Tempus Fugitive

by Nicola Rhodes

  ‘Yes, I suppose he is, but still, we should try to find out why he is here, what brought him here. Maybe he needs our help.’

  ‘I agree, I guess I’m going to York.’

  ‘I will send you.’

  * * *

  ‘It’s all gone wrong,’ moaned a weasely figure from the back of the room.

  ‘Patience Molbus, patience,’ soothed the tall thin man. ‘It is out of our hands now in any case, but we must have faith in our champion. These unforeseen circumstances were to be expected in some ways, we are after all, dealing with an extremely cunning adversary.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘But, we would not have sent her, had we not had confidence in her powers. She is extraordinary.’ He broke of and stared dreamily ahead, like a man trying to pierce the veil of mists ahead. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘I really think she might be the one.’

  There was a solemn and portentous silence as this sunk in.

  After a long while a voice was heard from the back of the room. ‘The one what?’

  The thin man sighed. ‘Chimps!’ he said. ‘I am working with chimps.’

  ‘Yes, but the one what?’

  ‘You be careful Tibyd,’ said the thin man. ‘I may have to promote you – anything to get rid of you,’ he muttered.* It seemed fair to him. It was after all how he had ended up with most of this bunch in his division in the first place.

  *[This of course being the time honoured method of getting rid of incompetent employees without risking an unfair dismissal trial and all the attendant publicity. This explains a lot about upper management ]

  Tibyd beamed. ‘Thank you Sir.’

  * * *

  ‘Do you think he’ll come back?’

  ‘I don’t know. He looked pretty mad.’

  ‘Why, do you think?’

  Kent looked ruefully at her. ‘Can’t imagine,’ he said eventually

  ‘So, what do we do now?’

  ‘I guess I’ll make up the spare bed. You hungry?’

  Tamar opened and closed her mouth a few times and finally said. ‘Now you come to mention it, I’m starving.’

  Kent grinned. ‘Maybe later I’ll take you flying.’

  ‘Cool!’

  ‘If you like, that is.’

  ‘Well yeah.’

  ‘And I’m sure that if he wants to, he can find you again, so don’t worry about it.’

  Tamar wrinkled her brow. ‘Who are you talking about?’

  Kent glanced at her strangely. ‘Oh, no one.’ He said eventually.

  ‘You’re not afraid?’

  ‘No, this is great.’

  ‘Cold?’

  ‘I really hadn’t noticed.’

  ‘You’re really taking to this flying thing. Even I was nervous the first time I did it.’

  ‘I wish you hadn’t said that.’

  ‘Trust me. So where do you want to go?’

  ‘Um.’

  ‘Want to head back?’

  ‘God no!’

  There was a scream in the night. Mega Man swung round sharply, causing Tamar to wonder if her spleen was really a necessary organ, because she was not sure that it had not rocketed out of her body. ‘Hey!’

  ‘Sorry, I’m not used to passengers.’ He paused listening. ‘Fire at the foundry, I have to go, I’ll just drop you off at home …’

  ‘Won’t that waste precious time? Better just leave me here – there on that building. I’ll be fine, just don’t forget to come back for me.’

  ‘I can’t just leave you here, you’ll freeze to death.’

  ‘Don’t argue, just go, I mustn’t be the reason you don’t get there in time.’

  He nodded shortly and swooped off into the night.

  Tamar shivered; it was bloody freezing.

  * * *

  It was dark, and everything was still, there was no sound – really no sound at all, not even the sound of his own breathing. ‘Oh Hell!’ he said again. Again no sound came out, but he thought he heard the echo of his words, very faint and from a great distance. Now he was really scared, a fear that was building up slowly to primal terror. Very slowly, after all, there was no point wasting his adrenaline all at once – he might need it later on, for when things got really bad. Because technically nothing bad was really happening to him at this point, nothing was happening at all, in fact, but later on there might be monsters. ‘Am I dead?’ he wondered, ‘strange, I expected more pitchforks.’

  It was like being in a black hole – that is, if he had known what a black hole was like, this was what he might have expected – except there was no sense of gravity and no whirling stars, such as you saw on Star Trek. No, it was more like being nowhere at all. He remembered Tamar describing a half-remembered experience of the same type.

  ‘I am dead!’ he thought. ‘Oh shit! I haven’t got time for this. Let me out, I’ll be dead later.’

  He pondered for a while, got bored and decided to do something about the situation. After all, if this was the afterlife you could keep it. He dug around in his pocket and pulled out the Athame. He had faith in this toy, if anything could get him out of this … It had never let him down before. He weighed it in his hand and grinned without amusement in the darkness.

  Then he heard a voice. ‘Hey you! Are you all right in there?’

  * * *

  ‘Bloody freezing! Bloody, bloody – stop thinking about it, he’ll be back soon.’ Tamar flapped her arms around herself to keep warm, and looked down at the world so far below her. There was something familiar about this view that she could not quite put her finger on. Something … Suddenly without warning the large skyscraper opposite lit up like the world’s hugest Christmas tree. After a few seconds, the flashing lights resolved themselves into words. It read “CLOSE FILE”

  ‘Close file?’ she murmured. ‘What the hell does that…’ she was back in mainframe before she finished the sentence. ‘…Mean? Oh yeah.’

  ‘That was bloody convenient,’ she thought. She was now more certain than ever that they were being helped. She suspected Clive – he was always in the middle of these things, but whoever it was, well, she agreed with Denny, a little more help would come in handy right now. And to hell with interfering with free will.

  * * *

  ‘I will send you,’ said Hecaté.

  ‘How?’ asked Stiles. ‘I mean doesn’t teleportation rely on time, I remember Cindy telling me…’

  ‘Hmmph!’ it was an impressive snort even for Hecaté. ‘Witches!’ she added in a derogatory tone. ‘They may have to rely on such chicanery moving between dimensions, but I,’ she drew herself up impressively. ‘Am a goddess.’ *

  *[For the full explanation of this statement see ‘Tamar Black - Reality Bites.’ in brief it goes like this. To teleport instantly from one location to another one must move into the astral plane where there is no time and simply travel in the normal way (the normal way for a witch of course is to fly) to your intended destination. You can of course see where you are going from the astral plane, but it is all done instinctively anyway. It’s amazing how convenient magic can be]

  ‘Okay, okay.’ Stiles held up his hands placatingly. ‘I know I know.’ But still, he looked at her interrogatively.

  She smiled. ‘You do not believe in me? That could be a problem you know.’ (Deities rely on belief for their powers and indeed their very existence)

  He looked sheepish. ‘I just wanted to know how you would do it. It’s the policeman in me.’

  ‘Moving things – or people – through space is not a problem for me. I do not rely on the astral plane it did not even exist when I was – born. I simply will it and it is done. Do you trust me?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Good.’

  She closed her eyes, and Stiles instinctively did the same. A chill went down his spine a creepy crawly presentiment; he snapped open his eyes and grabbed his gun of the table. Hecaté raised her eyebrows but said nothing. There was a flash (gods tend to be showy) and he was gone.r />
  When he opened his eyes again, it was on an eerie, sepia toned, frozen world. The second of time he was in had gone mouldy, it seemed. He shivered.

  ‘Don’t touch anything,’ she had warned him, even disturbing the dust would change things, but that could not be helped. ‘Just don’t pull down anyone’s pants or put them in funny positions with their finger up their nose or suchlike.’

  Stiles had been indignant. ‘How old do you think I am?’ She had looked shrewdly at him. ‘I think that, compared to me, you are a child and anyway, I know you, so heed me.’

  Stiles conceded; there’s no point arguing with a woman, even a goddess, perhaps especially a goddess. He did not even bother to point out the grey at his temples and the crow’s feet around his eyes. There were times when she appeared to consider him a sort of ante-pubescent Just William (or Bart Simpson, for those of you under thirty, and if there are any under thirties reading this book – What’s the matter with you, why aren’t you out getting drunk?)

  He moved carefully between the immobile people, being careful not to disturb so much as a fallen leaf. It was slow going and all around him was the feeling of dread expectation that one usually associates with nightmares. His hand tightened on his gun and he moved forward at a frustratingly slow pace. ‘It would help if I knew what I was looking for,’ he thought. ‘Maybe I’ll know it when I see it.’ But he doubted it; his coppering instincts were against the likelihood of such chimerical operations. Things just did not happen like that.

  He had forgotten what he was dealing with; much like Denny still did on occasion. They both still tended to view the world in a hard headed, practical, common sense way despite all the evidence to the contrary that they had seen. And they were both capable of being surprised by coincidences, even though these turned up these days with the same regularity as they did in bad action movies.

  As soon as he saw it, he knew he had found it, a – he almost choked on the word – clue. He almost spat on the ground, but he remembered Hecaté’s injunction just in time. Clues! What am I, Sherlock Holmes? Stiles believed in clues in the same way he believed in coincidences, on the other hand … it was undeniable.

  Just ahead of him was a crowd of people all staring in the same direction, that they were standing still was a given in the situation but there was a suggestion in their attitude that this had been pretty much the case before time had stopped. And the expression on all the faces was unmistakable to Stiles. It was the expression you saw on the faces of people when confronted by a particularly gruesome traffic accident or shootout, but also, grimly enough in Stiles opinion, when witnessing a celebrity having an embarrassing incident in public. A mixture of shock, fascination and curiosity. These were the faces of people who had witnessed, sorry, were witnessing something both horrible and compelling at the same time. The only problem was – they were apparently looking at nothing more interesting than the display in the window of Bennetton, and whatever you might think personally about this, people are used to such horrors. Stiles was disinclined to think that even the poster in the window bearing the legend “We’re all the same inside” with the appropriate graphics to complement it, could account for the large crowd it appeared to have attracted. You see worse every day – or was that just him? He did not think so.

  This then, was the place where their mystery man had appeared, possibly with a flash and a bang, or – no, the incident had been reported. This was no doubt the last place he had been, though, before time had stopped. What had he been doing? And more importantly, where the hell had he gone? Was it possible he had disintegrated or vanished before people’s eyes? Accounting for the shocked expressions. There were no answers here, why couldn’t clues turn up when you needed them? On the other hand, Stiles had a bad feeling about this. All his instincts told him to worry excessively, and that even mild panic would not be out of place. People did not just vanish – at least not in normal circumstances, not without magic – even when they were out of their own time, at least he did not think so, he really needed Hecaté’s input here, she would know. He concentrated and called on her with his mind – he just hoped it would work.

  ~ Chapter Fourteen ~

  A gnarled hand reached through the blackness and grabbed at Denny’s hair. He yelped. ‘Hey, watch it.’

  ‘Jus’ tryin’ ter ’elp,’ said a disembodied voice gruffly. ‘Sod yer then, yer ungrateful bastard. Stay there if yer’d ruther, see if I care.’

  ‘Um, I’m sorry,’ ventured Denny. Actually, I’m not even sure where I am, and I’m a bit … please help me.’

  ‘Doesn’t even know where ’e is,’ muttered the voice. ‘Where do they get these idiots? You been drinkin’?’ he added a little louder.

  ‘I wish.’ muttered Denny. ‘No, I haven’t been, er drinkin’, I’m just lost. I think …’

  ‘Lost?’ said the voice in wonderment. ‘Lost?’ it repeated. ‘’E says ’e’s lost, by Beelzebub that’s a new one. You sure you ain’t been at the gold top?’

  ‘Gold top?’ thought Denny. But he did not have any more time to wonder about that as he was pulled out into the light by his horns. ‘Horns? Here, wait a minute.’ Then he saw where he was. Double, double shit! With a horse apple on top.

  ‘Ogod,’ he said. ‘No, I mean – I didn’t mean … no, noo-oh shiiit.’

  * * *

  ‘Thank God that’s over,’ breathed Tamar. She heard footsteps.

  ‘One thing after another,’ she thought, as the guard folded up neatly with a small sigh and she dusted off her hands. ‘That’s what we should have done in the first place,’ she thought ruefully, but Denny had an unfortunate tendency to panic. And now… well where was he? Surely, he would not have carried on going through the files without her. Would he? Perhaps if he had panicked again … no. So … where…? Damn!

  Two choices now lay before her, did she wait here and hope that he turned up. Or did she… what? What was the other choice ?

  Okay, thinking logically, if he wasn’t here then he must be … aaagh!

  Okay, start again. What was the last thing he had said? “Close file” obviously, so …? Wait, he hadn’t said that had he? What he’d actually said was “close files”. What did that mean? Maybe he was out of mainframe altogether. That would be okay, as far as it went, if he was back in the world. But she could not count on that. There were other places outside of mainframe, as Tamar knew only too well. Besides, think about it. The world as we know it is actually, technically a part of mainframe, well, one of the files anyway. So if Denny was outside of mainframe, then he could be anywhere, or nowhere, he could be … oh no, it did not bear thinking about. Tamar wrenched open the main file door and started to run.

  * * *

  ‘He does not belong here anyway,’ said Satan, frowning from his sagging armchair. They were gathered around him on a square of carpet, like children at story time. (Hell took this idea directly from teachers – every evening the sinners were tortured with readings from Enid Blyton or Harry Potter.) His minions trembled as well they might, such a frown had been known to cause earthquakes and/or floods, and they knew what was coming. (Famous Five do something incredibly boring – in a boat).

  Another cock up! And frankly, they were sick of taking the blame.

  ‘Doesn’t he?’ asked Snarkle before the others could silence him. ‘How can you tell?’ (There’s always one). Several minions – all of them, in fact, hit the ground running, but Old Nick (which no one ever called him to his face – those sinners who had called him that in life were singled out for extra special punishments – Beatrix Potter) merely frowned a little deeper – he was more puzzled than anything.

  ‘Well, for one thing,’ He said, shaking his head in deep perplexity, ‘he’s still alive’

  * * *

  After five minutes hard running, Tamar suddenly stopped. This was not because she had arrived. She did not really know where she was going, after all, nor what she was looking for. Neither had she realised this and decided to th
ink sensibly and stop panicking. Nor had she merely run out of breath. In fact, she was distracted, by raised voices behind a nearby door. She skidded to a halt and listened, fascinated.

  ‘I am the real Robin i’ the Hood,’ said one voice

  ‘Scurvy knave,’ objected another. ‘Would you give me lie to my very face? I gentlemen, am Sir Robert of Huntingdon …’

  ‘Ah, you see?’ interrupted the other voice. ‘He admits it! He is not even called Robin. I, on the other hand, am. I am Robin of Locksley …’

  ‘A peasant,’ said the other voice, scornfully.

  ‘Well?’ said the first voice.

  ‘Peasants cannot be heroes,’ said the second voice. ‘Well known fact.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘This is surely all academic,’ said a third voice. ‘I am the true Robin i’ the hood, and I will suffer no pretenders.’

  ‘Is that a threat?’ said the first voice. Move him forward a few centuries and he might have been saying “come and have a go, if you think you’re hard enough.”

  ‘A challenge,’ confirmed the third voice, languidly.

  ‘Right, you ponce!’

  There was the sound of a scuffle. Tamar grinned; this was a famous historical cock up, and she had always wondered how it would be resolved. Now maybe she would find out, she gently pushed open the door.

  Inside she saw a small conference room. There were three burly men fighting like cats in a sack on a Persian rug. There was a lot of scratching and biting and hair pulling. They ought to have been ashamed of themselves really. Behind a large oak desk, were three accountants, or possibly they were clerks, all dressed in identical grey suits and wearing identical expressions of alarm. They were remonstrating ineffectually with the “heroes” along the lines of. ‘Oh I say…’ and ‘Oh really – gentlemen – please.’ And flapping their arms feebly.

  Tamar acted on instinct. That is: she leapt into the fray.

  She emerged, not a hair out of place, holding on to the ears of two of the protagonists, her foot on the third one’s head.

  ‘Ow, ow, ow, ow.’ they whimpered.