1. Just One Damned Thing After Another (9 page)

Moving like an old woman, she hobbled out.

The Chief smiled at me. ‘Your turn.’ I reached for my bag but he’d already picked it up. I looked at my burned hands and my stiff, red fingers, swollen from all that time in water. Now it was all over, I doubted I had the strength to put one foot in front of the other.

‘Lean on me,’ he said and, just for once, I allowed myself to do so.

Chief Farrell visited us in Sick Bay the next day, bringing with him a box of various bits and pieces we’d left behind in the pod. All the records had been uploaded and everyone was waiting on our reports. We nodded.

He said, ‘I’ve already debriefed Sussman and gather it wasn’t shellfire after all, but an accidental explosion. Can you give me the details?’

‘I think Max is the best person to talk to,’ said Kal, ‘She was the one on the spot.’ To my surprise, she pulled an incomprehensible face and left the room.

‘So,’ said Farrell, sitting down next to me and smiling. ‘How are you?’

‘Absolutely fine,’ I said, so pleased to see him.

He regarded me warily. ‘Is it safe to be this close?

I hear you’ve developed your own defence mechanism.’

‘Oh, yes,’ I said ruefully. ‘I don’t think he’ll ever forgive me.’

He looked at me carefully for a while and then said, ‘So, tell me all about it.’

‘There’s not much I can tell you. First of all I was behind the door and then I was underneath it. Then the corridor was full of smoke. Then I was outside. I know it spread really quickly.’

‘Yes,’ he said absently. ‘Old building. Did you smell anything?’

Did I? I shut my eyes and walked through it again. And again. And there it was, on the very edge … ‘Yes, yes I did.’ I actually sniffed, tasting it with my nostrils. ‘Yes … chemicals … like the lab sometimes.’

He sat back. ‘I think probably not gunfire at all. I think sabotage.’

‘Someone sabotaged a
hospital
?’

He shrugged. ‘Looks like it. There’s no source of combustion, only the hot pipes from the boilers running through the rooms to air the linen. So I think someone very carefully mixed a chemical cocktail. I think it smouldered for a while, generating some heat and actually opening the door provided additional oxygen and created the fireball.’ He was watching me carefully. ‘Does that sound likely?’

I wasn’t listening properly. ‘So it was me? I did it? I set fire to the hospital?’

‘No, no, no. Absolutely not, Miss Maxwell, I didn’t mean that at all. Please don’t think … The person who mixed the chemicals set fire to the hospital. It wasn’t you.’

‘You can’t know that.’

I spent the rest of the day going over and over things in my mind. If I had noticed that warm door handle … If I’d been paying attention … If I just stopped and thought occasionally … I know the fire had to happen because it had already happened, but it was a shock to discover that I was the one who might have caused the very catastrophe we went to investigate.

We were both restless all day. Sussman had been discharged. By unspoken consent we left the lights on. Nurse Hunter irritated us by constantly sticking her head round the door and going away again. After an hour, I couldn’t stand it any longer. I sat up and, for something to do, rummaged around the box the Chief had brought. There was something knobbly at the bottom. I pulled out a paper-wrapped bundle. Six pieces of chunky charcoal. The big stuff, not the little girlie willow sticks.

I looked at them.

I looked at the big wall to my left.

The big, blank wall.

The nice, big, blank wall.

I swung my legs out of bed. ‘Give me a hand to shift this table.’

‘Why?’

‘I want to stand on it.’

‘You’re not going to hang yourself, are you?’

We shoved the table into place and I clambered up. Once I got started, I couldn’t stop. Using wide arm movements, I sketched in a black sky, lit with starburst shells. Stark figures raced and fell across a lunar landscape. I drew faster and faster, unable to stop, taking the pictures in my head and transposing them on to the wall. I drew the explosions, the cold, the terror, the heart-breaking waste. I drew limbs, heads, and blood. I drew men dying on the wire, drowning in the mud, eyes wide, mouths gaping, hands clawing. It poured out. Beside me, Kal added her own contributions. At some point, Dr Foster came in, watched, and surprisingly said nothing. We moved the table out and I drew the Reception tent. I drew rows of soldiers, wrapped in blankets and coats, all stiff and heavy with mud and blood. I drew cold, grey, vacant faces; contorted faces; screaming and crying faces. The last piece of charcoal crumbled and flaked with the pressure. A hand touched my shoulder and Dr Foster said, ‘Enough.’

I looked round. A crowd of people had gathered behind us; the entire medical team, Farrell, Dieter, Doctor Dowson, and some more. I waited for the trouble coming my way but it didn’t happen.

We washed our hands and Nurse Hunter brought us a cup of tea. Then we switched out the lights and fell asleep.

We got over it, of course. You have to. We wrote our reports and submitted them to Dr Bairstow. We spent an afternoon with him and Chief Farrell, talking them through everything before they made the final report to Thirsk for them to present to the client. And then it was nearly done.

Kal and I accompanied Dr Bairstow to the Remembrance Day ceremony in Rushford that year. We were smartly turned out as he always insisted we were in public, wearing the full, formal uniform, hair up, shiny shoes, and make-up. We paid our private respects while he laid a wreath on behalf of St Mary’s, as he did every year. In my mind I saw the tents, the rows of wounded, saw the faces, heard the guns that never went away.

The Last Post sounded, thin in the cold air and the echoes took a long time to die away in more ways than one. I thought of the blind soldier and of that young major from the Glosters whose presence of mind had saved so many lives and wondered if they had survived the conflict. I dragged myself back to the present. We joined in the prayer.

They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old

Age shall not weary them, not the years condemn

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

Sussman didn’t come.

There was a curious postscript. A small event that had enormous consequences. I had a birthday soon after. Left outside my door, I found a small box, neatly wrapped in coloured paper. This must be from Sussman. Typically, he’d never talked about the explosion and fire at all, just carrying on as if nothing had happened and expecting everyone else to do the same. I wondered if he was trying to make amends with a present. If so, he’d certainly succeeded.

Inside the box nestled a small statue. A model of the Trojan Horse. About six inches tall and exquisitely made. From its delicate features to the trapdoor in its belly, it was absolutely perfect.

That evening, however, Sussman handed me a box of chocolates. I was surprised but did remember to thank him, although this didn’t solve my problem. Who left the horse for me? I pondered this as I ran downstairs and collided with Chief Farrell who was going up. We’re supposed to keep to the right.

‘You’re supposed to keep to the right,’ he said, mildly.

‘Sorry, Chief. You OK?’ And then I got it. I don’t know how I could ever have thought Sussman could have come up with anything so exquisite. Whatever had I been thinking? Sudden realisation swept over me. He’d given me a gift, a perfect gift, a wonderful gift. I was so happy. An inner voice said, ‘Don’t read too much into this,’ but how could I not?

I said, without missing a beat, ‘Thanks very much.’

He smiled back at me. ‘Keep it safe.’

I felt a little offended he thought I might lose or break it. I don’t have so many possessions I can afford to be careless with any of them and certainly not this one.

‘No,’ he said seriously. ‘I mean it, Miss Maxwell. Keep it safe and keep it accessible. It’s important.’ Then he was gone again, leaving me, happiness subsiding, bewildered and just a little bit uneasy.

We had the usual big noisy party that evening, but not all the music, dancing, and drinking in the world could mask the underlying tension. I don’t know if anyone said anything to Dr Bairstow, but Sussman and Kal never went on another assignment together again.

Chapter Six

Another all-staff briefing from Dr Bairstow.

‘And finally, I have been asked by Mrs Partridge to raise this issue. As some of you may struggle to remember, next month is your annual appraisal and I’m advised by Mrs Partridge that some of the forms you were asked to complete as a preliminary need … more work.

‘Your personal details update form … Mr Sussman; you are not a Jedi Knight. Kindly amend the details in Box 3 – Religion. Ditto Mr Markham, Mr Peterson, Miss Maxwell, Mr Dieter, and Miss Black.

‘Miss Maxwell, Box 5. You are not five feet seven inches tall and never will be. Live with it and correct your paperwork.

‘Mr Markham, the box marked “Sex” is not an invitation. Please amend the details and apologise to Mrs Partridge.

‘Mr Dieter, the claims made in the box marked “Other Interests” are physically impossible and, in most of the civilised world, illegal. You also render yourself liable to prosecution for misuse of government property. Amend.

‘Miss Black, there are two P s in oppressed and only one N in minority. You are neither. Delete.

‘I would also take this opportunity to remind you that Doctor Foster will be circulating similar medical paperwork for your completion and does not share my enlightened attitude towards employee relations. As I’m sure at least some of you are aware, she enjoys a robust, thorough and above all, penetrative approach to your annual medical examinations. Mess her about at your peril.

‘Miss Maxwell, please report to my office in thirty minutes and persuade Mr Sussman to take time out from his religious conversion to accompany you. That is all. Dismissed.’

Grumbling and shuffling our paperwork, we watched him limp away to his lair. I looked round for Sussman but he’d disappeared already. Kalinda joined me and gave me a look.

‘What?’

‘He’ll get you killed one day.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘He’s just a bit … erratic.’

‘No, you’re erratic; he’s a bloody disaster. If you don’t watch it, Max, you’ll lose your chance at the next Big Job because of him. The Boss does not like him and I don’t either. Nobody does but you.’

‘He’s my partner,’ I said defensively, getting tired of this. ‘He’s not that bad.’

‘Exactly, Max. He’s your partner and the best you can say of him is that he’s not that bad. Doesn’t that tell you anything?’

‘He’s OK with me. It’s you he doesn’t like and he winds you up deliberately. It’s not a problem, believe me.’

Exactly thirty minutes later we stood outside the door. Time is important in our organisation. If you can’t even get to an appointment in your own building on time, they argue, you’re not going to have much luck trying to find the Battle of Hastings.

Sussman pushed me in first. Mrs Partridge gave us an unloving glare. You could see the words ‘feckless’ and ‘irresponsible’ hacking their way through her thought processes. I looked in vain for some human emotion. She made the Boss look like a humanitarian aid worker. She was, as always, impeccably dressed in a black suit and white shirt, with her dark hair in a French pleat. As always, she reminded me of someone. She handed us each a mission folder and nodded us in. I began to feel excited. This could be a Big Job
.

The Boss was waiting for us at his briefing table. Files, cubes, and data sticks littered the surface. He motioned us to sit. Without speaking, he began to bring up data. He was such a showman. Data began to twist and spiral, culminating in Thirsk’s logo and two short paragraphs.

I sat stunned. Beside me, Sussman’s mouth hung open. For the first time ever, the pair of us were speechless. We stared at the screen. I looked away, blinked and looked back again.

There were only the two paragraphs but I couldn’t take them in at all. So I read them again. And again. I took my scratch pad out of my knee pocket, laid it on the table in front of me, clasped my hands, and looked expectantly at the Boss.

‘Well?’ he said. ‘Are you interested?’ I could almost hear my own excitement. I looked at Sussman’s flushed face. He grinned at me.

‘Sir,’ I said. ‘We will climb over the cold, dead bodies of our colleagues for this one.’

He smiled grimly. ‘Shouldn’t you inquire if it’s safe? Or even possible?’

‘If you think it’s do-able, sir, then that’s good enough for me.’

He sat forward and handed us the files and data.

‘You should find everything you need here. Certainly enough to get you started. I want to see a mission plan here in my office at 0930 on Friday. You may allocate mission responsibilities as you think fit. I estimate a preparation period of about three months, three months on-site and around two weeks to work up your data and present your findings. Miss Maxwell will head the mission. Are there any questions at this moment?’

We both shook our heads. I was still gobsmacked and Sussman knew better than to talk in front of the Boss. We withdrew.

We filed sedately through Mrs Partridge’s office, feeling her stare on our backs. We walked quietly along the corridor and slowly down the stairs. We entered the Library, nodded politely to Dr Dowson, who was peering into a microfiche reader and again to Professor Rapson, muttering to himself in the Early Mesopotamian section. We dropped our files on one of the big data tables to establish ownership, climbed out of the window, walked casually down the path, and into the sunken rock garden, where we finally took a breath.

I jumped onto a bench, lifted my head to the grey sky and shouted ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ and began to sing, ‘We are the champions’ and play air guitar. Sussman cartwheeled off down the path and back again, whooping incoherently. I jumped off the bench, met him as he straightened up, and the two of us hugged, jumping up and down together until we got tangled up and fell over. I was on the bottom, still shouting ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ as Chief Farrell came around the corner. The ground never opens up and swallows you when you need it to.

There was a fairly crowded silence and then he said politely, ‘Good morning, Miss Maxwell and whoever that is. May I be of any assistance?’

Sussman was shaking with laughter and deliberately keeping his face hidden, so I looked over his shoulder and said, ‘Good morning, Chief. No, everything’s fine, thank you. We’re just having a small celebration.’

‘What do you do for large celebrations?’

‘Oh, we really let rip for those, Chief. This is only a 2.5 on the Richter Scale.’

Eventually, we calmed down, climbed back in through the window, and got down to it. We were laying out our files when Kalinda and Peterson turned up. Word had already got around.

‘What have you got?’ demanded Kal. ‘Come on, is it a Big Job?’

I grinned at Sussman. ‘You have no idea.’

‘What? What have you got? Don’t make me come over there!’

I took a deep breath, savouring the moment. Once I told Kal and Peterson it would be all around the unit in minutes. Or less.

‘It’s a big one,’ I admitted. ‘In fact, it’s
the
Big Job. Three months full study, climate, geology, flora, fauna, even a star map. The works.’

She grinned at me and I could see my own excitement reflected in her eyes. ‘Flora? Fauna? When? Where? What have you got? Jesus I’m going to kill the pair of you in a minute.’

‘Guess,’ said Sussman.

‘Oh God, I don’t know. Flora, fauna … something biological. The
Beagle
! You’re going to the Galapagos.’

Sussman snorted with derision. ‘Oh, come on Kal, look at our specialties. I’m early Byzantine and Max doesn’t even get out of bed for anything after the Peloponnesian Wars.’

‘Well, not Troy. The two of you would be screaming from the rooftops. Egypt? Mesopotamia? Oh, I know. The Great Rift Valley. You’re going to study the early migrations.’

‘You don’t know the half of it. Way further back than that.

‘Jeez, I don’t know. What?’

I drew deep breath, feeling it all bubbling up again. ‘The Cretaceous Period. Sixty-seven million years ago, give or take. We’re going to live with the dinosaurs!’

And then again, the two of us were jigging about like a pair of idiots, chanting, ‘We’re going to see a T-rex, a T-rex, a T-rex,’ until Dr Dowson frowned gently at us.

They stared. I could see the conflict. Envy competing with shock. I didn’t blame them. Something similar was going through my mind. Peterson, the sensible one (and imagine a group where Peterson is the sensible one), said quietly, ‘But have you thought? It’s so far back.’

I knew what he meant. The further back you go, the fewer reference points there are. How do you know if you’ve gone back twenty, thirty, sixty, one hundred million years without a handy newspaper or dress shop opposite? And, although this was ridiculous, I think we all instinctively felt the invisible cord, our trail of breadcrumbs, our route home stretched thinner and thinner the further back we went. Sixty-seven million years ago (give or take) would stretch it very thin indeed, possibly to breaking point.

Kal had been too quiet too long. ‘Max, it’s so far. Far further back than anything we’ve ever done before. Aren’t you just a bit worried?’

‘It shouldn’t make any difference. Yesterday, or sixty-seven million years, they’re the same; you know that. Look on the bright side; we’re far more likely to be eaten by the indigenous fauna than lost in time.’

She sighed. ‘Do you guys need a hand?’

‘Not at the moment. We need to look through the parameters now, but we’ll almost certainly need you at some point.’

‘How long’s your lead-in?’

‘Three months.’

She blinked. ‘Yes, it would be, I suppose. We’ve got late nineteenth-century Vienna and we’ll be there and back before you’ve even set off.’

‘I hope you’ll be here when we go,’ I said and Sussman nodded.

‘Of course we will. Give us a shout if you need us.’ And they wandered off, presumably to spread the word.

We got stuck in again and set up the categories.

The star map; they wanted to map the night sky. Conditions would be ideal with no light pollution. I had no idea how different the stars would be all that time ago, but now was a good time to find out, I suppose. However, we’d need horizon-to-horizon vision, so we wouldn’t want to be in the middle of a forest. Ideally, we could set up on the pod roof and just leave the equipment to do its thing. I made a note to talk to the Chief about co-ordinates and how much control we would have. None, I guessed. We would almost certainly land in some boggy swamp, or under water. Don’t think about that. We colour-coded that black and moved on.

We looked at climate next, dividing that down into sub-sections, temperature, wind, rain, etc. Oxygen levels would be important. I’d heard CO
₂
levels were higher then. Too high and moving all our kit around would be difficult. I made another note to talk to Helen about high-altitude medication. Climate was allocated blue.

Geology would be interesting. I wanted that one for myself, although I wouldn’t be telling Sussman that. There would be a certain amount of horse-trading and almost certainly tears before bedtime. We couldn’t bring anything back, so all samples must be photographed, catalogued, and analysed on-site. That meant even more equipment. And from what I could remember, the period was seismically active, so we could add being enveloped in pyroclastic flows to our list of fun ways to die. Geology was imaginatively coded brown.

Flora: again no samples; only photos, images, and on the spot analysis. No grass, if I remembered rightly, and lots of coniferous forests, though broad-leafed trees did exist. And flowers had evolved too, so we could expect big, stingy insects. Yay! Flora got green.

And so to the biggie – fauna; a field so big we decided to spend a week or so on research before coming up with a plan. Fauna was orange.

‘Like techies,’ said Sussman. ‘Big and clumsy with small brains.’

I frowned at him. ‘Don’t do that, Davey.’

‘Oh, I forgot, you actually talk to them, don’t you?’

‘Davey …’

‘Well, I’m just saying, I wouldn’t want my sister to marry one.’

‘You haven’t got a sister and if you did she’d slap you senseless if you tried any of that crap on her, so give it a rest.’

He sat back in his chair. ‘You’re the boss; so who gets what, then?’

This was where he could be difficult if not carefully managed. ‘What do you want? Make a case. And don’t cherry-pick all the good stuff for yourself.’

‘I’d like the star map. I could do a good job there. You know I could. I’ll talk to Barclay about it. She’s red-hot at this sort of thing. She tells me what she wants and I set the equipment accordingly. Then I can liaise again when we get back. We’ll input the data and project a moving star map. It could be spectacular, Max and I’d like to do it.’

I thought. He was right. He certainly got on better with Barclay. They could produce something really exceptional. I nodded. ‘Yes, agreed. I’ll leave it with you, but I want daily updates and full training. If anything happens to you then I’m your back-up.’

His face lit up. ‘That’s great, Max. It’ll be the dog’s bollocks. You just wait.’ He paused and I knew. This was it. This was what he really wanted.

‘The dinosaurs … I’m thinking we could do something similar.’

I started to shake my head.

‘No, listen Max. We could do something along the lines of “A Day in the Life of
 
…” We’ve done statics for junior schools – “A Day in the Life of a Medieval Peasant” or a Roman soldier or an Egyptian stone mason, you know the sort of thing. We can set up near a waterhole or some centre of activity. We’ll have everything coming down to drink, or bathe, or whatever they do. And there’ll be fights and kills and sex and cute babies. Max, just think, if we could pull it off, we can do a 3D holo for this. People could actually look up at some thumping great reptile as it passes twenty feet above them. We’ll have sound as well and the computer can add vibrations, even the smell of dinosaur shit. Barclay can work all that out. Come on Max, it’ll be awesome!’

It would too; images of actual dinosaurs, living, walking; a dinosaur experience. It was a brilliant idea, but he wasn’t going to get it easily.

I leaned forward. ‘OK, here’s the thing. I agree, but it’s huge. It’s adding huge to an already huge workload. Thirsk have paid for this and they’ll want what they paid for, which is just unspectacular, boring, raw data; otherwise the shit will really hit the fan. I don’t want you spending all your time on this while I’m disappearing up my own arse like the backward-flying bird of fable trying to get all the other stuff done.’ I leaned back. He nodded.