Simon Clark - The Fall

‘Let him go, Carswell,’ Sam said. ‘He’s not under arrest.’

‘Well, if he’s our only hope of getting off this weird carnival ride back through time, I’m not letting him slip through our fingers.’

‘Carswell,’ said Jud, ‘we need Mr Rolle’s voluntary cooperation.’

Displeased, Carswell nevertheless gave a shrug that said clearly enough, ‘Okay, you think you know best, but don’t come running to me if he disappears.’

‘Mr Rolle,’ Sam said quickly. ‘Do you remember me?’

‘From the hole, from the Watchett Hole. I remember, I remember, I remember…’ He chanted the words in a pulsing rhythm that was as soft as it was fast. ‘I’ve told you, you have to get away from the hole. You’ll be integrated, you’ll be fused, you’ll be mashed if you don’t.’

‘Integrated?’ Sam remembered the man with the bird fused into his face; how both the man and the bird had screamed in agony. ‘You mean every time we make the time-jump, someone’s going to end up fused with whatever’s occupying the same space when they materialise?’

‘I do… and the time stream has become a leaky conduit – an oh-so-leaky conduit. Liminals are escaping. Are escaping out into the here and now.’ He gave a little chuckle, but his eyes were fixed and serious. ‘So how long – how long until Robin of Greenwood rides into the shopping malls of tomorrow-year? And – and how long until you find Caesar in McDonald’s? Big Mac, Blood Mac, Dead Mac. I’m sorry, my tongue is slippery as an eel: it escapes me so easily.’ He took a deep breath to steady himself. ‘Now my blood boils with salvatory… salvation; God-given salvatory tasks.’ He started to move away from them as if late for an important appointment. ‘I’ve work in the other places.’

‘Wait,’ Carswell said. ‘We haven’t finished with you yet. We need to know how to get off this damn conveyor belt back into history. What’s more, we want to return to our own time. 1999. Did you hear me? Nineteen-fucking-ninety-nine. I told you to wait!’

Muttering to himself, Richard Rolle backed along the street, eager to be on his way. Carswell didn’t hesitate; he grabbed the man by his arm to stop him going any farther. The bag slipped from his hand.

Sam looked down to see a dozen or more brown pill bottles spill from it. There were glass ampoules, too, filled with an amber liquid.

‘What have we here?’ Carswell said unpleasantly.

‘Please, dear heaven, dear sweet heaven, those are for my neighbours. I need them.’

‘What the hell is this nutcase talking about?’

‘Apologies, sir… When I am in the world of now, my tongue runs swiftly… so swiftly; swiftly ahead of my thoughts.’

Jud crouched down and started putting the ampoules back in the bag. He looked at the labels on the pill bottles. ‘Penicillin.’ He handed the bag back to Rolle.

‘Thank you, sir. These are needed most urgently. Most urgently, sir.’ He started to back away again, anxiously clutching the bag.

‘And just what are you doing with those?’ Carswell said. ‘You’ve enough to run your own dispensary with that lot.’

‘It’s no business of ours, Carswell,’ Jud said. ‘I imagine Mr Rolle has his own reasons.’

‘Indeed so, sir, indeed so, indeed…’

Carswell gave one of his irritated grunts. ‘We’ve spent all day looking for him! Just look at him. He’s a tramp. Nothing but a scruffy tramp, and as mad as a bloody hatter.’ Eyes burning furiously, his hand went to the gun in his pocket. For one crazy moment Sam thought the man would draw the gun and shoot Rolle dead in the street.

‘Wait,’ Jud said soothingly to Rolle. ‘I know you’re in a hurry. But we do need to talk to you. Believe me, it is important.’

‘No time. I’m terribly sorry,’ Rolle said quickly, running the words into a single stream of sound. ‘I need to hurry – rush, rush, rush. Babies are dying. All dying so quickly now. Buboes swelling up on them, here, here.’ With his free hand he pointed to his armpit, then to his groin.

‘Buboes?’ Jud said, astonished. ‘The penicillin is for them?’

‘Yes.’

‘Please. Won’t you let us help you?’

With a twitchy shake of his head Rolle said, ‘No… no.’

‘Can’t we take you where you want to go? We have a car.’

‘Hah.’ The sound was more a breathy expression of regret than a laugh. ‘Your car doesn’t go that far.’

‘Mr Rolle,’ Jud said. ‘Please, we do need your help. Can we meet you later? All we want to do is talk.’

The red-haired man looked at each in turn; he seemed nervous, even anxious. Sam was sure he’d see that jerky shake of the head again. No.

‘Well?’

This time they were rewarded with a single sharp nod. ‘St Jude’s. Eight o’clock.’

‘St Jude’s. Eight o’clock,’ Jud echoed, and nodded. ‘We’ll be there. Thank you.’

‘Are you sure we can’t take you somewhere in the car?’ Sam asked.

Again the twitchy shake of his head as Richard Rolle began to back away as if already he’d wasted far too much precious time. ‘I’m beginning the Jesus Prayer now. For me the way is made open by the Jesus Prayer.’

With that he turned and hurried away, the precious bag clutched to his chest. Sam could hear the ginger-haired man muttering quickly under his breath, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of…’

The voice faded away, drowned by the whoosh and roar of a steam engine pulling into the station.

Carswell fixed Sam then Jud with his piercingly angry eyes. His expression was the sourest Sam had seen so far.

‘Well, what a piece of carnival that was. What a waste of fucking time. We’d have had a more meaningful conversation with one of the monkeys down there at the bloody circus.’

Jud began calmly, ‘Richard Rolle is—’

‘Is bloody mad. It’s as obvious as the nose on your blasted face.’ Carswell slapped the pocket that carried the gun in a way that Sam could only describe as neurotic; dangerously neurotic at that. ‘Lunatic. He should be locked away. And there you two are, nice as pie, politely asking him to help you.’

‘Carswell,’ Jud began again, firmly but calmly. ‘Richard Rolle is a hermit and a mystic. That means he is a maverick, an outsider, he won’t behave as ordinary men and women behave. That doesn’t make him insane.’

‘It does in my book; at least, what I’ve witnessed.’ He forked his fingers towards his eyes as if about to gouge himself. ‘These two eyes tell me he’s completely insane. Did you hear how he talked? Did you hear that nonsense about the Jesus Prayer, and see the way he ran off muttering gibberish?’

Jud said, ‘The Jesus Prayer is a prayer from the Orthodox branch of Christianity. “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God have mercy on me, a sinner.”’

‘You’re barmy, too.’

‘No. That is the prayer repeated by mystics over and over until they achieve an altered state of consciousness, or a trance if you like. All cultures have their own variant of this – in the East, mantras are chanted. Modern hypnotists repeat the same phrase over and over to induce a state of hypnosis.’

‘Oh, mesmerism is it, now? Fat lot of good that will do us, Campbell.’

‘You still don’t get it, do you?’ Jud’s eyes gleamed in a fixed way. ‘Already Rolle’s given us a clue; no, not just one, but several clues about how he can apparently travel through time at will. He does it through altering his own state of consciousness. What’s more, we’ve just seen him with bottles of penicillin. He’s talked about helping sick people suffering from buboes beneath the arms and in the groin.’