of a jerk he is, I have to thank him, because, without Carter, I wouldn’t have you, or your mother, or your half brother, Tom, for that matter. Without him, and this gadget.
The gadget Riley’s father referred to was a Timekey slung around his neck on a thick cord.
With this, I can take you to see my home. We will all go one day. It’s a new world, my dear son.
Another scene change, and this time Tom was beside him in the bed they shared, whispering.
“I’m off for a gentlemen’s engagement on the pier,” he said. “Just between us, eh, Riley boy? No need for Mater and Pater to be informed. On my return there will be barley sugar for you, and perhaps tales of a kiss from pretty Annie Birch.”
Riley watched his half brother slip through an open window and heard an oof and slap of feet as Tom landed on the street below.
Moments later the toddler Riley felt a presence in the room and a low-tide stink of rotten fish wafted through the window. A man stood in the shadows, a blade jutting from his fist. It seemed to the child that the man had simply appeared on the spot.
“Magic,” he said. “Magic man.”
The man moved so quickly that the shadow cast by the hall lamp seemed to lag behind.
It was Garrick, come on business, and he leaned over the small boy, knife hand raised overhead, on the point of ensuring his silence, when Riley spoke again.
“Magic man.”
Something strange happened to Garrick’s face: it warred with itself until a smile broke out. Not a happy smile; rather a momentary relaxing of his features.
“Magic man,” he said, repeating the toddler’s mumbled words. “Once upon a time . . .”
On hearing this phrase, young Riley burbled happily, certain that a story was forthcoming. And this innocent mumbling saved his life, for Garrick found himself judged a magical storyteller by this little fella and decided not to do away with him until after the main job.
When Garrick returned barely a minute later with blood on his blade, the boy Riley still expected a bedtime story and met him with a broad grin of baby teeth.
“Story, magic man,” demanded the three-year-old. “Story.”
Garrick sighed, shook his head, and blinked at the fanciful notion that had popped unbidden into his mind. Then, with only a moment’s hesitation, he tucked the boy inside his greatcoat and left through the same window he had come in by.
In the wormhole, Riley would have cried if he could.
Garrick murdered my parents and stole me away, he realized, and knew it was true. And for all these past years he has been swearing that he saved me from a bunch of street cannibals in the alleys of Bethnal Green. But it was he who orphaned me.
Riley allowed this statement to repeat itself in his consciousness, in case he forgot when he woke.
Garrick killed my parents. Garrick killed my parents.
Riley did not want to forget, because remembering this fact would steel his resolve.
For one day soon I must bring Albert Garrick to justice or be snuffed out me own self.
Their journey through the wormhole ended gradually as spacetime dissipated around them like cloudy fragments of a deep and detailed dream. Riley and Chevron Savano found themselves in a Victorian London basement, both smiling broadly in the grip of what Charles Smart called the Zen Ten.
“Garrick did in my whole family, except my brother, Tom,” said Riley. “I am truly an orphan.”
Chevie hugged the boy. “Hey, so am I. Two orphans, together against the world.”
“And my father was a policeman, like you.”
“Like me?”
“An agent in the FBI. He showed me his shining badge and his Timekey.”
“I saw that vision too, somehow,” said Chevie. “Your dad was a Fed. How did that happen?” This, she decided, was an important detail that she would definitely come back to when her mind was a little sharper.
“He was protecting someone who wore a horseshoe ring,” continued Riley.
“Horseshoe ring,” repeated Chevie, a little dopily, like a patient coming out of anesthetic. “And neither of us is a monkey.”
The basement had the same shape as it would in the future, differing only in the bare walls and floor of compacted earth, with brick pillars to support the rooms above.
Chevie stamped her foot and the ground resounded with a hollow bong. “A metal plate. We need that to land in one piece. This plate is specially designed to act as a guide for the wormhole, like a lightning