Time's Chariot

doesn’t look that different.’

‘Trust me,’ said Rico. ‘They’ll have edited it into a separate stream, cleaned up, changed memories, wiped records, and then spliced the stream back into the alpha stream again. The bygoners will have a brief moment of deja vu when the streams merge, but that will be it, and to outside observers it’ll seem that no time passed at all.’

‘So much for not fiddling with time.’

‘They won’t have caused any new people to exist, or deleted any existing ones. The Code allows that.

And just in case they miss out on any records, if there’s still something left, they’ll implant engrams that prevent the person who sees them from making any sense of them. Or even being interested in them. It works.’

‘You’ve done it yourself, haven’t you?’

‘Once or twice.’

‘Freeze!’ A man’s voice behind them. They froze. ‘Put your hands on your heads. Turn round.’

Alan, Rico and Asaldra obeyed the orders in succession, Asaldra stumbling and almost falling over. Two figures had come out of the trees behind them and were standing on the other side of the road. Their feet were apart and their hands raised, covering them.

‘Stay right there,’ said a woman’s voice.

‘Hi, Su,’ Rico called. ‘What kept you?’

‘Rico!’ A grinning Su came forward out of the darkness, tucking her synjammer into her belt. A man followed close behind. ‘Well, you truly buggered up, didn’t you?’ He held his arms out and she fell into a hug.

‘At last,’ Asaldra said. His strength seemed to be returning. ‘What kept you?’

‘Shut up, you’re being rescued,’ Rico said. ‘This is Mr Asaldra, if you hadn’t gathered.’

‘I’ll just deal with the other one,’ said the man, and he took a step forward. Alan moved in a blur, and then the synjammer was lying in the grass ten feet away and the man was on his front, hands pinned behind him and face pushed into the ground by Alan crouching on top of him.

‘No one,’ Alan said, ‘deals with me.’

‘You understood me?’ the man wheezed. ‘But how…’

Rico and Su stood watching the little tableau, Rico with his arm round Su’s waist. ‘Brains are still a priority in recruiting Specifics, I see,’ Rico said cheerfully

‘He’s the correspondent you were briefed on,’ Su said, and it was obvious she was trying not to laugh. ‘You are RC/1029, I take it?’

‘At your service.’ Alan stood up and let the Specific pick himself up in his own time.

‘Op Bera was about to do a quick edit on you.’

‘That’s happened once too often for my liking,’ said Alan.

‘Correspondent?’ Asaldra said. Alan gave him a look of pity and contempt.

‘You still don’t get it, do you, Herbert?’

‘Who?’ said Rico.

It took a moment to sink in. ‘You?’ Asaldra said. The sheer horror in his tone suggested he had gone pale in the moonlight.

‘Don’t worry, I think I’ve had my revenge.’

‘Can I interrupt?’ Bera was climbing to his feet. He glowered at Alan, but when he picked up the synjammer he simply put it away in his fieldsuit. ‘Op Garron, Mr Asaldra, you’ve been identified and now we have to get to the recall field. As for you… our orders don’t cover you.’ Rico stepped in front of Alan, just in case Bera still intended to take the initiative in dealing with a rogue correspondent. Bera snorted. ‘But there’s no way you come with us,’ he said.

Alan shrugged. ‘As I understand it, if I go back with you, I’m still a criminal or a misfit. If I go back on Recall Day I’ve done my sentence. I’ll hang around a bit longer.’

‘Well…’ said Rico, and stopped. He and Alan hadn’t had the best of relationships but he had found himself liking the correspondent, and if they ever saw each other again, to Rico it would be twenty-seven years in the future. ‘Goodbye, then. Some of it was a pleasure.’ They reached out to shake hands.

A thin, high-pitched gnat’s whine drifted through the quiet night air from the direction of the hall. Rico recognized the noise — a helicopter’s engine starting up.

Alan was glancing back at the hall. ‘No one was scheduled…’

Another whine, and another. Rico remembered the three helicopters parked on the lawn outside the hall.

‘There’s an alarm going!’ Alan exclaimed.

‘I don’t hear anything,’ Bera said, straining his ears.

‘Of course you don’t, but trust me.’ He swung on Rico. ‘I thought you said your people would fix everything!’

‘They’ll have left everything as it was, minus the Home Time element,’ Bera said.

‘Everything?’

The whine turned into a throaty mechanical roar as the first helicopter lifted off and its searchlight impaled the darkness.

‘Well, yes.’

‘Including Matthew Carradine lying unconscious in his study,’ Alan snapped. ‘Brilliant work!’

‘But they won’t be looking for us,’ said Su.

‘No, they’ll be looking for Matthew’s PA who drugged him.’

The Home Timers turned for a final look back at the hall. The three helicopters were in the air, each spiralling out from the hall in a different direction. One of them was turning towards them.

‘Then let’s get to the recall field now,’ Bera said. He set off into the trees at a light trot. Rico, Su and Asaldra turned to follow him.

As did Alan.

‘I said you couldn’t come!’ Bera snapped as the leaf canopy blocked out the sky.

‘I won’t get out of the estate in my car,’ said Alan. ‘I’m taking the long way. And by the way, those choppers all have infra-red detection equipment.’

‘We’ve got fieldsuits. We can block that out,’ Bera said.

Su nodded at Rico and Asaldra. ‘These two can’t.’

They glanced back. Like a squadron of metallic valkyries, the three helicopters were now flying towards them in line abreast, searchlights like lances through the dark.

‘Oh, shit !’ Bera said. ‘Run. And you –’ he pointed at Alan — ‘go somewhere else or I use the synjammer.’

They ran, pounding through the undergrowth. Branches slashed at Rico’s face, brambles reached out to trip him. Bera and Su were drawing ahead.

‘Come on!’ Su urged from up front.

‘You can see! I can’t!’ Rico shouted. Just behind him he could hear Asaldra, similarly unequipped and crashing through the undergrowth. He ducked to avoid a particularly large branch and ran into a trunk. He fell back onto the ground, dazed.

A pair of strong hands grabbed him under the arms and hauled him to his feet.

‘You go on,’ Alan called. ‘I’ll bring him. Come on, Mr Garron.’

‘I’ve got you,’ Su said behind them. She was talking to Asaldra, not Rico. ‘Just follow me.’

For just a few moments, Su and Alan used their enhanced vision to guide Rico and Asaldra through the dark, but then light burst onto the scene as the three helicopters finally reached them and bright white light blazed down through the canopy. The downdraft of the rotors picked up the mulching leaves and swirled them about in the roar of the three engines. Branches and shadows whipped about in a crazed dance that made the going even more hazardous.

‘Remain where you are.’ An amplified voice echoed over the engine noise. ‘We have picked you up and you can’t escape. The estate is sealed off and armed guards are on their way.’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Rico muttered. The three machines were directly overhead, all jostling for position and the glory of catching the fugitives, and the noise was deafening. Helicopters weren’t that useful when it came to