‘What! You can’t do that!’
Kite ignored him and looked back at the Scottish sailor, who brought out the box with the tortoise marked ‘1’. Beside Kite, his sister was watching the middle distance, wary. Everything about her said she wasn’t sure any of this was a good idea. Joe tried to follow her eye line. There was nobody else coming.
She saw him looking. ‘If even one person in ninety years told the French we were doing this, they could save themselves a lot of trouble if they shot us all now,’ she murmured.
‘No one would believe it,’ Joe said. ‘And no one’s here. I came from the shore yesterday, they’ve all gone to Stornaway. If there were soldiers I’d have seen.’
‘Mm,’ she said, but he couldn’t tell if she was agreeing or not.
‘Agatha, have you got the book?’ Kite said to her.
She held up a notebook.
‘Then we’re ready.’
They were. McCullough and the four grown tortoises were on the future side of the gate, while the rest of them stayed on the past side. The distance between them was narrow enough to shake hands over.
‘All right.’ She looked happy. She was one of those people who liked books, Joe suspected, that were mainly graphs and numbers. ‘Let’s have young tortoise number one on our side and old tortoise number one on the future side. Who’s doing the honours?’
Kite glanced at the others to see if any of them would volunteer, without much expectation. No one did. He took out his gun and shot the little tortoise in the head.
Joe flinched hard and had to concentrate not to move when a shard of shell slid across and touched his boot. He didn’t quite see what happened to the old tortoise. It didn’t fade into mist or pop out of existence; it was just gone. So was the crate it had been in. His eye had slid over the real moment of it and he couldn’t have said how it had gone except that it had. On the other side McCullough rubbed his eyes.
‘Well then. I suppose we’d better get started, if you have to do it?’
Joe stared at him.
Kite was watching McCullough too. He inclined his head slowly. He always moved slowly. He had rusted. ‘Could you bring the second one over here?’
‘Second one? We haven’t done a first one yet,’ McCullough laughed.
‘Check the numbers on them,’ Kite said, quite gently.
‘We’ve got two, three, and four,’ McCullough said without checking. ‘Never got number one, something must have happened to it before we had them.’
There was a small silence in which there was only the wind singing around the gate.
Joe didn’t have many anchor chains to his own character. He hadn’t been himself for long enough. But one thing he had known about himself for as long as he’d been himself, was the epilepsy. Epileptic amnesia, the doctor had said; perfectly common, plenty of people have it. Nothing extraordinary. Even when the Sidgwicks had told him it might be a sign of something else, it had still been epilepsy. A disease with an interesting cause, but still a disease, laced through him as thoroughly as any cancer.
Only it wasn’t epilepsy. It was the pillars. It was the future rearranging itself. McCullough had forgotten the presence of a tortoise that was now impossible. Joe must have had a whole life that had become impossible.
He felt himself losing the strength in his knees. If there had been anywhere to sit down, he would have. As it was, he slumped a little. It must have looked strange, as though someone had smacked him too hard in the middle of his spine. Mrs Castlereagh noticed and smiled a tiny, regretful fraction. She must have suspected already. No wonder she hadn’t been surprised to find he’d forgotten meeting Kite.
‘Yes,’ Kite said. He sounded curious now. ‘I just shot it in front of you. You didn’t see?’
‘I …’
Kite pointed with the muzzle of his gun to the blasted little corpse on the ground. ‘About ten seconds ago.’
McCullough looked worried. ‘Well, that’s something, isn’t it.’
‘So,’ Mrs Castlereagh said, ‘let’s have young tortoise number two on the future side, beside old tortoise number two.’
Joe watched the old one hard, because he didn’t want to see the little one die. The gunshot was loud when it came. But nothing happened to the old tortoise, which only hid inside its shell from the noise.
‘I don’t like this,’ McCullough said unsteadily.
Joe couldn’t have agreed more.
‘If you could bring the third one over here to the past side,’ Kite said, polite, although everything else about him said, I’m the one shooting them, you prick.
McCullough looked unhappy and tugged the sleigh across. His shadow swung in the hellish red light. Mrs Castlereagh and Joe had to help him lift down the third crate. The third tortoise was more awake under its blanket. It was eating some lettuce and it looked at them all interestedly. Once it was on their side, the past side, McCullough went back to his own side. Kite put their own third little tortoise on the ground and Joe looked at Mrs Castlereagh, wanting hard for her to say, no, let me, because there was something frighteningly disengaged about the way Kite was doing it. He didn’t look away. He even watched the tortoise while he reloaded the gun, which was only made to take one bullet at a time and whose handle was like a club in case the one shot didn’t hit anyone. But she didn’t, and Joe felt the gunshot crackle outward through his ribs a long time after the sound was over. Because of the red light, the blood on the ice looked black.
The old tortoise didn’t go anywhere. It snapped its slow way through a piece of apple and blinked at them. Mrs Castlereagh glanced towards McCullough.
‘Can you still see him?’
‘Clear as day.’
‘Let’s … take him back across then.’
They lifted the crate back onto the sleigh and moved it to the future side. Joe waited, his stomach tight, expecting it to vanish. It didn’t. The third tortoise stayed exactly where they had left it, chewing.
‘Is that it?’ McCullough said anxiously.
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Castlereagh. ‘It’s what we hoped. Cause and effect only works when there’s a time difference. Stick two chronologically related things in the same time, and they exist independently of each other.’ She smiled at Joe. ‘So you won’t disappear, even if something happens to your grandparents while you’re here.’
‘Um – good,’ said McCullough, looking like he had no idea what was going on.
Kite was loading the gun again.
Joe realised what he was doing too late. ‘McCullough – run, for fuck’s sake!’
McCullough only stared at him. Joe tried to run too, to push him, but Kite’s free hand clamped over his arm. McCullough finally started to run, but the bullet caught him in the back of the head and he splayed forward over the ice.
‘Why did you do that?’ Joe demanded. ‘He didn’t know anything!’
‘He knew what the gate does,’ Kite said blandly.
‘Good eating on a tortoise,’ the previously silent Scottish sailor observed, pleased. He picked up the rope of the sleigh.
Joe couldn’t talk. He had to stare at the pillars in the bloody light, throwing black shadows onto the ice. Both pillars were carved with names, mostly women’s: Lizzie, Mhairi, Honour, Anne, Jem, right up and down the length from the sea to as far as the lamplight reached. Some were wind-worn to nothing. A few were much newer. One of those was Madeline. Seeing it at exactly eye level made prickles sweep up the back of his neck.