No Time Like the Past (10 page)

‘Those working at Site One, Old St Paul’s, report to Wardrobe. We’re kicking historical accuracy into touch for this one. We’ll be wearing fireproof suits with some kind of cloak thrown over the top. Those at Site Two, St Mary’s, will draw the usual paper suits. Cotton gloves and headgear, people. I don’t want anyone shedding modern epithelials over 17
^th
-century artefacts. Any questions, anyone?’

‘Do we have any idea of what we’ll be able to salvage?’

She shook her head. ‘Not really, no, but stick with reasonably small stuff. Don’t go trying to dismantle rood screens or uproot the font.’

‘How long will we have?’

‘Not long. Probably less than an hour. The time that everyone else has decided it’s too dangerous to remain any longer is when we move in.’

‘When do we move out?’

‘When I say so,’ said Major Guthrie, standing up and turning to face the room. ‘Be very clear. Any historian not clearing the building when I give the word will be shot. We will have a timekeeper. Mr Sands will remain in Number Eight to monitor the situation from outside. Either after one hour, or when he judges evacuation is necessary, whichever comes first, I will give the order to move. And you
will
move.’

‘Any more questions?’ said Schiller.

There weren’t.

‘Good luck, everyone.’

Chapter Seven

Twelve people set out for Old St Paul’s and twelve people didn’t come back.

It was a disaster. It was unprecedented. Twelve people lost in one mission.

We stood on the gantry with our stupid welcome home banners and waited.

No one came back.

We waited an hour. The techies frantically ran diagnostics, checked their equipment, and shouted at the IT Section. The IT Section stared at their screens and shouted back. Two hours later and four plinths still stood empty. No sign of TB2, either. Something had gone horribly wrong.

Finally, Mr Lindstrom reported to Dr Bairstow, who was still waiting with us on the gantry. I’d brought him a chair, which he’d gently refused, standing quietly with his hands crossed on his walking stick.

There was no malfunction, said Mr Lindstrom. Everything was working perfectly. There was no reason under the sun why four pods shouldn’t be sitting quietly on their plinths. No reason at all. The fault lay at the other end. In London, 1666.

It was unthinkable that all four pods should have developed a simultaneous fault, and certainly not with Leon and Dieter there. And even if they’d been in serious trouble, Mr Sands, at least, could have jumped back for assistance, but there was nothing. No pods. No people.

I stood on the gantry, gripping the safety rail and trying to get my thoughts in some sort of order. Something had gone hideously, horribly wrong and no one was coming back from this assignment.

Dr Bairstow said quietly, ‘Dr Maxwell, Mr Markham, my office please. Ten minutes,’ and limped from the gantry.

I looked down into the hangar. The technical team was still at it. Polly Perkins and the IT team were running more diagnostics. Up on the gantry, people looked at me.

‘We may be worrying unnecessarily,’ I said, quietly. ‘No matter how big a catastrophe, someone is always able to get back to St Mary’s and report. The fact that no one is here at all might simply mean they’re too busy and have forgotten. You know how things are when historians are caught up in the moment.’

I’m not sure if anyone believed me. Leon, Guthrie, Dieter – there were cool heads there who would have driven oblivious, obsessed historians back to their pods with chairs and whips if they’d had to. And I’d put David Sands in Number Eight just to prevent this very occurrence. He was their timekeeper and observer. Any command from him was to be instantly obeyed. I’d given him the authority to override everyone and everything, deferring only to Major Guthrie.

So where were they?

More importantly, what were we going to do about it?

I looked at us. Markham and me. There are dream teams – and then there is Markham and me. He was still limping slightly from his unassisted leap from the roof in 1643. I was fit but ineligible. I couldn’t go back. Not safely, anyway.

‘Let’s go and see what Dr Bairstow wants to do,’ said Markham, and off we went.

Mrs Partridge was waiting for us and followed us in, closing the door behind her.

The Boss was sitting behind his empty desk. Brisk and business like. I did my best to swallow my own fears and pulled my scratchpad from my knee pocket.

‘Yes, sir?’

‘Tell me again, on which day were you in Mauritius?’

‘Sept 3
^rd
, 1666, sir.’

‘All day?’

‘No, we arrived mid-afternoon, Mauritius time.’

‘Can you be more specific?’

‘Not really, sir. Around three o’clock, I would say.’

‘London is three hours behind … so about noon, our time.’ He trailed off and stared at his desk. ‘For how long were you there?’

‘A little under three hours, sir. I could jump to London any time after, say, three o’clock.’

‘By three in the afternoon, St Paul’s will be ablaze. I dare not wait that long.’ He did the desk-gazing thing again. ‘You and Mr Markham will take a pod and jump back to investigate.’

I opened my mouth. He held up his hand. ‘I am aware of the risk, Dr Maxwell. I am aware of the risk to you personally and I am especially aware of the risk to the timeline if two living versions of the same person try to inhabit the same period of time.’

He sighed. ‘I cannot do nothing. I must make at least some attempt to mount a rescue. Therefore, I give you one hour. One hour only. You will be on the clock. You will use the time to locate and, if possible, extricate our colleagues. Their safety is your secondary concern. If necessary, you will instruct them to abandon their assignment and return to St Mary’s. Whatever treasures they are endeavouring to rescue are valueless compared with the lives of the people in this unit. Is that clearly understood?’

‘Yes, sir. So what’s my primary function, then?’

‘The timing of your Mauritius assignment is vague and it’s impossible to be as accurate as I would like, so your primary function is to return to St Mary’s by 11.30 regardless of whether you have located your colleagues or not. Is
that
clearly understood? I am concerned with the possibility you may have arrived in Mauritius earlier than you think.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I mean it, Max. There are some differences of opinion as to exactly what would happen should two incarnations of the same person appear at the same time, but everyone agrees it will not be good. You must, therefore, adhere to the thirty-minute safety margin. There will be no misunderstanding over this.’

‘No, sir.’

‘Mr Markham, you will accompany Dr Maxwell in your usual capacity.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Dr Maxwell, that will be all. Mr Markham, if you could remain behind for one minute, please.’

One minute he said, and one minute it was. Markham emerged looking rather pale. I guessed Dr Bairstow had been frightening him with the current thinking on what would happen if two versions of me tried to occupy the same time.

‘What did he say?’

‘A short and brutal lecture on what he personally will do to me if I don’t get you out by the specified time. I know you don’t care about yourself, Max, but for God’s sake, spare a thought for what will happen to me.’

I laughed.

We sat on the stairs in the deserted Great Hall. All around us were whiteboards, data tables, and files. Piles of paper were strewn around the floor and stuck on the walls. The only thing missing was the historians themselves. All of them, except me. I pushed that thought to the back of my mind.

‘Right,’ said Markham, uncharacteristically business like. ‘I think we can agree that whatever has happened to them has happened to all of them. Even Mr Sands.’

I nodded. Jagged pictures flashed through my head. A massive stone edifice, ablaze from top to bottom, running red with molten lead, slowly imploding and helpless historians trapped inside, their screams lost amongst the sounds of crashing masonry and roaring flames …

I pushed all that away. Not helpful. Markham was outlining a course of action.

‘We’ll land as close to the cathedral as we can get. We’ll check in with Sands, find out what’s gone wrong. It might be something simple. Depending on what he tells us, we’ll go after the others.’

I agreed. ‘We should arrive around 10.30 in the morning.’

‘We could go in earlier.’

‘We’re not sure where they’ll be. By 10.30, they’ll definitely be inside St Paul’s so we’ll know where to look for them. If, for some reason, they’re not there, we’ll initiate a widening search around the cathedral. We’ll take tag readers – if they don’t melt. It’s going to be hot, I’m afraid.’

‘The only reason they wouldn’t be inside St Paul’s is if they’ve been trapped elsewhere. Or maybe …’ he trailed off, but I knew what he meant.

In a desperate attempt to save all London, Charles II would order vast numbers of houses to be demolished to prevent the fire spreading even further. A building could have come down on them. A whole street could have come down on them. Even if they’d sought safety inside their pods, they could have been buried under a vast pile of burning rubble, slowly suffocating … stifling in the immense heat …

‘OK,’ I said. ‘We’ll take water, tag readers, fire axes to clear a pathway. And rope. Anything else?’

‘Blasters. To defend ourselves.’

‘Against what?’

‘We don’t know. That’s just the point. We’ll wear fire suits, helmets, gloves, and boots – the usual stuff. Like we did at Alexandria.’

That had been our first salvage assignment. The Great Library at Alexandria. That had been burning to the ground as well. Maybe one day we could embark upon a salvage assignment that involved vast amounts of cool, clear water.

‘Meet you in Hawking in an hour,’ he said.

We met in Hawking. We wore fire suits, heavy boots, and helmets. My gloves were stuffed into my belt, along with a fire axe. The suits were stiff and heavy. I was already sweating heavily and we hadn’t even started yet.

Like Markham, I carried a cloak. They’re so useful – you can tear them up for bandages, carry things or people in them, use them as a disguise – even actually wear them as cloaks to keep warm and dry. I don’t know why we ever abandoned them. You try ripping up a waxed jacket to make a tourniquet.

We walked to Number Six. We were silent. The whole hangar was silent. There was no Leon around to give everything a reassuring last-minute check.

Mr Lindstrom was nervous. I think exactly the same thought had occurred to him.

‘I’ve checked everything thoroughly, Max. Remember, you must be out by 11.30.’

I nodded. Markham was stowing our gear.

Lindstrom gulped nervously. ‘I’ve laid in the coordinates and Miss Perkins has verified them.’ He swallowed again. ‘Just in case of error.’

‘Thank you, Mr Lindstrom. I’m sure there was no need, but we both appreciate your attention to detail.’

‘Yeah,’ said Markham. ‘And you can buy us a drink when we get back. Mine’s a pint and they don’t call this lady the Margarita Monster for nothing.’

‘Do they?’ I said, surprised.

‘Well, not to your face, obviously.’

Poor Lindstrom was looking a little taken aback. In the absence of Leon and Dieter, he’d suddenly been propelled into the front line. I was more confident in his abilities than he was. None of Leon’s or Guthrie’s teams were idiots, no matter how many times we told them they were.

‘Look on the bright side,’ said Markham, making himself comfortable at the console. ‘If neither of us comes back then you’ll have a cheap evening. Albeit a lonely one.’

He didn’t look particularly comforted.

‘I tell you what,’ I said. ‘If we do make it back, Markham will buy you a drink instead, and if we don’t, then I’ll buy you one.’

We shunted him outside while he was still thinking about it.

We landed on the north side of St Paul’s, in Paternoster Row, just outside Paul’s Gate. Excellent work, Mr Lindstrom.

‘Max. Listen. We have one hour. Not a second longer. We must be gone by 11.30, which will be about half past two in the afternoon in Mauritius. We dare not cut it any closer. No arguments. No excuses. After sixty minutes, we’re out of here.’

I nodded. He didn’t have to tell me. If, for any reason, I was still here  when I was due to arrive in Mauritius … what would happen?

It struck me that he was looking unusually serious. I know that we were in the middle of the biggest fire London had ever seen, and that we would be poking around a cathedral whose roof was about to fall in on us, and that I was pushing our safety protocols to their limit, but all this sort of thing was meat and drink to Markham. As far as he was concerned, all assignments were like this. Maybe Hunter had consigned him to the outer darkness of her affections again and he was feeling gloomy. He slapped a gun on his sticky patch. ‘Let’s go.’

We had one hour.

We slipped out of the pod and my heart sank. We’d hugely underestimated the severity of the blaze. The heat was overwhelming. The entire north side of Paternoster Row was ablaze. The roar of the flames was deafening. Inside my helmet, I could feel the sweat running down my face. I could even feel the heat of the ground up through my heavy boots.

Our priority was to find the pods.

As we stood getting our bearings, a pleasant female voice said, ‘Sixty minutes remaining to terminal event.’

I turned to Markham and could see jumping flames reflected in his visor. ‘What the hell was that?’

‘Countdown. Down here,’ he said, tersely, and we set off at a run.

The pods were exactly where they should be, clumped together in their usual configuration, a neat three-sided square, just inside the East Gate, Augustine’s Gate, and, as far as we could see, completely unscathed.

I called up David Sands.

No reply.

‘Behind me,’ said Markham, and we inched forwards to check them out.

Numbers Three and Five were empty. I checked the consoles and everything was just as it should be. Markham even checked the toilets, presumably in case they were all hiding in a three feet by three feet space.

Number Eight, however, contained an unconscious David Sands. He sprawled face down on the floor, breathing heavily. Blood had seeped from a wound on the back of his head.

I looked around. ‘What happened here? Was he overcome by smoke? Did he fall backwards and hit his head on the console? Where are Helen and Dieter?’

Markham was bending over him. ‘Check the console.’

I scanned the read-outs. Everything was normal. ‘The next set of coordinates has been accessed, but he would have been prepping for a quick getaway.’

‘Maybe. We’ll check it out later. Come on.’

We heaved him into the recovery position and left, closing the door behind us.

‘Fifty-five minutes remaining to terminal event.’

We set off, working our way back to the north side of the cathedral. Faintly in the distance, we could hear the sound of explosions. The ground shook and even above the roar of the flames, I could hear buildings coming down.

I activated my com.

‘This is Maxwell. Can anyone hear me? Report.’

Static crackled in my ears.

I shouted to Markham. ‘They’re around here somewhere, I think. I just can’t get a clear signal.’

He looked up at the huge edifice, towering above us, wreathed in burning wooden scaffolding and at the solid wall of fire in the streets around us.