Christmas Eve, Chapter Two

An empty shell of a Time-Shifting Device, small enough to carry in the palm of a hand and with rectangular holes on its face where the buttons should have been, hung suspended in mid-air by a mind-boggling tangle of cables and pipes. In the midst of this chaos that rambled the length and breadth of his laboratory at Nottingham Castle, The Chancellor moved swiftly and efficiently, turning dials and triggering relays to transmit much-needed power through the snaking maze of conduits into the tiny machine. This severe moustachioed soldier was a scientist of genius equal to Phoenix’s own, and there was another way in which he and the pretty French-speaking half-Martian girl were alike. It was not so much that he too was busy in solitude this Christmas Eve, isolated from the merrymaking going on all around. The resemblance had more to do with the way The Chancellor and Phoenix were feeling, and the way that both were trying to hide it.

Into the laboratory strolled D’Carthage. A bronzed, brawny man with long sun-bleached locks and a dazzling smile, he was as usual resplendent in luxurious velvet that twinkled with jewels and left his muscular arms and chest bare. The Chancellor continued his work, paying no attention to him.

“My dear fellow,” D’Carthage began. If his sartorial magnificence appeared incongruous in this clinical venue, his tone was doubly so, for it suggested the man bluntly ignoring his presence was a beloved friend. “Why these labours, when a night reserved for unbounded jollification awaits? Down tools, Sir, and let us see in together our first Yuletide in this era’s Nottingham! I’ll wager a blazing hearth, a frothing tankard and a sweet fur-buskined lass bring the same pleasures now that ever they did in my day!”

“Then go and sample them,” The Chancellor returned. His lightly-accented English was clipped and brusque, and he did not turn from monitoring the Time-Shifter. “Drunken decadence of that kind is your pleasure, not mine.”

“Ah yes, you live as a good soldier should, wisely eschewing temptation and emotional attachment,” was D’Carthage’s reply. There was no anger in his voice to give any outward sign he had taken offence, but nor was he quite as genial and benevolent as before. A certain edge, of something like mockery, glinted behind the words of praise.

D’Carthage sidled over to where The Chancellor was working. “Indulge me then, Sir,” he persisted. “Mere company is all I beg. We are far from home, the two of us, and dear Steam is nowhere to be found. What cost a little fellowship, at your team-mate’s glad request?”

“You know well that I am here under Gala’s orders,” said The Chancellor. “She requires a new Time-Shifting Device with the utmost expediency, and some of us in the Next Four know how to obey our leader.”

“You refer of course to my ill-fated duel with that excellent knave Sword-Slicer,” D’Carthage responded smoothly, with a chortle that at least sounded good-natured. “Shame on you though, old fellow, for raising past recriminations tonight of all nights!”

Finally, The Chancellor turned to face his companion.

“I do not like you, D’Carthage,” he told the other man plainly. “Perhaps you have forgotten that on the instance you speak of, I would have tortured you without reservation had The Four Heroes not opposed Gala’s wishes? You are a dilettante fool. Your only interest is self-indulgence, and your posturing has done little lately to conceal your ineptitude and cowardice. If I must tolerate you in the name of our cause, so be it. Your society, however, I neither need nor want.”

So saying, he resumed his studies of the Time-Shifter. All at once D’Carthage changed. His smile remained as white and shining as before, but suddenly jovial bonhomie had become cruel triumph. When he spoke again, the aloof overtones that had previously been detectable were as stark, flagrant and insulting as anyone could wish.

“Am I then, a lover not a fighter?” he inquired of The Chancellor. “Such a durable cliché, and so true…of one of us. For who but a lover would toil so selflessly, so steadfastly, at the very task that will break his heart?”

“What is this sentimental nonsense?” The Chancellor demanded.

“Forgive me, dear fellow, but I am well acquainted with the signs – it comes of being decadent and self-indulgent,” D’Carthage informed him, his blue eyes like shards of ice. “Do you really think I cannot see? You have long been Gala’s confidant, the only one among us she trusts or even likes…but secretly you yearn to be more than that. So here and alone you slave away this Christmas Eve, following her instructions to the letter as always, despite the pain that tears at you with every bolt you tighten.”

“You know not of what you prattle,” The Chancellor retorted. His curt delivery did not beguile the other’s practiced ear.

“Sir, you are no after-dinner speaker, but in your charm and wit this evening you outdo even yourself,” stated D’Carthage. “And why should this be so, but that you know as well as I what that little toy you are fashioning is for? It is one of the means by which Gala will draw Joe closer to her. With it she can go on sharing her past with him, until he trusts her implicitly, understands at last her ways…and they can do together what they are destined to do. She needs him, if our cause is to reach fulfilment. I wonder whether you, constant soldier, will prove able to keep your feelings and our cause apart?”

This time The Chancellor said nothing. He had also ceased to look at the machinery in front of him.

“And I wonder too, will she?” D’Carthage then slipped in, slyly, mercilessly. “She is human, no doubt, even beneath it all. Joe is growing up a comely enough lad. Why, the old romantic in me fancies that just the other day, I caught the smallest of glimmers in the way she looked at the boy…”

At this The Chancellor rounded on him. D’Carthage met his glare.

“You called me coward,” the latter said softly. “But if cowardice is to hide from that which is painful, who is the coward here?”

A noise from the doorway broke the tension. Steam was standing on the threshold. His head was lowered, so that the expression on his face was obscured by his long spikes of jet-black hair.

“The very man!” D’Carthage sparkled, switching back to the persona of gracious host with his usual unsettling speed. “Here’s far fitter company for the alehouse, I’ll warrant! Come, and over a flagon or two you shall tell me what mirth has kept you so occupied this day!”

The one addressed did not move.

“Steam?” barked The Chancellor. His combat instincts, far sharper than those of the languid D’Carthage, were already scenting danger.

A response of sorts came from Steam at last. His voice was halting, half-strangled, and his teeth seemed to be clenched. The two other men could barely make out any words at all, but one they did hear was “Shifter.”

Another was: “Give.”

With no more warning than this, Steam’s fires blasted into life and he hurtled at the unfinished Time-Shifting Device. It was all The Chancellor and D’Carthage could do to fling themselves out of his blazing path in time, before his mechanical body ploughed into the heart of the experiment. A deafening cataclysm swallowed the main bench, enveloping Steam, the Shifter and all that was around them in a tempestuous ball of flame, noise and energy emissions of every kind. As aftershocks from the primary impact rebounded from the laboratory walls and began to disperse, the luminous cocoon of chaos did not shrink likewise. Rather, it was growing.

D’Carthage and The Chancellor scrambled to their feet and bolted out into the corridor. There they saw Gala, striding purposefully with coat and cutlass in hand to investigate the explosion she had heard.

“RUN!” The Chancellor hollered to her.

At that moment the laboratory entrance, along with the corridor’s entire west-facing flank, succumbed to the expanding field of sound and fury. Gala saw at once that it was time to abandon ship. Her two team-members reached her position, and she made no delay in joining them as they fled.

END OF CHAPTER TWO