Helen's Hi-jinks Part VII
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Intermission VII – The Conclusion
By the end of Caroline's tale, the eyes of most of ARC crew were wide-open and shell-shocked. "Are y saying that you- but you- but Helen-"
"The first humans have come from Africa, have you forgot," Caroline shrugged slightly. "We just didn't have time to accumulate to the changed climatic conditions of Europe back then. It's one of these rules – Allen's, Bergmann's, whatever – the ones that I almost got confused in."
"That's not the point!" Connor howled so loudly that birds flew from their perches. "The point is-"
Michael's loud growling interrupted Connor's cries, as somebody emerged from the bushes. "Caroline, dear, could you please invite your friends – oh, it you, Nick. Then come in all the same, before the neighbours will start to wonder as to what sort of a secret conspiracy you're cooking up in my backyard, see?"
Connor's tirade was cut-off in midchoke as Helen utter casually emerged from the shrubbery behind them, leaning slightly on a crutch, and looking somewhat more pale and withdrawn than before.
"Helen," Nick said with narrowed eyes. "So you are behind this?"
"No, not anymore," Helen said, smiling beatifically. "Didn't Caroline here tell you the crux of the matter? I have retired from time travelling or manipulation, but want to speak to you all the same."
"And why would I- we want to listen to you?" Nick growled.
"Because, oh ye hard and unyielding bedrock of Scotland, it is only a matter of hours before Oliver, Philbert and others get the ARC's equipment online and unleash their version of reality onto this world, and you are the ones who are best equipped to stop them. And don't give me that look, either – if you had wanted only peace and quiet in the long run, you would have never come to the Forest of Dean in the first place!"
Nick's face went red, then white with tightly contained anger as he looked on the verge of physically strangling Helen – or at least planning to try. Suddenly, Jenny (with Abby) was at his side, whispering something in his ear, with a completely serious intent.
"Fine," Nick spoke up after a brief and hushed discussion, "we're listening."
Helen rolled her eyes, her facial expression clearly conveying that she was not impressed by Nick's self-control. "Hooray for me," she wryly. "Now come on inside, I do not intend to explain to the neighbours just what is exactly our relationship."
"We're-" Nick paused, as he realized that the particulars of his relationship with Helen were a bit peculiar indeed, and explaining them to an innocent third party would be more than just a little bother.
"-no longer married or living together," Helen said with a rather venomous smile. "Now let's get going."
As Nick and Jenny followed her, they could hear Abby and Connor having a brief argument of their own; but of Caroline Steele, the woman who brought them here, there was no sound.
Meanwhile, in a few moments, Helen Cutter's house loomed through the foggy autumn evening. "Nice place," Jenny managed to say, "very rural and suited for here – and where is here, anyways?"
"You mean when it here?" Helen shrugged-off the other woman's not-so-subtle dig with a roll of her eyes. "Sorry to disappoint you, but you've gone merely in space this time, not so much as time, and are still in this modern day and age – just in America."
"And why are we in America?"
"Because I wanted to start my life anew without you – and I couldn't do that in Britain, and Europe was never for my tastes, remember, Nick?"
"I am not going to baited, Helen..." Nick's parting shot faded, as he saw what had a very distinctive feel of a 'family photo' to him. The picture showed... Helen, a girl who had some definite resemblance to Caroline, if one knew where to look, and another girl and woman. "...Your new family?" Nick said after a pause.
"Yes," Helen nodded, completely serious now as well, all humour or wryness gone from her voice. "It's not what I had been planning in the start, but life turns out in different ways from what you imagine it too be, no matter how hard you try to grasp it by its collar and steer it in the direction you want."
Nick nodded, thoughtful. "Maybe you're right. But this is not the question – make that questions – which we need to ask you."
"You want to ask meek about Philbert and Leek and the rest?" Helen nodded, as she sat down with a grown, favouring one of her legs.
"Yes. That is a good place to start. Start speaking."
"Good; now, how to begin... Let us see – does any of you know Shelley's poem 'Ozymandias'?"
"I do," Jenny spoke up sharply, "but what's this got to do with us?"
Helen rolled her eyes. "Well, firstly, do you remember the punch line of the poem?"
"The... punch line?"
"Yes - round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away. That punch line."
"Helen. Please, don't mess with us," Nick ground his teeth.
"Fine," Helen nodded, a bit of her usual mischief showing through her eyes and eyelashes. "Try to imagine in the role of the wreck a complex of technology so advanced, that no techno-geek could ever imagine, surrounded by wild and desolate lands, inhabited by the future predators, and dingoneks, and various descendants of the baboons, terrestrial and aquatic-"
"You're talking about the future," Nick slowly said.
"Yes, Nick. The future of our world. One that I tried to change, but then Leek proved to have plans of his own, and got torn apart for his troubles."
"But now he's back. How?"
"He's got cloned, of course."
"But the future predators had torn him to pieces! There was nothing left!"
"We're talking about futuristic technology, Nick. Enough was apparently left for the cloning machinery of that level, and if enough of Leek's brain had survived, then his personality had been recovered as well."
"And his appearance has been altered because-?"
"Because some of the future predator's DNA has been mixed with Leek's own, that is only natural," Helen said with a completely blank look, but then decided to explain it as well:
"Look, I may have misdirected you. The 'clones' I speak of are not as much as Dolly, as complex biomechanical bodies, usually with the original's own personality intact. Is that better?"
"No! Why is Leek different?!" Nick snapped.
"Because he got the future predator's DNA mixed with his own, and held together by nanobites! Or whatever the future has developed in place of nanobites!" Helen snapped. "This isn't Oliver Leek's carbon copy! This is Oliver Leek's augmented copy!"
"Then how do we stop him?"
"I don't know!" Helen admitted with a start. "Don't you have a plan?"
"Now it was the others' turn to flush from embarrassment. "Not really, no – we've just been really lucky," Caroline said from her back seat, as she did her best to blend into upholstery and wallpaper patterns.
Surprisingly, Helen stiffened and looked in her stepdaughter's direction for the first time. "Caroline – what had happened to you?"
"Eugene Flint did," Connor said helpfully. "He kind of tried to choke, or strangle, or just break her neck before Nick and Jenny rescued her."
"I see," Helen nodded softly and fell silent.
So did all the others, but mainly because they had nothing to say now. Nick Cutter, however, broke the silence first:
"So how do you want to help us, if you can?"
"Right," said Helen was a start. "Getting back to my Ozymandias analogy. Originally, because of me, Philbert and others had access to that technological complex – that how they were able to clone Leek. But then I retired and they got locked-out."
"Excuse me?"
"Right, the long version. The machine that manipulates the time is beyond what I have ever seen, but it is still a machine, and it needs a user, just like our computers or lab-tops. Now that it could not run on its own, which it does, but it still needs to have new data input into it, and that is where people like, well, me, come in. I got to travel through prehistory and see the human evolution starting with such creatures like godinotia and apidium, and it the machine got a chance to study my notes first. But then, eventually, I meant Gina and the girls, and decided to terminate our agreement."
"You missed the part where Phil got access to that complex, and secondly, where are the inhabitants, or rather the rightful owners of that place."
"Oh, I took him with me on his first visits there," Helen said airily, though it was obvious enough that she was pretending and introduced him to the cloning machinery for my own purposes. But from the machine's point of view, he was something of an accessory of mine, and when my contract with the machine was revoked, he was no longer able to come and go there as he and his company pleased."
"Wait a second. Your contract with the machine?"
"Yes. I no longer felt that... that I could go on as I did before. Gina and the girls and the others...they just grew on me, they just did," Helen seemed to implode as she said that. "It's probably not what you felt when you met Claudia or Jenny or whichever of the two cousins that you care for real, but..."
"About that," Nick interrupted. "How come there are two of them now?"
"Now? Nick-" Jenny began with a huff, but Helen shushed her.
"That happened because I took Gina and the others with me, which caused a sufficient alteration of the future for you to get cousins instead of a single person," Helen shrugged. "Hey, one could say that I had the One Ring on my finger for a while, and unlike Bilbo Baggins I had a much wider array of choices, mmm?"
"Helen," Nick said with an infinite patience, "just what did you do?"
"Create half a dozen of worlds before settling in this one," Helen replied just as calmly, "and now, Nick, it's your turn."
"What?" Nick choked on bare air. "What are you saying?"
"Firstly, you step on a butterfly, this country elects a new president or something," Helen said, carefully studying the others. "Now magnify this event by a considerable exponent and see what you end up with. Secondly, that machine needs a user, as I said before – think of it as a dream of Asimov. Right now, there are two options – you and Oliver Leek – and I really hope that you won't back down before Leek once more."
Nick stared at Helen as if she had grown horns and produced a pitchfork from underneath her sofa. "Me? How did I get into this-?"
"I may have rumbled about you a time or two times a hundred or two after the mosasaurus incident, and it just continued to accumulate," Helen said with an innocent smile that did not fool anyone. "The machine, with its' version of intellect, decided that that was just what she needed in a user, provided that you beat Oliver Leek."
"Helen," Nick spat out. "Do you have to manipulate the others to do what you want?"
Instead of rising to the challenge, as expected, Helen seemed in deflate instead. "No, Nick. I am trying not to."
This simple reply abruptly defused Nick's own anger as well, and silence fell once more.
"Well, since we are all in agreement, let's get moving, shall we?" Abby's voice was too bright and cheery for the silence. "I mean, it's not like we can get to whatever complex there is by walking, can we?"
"Of course not!" Helen too seemed to have recovered some of her old zeal. "I get to send you there!"
There was another pause, this one just plain uncomfortable and confused. "And just how do you plan on doing that?" Connor said, wearily.
"Oh, that's simple!" Helen said airily. "Just stand over there, by that conversation piece of a table, not unlike as if for a group photo, and-"
-the scenery had abruptly changed. This caused Jenny to stagger briefly – a feat that caused her to step on Nick's legs that resulted in him cursing mostly foully.
"Now that that's all resolved," Abby said wryly, "any idea where to go?"
"I do," Caroline spoke-up unexpectedly, causing the older couple to startle:
"What are you doing here? Wouldn't you rather stay with your mother?"
"Helen's my stepmother, and no, I got to see this through before I don't have any more excuses," Caroline said firmly. "Got it?"
Connor opened his mouth to say something about it, but Abby stood on his foot, thus shushing him in effect. Jenny too turned to Nick. "We could probably use Caroline's help, and we certainly will need her dog's. Remember when it rescued us from that-that thing?"
"What thing?" the younger people turned to Jenny as well.
"In Helen's gospel, it was probably another clone," Nick said crossly. "A combination of a human and a smilodon. Michael killed it."
"And you didn't tell me or them about this because-?" Caroline's voice sounded rather annoyed.
"We forgot," Jenny said quickly, eager to nip a long, pointless and ugly argument in the bud. "Now can we please get to the matter back at hand?"
"Fine," Caroline nodded. "We need to go-" And then the corridor lit-up with fluorescent bluish lighting, round illuminator-like windows opened up in the walls, releasing the sunlight, and for the first time Nick and others saw for real where they stood.
"Wow!" Connor was the one to say it for all of them. "This is just like Star Trek!"
There was a pause as everybody turned to look at him. "What?" Connor said defensively.
"We thought that you were more of a Star Wars kind of guy," Jenny said lamely.
"No... Well... Caroline, where to?"
"That way!" Caroline replied, as she pointed out to a corridor that let away from the area with thin windows. "This is the route inside!"
"It is? Good, but why is your dog growling?" Nick turned to ask, when out of the corridor stepped a painfully familiar face – The Cleaner.
"I see that the others will arrive just in time," the man growled, as he prepared to shoot.
"Wait you cannot shoot us – not out here!" Connor said quickly.
The Cleaner (or his clone) blinked. "Why not?"
"You see that black dot in the sky? It had seen us, and pretty soon it'll be here to bash the glass and get to us!" Connor explained.
The Cleaner frowned. "If it's alive, it can be killed. If not, then Eugene can probably find ways of destroying it. In any case, there's plenty of time to shoot you and run." Once more, he raised his gun.
Suddenly one of the windows shuddered, as if something invisible was battering against them. "What the-?" The Cleaner paused, hesitating for a minute.
From a flanking position, Michael lunged. Not unlike before, the big dog hit from a surprisingly low position for such a tall creature, and as The Cleaner turned around to shot it, the dog knocked him off the feet instead, and Nick's well-placed kick knocked him out completely.
On the other side of the gallery, the window shuddered again for no reason. "We're leaving now," Nick said quickly, as he ushered the others into the corridor. "And whatever's outsider he have this fellow too – from what I know about him, he'll survive it, unfortunately."
As the group entered the internal corridor and closed the door behind it, the window shuddered for the fourth time...
"Well, that was fun," Jenny shuddered as she imagined that Connor's imaginary black dot was not so imaginary after all. "Caroline, where are we going?"
"I am not sure – I am remembering this as we go along," Caroline said darkly. Also, I am surprised that the AI hadn't tried to contact us yet."
"And it should have?"
"Well, with my, uh, parents, it certainly seemed aware and conscious," Caroline said uncomfortably.
"What, via on-the-wall cameras and speakers?" Connor piped-up.
"No, not exactly," Caroline quietly replied, as she suddenly stopped. "And just for the record I have no idea as to how we – or you – are to defeat Leek. Do you?"
Nick, in response, stopped so abruptly that Jenny, who has been holding onto him, almost lost her footing and fell. "That's the problem," he gnashed between his teeth. "Ever since the airport attack, we've been in such a rush that we never thought anything through. Admittedly, we rarely did that, but the last few days must have been a record in thoughtlessness. Unfortunately, right now it may be too late and-"
The walls shifted, as did the floor, scattering the people in different directions – and when Nick and Jenny recovered their footing and untangled their limbs, the others were gone, and the two of them were clearly not in the corridor any longer. Instead, the room... the room was utterly bizarre, but in a somewhat familiar kind of way...
"Well, well, well, it's time to begin, I see," and Oliver Leek dropped down from the shadows. "Professor Cutter, I want you to die!"
Suddenly, the building slightly shook and the fluorescent blue lights were augmented by more ordinary yellows. Leek grimaced in surprise and that gave Nick Cutter an opening to slug him hard across the jaw.
However, Leek – or his clone – barely staggered. "It's not time yet to fight. First, I want Eugene to kill your little friends. It is time to finish you and your crew once and for all!"
"So much anger for such a little man," Jenny blinked in thought. "Last time you were more eloquent, Leek, sneakier. What happened to you? A testosterone injection?"
"No!" Leek shook his head. "I am merely happy because all that I ever wanted is all but within my reach. It's so simple when you have competent people working for you and you had planned it all throughout the end."
"Working for you? Leek, they remade you from scratch!"
"Because I have been expecting such an emergency!" Leek replied, unshaken. "If it had been Helen in pieces, they would have left here there, because all Helen wanted was errand boys. I needed men for real work with real opportunities-"
"Leek, what you did was hiring some mercenaries to be your gang of enforcers or whatever," Nick interrupted the other man with a tired look. "With one of them at any rate obviously having plenty of nasty ideas – kind of like yours, I suppose – but with far more style."
"Why are you trying to make my angry?" Leek did not budge. "So that you would die quickly and not slowly? Small chance of that!" and with a quick punch he knocked Nick down. "I will rend you limb from limb, starting with the ribs!"
In the middle of his tirade, Jenny blind-sided him with one of her shoes – her high-heeled shoes. Leek dropped of Nick, rubbing his head, and snarled, even as blood dripped down from his face:
"Fine! You're first!" And he leapt.
"We're in a strange new place that looks almost too narrow for us, the dog is acting nervous, and we have no trace of Nick or Jenny," Connor muttered, as he got Abby onto her feet. "What else can go wrong?"
"Me."
Connor and the others turned around to see Eugene Flint approaching them at a quick pace, a long-snouted handgun in his arm, and a look on his face about as nice and friendly as the Terminator's – with the skin burned-off from some explosion or other.
Caroline opened her mouth to croak something or other, and Abby then hit something on the wall. Nothing happened, but sirens began to wail, and Eugene Flint opened fire instead. Caroline knocked Connor down, and he took Abby with them, and the bullets whizzed, but the next shot was fired low. Michael was already down the corridor, and Abby, helplessly tangled up in the other two, lashed-out with her leg, hitting something on the wall.
The floor tilted, and something fell down onto Abby's head.
"Ow!"
"A crowbar!" Eugene's voice floated through the corridor down to them. "How amusing! Caro, tell them that I could break that crowbar with my bare hands."
Instead, Caroline got up on her feet and snarled: "Let's finish this, Eugene! Enough playing!"
"What playing? Caro, has your fear unhinged your brain?!"
"Maybe, but there's nothing wrong with my eyes – again unlike your ears! You – you've been here before, haven't you?"
Eugene laughed – and that sound would have convinced anyone that that man was seriously deranged for good. "Oh, Caro, what else did Helen Cutter tell you? Did she tell you about how she abandoned me long ago in the Palaeozoic? No matter, it's time for you to go right out of history!" On the man's forehead, the scars and veins palpitated and pulsated and the look in his dark eyes was plain and simple madness.
This time, the gunshot was simply deafening.
"You know, Cutter, this attitude of yours had made me pretty annoyed, even without you having me killed," Leek snarled, as he had flung his assailants aside. "I can actually see why Helen often wished about seeing you dead!"
"I made my peace with Helen, and while I am wondering if she hasn't manipulated this, you are a piece of work in your own right, aren't you?" Nick gasped. "Look at you! You look more like a monkey than a man!"
"Ooh! Scary! What do you think this is? A Disney movie where in a middle of a dramatic fight I am suddenly overcome with forgiveness?"
Still wearing one of the high heels, Jenny stamped on his foot. That hurt, as Leek snarled and turned to Jenny with intent of choking her. Nick, for his part had no intent of that happening, jumped onto Leek's back and tried to choke him – and once more the cloned ex-bureaucrat flung them both aside. "You just don't get it! You are going to lose, then I will take over this whole thing, and then I will make them all pay! The last eighty-five or so thousand years of human existence, I will re-write it all. Helen should have surrendered when she had the chance, not tried to lock us out! I am Oliver Leek! I am the man!"
"And Caroline had thought that Eugene Flint was mad," Jenny muttered wearily. "At least Eugene Flint is competent in his madness."
"That because Eugene Flint does not tend to go beyond his limitations – he knows them, and uses this knowledge to his advantage," Nick muttered just as wearily, albeit more loudly. "Leek doesn't. That is why he failed then and failing now. You are mentally falling to pieces, Leek! Whether you kill us or not, you will go worse in the end – and your help will help you get to it. Face reality Leek – you have lost. Lester and I have killed you long ago – or rather, your neutrally clamped future predators did. Those neutral clamps of Helen were flawed in design, and so was probably the cloning machine that The Cleaner and his cohorts used to bring you back – and so's you."
As a response to that message Leek howled and went onto Nick – he met his gaze without blinking. "It ends here and now, Leek," the other man said calmly, "and you have lost."
"What are you doing?" Caroline hissed from her prone form, lying on top of the other two. "Shouldn't the two of you have followed Michael's lead instead?"
"Look!" Abby hissed back, as once more she tried to untangle her limbs from the other two. "We don' t like you all that much, but it is mutual and you are obviously ready to put your life on the line for us, so the least we could do is pay you back!"
"But that does not make any sense!" Caroline wailed, forgetting briefly about Eugene Flint preparing to take another shot at any of them.
"It doesn't have to make sense! It's about doing the right thing!" Abby snapped back. "That's what Helen did, I suspect, back when your mother confessed to her! Sometimes realizing the right thing is already half of the battle!"
Another person politely cleared their throat, implying that they would like to join in onto a discussion too. "Oh, go ahead, mate," Connor said cheerfully, listening to the other arguing himself, and blinked, when he realized that the cough had come from Eugene Flint, who instead of shooting them to kingdom come had sat down and waited politely for a lull in the conversation. "You, ah, wanted something to say?" he finished gamely.
"Mmm... how about...
The blood will freeze in veins, and marrow in bones,
And flesh will freeze like rock upon the sacred stones;
And long will be the sleep under the stone,
Whilst empty yet stands the Blackest Throne;
Whilst the palace has not become a tomb,
Whilst not yet strong the wind of doom;
Whilst in the sky still shine sun and moon,
While the sea has not yet breached its doom;
Until the blood will fill the cup, not wine,
Whilst in the sky the tiny stars do shine,
And then the Lord of Dark will reach his hand,
And kill the sea and whither land.
How did you like that?" the other man finished cheerfully.
"Um, how does this relate to the discussion, mate?" Connor said slowly, unwilling to provoke the obviously unstable commando.
"It doesn't – I'm just killing time," the other man smiled, "and that's 'cause it looks like you won."
"Why would you say that?" Connor insisted, suspecting a trick.
"Because of her," Eugene pointed to a point behind the prone trio, who quickly turned around and saw an android, made out of semi-transparent and opaque metal parts. It was shaped more or less, as a human would be, except for an icicle-shaped head with two eyes a size too big for the head of that shape.
"Remember when I spoke of the AI who was in charge of that complex?" Caroline muttered quietly. "Well, this is that AI."
"Does it have a name?" Connor whispered quietly.
"I call her Mystery," Caroline muttered as behind them Eugene Flint spoke at the same time: "Beauty."
"I'll be with you shortly," the machine spoke-up in an oddly human voice and the floor tilted, dropping the prone people into another hole.
"Nick!" muttered Jenny, as Leek, obviously having gone round the bend by this last remark of the relentless Scott, was advancing onto them like a some sort of a crazy troll, now clearly intent on tearing them into bits and pieces. "I regret to tell it under these circumstances, but I am very impressed by your bravery and ingenuity under pressure-"
"In other words you suspect that it is my fault – is that it?" Nick sighed.
"Well – yes, within a reasonable and comprehensible point."
"Which is?"
"Nick, we're about to die and you are spending our last moments together-"
Before Jenny could finish this sentence, a hole opened in the ceiling, and Abby, Caroline and Connor fell straight on top of Leek. "Ah, hello!" Connor said cheerfully, as his companions still tried to catch their breaths. "We've won! What else is new?"
"You're sitting on Oliver Leek," Nick replied nonchalantly, "and by the way, what makes you think that we've won – besides the fact that you're still alive?" The others ignored his question as they jumped up and away from Leek, whose face was frankly terrifying.
"He's worse than Flint ever was!" Caroline exclaimed, only to be interrupted by Jenny:
"Don't you start! Hearing it from Nick was bad enough!"
As Leek began to resume his advance upon them, there was suddenly a smell as if after a lightning strike, and the ex-bureaucrat just exploded, his ribcage almost hitting Nick in the faith.
"I think that's a revelation of our victory," Connor sat, as he too cleared his face from Leek's viscera. "Oh, and that," he pointed to a new figure in the room, "is the AI Caroline had been talking about... I think?"
It was then – or maybe it was just tiredness catching up to him at last – that Nick Cutter felt a need to sit down.
"So, what happens now?" it was Jenny who asked instead.
And for a while, there was just silence, as smoke cleared from the remains of Leek's corpse. Then Jenny spoke-up once again: "Well?"
"What do you want to happen?" the AI answered instead.
"I want to know the truth about what will happen to us," Nick said slowly. "Helen implied-"
"Your wife can imply many things, but you can hear implications in her voice even when there are not any," the AI shook its head. "What do you want to happen now, Nick Cutter?"
"Right now, I want to go home and sort things out – please," Nick said wearily. "If it is possible or permissible, that is."
"It is," the AI nodded calmly, its oversized blues eyes lighting briefly on each person in the group. Yet Abby at least could notice things moving in the shadows, machinery of some sorts, most likely. "But do not forget – I will speak with you in time, perhaps not as soon as you expect, or perhaps even sooner than that. But until that time – rest and sort things out!"
The eyes of the AI burst into a deep, aquamarine light, and there was a disembodied feeling, and a feeling of vertigo, and then...
"Cutter! Where the Hell you've been?!" James Lester exclaimed.
Nick looked around, shocked. They were back at ARC, which looked even worse for wear. "Cutter! Where have you-oof!" A big, spotted animal bowled him over.
"Michael! You're all right!" Caroline cried delightfully, as she hugged her favourite pet. "Where have you bee, you naughty boy?"
"That's what I would like to know," Lester said, as he slowly got up. "Cutter, you still haven't answered my question!"
Nick, Jenny, and others shared a look between themselves and knew that while Helen Cutter had stopped influencing or manipulating their lives directly or otherwise, their problems with the time anomalies themselves were just beginning.
The End.