“Charlie,” whispered Gramps, who was looking down at the floor of the church. Charlie tore his gaze away from Sir Geoffrey’s face and walked around to where Gramps was standing. He saw that there was a gravestone set into the floor. The words carved into the stone had nearly been completely erased by the countless pairs of feet that had walked over them but Charlie could still read them:
“Under thys stone layeth ye mortal remanes of
Layde Gwendolynne Handewell
Of the Manor of Bagshotte
Loved true by all persons who knewest her
MY HEART PAINETH
MY STRENGTH FAILETH ME
AS FOR YE LIGHT OF MINE EYES
IT ALSO IS GONE FROM ME
Taken unto the Lord
Ye fyfth Daye of Auguste in the year AD 1187”
They spent some time lost in their thoughts and then left the church. Charlie dried his eyes and Gramps suggested that they drive home. Charlie agreed.
The first day back at Cuttleworth, after the summer break, was the usual cacophony of sound and riot of colour. A jumble of frightened and apprehensive new pupils looking bewildered and the newly crowned year elevens swaggering around, flouting their freshly acquired senior status. In between were all the other years. For them it was the same situation, just a different month. Charlie was waiting at the school gates when Emma and Jerry appeared.
“Charlie!” they both cried out and ran over to him. Jerry and Charlie shook hands vigorously and Emma gave Charlie a kiss on the cheek. He didn’t try to dodge it like he used to. Both Jerry and Emma noticed the same thing; Charlie looked somehow older, perhaps a little taller and somehow, altogether more adult. Neither commented because the effect was so indefinable. They started the walk up to the school together.
“How was your summer with your grandfather, Charlie?” asked Jerry.
“Pretty adventurous, Jerry,” said Charlie. “I’ll tell you all about it one day. In the meantime….”
“WATTS! YOU GEEK!” The sound of Mick Clarke’s voice cannoned out from behind them. They turned at once and there he was, perhaps even a bit bigger, if possible, than when Charlie last saw him. There were the ever-present henchmen flanking him on either side.
“Give me your dinner money, Watts. Let’s kick off the new term as we mean to go on, eh?” Mick laughed and his cronies laughed with him. A crowd had started to gather, not believing their luck to see some action on the very first morning of the new term.
“Oh damn it, not so soon,” sighed Jerry. “Some things never change. Come on Charlie, ignore him.”
Emma tried to pull him by the arm but she couldn’t move him an inch. Charlie was set like marble. He stared back at Mick Clarke, his face
not betraying a single flicker of emotion. Mick Clark’s expression changed imperceptibly at Charlie’s complete lack of concern. He seemed not to care. Mick was used to other kids being frightened, not unconcerned.
“D’ ya hear what I said, Watts?” he sneered again.
Charlie finally spoke, “Yes, I did Mick. If you want my dinner money, you are going to have to come over here and take it from me.” He let his backpack drop to the floor and readied himself.
A murmur of anticipation ran around the audience; this was better than they dared hope for, someone actually putting up a fight. Some of the new pupils were watching in utter fascination.
Mick didn’t hesitate for a heartbeat. He charged Charlie at full speed but Charlie simply stepped to one side and put out his foot. The lumbering ox of a boy tripped. Mick went crashing to the ground like a felled tree and Charlie just stood watching him. Mick was beside himself with rage and got up and charged at Charlie again. This time Charlie did not move a muscle as Mick approached and took a swing at him. At the last moment Charlie ducked smoothly under the blow and then drove his fist into Mick’s stomach. The bully doubled over, expelling the air from his lungs and clearly in pain. Charlie smashed his balled fist into the back of Mick’s neck. Mick fell to the ground and curled up in a ball. Curiously, he fell on exactly the same spot on which he had made Charlie throw up when he had punched him in the stomach last term.
Jerry and Emma stared open-mouthed at Charlie and there was a stunned silence from the other pupils who had been looking on. Dibben and Jennings swapped matching looks of incredulity and then silently dissolved into the crowd.
Charlie looked at Mick Clarke, on the floor, and then turned his back on the bully and walked towards the school again with his best friends, Jerry and Emma. Compared to Longhaired Nick-Mick Clarke was an amateur.
Charlie allowed himself the smallest, private, smile of satisfaction.
Jerry’s chest was puffed right out.
Emma just loved him even more.
Appendix One
Some of the Principal Natural Laws of Temporal Shift and Portal Usage*
• You cannot travel to the future. The future has not happened and is in a state of evolving flux; therefore there is no defined place to which you could travel.
• You cannot travel to a time in your own past. Natural law does not allow there to be two versions of the same person in existence at the same time.
• Paradoxes do not exist. Nature creates Closed Loop Events, which means, if you are present in the past-you were always present in the past. Natural law also prevents, by Conspired Circumstance, the emergence of a personal timeline conflict event (a TCE).
• A portal cannot exist in solid matter; therefore you will always enter the past in clear space.
• Although the exit point of a portal is usually different geographically from the point of entry, your return from the past will be to your exact geographical point of departure.
• Portals compensate, naturally, for planetary positioning and topographic change. This is known as ppT shift.
Appendix Two
The Portal Prime Locations
The Northern Portals
First Portal-Italy
Second Portal-United States
Third Portal-Russia
Fourth Portal-England
Fifth Portal-Finland
Sixth Portal-Finland
Seventh Portal-Germany
The southern Portals
Eighth Portal-South Africa
Ninth Portal-Australia
Tenth Portal-Chile
Eleventh Portal-Australia
Twelfth Portal-Easter Islands
Thirteenth Portal-India
Fourteenth Portal-New Zealand
Fifteenth Portal-Antarctic
Appendix Three
C/I-TaD-ELS XII
Cause/Initiation-Time and Dimension-Event Locating System.
Model 12.
Known by users as the acronym: Citadel
Some brief passages from the Time Line Commission technical report: 12/12/03
“A strange and unexplained phenomenon connected to the use of a time portal is that, when a traveller passes through, any mechanical or electronic device (such as a digital watch) will reset itself to display both the correct time and date for the new location. This happens even if the device in question does not have the date stored in its memory.”
“The discovery of this seemingly impossible influence over mechanical and electronic instruments led to the development of the Citadel system. This is a handheld device, similar in looks to a handheld computer but containing a hugely more powerful database that can be preloaded by the traveller with information pertaining to the time and location to which they intend to travel. The Historical Event Database can predict non-conformance with known events due to timeline interference. Although, occasionally, history is not recorded accurately; this can also lead to a non-eventuality warning…”
“Although the fixing of date and time is addressed by t
he Portal Adjustment
Properties that automatically adjust electronic date keeping devices; the
geographical location positioning (best estimate) is decided by:
Traveller’s estimate of location
sun and star position
Topographic reference
Known landmarks (natural or manmade)”
ENDNOTES
*Extracted from “The Time Line Commission-Guardian’s Charter Book”
Charlie Watts and the Rip in Time Page 25
