Trace Memory

'Sixty-seven?' said Michael. 'They keep mentioning 1967 but I don't know what they're talking about.'

'No,' said Cromwell, 'I don't suppose you would. To us everything has been moving in a straight line, but for you…' He shook his head and raised his hands in resignation. 'For you it's like a Chinese puzzle, is it not? Popping up, here and there: 1967, your arrest, the training hospital a few years back. Can you even remember half of these things? I doubt it. Oh, Michael, if only we could have had the chance to study you. If only we'd known, those first few days after the explosion. If only we'd had the laws we have nowadays. It was much harder to simply have someone disappear off the streets in '53.'

Cromwell laughed, and once again mopped his brow, chuckling softly.

'So long ago now,' he said. 'For me, at least. You, on the other hand, haven't aged a bit. It must seem like days, to you. There was a boy out there, on reception, probably about your age. Funny boy. Sounded like he was from our side of the bridge, somewhere up in the valleys, I reckon. Stuttered and spluttered his way around asking me if I'd like a cup of tea. Funny to think he's young enough to be your grandson, isn't it?'

Cromwell looked across at the mirror, and ran one hand over his bald head. Michael followed his gaze. It was only now he could appreciate just what Cromwell was talking about. The last time they had met, there had been no more than ten or fifteen years between them, but now Cromwell was a very old man, and Michael was still little more than a boy.

'But time is the decider of every man's fate, is it not?' said Cromwell. 'Some of us die young, and some of us live to be very old men with weak bladders and knees that crack when we get up too quickly. Do you know how you can end this, Michael?'

And now Cromwell turned from his own reflection to look at Michael directly.

'How?' asked Michael.

'The only way,' said Cromwell, 'that this will ever end is when you die.'

'No,' said Michael, looking down to the floor, wishing he could raise his hands to cover his face. 'No, that's just another lie. Like when you came to the hospital, and you said you were from the Union… That's just another lie.'

Cromwell shook his head. 'I'm afraid it isn't, Michael. They want you, you know.'

'Who? Who wants me?'

'Somebody later told me they are called the Vondrax. Strangest things. Some of the victims bled to death, haemorrhaging on a massive scale. Others were burnt to cinders. The sightings, the records, '67… We spent so many years piecing it together for our report, and that's when we came to the conclusion. They're after you. You're the only one who can end this.'

'No,' said Michael. 'How can I end this? What am I supposed to do?'

Cromwell was staring at him gravely when they both heard the alarm.

'Ah,' said Cromwell, 'here they are. As I thought.'

'Who?' asked Michael.

'The Vondrax,' Cromwell replied. 'It was only a matter of time.'

The door to the interview room opened, and two of the armed guards came in.

'Mr Cromwell, Miss Stanley has asked that you stay here with our visitor. It appears we have a Code 200 situation on one of the lower floors.'

'Men in bowler hats, no doubt,' said Cromwell. He seemed unnervingly at ease, as if he had experienced this too many times before.

'Y-yes, sir,' said one of the guards. 'How did you know?'

'Ask our young friend, here,' said Cromwell, smiling broadly. 'He is an old friend of theirs.'

The guards looked from Cromwell to Michael and back again.

'I didn't mean literally,' said Cromwell. 'It was a figure of speech.'

The guards left the room and the door closed. Michael pulled against his restraints, but it was no good.

'Trying to escape?' said Cromwell. 'There really is no need, you know. You're always best at escaping when you aren't even trying.'

'But we need to get out of here!'

'Me, perhaps, yes,' said Cromwell. 'There's every chance I won't be getting out of this one in any fighting condition, but you… You're what they call a dead cert.'

'What do you mean?'

Cromwell didn't answer him, he simply looked at his watch. Somewhere in the building there was an explosion. Even inside a room that was apparently soundproof, it could be heard, and more than heard — it could be felt. 'Here they come,' said Cromwell. 'Like children of the cosmos, I've always felt. So much chaos, so much destruction, so much pointless cruelty, and all they want is their ball back.'

'You're talking in riddles!' shouted Michael. 'Get me out of this chair. You're insane!'

'Oh no,' said Cromwell. 'After fifty odd years of this I am finally quite sane. There's nothing like knowing the future, or in this case the past, to put your mind at ease.'

He looked at Michael, his expression suddenly warm and compassionate, filled with feeling.

'I never did apologise for what we did to you,' he said, smiling softly. 'I never said sorry.'

He closed his eyes serenely, as if he were listening to some soothing piano sonata and, as he did so, the mirror in the wall shattered, sending shards of two-way glass tumbling to the ground.

'They're getting closer,' said Cromwell, his eyes still shut, his expression beatific. 'They don't like mirrors.'

The sound of another explosion, louder now that the two-way mirror was broken, and Michael could see through into the darkened, adjoining room. He could hear people screaming, somewhere beyond the observation room, and in the darkness he saw moving, shadowy forms.

'Please,' said Michael, 'just get me out of this chair. We need to get out of here, now.

'You don't,' said Cromwell. '

You'll be just fine.'

The shapes in the darkness were becoming steadily more visible as each one came into the light from the interrogation room. They looked like men, at first, but then they always did. As each one was illuminated, an identical face was revealed, that same, grey-skinned sneering face, its eyes hidden behind round, black sunglasses, the leering mouth opening to reveal sharply pointed teeth.

'The Traveller…' they said as one.

Cromwell opened his eyes, and looked through the broken mirror as the Vondrax drew nearer. All at once they stopped, each of them breathing heavily, a foul hissing that emanated from their throats, their talon-like fingers wrapped around the jagged, gaping wound in the wall where the mirror had been, poised to enter the interrogation room.

Cromwell turned to face Michael and saw nothing but an empty chair.

'Clever boy,' he said, laughing to himself.

He turned back to face the shattered mirror, and looked straight into the eyes of the Vondrax.

ELEVEN

The opening chords of T-Rex's '20th Century Boy' blasted into his ears as Jack Harkness walked down Carnaby Street on a late summer's morning in 1967. Never mind that the song would not be recorded for another six years, or that the device on which he was listening to it, the C-Fish X20, would not be invented for another six decades. Anachronisms weren't important to Jack, and the earphones were practically invisible so it wasn't as if anyone might notice. What mattered was that the song seemed right.

The C-Fish, a portable music player, had, along with the contents of his bag, been deposited in a locker at King's Cross by Jack himself a long time and many lives ago, back in the days when time was no barrier. He'd thought that both might come in handy one day, and he was right.

Looking around at the assorted mods and hippies — girls in fluorescent miniskirts, Union Flag-patterned waistcoats and baker-boy caps; men in flared jeans and paisley shirts made of cheesecloth — it struck Jack that