Overtime Tom Holt

by Overtime (lit)

  Then the film stuck, as if a huge hair had got itself jammed in the gate of Time; and, as always seems to happen, the film seems to crackle, and little wisps of smoke

  'Satisfied?'

  'All right,' said a muffled voice from inside the rubber castle, 'there's no need to make a bloody great performance about it.'

  'Come out, then.'

  The rubber castle stirred uneasily. One of the small children who had been bouncing about on it a few minutes before dropped its ice cream and started to yell.

  'Can't we talk about this like sensible adults?'

  'No.'

  'How about arbitration?'

  'No.'

  'Toss you for it?'

  'No.'

  The castle writhed a little, like a dyspeptic python. 'Best of three?' it said hopefully. 'Use your own coin?'

  'No.'

  'Look, there really isn't anything personal, it's just...'

  King Richard raised his sword again and pointed at the ground in front of him. He was smiling, but his smile had about as much to do with joviality and bonhomie as a cap pistol with a Howitzer.

  'You wouldn't,' said the castle, shaking like a crenulated jelly.

  'Watch.'

  'But opening the Archives ... You haven't got the faintest idea ... Thousands of years ... They just won't fit...'

  King Richard raised the sword in both hands, whirled it round his head, and brought it down in a flashing circle of light that seemed to cut a section out of the sky. A fraction of a second before it hit the ground, he checked the stroke and wobbled furiously. The castle unhuddled itself.

  'Very funny,' it said, and its voice was on the thin edge of hysteria. 'Knew you wouldn't have the ... No!'

  The sword rose.

  'All right!'

  And where the rubber castle had been, there stood a gateway, and behind it, mile upon mile of winding battlements and cloud-topped watchtowers and sun-spearing keeps and mottes and baileys and ...

  And the gate was open.

  Something fell from nowhere and landed at Richard's feet. It was a small, brass Yale key, attached to a scruffy rectangle of cardboard by a broken rubber band. On the cardboard someone had written, Chastel des Larmes Chaudes. If nobody in, leave with Number 47.

  Guy stood up and looked around.

  About forty yards behind him lay the burnt-out wreckage of his plane. Somehow, he realised, he had got out of that thing before it blew up. Pretty impressive; shame he hadn't the faintest idea how he'd done it.

  Nor, he realised, had he very much idea where he was. France, presumably; which meant his troubles weren't over yet. It would probably be a good idea to run somewhere.

  'M'sieur!'

  He looked round, feeling more foolish than anything else. 'Hello?' he said.

  'M'sieur!' the voice hissed again. 'Allez! Allez vite!'

  Ah yes, you (plural) go fast. Just what I was thinking, miss. Where, though?

  The owner of the voice appeared out of the darkness, and Guy allowed himself to relax slightly. Not likely that the Germans were recruiting seventeen-year-old French girls into the SS. More likely, this was a friendly native.

  'Hello?' he said. 'I think ... I think I've banged my head.'

  The girl scuttled forward, grabbed him by the arm and dragged him behind a bush. Ambiguous, Guy said to himself; but she's probably hiding me from a German patrol. Ah yes, there they go. Let's not say anything for a minute or so, until they go away.

  When they had gone, the girl hauled him to his feet again -just when he was getting comfortable, but that's women for you - and bundled him off into a sort of small wood. He followed her, trying to trip over as little as possible, until they came to a little cottage. There was a light in the window. The girl stooped down, picked up a small stone, and threw it against the pane.

  'Here,' Guy said, 'don't do that, you could break something -'

  'Tais-toi, idiot,' the girl hissed (a high-class hisser, this one; of course, French is a much more sibilant language than ...

  The light went out, and the door opened. Probably the householder, come to give us a piece of his mind.

  'Isoud,' came a low voice from the darkness, 'c'est toi?'

  'Si. On arrive.'

  Guy felt himself being dragged towards the cottage. A young man appeared and grabbed his other arm. Tall chap, light blond hair, moustache.

  The young man closed the cottage door and the girl pulled down the blinds. 'Etes-vous blessé, m'sieur?' the young man said - are you (plural) wounded, sir? Oh I see, am I all right?

  'I'm fine,' Guy replied. 'I think I may have banged my head ...' Then he fell asleep.

  When he woke up, he discovered that the girl's name was Isoud and her brother was Jean, and they were with the Resistance. Nice girl, too. Reminded him of someone, too, but for the life of him he couldn't remember ...

  Out of the gate had ridden an army.

  There were knights, and squires, and men at arms, landschnechts, halberdiers, bombardiers, longbow men, crossbowmen, arquebusiers and, somewhere near the back, Pursuivant, Clarenceaux, Mordaunt and White Herald, with their eyes tightly shut. In any military force, there are always a select of body of men whose job it is in the event of an ambush to clutch their sides, scream convincingly and fall off their horses. It's a lousy job, but somebody's got to do it. Poor bloody henchmen.

  At the head of the army rode a figure in half a suit of shining, night-black armour. The way in which he stayed on the horse is best left to the imagination.

  The procession halted, and two trumpeters cantered ahead to blow the parley. A rather bemused sun glinted off ten thousand jet-black spearpoints. Behind the Antichrist's shoulder, two identical figures sat impassively in their saddles and looked down. By this stage, the only way they could stay materialised simultaneously was to sit absolutely still and breathe once every ten minutes.

  'Well now,' said the Antichrist, 'here we all are, then.'

  Richard (who had acquired some pretty impressive armour of his own from somewhere; probably a while-you-wait armourer caught up in the gales of time) lifted his visor and smiled.

  'Yes indeed,' the Antichrist went on, 'you with your victorious hordes.' He counted on his fingers; he had enough. 'Me with my ten thousand defeated but still quite highly motivated spectral warriors. Bit of a turn-up, don't you think?'

  Richard continued smiling and saying nothing.

  'Nice firework display,' the Antichrist continued. 'Looks like you rolled back - what - eight, nine hundred years there. Neat trick. And now you've won.'

  Richard nodded. 'Apparently,' he said.

  'So?'

  'So what?'

  The Antichrist grinned. 'So what exactly is it you want?'

  There was a long, significant silence. Nature waited. Time listened.

  'Um,' said Richard.

  The Antichrist leaned forward in his saddle. Cautiously.

  'Sorry,' he said, 'didn't quite catch that. Bit deaf on this side, to tell you the truth. What was it again?'

  King Richard suddenly found the toe of his chain-mail socks very interesting. The Antichrist raised an eyebrow.

  'I mean,' he went on, 'you must have had a bloody good reason, mustn't you? Winding back eight hundred years, threatening to open up the Archives, bringing the Chastel des Larmes Chaudes to its knees. Or rather knee. So, just give us the word and we'll get on with it.' He paused. 'Whatever it is.'

  Something complicated seemed to be going on in the King's mind.

  'If you'll bear with me a tick,' he said, apparently to his sock, 'I just want to, um, talk things through with my advisers. Get things straight in my own mind, you know.'

  'That's fine,' the Antichrist replied. 'All the time in the world.'

  Richard took two steps back and pulled Blondel and Guy into a huddle. The Galeazzos drifted up, like iron filings to a magnet.

  'Quick,' Richard hissed sideways under the noseguard of his helmet. 'Think of something.'

  'Sorry?'


  'Something to ask for,' Richard whispered. 'Demands. That sort of thing. Quickly.'

  There was a deathly hush.

  'How about,' Guy started to say, 'No, that'd be...'

  Five anxious voices assured him that it was fine. They really wanted to hear from him. This administration accorded the very highest value to the voice of public opinion.

  A moment later, Richard stepped forward.

  'Ready?' said the Antichrist.

  'Yes,' Richard said, looking round over his shoulder. 'In just a ... Yes. Ready.'

  'Well?'

  'We demand-and we won't take no for an answer.'

  'Yes?'

  'Sorry?'

  'You were demanding something.

  'Oh yes, that's right. We insist that you, er...'

  'Yes?'

  'Do something about the way it gets dark so early in December,' Richard said. His visor had fallen down over his nose, muffling his voice. He didn't see in a hurry to do anything about it.

  The Antichrist blinked. 'Granted,' he said.

  'I mean,' Richard mumbled, 'it's a disgrace.'

  'Agreed,' the Antichrist said. 'So what shall we do?'

  'Sorry?'

  'About the long winter evenings,' the Antichrist said patiently, and with malice. 'I mean, do you want more sun in winter, which will bugger up the crop cycles but never mind, or less daylight in summer, which'll -'

  'Surely that's your problem,' Richard muttered quickly. 'Just do something about it, all right?'

  'Fine.'

  'Right, then.'

  The Antichrist leaned further forward still, until his ribs were almost on his horse's ears. 'That's it, then, is it?' he said. 'Shorter winter evenings. All this was about shorter winter evenings?'

  Giovanni pushed his way forward. 'Go on,' he said, nudging Richard hard in the ribs, 'tell him. Tell him about the calendar reforms.'

  'Ah yes,' Richard said, with a strange edge to his voice. 'I was, um, forgetting. You tell him,' he said desperately.

  'We demand,' Giovanni said, doing his best to speak with a palate apparently composed of leather, 'that something is done about the calendar. I mean, it's a disgrace.'

  'Absolutely,' Richard boomed through his visor. 'A scandal.'

  'Infamous,' said Blondel. 'Outrageous.

  'And we won't stand for it.' 'You can say that again.'

  'We won't -'

  'Shut up.'

  'Sorry.'

  'Is it now?' the Antichrist said. 'Do tell me all about it.'

  'I mean,' Giovanni went on, giving the impression that somebody had wound his tongue up with a large metal key, 'you've got some of your months thirty days long, some of them twenty-eight, some of them thirty-one. Just think of the havoc it plays with watches.'

  'Watches?'

  'You heard me,' Giovanni snapped. 'Calendar watches. How the hell is a poor dumb machine supposed to know which months have twenty-eight days and which ones have -'And there's leap years,' Blondel added loyally. 'Somebody's bright idea, I suppose.' He tried to find a bitter twang in his vocal repertoire, and failed.

  'Right, then,' said the Antichrist. 'Winter evenings shorter, reform the calendar. No problem there, I mean, they might have a bit of trouble fiddling the moon's orbit, but let nobody say we're not ready to give it a go. Are you sure there wasn't something else? Something,' he hissed viciously, 'almost equally important?'

  'Um,' Richard said.

  'I mean,' the Antichrist rasped unpleasantly, 'otherwise I think that when you come to explain all this' - and he waved his hand at the horizon - 'to the Boss and say it was all to get the calendar sorted out and tack an extra hour on before lighting up time in December, He might get just a bit aerated, don't you?'

  As if on cue, the sky darkened. Clouds knitted together like huge eyebrows. The Antichrist's grin widened, until it stretched from ear to... to ...

  'I mean,' he said, 'Somebody Up There might take a less than tolerant view. Words like irresponsible and troublemaker might be used, don't you

  SHUT UP

  'Who said that?' Guy asked. Nobody could accuse him, he felt, of taking his duties lightly.

  I DID, YOU CLOWN.

  'How did you all manage to say that without moving your -AND AS FOR YOU, YOU CAN TAKE THAT GRIN OFF YOUR FACE.

  The Antichrist looked straight up at the sky and wilted. Then he slid down the side of his horse like an oily raindrop.

  THROWING YOUR WEIGHT ABOUT LIKE THAT,

  YOU OUGHT TO BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELF. NOW, IF YOU'VE ALL QUITE FINISHED MUCKING ABOUT, LET'S GET THIS MESS CLEARED UP AND WE'LL SAY NO MORE ABOUT IT

  'But,' the Antichrist said, and then clung frantically to the patch of air his horse had occupied before the lightning hit it. That, it occurred to him, was a hint. Bloody good hint, too.

  Guy leaned over and whispered in Giovanni s ear. 'Is this what they call a deus ex machina?' he said.

  'I wouldn't,' Giovanni whispered back, 'not if I were you.'

  'All right, don't tell me, then,' Guy said. 'And you can all work it out for yourselves for all I care.'

  The clouds swirled. A patch of cumulonimbus raised itself.

  'And that,' Guy shouted, 'goes for you too.'

  Suddenly he was alone. It wasn't another temporal shift or anything like that; it was just that everybody had suddenly realised how sensible it would be to be somewhere else.

  WHAT DID YOU SAY?

  'I'm fed up,' Guy yelled, 'and I want to go home. Nobody ever tells me anything.'

  There was a long silence. A small thorn bush a few yards to Guy's left started to smoulder quietly.

  DON'T THEY?

  'No,' Guy said, 'and I'm not standing for it any longer, understood?' He raised his fist in a gesture of defiance, realised how silly he looked, and lowered it. 'If you were wearing a hat ...' he wailed.

  ALL RIGHT

  'Sorry?'

  I SAID ALL RIGHT. YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT'S GOING ON AND I'M GOING TO TELL YOU, READY?

  'Well, yes,' Guy said. 'Um...'

  IN THE BEGINNING ...

  'He's asleep,' said Blondel.

  'Good,' Isoud replied, pounding the boiled potatoes with a wooden spoon and a great deal of force. 'Did you really have to hit him like that?'

  'If he thinks he's got concussion -'

  'He has got concussion.'

  'Let me rephrase that,' Blondel poured himself a drink and held it up to the light. 'If he thinks he got concussion getting out of the plane, he won't be surprised at not being able to remember anything. Best way,' he added. 'Sante'.

  Isoud added a drop of milk to the potatoes. 'You know,' she said, 'he seems much nicer than he did.'

  'That's just because he's incoherent with concussion,' Blondel replied. 'I've noticed, you women tend to go for the concussed type. Brings out the nursing instincts, I suppose. Can I get you one, sir?' he said, turning to the man sitting in the shadows in the corner of the room.

  'Thanks awfully,' said the man, 'but not for me. Well then, that just about wraps it up for now, then, don't you think?'

  'More or less,' Blondel replied. 'Thanks ever so much for dropping us off here, by the way. It'll make things much easier for Isoud and Guy.'

  'Don't mention it,' Richard replied. 'They've got their own lives to lead, after all.' Richard shrugged and grinned. 'Not like us.

  'Right,' said Guy. 'Thanks.'

  YOU GET THE GENERAL IDEA, ANYWAY?

  Guy rubbed his eyes. 'More or less,' he said. 'Only...'

  MMM?

  'That bit with the whale,' Guy said doubtfully. 'I mean, I've often wondered about that. You see, I always understood that whales couldn't swallow people, because of all this sort of mesh stuff they've got in their throats, so how come ..

  IT'S A... THING.

  'Thing?'

  BEGINS WITH M. METRONOME, NO, METAPHOR. IT'S A METAPHOR.

  'Oh,' Guy reflected for a moment. 'And that's allowed, is it?'

  OH YES. PERFECTLY LEGITIMATE DEVICE, METAPHO
R.

  'Great,' Guy said. 'I didn't mean to imply...'

  WHICH WOULD YOU RATHER LISTEN TO, ANYWAY, A NICE STORY WITH A HAPPY ENDING AND A STRONG WILDLIFE ELEMENT, OR THREE HOURS OF TECHNICAL METAPHYSICAL JARGON FULL OF WORDS LIKE COUNTER-INTUITIVE AND NEO-TRANSUBSTANTIATION? SOME PEOPLE DON'T KNOW THEY'RE BORN.

  'Thank you,' Guy said. If in doubt, his mother had told him, just say thank you. People will understand. 'Er...'

  NOW WHAT?

  'Sorry,' Guy said, 'and really, I don't mean any disrespect or anything like that, it's just ...'

  BEFORE YOU ASK, IT'S ANOTHER METAPHOR.

  'What is?'

  STANDS TO REASON, REALLY. EVEN IF YOU COULD HAVE A TOWER THAT HIGH, THEY MUST HAVE HAD SOME WAY OF TALKING TO EACH OTHER, OR ELSE HOW DID IT GET BUILT IN THE FIRST PLACE? JUST THINK ABOUT IT, WILL YOU? YOU'D HAVE HAD ONE LOT DIGGING OUT THE FOOTINGS ON ONE SIDE AND ANOTHER LOT-

  'No,' said Guy, 'actually it wasn't that so much as...'

  OH. LOT'S WIFE, MAYBE?

  'No,' said Guy, 'not Lot's wife.'

  Silence.

  SO YOU ACTUALLY BELIEVE ALL THAT STUFF ABOUT -

  'Yes. What I was going to ask was ... um ...' Guy nerved himself. It wasn't nearly as hard as he'd imagined. 'You're not Him, are you?'

  There was a slight rustling sound as something shuffled about in the burning bush. 'How did you guess?' it said.

  It turned out to be a little white gnome with no hair and singed eyebrows, which clambered out, dusted itself off and extended a sooty hand.

  'Melroth the Pole-Star,' it said. 'Pleased to meet you. Now you know,' it added, 'why angels always wear white. Asbestos.' It coughed.

  'I hope you aren't offended,' Guy said.

  'Not a bit,' Melroth replied, 'only too glad to get out of that thing.' The thorn bush collapsed in a cloud of white ash. 'Now then, where were we?'

  'Um,' said Guy, 'you do have ... I mean, I can take it you're fully authorised to...'

  Melroth stared at him for a moment and then winced slightly. 'Sorry,' he said, 'memory like a sieve. My identification.' He showed a small plastic square with a blurred photograph half obscured by a red ink stamp. That alone was enough to convince Guy that it was genuine.

  'He couldn't come himself, you see,' Melroth was saying. 'I know He's supposed to, but it just doesn't work like that. I mean, He can't be everywhere, can He? Well, He can, of course, but -'