Yet here was this man, creating a scene, right in front of the Mona Lisa. And there was the Countess, watching him over the pages of her newspaper. The Countess. He never saw her in the same outfit twice. Every one fitted her perfectly. Every one showed off her style, and her beauty. Her thin, graceful figure flowed and wafted in summer and strode crisply through winter. She was watching him now. He returned her look, trying to work it out. That idiot had to be something to do with her. Unless, well, two options presented themselves. One was a rival operation, queering her pitch. Duggan quite liked that. The other, worrying notion, was that another agency was on the trail of the Countess. But who? He felt quite defensive about that, almost protective of her. She flashed him one of her rare smiles and got up to go. As she went, the ageing schoolgirl shuddered with embarrassment at the antics of the man in the scarf. Or was it a signal? Involuntarily, Duggan’s hand slid to the handle of his gun as he
THING ONE
‘Excuse me, m’sieur, could you move along? Other people wish to enjoy the painting.’
Startled, the Doctor spun round and carried on spinning.
Madame Henriette had entered the room and seen him there, blocking the view of the painting. Mustering her tiny, birdlike frame, she’d reached forward and tapped him, just tapped him, lightly on the shoulder, but this seemed to send him reeling across the gallery. She caught a mere flash of his eyes, but that would stay with her for ever. Glaring at her with confusion and horror.
The schoolgirl with him had her hand to her forehead, wincing with pain. She was trying to reach out to the man, but there was no stopping him. He toppled against the flowing skirts of a woman as she got up from her bench. She cried out with surprise and fury as the man fell to her feet.
‘Sorry madam, so terribly sorry,’ the ill man bleated dazedly.
Startled, the woman seemed about to say something in reply, but then, much to Madame Henriette’s confusion, another man entirely, the Rosbif who could do with everything he owned washing, stepped forward to help.
‘Come on, stand back everyone.’ Ah, she thought, there was no mistaking that tone. A flic.
The policeman picked up the stricken man casually with one arm, helping him to his feet. As he did so, the man collided with something in the policeman’s terrible raincoat and let out a gasp.
‘Are you all right?’ the policeman asked tersely.
Rubbing his head, the injured man nodded weakly. ‘Yes thank you. Just dented my head on the handle of your gun, that’s all.’
The policeman cursed under his breath. The schoolgirl grimaced. The glamorous woman floated from the room, nodding to . . . well, Madame Henriette guessed it was a bodyguard. He followed her out. There was an air of menace in the room. Oh dear, this was most unfortunate. She looked over to her crowd of deluxe and select tourists. Commotion and the mention of the word ‘gun’ had brought out the cameras. Illicit flashbulbs popped, twisting the policeman’s face into a fury. Claude, the security guard was moving forward, pushing the crowd to one side, vainly trying to stop them taking pictures. They simply took more of Claude. One of her party then noticed his Polaroid camera was missing and kicked up an awful fuss.
‘Oh, my dears,’ Madame Henriette later confided to her cats, ‘it was all so frightful.’
* * *
Sat miserably on the floor, rubbing his head and wishing the whole world would make its mind up what it was going to do, the Doctor groaned.
Romana leaned over him. ‘Are you all right?’
The Doctor gave no reply.
She spoke rapidly to the ox-like man in the raincoat. ‘Take no notice of him. He’s just having one of his funny turns.’
The Doctor groaned again. ‘Funny turn? The whole world took a funny turn.’
* * *
One day, Professor Kerensky was planning on writing a withering monograph on the relationship between science and money. When he was rich, of course.
Up until now, time had been the only dimension that had evaded the relentless march of progress. In other words, someone with money turning up and flinging cash at it. Without cash, the dimensions were egalitarian to a fault. Queen or kitchen maid, your progress through them was at a fairly steady rate. The advent of the horse had changed all that. Suddenly, simply by buying one, you could travel quite rapidly through rather more dimensions than you had perhaps intended. There was a reason why the horse was still used as a measure of speed. It was the first way that the rich had invented of cheating.
Cash had proved to be quite the best way to progress through a dimension in rapid comfort. If you were rich you could leap onto Concorde and arrive in New York with barely a chance to breathe in your champagne. If you had less money your options were more limited, irksome, and tiresomely lacking in champagne.
Time was the only dimension that had proved impervious to horses. Up until now, science had only allowed you to measure it. Money could get you to your destination faster and with a better pillow, but it could not alter the speed at which you travelled forward through the dimension of time. Nor could it increase the amount of time you had. Rich men, suddenly perceiving a lack of days remaining to dance around their money, threw frantic amounts of it at time, but time ignored them. Rich or poor, everyone travelled through time at a walking pace and in only one direction. In any other dimension, you could lose your keys and go back and do something about it. Time just moved you resolutely further away from your keys.
The best that science had managed so far was to come up with some very expensive ways of measuring time. Your wrist could tell you, with ruthless Swiss efficiency, how far away you were from your keys, but could do absolutely nothing about your terrible lack of keys.
Until Count Scarlioni had entered the life of Professor Kerensky, that was. For all Kerensky’s mild terror of the man, for his vague threats and his awful smile, the Count had enabled him to wander into time and poke about a bit. Admittedly by flinging vast sums of money at the problem, but the thing about the Count was he knew exactly where to throw them.
When he’d first been approached, over that quite amazing dinner, Kerensky had warned the Count that you would need to be unimaginably wealthy to succeed in this project. A small amount of progress (he’d waggled a finger in a friendly way and the Count had smiled), yes a small amount could be achieved simply by burning through the fortunes of one very rich man. But, if you actually wanted to pull this project off, if you really wanted to take control of time, then, well, you may need to throw the achievements of the entire world into it.
‘Yes, Professor,’ smiled the Count. ‘That’ll do nicely.’
Kerensky rubbed his eyes blearily, staring at the smoking ruins of yet another circuit board as the supercomputer behind him stuck out a long paper tongue of data at him. He was worried. On the one hand, the machine he was building was certainly powerful. On the other hand, it wasn’t behaving quite how he had expected.
For once, however, the Count didn’t seem that concerned. ‘Excellent, Professor, excellent,’ he declared, running a finger along the printout.
Kerensky was cautious, defensive. ‘An unfortunate effect,’ he observed.
The Count waved this away like false modesty after a piano recital. ‘Not so, Professor. Not so. The work progresses well.’ He flicked the ticker tape up into the air and it drifted down in a slow ribbon. Behind it, the Count adjusted his smile to a beam. ‘Now, you must find a way of vastly increasing the time span.’
Increasing? Was he mad? Surely that was impossible. At the very least—‘But are you certain, Count? Einstein says that—’
‘Pfft.’ The Count flapped a hand dismissively. ‘I am not employing Einstein, Professor.’ He seized Kerensky in his arms and danced him around the laboratory. ‘I! Am! Employing! You!’ He released Kerensky, who, just for a moment, felt a little flush of delight. Was it true? Did this man really think he was better? Was that what
he meant? The delight snapped off from the Count’s face and he rubbed at his right eye. ‘Now, please continue with the work.’
The abruptness of this hurt Kerensky. He could have stood to hear a little more about his own genius. Just a bit. Not flattery, of course not, just an awareness that his employer was properly cognisant of his abilities. They’d run two tests in a single day. One a fortnight, perhaps that was more realistic. But today had been a remarkable achievement! To gather the results they had, to be able to scoop up and hold a single droplet of time, even for a . . . oh, he couldn’t say moment. They needed a unit of measurement. A Kerensky? Oh, that would be delightful. Test 1 had achieved 1 Kerensky. Test 2 had achieved 4 Kerenskys. No, wait. Was that ungenerous to his employer—should he offer him the measurement of the elongation of time? The Scarlioni Factor? And he himself would take the name of the device—the Kerensky Process. Maybe, maybe. But which guaranteed absolute immortality? James Watt’s surname was still used whenever you changed a plug. The second had been around almost since the dawn of time as a measurement of it. To come up with a new term for that . . . well, that would be quite something. Should that not be his own name? Truly a daunting decision. Was that really what he wanted?
Actually, what Kerensky really wanted was far more simplistic. ‘But, you are stretching me to the limit, Count,’ he pleaded, balling his hands into his eyes and hoping neither of them fell out.
The Count, clearly still playful, clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Only thus is true progress ever made, Professor. You as a scientist should be the first to appreciate that.’
Kerensky paused for two Kerenskys before replying. ‘But I do, Count, I do. I appreciate many things. I appreciate sleep, regular meals, I appreciate walks in the country.’
The fool sounded like a lonely hearts advert, thought the Count. Perhaps he could, after all, afford to be generous. Why not? Today had been a good day. He tugged the bell pull and Hermann the butler appeared smoothly at the top of the flight of stairs.
‘Ah, Hermann, would you please prepare for the Professor . . .’ a vat of acid, some electrodes and a branding iron. All those Hermann could produce in a trice. The Count paused, making his smile seventeen per cent more celebratory. ‘Half a dozen escargots aux beurre, followed by an Entrecôte Bordelaise avec haricots et les pommes sauté. Served directly here to the laboratory.’ The Professor was drooling like a bloodhound. Bless him. ‘Oh, with a bottle of the Chambertin—my own—oh, better make that half a bottle . . .’ A confidential wink to the Professor, best of friends. ‘We wouldn’t want anything to get in the way of our work, would we, Professor?’
Hermann bowed. The Count’s smile shone with maximum benevolence for all in the room. I can be a generous employer.
Delighted by the gluttonous visions conjured up by the Count, Kerensky pushed the envelope of his luck. ‘But Count, I would really like to get some sleep . . .’
The smile snapped off and the Count turned on his heel, striding up the stairs out of the cavern. ‘Hermann, cancel the wine! Bring the vitamin pill. We must press forward. I’ll be upstairs.’ Opening a bottle of something. I’ll make sure you hear the cork pop.
5
MIXED DOUBLES
Duggan wove through the streets of Paris, not letting his quarry out of sight for a moment. There was an art to surveillance which was actually pretty simple to learn—most people went through life without suspecting for a moment that they were being followed. Blameless, boring souls, they never looked over their shoulders as they pottered from the building society counter to the Co-Op till because there would be no reason for them to be followed. A camel could follow ninety-eight per cent of people and not be spotted. But there would be no point. It was the remaining two per cent you needed to be careful of. Half of them were guilty of something terribly mundane and domestic—adultery, fingers in the cash register, poisoning next door’s goldfish. They’d glance over their shoulders, they’d boggle, they’d break down sobbing, waste police time, and only occasionally reveal that granny was under the patio. You could eliminate them fairly easily because they just looked Too Guilty. Which left a final one per cent. The carefully sly. Frequently their sheer casualness was a dead giveaway. No innocent person laid down a false trail, ducked into a shop and out the back, loitered near a payphone. Following them without being detected was tricky, but even someone with Duggan’s bovine build could pull it off.
As his chief had told him wearily after yet another partially successful operation, ‘Your problem is—’ Actually, most pronouncements from the Chief started like that. ‘Your problem is that you look like a policeman. Even disguised as a clown you’d look like a copper. As soon as anyone glimpses you, they’ll start whistling the Z-Cars theme. They can’t help it, any more than you can. Next time—’ So, there would be a next time, eh? Good old Chief. ‘—just make sure you’re not seen.’
Duggan had become an expert ducker. The excellent thing about Paris was that it was full of things to duck behind. Newspaper kiosks, flower markets, pissoirs. He peeped through a postcard rack, feeling just a little like Inspector Clouseau.
His quarry marched on, seemingly two people without a care in the world. Which was extremely suspicious given their recent behaviour and their rather hasty exit from the Louvre. If they’d really been innocent British tourists, they would be curled up in embarrassment at the side of the pavement, not striding through a bric-a-brac market, down towards a café on the banks of the Seine.
Duggan slunk after them, stealthily. Completely unaware that he was himself being followed.
* * *
Paris can be exceedingly subtle. The texture of foie gras, the flavour of cheese, the exact point that a road ends and a café begins. At some time an agreement had been reached between the Notre-Dame cathedral and the café opposite it. At a certain point between the two, cars could race through the plaza. A little further beyond that, with no appreciable change in the surface of the road, pedestrians could meander, and, a little further still, tables could perch quietly outside the café and make the most of the view.
Romana was unfamiliar with these subtle, smoky distinctions. To her it looked rather as though the Doctor had decided to sit down in the middle of a motorway. This did not surprise her one bit. He indicated that she pull up a chair opposite, and, a little uncertainly, she did.
A lorry did not run her over. Well, that was something.
Romana didn’t need to say anything. Clearly, their holiday was over. Something was very wrong with Paris. Since travelling with the Doctor, Romana had grown used to sentences like this which would have previously seemed completely outré.
A waiter bustled out of the café and handed them a menu. Romana noticed ironically that they served bouillabaisse. Sadly, now was not the time for fish stew. She leaned forward. ‘Doctor, you do know we’re being followed?’
Running his fingers through the pastry section, the Doctor nodded grimly. ‘Yes, all the way from the Louvre, by the idiot with the gun.’
Romana was slightly disappointed. ‘Oh. You did notice.’
The Doctor buttered some crusty bread and popped it into his mouth airily. ‘Of course I noticed.’
‘What do you think he wants?’
‘Look in your pocket,’ said the Doctor surprisingly.
Romana did so.
‘Other pocket.’ The Doctor sounded just a little annoyed.
Romana fished out a bracelet.
The Doctor had the air of a conjurer delighting a children’s party.
‘What’s that?’ Romana wrinkled her nose.
‘It’s the bracelet that woman I bumped into was wearing,’ the Doctor admitted bashfully.
‘What? You mean you stole it from her?’ This was a worrying new development. Perhaps it was a good job they hadn’t gone shopping after all.
The Doctor flashed his most disarming grin. ‘Look at it.’
Romana took the bracelet. It tingled slightly with an unmistakable energy. ‘It’s a micromeson scanner.’
The Doctor nodded approvingly. ‘She was using it to produce a complete record of all the alarm systems round the Mona Lisa.’
‘She wants to steal it?’ Romana was surprised. I mean, it really didn’t seem worth the fuss.
‘It is a very pretty painting,’ the Doctor offered.
Romana put the bracelet firmly down on the checked tablecloth. ‘And this is a very sophisticated device for a level five civilisation.’
‘That?’ the Doctor huffed. ‘That is never a product of Earth technology.’
‘You mean an alien wants to steal the Mona Lisa?’ Romana got to the end of the sentence and giggled.
The Doctor shrugged. ‘It is a very pretty painting.’
He fell silent.
Romana picked the micromeson scanning bracelet up again. Was this really alien? It seemed so very old, and the carving suggested . . . she squinted, her eyes adjusted as the TARDIS’s telepathic circuits struggled to render them and failed. If those were hieroglyphs then they were from an extremely ancient civilisation. Tricky.
‘Romana . . .’ The Doctor broke into her chain of thought.
‘Mmm?’ Romana didn’t look up from rubbing her finger along the inlay. There was clearly a sophisticated internal power pack with a half-life decay of—
‘Romana,’ continued the Doctor airily, ‘I think something very odd’s going on. For instance, you know that man who was following us?’
‘Yes?’ Romana was tracing the power threads back to their source.
‘Well, he’s standing behind me poking a gun into my back.’
Romana looked up.
The Doctor was not lying.
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