would flip over into another state of matter if he touched it. They drank it in silence.
‘Time travel. It’s fascinating. It’s truly fascinating.’ Carradine shook his head as he put down his spoon and the waiters rematerialized. ‘And I’ve had sleepless nights wondering why you came here, of all the times available to you.’
‘You’ve probably had teams of experts working on the problem,’ Scott said.
‘I certainly have. The consensus is that you wanted to go as far away from your Home Time as you could, while keeping to a certain technological minimum –’ he looked hopefully at Scott, who kept his expression deliberately bland — ‘but that still doesn’t explain what you want.’
‘No, it doesn’t,’ Scott said.
Carradine changed the subject. ‘I was wondering if your colleagues would be coming this evening, too.’
Colleagues? For a moment Scott was confused by the plural, until he realized Carradine was including Killin and Baiget. They would be fish out of water here.
‘No,’ he said, ‘they all have work to do.’ And Daiho, the one whom Scott did regard as a colleague, had made it quite clear that he disapproved of Scott going off on this trip. The problem with some College people was that they couldn’t imagine transference actually being any fun.
‘But you don’t?’
‘The youngsters are our technicians, Mr Daiho is our…’ Scott paused for thought. What exactly was Daiho in the set-up? ‘Our philosopher. I’m management and this is by way of getting to know our hosts. Good relations.’
‘Naturally.’
The second course came. ‘This is steak of ostrich,’ Carradine said. ‘That’s a large bird…’
‘I do know what an ostrich is,’ Scott said, twisting his mouth in a smile to take any sting out of his words.
‘I’d thought they might be extinct by your time.’
‘Nothing’s extinct in the Home Time,’ Scott said, and let Carradine work it out for himself. After a couple of moments the man groaned.
‘
‘Saurians are too oily for my taste,’ Scott said.
‘Mr Scott, you have a lovely way with one-liners,’ said Carradine. ‘I suppose I never really got rid of my childhood idea that the people of the future would dine out on a single pill that could last for a week. Lousy science, of course, but it caught my imagination.’
‘Why on earth would they do that?’ Scott laughed in genuine disbelief. Carradine chuckled too, and they commenced their attack on the ostrich.
Carradine’s former companion appeared by Carradine’s side with a small, rectangular plastic box in his hand. Scott looked at him curiously. The man had been at a neighbouring table all the time they had been there but he had vanished from Scott’s perception the moment Carradine asked him about the flight. It was hard to notice him — he was discretion personified. The perfect assistant.
The man whispered into Carradine’s ear and handed him the device.
‘Thank you, Alan,’ Carradine said, and held the box to the side of his face. He spoke into its lower end.
‘Carradine.’ His eyes widened and his jaw dropped; then he looked up at the ceiling. ‘Oh, Christ. Right. Yes, I’ll see to it.’
Scott was waiting, knife and fork poised.
Carradine looked at him, annoyance and amusement competing with each other in his expression. ‘Trouble up’t’mill,’ he said.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Trouble back at the hotel.’
‘Back to work,’ said Mr Daiho. He stood up, took a final swig from his glass of water and left the dining room. From their journeyman’s table at the other end of the room — just eating in the same room as the other two had been a mental wrench that none of them had enjoyed, and Mr Scott had made his displeasure quite obvious — Sarai and Jontan looked at each other. Then they silently pushed back their chairs and stood too.
They hadn’t had much time to talk since the walk, but just before they went through the door Sarai’s hand sought his and gave it a squeeze. He risked a quick squeeze and a smile in return, before they left the room a chaste two feet apart and the model of journeyman propriety.
The kit was of course as they had left it, since it was surrounded by a forcefield that could only be symbed off. Mr Daiho had already done this and was settling on to his couch.
‘Take your places,’ he said. They sat down in their respective chairs and symbed into the systems, with the usual mental jostle for a symb frequency not being used by the others. Representations of nutrient levels and energy flows filled Jontan’s mind. Then Mr Daiho activated his field computer to make some fine adjustments, shut his eyes and settled back on the couch. The evening session had begun.
Jontan stole a glance to his right: Sarai’s eyes were half shut as she symbed. He reached out and laid a gentle hand on her knee. She covered it with her own hand, but didn’t make any effort to remove it. Nor did she look at him.
So Jontan let his gaze roam over the kit, while half his mind continued to monitor the signals it was sending. One of the popular entertainment shows displayed in that box in the lounge, he had gathered, was meant to be set in the future and the kit there was covered with flashing lights. The reality that they had brought with them was a collection of abstract boxes with not a flashing light to be seen, except for the row of seventeen red crystals that glowed with an inner light. Unlike Mr Daiho and his symb connection, they were physically connected to the main culture tank — a large flattened oval as long as an adult. What was going on in there was anyone’s guess. Jontan only knew that it was some form of biological activity, coordinated by Mr Daiho, and it was his and Sarai’s job to keep the culture alive and healthy.
‘Watch it,’ said Sarai.
‘Got it,’ he said. Levels of feeder-A were dropping in the tank. He had to get a bottle from one of the crates they had brought with them and physically top up the contents.
‘What’s it for?’ he murmured as he sat back down again.
Sarai spoke but didn’t answer the question. ‘I’ll check that valve when he’s done with this session. The field’s out of sync.’
‘Oh, yeah.’ A symb image of the set-up showed Jontan what Sarai meant. He glanced again at Sarai and, with Mr Scott absent and Mr Daiho under the hood, decided that at last he would say what he had been thinking for so long. ‘Sa?’
‘Yes?’
‘The College doesn’t know we’re here, does it?’
Now she actually looked at him, and he felt a paradoxical relief to see his own anxiety mirrored in her eyes and in her heavy sigh. ‘A College man sent us here,’ she said, which he suspected was her way of saying she knew exactly what he was getting at but wasn’t going to admit it.
‘Yeah, but at school they said every trip should be accompanied by Field Ops, and I don’t see any, and that chamber was all hidden away, and the man said something about setting charges, and I think he was going to blow up the equipment after we went.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Sa?’
‘Yes?’
‘I think this is illegal.’
‘It might be, in the Home Time.’
‘Sa?’
‘Yes?’
‘How do we get back if he blew it up?’
Sarai held her hands up in a shrug. ‘The College has got plenty more transference chambers.’
‘But—’
‘Jon, I don’t
