Overtime Tom Holt Page 6

  'Footpads?' Guy asked.

  'Footpads be blowed,' Blondel replied. 'See that shield? Mitre argent on a sable field and bunches of upside-down keys? No, if it was footpads I'd be inclined to worry.' He turned round and stood in front of the stag, hands on hips.

  'Now then,' Blondel said, 'I think you and I should have a little talk.'

  The stag gave him a blank look, as if to say that deer are not capable of human speech. Their larynxes are the wrong shape, said the stag's eyes.

  'Unless,' Blondel continued, 'you don't want to talk, of course, in which case it s venison rissoles for my friend here and myself. Capisce?'

  The stag breathed heavily through its nose.

  'I'll count,' said Blondel sweetly. 'Up to five. One.'

  'All right,' said the stag, without moving its lips (the larynxes of stags are totally incapable of forming human speech), 'there's no need to come over all unnecessary. I was only doing my job.'

  Blondel smiled. 'And what might that be?' he said. In the background, Guy coughed.

  'Excuse me,' he said.

  Blondel turned his head. 'What?' he asked.

  'Do you mind if I have a cigarette?' Guy said. 'All this excitement ...'

  'Go ahead,' Blondel replied. He turned back to the stag. 'Your job,' he said.

  'I serve His Excellency Julian XXIII,' mumbled the stag. 'All right?'

  'Yes, I know that,' said Blondel. 'A mitre argent on a sable field and all that nonsense. You were told to come here?'

  The stag nodded. The movement of its antlers jerked Guy's hand, sending his cigarette arcing through the air like a flying glow-worm. He said something under his breath and lit another.

  'And when we turned up, you were to lead us towards where the idiot there was lying in wait?'

  The stag nodded again but Guy was ready this time.

  'Thought so,' Blondel said. 'Now then. Who said we'd be coming this way tonight?'

  The stag gave him a blank look.

  'Come on,' Blondel said. 'Someone must have said.'

  The stag shrugged.

  'Oh, be like that, then,' said Blondel. 'Now then, where did you come from?'

  Silence. It wasn't (Guy felt) that the stag didn't want to say; more like it didn't actually know. Probably it didn't understand the question. Blondel rephrased it.

  'Where,' he asked, 'do you live?'

  Silence.

  'You know what?' Blondel said to Guy. 'I think we're wasting our time. Just because the dratted thing can speak doesn't necessarily mean it's intelligent.'

  'Here,' said the stag, affronted, 'just you mind what you're-'

  'In fact,' Blondel went on, 'I think that if we look carefully...' He went across and started to feel the fur between the stag's ears. 'Ah yes,' he said. 'Here we are.' He pulled, and something came away in his hands. The light went suddenly out.

  'Blondel,' Guy complained, 'what are you doing?'

  'See this?'

  'No,' Guy replied. 'Somebody put the lights out.'

  Blondel showed him a little grey box, with wires coming out of it. 'This,' he said, 'is a radio transmitter-cum-microphone-cum-hologram projector. It also sends electrical impulses into this poor mutt's brains to control its actions. Cerf le Blanc,' he said, patting the stag's nose, 'is just an ordinary white deer, aren't you, boy?'

  'Oh,' Guy said. 'I see.' To a certain extent, he felt, he ought to be relieved. Somehow he wasn't.

  'All those magical effects,' Blondel went on, 'were produced by this little box of tricks here. That's where the voice came from. I expect it's also transmitting what we say back to Head Office, wherever that is. Is that right, boys?' he said.

  'Yes, that's ...' said the voice of Cerf le Blanc. Another voice said something rude and there was an audible click. Blondel chuckled softly and then put the box on the ground and jumped on it.

  'All right,' he said, 'you can turn the deer loose now. We'd better be going.'

  Cerf le Blanc, freed from the rope, picked up his hooves and ran for it. Blondel took back the rope, coiled it up neatly and stowed it in the saddlebag. 'Time we weren't here,' he said. 'Now, our best bet will be a corn exchange or something like that.'

  Guy, who had just started to feel he could cope, on a purely superficial level at least, felt his jaw drop. 'A corn exchange,' he repeated.

  'Or a yarn market will do,' Blondel replied. 'We can make do with a guildhall at a pinch, I suppose, but there may well be people about. Somehow I don't feel a church would be a good idea. They may be idiots, but they aren't fools. Coming?'

  It was about two hours before dawn when they reached the town. Fourteenth-century Wandsworth was waking up, deciding it could have another ten minutes, and turning over in its warm straw. Blondel quickened his step.

  'In the 1480s,' he whispered as they crept past a sleeping beggar, 'there was a corn exchange in the town square, but they may not have built it yet. Looked a bit perpendicular when I saw it. Hang on, this'll do.'

  They were standing under a bell-tower. Blondel was looking at a small, low door, which Guy hadn't even noticed. It wasn't the sort of door that you do notice. Over its lintel were letters cut into the stone.

  NOLI INTRARE, they said, AD VSVM CANONICORVM RESERVATA.

  'That's the Latin,' Blondel explained, 'for No entry, staff only. This'll do fine. We'll have to leave the horse, but never mind.'

  He knocked three times on the door and pushed. It opened.

  'So?'

  'He hit me,' Pursuivant explained.

  'I gathered that. What else?'

  Meanwhile the doctor's assistant was up a ladder in the stockroom, looking at the labels on the backs of what looked like shoe-boxes. 'We've only got a 36E,' he called out. 'Will that do?'

  'Have to,' the doctor said. 'Means he'll get bronchitis from time to time, but so what?'

  Pursuivant sat up on the operating table. 'Hold on, doc,' he said. The doctor pushed him down again.

  'You never heard of the cuts?' he said. 'You're lucky we've got a 36E. There's been a run on lungs lately.'

  'Yes, but ...'

  'Don't be such an old woman,' said the doctor. 'We should have some 42s when you have your next thirty-year service. Until then, you'll have to make do.'

  Mountjoy, who had been standing fiddling with his signet ring all this time, was getting impatient. 'He hit you,' he repeated. 'Then what?'

  'Then I fell over,' Pursuivant replied. 'Look, boss, in the contract it plainly states that all damage will be made good, and -'

  'Shut up,' said Mountjoy. 'You fell over. Go on.'

  'But boss

  'Look,' the chaplain snapped, 'I should be at an important meeting. Get on with it.'

  In actual fact, Mountjoy was at the meeting - in fact, he'd been three minutes early - but there was no need to mention that. He flickered irritably.

  'I fell over,' Pursuivant said. 'Then there was a bang and the bloke's hat came off.'

  'What?'

  'His hat,' Pursuivant explained. 'He was wearing a hat and it came off. Don't ask me why.'

  'I see,' Mountjoy said. 'And what happened next?'

  'I died.'

  'I see,' Mountjoy said. 'And that was all you saw?'

  'Well,' said Pursuivant, 'my whole life flashed in front of me, but I don't suppose you want to hear about that.'

  'Not particularly, no. What was this other man like?'

  Pursuivant furrowed his brows, thinking hard. 'Odd bloke,' he said. 'About my height, dark hair, wearing a sort of sheepskin coat, no sword. If you ask me, he didn't seem to have much idea of what was happening.'

  'That,' said Mountjoy unkindly, 'would have made two of you.' He put away his notebook and turned to the doctor. 'Right,' he said, 'how long before this one's up and about again?'

  'Let's see,' said the doctor. 'Neck partially severed, multiple wounds to lungs, stomach and shoulders, compound fracture of the left leg. I'll need to keep him in for observation, too. Say about twenty minutes.'

  'Oh
for pity's sake,' snapped Mountjoy petulantly. 'Doctor, you are aware of the staffing shortages?'

  'Not my problem,' the doctor replied. 'All right, nurse, close him up.'

  The staff nurse put down her visor and lit up the welding torch.

  'Blondel,' said Guy, 'can I ask you something?'

  The tunnel was damp and smelly. The ceiling was low and the light from the torches in the wall-sconces wasn't quite bright enough. On a number of occasions, Guy had trodden in something. He was glad that he didn't know what it had been.

  'Fire away.'

  'How do you do that?'

  'What?'

  'Go through doors,' Guy said, 'that lead to ... well, this.'

  Blondel laughed. 'This is how we travel through time,' he said. 'My agents taught me.'

  'I see.' Guy walked along in silence for a while. He was getting a crick in the neck from keeping his head ducked. 'Er, how does it work?' he asked.

  'On the principle of Bureauspace,' Blondel replied. 'Are you all right with the saddlebags or shall I carry them for a bit?'

  'No, no, that's fine,' Guy said. 'What's Bureauspace?'

  Blondel stopped under a torch and looked at a little book. He was actually rather shorter than he looked, Guy noticed, and didn't have to lower his head to avoid the ceiling. 'This way,' he said at last. 'I thought we'd taken a wrong turning back there, but it's all right. Now then, the proper name for it is the Bureaucratic Spatio-Temporal Effect, but we call it Bureauspace for short. It's really very simple, once you grasp the fundamental concept.

  'Oh good,' said Guy. He had the awful feeling that this was going to be one of those questions you regret asking.

  'It's like this,' Blondel said. 'Oh, left here, by the way. Mind your head.'

  'Ouch.'

  'At the heart of all bureaucratic organisations,' Blondel said, 'there's a huge lesion in the fabric of space and time. It's like a sort of ...' Blondel thought hard. 'It's like the gap between the sofa-cushions of time and space. Things fall into it, get lost and then get washed out again. In the meantime, they've been whirled round all through time and space until they end up more or less where they started. That's how the system works. They're all well aware of it in the public services, only they call it going through channels. However, it has its advantages.

  Guy stopped just in time to avoid walking into a pillar. 'Oh yes?' he said.

  'Yes indeed.' Blondel had halted again and was screwing up his eyes to read small print by the light of a very dim torch. 'You see,' he said, 'all bureaucracies are one bureaucracy. The British Ministry of Works is in fact the same organisation as the Turkish Home Office, the Tresor Royale of Louis XIV and the Roman Senate's sub-committee on Drains and Sewers. They had different notepaper for each department, but they're all basically the same thing. And all bureaucracies are built over this lesion in the fabric of space and time, what Marcus Aurelius would have called the Great Chesterfield. This is why, sometimes, when the system breaks down, you get an income tax demand that should have been sent to the Shah of Persia, while the Archbishop of Verona gets your electricity bill.'

  'I thought so.' 'Sorry?'

  'Never mind,' Guy said. 'Go on, please.'

  'Well then,' said Blondel, 'once you've realised that fact, you can make use of it. We are presently in a duct in the bowels of the Civil Service. What they call the Usual Channels. Or, if you prefer, we've fallen down behind the back of God's filing cabinet. Right now we're directly underneath the Finance and General Purpose Committee of the Anglo-Saxon Folkmoot. Over there somewhere is the National Bank of the Soviet Union, and that corridor on your right leads under the commissariat division of the grand council of Genghis Khan. You soon find your way about down here. It's a bit like the Phantom of the Opera.

  'But how did we get here?' Guy asked.

  'Easy.' Blondel stopped and rubbed his eyes. 'You'll have noticed how, in every public building ever constructed, from the Ziggurat of Ur to the Coliseum to Chichester Cathedral to Broadcasting House, there are always lots and lots of doors marked Private, staff only, do not enter. Yes?'

  'Yes,' said Guy.

  'Well then,' Blondel said, grinning, 'haven't you ever wondered where they lead to?'

  'No,' Guy admitted.

  'Of course not,' Blondel said. 'You're brought up not to. Nobody knows, that's the whole point. I mean, you've never actually seen anyone going in or out of them, have you?'

  'Guy shook his head.

  'Well,' said Blondel, 'now you know. They all lead down here. Which means,' he yawned, closing his little book and putting it away in his purse, 'that wherever there's a public building of any description - library, town hall, railway station, government ministry, kennel for the King's Wolfhounds -' Blondel sniffed and pointed upwards '- sewage farm, manhole cover, orbiting space station, anything like that - there's a gateway to the whole of time and space, and all you have to do is knock three times and enter. It's as simple as that. It certainly beats all that mucking about with transmat beams. Ah,' he said, 'I think we've arrived.'

  In front of them was a door.

  'For a while,' Blondel was saying, 'I thought they might have King Richard down here. You know, filed away in the archives, bound hand and foot with red tape. But they haven't, I've looked.'

  'Where are we?' Guy asked.

  'You'll see,' Blondel smiled. 'Ready?'

  'Usher,' said Oliver Cromwell, 'take away that bauble.'

  Behind the Speaker's chair, a door opened. Not many people had ever noticed it was there, probably because it had staffe onlie painted on it in gold leaf.

  Slowly, and with infinite misgivings, the usher rose to his feet and walked towards the table on which the Great Mace lay. Cromwell's face remained implacable.

  'It's his warts,' explained a colonel to the Member for Ashburton. 'When they're playing him up he can be that difficult

  On the back benches a solitary figure rose. The usher stopped dead in his tracks. He knew that history was being made; he was also acute enough to guess that the production of history, like coal-mining, is a highly hazardous occupation.

  'Mr Protector,' said the solitary figure, 'by what right...

  Behind the Speaker's chair, Guy froze. He had a horrible feeling - not unlike the sensation of discovering that the large bowl of water one has just upset all over one's host's carpet had originally contained one's host's goldfish - that he knew exactly where he was, and when.

  'Come on,' Blondel hissed, 'you're dawdling again.

  'Yes, but...'

  But Blondel wasn't there. Instead he was standing in front of the Speaker, showing him a raggedly little scrap of paper. The Speaker, having read it, nodded and called upon Blondel to speak. Apparently he was under the impression that Blondel was the Member for Saffron Walden.

  Actually, Blondel didn't so much speak as sing; he sang L'Amours Dont Sui Epris, and had got as far as Remembrance dou vis before the big spotty man who'd been talking when they came in shouted to a couple of guards to take this something-or-other and throw him in the river.

  It was, Guy realised, a time for swift and positive action. He started trying to back through the door he'd just come through on his hands and knees.

  Blondel had turned round and was glaring at Cromwell with a sort of paint-stripping fury in his eyes.

  'Who are you calling a -' Then he noticed that a halberdier was trying to annex his collar, kicked the man neatly in the groin and jumped up on the table with the mace on it, his sword in his hand.

  'Oh hell...' said Guy to himself.

  If he'd had time to analyse his reluctance to get involved, he would have said to himself that this was a crucial moment in the development of English Parliamentary democracy, and that if he loused it up he would probably be responsible for a new Dark Age of royal supremacy and baronial repression. As it was, time was short. Very tentatively, he stood up and drew his revolver.

  'Excuse me,' he said.

  The Lord Protector, the Long Parliament and an as
sortment of officials and soldiers turned and looked at him. In a brief instant of total perception, Guy realised that he hadn't shaved, his fingernails were dirty, his left sock had a hole in it, he was probably going to die very soon, his jacket was too big and his hair badly needed combing. He said 'Er.'

  Blondel, meanwhile, had jumped down from the table, sheathed his sword, picked up the mace and clobbered two halberdiers with it. Then he swatted Black Rod across the kneecaps, stunned the Member for Kings Langley, caught the usher a savage blow on the funny bone and fell over. The guard who had felled him, rather unsportingly from behind, with a bound copy of Bracton, drew back his arm for another blow

  'Freeze!' shouted Guy.

  Of all the peculiar situations he had found himself in recently, Guy felt, this had to be the loopiest. Here he was, Flight Lieutenant Guy Goodlet, bachelor, twenty-six, until the outbreak of war a respectable bank official, standing on the floor of the House of Commons pointing a loaded revolver at Oliver Cromwell. However, despite the ludicrous nature of what he was doing, it had to be admitted that he seemed to be having the desired effect. Nobody seemed terribly interested in doing anything just at that moment. The entire House was frozen, like a group of statues assembled by a dangerously eccentric collector.

  What eventually happened was Blondel made a jump for it, a halberdier standing to his immediate right - not the one with the copy of Bracton, a different one - took a mighty slash at his head with a large sword, and Guy, more by way of a nervous twitch than with malice aforethought, pulled the trigger. There was a loud bang (the acoustics of the House are excellent) and everybody started yelling at once. Oddly enough, the only thought passing through Guy's mind was 'Oh fuck, I've shot Cromwell, Mr Ashton will never forgive me.' Mr Ashton had been Guy's history teacher, and was a great advocate of Cromwell and the seventeenth-century republican movement as a whole. In fact he had once lent Guy a copy of the collected works of John Lilburne, which Guy had always intended to read.

  That was it, action wise, as far as Guy was concerned, and the guard who had been stalking him for the last five minutes would have had no difficulty in grabbing and disarming him if he hadn't been hit over the head with the Great Mace of England first.