“Trust me,” I said. “I have no intention of blowing up the universe. I’ve got a much better idea. If I should fail in my mission…then it’s up to you. But for now, trust me… Grandmother.”
“Well,” said the Matriarch after a moment. “Just this once, Edwin.”
She actually managed a small smile for me, and I smiled back. And then, as if things weren’t already complicated enough, the ghost of Jacob Drood and the living Jay Drood decided it was time they made their appearance. All the time I was talking with the Matriarch I had the feeling someone was watching me. I finally looked around, and my gaze fell on the Merlin Glass, currently showing a reflection of the War Room. But there was something wrong with the image in the mirror, and when I strode over to study it, I realised there were too many people in it. In the mirror’s reflection, Jacob and Jay were standing behind me, grinning at me over my shoulder. I looked behind me, but there was no one there. I looked back at the mirror, and there they were. It gave me the shivers. Especially when the two of them shouldered past my reflected image, strode forward, and stepped out of the mirror into the War Room. I had to backpedal fast to get out of their way. People jumped and yelled and even screamed, and Jacob and Jay grinned and sniggered and elbowed each other as though they’d just pulled off a particularly clever and childish trick. I had to take a deep breath just to get my heartbeat back to something like normal.
Jacob was now wearing an old-fashioned bottle green engine driver’s uniform, complete with peaked cap, with the front of his silver-buttoned jacket hanging open to reveal a T-shirt bearing the legend Engineers Get You There Quicker. He looked very sharp and focused, with hardly any blue-gray trails of ectoplasm following him when he moved. Jay was back in the full finery of his original period and looked almost as excited as his future ghostly self, but there was something in his eyes … I folded my arms across my chest and gave them both my best hard stare.
“Nice trick,” I said coldly. “I’ll bear it in mind for if we ever need to give someone a coronary. I didn’t know you could do that, Jacob.”
“You’d be surprised at what you can do when you’re dead, boy,” Jacob said cheerfully. “It’s really very liberating.”
Jay looked severely at his future self. “I’m boasting again and I do wish I wouldn’t. We have a plan to save the day, Eddie.”
“Of course,” I said. “Doesn’t everyone? Does your plan by any chance involve blowing up the whole damned universe?”
“Well, no,” said Jay. “Not as such.”
“I like it already,” I said.
“Oh, you tell him, Jacob,” said Jay. “You know you’re dying to, and you’ll only butt in and interrupt if I try. I apparently become very grumpy after my death.”
“Try hanging around this family for centuries,” Jacob growled. “They could make a pope swear and throw things. Listen, Eddie, we have a way to stop the Invaders in their tracks. We’re going to use the Time Train.”
“You’ve only just started describing your plan, and already I hate it,” I said. “Going back in time to undo present events never works. Never never never. It always ends up causing more problems than it solves.”
“Do calm down, Eddie,” said Jay. “Your face has gone a very funny colour, and it really can’t be good for you.”
“We are not going back in time to stop the Invaders before they start their plans against us,” Jacob said patiently. “I know enough about time travel to know that wouldn’t work. I watch television. No, we’ve got a much better idea. We’re going to use the Time Train to sneak up on the Invaders’ home dimension, and attack them from the one direction they won’t be expecting: the past!”
“Run that by me again,” I said. “I think I fell off at the corner.”
“It’s really very simple,” said Jay.
“No it isn’t,” I said. “No explanation that begins that way ever is.”
“Look,” said Jacob, prodding me firmly in the chest with a surprisingly solid finger. “The Invaders come from a higher dimension than ours, right? That means to them, time is just another direction to move in. We can use the Time Train to access their dimension and attack their homeworld from the past! They’ll never see us coming!”
“They’re bound to have hidden their homeworld,” said Jay, “inside some pocket universe or dimensional fold, confident no lesser beings from some lower dimension could ever find it. But Jacob is dead, while I’m still alive, and together we can see things no one else can.”
“Only we could hope to survive the stresses of a time journey like this,” said Jacob. “Because we’re the same person in two different states of existence. It has to be us, Eddie. Tony’s already reworked the engine so it will soak up time energies as it travels. So that when we finally get to the Invaders’ homeworld… we can drive the Train into it at full speed and release all the time energies at once, blowing the whole nasty place apart like a firecracker in a rotten apple!”
“End of homeworld, end of Invaders!” said Jay.
“An interesting plan,” I had to admit. “Even if my mind does seem to just slide off the edges when I try to grasp it. But are you sure you can find the Hungry Gods’ homeworld?”
“You can’t hide things from the dead,” said Jacob. He looked at Molly and then at me, and didn’t say anything.
“You have to let us try,” said Jay. “This… is how I die. Jacob finally remembered. I don’t mind, really. It’s… a good death. Spitting in the face of the enemy, saving the innocent; for the family. A Drood’s death.”
“And this is what I’ve waited for, all this time,” said Jacob. “This is my end, at last. None of you here could hope to do this. Only me, and me. Jay dies striking down our enemies, and somehow ends up here, in the past, as the family ghost, waiting to do it again. And I… finally get to go on, to whatever’s next. I’m quite looking forward to it. I’ve grown awfully thin, down the centuries, and I’m really very tired.”
“Go for it,” I said. “The Time Train is all yours.”
“You still have to keep the Invaders occupied, distracted, so they won’t think to look for us coming,” said Jay.
“I think we can do that,” I said.
Martha surprised me then, by stepping forward to face Jacob. “Go with God, Jacob,” she said. “I shall miss you.”
He grinned crookedly. “Then you should aim better. Good-bye, great-great-great-great-granddaughter.” He looked around the War Room. “You are all my children, my descendents, and I have always been so very proud of you.”
He and Jay turned as one and strode back into the reflection in the Merlin Glass. For a moment they moved eerily among our watching reflections, and then the image in the Glass changed to show them walking through the old hangar at the back of the Hall. They climbed up into the gleaming black cab of the Time Engine and waved good-bye to Tony, who waved back with tears in his eyes, knowing he’d never see his beloved Ivor again. Jacob manipulated the controls with professional skill, while Jay shovelled crystallised tachyons into the boiler with fierce nervous energy. He was going to his death, and he knew it; and knowing he was coming back as Jacob probably didn’t help.
Ivor lurched suddenly forward. The time pressure peaked and Jacob put the hammer down. The Time Train accelerated forward, disappearing at speed in a direction no human eye could follow; and just like that, they were gone.
I waited for a moment, looking around me, but nothing changed. So I just got on with my own plan. What else could I do?
Molly and Subway Sue took my small group off to a relatively quiet corner of the War Room so they could explain the Damnation Way to us. There was a certain amount of disagreement between them over details, the two of them almost coming to blows over certain obscure references and sources until I separated them, but they seemed firm enough on the main outline. They started at the beginning, which turned out not to be the Damnation Way itself.