The sadly familiar feel of a hypo on his skin. Hands lifting him up. Rico seemed to float in the chemical smog around his brain.
‘Wha—?’ he said.
‘I’m not a murderer,’ said a voice. Whose? He knew it, and he knew there was something he wanted to do to its owner, like kick its butt.
‘Bully for you,’ he mumbled.
‘All that about timestreams, and what will happen if I try and stop the Home Time happening?’
‘All true.’
‘I know. You convinced me. Wait here.’ The hands released him, and his knees buckled. He floated gracefully down to the floor and bounced slowly. The impact of his head against the tiles tickled and he giggled.
Another touch of metal against his arm; yet another blast of pharmaceuticals into his system to do battle with the cocktail already coursing through his veins.
‘This should help,’ said the voice.
Alan, Rico remembered. Its owner was called Alan — or rather, chose to be called Alan nowadays.
He was a correspondent.
He had handed Rico over to the interrogators.
Rico’s mind told his body to lunge up and hit the man, hard. Rico’s body preferred to imitate a jellyfish.
But Alan was holding a hand out to him.
‘You and Asaldra both said exactly the same thing,’ he said. ‘You couldn’t have lied with what you went through and I’m sorry I doubted you. But I’ve got two more questions for you.’
Rico glared at him, but took the hand and let himself be hauled up. Alan set him down into a chair. Rico looked around. He was back in what Alan had euphemistically called a guest apartment. Then Rico saw the two unconscious figures of his guards.
‘They’ll live,’ Alan said, following his gaze. ‘Just two further questions, Mr Garron, and then we get out of here.’
Rico looked from the interrogators, to Alan, to the interrogators, then back to Alan again. He shrugged.
‘Shoot,’ he said.
‘You said there were two kinds of correspondents. Psychopaths and misfits. Which kind am I?’
‘Dunno. I don’t know when you came from.’ Rico lifted his hands up cautiously and held them in front of him, wiggling his fingers. Then he held his arms out to either side — he was strong enough to do that, now — shut his eyes and touched his nose with both hands. Yes, it was all coming back. ‘Still, you’ve been here a good thousand years. How many people have you killed?’
‘One hundred and seventy-two,’ Alan said at once. ‘All in self defence.’
Rico laughed weakly. ‘Not even two a decade. You’re the second kind. Does that make you feel better?’
‘Not really. A bit, maybe.’ Alan leaned closer. ‘Second question. When is Recall Day?’
‘I haven’t already told you that?’ Rico said, surprised.
‘I didn’t believe in it, so I didn’t include it in the list of questions for the interrogators,’ Alan said. ‘When is it?’
‘No,’ said Rico.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘If you want to know that, put me back under and ask, but I’m not telling you that of my own free will. I’m a Field Op and I have obligations.’
Alan was quiet for a moment. ‘Well, one out of two isn’t bad and I’ve lived through worse odds. But it must be close, or Daiho wouldn’t have been counting on it, would he?’ Rico just looked at him and said nothing. Alan sighed. ‘All right, all right. Can you stand?’
Rico cautiously pushed himself up out of his chair. He was unsteady on his feet but he could walk.
‘Good enough,’ said Alan. He checked one of the unconscious guards, then the other. ‘This one’s about your size. Give me a hand.’
Alan was undoing the man’s jacket; Rico knelt down and started on the boots.
‘Where are we going, out of interest?’ he said.
‘You, that’s up to you. Me, I’ll think of something.’ Alan lifted the man’s torso up and began to tug the jacket off. ‘A holiday. A binge at Monte Carlo. A Caribbean cruise. A golf-and-fishing holiday in Scotland. Anything to while away the time until Recall Day, when I go home.’ He looked up at Rico. ‘You could come with me, if you like.’
‘Me?’ Rico exclaimed.
‘You’ve missed your boat back home, haven’t you, thanks to me? And I want to make amends, and I got the idea from the interrogation that you don’t like the Home Time that much. You’d need an identity, but I’ve got a few stacked up that go back for years. You can have one of them.’
‘Stay here,’ Rico mused. It had honestly not occurred to him and he fantasized briefly. If he stayed here until Recall Day, his savings back in the Home Time would have been growing uninterrupted for 27 years while he was away. When he returned, still much the same physical age as now, then based on the date of his birth he would be that much closer to retirement. He would get off Earth, out into space, still young, and start his life all over again. It was a tempting prospect.
But…
‘No,’ he said. ‘Thanks, but no. For a start, I’ve got to contact the Home Time and tell them what’s happened here.’
Alan stopped. ‘Why?’ he exclaimed. ‘No, don’t tell me. Obligations.’
‘I can’t leave the situation as it is,’ Rico said. ‘Carradine knows about the Home Time, and so do these two, and I expect a lot of other BioCarr people, and by now that information will be stored on servers and mainframes all over the planet. I have to let the Specifics know.’
‘Who are they? The time police?’
‘Something like that.’
‘And they take you back?’
‘And they take me back,’ Rico agreed, still with a tinge of regret. ‘Look, life in the eleventh century was a lot simpler, but which period would you rather be living in, then or now?’
‘Now,’ Alan said without hesitation. ‘They know about hygiene and no one tries to kill you very often.’
‘Same argument,’ Rico said. ‘I belong in the Home Time. I’m sorry.’
‘Well, it was just a thought.’ Alan held Rico’s gaze for a moment. ‘But I am sorry for what I did to you.’
‘No hard feelings. Oh, and I’m taking Asaldra with me.’
Alan seemed to deflate as the last traces of his once great plan evaporated. ‘Ah, you’re welcome to him. So, how do you contact your people?’
‘I don’t,’ Rico said. He couldn’t help a grin. ‘You do.’
The road looped around the edge of the landscaped bowl in which the hall stood. The car drew to a halt at a point overlooking the grounds. The headlamps flicked off, its hydrogen-powered turbine whispered to a standstill and the doors gullwinged open with a quiet hiss. Two passengers got out and one of them turned to give a hand to the third, who staggered on rubbery legs and had to lean against the side of the car.
Alan had raged. ‘
‘
‘You have to admit, it’s attractive,’ Alan said now. He stood with his hands in his pockets, looking down at the hall, ablaze with light. ‘Wouldn’t you agree, Mr Asaldra?’
‘Get on with it, for God’s sake,’ Asaldra muttered. Rico remembered how he had felt on his post-interrogation wakening and for the first time ever he felt a measure of sympathy for the man. He had the world’s worst hangover and the only cures for it were back in the hall or in the Home Time.
Rico was looking at the sky.
‘You can see more stars on a night like this than you could fifty years ago,’ he said. ‘BioCarr had its faults but it did help clean the world up.’ He added: ‘And, if you’ve missed it, the moon’s up there.’
‘I know, I know.’ Alan looked up. A couple of seconds later: ‘it’s done.’ He squinted at the hall again. ‘It
