‘Eddie, the fault is mine. I should have looked after you better.’
‘If it’s any consolation, I don’t regret any of it. I regret very little in my life. Do you?’
I considered. ‘I’d like to skip the early years, but on the whole, no.’
‘That is always the sign of a life well spent.’
I fell in love with him all over again.
‘We’ll do it together, Eddie.’
‘Very well.’
I took his hand and guided it to the controls.’
‘Got it?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll give the word and then …’
‘It’ll be very quick, Max. We’ll never know anything about it.’
‘Eddie, if I wasn’t already spoken for …’
‘Max, if I was forty years younger, it wouldn’t matter if you were spoken for or not …’
‘You’re a bad boy, Eddie. Just my type.’
I felt, rather than heard his little chuckle.
We held hands, tightly.
‘Computer – on my mark, disengage safety protocols. Mark.’
Light seared through my eyes and boiled my brain.
The blast stripped the flesh from my bones.
Heat coalesced.
We were burning …
We were falling …
We were dying …
Chapter Four
If only I could shift this nagging feeling that something was important …
I could hear faint electronic beeping. That was good. Something was working. Obviously, the console had fired up. Everything was operating. All I needed to do was … If I could just open my eyes … Or move my hands …
I struggled. Something important.
A fuzzy voice came and went.
I strained to move something – a finger – anything. Important. The beeping increased. Another fuzzy voice said something else. The beeping faded away … for a long time …
I opened my eyes and everything was black. I slid away …
I opened my eyes and people spoke. Now they slid away …
I opened my eyes and Nurse Hunter said, ‘That’s better, Max. Try and stay with me this time.’
I smiled because I liked her and … something important … she slid away …
To be replaced by someone for whom sliding away was never an option.
Her voice had harmonics that could raise the dead.
‘Maxwell? Stop lazing around and open your eyes. Now, please. This is Dr Foster.’
I said thickly, ‘Are you really from Gloucester?’ And slid away. Which probably saved my life.
Finally, I opened my eyes and took in the bed, the beeping equipment, the dim lights, and Hunter. I remembered the thing that had been so important and croaked, ‘Professor Penrose?’
She bent over me. ‘Safe.’
Now I could sleep.
They told me I should be grateful to be alive. I didn’t feel the slightest bit grateful. Actually, I didn’t feel the slightest bit anything. I was enjoying that pink fluffy cloud feeling associated with strong medication and the euphoria of not being dead. A pleasant sensation I was determined to prolong as long as I could.
Because now, of course, I knew I was in real trouble. There’s nothing like taking your boss’s old friend, embroiling him in a back-alley brawl, getting him stabbed, and hurling his aged bones across time and space before precipitating him across Hawking in a flaming pod, to further one’s career.
Dr Bairstow was going to have a great deal to say to me.
I knew he was there. I thought about lying still and feigning death, possum-like. Perhaps I could pretend I’d lost my memory. I could definitely get away with claiming I’d lost my mind. I was warm. I was comfortable. I could lie here for ever if I had to.
No, I couldn’t. Just the knowledge that he was there, waiting …
I opened my eyes.
He stood at the foot of my bed, dark against the window, his expression difficult to read. We regarded each other for quite a long time, which was unnerving. Telling myself I was too ill to get a proper bollocking, I waited.
The silence went on and on.
Finally, he shook his head and said simply, ‘Words fail me,’ and limped away.
I closed my eyes again.
Next up was Leon, who had to be getting pretty tired of sitting by my sickbed and listening to my bones knit. I know I was. No wonder he wanted us out of St Mary’s. And after being trapped, alone, in the dark, wherever and whenever we’d been, I was inclined to agree. No need to tell him that, though.
I knew the signs. The best thing to do is let him get it off his chest.
‘The jump was to Cambridge. In the middle of the Fens. It’s one of the wettest cities in the country. How did you manage to set fire to your pod? We build them so that even historians can’t set fire to them. For God’s sake, tell me Isaac Newton is still alive. That you haven’t incinerated one of the greatest scientific figures of all time? And what about Professor Penrose? He’s seventy-six and you bring him back with a stab wound, second-degree burns, and concussion. You were visiting an educational establishment, for crying out loud, not the sack of Constantinople.’
‘1204,’ I murmured, helpfully.
‘You melted your pod!’
‘I’m fine, thank you.’