Overtime Tom Holt

by Overtime (lit)

  Fifty yards or so further on, he discovered the flaw in his basic strategy. A squad of heavily armed men were coming down the tunnel towards him. They seemed pleased to see him, a feeling he found it hard to reciprocate. He skidded to a halt, turned athletically, and ran back the way he'd come. Mistake number two.

  If he hadn't been so preoccupied he'd have seen himself coming; as it was, he collided with such tremendous terminal velocity that both of him were thrown backwards. For a moment, he was both stunned.

  'You clumsy idiot!' he panted, simultaneously.

  'Look who's talking.'

  'Why don't you look where you're going?'

  'I like that, coming from you.'

  'Look,' said his later self, 'I'm being chased by a platoon of Time and Motion, I haven't got time...'

  'So am I,' replied his earlier self.

  'But they're not behind you,' replied the later self, 'they're behind me. You're heading straight for them.'

  'I am?'

  'Yes.'

  The earlier Blondel gave his later self a funny look. 'How do you know?' he said.

  'Because I nearly ran straight into them, idiot,' replied the later Blondel, 'that's how. Now, if you don't mind...'

  'Before or after you ran into me?'

  'Before. No, after. Look, does it matter?'

  'But that's crazy,' replied Mark I. 'It's impossible.'

  'Is it?'

  'Must be,' said Mark I, backing away slightly. 'Because I -we - can't be just about to run into them, because you've just warned me they're coming.'

  Mark II tried, very briefly, to think about this, and then came to the conclusion that now wasn't the time. So to speak.

  'Look,' he said, 'will you just ..

  Mark I shook his head. 'Oh no you don't,' he said. 'If one of us is going to turn round and carry on running in the safe direction it might as well be me.'

  Mark II stared. 'How do you make that out?' he said. 'Well,' Mark I replied, 'I'm not the one who went blundering into them in the first place letting them know where I was, am I? No, I reckon the best thing would be for them to catch you, so's I can get away.'

  'Look ...' Mark II said angrily, and then tailed off. 'Why don't we both...'

  Mark I gave him a look. 'Don't be silly,' he said.

  Down the tunnel came the sound of heavy boots running. 'But if they catch you,' said Mark II frantically, 'they'll catch me too.

  'And vice versa.

  'Toss you for it?'

  'Do I look like I was born yesterday?'

  'Right now,' Mark II replied, 'I wouldn't like to bet on it. For all I know you probably were. And tomorrow. Now can we adjourn this and do some running away, because -'

  'If we toss for it,' Mark I went on, ignoring him(self), 'you'll know which side the coin came down, because you're later than me and...'

  This is crazy, said Mark II to himself; a third self, presumably. Perhaps that's what's meant by a multi-faceted personality. Or terminal schizophrenia. 'All right,' he said, 'you can call.'

  'Ah yes,' Mark I replied smugly, 'it's all right for you Lo say that, because you know I called wrong and so...'

  Blondel took a deep breath, shouted 'Behind you!' and, while his head was turned, kicked himself in the reproductive organs. Then, while he was lying on the ground groaning weakly, he jumped over himself and ran.

  Straight into an oncoming TAM patrol.

  He turned and fled. It wasn't exactly easy running, not with this awful pain in his lower abdomen, but somehow he managed. Fear probably had something to do with it. Also a very great desire to find himself again and kick his head in.

  About fifty yards down the tunnel, he collided again.

  'Right, you,' he chorused, and let fly a powerful right hook. His two right hands landed in his two left eyes at exactly the same moment. He fell over and went to sleep.

  'Straw.'

  'No.'

  'Shadows.'

  'No.'

  'Spiders' webs.'

  'That's two words.'

  Guy snarled quietly. 'Very true,' he said, 'but are they the right two words?'

  'No.'

  'That sounds like a very interesting game,' said the voice pleasantly, from his corner of the cell. 'Would you mind explaining the rules to me?'

  Guy turned his head. He prided himself on his adaptability, but the prospect of this state of affairs continuing much longer wasn't exactly cheering him up. 'It's a very boring game, actually,' he said. 'Sand,' he added.

  'There isn't any sand,' Isoud replied.

  'How do you know?'

  'She's right, actually,' the voice broke in diffidently. 'Or at least I haven't come across any. Not yet, that is. I may be wrong, of course.'

  'What we do,' Isoud said to the voice, 'is I think of a word and then I say I Spy With My Little Eye Something Beginning With S. That's a clue.'

  'Oh yes?' said the voice.

  'That lets you know the word begins with S.'

  'Excuse me if I'm being a bit slow,' said the voice, 'but what if the word begins with something else? G, for example, or T. Or can you only choose a word beginning with S?'

  'No,' said Isoud, 'if the word began with G, I would say I Spy With My Little Eye Something Beginning With G.'

  'Oh I see,' said the voice. 'Can I have a go?'

  'I haven't finished yet,' Guy said irritably. 'Stones,' he suggested.

  'No.'

  'It must be stones,' he protested. 'There isn't anything else beginning with S.' He looked around sadly. 'There's not a hell of a lot beginning with anything, really.'

  'Well that's where you're wrong, Mr Clever,' Isoud replied smugly. 'There's sandstone, frinstance.'

  'Is it sandstone?'

  'No.'

  Sotto voce, Guy asked God to give him strength. 'All right,' he said, 'I give in, now tell me what it is before I go completely round the bend.'

  'Shank,' said Isoud proudly.

  'Shank?'

  'The shank,' Isoud explained, 'of the lock. I told you it was a clever one.'

  'Very clever indeed,' said the voice, 'if I may make so bold.'

  'Shank?'

  'There is such a word,' Isoud said defensively.

  'Yes,' Guy replied, 'but you can't see it.'

  'Yes I can.'

  'Then you must have bloody good eyesight,' Guy snapped, 'because the shank is part of the works, ergo it's inside the lock, ergo you couldn't see it from here even if it wasn't as dark as a bag in here, which it is. I win.'

  'Be like that, then.'

  'Actually ...' said the voice, and then became aware, no doubt by some form of low-level telepathy, that he was being glowered at by both parties. 'Sorry,' he said, and went back to plaiting spiders' webs.

  'My go,' said Guy firmly.

  'It's not,' Isoud said, 'you cheated.'

  'I did not cheat,' Guy said. 'A shank is part of the works of a lock, ask anybody. If you like, I'll call the warder. He should know about locks if anybody does.'

  'I'm not playing with you any more.

  'Good.'

  A rat nuzzled affectionately up to Guy's hand and was both shocked and profoundly disillusioned when the hand tried to swat him. He retreated into a distant part of the cell and, since rodents can't cry, started to gnaw at a splinter of wood.

  'Of course,' Guy said suddenly, 'it could be that we've been missing something important here.

  'Oh yes?' said the voice eagerly. 'Do tell.'

  Guy reached inside his jacket and felt for something. To his great relief it was still there. 'All we have to do in order to get out of here,' he said, 'is to open the door, right?'

  'That would help, certainly,' the voice agreed. 'But, and far be it from me to play devil's advocate or anything, isn't that going to be

  'Not,' Guy said, 'if I shoot the lock off.'

  'Gosh!' The voice sounded impressed. 'Can you do that?' it asked.

  Guy drew his revolver and screwed up his eyes. There was just enough light to see that it was
loaded. 'Don't see why not,' he said. 'Stay well back, everyone.'

  He advanced to the door, felt for the lock, placed the muzzle next to it, and fired. The noise, which was ear-splitting in the confines of the cell, slowly died away. From the other side of the door came the sound of someone saying, 'Look, do you mind?' in a querulous tone. Guy tried the door. It was solid. There was a bullet-hole clean through the wood about an inch above the lockplate.

  The peephole in the door slid back, filling the cell (or so it seemed) with a beam of blinding light.

  'See that?' said the warder.

  'Pardon?'

  'That's a brand new hat, that is,' the warder went on. 'And now look at it.'

  Guy blushed. 'Sorry,' he said.

  'Bloke can't pull up a chair and take forty winks in this place without getting holes in his hat,' the warder grumbled. 'What's the world coming to, that's what I want to know.'

  'It was an accident,' Guy said. 'Honest.'

  'Oh yes?' The warder didn't sound impressed.

  'It was,' Guy insisted. 'I was trying to, er, shoot off the lock, and I must have ...' He closed his eyes and tried to swallow the shame. 'Missed.'

  There was a long silence.

  'Missed.'

  'Must have.'

  'I see.'

  'Good.'

  'I was,' the warder went on, 'going to come in there and take that thing off you as an offensive weapon. Still, seeing as how you can't even hit a lock, I don't think I'll bother.' The peephole cover slid back, flooding the cell with darkness, and Guy put his revolver back in its holster. More than anything else in the world, he realised, he hated hats.

  Blondel opened his eyes and looked round. To his relief, he found that he wasn't there any more.

  Lying next to him, however, were a large number of recumbent bodies; about thirty of them. They looked as if they'd been in a fight.

  One of them groaned and lifted its head slightly. The effort proved too great, however, and it sagged back.

  'Hello,' Blondel said, 'what happened to you?'

  The soldier looked up and instinctively reached for something at his side. Blondel put his foot on it and smiled.

  'Not now,' he said. 'What happened?'

  'It was those other blokes,' the soldier said.

  'What other blokes?'

  'The ones who came down the corridor a few minutes after we got here,' the soldier replied. 'We were just about to take you into custody when they got here and started arguing the toss. Said it was their collar and why didn't we back off. Well, we weren't standing for that. There's a reward.'

  'Oh yes?'

  'Too right.' The soldier grinned. 'We showed them all right,' he said, and fainted.

  Blondel sighed. It was at times like this that he wondered why he bothered. He had this strong suspicion that all he really had to do was wait quietly and everybody would beat the springs out of everybody else without him having to lift a finger.

  He stood up and counted the bodies. It came to an odd number. Not so good.

  In the distance, he could hear the sound of running feet.

  'Listen,' he said out loud, and pointed towards the direction the sound was coming from. 'You go that way, right?' Then he picked up his feet and ran the other way.

  He hadn't gone far when he stopped. Not voluntarily; there was this door in the way.

  Blondel picked himself up off the ground, rubbed his nose and looked at the door warily. Something told him that whatever there was on the other side wasn't going to be friendly. It had that sort of look about it.

  Behind him he could hear footsteps, getting closer. They sounded like the footsteps of heavily armed men who have just had a fight with themselves and are dying to vent their embarrassment on an unarmed and vulnerable third party.

  On the other hand, it was perhaps the least prepossessing door he'd ever seen, in quite possibly a uniquely wide experience of the subject. Not only did it have the words No Entry written on it, but also the word Honestly.

  Behind him, Blondel could hear voices. They seemed to be discussing, in a breathless but enthusiastic way, who was going to have the privilege of mutilating which part of him.

  When is a door not a door?

  When it's a jar.

  Obviously.

  '... Which, together with a balanced portfolio of Beaumont Street Gilt and Fixed Income Trust units and a modest cash balance in, say, the Beaumont Equitable Building Society, provides for maximum income potential without undue prejudice to long-term capital growth. What do you say?'

  'No.'

  Giovanni sighed. It was cold down here in the cellars and he was getting cramp. On the other hand, he enjoyed a challenge. 'Fair enough,' he said. 'How about putting the bulk of the capital sum into Carribeanis 9 1/2 % Convertible Treasury Stock, and investing the balance in something like, oh, I don't know, Second Crusade 31/2 % Loan Stock 1192? Now you can't say fairer than that. Safe as the Bank of England, that is.' He remembered the investment package he'd worked out for the Chancellor of the Exchequer back in 2343. 'Safer,' he added firmly.

  'No.'

  'It so happens,' he said, 'I know of this horse running in the 2.15 at Doncaster. When I say running, what I really mean is ran, of course...

  'No.'

  There are times when even the most persistent financial adviser has to call it a day. 'Ah well,' he said, 'it's entirely up to you, naturally. If you don't want to provide for your old age ...'

  'Talk sense,' the Antichrist replied.

  It was raining. It was coming down in bucketfuls and nobody had invented the umbrella yet. Mountjoy, who generally insisted on dressing in period ('When in the Renaissance, do as the Renaissancers do') looked out from under the soggy top edge of his cowl and blew a raindrop off the end of his nose.

  'He's late,' he said, 'With respect, sir.'

  Slowly, the Anti-Chaplain turned his head and scowled at his chief henchman. Acting Chief Henchman; he'd asked for White Herald, but apparently Maintenance were all out of 63B knee joints.

  'You said something?'

  'Yes, sir,' Clarenceaux replied. 'With respect, sir, given that we are presently in a temporal anomaly, with respect, urn, how can he be late, sir? I mean...'

  Mountjoy let him tail off without interrupting. He felt it would be more humiliating. 'Have you quite finished?'

  'Sir.'

  'Then shut up.

  Clarenceaux mouthed the word Sir and continued to stand to attention. After all, he said to himself, I may be the lowest form of life and completely unintelligent and little better than a robot, but at least I've got the sense to wear oilskins.

  Mountjoy was just beginning to suspect that this was some sort of practical joke when a small figure appeared on the opposite side of the bridge. He was carrying an umbrella. Typical.

  'Sorry to have kept you,' Blondel sang out as he approached, splashing through the puddles in his green wellington boots. 'I got held up on the way here.' He turned his head and nodded to the castle on the other side of the river. 'Not there, of course, but the castellan turned out to be a fan and they insisted I stay for a glass of mead. One does like to be polite, you know.'

  Mountjoy glowed peevishly, evaporating a pint or so of rain out of his cowl. 'It doesn't matter,' he replied, 'you're here now.'

  'So I am, yes,' Blondel said. 'Look, do you think we could just step in out of the wet somewhere? This is my sister's umbrella, and it's a bit small for me.'

  They found a degree of shelter under a small tree, and Blondel put the umbrella down. It was a sort of beigy-fawn colour with rather restrained black patterns, Mountjoy noticed. So that was what women went in for. One of these days, it might be quite intriguing to meet one. Or maybe not. He flickered in the cold, and cleared his throat.

  'Right,' he said, 'let's get down to business, shall we?'

  'With pleasure,' Blondel opened the flap of the small leather satchel he was carrying round his neck and produced a tape recorder. 'You don't mind if I take notes, do you
?' he said. 'I find my memory isn't what it was these days.'

  'Please yourself,' Mountjoy replied frostily. 'I had assumed that we could trust one another, but -'

  'I know,' Blondel replied. 'Wretched, isn't it? Actually, it wasn't my idea, it was my agent's. There's a born negotiator for you. Spent the last few days trying to sell your boss life insurance.

  Mountjoy looked down his nose. 'Unsuccessfully, I assume.'

  Blondel grinned. 'Not entirely,' he replied. 'Didn't manage to kid him into taking out any life cover, but he did manage to interest him in an accident policy. He's now fully covered in the event of loss of limb.'

  That, Mountjoy decided, was enough small talk. It was time to show his hand.

  'It might interest you to know,' he said, wiping rain out of his eyes with the heel of his hand, 'that we have some guests staying at the Chastel at the moment.'

  'Oh yes.'

  'Friends of yours,' Mountjoy said. 'Or rather, one friend and one relative.' He smiled stroboscopically (a neat trick, if you manage it. Being two-faced, like Mountjoy, does of course help).

  If Blondel was disconcerted for a moment, he recovered quickly. Someone who can teach themselves tightrope walking at the first attempt shouldn't have any problem with mere mental agility.

  'Oh,' he said, 'you mean that Goodlet chap and my sister Isoud. Perhaps I ought to warn you that unless Isoud has a cup of tea first thing after waking up she's about as sociable as a puma. Or have you found that out already?'

  'La Beale Isoud,' Mountjoy replied, 'has the sense to realise that she has more pressing things to worry about than where her next cup of tea is coming from.'

  'Are you sure we're talking about the same person?' Blondel said. 'About this height, sort of mousy blond, keen on carbohydrate-rich foodstuffs?'

  Mountjoy ignored him. 'I am told,' he went on, 'that they have already made one fumbling attempt at escape, which naturally ended in failure. You may be sure that they won't be in a hurry to try again.

  A gentleman, Blondel's mother had always insisted, is unfailingly polite at all times, even when being lowered into a pit full of scorpions by black-hearted and incorrectly dressed Infidels. He shrugged slightly.