The Aunt Paradox (Reeves & Worcester Steampunk Mysteries) by Chris Dolley Page A

that gun away.”
    I managed to prop myself up with my good arm and looked towards Reeves.
    He’d disappeared. Along with the time machine.

Fourteen
    was not sure which shocked me the most — being abandoned by Reeves, or being shot.
    Or, indeed, the language employed by Dawson when he discovered the time machine missing. It was enough to redden the cheeks of a sailor with thirty years before the mast.
    I struggled to my one good foot, grabbed the door with my one good hand, and hopped through 180 degrees to meet my adversary.
    “You have meddled enough in my affairs, Worcester,” said Dawson, advancing upon me, gun levelled and still smoking.
    This was my opening for a merry quip, but I didn’t feel much in the mood for quipping. I was losing sensation in my left arm, I had a burning pain in my left shoulder, a sore ankle, and a hole in my new suit! So I gave him a disdainful look instead.
    I could tell it wounded him.
    “Whatever your valet does, it’s not going to save either of you. Anything you change, I’ll go back a day earlier and change it even more. I have things planned for you that even your automaton can’t imagine.”
    “Says you!”
    In retrospect that wasn’t my finest riposte, but it was all I had. I’d been shot and abandoned — all in the space of a single second.
    Dawson smirked.
    “Says I!” he said. “How long do you think you can keep me away from that time machine? You going to watch it every hour of every day for the rest of your life? It only takes a minute to snatch it back. And I have enough money to buy an army. I can storm your flat whenever I want.”
    As Snakes and Ladders went, the bullet in the shoulder was a definite snake, but now I wondered if I could see a ladder. What if Reeves was still here? In the ether, that is. He might have manoeuvred the time machine behind Dawson — or, even better, above Dawson — and be ready to materialise any second.
    I could be saved.
    But I wasn’t.
    At least, not by Reeves.
    There was a slight shimmer in the air, and then a dazzling light as the gloom of the cellar was replaced by the welcoming sight of my beloved flat.
    I was saved! And — I patted myself down to make sure — whole. I had no pain, and no bullet holes. And I was alone. I beetled around the flat, looking for Dawson, dead bodies, time machines, concealed policemen, and Reeves ... and found nothing.
    Which baffled me somewhat. Shouldn’t Reeves be back at the flat with the time machine by now? Or had Dawson managed to snatch it back again?
    I checked the lock on the front door. It hadn’t been forced.
    I mixed myself a cocktail and pondered at great length.
    Then, as I was weighing up the pros and cons of moving to New York under an assumed name, the door opened and in walked Reeves.
    “Reeves! Where have you been?”
    “The British Library, sir. May I mix you another cocktail?”
    “Hang the cocktail!” I said. And, yes, dear reader, those were my exact words, so you can see I was not myself. “You abandoned me, Reeves!” I continued. “What happened to your feudal spirit? Didn’t you notice I’d been shot!”
    “That was why I had to leave, sir.”
    “Because I’d been shot?”
    “Exactly, sir. If I had come to your aid, the probable outcome was that both of us would have been shot, and the time machine lost. And if I had succeeded in rescuing you, then you would still be wounded. Even if we piloted the time machine into the past and erased the timeline where the shooting took place, the chances were that you — being inside the time machine and thus shielded — would remain shot. The only sure way of restoring your body to full vigour was for me to change the timeline whilst you were still in it.”
    “I think I’ll have that cocktail now, Reeves.”
    “Very good, sir.”
    “So you’re saying you were looking after my best interests?”
    “Indeed, sir.”
    I’m sure there was large flaw in Reeves’s argument, but hanged if I could see