Chapter I

I have talked with Roman emperors, fought with armoured knights and outwitted a super-computer the size of the planet earth. I have had a sword driven straight through my lung and I have had to navigate Heathrow Terminal Five. I know pain.

It is without hyperbole that I write that my third year final exams were the hardest and most painful accomplishments of my life. After returning from my Easter break I descended into a foul miasma of fluid dynamics, thermodynamics, stress analysis and tribology. I pushed equations longer than the Aeneid into my head and turned the cogs of my brain until results came pouring out onto the page. I was up before dawn and coffee carried me on until well after dusk. There was so much to perfect and so little time to perfect it that by the time the exams hit me there wasn’t even time to shower.

What emerged from the exam room after my final exam was a stinking, sweaty mess. Hair piled up in a crow’s-nest held in place with a spare pencil atop a brain filled with nothing but numbers. Clothes that hadn’t been washed for days hid a body that hadn’t been fed more than coffee and energy bars for days.

But it was over. I was free. We were all free until the next September. Alright most of us had internships and I was due at Rolls-Royce on the first of August, but at that moment, right then, I felt utterly free.

And like any other rational adult, I used that freedom to get thoroughly hammered.

After a week of parties, be they end of year or farewell, the clamour died down. Most of my friends moved back home to their parents to enjoy free food and free laundry. Soon the only people left were those going after jobs, those with no homes to go to, and myself. But not just because the price of an aeroplane ticket back to Montreal was significantly more expensive than a few weeks’ food and laundry. I had something infinitely better planned.

Kitted out in bright new clothes and thoroughly recovered from the maelstrom of mathematics, I walked towards the Edgware Road. There was no way I was braving the Underground in tourist season. Or the heat. The skies in England might perpetually threaten rain but the weather was unpleasantly warm. The city was beaten down by it. Sunbathers melted by the Serpentine, while those waiting for the bus along its edges drooped over like wilting flowers. Anyone with any sense would get out of the city in this heat and, in a way, I would as well. The heat couldn’t beat down my growing excitement. Until I reached Marble Arch, where a wave of dread rolled through me. Before I did anything else... I was going to have to visit Amir.

I took a deep breath and strode into the little shop, the electronic bell announced my entrance. Amir’s son was behind the counter, fiddling about on an iPad. He didn’t look up until I’d made it past the chocolate and the newspapers and was almost under his nose.

“Dad?” he called into the backroom. “Hannah’s here.”

“It’s nice to see someone remembers my name,” I said to myself.

“Ah, the sane one,” Amir himself appeared in the doorway. “You’re alright, girl. He’s been behaving himself.” Amir shrugged. “Came in last week with a new order and paid up until September.”

“Really? Sir Reginald actually paid up?”

“Oh there was some muttering about unfair prices and he literally cursed me to the eighth level of hell, but he paid up,” Amir nodded. “I think you talked some sense into him last time you were ’ere.”

I consider myself comparatively unflappable but for a few moments I stood there in stunned silence. When I eventually regained my senses I could only stammer out a few sentences.

“Well, that’s uh… that’s good then,” I stumbled backwards on my way out of the shop realising I had no reason to remain. “I’ll just… I’ll stop by again soon… then. Anyway.” I ducked out of there before I could embarrass myself any further.

Something caught my eye as I left, perhaps my brain’s attempt to pretend the last few moments hadn’t happened. One of the free newspaper’s articles leapt out and into my brain.

“Great Fire Death Toll Rises to Nine!” the newspaper declared. I picked it up and scanned it over. Building work had uncovered a skeleton near Monument which according to the archaeologists had died during the fire of 1666 that had destroyed most of ‘Old London Town’. The traditional death count had always been eight, for three hundred and fifty years. Now they knew there was at least one more.

I looked over the photographs of the skeleton, smiled to myself and closed the newspaper. Sir Reginald was going to want to hear about this.

*****

When I reached the opticians above which Sir Reginald had lived for as long as I had known him I was surprised to find a freshly painted sign hanging above the private doorway to the upstairs apartments.

“The Derby and Delaronde Time Travel Company” it declared in bold white text on a navy background. “Mysteries Solved, Ciphers Broken, Enigmas Unravelled” it added in an italic post-script. Thankfully none of the Londoners paid it a moment’s notice.

Warily I put my key into the lock and heaved my weight against it to push past the pile of letters. There was no resistance when my key turned, the door and I were flung by my own bodyweight into an utterly empty hallway.

Things were getting thoroughly spooky now as I closed the door and locked it tight. It was then I saw the device attached to the letter box. A brass scoop fitted tightly around the letter slot and hummed gently, just beyond the range of hearing. It connected to a tube of leather than ran up the stairs and out of sight.

This did not bode well.

I raced up the stairs following the leather pouch to the top and to the door of Sir Reginald’s small attic room. I took a moment to catch my breath and then opened the door.

“Ah, my dear Hannah.” Sir Reginald stood admiring a small steam engine in the old Victorian fireplace. Beside it a great brass bookshelf took up one wall, the most permanent piece of furniture I’d ever seen Sir Reginald install. Letters lay on every shelf, carefully stacked into neat little rows with machine-like precision. Occasionally delicate brass arms slid up and down the shelves shuffling the letters into a new order. “You’ll be pleased to know I’ve not been idle since recovering from my little sojourn with convalescence.”

“Is that a–”

“Automatic Letter Sorting Apparatus,” Sir Reginald nodded. “I choose to call her Alsa.” He patted the brass bulb of the steam engine as he might a horse. “Left to right, interesting to uninteresting, top to bottom, past to future.”

This was more obviously the case as I looked it over. The top few shelves had clay tablets, papyrus scrolls and bamboo slats while the bottom was littered with data drives and crystals.

“How… how does it know if they’re interesting?”

“Oh, it’s only a vague estimate. Whether or not I’ve laboured for them previously, whether it includes individuals of note,” Sir Reginald’s look of pride faded for a moment. “As yet I cannot give it cognisance capable of evaluating the intrigue of the mystery. So worry not, your role has not been supplanted.”

“Uh, I think I’m a little more useful than just a letter opener.” My brows furrowed.

“That was impolitic, I misspoke,” Sir Reginald fixed me with an honest stare. “I enjoy having you bring me mysteries. Alsa might sort the letters but I would rather have no-one else read them. Come, sit down,” he indicated his own arm chair. “Be at ease and I shall make us some tea. And you can tell me all about your last term.”

I sat down and dropped the newspaper I was carrying onto a side table next to the new letter sorter. The sorter’s little arms fluttered for a moment, like I had startled a flock of birds. Sir Reginald busied himself with the kettle and the teapot while I struggled to think of things about my last term which were not just equations. I talked a bit about friends but even that ended swiftly.

“Almost all of them have gone home now, anyway.”

“And you, when will you return to Canada?” Sir Reginald asked as he emptied the kettle into the teapot.

“Oh, it’s far too expensive for me to head back for only a week or two,” I shook my head.

“Pish posh, I’ll see to the particulars.” Sir Reginald returned the kettle and nestled a cosy over the teapot. “We’ll have you on the next…” there was a brief pause while Sir Reginald plumbed for the correct word “aeroplane to Montreal whenever you wish.”

“I don’t want you to go to any trouble on my account.”

“It is no trouble,” Sir Reginald said. “One should never pass up an opportunity to see one’s family.”

As I faltered with the conversation Sir Reginald took up the slack.

“I have endeavoured to improve my situation here,” he announced, placing two cups of tea on a side table between his two chairs. “For too long I have lived in isolation from the rest of the twenty-first century. I have reappraised myself with the value of a guinea, ah, I say again, a pound. I ordered some new books, I visited Wilsons, I even tried to take in a play. It was such drivel I am afraid I walked out in the second act but at least I tried.” Sir Reginald took a sip of tea and then perked up as a memory struck him. “Ah! And I found a new wonder of the modern age!” Sir Reginald got to his feet and went to rummage in a distant cupboard. He returned bearing a familiar red, blue and yellow cylinder. “I found it while exploring one of the so-called super markets. Behold!” He plopped it into my hands.

“Custard powder?” I said, a pit of embarrassment forming in my stomach and working its way down my digestive system.

“I cannot tell you how often I have been in desire of a good custard after a stout meal and yet found myself unable to muster the effort of whisking eggs and boiling vanilla.” Sir Reginald paced with excitement. “But a spoonful of custard powder, a spoonful of sugar and a pan of milk and I can have custard whenever I desire with as little effort as a cup of tea. It is a different pudding, it’s true, but similar enough to scratch the itch of desire.”

“Sir Reginald…” I tried and failed to find a way to broach this delicately. “Custard powder has been around for… at least a hundred years.”

“What?” Sir Reginald froze.

“Probably two hundred…” I said, looking over the tub to avoid his gaze.

“O, for all the wasted years,” Sir Reginald’s excitement faded and he settled down into his chair. “Well, no matter. Such is my punishment for not exploring the world with greater gusto.” With a flick of his wrist he dismissed the irritation building across his brow. “I presume, as you are here, we are to take up our old habits again?”

“If you mean mystery solving, I’m game.”

“Then, pray pluck me a perplexity from Alsa’s new library and let us see what help we may be.”

*****

Sir Reginald never seemed more relaxed than when I visited him at his small rooms at the top of the optician’s building. Whenever he was outside he insisted on dressing in a full suit that was at least a century out of date, with a waistcoat and pocket watch and gleaming top hat. But inside his rooms he dressed down only to a puffy-sleeved white shirt and let his hair hang free of his hat. Without his hat and suit and cane it was much more obvious he wasn’t any taller than me, with a slight frame and pale skin, as if the sun couldn’t touch him.

Although it had concerned me at first that he’d built a steam-powered letter sorter, the more I thought about it the more it reassured me. Before Sir Reginald had installed Alsa he could have packed up his folding bureau, his small collection of books, his clothes, and been gone in an hour. That had been the case for three years, and now, finally, he seemed to want to stay in the twenty-first century for a while. Outside of his work, at least.

“Canon Walter of Mottisfont Priory begs you lend your expertise to help them search for the spirit that has been haunting their cloisters,” I read the canon’s Latin letter with reasonable confidence. The only confusion arose from the unusual shape of the letters.

“Does the spirit only haunt them at night, haunt one particular area of the priory in particular, and alternate between laughter and screams?” Sir Reginald barely stirred.

“How did you know?”

“Because monks live lonely lives,” Sir Reginald shrugged. “Make a note to write back to the canon and inform him his spirit is in actuality one of the women from the nearby village making love or making coin with one of his monks.”

“Ah.” I made a note to send the reply. “Could it not be one of the monks? Sleep walking maybe?”

“It could be, but if one of the monks it would have been going on for longer and they would recognise his voice,” Sir Reginald took a sip of tea. “A woman is the most likely answer. Let’s open another.”

I put Canon Walter’s parchment aside and reached up on the brass bookshelf for one of the more modern letters. I was trying to trust Alsa’s sorting algorithm but so far very few ‘interesting’ cases had elicited any reaction from Sir Reginald.

“Director Michel of the French National Archives in Paris urges you to meet him with all haste and discretion,” I said. The letter was handwritten in the fluid yet uniform manner of the French. “He hesitates to put the details of the case into this letter in case it falls into the wrong hands. A theft has occurred at the archives and in these dire times any failing of the state could inspire rebellion and he dare not take police away from the riots. The Treaty of Fontainebleau has disappeared from the archives of France.” I checked the date of the letter, thoroughly confused. “It was sent on the twenty-fourth of May 1968.”

“The Treaty of Fontainebleau, clearly a top priority.” Sir Reginald did not commonly use sarcasm. “Without it Napoleon could return from Elba to wreak havoc on an unprotected Europe.”

“I thought Napoleon was exiled to St Helena.”

“The second time.” Sir Reginald bowed his head in acknowledgement. “The first time, the failed time, they sent him to Elba. It should be the folly, not the treaty, of Fontainebleau.” Despite his derisive tone there was a glimmer in his eye. “Put it to one side. I might return to it. I’m curious to know why the director cares greatly enough to come to me, but I think I’d rather brave the Great Fire of London protected from the flames by a shirt made of matchsticks than visit Paris in 1968.”

“Ah, speaking of the Great Fire of London,” I tried to mask my disappointment as I put the Paris case to one side and brought out the newspaper, “I thought you might be interested in this.” I handed over the article for Sir Reginald to read. His eyes scanned down the page quickly.

“Interesting,” Sir Reginald said slowly as he chewed over the details of the find. “I always thought the death count for the fire was unusually low. Although a ninth hardly makes it proportionate to my expectation.” He looked over the picture of the skeleton carefully, turning it slowly as he thought. “What say you to that?” he pointed to the edge of the skeleton’s skull, just behind the ear.

“I’d say it looks like a fracture.” I broke into a smile. I knew Sir Reginald would want to see this. “A fracture made just before he was consumed by the flames.”

“A murder, in fact.” Sir Reginald stared down at the picture hungrily. There was a big juicy mystery there, waiting to be solved and no forensic scientist would be able to answer it as clearly as a time traveller. The glimmer faded after a few moments though and he handed the paper back to me. “But the Great Fire of London is an exceptionally dangerous place to visit. Before the fire there was plague and after the fire there is chaos. Let us exhaust our other options first.”

I turned back to the bookshelf, but nothing seemed to interest Sir Reginald, be they requests in cuneiform from Hammurabi’s scribes or holographic data crystals from Emperor Keith, Seven-Keith of his name, king of Mars. Most things Sir Reginald could solve without stirring from his chair.

“I think perhaps I shall have to tweak Alsa’s settings,” Sir Reginald said, casting a dark eye at his new machinery. “She clearly has no idea what makes an interesting mystery.”

Out of growing desperation I plucked a letter at random from one of the more modern shelves. It had a lunar colony postmark complete with a holographic stamp of Neil Armstrong’s face and the date 20th March 2275. I opened it up and read.

“Marlin Arnold of Lucon would like us to find his missing... family,” I said, reading the letter. I was quite pleased this was one of the few addressed not only to Sir Reginald but the full Derby and Delaronde Time Travel Company. “Marlin says that by all official record he is the last surviving heir of his family line, but he thinks some went missing.”

“Quite careless to lose an entire branch of the family tree,” Sir Reginald leant forward slightly. “Why doesn’t he believe he is the last one?”

“It doesn’t say,” I said, turning the letter over to check there wasn’t any more on the back. “He says he has done all the research that he can, but he has heard about our... unique... perspective. He is over a hundred now, he says, and doesn’t have much time left to look.”

“It’s painful to be the last person left of your family,” Sir Reginald said, and leant back into his chair. I sighed. He seemed just as uninterested as with all the others. I lowered the letter in my hand and reached for another, a brown, wax-sealed letter at the top of the 'interesting pile'. Just as my fingers began to close around the blob of wax Sir Reginald started to move. Slowly at first, as if pulled by some magnetic force, his body slid towards Marlin's letter. Finally in a flurry of movement he snatched it up. “Very well, we shall take pity on the old man.” Sir Reginald announced. “We will see what can be done. If any shoots remain on this missing branch of his we can leave him in happiness and if not... well perhaps it will put me in a self-destructive enough mood to want to visit London in ’66.”

Chapter II

Despite Sir Reginald’s burst of energy our travel to the twenty-third century was delayed by an invention of the eighteenth century. Sir Reginald might have been settling into the twenty-first century but no force on heaven or earth could persuade him to part with the steam engine that powered his time machine.

The time machine sat in a small yard behind the opticians, visible only to pigeons and crows. It was fifteen feet square, dominated by the huge steam boiler and fly wheel that drove the time machine’s machinery. Beside the boiler lay the true time machine, the collection of glass stems and gears that intertwined like the nerves of a great glass beast.

It always astounded me how clean and pristine the time machine looked, as if it had just been built. Sir Reginald either spent hundreds of hours cleaning it or had infused it with some dirt-repellent from the deep future. I suspected the former, otherwise he would have seen fit to power the machine using an engine more complex than boiled water.

I dreaded the idea of fumbling around a firebox in the heat of high summer. Sir Reginald always made me stoke the boiler while he dealt with the delicacies of setting up the time machine. Which is why it surprised me that Sir Reginald peeled off his jacket, tucked it into his hat and set them both to one side.

“Please prep the time machine to transport us, Hannah,” Sir Reginald said. “I’ll tend to the mundanity of coal.”

“Are you sure?” I hesitated. I’d driven the time machine before when it was fully up to pressure but I’d never had to watch over it and set it up from cold before.

“I will be here beside you.” Sir Reginald squatted down to light some kindling in the firebox. “Should you go wrong, I will correct it.” Tiny tongues of flame crackled around the wood shavings and Sir Reginald blew on them gently. “But you have been watching me carefully enough I doubt you will go far wrong.”

Meagre words of praise, but the trust shown through his offer spoke volumes more. I turned to the control panel, resting my hands on my hips, and tried to run through the process in my head. I could do this. I knew I could. I’d watched Sir Reginald do it a hundred times...

I think I ended up sweating more from stress than I would have done from heat stoking the boiler, but after a few false starts and only one correction from Sir Reginald we were ready to get underway.

“Set coordinates for Lucon, twenty-first of March 2275,” Sir Reginald directed me when the boiler chimed it was at pressure. “Any time in the morning should be fine.”

“Why morning?” I asked, setting the coordinates to bring us in at nine-thirty local time, nonetheless, and locking them in place with a pull of a brass handle.

“Marlin Arnold is over a hundred years old,” Sir Reginald said. “At that age, even in the twenty-third century, he could go at any moment so I’d rather not waste a moment of his time.”

“Ah.”

Sir Reginald wiped the coal dust off his hands with a handkerchief and put on the rest of his suit. It was almost like a robot re-assembling itself as he pulled on the jacket, retied his cravat and donned his hat. He wore the suit so much it had almost become a part of him. It wasn’t until the hat was on his head and his cane was in his hands he seemed fully himself.

“By your leave,” Sir Reginald said.

“Then here we go,” I said and pulled the time travel lever.

The glass time machine lurched into life as it drew power from the boiler. Sparks struck and crackled in the air around us and I felt the world begin to distort. The sparks burst into flames that swirled around the time machine in every colour of the rainbow. The blaze grew and lightning crackled until the entire machine vanished with a pop.

Only a column of smoke remained in the sky to say we had ever been there at all.

*****

Lucon was a city on the moon. More correctly, I suppose, it was a city under the moon, or perhaps inside the moon. Centuries of mining had hollowed out the cavern for the city and it was roofed by a great glass dome for earth and sunlight to shine through.

Skyscrapers rose like stalagmites towards the dome top. Some were glistening white from their moon-crete while others were draped in shrubbery to help keep the city breathing. All of them competed with each other for light and space, and most rose as high as the one Sir Reginald and I climbed to find Marlin Arnold. But I hadn’t expected we’d be visiting the top floor. From up here you could look up and think you were alone on the surface of the moon. Only the occasional spaceship or capsule drifting above the surface of the moon reminded us of the bustling city below.

“Nearly there,” Sir Reginald waved his cane at a doorway. “How are you adjusting to the lunar gravity?”

“Well it was going fine,” I said and awkwardly came to a stop. It was important not to think about it. Like walking downstairs or riding a unicycle, if you thought about how you were doing it you started doing it wrong. “Just give me a second...” I added as I tried to get back into the rhythm of moon walking.

“Marlin Arnold has done quite well for himself,” Sir Reginald said to himself as he waited for me to catch up. “A mansion like this has to be worth millions of lunas.” Sir Reginald ran his eye over the mansion apartment suspiciously, like a man buying a used car. “He must be one of the hundred richest men and women in the city to afford it.”

“So? Maybe he’s looking for the missing branch so he can find an heir?” I landed next to Sir Reginald with a bump.

“So, I had not heard of him before today and I have visited Lucon many times,” Sir Reginald frowned for a moment but let it break into a warm smile. I was at his side and he rapped on the doorway with his cane.

The door opened to reveal a robot hanging from the ceiling. Four arms dangled from a central, near featureless torso. It gleamed with white plastic and its only feature seemed to be two dark pits in its chest where cameras gleamed.

“Arnold residence,” the robot announced. “Please state your name and purpose.”

“My name is Sir Reginald Derby and this is my associate Ms Hannah Delaronde,” Sir Reginald said. “Our purpose is to solve your master’s problem.”

“Mr Arnold will be pleased, he has been forced to use the guest bathroom for two days.” The robot said and retreated from the doorway, allowing us inside. I shot a confused glance at Sir Reginald.

“We’re not plumbers,” I said. “We’re detectives.”

The robot paused and turned back to us. There was a faint whirring like a camera focussing and refocussing its lens and it froze into uncanny stillness.

“He wrote a letter? We’re here to find the missing branch of his family.”

“Ah. Then you are not here to solve Mr Arnold’s problem. You are here to solve the problem of all Arnolds.” The robot returned to motion and beckoned us inside while closing the door behind us. “Mr Arnold is in the living room, may I take your coat and hat?”

Sir Reginald waved the offer away and we followed the robot through the house. Initially it was hard to take my eyes off the robot. It rolled along the ceiling and clung to it as if it was held like a magnet. With its four dangling arms it could happily reach anywhere in the house, folding out like a concertina, but they ended with unnervingly human-like hands.

But no robot could compete with the treasures lying in the rooms we passed. A statue of Romulus and Remus suckling at their she-wolf mother, a bronze bust of Caligula, and a dozen other renaissance artworks lay in a pile in one room as if glanced at once and then discarded. There were a stack of paintings in another room half hidden by a protective cloth. It opened up just far enough to see a painting of the dome of St Paul’s rising out of dockside London by Canaletto.

It was as if all these things had been bought at auction and simply dumped in the house, untouched, because that’s what rich people were supposed to own. Their owner had no attachment to them whatsoever. Even the house seemed impersonal. White walls, white furniture, crystal glass and stainless steel holding the frame together, it reminded me more of a hospital than a home.

After a few corridors the robot led us into a wide room overlooking a walled garden. I thought it was empty when I first stepped into it but as the robot drew to a halt I saw the fragile little man beside which it hung. The man might have started tall but time had wilted him. He lingered like a raisin, twisted and sunken. Sitting on a sparse sofa he seemed to hide between the cushions.

“Sir Reginald Derby and Hannah Delaronde to see you, sir,” the robot announced as they entered.

“I only wrote to you yesterday.” Despite his fragility the man leapt to his feet and bundled over to us. Between his clothes I could see flashes of metal at his wrists and ankles, and a slightly mechanical nature to his movement. “Letter would barely have got to the space port by now.” He glared at Sir Reginald suspiciously.

It wasn’t a look of wealth or power. I’d seen the cold cruelty of a jaded businessman, and I’d seen the gathering storm of an emperor’s wrath, but this look didn’t fit either of them. This was the look of a man short-changed in the pub, but even that didn’t quite fit. It certainly wasn’t the look of a man who’d amassed a fortune of lunas.

“You alluded in your letter to certain... advantages... we have over other detectives,” Sir Reginald didn’t retreat from the bluster. “If you believe what you’ve heard it should not surprise you that we arrive... promptly.”

This seemed to appease the old man who slumped a little. He reached up to stroke his chin and his sleeve slipped, showing off the cuff of an exo-skeleton suit. No wonder he seemed so spritely. It wasn’t his muscles doing the moving.

“Well... I suppose I could believe that,” the man made a face as if he could excise all his suspicious thoughts with a facial contortion. “Marlin Arnold.” He introduced himself and held out his hand. Sir Reginald shook it and after that Marlin held it out to me as well. “I suppose you’d better sit down, this is going to take a bit of explaining.” He cast his eye up to the robot hanging from the ceiling. “Vlad, go make us some coffee.”

“At once, sir.” The robot rolled away.

“I call him Vlad because he hangs upside down,” Marlin explained as he sat down. “Like a bat. Ha!” His faced rolled up as he laughed at his own joke. I tried to smile politely and began the difficult task of sitting down in lunar gravity. You couldn’t just let yourself fall into the chair; you’d bounce right out of it. I had to lower myself carefully and then hold myself there until the bouncing stopped.

“First, a little test, right?” Marlin held up a finger. “You’ve seen me, you’ve seen my house, what do you think I did for a living, a full fifty years of my life?” The man’s eyes dashed from me to Sir Reginald and settled on me again, as if pressing me for an answer.

If this had been the twenty-first century, I’d have said oil. Not one of the riggers, but someone who worked with them often. Educated, intelligent, but still hands-on, still working, an engineer or technician, or something like that. But as it was the twenty-third century I guessed.

“Colonial Commission?” I suggested. “In the energy sector.”

Marlin’s expression betrayed nothing. He turned to Sir Reginald. “What about you, hat man? You agree with that?”

“Mining engineer,” Sir Reginald said, adjusting his cuffs. “Born and raised on earth, but educated and expatriated to the moon at a young age. Took an office role at age sixty, retired on or around eighty.”

The moment Sir Reginald said it the clues all fell into place. You could tell by his frame he hadn’t been brought up from birth in the lunar gravity, and mining engineer fitted the profile of educated but hands-on perfectly. He wore simple, tight clothes, and short hair, so nothing would catch in machinery, and yet the fingers he held up showed no signs of calluses from operating the mining machinery all day. An engineer looking over the city’s energy production would never have got close enough to the reactors to need to worry about catching in machinery.

Sir Reginald glanced at me, saw in my face I’d unpicked the clues, and so he pressed on.

“You did not write to us to tell you your life story,” Sir Reginald chastised.

“You sure you didn’t look me up before you landed?” Marlin’s eyes narrowed.

“It was your idea for a test,” Sir Reginald shrugged. “Now please, indulge me as to the full extent of your problems.”

“Well... it’s like this see,” Marlin began, rubbing the back of his neck. “For the last... ten... twenty years I was pretty happy just being retired. I had Vlad for company, and a lifetime’s worth of films to watch. I never... I never married but I was sort of... OK, with it. Right? I’d had people who were close, and people who’d drifted away, and I never felt any of it was a waste, or had gone wrong, right? Then, about.... two years ago?”

“Two years, one hundred and seventeen days,” Vlad said as it returned with a tray of coffee. It handed a cup and saucer to each of us and at Sir Reginald’s request added four sugars to his.

“Right, yeah, two years ago,” Marlin continued. “I get this call saying a distant relative had died and left me all his pots of money. I’d never heard of him, but by the sound of it he was in the same position as me, childless, few friends, and he’d inherited all the money from some distant relative of his.” Marlin took a sip of coffee. “There weren’t a lot of us Arnold’s left, apparently and now... and now there’s just me. The last of the Arnolds.” He smiled weakly. “At least those of us whose surname is Arnold. But I want to be sure, Sir Reggie, I want to be absolutely sure. So I’ve been doing all this research into the family history, trying to make sure.” Marlin waved a hand at Vlad to get the robot’s attention. “Can you bring Reggie the research?” The robot trundled off to another part of the house.

“See, this inheritance has done a lot for me,” Marlin said, looking down at the surface of his coffee. His face drooped as if the heat of the coffee was melting off his skin. “Got me the exoskeleton. Allowed me to visit earth and stand under real sky one last time before I die. But it can do more. If I’d got even a fraction of this money when I was in my thirties there were... things that could have been done. Things would have gone very differently, and maybe I’d have had more company in my nineties than Vlad and the boys at the Retired Miners Club.”

“Here is the first box of research,” Vlad placed a large brown box of papers and books down beside Sir Reginald. It had originally been labelled one of three, but that had been scrawled out and replaced several times until it finally read one of twelve.

“Right now, this money is either going to go to charity or the government,” Marlin said. “And they’ll spend it and they probably won’t do a terrible job of spending it, but it won’t change anyone’s life. If there is anyone, anyone at all who has an honest, family claim to this money... I want it to go to them.”

“And you say there’s a missing branch of the family?” I asked.

“Exactly!” Marlin broke out of his reverie and punched the air. “There’s references... oh all here and there... but nothing concrete, right? Nothing easy to prove. No-one ever wrote in their diary ‘oh, and by the way the Blobby-blob family are a junior branch’. There’s just these... cryptic little clues.”

“And do you think the junior branch will have survived when all of the Arnolds have died out?” Sir Reginald asked, gently swirling coffee around his mug in idle thought.

“They might be all gone too,” Marlin shrugged. “One way or another, over the millennia, all families are going to die out. But if there is anyone, anyone at all, from that branch left... the money should go to them. It could change their lives.”

“Box two,” Vlad announced.

“I don’t think I will be able to carry twelve boxes of research away with me...” Sir Reginald said.

“Oh I have them digitally as well,” Marlin offered, and brought out a tablet.

“Hannah, if you would be so kind,” Sir Reginald waved a hand and I brought out my phone. It took a bit of discussion and intercession from Vlad the robot, but eventually I managed to get the files from Marlin’s computer and onto my own despite the three hundred year difference in technology. It took a little more effort to make sure my phone could read them. “I can always reproduce myself a proper copy should I need it.”

“Do you know when the junior branch line diverged?” I asked.

“Most of the clues I’ve found would suggest the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries, but I can’t even guarantee that,” Marlin shrugged. “If I knew, I wouldn’t need the help of time detectives.”

“It’s certainly plausible.” I rested my thumb against my lips. “Too many sons in one house, one goes off to the colonies and is never seen again...”

“It’s going to be like searching for needle in a hay stack, I’m afraid,” Marlin grinned.

“More like a particular piece of hay in a hay stack,” Sir Reginald sighed. “A needle might be small, but it is easily distinguished.” Sir Reginald stood up. “Thank you for your research, Mr Arnold. We’ll take over from here. When you next see us, we’ll be able to tell you one way or another if there is anyone left.”

“Before you go you should see some of the physical evidence, the things I couldn’t perfectly digitise,” Marlin stood up and waved for us to follow. “I’ve got a pendant from the order of the Golden Fleece, not sure who that belonged to, an old film projector, real celluloid, and miniature-“

Marlin stumbled, as if he had been struck, and blood bubbled out of his chest, dripping to the floor and furniture. Marlin fell slowly, and I leapt to try and help him. Vlad got there faster, robotic arms cradling the man and stopping his fall, while one hand reached down to the wound and oozed a gel over it.

“Deploying e-seal, alerting authorities,” Vlad announced as Marlin shuddered in the robot’s arms.

I looked around in a flurry, trying to figure out what had happened. It had been silent. Utterly silent. Was there an invisible assassin in the room? Or had some distant sniper been waiting for Marlin to come into line of sight?

A bullet had embedded itself into the floor near where Marlin fell. The carpet around it smoked, and it had driven an inch into the moon-crete below. I turned to face the source of the bullet to see Sir Reginald already scrambling through a shattered window.

I looked down at Marlin, the old man was fading fast and there was nothing I could do. I wasn’t sure if his eyes even saw anything anymore. Only the exoskeleton gave him any strength, trying to push down on the source of the bleeding with the strength of robotic biceps but his feeble hands couldn’t keep the pressure. There was too much blood, there was nothing I could do.

Except chase after the killer.

I ran after Sir Reginald, diving through the broken window and into the garden. I could see Sir Reginald as a distant dark shape disappearing into the brush but beyond that he was chasing a blur.

I threw myself forwards into a sprint as fast as my feet could take me, preparing to shoulder through the undergrowth as if it was the defensive line at a hockey game, but as I hit it the force just bounced me off my feet and up into the air.

“I hate lunar gravity,” I cursed as I flipped myself upright and pushed off with as much force as possible. I couldn’t sprint so much as glide after them. I vaulted over the undergrowth and then followed Sir Reginald’s lead up onto the roof of the mansion, over the roof garden and down to the other side.

Sir Reginald had the attacker cornered against the edge of the skyscraper. It was almost half a kilometre of freefall on the other side. Even with lunar gravity, that’d kill you. The attacker seemed to be giving it some thought though, trying to find a fire escape maybe or some piping to slide down, but there was nothing. One hand hung onto a rucksack as if it could save his life while in the other glowed a heavy pistol. It looked more like the electronic rails that shot space capsules towards the earth than it looked like the guns of my time. No wonder it had been silent.

“Why did you do it?” Sir Reginald snarled, drawing up his cane to use as a weapon if needed. “He was just a poor old man.”

“Well, not poor,” I muttered.

“Tell me why!” Sir Reginald demanded again, as the pair of us closed in.

The man turned. His face was far older than I expected, easily in his fifties and maybe even older. He had a broad nose, but a thin face, lined over the years by frustration and pain. His hair was a mossy brown, receding and fading towards grey. His eyes drew yours in, as if they were black holes in the centre of his face that drew in all sight. They were brilliant blue, and both had a pupil fleck in the iris.

“You know why.” The man leapt over the railing.

I nearly followed him as I leapt to look over the edge. Sir Reginald’s cursing rang in my ears. Down below me the falling man hauled on his rucksack and a parachute no larger than a patio umbrella unfurled. But on the moon, that’d be enough to save him.

Sir Reginald joined me looking over the railing as the parachute disappeared from view, its user finding refuge a dozen floors below us.

“The police will find him,” I tried to reassure Sir Reginald.

“The police will find us first,” Sir Reginald sank down until his chin was resting on his arms. He looked like he wanted to throw himself after the attacker, parachute or not. “But that’s not my concern.”

“What is your concern?”

“He said I knew why...”

“So... it might be a paradox. We’ve met him before... but not yet?”

“I’m getting a headache.” Sir Reginald buried his face in his sleeves and the sirens closed in around us.

Chapter III

The police station we were taken to was named after Georges Danton, the great libertarian. This was the only small amusement in the whole ordeal. Sir Reginald and I were both arrested, separated, and questioned. I decided to stay silent unless I had Sir Reginald with me. Or a lawyer, I thought. The reality slowly starting to sink in. Charged for a crime I didn’t commit in a time I wasn’t from.

The holding cells weren’t like the North American ones, with rows and rows of bars. Here the European influence had crept in and thick walls and heavy steel doors separated one prisoner from another. They smelt clean in an unwholesome way, as if filth was regularly washed off the walls with a heavy duty cleaning solution. It was interesting, from a time traveller’s perspective, that very little had changed in the design of cells over the centuries.

They took my phone away from me, and my notebook, and any other way of entertaining myself so the only thing I had was to stare at the walls and, from the police’s perspective, become consumed by guilt and confess. In the end the only amusement I had was to trace interesting shapes with my finger along the grain of the concrete walls, like cloud watching. Would Sir Reginald be able to talk his way out of this? Would I? Or would this be my fate? To forever stare at the bare concrete walls three hundred years from home.

I was lying on the floor after... I don’t know how many hours, when the door buzzed. Its electronic locks opened with a clunk and a robotic policeman filled the doorway.

“You will accompany me,” it ordered. I pulled myself upright, trying not to launch myself at the ceiling as I did so, and followed. It was not alone. A human officer followed along beside it, keeping the robot between me and him. The robot’s basic frame was strong enough to restrain all but the most brutal of prisoners, and it was also equipped with clearly labelled mace spray and restraining foam. Its casing was transparent glass, showing the mechanisms underneath. The prisoner was to be shown the inevitability of escape, and it worked quite well, even on me. The human policeman only needed to be there to preserve some sense of humanity in the justice system.

The two policemen led me to an interview room and opened the door. A faint hint of tobacco smoke wafted out and relief flooded through me. The only person I’d ever seen smoke in the twenty-third century was Ibrahim El Siddig, the administrator of ColCom.

I was ushered inside by the policemen and sure enough, there Ibrahim was, complete with his tiny robot eating the smoke to protect the lungs of others. The thin cigar lit up a very different face than when I had last seen it. Instead of the smiling, charming man I’d met I saw the hard expression of the statesman who had clawed his way to the top of ColCom. The eyes were cold, the face was lined, and grey was beginning to attack his hair.

“Hannah,” Ibrahim acknowledged me. “Take a seat.” He was straining to sound friendly, but I could hear the stress hidden beneath the surface, as if his teeth wanted to bite rather than talk.

Sir Reginald sat on the other side of the interview desk. He had taken off his hat and rested it on the table. I sat down next to him, and turned back to our host. Sir Reginald didn’t seem himself either, he was stiff, like he sometimes got after an argument. For a long while none of us spoke, and Ibrahim smoked his cigar down to the nub.

“I don’t normally step into police business,” Ibrahim growled as he finally fed the stub to his tiny flying robot. “I am an administrator, not a dictator. If the forensics reports hadn’t come in as I was making my appeal this could have become a very... political... incident.”

“Then I timed my request for you to be summoned at precisely the correct moment,” Sir Reginald said, hinting of singed pride. “Any earlier and you would have been in dire political straits. Any later and you would not have come.”

“Of course I’d have come,” Ibrahim threw up his hand, as if he was about to throw a punch before restraining himself.

“As a friend,” Sir Reginald said. “But you would not have come as the Lunar Administrator, and I needed the Lunar Administrator more than I needed Ibrahim El Siddig, if you’ll pardon me for saying so.” Sir Reginald leant forwards, momentum building. “You know we are innocent of the crime. But you are also well aware of current judicial practices of the Lucon Police Department. It doesn’t matter who is punished as long as someone is punished. Lucon is a five hundred yard deep Petri dish six miles wide on a lifeless, airless, often sunless rock. They believe that without fear of law the city will descend into anarchy, and anarchy will kill us all very quickly when there is no-one regulating the air, supplying the food, and so on.” Sir Reginald tapped the table. “They confiscated my cane, so now they know it contains a sword. They will use that to link me to the murder even if it is not possible for me to have fired the shot that killed. They have scanned and attempted to interview both Hannah and myself and know we were not carrying valid ID cards or identification chips. If they can pin nothing else on us, they will want to string us up for that.”

“You make us sound like a police state,” Ibrahim said bitterly.

“Have I incorrectly described the situation presented to you by the police when you arrived?” Sir Reginald said darkly. “I thought not. That is why I summoned you, Ibrahim, so that you could come and get this all thrown out before anyone files any paperwork but after the forensics came back proving we were innocent.” Sir Reginald leant back. “I gave an accurate description of the attacker. You should be able to find him very swiftly on the security recordings.”

“There is a complication.” Ibrahim drew out a device from his pocket and placed it on the table. It glimmered, covered in tiny fins stacked on top of each other like a radiator.

“Ah,” Sir Reginald said.

“What is it?” I asked.

Ibrahim and Sir Reginald exchanged a look, Ibrahim shrugged and Sir Reginald explained.

“It is known as a scramble cannon,” Sir Reginald said, lifting the device carefully and showing me that it had a core of electronics. “This one is spent, I believe. When activated, a scramble cannon fires off a targeted electro-magnetic pulse. It throws off positioning satellites, identification chips, and will scramble any recording equipment for a thirty-minute window, fifteen minutes before activation and fifteen minutes after. They are rare, and highly illegal.”

“And becoming more common every day,” Ibrahim muttered. I hesitated to suggest that if Lucon was not recording everything on CCTV they would be unnecessary, and instead just nodded.

“Was Vlad affected? Did he get an image of the killer?” I asked.

“Vlad?” Ibrahim raised an eyebrow.

“Marlin’s robot.”

“Oh, no, its cameras were not facing the correct way,” Ibrahim said. “Cybradyne Personal Assistance Droids stay focussed on their owner at all times, and have a limited field of view outside of that.”

“A computer is not intelligent enough to pick a face out of a crowd by description alone.” Sir Reginald drummed his fingers against the computer. “And yet the killer must be somewhere in the recordings. The scramble cannon’s effects only travel a few hundred metres. You must get your men combing the footage.”

“There are over thirteen thousand security cameras facing the edge of that sphere of disruption, assuming he left it,” Ibrahim said. “And a hundred and fifty thousand within the sphere. We’re not omniscient, Sir Reginald. He could have found some hidden space the cameras can’t see quite easily and he can’t be auto-tracked without a camera. To find him on the security recordings would take millions of man-hours. Lucon can’t afford that.”

“The rail-gun then,” I suggested. “There can’t be many guns of that design in Lucon.”

“Not... officially,” Ibrahim said slowly. Shaking slightly with stress he drew another long thin cigar and lit it. “But a rail-gun like that can be built from a number of mining tools if you’re desperate enough and have the right training. The ammunition might provide more clues, but even then it’s a wild goose chase.”

The silence that drifted over the room was broken only by the whirring of Ibrahim’s smoke eating robot.

“Marlin Arnold’s best friend was a robot,” Sir Reginald said after a few minutes. “All other friends beyond the mortal coil, all acquaintances far too old to be our killer. He’d been retired for twenty years. The only reason anyone could want him dead is because of his inheritance.”

“His inheritance defaults to the government,” Ibrahim said. “He has no legal heirs.”

“The Lucon government wouldn’t stoop to assassinating old men for cash,” I said.

 “Not when it could pass an inheritance tax,” Sir Reginald added with a sardonic smile.

“A scorned relative, maybe? Someone who thought they should inherit the Arnold fortune?” I asked.

“Or someone who doesn’t want the hidden branch of the Arnold line to be found,” Sir Reginald suggested. “Someone who had heard all the research that was going on. All the records copied from museums. All the old diaries dug up. Someone waiting to silence those who dig too deeply into the Arnold past.” Sir Reginald looked down at his hat and stroked the brim for comfort. With a sudden lurch the thought that was troubling him started troubling me.

What if we started investigating the history of the Arnold family and that was why Marlin Arnold was killed in the first place? That would be a circular paradox with no escape. I felt a twinge in the back of my head. Sir Reginald had always said a headache was the first sign of standing on the cusp of paradox.

“You know why...” I echoed the attacker’s words.

“And yet I see little choice,” Sir Reginald said. “If it is a paradox then it has already begun, and if it is not I will strive with the force of heaven not to create one.”

“If what is a paradox?” Ibrahim’s cigar twitched with irritation.

“It matters little,” Sir Reginald waved his concern away. “Now I need you to grant us our liberty.”

“Hold on, it’s one thing to stop you being treated like murderers but I can’t simply let you walk out of the building until the police have someone else, preferably the killer.”

“Parole then,” Sir Reginald said. “Until it comes to trial.”

“Sir Reginald I know you,” Ibrahim wagged the cigar like a finger. “The last time we spoke I showed you a purple pearl and you disappeared for nine months. If I let you go I know there’s nothing to stop you from disappearing again to god knows where.”

“Bail?” I suggested.

“There do exist sufficient sums of bail that would force me to return,” Sir Reginald suggested. “Simply set the bail price very high.”

“Oh, I intend to,” Ibrahim said, and a glimmer of his old, playful charisma flashed behind his eyes. “A very high price indeed.”

*****

“Utterly ungentlemanly is what it is,” Sir Reginald rambled and ranted he climbed the stairs to his rooms in Edgware Road. It made sense to leave the twenty-third century as soon as possible. We had infinite time to solve the case as long as we stayed out of events there. Sir Reginald seemed too shaken by events to suggest another time. Inside his rooms I made for the kettle, hoping a cup of tea would calm him down, but Sir Reginald went straight for the brandy. “What kind of man confiscates another man’s hat?”

“A person who knows losing your hat is the thing that would annoy you most?” I suggested.

“It was my favourite hat,” Sir Reginald scowled as he poured two glasses of brandy and shoved one in my direction.

“It was your only hat.”

“It was the only one I wanted,” Sir Reginald frowned. He took a swig of brandy and stole over to his shaving mirror to get a look at himself without it. He fussed over his hair and cursed more under his breath.

“Most people would be upset by the million lunas he wanted. We can get you another hat,” I suggested. “It may not be the millinery age any longer but I’m sure there’s a hatter somewhere.”

“It won’t be the same hat,” Sir Reginald sighed, pulled away from the mirror and slumped into a chair. “The devil could have taken my jacket or my waistcoat or my cravat or my cane or even my trousers, but he had to take my hat.” Sir Reginald drained his glass of brandy in what had to be a painful single gulp. With the brandy gone he similarly banished his despondency, leaning forward and clasping his hands together. “Well now. The only way I’m going to get my hat back is if we crack this mysterious killer as fast as possible.”

“I had a thought on that,” I said, setting the brandy to one side. “We could go to the twenty-fourth century and look up the records of the case.”

“We’re potentially already in a paradox, and you want to introduce that into the mix?” Sir Reginald scoffed. “Why not simply look up the evidence of every conviction in history and deliver it to the police at the correct moment?”

“Well... we’ve been to the ninety-ninth century before to solve a case. What’s so bad about doing the same thing in the twenty-fourth?”

“I could trust the ninety-ninth century,” Sir Reginald said and immediately scoffed at the sound of his own words. “Ha. Well. I could trust some of it. I could trust the Genesis computer to give me otherwise hidden details that would lead me to the correct answer, without giving me the correct answer. Do you see the difference?”

“Honestly... no.”

“Suppose we act as Hamlet’s father, and go to inform Hamlet in Act 1 of Claudius’s guilt,” Sir Reginald suggested. “Hamlet demands proof, we do not provide it, and so he tricks Claudius into confirming suspicions. The time line can weather this paradox easily, Hamlet could easily have suspected Claudius in any case. Suppose instead we meet Hamlet in Act 1 and say ‘Regard this, dear Hamlet, a photographic plate of Uncle Claudius pouring poison into your father’s ear.’ Hamlet uses this information to convict Claudius and then we show up in the final act to find evidence of Claudius’s guilt and take the photographic plate back with us to Act 1. How well does the universe weather that paradox, do you think?”

“I am going to guess not well,” I pursed my lips. “I didn’t mean that... but if all we did was discover it was Joe Bloggs and then we found the evidence on our own...”

“It is a dangerous risk I would not like us to take,” Sir Reginald said, rubbing his forehead. “Do not be tempted by paradox. Some can be weathered. Others cannot.”

“Oh come on, it can’t be that bad,” I smiled. “You looped your own timeline to save my life before. Two of you, side by side, how did that not create a paradox?”

“With great care,” Sir Reginald twitched. “Regardless, the gain was worth the risk. A world without Hannah Delaronde in it was not worth living in, in the first place.” Sir Reginald’s eyes fluttered in irritation as his brain caught up with his mouth. He shook his head at himself and pressed on before I had a chance to reply. “Putting that aside, no. We will not visit the twenty-fourth century. Or ideally any century beyond the twenty-third until we have secured the correct man behind bars.”

“Alright Sir Reginald,” I held up my hands in defeat and I could tell I was hitting a nerve. “It was just an idea.”

“I think the answer lies somewhere in Marlin Arnold’s research,” Sir Reginald said. “I am not sure where, and the prospect of reading twelve heavy boxes of research materials does not thrill me, but somewhere... something Arnold found drew attention to himself.”

“Those boxes are still in Lucon.”

“I know. I would suggest we make a physical reproduction of the digital files he gave you, but for the second part of my point,” Sir Reginald nodded in agreement but held up his hand to quell any other debate I may have had. “Just as it would be a waste of police time to comb millions of hours of footage for a face they have only had described to them, it would be a waste of our time to spend all the time until you must return to Canada reading an old man’s research.”

“Well I don’t have to return to Canada,” I said.

“Which is why I suggest you choose a mystery to solve and I will read the old man’s research,” Sir Reginald finished. “And as I cannot carry around with me hundreds of pages of documents I will...” Sir Reginald sighed. “I will purchase a slate computer to read them on.”

“You want me to solve the mystery alone?”

“Not alone no, I’ll still be there but.... in the background, reading,” Sir Reginald said. “You’ve more than proved yourself capable.”

“Oh I know that, I’m just surprised you would be willing to hang in the background,” I laughed.

“Well I’ll speak up if anything catches my eye,” Sir Reginald rolled his head around his neck. “But I think this is the best way. We do not nearly have enough time together. I am not going to waste it sitting around reading family tree research.”

“Family tree research that might catch a killer.”

“Nonetheless.” Sir Reginald sat back in his chair and waved his hand at Alsa. “Choose any mystery you like.”

“Well... I have been meaning to visit Paris for years,” I said and picked up the letter from the director of the National Archives. “Two birds with one stone, right?”

“By your leave.”

~~~~~

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