by Tanya Allan
I then popped over to the saddler and collected Katie’s new saddle, as both she and Snowflake had out-grown the last one. I also picked up a belt and holster that he had made especially for me.
I went home and gave the bread to Cook, who shrugged, as she made all the bread we needed. With Oliver on the staff, who ate a vast amount, any extra was always welcome.
I went to my room to complete the outfit that I had been making over the last few weeks.
It was a uniform, but not one that anyone here would recognise.
With a pair of black breeches and a waist length black tunic with a high, roll-type collar, it was the nearest thing I could come to a quasi-police uniform. The Police in England would not be created until 1839, but if Mr Soames was one of the enemy, then I proposed to give him the fright of his life. I had even constructed a patch with TIME PROTECTION AGENCY, embroidered in white on a blue background, which I sewed on the left breast of the tunic.
I then opened the box from Josiah and assembled my pistol. It was very basic, so some of the parts needed a little filing in places to ensure a smooth fit, but it was of good quality steel, even if the workmanship was a little crude. I oiled it, loading it with six precious rounds that I had made. I knew that I was breaching every law of my own organisation, but I wanted to make a point. I felt a revolver was more sensible than a self-loading pistol, which is usually wrongly called an automatic.
He had also made for me a set of basic handcuffs, and a key.
Once the house was asleep, I dressed in the uniform, pinning my hair up. I’d have liked a beret or other more modern hat, but it wasn’t to be. I made up my face to look more twentieth-century, and pulled on my black riding boots.
With the belt and holster, I looked the part. I smiled, placing the gun in the holster. It felt very familiar and reassuring, but I hoped that I would not actually have to use it. I covered the uniform with my long hooded cape and slipped out of the house. I made my way across town, where I managed to gain entry to Mr Soames’ address. His single lock on the front door was crude and opened in moments. I had previously checked on this man, discovering that he was a bachelor and lived alone. He had a housekeeper, who resided in an apartment to the rear of the premises. He had been in Abingdon for six years, yet no one I spoke to was able to tell me what he did for a living.
I searched the house thoroughly first, his study first. In his desk, I found a time chart, with events up to 1840 written in the appropriate boxes and some events circled. One was Waterloo, as well as the date just before, when Roger and I foiled the assassination.
There were some in 1816, and then in 1822 in Washington DC, and others at various places in the United States. But I was interested in today’s date, January 8th 1816. Something was to happen this very day, and it involved this man. He had written, Oxford, 3pm. Last chance. I seized the chart, folding it and placing it in my pocket.
The house was an old one, so I was very conscious of every creak of the floorboards. The stairs were dreadful, so I moved very slowly up to his bedroom. His snores led me to his room, into which I managed to enter without waking him.
I took one of his hands, and very carefully managed to handcuff him to his bedpost, so then I searched under his pillow and found a contemporary pistol. It was loaded, but not cocked. Its twin was on the mantle piece, unloaded, so I simply switched the guns.
I lit a pair of candles and poured a glass of water onto the slumbering man’s face.
He woke up, coughing and spluttering. Then he saw me, paling visibly.
“Good morning, Mr Soames,” I said, with my American accent. It sounded very odd, even to my ears.
He sat up and suddenly found his hand attached to the bed.
“Who the devil are you?”
“I’m your worst nightmare, buddy, I’m a cop from the future. Your little game is over, and you’re busted!”
He frowned deeply. His waking brain was having difficulties with the information.
“You’re under arrest for breaching the time line code 4556.9. You, having no authority, have entered a time line in recognised history and illegally have conspired with others to alter said time line, by committing acts of murder, with a view for gain for yourself, or others, or to the detriment of others.”
He stared at me.
“This is impossible. You can’t be here!” he said, as one hand went under the pillow, coming out with the pistol. He pointed it at me, and the hammer made a very loud click as he cocked it.
“Who are you?”
“I’m from the Time Protection Agency. And you, as I said, are busted.”
“I don’t think so,” he said, pulling the trigger. It was funny because he shut his eyes as he did so, so with the pressure of the trigger, it pulled to the left, so had it been loaded, he would have missed me by about a foot. It just clicked, so he opened his eyes, paling perceptibly.
“You’re in stasis at this moment. Time ceases to exist until we transport you to Penal Epoch Four in the Jurassic age. All crude weapons are rendered inert by the stasis field generator, so you may as well relax.”
He dropped the gun and started to weep.
“They said you didn’t have the technology. But when Robert was killed in Paris, I knew that you were close behind.”
“Hey buddy. I knew you were due in Oxford today, so I had to bring you in,” I said, really making my accent drawl over the ‘knew’ and ‘due’ sounds, pronouncing them as ‘noo’ and ‘doo’. The accent sounded almost alien to me, as I had been so very English for so long. I felt a real twinge of homesickness, as it reminded me of the life I had and the many things I was denied here. I remembered who and what I was, so the future diminished. I smiled, recalling the baby inside me. This was where I belonged now!
“What will happen to me?” he asked, bringing me back to the current situation.
“As an illegal construct, you will be placed in stasis, so that you will not be able to return to your original body.”
He started to shake.
“How did you get here?”
“Hey, I ask the questions, but just so you know, we don’t need constructs anymore, we have the technology to send agents direct to a given moment, and return them to home in seconds.”
“I knew we underestimated you. I told them, but they wouldn’t listen.”
“Okay, what’s your real name, and when are you from?”
“I really am Steven Soames. They recruited me in 1980 in London. They promised me riches beyond my wildest dreams, but I have seen nothing but disaster.”
“Who recruited you?”
“A man in a pub. It sounds ridiculous, but that is the way it was.”
Steven Soames had been an army officer, dishonourably discharged from the service for an indiscretion with a young man he had met in a gay club in Bristol. Whilst drinking himself into a pool of self-pity the enemy approached him and gave him the offer of a lifetime.
The man who had recruited him was none other than the man that Roger had killed in Paris, so I expected him to come along any moment, as I was aware that the construct system was that manageable.
I moved slightly, so as to get a good view of the door, allowing the man to continue to talk.
His training was nonexistent, as they flung him into this era with a few jobs highlighted on his chart. (Now in my pocket.) There had been three of them originally, but one had left for America last year, and as we killed the other in Paris, he was now on his own, and hopelessly out of his depth.
I understood that their technology was similar to that of the Agency, but much more basic. They had not the resources that the Centre had, so agents were not able to re-create constructs as rapidly as the centre. Indeed, he believed that if one of their agents died, then the original body died more often than not.
He told me that he was taken to a location in the Netherlands, and it was from there that he was transferred to somewhere outside of time. The individuals who ran their equivalent of the Centre were strange in the extre
me. He actually thought that they were not human. Although they looked human, they were devoid of any emotions or expression.
“They were more like robots,” he said, almost with a laugh.
He talked as if his life depended upon it. The creaking floorboards warned me that we were not alone.
I drew my pistol, moving slowly and silently into the shadows. Soames was oblivious to this and kept babbling away. The door opened very slowly, and a gun barrel pointed in, directly at Soames.
I simply raised my pistol, aimed and fired two shots. The assassin dropped his weapon, falling head first into the room.
Soames went very white, lying there with his mouth open.
I kicked the assassin over. It was the same man from Paris, yet he had both arms this time.
He was not dead, but with two .45 holes in his chest, I knew it would not be long. He looked up at me, frowning.
“You?”
“The very same. Us Time cops get to all the wrong places,” I said, American accent in place still.
“How?”
“Shit boy, it’s magic!” I said, as he died.
“He was going to kill me!” said Soames, fear causing his voice to shake.
“Yup. You’re now in deep shit with your own side now,” I said, and he began to sob harder. Then he stopped.
“If we’re in stasis, then how did he get here, and how did your gun work?” he asked.
“I lied. We ain’t in stasis, we’re still in 1816. And you’re now dead meat as far as the bad guys are concerned.”
“You have to help me. I’ll tell you everything I know.”
“What do you know, boy?”
“That man, his name is Robert Armes. He’s French but his family came over to England during World War Two, settling in London. He studied law, working in the East End of London in the 1960s. He was a bent solicitor who used to work with the Crays and several other notorious underworld figures. They recruited him just before the police were going to swoop and, from what he told me, he wouldn’t see the light of day for a long time. He’s the co-ordinator for this century. His task, our task, was to undermine the British sufficiently to enable Napoleon to win Waterloo, and then for the French to take the whole of North America.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.” I drawled.
“The other man, his name is Richard Frost. He has already gone to America, where he will try to help the French and the Spanish to take any land away from the Americans. He is also to take out a very important man.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where is Frost now?”
“I don’t know. But he had an address in or near Washington.”
“The British burned Washington. Is he still there?”
“I have no idea.”
“Where in Holland is your Centre?”
“I’m not sure. It’s near the German border, near Sittard.”
“Describe it.”
“It’s a farm. There is a silver grain silo by the farm buildings. The barn is a red colour, and the house is white with brown tiles on the roof. There is an electricity pylon very close to the barn.”
“What year was that?”
“1980.”
“So, as far as you know, your body is in stasis at that location?”
“Yes. Unless they have a way of moving it.”
“I doubt it, as that’s the trick of stasis, it’s stuck in one time/space location until switched off.”
“So, what happens now?”
“Beats me. Until we take out your control and recover your stasis field, you are theirs to do with what they will. They could kill your original body, so you’re stuck here.”
“That would be preferable to going back to my old life.”
“On the other hand, you could work for us, after serving your sentence, that is.”
“Anything, absolutely anything.”
“Okay, how do you communicate with each other and with your control?”
“The Times, we place apparently meaningless adverts in code in the personal columns.”
“What do your erstwhile employers get out of this?”
“I don’t know.”
“I want those codes.”
He nodded to a wardrobe.
“In a box on top of the wardrobe,” he said.
I retrieved the box, wondering how the hell I could get these codes to my central control.
“All right, I’ll help you. First, you have to disappear. This guy, Armitage, may already be creating a new construct. He may also have access to your original body. We know that of he kills that, you can still live out your life here, but there is no way back. So he will be after you to finish the job. You have to sell up and go to the States. I’ll contact you there in due course. Go to Washington, under a new name, Ronald Reagan will do. What do you do for a living?”
“Nothing, I have sufficient funds to live.”
“You’ll find that you won’t be getting any more, so you’ll have to get a job. What can you do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then become a journalist. You’ll find it easy, with what little you know of the future, you’ll be able to get a nice little job writing about the events with a sharp insight as to the likely turn out of events. You should do nicely. And leave the boys alone, the Americans don’t like child molesters.”
“You’re American, aren’t you?”
“No shit, Sherlock.”
“I’m sorry, but your accent is very obvious. You’re not from this era?”
“Hey, when I come from, there’s a woman in the White House,” I lied.
“My God, so you must come from about 2057?”
“Hey, I ain’t telling you diddly squat.”
“I’m sorry. Are you going to undo me?”
“First, what happens at three o’clock in Oxford?”
“You know very well.”
“Pretend I don’t.”
“Sir Robert Peel is dining with some friends at Magdalene College. His terms as Prime Minister are crucial to this country, so he is the target. The ironic thing is that his Grace the Duke of Wellington is dining there also.”
“Do away with Peel, and set the law and order brigade back twenty years or so. Not a bad idea. Pity you ain’t gonna do it now,” I said.
“No, not now, please let me go.”
I looked at him and put my pistol back into the holster.
“I hadn’t realised that you were able to get people and objects through the barrier. No wonder we keep getting caught.”
“Look buddy, you’ve all been under observation from the moment your generators kicked in,” I said, bluffing.
“You know about our individual generators?”
“What am I, a quiz master? Of course. They give off a unique signature in the time/space continuum. We track you from the moment you engage.”
“I knew you were advanced, but not that far.”
“So, I want your generator. It’s useless to you now, as your erstwhile buddies are no longer your friends.”
Nodding, he pointed to the wardrobe. “On the top shelf. With it gone, they can’t trace me, can they?”
“I shouldn’t think so,” I said, going over to the wardrobe and opening it. I took out the chunky device designed to be strapped to the agent’s chest by a basic harness. A single red light glowed at me from the centre of the small grey metallic box.
“What’s the red light mean?”
“Just that it’s on. I can’t turn it off. The light changes to green when we use it. To return we press the button, and our mind is sent back to our body again.”
As we watched the light went out.
“Looks like you can’t go back. They pulled your plug. What happens to your original body?”
“It dies, I think. I’m not sure,” he said, going rather pale.
“Okay, I’m gonna let you go. But you let me down, and I promise, It’s bye-bye balls!” I said, pointing
my .45 at his testicles.
He crossed his legs and looked pained.
“May I know your name?”
“You may call me Officer Smith.”
He laughed, shortly and with little humour. “I’m sorry, it was a silly question,” he said.
“You bet your ass it was, boy.”
“Will I see you again?”
“You had better hope so. But I’ll be watching you, so step very carefully indeed.”
“How do I contact you?”
“If you write for a paper, then I’ll look out for your column. Once I see your name, I’ll be in touch. Don’t expect anything until at least 1820, as I will be otherwise occupied until then.”
“How will I know you?”
“I’ll use the name Jane Fonda, okay?”
This made him smile slightly. “What will you do?”
“My job. I’ll try to save your stupid British queer ass.”
“Thank you.”
“Shit boy, you’d better deliver.”
“I will.”
“They’ll try to kill you again, you know that?”
“Yes, will you be around to help?”
“Not all the time, I ain’t omnipresent.”
“Oh, I see.”
“I gotta take off. You take care now.”
“What about him?” he said, pointing to the body.
“I suggest the Thames. A lot of shit lands in there at this time of year.”
“What about the gunshots? People will have heard.”
“Look buster, I saved your dumb ass, do you want for me to wipe it as well? You got yourself into this mess, now get yourself out!” I said, losing patience.
“Fine. I’m sorry. It’s just that I’m not used to this sort of thing.”
I unfastened his wrist, looping the handcuffs onto my belt.
“I have to go,” I said, and slipped downstairs and into the night before he could reply.
I was home within an hour, having dismantled and buried the generator in St. Helen’s Church graveyard. I had no way of getting it back to the Centre, so I didn’t want it cluttering up my life, so I took the name of the nearest deceased and hoped that I could some way transmit the information to those that needed to know.
I gratefully slipped into bed having packed my ‘uniform’ and weapon away in a secure place at the bottom of my wardrobe. I fell asleep almost immediately. I had a full day of work ahead of me tomorrow.
