leave you alone for longer. Eventually you would've made a war machine like ours. But you still can, of course.”
Ian hopped up and down with excitement.
"Yes!" he exclaimed. "We'll have a battle then!”
Nathan wiped away tears, no longer able to deny the certainty that his friends had killed the Knight. Death's servitude was no guarantee against their predations; their limitless capacity for destruction. Death held no fealty in this place.
"Paradox," muttered the boy, and smiled. He looked up. The War Machine still confounded Nathan's reason. It could only be comprehended in scant glimpses entirely proportionate to his disbelief, never in its totality.
A blister of iron upon the thing's side split apart to admit their sword-craft. Nathan was grateful to be in sudden darkness, for his tears could now flow undetected.
They entered an enormous internal bunker, with vision slits admitting weak bars of light from the machine's exterior. Checker-plate was the dominant furnishing, stamped sheets of which constituted decking, tables and chairs. A meal of shakes, burgers and fries sat before them. Jeremy admonished Ian for bringing weapons into a "designated mess area.” Chastened, Ian dutifully removed his sidearm.
The boys ate. Nathan noted that the war machine defied understanding. Jeremy smiled.
"It is a collection of ideas we gave to Death, but without a ...” - there was a long pause - "unifying concept. At any time it's a robot, a giant, a truck or a plane ... And of course it's none of these things.”
Nathan thought it sounded a lot like Superposition, and said so.
“That’s exactly right,” said Jeremy. “It exists in all possible states simultaneously, but when you look at it, it commits to a single form.”
"It rules!" said Ian loudly.
The boys finished their meal, then Nathan spoke. He told them of the Knight, the book and the Ancestral Hall. When he concluded, his friends were wide-eyed. Jeremy spoke first:
"A time machine!" he cried. "We can get Death to make one and then go back and change everything!”
Anger overcame Nathan.
"I don't care about a time machine, I really don't. We killed him, Jeremy. He was trying to tell us something really important and now he's dead.”
"Collateral damage," said Ian. "He was in the way of our guns.”
Jeremy adopted his Field-Marshall's voice:
"A spot of friendly fire, old boy.”
Nathan ignored them.
"You two should have waited. Not everything has to be a target or an enemy.” The boy stabbed a pickle extracted from his burger with a straw.
"Now he's dead, and we'll never know why he was here.”
Jeremy pushed a button and the tables receded into the deck-plate with a hum, taking the remains of their meal with it.
"I'm sorry he's Dead, Nathan," said Jeremy. "But we didn't mean to do it.”
Ian effusively re-stated Jeremy's plan for a time machine.
"No," stated Nathan firmly. "Definitely not. We need to work out why the Knight was here ... and what the book meant.”
A pressure in his frontal lobes.
How did we go from a frog to war machines? He wondered.
A vision consumed him: A teacher of gargantuan size peeling the side off their vehicle and plucking them from their seats, her breath a scald-blast of chalk fumes and retribution. He noticed Jeremy speaking again:
"- Crusades, 100 Years War, Diem Bien Phu, the invasion of Normandy!” His friend relayed this litany of conflagration as if imparting flavours of bubblegum. Nathan closed his eyes and spoke.
"We won't do time machines. We won't see wars. We'll hunt for the Knight's book and work that ... paradox out.”
Jeremy smiled.
"The Knight and the book were enigmas, not paradoxes.”
Nathan ignored this and tried to speak again, but Jeremy spoke over him.
"We have the greatest gift anyone has ever had, Nathan. Endless power to create. Power over Death himself -”
Ian broke in.
"The Knight may have been our enemy all along, just using you as bait to lure us in.”
Nathan sighed in exasperation.
"This wasn't a trap. He was ... instructing me somehow.”
"Or distracting you with that hall and stuff" suggested Jeremy. "Perhaps it was all some sick game of his. Anyway, we’ll never know, now.”
Jeremy seemed satisfied that his earlier apology was ameliorated by the concept of the Knight as potential aggressor.
“Pre-emptive strike,” muttered Ian.
Nathan’s headache seeped further into his skull.
“We need to stop this. Stop making things and ordering Death around. Just until we’ve worked it all out.”
“No, Nathan” said Jeremy. “I can’t stop. But I also won’t stop you doing what you need to do, either. We won’t end up like Lord of the Flies.”
Ian exploded into laughter. Nathan smiled too.
“It’s obvious,” continued Jeremy, “That there’s plenty of Death to go around. That is, he’s omnipresent here.”
It came to Nathan that this was true in the real world also. Then a moment of imploding vacuum; a crystal balloon at sea-bottom.
They’re going to leave me.
He looked to the vision slit opposite, felt the first of his tears come, then a whisper upon his lips:
“We have to stay together.”
Ian retrieved his pistol and spun it gunslinger-style on his index finger.
“It’s just playing,” said Jeremy. “Just like on the hill, Nathan. Don’t be sad. You play your way and we’ll play ours.”
Nathan cried freely now.
“We weren’t lead here to play. I don’t know why we’re here but that’s not it.”
Ian touched his shoulder. His eyes were rimmed with moisture.
“We crashed the blackbird planes into each other,” Ian said reverentially. “It sounded like a million refrigerators falling down a million flights of stairs.”
“No,” said Nathan firmly. “I can’t, Ian. We are in this place for a reason; I know that now.”
Silence between them. Jeremy popped a hatch and produced a box of tissues tinged in olive drab. He smiled broadly.
“What if we left, Nathan, and could never come back? Think of all we would have missed!”
There was awe in his eyes. Ian discarded his tissues on the grating at their feet. With a hiss, the square of mesh widened and devoured it. Nathan had by now staunched the flow from his eyes.
“Can we see outside?” the boy said. “I want to feel the sun on my face.”
Jeremy nodded. The vast bulkhead comprising the wall before them blew outwards with a concussive blast.
“Explosive bolts!” beamed Ian.
Nathan edged towards the aperture. A railing of post and chain sprang from the gulf’s edge. The window framed a sloping flank of black steel. Nathan saw that across this sombre façade streamed many cascades of silver, each comprised of thousands of metallic pieces.
“Pistol rivers,” said Ian proudly. “Those are all unloaded though,” he added, seeing Nathan’s look of concern.
“There is one around the other side made of tanks,” said Jeremy. “World War 2 Shermans. They look beautiful when the morning sun hits them.”
Nathan imagined ranks of knightly armour flowing down the slope. The thought gladdened his heart for some reason. While his friends fired grenade launchers into the gun-stream, great turbines screamed in voices high and pure. Not far from the boys, a wayward crank from some vast engine-room beneath punched its bus-length of greasy iron through the armour plate. Steam vented forth with every whining revolution.
Ian clapped his hands in joy. Jeremy’s eyes were shut against the wind, a lock of hair stirring to life upon his forehead. Via Death, the boy had command of the very heavens, for the sun fell prey to a swift-closing moon. Nathan closed his eyes too.
They are going to leave me, he thought again. And the mystery of the book and the
Knight will be mine alone – he opened his eyes - and Death’s.
They retired to a bunkroom again adorned liberally in checker-plate The boys played video games. Ian and Jeremy talked incessantly about the war-machine and their planned modifications. Death would provide them with another, it was decided, an identically fitted out creation with which to wage a battle.
“It’ll be awesome,” mused Ian. “You can watch from a distance if you don’t want to join in.”
Nathan shook his head.
“I need to do some things tomorrow,” he said.
Jeremy looked up from his game.
“There’s nothing else to do here. The Knight is gone, Nathan, you can’t bring him back.”
Ian began to describe a time machine again and Nathan glared at him.
“Just some things,” he said firmly.
A plan was forming in his mind.
The machine started forward from Jeremy or Ian’s unspoken command. Ian motioned for Nathan to look groundward; they entered the outskirts of a city. Cars and buses streamed up the boulevards before them. Nathan saw tiny figures scattering at their approach and looked to Jeremy.
“Androids,” assured Jeremy.
Cannon-fire burst to life from the batteries at their feet. Each retort shimmered the decking and wafted hair across the trio’s faces. The rolling barrage focussed on a skyscraper in their path; its face of smooth glass was now put to fire and the spattering impacts of smaller calibre shells.
The firing pleased Nathan. His friends would never leave this place, that much was clear now. Ian and Jeremy were too much in thrall to weapons and war-play. That Death’s servitude might be fickle was of no consequence to them, he saw that clearly. The unfettered devastation they now bore was its own reward.
“Check this out!” yelled Ian, and a gantry bristling with