Overtime Tom Holt

by Overtime (lit)

  Guy said nothing. Something or other ran lightly over his foot and up his leg as far as his knee. He shuddered slightly.

  'Mr Goodlet. Guy,' said La Beale Isoud, 'I'm not going to plead with you indefinitely, you know. What will be, will be, and if you want to start off our relationship on this sort of note, then I for one will not be answerable for the consequences.'

  Guy considered this for a moment; then, having reflected maturely on what Isoud had said, and also the way in which she had said it, scrabbled around for some more coal to pile against the door. The woman sounded exactly like his cousin Flora.

  There was a long silence, but Guy wasn't going to be fooled. She might have gone away; on the other hand, she might be waiting outside the door, holding her breath and with an attendant clergyman and two bridesmaids standing behind her fingering sacrificial implements.

  'Are you there, Mr Goodlet?'

  'Yes.'

  'It may interest you to know,' said La Beale Isoud, 'that I am none too happy about this idea myself. However, instead of shouting at each other through the door, perhaps we should be considering how we can prevent this thing happening?' A long pause. 'Mr Goodlet?'

  'Still here.'

  'Mr Goodlet, I'm rapidly running out of patience. Would you at least have the good manners to answer me when I speak to you?'

  'Look,' Guy said, 'I really don't want to seem rude, but if there's a photograph of us on our wedding day, then I'm afraid I'm just going to stay put. The way I see it, we can't get married if I stay here. If you want to get on and do something else, please don't mind me.'

  'Oh, for heaven's sake ...'

  Guy heard the sound of bad-tempered heels clacking away across flagstones, and relaxed slightly. It might be that she'd gone to fetch a crowbar, but as far as he could remember it had seemed like a good, solid door, opening inwards. He lay back on the heap of coal and considered his situation in some detail.

  He tried to puzzle out, from what Blondel had told him, how time worked. On the one hand, it seemed, you could whizz back and forwards through time as easily as catching a train. On the other hand, it stood to reason that if a photograph of him on his wedding day had been taken, then he'd had a wedding day at some time or other - some time in the future, of course - and in that case, the thing had already happened and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. Except, of course, that it was in the future, so it couldn't already have happened. He could stop it happening by taking his revolver and shooting himself here and now - assuming he didn't miss, which seemed on recent experience to be quite a large assumption - but since he wasn't seriously proposing to put it to the test, that one could be shelved for the time being.

  Meanwhile, what he needed most of all, he decided, was a smoke; and to this end he produced from his pockets his last remaining cigarette, his last two matches and the remains of his matchbox, which had not been improved structurally by having been fallen on several times recently. He struck a match.

  No Entry. Authorised Personnel Only.

  The match went out and he struck another, which flared up, managed to find a gust of wind in the entirely draught-free environment of the cellar and blew out. Guy stretched out a hand and felt for the door he'd just seen.

  As Aristotle said, when caught between a ravening tiger and a process-server bearing a legal document, it's always worth looking for the fire escape.

  The Chief Warden returned to his office tired, worried and upset. In the space of a single day he had broken all the laws and regulations of his vocation, only to discover that his aiders and abettors were responsible for the annihilation of (in his opinion) the greatest musical genius who had ever lived, who had perished in one of his own Archives. As if that wasn't bad enough, he remembered, his wife had told him they had people coming to dinner and he was on no account to be late. As he unlocked the office door, he toyed briefly with the idea of nipping back through time to half past six and thus at least saving himself a degree of aggravation. It would be a flagrant breach, of course, but compared with what he'd done, it was a mere parking ticket on the windscreen of his honour. Still, perhaps not. Now, all he had to do was open the safe, put the key back in it for the night, and think of a reasonable excuse on the way home...

  There were people in his office. They had been sitting in the dark, because the light was off when he walked in; almost as if they were waiting to catch him unawares.

  'Good evening, Chief Warden.'

  Even if he'd contemplated turning and trying to make a run for it, there wouldn't have been any point; a very substantial security officer had filled up the doorway. The Chief Warden relaxed. After all, since it was all such a foregone conclusion, there was no point in getting all tense about it.

  'Come in and take a seat, please.' Although it was - what, two hundred years? About that - since the selection committee meeting when he'd received his appointment, he recognised the voice instantly; and when the speaker swivelled round in the chair and faced him, he was ready for it. But he still couldn't help making a sort of mouse-in-a-blender noise and turning his head away. The Chief Warden was, after all, human, and no human being, however cool or laid back, can hope to face a man split down the middle with equanimity.

  'That's all right,' said the half-man, pre-empting the apology. 'I'm used to it by now, Lord knows. I won't be offended if you look the other way.'

  'Thank you, sir,' the Chief Warden said, to the opposite wall. He sat down.

  'Now then,' the half-man continued, 'you can't see them, but sitting on my right is His Holiness Anti-Pope Julian II, whom I believe you've met. Yes? And on my left,' the half-man continued, with a chuckle, 'is His Holiness Pope Julian XXIII. Before you say anything, yes, they are one and the same person; as you know, Julian was Pope of Rome, died, and now commutes from the sixteenth century to be Antipope. Well, he's kindly agreed to make two simultaneous trips, one in each capacity. Apparently it's the first time it's been done, so he asks you to make allowances. For a start, it means he can't speak.'

  The Chief Warden's curiosity got the better of him. 'May I ask...?'

  'For fear,' replied the half-man, 'of contradicting himself. Since he is speaking ex cathedra in both capacities, the results might be extremely unfortunate. He will therefore communicate with me by means of sign language, which does not qualify as a medium for Infallible statements, and I will relay his points to you myself. Since you cannot, understandably enough, bear to look at me, you'll have to trust me to interpret accurately. Are you agreeable to that?'

  'Perfectly,' said the Chief Warden.

  'Splendid,' said the half-man. 'Finally, as these are judicial proceedings, we have a shorthand writer present who will take a transcript for the record. You have no objection?'

  'None whatsoever.

  The half-man nodded to Pursuivant, who was sitting at the end of the desk. Pursuivant sharpened his pencil, opened his notebook, and wrote down the date. He spelt it wrong.

  'Right,' said the half-man. 'Here goes, then. You are John Athanasius, Chief Time Warden, of "Hourglasses", Newlands Road, Bleak City, Atlantis?'

  The Chief Warden nodded. 'Yes,' he said.

  'John Athanasius, you are - can't read my own writing, dammit; Julian, what does that ...? Oh yes, thank you - you are charged with contraventions of the Chronological Order, in that you did knowingly and for purposes of private gain admit unauthorised persons into one of the Time Archives, contrary to Sections 3 and 67 of the said Order. How do you plead, guilty or not guilty?'

  'Guilty,' said the Chief Warden.

  'Oh,' said the half-man. 'How tremendously unimaginative of you. We've been to a great deal of trouble to track you down, you know. I've got a whole corridor full of witnesses all hauled back from temporal oblivion just to say they saw you at it. Are you sure you won't change your plea?'

  'I'm sure.'

  The half-man shrugged - difficult to do, with only one shoulder - and reached into his bag for half a black cap. 'Is there - where is th
e dratted thing? - anything you wish to say before sentence is pronounced upon you?'

  'No.'

  'Ah, here we are. Are you sure?'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'Be like that. Now, which way round does it go? You'll have to take my word that I've got it on, of course. Just as well you aren't looking, you'd probably get a fit of the giggles, which'd be Contempt, and you're in enough trouble as it is. John Athanasius, you have been found guilty of a wholly unforgivable breach of the sacred truss - confound it, that's a T -trust which has been reposed in you. You try reading this with only one eye and see how you like it. I have listened with patience to your attempts at mitigation ... No, scrub round that. Pity. You have made no attempt to mitigate your crime, and I am therefore obliged to sentence you to filing in the Main Archive. Now have you anything to say as to why such sentence should not be imposed upon you?'

  'No, sir.'

  'Nothing at all? Not even It's a fair cop, bang to rights, guv? Nothing at all?'

  'No, sir.'

  The half-man sighed. 'Fine,' he said. 'The whole evening has been a complete frost. Had we known, we could have entered judgement by default, Julian could have stayed at home, I could have gone out to dinner, Mr ... whatever his name is here could have gone to the greyhound races, or whatever it is his sort of person does in the evenings, but there it is. Sentence accordingly.'

  The Chief Warden hung his head, waiting for the feel of the guard's hand on his shoulder. Instead, he heard the half-man's voice again.

  'I told the driver to come back in five hours' time,' he said, so we re stuck here till then. How about a game of something?'

  'Thank you,' said the Chief Warden, 'but I don't really feel in the mood for...'

  'I wasn't talking to you,' the half-man said. 'Julian, what about a rubber of bridge? You and you against me and Mr ... Oh, sorry, I forgot. Can't bid when you're being Infallible, might go two no trumps and get doubled, and what would that do to the Ninth Lateran Council? Oh well, this is going to be a jolly evening, isn't it?'

  There was a long silence, during which the Chief Warden stared at the wall. By now, his wife would have given up waiting and served the cold beetroot soup with sour cream and chives. Where he was going, he reflected, not only would he never taste his wife's cooking ever again; he would also never have eaten it in the first place. The corners of his lips rose involuntarily.

  'I spy,' said the half-man, 'with my little eye ... Literally, in my case, of course. Let's see. Something beginning with ... Chief Warden, is this a complete set of Blondel recordings?'

  The Chief Warden nodded.

  'Including the 1196 White Album?'

  Without wanting to, the Chief Warden smirked. 'Yes, sir,' he said.

  'The pirate edition, naturally?'

  'No sir,' the Chief Warden replied - O grave, thy victory -'the official recording, sir. With,' he added vindictively, 'Gace Brulé on drums.'

  'I see,' said the half-man. 'Chief Warden, have you, er, made a will?'

  The Chief Warden nodded.

  'Yes,' said the half-man, 'I expect you probably have. Invalid, of course. If you never existed, you can't have made a will, which means that all your property will be forfeit to the -'

  'If I never existed, sir,' replied the Chief Warden, with relish, 'then I could never have bought the very last copy of the official recording of the 1196 White Album. Which means,' he added happily, 'that somebody else must have bought it, sir. Don't you think?'

  'I...'

  'Which is a pity, sir, wouldn't you say, since I left it to you in my will.'

  'I...'

  'Specifically. And there's the Chastelain de Coucy,' said the Chief Warden, as if to himself, 'on tenor crumhorn. Blow that thing!' he added.

  'Chief Warden!' The half-man's voice was suddenly as hard as diamonds. Black diamonds, industrial grade. 'Look at me when I'm talking to you.'

  The Chief Warden turned smartly and smiled. No worries about looking that half-skull in the eye; not in the circumstances. For it had occurred to the Chief Warden that, if his collection of Blondel records still existed, then Blondel too must have existed; and if he had existed, then he must, somehow or other, have got out of the Archive. In which case, sang the Chief Warden's heart within him, I'm going to get out of this mess somehow or other, quit this bloody awful job, find another copy of the 1196 White Album and retire.

  'Have you any idea,' said the half-man, 'how serious an offence it is to attempt to pervert the course of my justice?'

  'No, sir.'

  'Well,' said the half-man, 'it's very serious. So don't do it, d'you hear? Leave it out completely. Understood?'

  'Sir.'

  'Splendid. You, whatever your name is.'

  Pursuivant lifted his head from his notebook and clicked his heels smartly under the table. 'Yes, Your Highness?' he said.

  'Is that the court record you've got there?' the half-man enquired.

  'Yes, Your Highness.'

  'Hand it to me.'

  Pursuivant closed the notebook and passed it over. The half-man took it, flipped it open, and took hold of several pages between his teeth. Then he leaned his head back and pulled. The pages ripped away from the spiral binding, and the half-man stuffed them into his half-mouth, chewed vigorously with his half-set of teeth, and swallowed.

  'Yuk!' he said.

  'Sir!' Pursuivant shouted. His eyes were so far out of his head that he looked like a startled grasshopper. 'You can't do that!'

  The half-man looked at him. Of that look there is nothing to say, except that a few hours later Pursuivant showed up at the sick bay waving a studded club and demanding to have his memory wiped.

  'Next time,' the half-man said, 'don't use pencil, it tastes horrible. Shut up, Julian, you'll sprain your hands. Now then, Chief Warden. John,' he corrected. 'Or rather, Jack, my old son. Why didn't you tell me you were a Blondel man?'

  'Well, sir .

  'Tony,' said the half-man. 'Call me Tony.'

  'Well, Tony,' said the Chief Warden, 'I wouldn't have thought ... In the circumstances, I mean

  'Nonsense,' said the half-man. 'Just because I don't hold with the feller personally doesn't mean I can't admire his music. And I may only have one ear, but it isn't made of tin. Is it really Gace Brulé on drums?'

  The Chief Warden nodded. 'There's this incredible riff,' he said, 'in the bridge section in Quand flours et glais...'

  'Cadenet on vocals?'

  'They do this duet,' replied the Chief Warden, 'in San'cfuy beiha...'

  There was silence for a while, broken only by two - one and a half - men humming. Julian looked at each other and shook his heads sadly.

  'Anyway,' said the half-man, with an effort, 'this court finds insufficient evidence of the charges alleged and rules that these proceedings be adjourned sine die with liberty to restore.' He tried to wink but, naturally, failed. 'And let that be a lesson to you, Chief Warden.'

  'Sir.'

  The half-man rose to his foot. For the record, he moved in a strange - you might say mysterious - way; the half of his body which was there moved as if the other half was there too. 'All rise,' he said. 'Come on, Julian on your feet. Go and make a cup of coffee or something. You too, whatever your name is. Go and see if you can raise that blasted driver on the radiophone. Now then, Jack...'

  The Anti-Pope and his previous life shrugged and went to look for a kettle. Pursuivant, mentally exhausted, found a cupboard under some stairs and went to sleep in it. From the Chief Warden's office came the sound, in perfect Dolby stereo and highly amplified, of Blondel singing L'Amours Dont Sui Epris.

  If anybody - apart, of course, from the man and a half in the office - joined in the second verse, nobody heard.

  The waiter who brought him his iced coffee and a glass of water looked familiar, and Blondel asked him his name.

  'Spiro,' the waiter said.

  'Yes,' Blondel replied, 'but Spiro what?'

  'Maniakis,' the waiter replied. 'Is it important?'<
br />
  Blondel shrugged. 'Did your family use to farm down near Mistras, a while back?' he asked. The waiter looked at him. 'Do excuse my asking, but you remind me of someone I used to know.'

  'Really?' The waiter gave him an even stranger look. 'A hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty years ago, my mother's family lived in a village near Mistras. What of it?'

  Blondel suddenly remembered who the waiter reminded him of. 'Sorry,' he said, 'my mistake. Sorry to have bothered you.'

  The waiter shrugged and walked away, whistling. The tune, incidentally, was a very garbled recollection of L 'Amours Dont Sui Epris, which the waiter had learned from his great-grandmother. Blondel finished his coffee quickly and left.

  A tiresome sort of day, so far, he said to himself as he wandered back towards the Town Hall; and it had been just as well that he'd noticed the door marked Staff Only, No Admittance in that split second before the oil rig blew up. It was good to be out of the Archives again, but disturbing that he'd heard someone singing the second verse of the song. It could just have been a coincidence, of course; but he had the feeling, although he had no scientific data to back it up with, that coincidences didn't happen in the Archives. Something to do with the climate, perhaps. Another missing person to look for, too. Just one damn thing after another.

  He looked at his watch. In twenty minutes or so he planned to sing the song under the ruined Crusader castle on the promontory; then (assuming no response) he ought to be getting along to the 1750s, where he'd pencilled in a couple of Rhine schlosses to round the day off with. Then, with any luck, bed, with the prospect of looking for two characters lost in history instead of just one to look forward to. Well, it doubled his chance of finding something, if you cared to look at it that way, although it could be argued that twice times sod all is still sod all.

  He decided to walk down to the promontory by way of the market, just for the hell of it. It was nine months and seven hundred years since he'd been here last - the time before that had been fifty years in the future, but that had been years ago now - and he liked to see what changes had been, or were to be, made in the places he visited. Had they filled in the enormous pothole in the road just opposite the Church?