Frozen in Time (5 page)

‘Anything?’ she asked Ben, who was squinting at the book.

He shook his head … ‘Nah … it’s all just equations and numbers and stuff. Science stuff. Weird things to leave in a burial chamber. Maybe they were both … you know … geniuses or something, like Uncle J. What’s that noise?’

Rachel listened, her fair head cocked to one side. Something was hissing. Not like a snake, but steadily, like escaping gas. She stared up, scared again, at Ben. ‘Shhhh!’ he said, in an imitation of the noise. But now she realized something else was threading through her ears … beneath the hissing … a low hum, almost below the range of hearing, it was more as if they could
feel
it, vibrating through their bones.

Now the hiss and the hum were joined by a regular beeping noise, like a slowed down alarm clock.

‘Oh no—what did you do, Rachel? What did you do?’

‘Me? What did
I
do? I didn’t do anything!’ she squawked.

‘You must have! What did you touch?’

‘Only that red square button—but it didn’t work. It’s not even lit up—it’s—oh!’ Now that she looked at it again, she could see that the button
was
lit up. Quite definitely. And next to it a row of other buttons, in various colours, were also beginning to light up, some glowing steadily and others flashing.

‘Oh no!’ moaned Ben. ‘We’ve set something off! We’ve got to get out of here.’

They both ran towards the door but as they reached it there was a click and a metallic thud and they saw that on
this
side of the door was not just an ordinary knob, but a turning wheel type thing like on the outside of the shaft … and it was turning. Rachel screamed again and Ben grabbed the wheel, trying to turn it back—but was completely unable to make it stop turning. He could hear the cogs and levers of a strong locking mechanism moving relentlessly inside it. Why had he shut the door behind them? Why?

Rachel was now banging against it, crying, ‘No! No! No! I’m not staying in here! Get me out! Get me out! I don’t want to die down here.’

Ben felt fingers of dread creep coldly over his shoulders and make for his throat. He and his little sister were being entombed. Buried alive with the dead. He shouted too then—he didn’t know what; he just bellowed with fear. The hissing went on, the hum grew louder and even the light seemed to get brighter as the beeping got faster. Rachel crumpled against the door and slid down its unyielding surface, crying uncontrollably, her nose running and her eyes screwed up. He felt himself beginning to pitch into hysteria with her … what was the point of trying to stop himself? They were done for. They would never get out and it would take several days for Uncle J to even notice they were missing. There was no food or water stored in this room. They were dead. As dead as the girl and boy in their metal coffins.

‘I do wish you’d both stop that racket. It’s like a blasted kindergarten in here.’

Rachel turned around and stared at the owner of the voice. Then her eyes rolled up into her head and she keeled over, unconscious, onto the floor.

‘For goodness’ sake!’ said the boy, after Ben had gaped at him for thirty seconds or more, making faint gurgling sounds of shock and horror. ‘You might stop looking at me as if I’m a ruddy ghost! And what the blazes are you doing in my father’s vault? He’ll go off like an atom bomb when he sees you here.’

The boy wiped back a dark fringe which hung across his brow from a neat side parting and rubbed his hands together, sitting on the edge of the torpedo under the glass which was now suspended above him at an angle, like the bonnet of a sleek racing car. ‘Shocking cold,’ he muttered and then leaned over and hammered unceremoniously on the torpedo next to him. ‘Hey! Polly! Get up, you lazy coot!’ At this there was a higher note of hissing and the girl’s glass cover suddenly popped up too, like the boy’s. A draught of cool, slightly sweet air flowed from it and Ben heard a sleepy murmuring from inside. He smacked himself on the face with both fists. It hurt. Yep. He was still awake. The boy was giving him an odd look.

‘I say, Poll—wake up fast will you? There’s a lunatic boy and a half dead girl here.’

Rich
, thought Ben.
Considering.

Polly sat up, yawning and scrubbing at her eyes. ‘Who? What? Oh, dash it! I’m frozen. He’s done it again, hasn’t he? Left us in too long. It’s really too bad. I bet I’ve missed Hilary’s party!’

Ben simply could not get his jaw to close. He kept gasping and blinking and shaking his head and trying to wake himself up and then he realized that Rachel was coming round at his feet and he simply did not know what to do.

‘Who’s he?’ asked Polly, sitting up fully and also rubbing her hands. She peered at Ben as if he were another species.

‘Can’t say,’ said the boy, who was getting out of the torpedo now, somewhat unsteadily. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt and grey flannel shorts. ‘Oh heck— I think you’re right. He’s left us too long again. I’ve never been
this
wobbly before. He probably got going on some new experiment and hasn’t eaten for two days—much less think about
us.
I’m jolly well not doing this again, I tell you. Look,
will
you two stop all that gibbering! It’s perfectly all right. The door will open again in a few minutes. It’s just a time delay, you ninnies.’

‘T-time delay?’ gulped Ben. Rachel had just sat up and begun all the gaping, gasping, blinking, and pinching stuff he had been doing himself only seconds ago. She looked like a mad fish.

‘Yes. The air pressure has to be equalized before the lids can be sprung,’ explained the boy. ‘It’s probably a bit too complicated for you to understand. Don’t worry. I’d like to know how you got in here, though.’

‘We—we d-dug …’ said Ben, and Rachel, who was now past the mad fish stage and getting unsteadily to her feet, nodded feverishly.

‘Yes … we dug.’

‘We … dug …’ repeated the boy, slowly, a patient smile on his face. ‘Well—we
… Freddy
and
Polly
! Are both of you called Doug then?’ He raised one eyebrow and gave a slightly wonky grin.

‘No! We
dug
—we dug down. With spades! That’s how we got in!’ said Ben, his more normal voice finally bursting through. He felt that this was not the time for sarky humour.

‘Right-oh!’ said Freddy. ‘If you say so. But you’d better scarper or you’ll be in a lot of darn trouble when my father catches you. And if you tell anyone you’ve seen this place, you’ll be in even more trouble. There are forces, you know, more powerful than …’

‘Oh pish! Don’t be such an idiot, Freddy,’ said Polly—who was clambering out of her own torpedo now. ‘They must be Father’s students. And they must be trustworthy, or he wouldn’t have let them in.’ She wore similar shorts to her brother and a pale pink blouse with a neat round collar. Her clothes looked as if they’d been washed, pressed, and put on that morning. She dropped off the edge of the torpedo and her legs immediately gave and she crumpled to the floor with a surprised squeak.

‘I should go easy,’ said Ben. ‘I don’t think you’ve used those for a while.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, primly. ‘But I don’t think I’ve forgotten how to
walk
in one week!’

‘One week?’ echoed Rachel and she and Ben exchanged appalled glances.

‘Yes—it’s beastly, isn’t it?’ said Polly. ‘That’s what you get when your father’s a genius. You might think we’d get two motorcars, a twelve inch television set, and a trip in an aeroplane, but oh no—we get to be suspended for days on end, just to help out. I’m jolly sick and tired of it. I’m not ever doing this again. Not even for a ten shilling note!’

‘Your dad—he was a genius?’ asked Ben and inside him the fear and amazement were beginning to mix with the most awful sense of pity. Something really terrible had happened to these two children and they had absolutely no idea.

‘Oh yes—he is,’ said Polly, rubbing her ankles through her short grey socks, to warm them up. Her buckle-up sandals were navy and polished. ‘He built all this stuff. It’s all terribly hush-hush, of course, but now that you’ve seen it there’s not much point in fibbing, is there? He’s a genius and he knows how to make your heart freeze … and then just start up again! Whenever you like. Isn’t that fantastic?’

‘Oh yes—jolly fab-oh,’ muttered Freddy, who was also fully out of the torpedo by now and gingerly walking around to his sister, on very shaky legs. ‘I think he should go back to using rats. I’m sick of waking up feeling all queer and then finding out I’ve missed
Journey Into Space
.’

‘So—so you’ve had your heart stopped … and then just started again?’ said Ben. ‘You’ve just been frozen in time? I mean—that’s cryonic suspension, isn’t it?’ He liked sci-fi stuff and stored up these kinds of phrases. The brother and sister looked at him in surprise. And then at each other.

‘Gosh—Father must have told you quite a lot,’ said Polly, a new respect creeping into her high, elegant voice.

‘Um … no. Not really,’ said Ben. ‘Look—there’s something you two should know—but … look, have you got any sweet drinks or anything?’ He looked wretchedly at Rachel and she returned his expression. How on earth would a bit of sugar help a shock
this
big?

‘Heaps!’ said Polly, proudly. ‘Tizer! We’ll get some from the refrigerator as soon as the door opens.’

‘
What
should we know?’ asked Freddy, and he was looking hard at Ben.
Man to man
, thought Ben. ‘What’s going on?’

Ben shuffled his feet. His fear was quite gone now, but he found his stammer was back, all the same. ‘When d-did your d-dad put you under?’ he asked.

‘Wednesday,’ said Freddy. ‘Why?’

‘What
date
?’

‘The sixth. Of June. What are you driving at?’

Ben closed his eyes and it was Rachel who said, gently, her voice full of sadness for them. ‘What …
year
?’

Freddy gulped and Polly paled. ‘1956, of course,’ said the boy. His eyes glittered and he stood up straight and then shouted ‘1956! 1956!’ And he watched their faces and his eyes skittered around the room while he chewed on his lower lip, and he finally said, ‘When … what … is the date now?’

The door hissed and clunked and the mechanism reversed. Rachel pulled it open. ‘You stay here—with them—I’ll find the Tizer. Don’t let them out … not yet.’

‘What the heck do you mean?’ shouted Freddy, and he tried to stride angrily across to the door but his legs gave way under him. He sank down next to his sister and she grasped his hand tightly and bit her lip.

‘Oh, Freddy,’ she said. ‘What has he done?’

Rachel ran through the bathroom and into the kitchen. The fridge was still working although its light didn’t switch on. It was still full of tins and boxes. There were bottles of Tizer in its door—and they looked OK. She hoped the lids wouldn’t have gone rusty or something on the inside. She ran to the drawer, looking for a bottle opener—these weren’t the kind that unscrewed—and found one, quickly. Awkwardly she fumbled with it until at last the cap shot off and danced across the Formica worktop. She did a second bottle and ran quickly back through the bathroom with both. Before she reached it, the door at the other end opened, and Freddy and Polly staggered through, Ben behind them, shrugging at her and shaking his head. ‘I couldn’t stop them,’ he said.

She and Ben had both realized that the sight of the dust all over the things in the living areas would provide the clue that they had been left, hearts stopped, for a bit longer than a week. As Freddy and Polly moved through the bathroom and into the kitchen, they were already beginning to slow down and sweep horrified glances from one side of the room to the other. In the chamber with the torpedoes the dust had not been so obvious, somehow. Everything in there was pale and grey-looking anyway. But here, on the blue and cream kitchen furniture, across the draining board of the sink, over the curved metal toaster and the pale lemon biscuit tins, the layer of dust was mournfully obvious.

Rachel pulled out two low stools from beside the sink. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘Sit down and drink this. You really, really need it.’ Dazed, they both sat and accepted a bottle. They drank a little, and then pulled faces. ‘Flat,’ said Freddy.

‘Drink it anyway,’ said Ben. ‘You need the sugar.’

Freddy took a long drink and then sat up, looking levelly at Ben. ‘All right. Don’t try to fudge us. You’d better tell it to us straight. How many months have we been down here? And what’s happened to our father?’

Ben winced.
Months.
They still thought it was only months. But then—why not? Dust like this
could
build up in months … maybe. And it wasn’t as if he and Rachel had arrived in shiny silver cat-suits, waving ray guns, like anyone after the year 2000 was supposed to have looked like to people living back in the old days. They wore jeans and sweatshirts, and many kids in 1956 probably wore something similar. ‘Look—I don’t know what happened to your father,’ said Ben, as kindly as he could. ‘But you ought to know this. It’s going to be a bit of a shock. This isn’t 1956 any more.’

They stared at him from round blue eyes—desperately unprepared for what he was about to say.

‘Freddy … Polly … This is 2009.’