I’m just saying …
I couldn’t think about that. Not just at the moment.
I spent a few minutes thinking about this job Mrs Partridge had sent me to do. I had absolutely no clues about that. For all I knew, it was something important in Thebes and I’d been so busy yanking Leon out of irrigation ditches that I’d missed it.
I didn’t want to think about that, either.
I thought about the Vikings, but not for long because they weren’t any of my special areas of expertise. I’m Ancient Civilisations, with British and European Medieval, and a bit of the Tudors thrown in for good measure. I tried to remember who, in my department, was the expert on Scandinavian history, couldn’t, and gave that up too. That world was gone. Gone for good. I’d never see any of them again. That was something else I couldn’t think about.
I stared out at the rain and doodled.
In the interests of peace and harmony, I did wake him after his four hours. And I made him a cup of tea.
He sat up and rubbed his hair.
‘What’s happening?’
‘Oh – the morning has been crowded with incidents. It stopped raining about an hour ago although we’re still waiting for the sun to emerge. A small child of indeterminate sex ran out of the big hall on the left, together with a dog. A woman stood on the threshold and yelled at them. On their return, the kid got a thump round the side of the head. The dog ran off. I have to say, Viking society isn’t anything like as exciting as I’d hoped. No one’s been raped or pillaged at all. Quite dull, really. Do you want to use the shower? It’s stopped raining. I can wait outside and we could let some fresh air in.’
‘No,’ he said, quickly, ‘don’t open the door.’
‘Why not? It’s a bit ripe in here – even by historian standards.’
‘I think you’ll find it’s colder than you think.’
‘In that case, I’m going to bed.’
I curled up in the still warm blankets. The sleeping module moulded itself around me.
The last thing I saw was Leon heading into the toilet.
When I awoke, considerably more than four hours had passed.
I sat up and glared at him.
‘You should have woken me.’
‘I tried. I couldn’t get you to open your eyes. Is there a password?’
He wasn’t telling the truth. Since childhood, I’m the world’s lightest sleeper. On a bad day, I can make Lady Macbeth look like a raging narcoleptic.
‘Anyway,’ he said, passing me over a mug of tea, ‘you’d only have been in the way. I’ve had the panels off the console and had a poke around inside. I can’t do much because I don’t have the equipment, but I’ve given it a bit of a tickle.’
His face belied his words. He didn’t look very happy at all.
‘Is there a problem?’
He suddenly looked very worried and very tired.
‘Leon, what’s the matter?’
‘I have bad news, really bad news, and catastrophic news.’
I grinned at him. ‘Nothing new there, then. OK. Give me the bad news.’
‘It’s not the pod they’re following.’
‘Well, it’s hard to see how they could have been, really. It’s not as if we leave a vapour trail. Is that the bad news? What’s the really bad news?’
‘They’re following us. Specifically, they’re following you.’
For a moment, I couldn’t think. Then I couldn’t speak.
Oh, my God …
Tiredness had drained all the colour from his face, leaving it a dreadful grey shade. God knows what colour of the spectrum I was, because now, suddenly, I’d just realised – this was all my fault.
He didn’t need to tell me the really catastrophic news. I could work that out for myself. Because the really catastrophic news was that I was tagged. We all were. In case we get lost in time. No doubt, Leon, having left St Mary’s in the conventional manner, had had his tag removed – in the conventional manner. Having been bundled out of my own world without a moment’s notice, I hadn’t given it a thought and I should have. I know I’d been racing up and down the timeline, pursued by the forces of temporal law and order, but I really should have tumbled to it long before this. It wasn’t the pod leaving a trail through time that a blind man could follow – it was me.
And with their advanced technology, the Time Police could track me wherever I went. And they were fast – so much faster than St Mary’s. And much more accurate. And we were screwed.
‘I’m an idiot. A complete idiot.’
‘No you’re not. I never realised, either.’
‘I should have thought … Why didn’t I think of it?’
‘Stop,’ he said, taking my cold hands. His hands were always so warm. ‘You’re no more stupid than me. Neither of us realised. Let’s just leave it at that, shall we?’