Paris appealed to Andromache, gesturing at his brother and the three of them laughed again. A happy moment in the sun.
Hector gently took his wife’s arm and she smiled up at him. For a brief, intimate moment, even amongst all these people, at this public event, there were just the two of them, and then they fell in behind the king and queen. Courtiers, soldiers, and priests made haste to join them. Brazen horns and trumpets sounded. People cheered, and the procession moved slowly off towards the palace. A kaleidoscope of glittering colour. Seeing and being seen.
No woman walked at Paris’s side.
I sighed. ‘There’s no Helen, is there?’
‘Well, that’s what you’ve always said, isn’t it? And it looks as if you were right.’
‘I know, but even so …’
‘Oh, I agree. I would have given a lot to see the face that launched a thousand ships.’
I looked around at Troy. Prosperous, powerful, and seemingly unassailable.
I looked at the vanishing royal procession. No pretty-boy Paris. And no Helen.
‘What else do you think Homer got wrong?’
‘We’ll have to wait and see.’
Chapter Eight
We’d finished. Seven months had flown by. Like everyone else, I was weary, covered with ingrained dust and grime, and desperate for a long, hot bath, my own bodyweight in chocolate, and a plateful of sausages. And yes, all three simultaneously. Why not?
I stood with Guthrie and Peterson in the cool pre-dawn air as we took one last look at Site B. Our home for nearly seven months.
I knew every stick, every stone, and every last blade of coarse, brown grass here, and now we were leaving. Part one of the assignment was finished. We had a huge amount of data on Troy and its citizens. An almost complete map of the city. Several holos of daily life. Number Eight was stuffed full of wonderful, unique, priceless data. Boxes full of sticks, cubes, disks, films, even scribbled hand-written notes and sketches. Half of me couldn’t wait to get at it and the other half was reluctant to leave. When we returned, the city would be at war.
We’d spent some time discussing whether to leave at least one pod on site. To mark our territory. Both Leon and Dieter had been reasonably confident that even after nearly ten years it would still be functioning on our return, requiring nothing more than a major re-alignment to make it operational again. We’d decided against it on the advice of Guthrie. While the Trojans posed no threat – there was no way they could even get inside it – that bastard Clive Ronan was still out there somewhere. Waiting for any opportunity. Alone and desperate. An unattended pod was asking for trouble. In the end it seemed easier to cope with suspicious Trojans than lose another pod to him.
In an effort to prepare the ground for our return, we’d told our neighbours we were leaving. They nodded. We told them we would return. They nodded again, uninterested. The chances were that they wouldn’t be here when we returned, anyway. When we returned, they would have been fighting the Greeks for ten years. Ten years of war would wreak enormous changes.
We withdrew in stages. Number Three had gone first. Number Five followed soon afterwards. Just the three of us left, now. When we returned, all this would be different. None of it would ever be the same again.
I watched the mist burning off as the sun rose and smelled wood smoke on the air.
Guthrie stirred. ‘We should go, Max. People will be up and about soon. And they’ll be waiting for us back at St Mary’s.’
‘Ready when you are.’
The world went white.
Peterson bumped us on landing. He always did.
I activated the decon. and the cold, blue light took care of any nasty Trojan viruses we might have brought back with us. In fact, since we’d lived there so long, I did it twice, just to be sure.
Peterson and Guthrie fussed around, picking up their kit. Peering through the screen, I could see an orange army of techies, ready to swarm over the pods the second they could get us out of Hawking. They would be itching to get on with it.
We stepped outside. St Mary’s seemed strangely harsh, noisy, smelly, and unfamiliar.
I took a deep breath and looked around. Dr Bairstow stood on the gantry, as he always did, looking down at me. I smiled and nodded.
He nodded and – did he? No. No smile. On the other hand, any mission that doesn’t end in death or my P45 is a good one.
The rest of the team were waiting for us. We always finish an assignment together. I insist on it. Van Owen and I assembled the troops and pointed them more or less in the direction of SickBay. Wise in the ways of historians, Dr Foster had sent advance troops to divert us from the bar. Which was a shame, because after months of the choice between Trojan rotgut or nothing at all, I was really ready for something blue and potent and with a little umbrella.
Helen, in a white coat and stethoscope, effortlessly achieving the sort of discipline for which lesser women would require black leather and a hunting crop, indicated we should form a line.