Present Tense [Round Two of The Great Game]

by Dave Duncan

  "Sit down, Exeter,” the surgeon said. Nothing happened, and he sighed. “I know you, man! I shook your hand in June 1914. I have discussed your strange disappearance extensively with Mrs. Bodgley. I have read the reports on your equally mysterious reappearance. I know more about your odd goings-on than anyone in the world, I expect."

  Still no reaction. How could the man stand it? According to the file, he had not spoken a word in three weeks.

  "You'll be more comfortable sitting down, Exeter,” Stringer said sharply. He would not meet defiance very often. “Cigarette?"

  Nothing. Smedley's skin crawled. As the box came his way he shook his head. He needed another Dunhill, but he also needed his hand free.

  "Captain?” said the surgeon. “You try."

  "I didn't tell him, Edward. He already knew."

  No reaction at all.

  Smedley felt the willies brush over his skin. Exeter thought he was a traitor. Stringer was scowling at him, as if this were all his fault. Didn't they realize he was just a broken coward, a shell-shocked wreck of a man? Didn't they know he was liable to crack up and start weeping at the first sign of trouble? Please, lord, don't let me get the jitters now!

  "I'm leaving here the day after tomorrow, Edward. Dr.—Mr. Stringer showed me your file. They're on to you! I wrote to those two people you named and both letters came back this morning, addressees unknown.” He stared up at that unchanging witless expression and suddenly exploded. “For god's sake, old man! We're trying to help you!"

  He might as well have spoken to the desk. Exeter did not move a muscle.

  Stringer chuckled drily. “The most remarkable case of esse non sapere I ever saw."

  Smedley discovered he was on his feet, eye to eye with Exeter, which must mean he was on tiptoe, because he was three inches shorter. He grabbed at lapels with one hand and a stump, and Exeter staggered back under the assault.

  "You bastard!” Smedley shrilled. “We're trying to help! You don't trust me! Well, screw you, you bastard!” Shriller yet. He had not planned this, but he might as well use it. He had his back to Stringer. He stuffed the note down inside Exeter's shirt collar. “I didn't go through all that the other night to help an ungrateful bastard who—who—” He was weeping, damn it! His face was going again. Full-fledged willies!

  "Sorry, old man,” Exeter said quietly, easing him aside. “Mr. Stringer?"

  The surgeon rose and reached across the desk. “I'm honored once again to shake the hand that humbled the fearsome ranks of Eton."

  "Those were the days,” Edward said in a sad voice. He sat down. “You have a good memory for faces, sir."

  "Good memory for cricket. Did you kill Timothy Bodgley?"

  "No, sir."

  "Are you a traitor to your King?"

  "No, sir."

  Happy to be ignored, Smedley sat down also, and shook like a jelly. He had done it! He had passed the note. “Perhaps I do need that fag, sir,” he muttered. He helped himself and leaned forward to the match, sucking a blessed lungful of smoke.

  Stringer, too, drew on his cigarette, eying his prisoner.

  Exeter gazed back with an unnerving steely calm.

  The surgeon blew a smoke ring. “You say you're not a traitor, and I accept your word on it. But when you made your dramatic appearance amidst the battle's thunder, you were talking."

  "Just shock, sir. It hits those who—Just shock."

  "Daresay. But you were babbling about treason and spies. If you have any important information, I want it. It's your duty to—"

  Exeter was shaking his head. “Nothing to do with the war, sir."

  "Tell me anyway."

  "Friends of mine in another war altogether. I was not expecting to arrive where I arrived. I was tricked, betrayed."

  "You'll have to do better than that."

  "I can't, sir. You would dismiss it as lunatic babbling. It has nothing to do with the Germans, the Empire, the French ... no concern of yours at all, sir. You have my oath on it."

  The two stared bleakly across the desk at each other.

  "You're saying that someone wants you dead, is that it?"

  "That is very much it, sir. But I can't even try to explain."

  Exeter's foot pressed down on Smedley's instep.

  He choked on a mouthful of smoke, remembering Ginger Jones sitting on that bench on Saturday.

  "Someone tried to kill him at Fallow,” the schoolmaster had said. “They ran that spear right through his mattress. Someone tried to kill him at the Grange and got young Bodgley instead. When he disappeared from Albert Memorial I was afraid that they had scuppered him at last. Now you say he's turned up in the middle of a battlefield? It sounds as if he's a hard man to kill."

  Stringer?

  Exeter was trying to say that the surgeon wanted to kill him?

  Perhaps Captain Smedley was not the worst case of shell shock in Staffles after all.

  Suddenly Stringer defused the confrontation with a patronizing chuckle. “Not just the public hangman?"

  "Him too, sir. But private enemies also."

  "All right! I shall accept your word on this also.” He beamed and sat back in his comfortable chair. “All the more reason why we've got to get you out of here, what?"

  Smedley gulped.

  Exeter showed no change of expression at all. “Why? Why risk your career to help a fugitive escape from justice?"

  The surgeon smiled with smug, professional calm. “Not justice, just the law. We can't have the school name dragged in the mud, what? And if some private thugs are after you as well, then that's even more reason. If we can get you out, is there anyone who would take you in?"

  Exeter turned a sad look on Smedley. “I thought there might be. Apparently not."

  "I think I can arrange a place for him,” Smedley said.

  "Ah! Somewhere secure?” the surgeon inquired blandly.

  Why ask? And Exeter's foot was warning him again.

  "No names, no pack drill, sir."

  Stringer's chuckle did not quite reach his eyes—or was that just another illusion? “If he is apprehended, Captain, then my part in the affair may become known. I must be sure you have a safe haven ready for him."

  Shot while trying to escape?

  This was totally crazy! A distinguished surgeon was offering to let a suspected murderer and spy escape from his care, and the aforesaid spy was hinting that the aforesaid surgeon was actually trying to kill him, and Julian Smedley was believing both of them. He had definitely cracked.

  "A school friend, sir, Allan Gentile. He and I were in the Somme cockup together. He got a Blighty."

  "A what?” Exeter said.

  Smedley and the surgeon exchanged shocked glances.

  "A wound. Brought him Home to Blighty—England."

  "Ah."

  Where had the man been for the last three years not to have heard that expression? Still, Allan Gentile had died of scarlet fever in 1913, and Exeter must remember that, so he would know this was all drip.

  Stringer seemed satisfied. “Good. Now, how do you propose to get him off the premises?"

  "He can go as me, sir.” Smedley fished out his pay book and flourished it. “I've got a chit for the bus to Canterbury, a chit for a railway ticket to Chichester.” He turned to Exeter and leaned a foot on his instep. “The window in your WC is directly above the washing shed roof. Sneak out just before dawn on Friday."

  Exeter waited inscrutably. He still looked like the peach-faced boy of 1914, but something inside him must be a hundred years old.

  Smedley ad-libbed some more. “There's a derelict summer house about halfway down the drive, on the left. Meet me there. My pay book will get you through the gate."

  "It will be a very close run thing,” Exeter said impassively. “They'll miss me when they do the morning rounds."

  "They'll search the house first,” Smedley snapped. It was a wet rag of a plan. It would not convince the present audience if Exeter himself started picking holes in it.


  Stringer frowned, tapping ash from his cigarette with a surgeon's thick finger. “I'll try and get down here again tomorrow evening and stay over. If I'm around in the morning I may be able to muddy the waters a little."

  Now that was definitely going too far! The surgeon had just strayed right out of bounds. Smedley felt a shiver of joy as if the spotters had reported he had found the range. He nudged Exeter's foot.

  "I'll look like a scarecrow in your togs,” Exeter complained.

  "You look like a scarecrow already. I'll try and filch something better from the laundry. If you've got a better idea, spit it out."

  "I haven't. But what happens to you?"

  "I shall be discovered eventually, bound and gagged in my underwear. How could you do such a thing to a cripple, you rotter?"

  "You'll freeze!” Stringer protested. He eyed Smedley suspiciously. “You may be there for hours. Can you really take that in your condition, Captain?"

  It would drive him utterly gaga in ten minutes. But it wasn't going to happen. “I'll manage."

  "Good show!” Stringer said approvingly. “Now we know how you collected all those medals. It's audacious! And ingenious! You agree, Exeter?"

  "I'm very grateful to both of you."

  "Just a small recompense for some of the finest cricket I ever saw. Now, where does he find Gentile?"

  Smedley almost said, “Who?"

  Again the man was showing too much curiosity. Chichester itself would sound a little too convenient. Somewhere handy? “Bognor Regis. Seventeen Kitchener Street, behind the station."

  Stringer glanced at his watch and reached for the cigarette box. “Excellent! Now, Exeter, I have a small favor to ask."

  "Sir?"

  "I want to hear where you've been these last three years—how you escaped from Greyfriars, how you turned up in Flanders. Just to satisfy my own curiosity."

  For the first time, Exeter's stony calm seemed to crack a little. “Sir, if I even hint at my story, you will lock me up in a straitjacket and a padded cell!"

  "No. I accept that there are things going on around you that have no obvious rational explanation. You can't spout any tale taller than the things I have already tried to imagine to account for your appearances and disappearances.” The surgeon was brandishing his full authority now. “I don't expect I shall ever see you again after you walk out of this room. So I want the story. The truth, however mad it may be.” The smile did not hide the threat: no story, no escape.

  Exeter bit his lip and glanced at Smedley.

  "Don't mind me, old chap!” Smedley said. “I'm already round the bend, as the sailors say."

  Exeter sighed. “There are other worlds."

  Stringer nodded. “Sort of astral planes, you mean?"

  "Sort of, but not this world at all. Another planet. Sir, won't you let me leave it at that?"

  "No. I can see that there must be some paranormal explanation for the way you come and go, and I won't go to my grave wondering. Talk on."

  Exeter sighed again and crossed his legs. “I was on another world, which we call Nextdoor. It's a sort of reflection of Earth—very like in some ways, very different in others. The animal life's different, the geography's different, but the sun's the same, the stars are the same. The people are indistinguishable from Europeans, everything from Italians to Swedes."

  He paused to study Stringer's reaction. “See? You can't possibly believe I'm not raving or spinning a cuffer."

  "It sounds like Jules Verne,” the surgeon admitted. “How did you get to Elfinland?"

  "I went to Stonehenge, took all my clothes off, and performed a sacred dance.” Exeter pulled a shamefaced smile. “You sure you want to hear any more?"

  "Oh, absolutely! Why Stonehenge?"

  "It's what we—what they call a node. They're sort of naturally holy places. There are lots of them, and they often have churches or old ruins on them or standing stones. You know that creepy feeling you get in old buildings? That's what they call virtuality, and it means you're sensing a node. If you know a suitable key—that's the dance and chant—then a node can act as a portal. Somehow the nodes on this world connect with nodes on Nextdoor or one of the other worlds. People have been going and coming for hundreds ... probably thousands, of years. You have to know the ritual, though."

  Smedley wondered how Exeter had managed to dance with a broken leg, but Stringer did not seem to have thought of that. He was nodding as if he could almost believe—or was he just humoring the maniac?

  "How do they work, though?"

  "I don't know, sir, I really haven't the foggiest. The best explanation I ever got was from a man named Rawlinson, but it was mostly just wordplay. Let's see if I can remember how he put it. It was about a year ago.... I'd been on Nextdoor for two years by then, and I'd finally met up with ... call them strangers—other visitors, like me—people who understand all this. Some of them have been back and forth lots of times. They call themselves the Service.

  "The Service have a station—much like a Government station in the colonies somewhere. In fact, it's not unlike Nyagatha, where I was born, in Kenya. Prof Rawlinson's made a study of the crossing-over business and come up with some theories...."

  Exeter had always carried conviction. As he continued to talk, Smedley found himself caught up in what had to be the strangest story he had ever heard, and somehow he found himself slipping into unwilling belief.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  7

  "WHAT RAWLINSON SAID WAS, ‘IT'S A MATTER OF DIMENSIONS. WE live in a three-dimensional world. Can you imagine a two-dimensional world?'

  "Of course I had to tell him that maths had never been my long suit. Then he produced a pack of cards...."

  That wasn't quite true, Edward recalled. The cards had been lying on the other table at the far end of the veranda, at least twenty feet away, so Rawlinson had not fetched them himself. He had shouted for a Carrot, and the Carrot had come and brought over the cards to him. That was how the tyikank did things in Olympus. But how could anyone ever explain Olympus to these two—the surgeon, as smug in his chair as a Persian cat, almost purring with self-satisfaction ... or Smedley, poor sod, with the skin of his face stretched so tight over the bone that it looked ready to split open, with glimmers of hellfire inside his eyeballs and little nervous ticks of smiles jerking the corner of his mouth every few seconds as he listened to poor crazy old Exeter talking himself into a lifetime padded cell.

  "He pulled out a king and a jack. Two two-dimensional people, he called them—length and width, but no thickness. He put them face-to-face and then asked me, could they see each other? I said I supposed not.

  "He said, ‘Right. They can't, because they're not in quite the same plane. They're separated by a very small thickness, and their world contains no thickness.’”

  Edward remembered how triumphantly Rawlinson had beamed, then. Prof was a spare, sandy-haired man with the fussy, pedantic manner of an Oxford don, but he looked no more than twenty, most of the time. His English had an odd burr, which might be more historical than geographical. He knew a lot and his mind was quick, but there was something essentially impractical about Prof, a hint of that most damning of all indictments: not quite sound. If you needed a detailed report with graphs and illustrations and references, fine—very good chap. Else put him in charge of the sports program.

  Materially, he was doing very well. His bungalow was large, one of the inner circle of residences surrounding the node, and he must own one of the finest collections of books in the Vales, where printing was a very recent innovation. He had at least a dozen servants, all rigged out in snowy white livery.

  But Stringer and Smedley would not be interested in all that.

  "I said, ‘You're telling me that Nextdoor and Earth are separated in some other dimension?’ and he said, ‘It's more complicated. If it were only one dimension, then Home would have only two neighbors, but there are at least six worlds that can be reached directly from Home
. We know of only two others from Nextdoor, but then we don't know very much about this world outside the Vales. So we must be dealing with more than one extra dimension. I know it's hard enough to think in four dimensions without throwing five or six at you.’”

  Edward was alarmed to hear himself chuckle. “I remember taking a long drink at that point. I couldn't cope with this while sober."

  All the time he'd been on Nextdoor, he'd been homesick for Earth. And now he was Home, he felt his heart twisting as he talked of Olympus. He recalled the dry fragrance of the air, tantalizing scents of spice or dried flowers; hot by day, cooling off rapidly in the evening when the tyikank gathered on their verandas to drink gin and blue...

  He looked again at his audience—Stringer's eyes half closed as he dribbled smoke, Julian's wide, too wide.

  "I warned you this was going to take a lot of swallowing! It even stuck in my throat, and I'd done it—I mean, I'd actually crossed over to another world. No offense, Mr. Stringer, but this is a too practical, down-to-earth setting for fairy tales. I told you you wouldn't be able to believe me. I had trouble believing Prof, although I knew I wasn't on Earth, and hadn't been for two years. Look here: desk, papers, telephone, filing cabinet! Whereas I was sitting in a wicker chair drinking what they call gin, but isn't, on a veranda with screens around it. The trees had an African look to them, you know?—airy traceries with foliage hovering around the branches more like clouds of smoke or insects than leaves. There were mountains like white teeth behind them, going straight up into a pale, bloodless blue sky. My drink had been brought by a liveried servant who addressed me as Tyika Kisster. Prof and I were dolled up in white tie and tails—he'd asked me to come a little early so we could have a private chat, but a dozen or more other guests would be arriving shortly and his wife was indoors overseeing the final touches."

  Chattering like this was madness! The sparkle in Smedley's eyes was welcome. The poor devil seemed to be enjoying the guff, and anything that took his mind off his own personal internal hell for even a few minutes was worth doing. But Stringer wasn't going to believe a word of it. Edward Exeter, alias John Three, was cutting his own throat with all this babbling. Trouble was, he'd been silent for so long that now he'd started to speak, he couldn't stop himself....