he looked up.
“Ah, Eddie,” he said vaguely. “And Molly, too. How nice. Yes. I was thinking about the best way to counter the satanic conspiracy’s new influence machine. It seems to me the best way to do it would be to build one of my own, and then figure out how to stop that.”
“We have had this talk before, Uncle Jack,” I said carefully. “The family exists to serve Humanity, not rule them. And most especially, we are not here to make up their minds for them.”
“I’m not talking about direct mind control,” said the Armourer. “Not as such . . . But would it really be such a bad thing to nudge Humanity in the right direction now and again? Whisper in their ear things like, ‘Make war no more’? ‘Feed the hungry, house the homeless, bring back proper Coke in the original bottles and stop making crap film versions of perfectly good television shows’?”
“You see?” I said. “It’s not where you start, but where you end up. It’s all too tempting to stop helping and start meddling. Put the whole idea out of your mind, Uncle Jack.”
“Oh, all right, all right,” said the Armourer, pouting. “Consider it done. You young people today don’t know how to have fun. . . . So, what are you doing down here, Eddie? I know I’m your favourite uncle, and I do enjoy our little chats. . . . Oh, would you like a biscuit? That’s real chocolate, you know.”
“Not right now,” I said.
“But the fact is, you only ever come down here when you want something,” said the Armourer, fixing me with a hard gaze from under his bristling white eyebrows. “What is it, having trouble with your TiVo again?”
“If we could return to the subject at hand,” I said patiently. “Why have you given up on trying to block the influence machine? You don’t usually give up so quickly. What’s wrong? Something’s wrong; I can tell.”
The Armourer sighed briefly and nodded reluctantly. “Sit down, both of you.”
Molly and I looked around. There weren’t any other chairs. So we stole a couple from some lab assistants who weren’t actually using them, and sat down facing the Armourer. He made a big deal of pouring some tea into his saucer to cool it, and then sipping it loudly, but we all knew he was putting off the moment, so he put the tea down and gave us his full attention.
“It’s Harry and Roger,” he said heavily. “Their deaths . . . hit me hard. Harder than I expected, given that I couldn’t stand the pair of them half the time. My poor nephews . . . They tried so hard to do the right thing. Old men shouldn’t have to see young men die before them. Uncles shouldn’t have to bury nephews. My generation hasn’t done too well with its children. Harry was James’s only legitimate child. And yes, I know there are many other bastards like Roger . . . some good, some bad, most somewhere in between, scattered across the world. All of them thrust outside the family because we didn’t approve of their mothers. Many of them have made names for themselves, but I can’t help wondering how much more they might have achieved if only we’d embraced them, brought them up and trained them as Droods. There will have to be a funeral after this mess is over. And I think we should invite all of James’s numerous progeny. Bring them all home. We’ve left them out in the world alone for far too long. Open to too many bad influences and temptations. They must feel as though we abandoned them, as though we didn’t care, and they’d be right. So bring them all home, because they’re family and we owe them.”
“Harry and Roger came back to the Hall,” I said carefully. “And it didn’t work out too well for them. We kept sending them out on missions until it killed them.”
The Armourer looked at me sharply. “That’s not how it was, Eddie, and you know it.”
“Do I?” I said. “That’s how it feels. . . .”
“Timothy was my only child,” said the Armourer. “I can’t help wondering whether, if I’d spent more time with him, he might not have grown up to become Tiger Tim. But I always had so much work to do, so many responsibilities . . . and I never was any good with children. Never knew what to say to them . . . I only got to know you, Eddie, because you were a teenage troublemaker, cutting lessons to sneak down here and badger me with endless questions about life out in the field. . . . Because you were already plotting on how best to get the hell out of the Hall, and as far away from the family as you could.”
“And here I am, back where I belong,” I said. “Funny how life works out sometimes.”
The Armourer nodded slowly. “Charles and Emily’s only child. The only surviving descendent of my generation. Only you and me left now of the Matriarch’s direct line.”
He scowled brusquely and looked away, his gaze the thousand-yard stare of a soldier who’s seen too many die in too many wars. I wondered if I should tell him what Walker had said to me during my time in Limbo. That my parents might not be dead after all . . . But there were already too many important things happening at once, and I couldn’t afford for him to become distracted. Not when there were still so many things I needed him to do. His attention snapped back to me as though it had never been away.
“What are you doing here, Eddie?”
I gave him a quick rundown on what had happened at the Wulfshead, and then at Sir Terrence Ashtree’s office. Leaving out all the bits that made me look like a monster. I told him that the upper echelons, and possibly even the leader himself, of the new satanic conspiracy were probably holed up in the Timeless Moment, and he nodded thoughtfully.
“Yes . . . Yes, that would make sense, actually.”
“Why?” Molly said loudly, unable to hold her peace any longer. “Why does it make sense, and what is the Timeless bloody Moment?”
“The headquarters, hideout and last retreat of the previous satanic conspiracy, back in the nineteen forties,” said the Armourer, leaning back in his chair and lacing his fingers together in his lap as he slid effortlessly into lecture mode. My uncle Laurence was a field agent back then—your great-uncle, Eddie, Grandmother Martha’s elder brother—and he told me all kinds of yarns about battling Satanists in occupied France. They were at the peak of their influence back in 1943, and plotting all kinds of black-magic attacks against England, from what they foolishly thought were safe bases along the French coastline. Safe and secure . . . Uncle Laurence showed them! Moving from city to city and town to town, arranging all kinds of unfortunate accidents to screw up their progress. You couldn’t blow everything up, or kill all the people who needed killing, because the Nazis would take reprisals on the local populations. Always very keen on executions, the Nazis. It must have felt so fine to be out in the field in those days, fighting the last good war. . . . I couldn’t wait to be a field agent, but all I got for my troubles was the Cold War. . . .
“Sorry, drifting . . . 1943. October. Uncle Laurence was checking out a particularly nasty coven down in Nantes when he stumbled over information about the Satanists’ secret bolt-hole and weapons depository, tucked away in the Timeless Moment. I’m not sure whether the Satanists created the place, or discovered it, or moved in and took it away from someone else. . . . Either way, it was the perfect hiding place. The Satanists established their main headquarters there, where none of their enemies could reach them. All right, Molly, don’t be so impatient; I’m getting there. The Timeless Moment was, and presumably still is, a pocket dimension of a kind, outside time and space as we know them. A strange alternate dimension tucked away between the tick and tock of linear time. Very hard to locate, and even harder to get into. Uncle Laurence led the mission to destroy the dimensional doorway the Satanists used to access the Timeless Moment, cutting the rank and file off from their headquarters, their leader and all the secret superweapons they’d been hoarding there to present to Hitler to help him win the war. Without all this, the rank and file were fatally weakened. Most of them legged it for the nearest horizon and disappeared. The few who stuck it out lost all their influence with Nazi High Command once it became clear they couldn’t deliver all the marvellous things they’d promised. That was the end for them as a vital force in the war. Which helped us win the war, no doubt about it.”
“This must be what rejuvenated the conspiracy again!” said Molly. “Someone must have regained access to the Timeless Moment!”
“Seems likely,” said the Armourer.
“Presumably this mysterious new leader of theirs,” I said. “Whose name we still don’t know. Why are all his people put under a geas, never to use his name outside the conspiracy? What’s the big deal about his name? Why make it such a secret?”
Molly looked at the Armourer. “Apparently because we’d recognise it. Apparently we know him.”
“Oh, bloody hell,” said the Armourer. “Not a Drood?”
“No,” I said quickly and very definitely.
“Good,” said the Armourer. “I suppose that’s something. If I have to announce I’m scanning everyone in the family
“The influence machine must be inside the Timeless Moment,” I said. “It’s the only safe place for it until it’s
