‘You …’ he stared. Shock, betrayal and hurt all chased each other across his face. ‘I can’t believe you would …’
I raised the gun.
‘Open the door, Chief, and put him outside. Do it now, please.’
‘So that’s it, is it? It’s all right when you pick soldiers out of the mud or a woodcutter out of the snow? But for everyone else …?’
I said nothing. I wouldn’t debate this.
‘You … bitch.’
Yes, Leon, that’s what you’ve made me. And this is what I’ll do to keep all of us from catastrophe. And I couldn’t expect Guthrie and Peterson to stay outside for ever. If I didn’t end this now, then Guthrie would.
Or History.
‘You heartless, hypocritical bitch! I can’t believe … you’d leave this boy to die. This is Helios, for God’s sake. You gave him chocolate. You played hopscotch with him. You have a chance to save him and you’re telling me to just turn him out? Out there? Do you actually know what’s happening out there? Or are you so caught up in History and yourself that you’re too stupid to notice? Well, I’m not you, thank God. I won’t do it. Shoot me if you dare.’
‘I’m not going to shoot you, Chief Farrell. I’m going to shoot him.’
I levelled the gun at Helios.
‘Or you can open the door and put him outside to take his chances. They’re better than if you try to keep him in here.’
He didn’t move. He didn’t believe me and it was vital that he did.
I clicked off the safety. Would I do it? Would I kill a child? Most importantly, would he believe it? He must. It was our only way out of this.
I hated him for what he was making me do.
The silence dragged on and on. Finally, he turned his head and said, ‘Door.’
Only then did I realise I’d been holding my breath.
Without looking at me, he said, ‘Twenty minutes.’
‘Agreed.’
Then he was gone.
Peterson and Guthrie re-entered the pod. Guthrie raised his eyebrows when he saw the gun but said nothing. I made it safe and put it back.
Tim checked over the console. I washed my face and hands, dabbed at my nose again with shaking hands, tried to tidy my hair, and straightened my clothing. I’m an historian and we never go back looking scruffy.
Without seeming to, I watched the clock, wondering what the hell I would do if he wasn’t back within twenty minutes.
But he was.
Guthrie said, ‘Here he comes,’ and as he spoke the door opened and Farrell tumbled in.
I wasn’t the only one staring at him in shock. He looked exhausted and even through his two-day stubble his cheeks were grey and hollow.
Without looking at anyone, he took himself off to a corner and sank to the floor.
I said, ‘Whenever you’re ready, Tim.’
‘Jump initiated.’
And the world went white.
That night, I partied harder than I ever had in my entire life.
I drank. I ate. I drank. I danced. I drank.
Markham and I participated in the infamous tray race and nearly broke our necks.
My attempt to drink a yard of ale nearly drowned Miss Prentiss.
Kal and I sang “Blow the Man Down” in a way that gave sea-shanties a bad name.
I caught Guthrie or Peterson looking at me occasionally, so I smiled, waved, and partied even harder. I knew that if I never spoke of it then they wouldn’t either. I’d lifted the incriminating tape from the pod’s internal security system and destroyed it. If Guthrie noticed the gap, he never said anything.
No one ever knew what Leon Farrell had tried to do. I didn’t write him up. That was the most I was prepared to do for him.
We never spoke directly to each other again in this life. We communicated through com links or third parties. I avoided him if I could. I never forgave him.
Whenever he looked at me, his eyes were ice-blue and empty. He never forgave me.
We never left St Mary’s. Our new life together died, stillborn.
I should have been devastated but I wasn’t. I was buoyed up on a wave of righteous anger. That he, of all people, could have tried to do such a thing was almost past belief. And so I took my rage and my fury and I nursed them. I could never forgive the man who had forced me to choose between him and my job. Because, in the end, with my back to the wall, I had chosen my job – as, I think, we both always knew that I would.
Chapter Thirteen
Of course, that wasn’t the end of the story of Troy. Legend tells us that the cause of all the trouble, Helen, returned to Sparta with her husband and, typically, the pair of them lived happily ever after, while for everyone else the bloody aftermath rumbled on for decades.
Odysseus struggled to get home for twenty years. Kassandra and Agamemnon would both be murdered by his wife, Klytemnestra. Him in his bath, naked and vulnerable; and her, stabbed in Agamemnon’s bedchamber as she quietly awaited her self-predicted fate.