Giles was in a broom closet with a beautiful woman who happened to be his mother as well as a character in this story he was telling. And he had just heard a demonic voice far off in the darkness.
But he had also heard Tiffany’s voice. “Unsightly beast,” she had called the owner of the other voice. She was out there in the passages somewhere, that mysterious black-haired woman who had grown from the girl Doree on Cloud Rock.
As he thought of her, he found he knew her story. She had told most of it to Jasmine out there in the corridors between worlds, and now he knew it too.
He must, must, must shape this story. He must find a way to search this fusty old building and find the nerve center, find out what had ripped open the sky. But his clumsy attempts to shape the story he was in had mostly failed.
Somehow he had to both give and receive, both shape and be shaped. He had to feel for what was most deeply and truly right and then make just the right suggestion. And he must call on all his craft as a teller of tales: he must feel, taste, hear. Imagine the sound of someone’s voice, the smell of their breath.
Mary, a dim gleam of eyes in the harsh chemical smell of cleaning supplies, was chuckling. “It does seem ridiculously roundabout, doesn’t it?” Giles had to circle around to remember that his character Robby the newsman had just said to Mary, his ex-partner, “I’m here to tell you to go meet me and send me looking for something that I’ll then come back in time and tell you? So you’ll tell me?”
“Mummy,” he murmured for no reason. He longed to hear her speak as his mother again.
Mary trailed to a stop and stood breathing carefully in front of him. The very darkness shifted, become wilder at the fringes. A draft blew across his cheek from elsewhere and his heart beat faster.
The gears of the story tried to mesh back into place, like when he’d sat beside Doree on the steps and tried to talk to her as himself. But Giles could shape this much. Lord only knew what the audience was hearing but he couldn’t worry about that.
“Mummy,” he said deliberately. “It’s your very own Gilly.”
Her presence in the absolute darkness grew as still as holy water.
In the faint light from under the door her form grew more mother like, less Mary like. She radiated the calm cheerful love he had always felt from her, and not the terror and misery which had torn at his heart when he saw her ghost. She had the peace he had seen on her face as a silver-haired corpse … but no, here in the dark the spell was undone and he remembered that he had not seen her, Jasmine had said he should not.
“I just want to say, I love you and I’m sorry for pulling you into this story Mummy, do you know me?” Worlds seemed to hang on her answer.
“Always, my lamb,” whispered the beloved voice, with the strong flavor of her native County Kerry, bringing memories of her colcannon, rich and strong.
She stroked his face. His breath caught. “So this,” she whispered, “is how you’ll be in twenty years or so, all grown up. As handsome as you were as a lad, but tall and fierce with courage. I’m well pleased.”
“Then you… you’re Mary as you were?” His head swam again.
“What an odd way to put it. I am as I am now, love.”
Giles nodded, aware that too much time was passing. A wisp of breeze that smelled of dank caves brushed his hair and in the distant dark agitated voices rattled.
She put a hand on his arm. “Tell me what you’re needing from me, my treasure.”
“Tell me about this place. What do you do here? What are they doing here?” Had his mother ever really been married to a man named Robby Baker? Was he inhabiting this body with the man who was, in real life, his father?
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“I don’t know what goes on here, love. I’m trying my best to find out without something unspeakable happening to me.
“This job was good money at first. The director, I call him His Lordship in my head, he was odd but no worse than my first boss who was always putting his hands on me. At least His Lordship did nothing like that.
“But then a couple of staff members hinted at something unpleasant going on and next thing ye knew, there were gone. Many-tongued Rumor said they were never seen again. Well, I’m not certain I believe that but everyone has become very careful. After that I started keeping eyes and ears open, though sure, I was shaking in my sensible shoes. But I promised one special to me that I’d not allow myself to be bullied.
“And then Ed Begley, in whose form you now stand, was told just this morning that he’d be volunteering and getting a grand bonus for sitting in the chair in that room and listening to some hypnotic tape and falling asleep. His Lordship was beside himself, he even threw a chair at Margaret and he promised the cleaning man a special trip to hell once things ‘changed.’ Everyone was jumpy as hell, not knowing which way to turn.
“The rest of us each had a few dials we were to watch and carefully note down readings. I couldn’t begin to tell you what they meant. Ed fell asleep, twitching and calling out words. Nothing that made sense, though His Lordship quivered like a cat at a mousehole at each word.
“Well, I’m afraid there’s little else I can tell you. Everything that happened after Ed awoke you already know … except perhaps I can point you to the nerve center of this place, such as it is.”
“You know which room is the control center?”
“Well, at a guess. There’s a room which is fair off limits. I tried the door once but it was locked.”
“Everything here is so low tech.”
“Low what, now?” Her rich Irish sardonic tone smote his heart.
“The technology, it’s pretty … Mummy, what year is it? Nineteen Seventy something, right?”
“The year is 1975, love.”
That at least fit with the environment. Giles wasn’t sure what year he saw the last of those faded purple/blue sheets before photocopies and printers replaced them but government facilities were always behind on tech, and he could well believe that a government project, especially one run by a half madman a bit on the shady side would not have whatever 1975’s latest tech was. Except for that modern car in the parking lot.
“There was a car out on the lot which, well, I guess you’d say it’s from your future, like I am. A Camry?”
“I not a fanatical follower of cars, love, you know that. I remember how you loved your Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars, and that’s about the end of it.”
Giles suddenly found his heart aching for a treasured childhood toy: a Hot Wheels version of the Speed Racer Mach 5. It was sleek white with a red M on the hood and he’d told himself it went faster than anything. And how he’d craved a silver-gray Aston Martin from Corgi toys: the car James Bond drove in Goldfinger. It had a real live ejector seat and you could press a little red button on the side to pop out the black-suited man in the passenger seat but his mother couldn’t afford it.
He shook his head to pop the memories. “Can you show me the control center? We’ll do our best to learn what’s going on. And then you’re going to have to make a lunch date with me, with Robby, and tell him to go investigate it. But you can’t tell him everything because he didn’t know much.”
This was crazy! He was also Robby Baker. Robby would know everything they managed to learn together. Why would Mary only tell past Robby a few dark mysterious hints?
“I’ll get whatever I can from His Lordship somehow, never you fear. And perhaps if I tell the Robby with whom I’ll have lunch in a few weeks more than he learned in your past, we can break this cycle of not knowing and spiraling around the truth?”
Giles nodded, pleased with how smart his mother had always been. Doubtless that was why he was attracted to brainy women to this day. “Maybe so. Or maybe we can learn something together that I can tell to people who need to hear it.”
“But we must then find a way to return you to your future. Back to your ‘Camra’ in the parking lot.”
“I have a way back, I’m sure of it.” He would will it to be so. He was the teller of this story. The Camry outside was a car from the future because outside it was the future. When he walked out of this building, he would walk into the future. Never mind how. Once he had the all-important secret, he would just walk out the front door.
“I think we’d better get out of this dark room now, Mummy. Mary. I don’t know if you hear the sounds getting louder somewhere…”
“I hear. But I’ll not be afraid. I promised one dear to me.”
“I suppose I did too.” He remembered Tiffany putting the lemon in his pocket and whispering something to him about courage. “Out of here, then. Take me to the control room and we’ll figure out a way in somehow. Come on.”
Just as he pushed open the door, he heard a small voice among the harsh ones. Jasmine! He strained to hear it again.
But a dry chuckle from just the other side of the door froze his blood and before he could stop pushing it open, he and Mary had both been seen.
The man with the soul of Killington watched them jerk to a halt with the door half opened and no way to hide.