Overtime Tom Holt Read online

  Once you have been selected, you are secretly vetted and then directly approached by a member of the practice. If, after a rigorous catechism, you are found to be of the right calibre, you are invited to number 32A to hear what the practice has to offer.

  A prospective client, who need riot be named, was sitting in the inner office. To be precise, he was sitting on an upturned orange box drinking instant coffee out of a chipped mug. The practice has never vulgarised itself by putting on a gaudy front merely to impress the punters.

  The three members of the practice were grouped round him on the floor. They were all peculiarly dressed and strange-looking, but the anonymous client hadn't become as rich as he had through judging by appearances.

  'You are familiar,' said the senior partner - he spoke English as fluently as he spoke all the other languages in the world, but with a curious accent that was probably nearer Italian than anything else - 'with the concept of the tax haven?'

  The client nodded.

  'Liberia,' said the senior partner, 'the Isle of Man, that sort of thing?'

  'Yes indeed.'

  'Well,' said the senior partner, 'our basic investment and fiscal management strategy is largely based on the tax haven concept, but with a unique additional factor that we alone can offer. That's why,' he added with a smile, 'our fees are so utterly outrageous.

  The client smiled bleakly. 'Go on,' he said.

  'Traditional tax haven strategies,' said the senior partner, 'rely on transferring sums of money from one fiscally privileged state to another. We call this the lateral approach, and we find that it has a great many imperfections. We prefer what we term the vertical approach. In our experience, which is considerable, it has no drawbacks whatsoever.' The senior partner smiled. 'Except our fees, of course. They're diabolical.'

  'When you say vertical ...'

  'It's very simple, really,' said the senior partner. 'Whereas the traditional approach is to move money about from nation to nation, in other words to transfer money through space, we transfer money through time. Oh dear, you seem to have spilt your coffee.'

  'Through -'

  'Yes indeed,' said the senior partner, 'through time. Reflect. In Khazakstan in the third century BC, for example, there were no taxes whatsoever. On the other hand, there were no banks either, and nothing to invest in except yaks. We find that yaks offer a very low short-term yield. The Free World in the twentieth century, on the other hand, has a wealth of investment opportunities but insanely high levels of taxation. The obvious thing to do, therefore, is to find a time and a place which offers the golden mean between return on capital and fiscal intervention. We have found such a golden mean, and we can transfer your money there tomorrow, if you ask us to. For a fee, of course.' The senior partner chuckled. 'Oh yes.'

  'Hang on a moment,' said the client warily. 'You mean you can actually send money back through time? Invest retrospectively or something?'

  'Oh no,' said the senior partner, 'nothing as complicated as that. Let me put it this way.' He leaned forward and smiled pleasantly. 'You know what's meant by the Futures market, I expect. We trade in Pasts.'

  'Pasts,' said the client. 'I see,' he lied.

  'Because of - shall we say - a unique arrangement which we have with the central authorities,' the senior partner continued, 'we have access to time travel. We can take your money, travel back in time with it, deposit it in your name and arrange for the income to be mandated to you directly in whatever form - and at whatever time - you wish. We offer a return on capital of thirty-seven per cent.

  The client whistled. 'That's good,' he said.

  'We can find better,' replied the senior partner airily. 'Much better. But,' he said, and leaned further forward still, 'we have chosen this particular location because of its unique fiscal advantages. The investment is entirely, one hundred per cent, tax-free.'

  There was a silence - a complete, utter silence, born of reverence and awe. It was a bit like Sir Galahad's finding of the Holy Grail, except that, compared to the senior partner, Galahad exhibited a lack of due seriousness.

  'Tax-free?' said the client at last.

  'Absolutely,' said the senior partner. 'You see, the investment has charitable status.'

  The client stared. 'You mean you've got hold of a charity that gives you money?'

  'It isn't a charity,' the senior partner replied calmly. 'But it does have the status, as I just said. We invest all our clients' funds in the twelfth century AD, through the Knights Templar, for the purpose of financing the Second Crusade.'

  A very long silence. 'I thought the Second Crusade was a war,' said the client.

  'Strictly speaking,' replied the senior partner, 'yes. On the other hand, it's a very special war. God's war, and all that. As such, it qualifies as being for the purposes of the advancement of religion, which as you know is one of the fundamental heads of charity. At least,' said the senior partner, grinning, 'that's how they all regarded it at the time. And that, you'll agree, is all that matters.'

  'Hold it just a moment,' said the client. 'I thought the Second Crusade was a gigantic flop.'

  'Indeed it was,' the senior partner replied, and there might just have been a hint of sadness in his voice, 'indeed it was. A complete disaster. A shambles. A cock-up. The Crusader leaders Richard Coeur de Lion, Philip II of France and the Emperor Henry argued violently before they even got to the Near East, their armies were ultimately defeated, and the result was a net loss of territory in the Holy Land to the forces of Islam. As for the investors, most of them were wiped out. So it's just as well that we always withdraw our clients' funds at the very height of the crusade fever in 1189. We then reinvest it back in 1186. And so on. For ever.'

  'I see,' said the client. 'Well, that's... that's very clever.'

  The senior partner smiled. 'Coming from you,' he said, 'if I may say so, that's a compliment of the highest order.'

  Thus it was that a substantial sum changed hands, and another client was added to the already magnificent client base of 32A Beaumont Street - a client base which includes, or included, such figures as all the Rothschilds, Louis the Fourteenth, Elvis Presley and (interestingly) Julius Caesar.

  It is, however, a fact of life that the really canny broker never shares the very best investments with the customers; he reserves them for himself. 32A Beaumont Street was no exception.

  32A Beaumont Street might have a finger in the financial services pie, but its heart and soul were in the music business.

  'Well,' said de Nesle, 'here we are at last. Make yourself at home.'

  Guy looked about him. It was quite unlike any town hall interior that he had ever seen.

  The roof was high - Guy had to tilt his head right back to see it - and constructed of great oak beams which were obviously carved, but too far away for Guy to make out what the carvings were. On the walls were long, gorgeously coloured tapestries, depicting scenes of hunting, warfare and gallantry in what Guy imagined (although he was no art historian) to be the High Middle Ages. Where a few square feet of naked wall peeped through the gaps between the hangings, it was bare yellow rock.

  The floor on which he was standing was paved with stone flags strewn with what Guy took to be rushes. The furniture was sparse but magnificent; a massive table at one end of the room - the room was circular, incidentally - with benches on either side of it and at the two ends, two huge, high-backed gilded chairs with coats of arms carved and painted on them. A roaring fire in the middle of the room provided just about enough light to see by, and Guy realised that what was obscuring his view of the carved beams was smoke, billowing about round the ceiling trying to get out of a rather small and badly thought-out hole in the roof. Hung above the tapestries on the wall were about fifteen or twenty pear-shaped shields with heraldic devices painted on them; the colours looked bright and fresh, and the workmanship was of the highest order, but the paintwork was scratched and gouged, as if someone had been using the shields recently for actual fighting. Beside the sh
ields hung a selection of helmets, coats of mail and enormous swords, all polished until they sparkled in the red light of the fire. There were three stuffed stag's heads, on the antlers of which someone had (inevitably) hung a selection of hats. Even the hats were peculiar, however; not a single homburg or derby to be seen. The firelight was supplemented by about twenty or thirty small earthenware oil-lamps, which seemed to Guy to be producing twice as much smoke as light, and which smelt rather awful. In fact, to be brutally honest, the whole place was distinctly niffy; and this had apparently not escaped the notice of the proprietor, who had recently been burning some sort of sweet, pungent incense, in Guy's opinion rather counter-productively. Apart from de Nesle and himself and three huge dogs sleeping heavily and noisily in front of the fire, the place was deserted.

  'Be it never so humble,' de Nesle said. He had opened the lid of what looked like a large oak steamer trunk and produced a jug, which looked for all the world as if it were made of solid gold. He put this on a similarly golden-looking tray with two golden cups, closed the lid of the trunk, and put the tray on it. Then he took the jug and filled it from a barrel standing on a trestle like a sawing-horse in a dark corner of the room. He turned off the spigot, smelt the meniscus of the jug's contents, shrugged, and poured out two cups. The liquid that came out of the jug was brown and opaque, like cold tea.

  De Nesle handed Guy one of the cups, and Guy nearly dropped it. It was quite remarkably heavy. He began to wonder if it really was made of gold.

  'Here's health,' said de Nesle, and took a long drink from his cup. He made a face, which didn't reassure Guy very much.

  'Er,' he said.

  'Mead,' replied de Nesle. 'Would you just excuse me for a moment? I'm expecting a call any minute now.

  He pulled back the edge of one of the tapestries, revealing a small low open doorway. He vanished through it, and the tapestry slid back into place.

  Guy stayed where he was, looking round slowly and trying to come to some sort of conclusion; but all he came up with was the thought that he hadn't realised that the Kingdom of Heaven had been designed and fitted out by D.W. Griffith. That wasn't very helpful. He looked into his cup, saw a dead wasp floating slowly round with one wing pointing up at him, and looked about him for a flowerpot. There wasn't one.

  This is all very well, Guy said to himself at last, but I think I'd better be pushing along now. I could go and find that nice-looking German guard and give myself up. He turned and headed for the door he had come in by. It wasn't there any more. In its place was a tapestry depicting a fair damsel with no clothes on looking at her reflection in a rather stylised pool. When he lifted a corner of the tapestry, there was nothing to be seen but wall.

  Guy Goodlet was not a hasty man; he preferred to think carefully before acting, and was generally happy to let his intelligence talk him out of things. On this occasion, however, his intelligence very wisely kept its mouth shut and its head down.

  Guy put down the cup, unbuttoned the flap of his holster, and took out his revolver. Then he headed for the door through which de Nesle had disappeared.

  It was a favourite saying of Pope Wayne XXIII (AD 2567-78) that about ninety-five per cent of a man's life is like mashed potato; he doesn't have to have it if he doesn't want to.

  This is, of course, a gross simplification of a complex field of theochronology; but Wayne, like most of the other Australian popes of the twenty-sixth century, was selected more for his undoubted communication skills than for the clarity of his thinking.

  What His Holiness was trying to encapsulate was one of the seminal arguments of theochronology, known since the twenty-third century as Bloomington's Effect. Bloomington observed that however much a man roams about in Time, it is inevitable, simply to maintain the continuity of history, for him sooner or later to return to the time and place from which he set out. Otherwise, people could simply disappear without trace and never come back; which would never do.

  As a result of Bloomington's Effect, it follows that all time spent in time travel is Time Out - in other words, any period spent by an individual in wandering about in another century or centuries does not go towards filling up his allotted span of life. You can leave your own time on your twenty-fifth birthday, spend a hundred years in the past, the future, or both, and then come back to your own time, and you will still be exactly twenty-five years old. Your matter - the atoms and molecules making up your body - is thus preserved in the time and place where it rightly belongs, and you have not violated the fundamental laws of physics (because you have never been away). Your absence, in short, has about as much effect on the world about you as a dream.

  It was very dark. There were more of those earthenware oil-lamps scattered about the place, but they gave out roughly as much light as the bedside lamp in a cheap boarding house, or a dying firefly. Guy bumped into at least three pillars before he found another doorway.

  There was a thick, small door studded with large iron nails, very slightly ajar, and bright light was coming out from behind it in a long silver wedge. Guy pressed very gently on it and walked through. Contrary to his rather gloomy expectations, the hinges didn't creak.

  He saw de Nesle, or rather his back, sitting at a long, low desk. There was a bright lamp beside him - a modern electric one - and on the desk were a collection of what appeared to be white boxes with glass windows in the front of them. Little green lights in the windows formed tiny letters, which changed as de Nesle touched what looked to Guy like a typewriter keyboard. It was all extremely odd and, Guy fervently hoped, nothing to do with him.

  'Put your hands up,' he said.

  He had hoped to say it rather more assertively; in fact, he squeaked the words rather than said them. But he did manage to cock the hammer of his revolver at the same time; and it was firepower rather than force of personality on which most of his hopes were pinned.

  'Don't turn round,' he said.

  'Why not?' said de Nesle to his glass window. Guy noticed that his hands were still on the keyboard.

  'I told you, put your hands up,' Guy said. The voice was getting a bit better, but not much.

  'What's the matter?' de Nesle said. 'Didn't you like the mead?' He raised his hands. 'Can I turn round now?' he asked.

  'I suppose so,' Guy said. 'But remember, I'll shoot if I have to.' A thought struck him. 'I assume bullets can hurt you?' he added. He hoped, in vain, that it had sounded more like irony than a genuine request for information.

  De Nesle was facing him now, still seated. 'That's a good question,' he said. 'Hurt, definitely yes, so I'd be awfully grateful if you were careful where you point that thing. I don't want to appear rude, but your hand is shaking rather a lot, and...'

  Guy tried looking stern. 'Never mind that,' he said. In retrospect, he felt, he could have done much better. Esprit d'escalier, and all that.

  'As to whether bullets could actually kill me,' de Nesle went on, 'now there you have me, I'm afraid. Opinion, as they say, is divided. There's a school of thought that says that if I die, I come to life again immediately afterwards. There's another school of thought that agrees that I come to life again, but probably about five minutes before. They reckon five minutes because that gives me time to make sure that I stay well out of the way of whatever it was that killed me. The third school of thought, which includes my mother, feels that I probably stay dead. It's never actually been put to the test, thank goodness, and that's the way I like it. Was there something?'

  'What?'

  'The threat,' de Nesle explained. 'I generally find - don't you? - that when people wave weapons at you they want something. What can I do for you?'

  'For a start,' said Guy, 'you can tell me how I get out of here.

  'Ah.' De Nesle made a sort of a sad face. 'That's tricky, I'm afraid. I'd have to come with you, and I am waiting for this rather important call. Do you think -'

  'No.'

  De Nesle considered for a moment. 'No, I imagine on balance that you probably don't. Sorry, tha
t was very rude of me. But I do find being threatened puts me rather on edge, don't you know?'

  Guy was beginning to feel bewildered. 'Look,' he said, 'exactly what is going on?'

  De Nesle grinned. 'I must say,' he said, 'you do ask the most awkward questions. Might I suggest that you really wouldn't want to know?'

  'All right,' Guy said. 'Just get me out of here and that's fine. I don't want you to come with me. Just show me the door.

  'I must advise -'

  'The hell with your advice.'

  De Nesle shrugged. 'Very well, then. To leave, go through that door behind you.'

  Guy frowned, suspecting a ruse to make him turn his head. He felt that eye contact should be maintained at all times in these situations. He reached behind him with his free hand and found a door knob.

  'This one?'

  'That's the one. But really...'

  Guy opened the door, backed through it, and vanished. The door, which was marked Private - Staff Only - No Admittance, closed behind him.

  'Oh bother!' said de Nesle.

  He looked at his watch, a Rolex Oyster which he wore under the sleeve of this steel hauberk, frowned, and picked up the microphone of his answering machine.

  'Hello,' he said into the microphone, in the slightly strained voice that people always use for that purpose, 'this is Jean de Nesle here. Sorry I'm not available to take your call. Speaking after the tone, please state the time at which you called and on my return I'll arrange to be here then. Thank you.'

  He switched on the answering machine, took a sword from under his desk, and went through the door.

  Guy was at a party.

  More like a reception, actually. In the split second before his appearance, walking backwards brandishing a revolver and causing the seventy-four people in the room all to stop speaking at once, Guy thought he heard several languages and the characteristic hyena-like yowl of diplomats' wives laughing at the jokes of trade attaches.