Time's Chariot

widened when he opened the bag and saw them.

‘Why, yes,’ he said.

‘Then that will be all,’ the Correspondent said, and set off on the walk back to the Grunewald.

‘Herr Wittgenstein?’ Frau Hug heard her lodger’s footsteps as the front door opened and closed, and she bustled out of the front room to greet him. Hope bubbled in her heart. Had he popped the question? Had the young lady said yes? She would be so happy for them, and she had a lovely double room, south-facing, that was perfect for a new young couple.

But Herr Wittgenstein was alone, his shoulders sagged, and he just looked at her silently out of deep, dark, hollow eyes with such an intensity that it was like running into a solid wall. Frau Hug saw the story immediately.

‘Oh, Herr Wittgenstein, I am sorry…’

But he was already walking up the stairs. She watched his receding back, saw him take the corner, listened to the remaining steps and finally heard his door shut behind him.

She walked back to the front room where her best friend was waiting with the tea, poised expectantly.

Frau Hug shook her head. ‘She must have said no, poor thing,’ she said. ‘Silly little girl. Herr Wittgenstein was so in love with her, you should have seen his face. And now the poor man doesn’t know what to do.’

She sank into a chair and took a bite of her cake.

‘Still,’ she said brightly, ‘he’ll get over it.’

TWENTY

The whine of powerful turbines starting up. A vibration that ran through him and stabbed into his brain. An unbelievable thirst.

And a whining human voice.

‘This wasn’t in the agreement. This wasn’t how it should have been. This wasn’t—’

‘Please be quiet, Phenuel,’ said another voice wearily. Rico forced his eyes open.

The first speaker was a bearded man whom Rico assumed was the Phenuel Scott that the biotech boy had told him about. The two were sitting opposite each other in a metal cabin of some kind, and next to Scott sat the very well and un-late looking Commissioner Daiho. Rico was feeling better and stronger by the second as his fieldsuit pumped medication into his system to clear his mind and soothe his jangled nervous system.

Scott was the first to notice Rico’s wakefulness. ‘You did this!’ he said. ‘You’re a Field Op, aren’t you? And obviously not a particularly good one. What did you do to upset the bygoners, hey? And now we’re all suffering —’

‘Your… your friend told you to shut up,’ Rico gasped. Something was nagging at the back of his mind, something forgotten, but for now he swallowed and worked his mouth to get a bit more saliva flowing. The next words came more easily. ‘I wouldn’t be here at all if your pal Asaldra hadn’t left a trail a mile wide behind him.’

‘And you are?’ Daiho said. The man sounded amused and not at all upset.

‘Field Op Rico Garron.’

‘I suppose you’ve come to arrest us?’

‘Just Asaldra, originally,’ Rico said. Now he felt as if he could move his head without it falling off and he looked cautiously round. It was the passenger cabin of a flying machine, probably a helicopter. Though it was dark outside he could see it was still on the ground, but the noise of the engines was getting louder and louder and the cabin was vibrating. There were two rows of three seats, facing each other. He and Scott were at the end of their rows, facing each other. At the other end of each, next to the door, was a bygoner guard. There was an empty seat between Rico and the guard on his side. Daiho sat opposite it next to Scott. The kid he had met earlier — what was his name, Jonjo, something like that, it wouldn’t quite come through the mists at the back of his brain — and his girlfriend were nowhere to be seen. Behind Daiho and Scott, Rico could see the backs of the helicopter pilots.

Rico realized two more things. His Field Op’s equipment had passed the camo test — he was still in the fieldsuit and he still had his agrav — and his hands and feet were cuffed.

He jerked at the links experimentally. ‘Can you get me out of these?’ he symbed at the suit.

‘Negative. The locks are non-magnetic and mechanical in operation.’

‘Can you just break them for me?’ Rico symbed impatiently.

‘Affirmative…’

Excellent!

‘… with an 87.6% probability of operative sustaining fractures to the carpal bones.’

Less excellent. And he was still sure he had forgotten something: the stun charges had pummelled it out of his brain. It would come to him.

‘We were doing fine until you came along, Garron,’ Scott said, warming to his theme, ‘and you—’

‘Of course, it could just be that the stupid, primitive bygoners outsmarted you,’ Rico said.

‘And all your fancy equip—’ Scott said.

Rico jack-knifed his body and lashed out with his feet. The cuffs helped keep his heels together as they pounded into Scott’s jaw. This ass, this idiot had been about to mention out loud the fact that Rico had special equipment. Rico didn’t know if the helicopter was bugged, or if the guards had been briefed on the Home Time language — the boy had told him some of the bygoners could speak it — but he intended to take no risks.

Scott’s head thumped back and blood poured from a split lip.

‘Stop that!’ the guard next to Daiho shouted, bringing his stunner up. Rico flashed his brightest smile.

‘He was annoying me,’ he said in English. Scott looked at him through slitted eyes with pure hatred, but kept quiet.

‘You know,’ Daiho said, ‘my colleague did have a point in that we aren’t the ones who let themselves be detected by a bygoner.’

I’m working on that, Rico thought: how had that man on the stairs known who or what he was? But out loud he said: ‘And I had a point that I wouldn’t be here if you’d done it properly. You people are amazing. You have such power, such privilege, and what happens? You –’ he nodded at Daiho — ‘had the authority to bend the rules, to send your assistant on field trips in complete contravention of every rule the College has. And, I suspect, grew and murdered a sentient clone just to cover your tracks. You –’ he nodded at Scott — ‘lured those two kids back into the past and broke even more rules. But the one thing none of you can be bothered with is being good at what you do.’

Scott was almost purple. ‘How dare you speak to us like that—’

‘Mr Scott,’ Rico said mildly, ‘I know ten ways of killing you, many more of disabling you and causing you a lot of pain, and I’m a long way away from the Home Time and social preparation and I don’t like you very much. Why not join the dots and shut up?’

He turned to Daiho. ‘You seem to speak the most sense. How long was I unconscious?’

‘You were laid out in the hall when they got us from our rooms,’ Daiho said. ‘They bundled us out here, strapped us in, then brought you along. You woke up about a minute later. So, not long.’ He paused. ‘Rico Garron. Is that Ricardo Garron?’

‘Why?’ Rico said, suddenly cautious.

‘Author of George Washington and the Crusades?’

‘Of what?’ Scott exclaimed, and Rico felt his toes curling. No one was meant to have read that!

‘It was, um, a private project, just a hobby…’ he said.

‘I take it it’s meant to be satirical?’

‘What are you talking about?’ Scott demanded to know.

‘Op Garron is an aspiring novelist and he left an extract from his latest opus on the computer I appropriated,’ Daiho said. ‘I imagine you wrote that passage while you were on assignment somewhere? Yes, a rather naive voice, I felt. Quite a pleasant if undemanding read but rather an overstated use of imagery…’