the cat curled up at his feet.

  Ora was holding an emergency meeting. No one had had any idea that the Deportees were being Atomised.

  Try as she might, Silver couldn’t make anyone listen to her story about Abel Darkwater and Regalia Mason.

  ‘Look,’ said Ora, patting Silver gently, but not really listening to her, ‘this place is full of people who think they can find the magic numbers of eternal life, or eternal youth, or whatever they want. It’s full of people who have nothing and who are trying to be something. A man who thinks he’s a magician is no big deal here. There’s a special Hocus-Pocus Focus Group for those who are anti-science.’

  ‘But the Timekeeper –’

  ‘Yes, and the Holy Grail, and the Lost City of Atlantis.’

  ‘But Regalia Mason is the Quantum, and she’s here.’

  Ora shook her head. ‘The Quantum isn’t one person. It’s everything, it’s everywhere. We know that, Silver, we have our Intelligence out there.’

  Silver shook her head. ‘Well, they weren’t intelligent enough to save Gabriel. And nobody knew about the people being Atomised.’

  Ora frowned.

  ‘And I want to know about the twins,’ said Silver. ‘I saw loads of twins at Checkpoint Zero. I mean, pairs and pairs of them, like Noah’s Ark or something.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Toby. ‘Sally ’n’ Kelly’z still in there. Wazappinin?’

  ‘The twins have been taken to the hospital. I have an excellent contact there who tells me both girls are safe and well.’

  ‘What goes on at the hospital?’ asked Silver.

  Ora sighed and sat down, exhausted. She had been up all night. ‘Silver, I can’t answer you now. You have to leave this to us now. This is very serious. This is an emergency. Go in with Gabriel, both of you, and as soon as I can, I’ll explain, OK?’

  Silver shrugged. She knew better than to argue with grown-ups. You had to wait until they forgot about you and then get on with things.

  The other kids from the bus were playing board games and eating bowls of steaming pasta. Toby and Silver took their plates and went into the little back room where Silver slept.

  Gabriel was sleeping soundly with a sprawled-sideways Dinger.

  ‘Man, that cat’s well dead,’ said Toby, poking Dinger with his foot.

  ‘Yeah, I thought that when I first came here, but he’s a scientific cat. He was used in a famous animal experiment by someone called Dr Schrödinger – that’s why he’s called Dinger. He’s alive and dead at the same time.’

  ‘No, that ain’t so!’ said Toby. ‘Can’t be done, man.’

  ‘It’s his wave function,’ said Silver. ‘He tunes in and out of Universes. He’s just tuned in to a Universe where he’s dead, that’s all, but he’ll tune in to us again later, and he’ll be fine.’

  Toby did not look too happy to be sitting next to a dead cat, but he had no choice.

  ‘Wot now?’ he said.

  ‘I’ve got to go to the Sands of Time.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘There’s something there I need to find – that’s why I’m here really. We didn’t really come by accident.’

  ‘You think I’m stupid? I know that.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  There was a silence. Then Toby said, ‘But I gotta get the twins out, y’know?’

  ‘Yeah. I think so too, and I should help you. You helped me. Let’s go together.’

  ‘It’s dangerous out there.’

  ‘Yeah, but so is a Black Hole, and so is being Atomised. It’s all dangerous here – what could be worse than Bethlehem Hospital?’

  As she said these words, Gabriel sat bolt upright in his bed, his bandage slipping from his head.

  �
�Fools and fiends there are and no others. It rises to the north of the City of London, isolated, majestic and imperious, brooded over by the water-tower and the chimney, unmistakable and daunting.’

  Silver threw her arms round his neck. ‘Not Bedlam, Gabriel, you’re never going back there. This is a modern open white hospital in a square.’

  ‘It is the same place,’ said Gabriel.

  He calmed down and wiped his forehead. ‘You saved me.’

  The cat Dinger stirred and stretched.

  ‘I’m coming with you,’ said Gabriel.

  Late that night, when it was completely dark, Gabriel, Silver and Toby got up and got dressed without putting the light on, and went to the window. No one was around.

  They climbed out quickly and slunk like night-animals round the edges of the buildings, until they came to the hospital courtyard, floodlit and patrolled.

  Gabriel was crouched down, and he began to tremble. Silver put her arms round him. ‘This isn’t the place you remember. Don’t worry.’

  ‘Round the back,’ whispered Toby, ‘to the kitchens. They deliver food ’n’ stuff at night. We can get in that way.’

  On all fours, like cats, they slunk round to the brightly lit kitchen entrance, and, sure enough, the big doors were wide open, and some of the Scrappers were unloading pallets on to a little train that ran on its own tracks into the hospital.

  ‘It used to be robots here,’ said Toby, ‘but humans is cheaper.’

  ‘Can we get out the same way?’ asked Silver.

  ‘Till dawn-time. When the third of the three suns rises, thazzit. Slam.’

  ‘And what do you think you want, you little snoopers?’ said a voice as nasty and high as a dead rat. One of the Scrappers had come up behind them. Toby took a swing at him and winded him in the stomach.

  ‘You little thug …’ His friend came forward and grabbed Toby, who twisted and turned and fought back as hard as he could. Gabriel lunged from his crouched position, straight at the legs of the man who had Toby, and brought him crashing down. The boys and the men started some serious fighting, even though Gabriel had one arm in a sling. In the heat of the fight Silver was forgotten.