Overtime (10 page)

The senior partner smiled politely. ‘You have the actual manuscript with you?' he said.

Smith, in spite of himself, could feel a glow of pride creeping over his face. It had been a long time since anyone had taken him seriously, since he'd been shown the proper respect his genius merited. ‘I do indeed,' he said.

‘Really!' The senior partner's manner changed; he became deferential. ‘I have indeed heard of your work, Mr Smith,' he said. ‘The word “seminal” would not be an overstatement.' Smith blushed. ‘In fact, I would go further and say that your book brings the Dark Ages of economics to an end. May I see?'

After a very brief moment's hesitation, Smith dived into his battered brown bag and produced a manuscript. It was thick, dog-eared and bound up in red string. He handed it to the senior partner, who threw it on the fire.

‘Now then,' he said, ‘we offer a wide range of tailor-made retrospective endowment policies which...'

‘You really must learn,' Blondel said, ‘to be more careful with that thing.'

‘I wasn't—'

‘I mean,' Blondel said, ‘it's a nice trick if you can do it, but there are some people who have very pointy tops to their heads. You could injure somebody that way, you know.'

‘It wasn't—'

‘Anyway,' Blondel leaned against the wall and caught his breath. ‘I don't think they're following us, do you?' he panted.

‘No.'

‘Splendid. Now, where are we, do you think?' He produced his little book and began to study it. Guy, who had got out of the habit of running shortly after leaving school, leaned with his hands on his knees and gasped for air.

‘Blondel,' he said, ‘I nearly killed Oliver Cromwell.'

‘I know,' Blondel replied. ‘Now, I make that the Un-American Activities archive over there, so if we head due south ...'

‘I nearly changed the history of the world.'

‘Then we can take a short cut through the New Deal, which ought to bring us out where we want to be. Sorry, you were saying?'

‘History,' Guy repeated. ‘I could have really messed it up, you know?'

‘Exactly,' Blondel replied. ‘Very volatile stuff, history. Give you an example. You tread on a fly. The fly is therefore not available to walk all over your great-great-great-great-grandfather's breakfast, and so he fails to die of food poisoning. Your family therefore does not sell up and move from Cheshire to Norfolk, with the result that your great-grandfather doesn't meet your great-grandmother at a whist drive, and you don't get born. That means you never existed, so you can't travel back through time and squash that fly in the first place. Result: your great-great-great-great-grandfather gets food poisoning, the family moves from Norfolk to Cheshire...'

‘Um.'

‘And you,' Blondel went on, ‘become a temporal anomaly, zipping in and out of existence like the picture on a television screen, thousands of times a second. Then you start to cause real problems, because of the knock-on effect and Ziegler's Mouse, and you end up with the Time Wardens after you.'

‘Time Wardens.'

‘Like game wardens,' Blondel explained, ‘only with even more sweepingly wide powers. They won't be appointed for a hundred years or so yet, but when they are they'll travel back and start rounding up all the Loose Cannons.'

‘Loose Canons,' Guy repeated. ‘Is that some kind of religious order?'

‘Not quite,' Blondel replied. ‘You're thinking of the Giggling Friars, which is odd enough in its way, because they were all wiped out by the Time Wardens in about six hundred years' time. The Wardens have been looking for me since before I was born,' he added, ‘or at least they will be. Actually, they're not a problem. It's the bounty hunters you've got to be wary of. Now, I think that if we go along this passage here, we'll come to a sharp left bend which should... ah, here we are.'

As far as Guy was concerned it was just another tunnel, but Blondel seemed to recognise it at once. He said, ‘Nearly there,' several times, and whistled a number of tunes, including
Stardust
and
The Girl I Left Behind Me.

‘History,' he was saying, ‘is fluid: you've got to remember that. It's changing all the time, what with the Loose Cannons and the Time Wardens and the Editeurs Saunce Pitie. Now then, if I press this lever here...'

A door opened, and Blondel walked through it.

Experience, the psychologists say, is like a man who walks into a lamppost, knocking himself out. When he comes round, the blow has caused a partial memory loss, which means that the victim forgets, inter alia, that colliding with lampposts causes injury. He therefore continues walking into lampposts for the rest of his unnaturally short life.

‘Blondel,' said Guy, but Blondel wasn't there any more. He shrugged and followed.

 

Me semont de chanter
,'

Blondel sang. A few passers-by threw small coins into his hat, but otherwise nobody took a great deal of notice.

‘Oh well,' he said at last, ‘he doesn't seem to be here. Right, what about a drink?'

Guy had tried to explain to Blondel that there wasn't in fact a castle at the Elephant and Castle; that it was, to the best of his recollection, something to do with a mispronunciation of the Infanta of Castile; that even if there ever had been a castle here, there was highly unlikely to be one still here in 1987; and that even if there was one in 1987 they'd come up in the tube station instead. He'd done his best to convey all these things, and he didn't believe that ‘That's what you think' was a satisfactory rejoinder. On the other hand, the idea of a drink sounded splendid, and he said as much.

‘You're on, then,' Blondel said. ‘Watch this.'

He laid his hat down beside him, produced his lute and sang some more songs, ones that Guy hadn't heard before and which he didn't like much. His view was not, however, shared by the passers-by, and they soon had a hatful of coins which Blondel judged to be adequate for the purpose in hand.

‘There used to be a rather nice little Young's pub just round the corner from here,' he said. ‘Nice beer, but the only way you could ever get on the pool table was to nip back through time and get your money down before the previous game started. Let's give it a try, shall we?'

‘Used to be,' Guy repeated. ‘When was that?'

‘When I was last here.'

‘1364?' Guy asked. ‘1570?'

Blondel grinned. ‘1997, actually. Like I always say, doesn't time fly when you're having fun?'

They wrapped Blondel's sword and Guy's revolver in a blanket to avoid being arrested and walked round the comer to the
Nine Bells.
As they sat down and tasted their beer, Blondel smiled.

‘That's one of the advantages of my lifestyle,' he said. ‘You get a better angle on progress.'

Guy wiped some froth from his lips. ‘Come again?' he said.

‘You know what I mean,' Blondel replied. ‘You know how, as you get older, the beer never tastes as good, the policemen get younger every year, that sort of thing. Now I do my return visits in reverse chronological order whenever I can, so I get the opposite effect; yummy beer, geriatric policemen, and the last time I was here it was thirty pence a pint more expensive. Drink up.'

Guy drank up. It made him feel very slightly better.

‘I suppose,' he said, ‘I must be in my seventies by now. That's if I survive the War.'

‘Quite so,' Blondel replied. ‘There's an outside chance you might meet yourself, you never know. That's why it's so important not to get chatting about the War with old men in pubs.'

Guy nodded. ‘Unless,' he said, ‘I remember I was here before, of course. Then I'd know, I suppose.'

‘Don't count on it,' Blondel said. ‘I knew a chap once who met himself. Actually - he was a terribly clumsy sort of fellow, you see - he accidentally pushed himself under a train. It was his future self that got killed, of course, not his time-travelling self. Tragic.'

Guy looked up from his beer. ‘What happened?'

‘Poor chap,' Blondel said, ‘went all to pieces. I said to him, Listen, George, it's no use living in the past.

But Jack, he said, I haven't really got any bloody choice in the matter, have I? In the end, the Editeurs came for him. It was the only thing to do.'

‘Who are the—'

‘Never you mind,' Blondel said. ‘It'd only worry you. I think we have time for another.'

He went to the bar and returned with more beer. ‘Blondel,' Guy asked, ‘is that where ghosts come from?'

‘Sorry?'

‘Ghosts,' Guy said. ‘Are they people who've got - well, lost in time? I mean, it sounds as if they could be people who've—'

‘Nice idea,' said Blondel, ‘but not really, no. Ghosts are something quite different. I'll tell you all about that some other time. Now then let's have a look at the schedule.'

He produced a tattered envelope, on the back of which was a long list written in minuscule handwriting. About a fifth of the entries were crossed off. Blondel deleted another three, and Guy noticed that three more added themselves automatically at the end. He asked about it.

‘Automatic diary input,' Blondel explained. ‘When I go to a place/time, it doesn't mean I've dealt with it once and for all. It just means that it goes to the back of the queue. However, I'm pleased to say we're more or less on—'

‘Is this seat taken?'

A shadow had fallen across the table. Guy looked up and saw three men. They were dressed in smart charcoal grey suits and had dark grey hair. It was hard to tell them apart. They could easily have been brothers; triplets, even.

Blondel glanced up, smiled and said, ‘Hello there, Giovanni, fancy meeting you here. Yes, by all means, take a pew. What'll you have?'

Guy stared. For some reason which he couldn't quite grasp, he could feel his hand walking along the seat on its fingertips towards the blanket.

‘That's all right,' said Giovanni, ‘Iachimo will get them. Same again?' He sat down, strategically placed between Guy and the blanket. Guy had the feeling that he'd done that on purpose.

‘That'll be fine,' Blondel was saying. ‘Guy, how about you?'

Guy said yes, that was very kind. One of the three went to the bar; the other one sat down next to Blondel and produced a cigar.

‘We just missed you last time you were here,' Giovanni said. ‘Marco, offer these gentlemen a cigar.'

‘Your local, is it?' Blondel asked.

‘Not really,' Giovanni replied. ‘But we look in from time to time. Handy for the office, you know, meeting clients, that sort of thing.'

Blondel nodded. ‘That's right,' he said, ‘I forgot. Beaumont Street's just across the way, isn't it?'

Giovanni smiled. ‘Well then,' he said, ‘it's been a long time, hasn't it?'

‘Quite,' Blondel replied. ‘It must be—'

‘Eight hundred years, exactly,' said Giovanni. ‘To the day, in fact.'

‘Is it really? Doesn't time—'

‘Eight hundred years,' Giovanni went on, ‘since you skipped out on us. Welched on your contract. Left us in a most unfortunate position.'

Blondel smiled. ‘I don't think you've met my colleague, Mr Goodlet,' he said. ‘Guy Goodlet, the Galeazzo brothers; Giovanni, Iachimo, Marco. They're in the...', Blondel considered for a moment, ‘... the timeshare business. And other things too, of course.'

The Galeazzo brothers turned and looked at Guy. Then they turned back and looked at Blondel, who was still smiling.

‘Mr Goodlet,' he said, ‘is a historian. In fact, he's with the History Warden's Office. Something to do with the fiscal division, aren't you, Guy?'

Some last vestige of native wit prompted Guy to sit still, say nothing and try and look very much indeed like a souvenir from Mount Rushmore.

‘I see,' Giovanni said. ‘No doubt he's got some means of identification.'

‘Indeed I do,' Guy said. ‘Would you like to see it?'

‘If you don't mind.'

Guy nodded. ‘I'll just get it,' he said. ‘It's in that blanket over there, so if you'll just excuse me ...' He leaned across Marco, fumbled in the blanket, found his revolver and pressed it into Marco's side, discreetly below table level. Blondel thought for a moment, and then put his hat on Marco's head. Marco didn't move.

‘Believe me,' Blondel said, ‘you're much safer that way.'