Time's Chariot

the drinks.

‘I did.’

‘Oh?’

‘Something the others in the hotel said. I wanted to know more.’ Alan handed Carradine a drink and raised his own. ‘To the future.’

‘The future,’ Carradine agreed, and drank. ‘I wonder if anyone we know of was really a correspondent? You know, anyone famous.’

‘I got the impression their conditioning forbade that. They would always be quiet, unobtrusive. Behind-the- scenes workers.’

‘They’d be good to have on your staff,’ Carradine said, laughing. ‘They’d know the market, they’d know how things were going to turn out — just the fact that they chose to work for you at all would be a testament that you were going to succeed.’

‘Exactly,’ said Alan, and stepped quickly forward. With one hand he took Carradine’s glass away; with the other, he caught his suddenly crumpling employer and lowered him gently to the ground.

He put the glass with its drugged contents down and lifted Carradine up onto the black leather sofa. Then he pressed the intercom on Carradine’s desk. ‘We’re taking the private way out. No calls or visitors.’

He went into the en suite bathroom and poured the drink he had fixed, in more ways than one, into the basin. Lastly he crossed to the bookcase and pressed the spine of one of the titles: the case moved aside to reveal Carradine’s private exit.

Alan took one last look around. He had said goodbye to a lot of places over the last thousand years; some with a sense of regret, others with decided relief. This place…

‘Goodbye, Matthew,’ he said quietly to the still form on the couch, and set off on his rescue mission.

TWENTY-THREE

They solidified into the transference chamber, standing on the carryfield that provided a transparent floor within the steel sphere.

They looked at each other: Daiho bowed slightly to Su.

‘Thank you for the lift, Op Zo,’ he said. ‘Before long, you’ll realize that you’ve been of great help to the Home Time.’ He looked around. ‘Now, if you’ll just open the doors…’

‘Decon,’ said Su.

‘Of course.’ He shut his eyes.

‘That won’t be necessary,’ Su said. She touched a panel on the gleaming, curved wall and it dilated to show a small med scanner in the recess.

‘This is ridiculous!’ Daiho said. ‘Just call up the decon field.’

‘You were in an unauthorized area, unaccompanied by a Field Op. The standard decon field might not be enough,’ Su said. She turned him and scrutinized him with the scanner. ‘Hold still.’

‘Listen, I insist—’

‘Mr Daiho, you’re legally dead and you’re in a transference chamber, and in that place you are indisputably under my authority. I can keep you here as long as I like.’

Daiho sighed. ‘Have your little revenge. It won’t matter in the long run.’

Right, just for that… Su thought, but ten minutes later even she had to admit she had run out of excuses. She didn’t trust herself to speak; she just signalled for the clam doors of the chamber to open and the two of them filed out, with her bringing up the rear.

And they were back in the transference hall; one small, unremarkable couple, insignificant among all the transferees coming and going through the many, many chambers arranged in tiers all around them.

‘Almost an anticlimax,’ Daiho said, looking around him and dusting his hands together. He turned to Su again. ‘And now, I’m at your mercy. What do you intend to do with me? I can understand you might want to place me under formal arrest and turn me in, and I couldn’t stop you, but I have to warn you, the matter wouldn’t get much further than that.’

Su boiled within. She could grasp the obvious and she didn’t need things pointed out to her.

‘I’ll submit my report,’ she said, ‘and we’ll see what happens.’

Daiho nodded. ‘If you don’t mind,’ he said, ‘I’d like to hang around while you recall the others. That equipment is valuable.’

Su glared at him with pure loathing, but there would be time enough for hate later.

‘Register,’ she said, ‘I request a recall field from this chamber…’

She symbed the co-ordinates of the lounge that she had acquired from Rico. A minute later the doors of the transference chamber swung open and Su dodged inside.

‘Well, Rico—’

She blinked. A boy and a girl, looking as if they were ready to fall on their knees and kiss the carryfield, and a pile of equipment. No Rico.

‘Where did he go?’ she demanded.

Their grins vanished. ‘H-he was here, miss,’ the boy stammered. ‘He was lying right where you’re standing when the recall came on, and—’

‘—here we are,’ the girl said.

Su fought down the urge to look for Rico behind the equipment.

‘Right,’ she said. ‘Wait there.’ She put them through the same decon scan she had given Daiho, but this time hurrying. ‘Now, help me get that stuff out of here.’

There was no need to hurry, of course; she could have waited a year and still sent a recall field back to that precise time and place again. But she was acquainted with Rico’s ability to find trouble in small spaces of time and it was psychologically impossible to go slow.

With half her attention, Su uploaded her report to the Register, and then she turned her full attention to helping the kids. Jontan filled her in on his perception of what had happened just before the recall, one eye always on Daiho who was hovering in the background.

‘He made his suit shine and he blinded the guards, but then he was fighting with the correspondent…’

‘What correspondent?’ Daiho said blankly.

Jontan flushed. ‘Um, the one who spoke our language, sir…’

‘Give me a hand,’ said Su, ‘and keep talking.’

Even Daiho helped moved the gear out of the chamber. Five minutes later it was empty and generating a second recall field, timed for thirty seconds after the last and expanding the range by a mile in all directions.

The doors opened and Su ran in. The sodden body of Phenuel Scott lay on the floor: otherwise it was empty. Jontan and Sarai stared at the corpse with horrified fascination.

‘Well, we should be getting back…’ Daiho said.

‘You stay there!’ Su snapped, earning the undying respect of Sarai and Jontan. She symbed a notification that there was a corpse in the chamber that needed clearing up, then propped herself against the chamber wall with one hand. She took a couple of breaths to clear her mind, then looked up.

‘Exactly where was Rico?’ she said. ‘What was he doing? And I mean exactly.’

Jontan and Sarai glanced at each other.

‘He was, um—’ Sarai said.

‘—sitting on top of the correspondent,’ Jontan said.

‘No,’ said Sarai, ‘remember? He got shot by one of the guards.’

‘Shot?’ Su exclaimed.

‘It would have been another stun shot.’ The comment came from Daiho, who was leaning against the barrier at the edge of the tier of chambers and looking bored. ‘None of them had lethal weapons.’

‘And then?’ Su said, looking back at the youngsters.

‘He, um, fell,’ said Jontan.

‘On top of the correspondent,’ Sarai added. Su began to suspect.