‘Why is everything covered in honey?’
‘Long story,’ said Peterson. ‘I’m going up. There’s a little platform at the top of the ladder. A bit like one of those airplane embarkation stairs. I’ll get him off the shelves and persuade him down the ladder. You scoop him up at the bottom.’
‘Don’t be an idiot,’ said Helen, brusquely. ‘There’s no room for two people up there and I love you so much.’
Silence. No one caught anyone’s eye.
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Tim, you take Helen. Dr Dowson, you keep an eye on the galloping Major, and I’ll go and talk to the naked man up there. Miss Schiller, where’s Dr Bairstow?’
‘In his office, as far as I know.’
‘Watch the door. No one comes in.’
Peterson heaved Helen onto the other shoulder. ‘You can’t go up there, Max. You won’t have the strength if he takes it into his head to do something stupid.’
‘Well, you can’t go. You’re wearing the unit’s medical officer.’
‘Yes, did you hear what she said? I have witnesses.’
‘Fat lot of good that’ll do. If she remembers any of this, she’ll never let us live. We’ll all have to join a witness protection programme somewhere.’
‘Someone’s coming,’ said Schiller from the door, because the day just wasn’t bad enough.
‘Quick,’ said Tim. ‘Everyone look normal.’
Guthrie’s legs folded beneath him like wet string.
Oh, great.
Leon had come looking for me. Discharged from SickBay, he’d gone to my room and I wasn’t there. He’d gone to the dining room, expecting to find me in a close relationship with a plate full of great British bangers and I hadn’t been there either. After that, of course, he’d just followed the noise.
We regarded him with all the dismay of a politician who has suddenly remembered the existence of the electorate only ten minutes before the polls close.
I wasn’t sure whether his arrival was a good thing or not. We all tend to forget he’s actually second in charge at St Mary’s. Mostly, I think, because he never needs to make the point. What people like Barclay never understood is that the louder and longer you shout, the less people listen. That doesn’t mean, however, that he can’t shout if he wants to.
He summed up the situation at a glance.
Dr Dowson, alternately exhorting the professor to come down at once for the love of God, and then threatening him with some blood-curdling fate should he actually choose to do so.
Ian Guthrie, collapsed in a badly folded heap on the floor and singing something incomprehensibly Caledonian, no doubt involving banks, braes – whatever the hell they are –, and Bannockburn.
And the Chief Medical officer, who appeared to be eating the Chief Training Officer who had a stupid grin on his face and was putting up no sort of resistance at all.
We must have been back all of twenty minutes.
I got a long, slow look. The words seven months could not have been more clearly conveyed, even if they’d been set to music. I got the message. There’s no sex on assignments. That would be stupid and embarrassing. And our shifts hadn’t coincided. So he’d waited seven months and I suspected he wasn’t going to wait very much longer. However, we had other things to deal with first …
‘Speeding through the universe.
Thinking is the best way to travel. ’
Correctly categorising everything happening at ground level as irrelevant, he threw his head back and, in a voice in which failure to comply was not an option, called, ‘Professor Rapson, if you would be good enough to join us down here, please. You are causing some alarm and Dr Dowson is distressed.’
Obviously, something got through. The overhead singing ceased.
‘Octavius, my dear fellow …’
I said urgently, ‘He shouldn’t try to get down alone.’
‘He won’t. I’ll get him down. Go and see Dr Bairstow who is looking for you and none of you want to be found here. Dr Peterson, please help Major Guthrie to his quarters. Miss Schiller, if you could assist Dr Foster to hers, please. Go now. Dr Dowson, you will remain.’
He began to climb the library ladder.
As I sped thankfully away, the last thing I heard was the professor’s faltering footsteps on the metal staircase. ‘Occy, my friend, what is all this?’ and then I was out of earshot, never doubting for one moment that all would be safely resolved.
I raced up the stairs, arriving, hot and sticky in the Boss’s office. Mrs Partridge frowned disapprovingly, but she always did. I flashed her a grin, just to annoy her, and bounced in to see him.
‘Good morning, sir.’
‘Dr Maxwell, welcome back.’
‘Thank you, sir. Nice to be back.’
He looked me up and down. ‘You appear to be remarkably unharmed.’
‘I am.’
‘If a little sticky.’
‘Honey, sir.’