1. Just One Damned Thing After Another (4 page)

‘Why should I?’ he demanded. ‘There’s only three, or at the most, four of us going to complete our training. Me, you, Grant, and probably Nagley. What’s the point?’

‘Are you suggesting we throw Stevens under the bus?’

‘What do you care?’

‘He’s one of us, you insensitive pillock.’

‘Well, now who’s suddenly a team player?’

‘He’d do it for you.’

‘He wouldn’t have to.’

I said nothing, which was usually the best way with him.

‘Oh, all right, then.’

I was sitting at my favourite data table in the Library, trying to work out exactly where I had gone wrong. Sussman came and plonked himself opposite me.

‘So, how did your first simulation go?’

‘Oh, really well,’ I said, inaccurately.

‘Where did you end up?’

‘Minoan Crete, Bronze Age.’

‘Wow,’ he said. ‘Well done.’

‘Yes. Sadly, I was aiming for early fifteenth-century Constantinople.’

‘Ah. Oh well, never mind. You’ll get it right next time. Did you hear about Stevens?’

‘Oh, no. What now?’

‘He wanted Tudor England. 1588 to be precise.’

‘And?’

‘He ended up right in the middle of the Spanish Armada.’

I thought quickly. ‘No, that’s good. 1588
is
the Spanish Armada.’

‘No,
right in the middle
of the Spanish Armada. About eight miles off the east coast with the San Lorenzo bearing down on him with all guns blazing as he and his pod disappeared beneath the simulated waves. The Chief is still trying to work out how he accidentally managed to override all the safety protocols and Barclay’s got a face like a buggered badger. He’s a bit depressed, so we’re off to ply him with alcohol before he loses the will to live. Coming?’

‘Yes,’ I said, stuffing my gear into my bag and following him to the bar.

Nagley and I put our heads together and did what we could. We gave him extra sessions, extra revision, and helped him with his notes. Grant and a muttering Sussman tried to make him look good physically, but probably our efforts only served to highlight his deficiencies and he was chopped.

We were finishing one of the sessions on closed timelike curves when the door opened and Barclay marched in. I saw Stevens go pale. He’d been expecting this, but now the reality was upon him.

‘Mr Stevens, a moment please.’

Whether by accident or design (and you never knew with her), the door didn’t close properly behind her and we heard every word.

‘Stevens,’ she snapped, ‘get your gear together, please. I’m sorry to tell you – you’re chopped.’

It was brutal. The class gasped. We looked at each other. Chief Farrell, his lecture now lost beyond recall, got up and stepped out into the corridor. We could hear voices. Eventually silence fell. Chief Farrell brought Stevens back into the classroom. He dropped blindly onto the nearest chair. The Chief placed a sympathetic hand on his shoulder, said, ‘I think we’re finished here today,’ and went quietly out of the room. I suppose it was too much to hope he was giving her a good kicking in the corridor.

Stevens was devastated. Grant and Sussman rushed him to the bar for emergency treatment. Nagley and I did his packing for him and spent an enjoyable half hour dreaming up a series of elaborate and painful deaths for Bitchface Barclay, as she was everlastingly known.

He cried when he left and, to my amazement, so did I. We didn’t have much time to mourn Stevens. Now we moved into the more physical part of our training. Apparently, up until now we’d had it easy.

‘Good morning, everyone,’ said Major Guthrie, trying not to grin evilly and failing. ‘Up to this moment, I’m sure you’ve all enjoyed the cut and thrust of academic debate, but the time has come to embark on the more “hands-on” part of your training. I see there are just the four of you remaining, which gives my section the opportunity to ensure each of you will receive extensive, thorough, and frequent attention. You will find your new timetables in the folders in front of you. Please study them carefully. The alternatives to non-attendance, for whatever reason, will not be pleasant.

‘However,’ he continued, ‘your primary survival strategy will always be running away, which brings me to the running schedules you will find in Appendix C. Those of you who have hitherto avoided our jolly cross-country sessions,’ he smiled unpleasantly, ‘will be sorry.’

Oh, bloody hell.

I got to know the security section rather well. As well as you usually get to know people who have their hands all over you five times a week. I suspect there are married couples who have less intimate physical contact than we did. I met Big Dave Murdoch, Guthrie’s number two, a real gentle giant, calm and polite.

‘Good morning, Miss Maxwell. Today, I’m going to rob, rape, and strangle you. Shall we begin?’

I also met Whissell, our other unarmed-combat specialist, small and runty with bad teeth and a habit of standing too close. They said he liked the girls a bit too much, but I suspected he didn’t like girls at all. Sessions with Whissell and his hands were always a little too real to be comfortable and one day, enough was enough.

I reached down, grasped, and twisted.

‘Aarghh,’ he yelled. I saw the blow coming but didn’t quite manage to avoid it.

He closed in.

‘Very good, Miss Maxwell,’ said Murdoch, appearing from nowhere. ‘But a more effective response would have been to catch his wrist – like this – and follow through – like this – finishing with the heel of the hand – like this.’

We both regarded the groaning heap of Whissell.

‘Most instructive,’ I said. ‘Thank you, Mr Murdoch.’

‘An honour and a privilege, Miss Maxwell. And keep that thumb un-tucked.’

After that, I always tried to make sure I got Murdoch. Weasel, as we called him, was the type to hurt the things he feared. I tried to keep a discreet distance from him and remain politely aloof, but he sensed my dislike and I would pay for it one day.

I survived unarmed combat. I even survived First Aid and Fire Fighting. So I was feeling pretty pleased with myself until Major Guthrie knocked the smirk off my face with Outdoor Survival. Apparently, we would be regularly driven to places unknown and left for two days to die of starvation and exposure. I hate the cold and wet and when I discovered this would be part of the final examination in November, I started to make plans. Not to cheat exactly, because that would be wrong, wouldn’t it? More like dealing with the situation on my own terms.

They kicked up the simulations programmes until we were in Hawking morning, noon, and night. I loved these sessions. I loved walking down the hangar, joking with Nagley or Sussman. I loved entering the pod and smelling that special pod smell. I loved checking the lockers and stowing my gear, settling myself in the lumpy chair, beginning the start-up procedures, laying in my pre-calculated co-ordinates under Chief Farrell’s watchful eye, taking a deep breath and initiating the jump. I loved dealing with the hair-raising scenarios that followed. The sessions were so real to me that I was always surprised to open the door and find myself still in Hawking.

We simulated missions where everything went according to plan, but only a couple of times because that almost never happened.

We simulated missions where we were attacked by hostile contemporaries. That happened a lot.

We simulated missions where we became ill with something unpleasant. That happened a lot too.

We simulated missions where the pod caught fire.

And everyone’s favourite, missions where we all died. These were usually scheduled for a Friday morning so we finished in time for the afternoon exams. Nothing good ever happened on a Friday morning. Enough could go wrong without tempting Fate. Or History. And for non-trainees, Fridays afternoons were usually reserved for the weekly bloodbath (or friendly football match, as it was officially known) between the technical and security sections – an event often resulting in only marginally fewer fatalities and ill-will than Culloden.

The final exams loomed ever closer. Not long to go now – the culmination of all our hard work. Unless you were Sussman of course, in which case, you’d barely worked at all. They posted the exam schedule. Every single one had a pass mark of 80% and we had to pass every single one.

First was Weapons Expertise on the Monday. I laid about me happily, smiting hip and thigh with enthusiasm. I got Big Dave Murdoch and not only could I hold him off, but I managed to land a couple of good blows as well. I felt pretty pleased with myself and he winked at me.

Archery was a doddle, as was target shooting. Guthrie scribbled away and I hoped this was a good sign. They gave me a pile of miscellaneous tat and fifteen minutes to fashion a weapon. In the absence of any fissionable materials, I came up with a pretty good slingshot that David himself would have been proud of and when asked to test fire, I took out the small window in the gents’ toilets on the second floor. Much more scribbling happened.

Fire fighting was easy. Electrical, chemical – you name it, I doused it. There was good scribbling for Fire Fighting.

Wednesday was Self Defence. I made no headway at all with Weasel as he none too gently chucked me around all over the place, grinning his stupid head off all the time. I waited until a particularly heavy fall then placed my hand on my lower stomach, curled into a ball and uttered, ‘Oh God, the baby!’

Weasel stopped dead, saying, ‘What …?’ and I hacked his legs out from underneath him, leaped to my feet, ran across his chest, and rang the bell, which was the whole point of the exercise. Weasel shot me a filthy look and, at this point, there was no scribbling at all. Major Guthrie threw down his clipboard and walked off.

‘Oh dear,’ I said to a watching Murdoch.

‘No, you’re OK. He’s gone round the corner where no one can see him laugh.’

So I felt quite pleased with myself and then on Thursday, it was Field Medic Test time and I got Barclay.

At first, it was theory; plague, cholera, and typhoid symptoms, how to treat simple fractures, shock, resuscitation, no problems at all. In fact, I enjoyed it. Then, in the afternoon, we had to go out and find ourselves a body. A number of volunteers lay scattered around the place and we had to find one. They had a label tied to one arm with a list of symptoms and injuries so we could diagnose and treat. With my usual luck, I fell over Izzie Barclay.

We didn’t like each other. I never forgave her for Stevens and she definitely didn’t like me. Physically, we looked alike; maybe that was it. Maybe because I didn’t find her as fascinating as she thought I should. I don’t know.

She lay stretched out near the entrance to Hawking, muffled up to the eyebrows against the cold and reading
Computing for Geniuses,
or some such thing. Her label said she’d been in an explosion. With dear old Mr Swanson from R & D looking on, I questioned her closely and got to work. Severe head trauma, broken limbs, burns; I worked away, bandaging, improvising splints and doing a good job. Mr Swanson scribbled away again. I sat back on my heels, satisfied, and then the sackless bint said, ‘Oh, by the way, I’m on fire!’

My heart stopped. I’d failed.

I checked her label.

‘No, you’re not.’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘You didn’t say.’

‘You didn’t ask.’

I took a deep breath. She was smirking. Everyone knew this was our examination. Everyone cut us some slack, Murdoch falling over more times than he had to, Guthrie rounding people’s scores up instead of down. I bet Professor Rapson held up his broken limbs for bandaging without even being asked. And I’d got Bitchface Barclay and she’d screwed me.

I said, ‘Oh dear,’ deliberately omitting the ‘ma’am’ she so coveted. ‘This is an emergency. I must deal with it at once.’

I stepped away to the outside tap, filled a bucket with ice-cold water, and emptied it all over her. She screamed and shot to her feet, soaked to the skin. It was bloody excellent. I didn’t dare look at Mr Swanson. She had to drip her way past a small crowd of interested techies who had turned up to see who was screaming. Someone sniggered. I swear it wasn’t me.

I waited all evening to hear I’d been failed.

‘Don’t panic,’ said Sussman. ‘Why would they fail you for something so trivial? They’ve invested hugely in us. And it’s not as if you actually set her on fire, which is what I would have done. You put her out. Don’t expect any gratitude from the rest of the human race.’

And so we came to the dreaded Outdoor Survival, appropriately scheduled for Friday and all over the weekend. It was November! It was freezing! It was pissing down! I was going to die!

I had already made some plans. Actually, I’d been making provisions since they first told us. We would be dropped off separately and make our way back somehow, to arrive before Sunday lunchtime. That wasn’t going to be a problem because I planned not to leave the building in the first place.

I acquired (!) a black jumpsuit, one of Barclay’s. She was such a Grade A bitch that I had no qualms at all. People see what they expect to see. Take away the greys and I was no longer a trainee. If I put on a techie-style baseball cap, grabbed a clipboard, slipped my scratchpad in my knee pocket, and looked as if I knew what I was doing, then I might just get away with it.

Next, I needed to avoid getting on the transport. I slunk into admin, brought up the lists, deleted my name, and re-printed. Hopefully, each driver would think I was with one of the others. We weren’t the only ones to have this inflicted upon us. Qualified historians had to complete a session every eighteen months and Security once a year. Always try to get lost in the crowd. Whenever anyone asked me which transport I was on, I said vaguely, ‘The other one.’

So far, so good. Now I needed somewhere to hide for two and a half days. I planned to use the time studying for my pods exams, which followed immediately afterwards, so it couldn’t have worked out better. I started poking round in odd corners. Obviously, I wanted to avoid the main building, the Staff Block, and the public areas.

I remembered the dark corridor opposite the Sick Bay lift and went for a wander one evening. The best bet was at the end, in the paint store. The badly lit room, cluttered and dusty with disuse, had a large, empty area at the back, cordoned off by yellow and black tape.