by Jodi Taylor
Dr Bairstow cleared his throat. ‘The world’s resources are not infinite and it therefore behoves all of us to be environmentally responsible. May I suggest, given your massive aversion to the Technical Section’s efforts to preserve you from a fiery death, that all of you refrain from removing either batteries or fuel cells, and be considerably more careful in the future vis-à-vis any situation likely to burn this building to the ground. Are there any further questions?’
Sykes shot her hand in the air.
‘Are there any sensible questions?’
It would appear there were no sensible questions.
‘Chief Farrell, if you could spare me one moment, please.’
The two of them made their way upstairs but not before I heard Dr Bairstow say, ‘You were right. Most enjoyable . . .’
3
We lined up outside Tea Bag 2 – our big pod. We have eight altogether. Nine, if you count TB2. Actually, ten, if you count the teapot. They’re small, apparently stone-built huts – except for the teapot, obviously – in which we live and work. There’s a console, away from which we keep Peterson because he always bounces his pod on landing. He says he doesn’t but he does. There’s a toilet, which frequently buckles under the strain, despite the binding properties of compo rations, and various lockers to hold our bits and pieces. Our pods are not comfortable and for some reason, they always smell of cabbage.
Theoretically on the same team as me were Leon, Matthew, Dieter, Evans, Markham, Atherton, Sykes and Mikey. It should have been Bashford rather than Atherton but there had been a last-minute change of plan when Bashford fell off his wardrobe and banged his head.
Yes, I know what you’re thinking, but it wasn’t one of those type of wardrobe-related accidents involving girlfriends and athletics. This one involved his chicken, Angus – although as I say that, it does occur to me that I’m not making things any better.
It would seem that Sykes had called on him last night – at rather a late hour, I thought – but it seemed she had wanted to discuss the forthcoming assignment, so that’s all right then. Bearing in mind her frequent complaints about a third party in the room, Bashford had clambered on to a chair to lift her down from the top of the wardrobe – Angus, not Sykes, that is. For God’s sake, don’t make the same mistake I did – and he’d fallen off the chair and hurt himself. To allay any concern on the part of the reader, Angus had landed on Bashford and was completely uninjured.
Not so Bashford, escorted to Sick Bay by Sykes, which hadn’t been the point of the evening at all, as she complained to me afterwards.
‘I mean,’ she continued, saturating me with information I could really do without, ‘what is the point of wrestling myself into my new push-up bra and drenching myself in “Extasy de Passion” – which took the varnish off my dressing table when I spilled a bit, so watch yourself with that stuff, Max . . .’
‘Extasy de Passion?’ I said.
‘Well, it’s a knock-off, isn’t it? I got it cheap off the market. The bloke let me sniff a sample and it seemed OK.’
I toyed with the idea of telling her that the usual trick was to squirt an infinitesimal drop of the real deal around the neck of the bottle – for the authentic smell – and fill up the rest with yellow water. And yes, the yellow water was exactly what you’re thinking, as subsequent analysis by Trading Standards had revealed. This exciting concoction would then be sold for an only slightly less exorbitant price than the original. And, I suppose, if you’ve filled a hundred bottles full of yellow water, the correct spelling of Exstasy probably wasn’t that high on your agenda. But I refrained from mentioning any of that. There was enough grief in her life without informing her she’d been dousing herself in market traders’ . . . um . . . body fluids.
Anyway, Bashford, still hors de combat, had been replaced by Atherton. Nice, normal Atherton, whose best friend wasn’t a chicken and never fell off wardrobes.
We had a fair bit of kit to take with us, as well. Metal detectors, tools, barrows, bins and rations – lots and lots of rations. Apparently, Mrs Mack had no faith in our abilities to live off the land. About which, yes, she was right, but hurtful nevertheless.
I’d been to the remote site before, albeit very briefly. I’d shot in, had a quick word with Dr Bairstow, ravaged Leon and jumped straight back out again. Now I had a chance to take in the details.
This is where we flee in the event of an emergency. It’s somewhere to hide our pods and our Archive. Especially our Archive. Which by now is quite sizeable because we’ve been doing this for some time. We visit major historical events, record what’s happening and do our very best not to die. Because it’s important. Not the not-dying bit – I mean, it’s always important to have an accurate record of what actually happened. Not the socially acceptable version, or the politically correct version – is there anyone left in the world who still believes what politicians say? – or the religious version, or the victor’s version, but a record of what did actually happen. Warts and all. Because the truth is important.
The truth is also very, very dangerous and so we take good care of our Archive because we can’t afford to have it falling into the wrong hands. Not least because if anything did happen to it, we can’t go back and do it all again. You can only be in any given time once, which means we only ever get one crack at a jump, and if we screw it up, then the opportunity is gone forever. Hence the remote site. Somewhere remote and in another time. In this case, the left-hand side of a continent that will one day be known as North America. You do realise I’m going to have to kill you now, don’t you?
I stood on flat grassland that ran down to a wide, fast-flowing river. The grass rippled silver and green in the slight wind. I turned to look at the woodland behind me, with the leaves just beginning to glow gold, at the rolling purple hills behind that, and the snowy mountains, hazy in the far, far distance behind them. The air was fresh and crisp with just enough of a bite to tell me that autumn would be here soon. The sky was a rich blue and apart from the sounds of wind and water, there was nothing but deep and peaceful silence. It was a nice spot. This was our sanctuary when, for whatever reason, Dr Bairstow judged it wise to remove all things St Mary’s out of harm’s way. A place of greater safety.
I could see evidence that we’d been here. Flattened areas of white grass where the pods had stood were just beginning to green over and stand up again. Piles of now unwanted firewood were dotted around. A homemade fishing net was spread over river boulders. Some people had started small plots – for salad or fresh veggies, I supposed – which were now filled with weeds and bolted lettuces.
I took a deep breath – which made my head spin because my lungs weren’t used to this sort of luxury – and turned to Matthew, who was looking up at me.
‘You should stay away from the river,’ he said, which, by some strange coincidence, was exactly what I’d been about to say to him.
We spent the first day carefully unloading and checking all our equipment. Well, Leon and Dieter did. Mikey and Matthew shot off to go exploring – I’d already accepted I wasn’t going to get a great deal of work out of either of them. I could hear them talking and laughing down by the river. Enjoying themselves as young people should do. And she was good for Matthew. He had made enormous strides since Leon rescued him from old Ma Scrope, but he still had occasional bad dreams from which he would wake in fear and it would take me a while to calm him down. Mikey’s cheerful, casual attitude to life was just what he needed sometimes.
Atherton and I surveyed the site, Markham and Evans did a security recce and Sykes, mercifully Extasy de Passion-free, wrecked the toilet.
To be fair, this happens quite a lot. Our chemical toilets can be a little bit fragile and do tend to stop working – or even colourfully explode – at the drop of a pair of knickers. The first we knew of this current catastrophe was the traditional yelp of alarm and Sykes backing out of the door at speed
to avoid the spreading pool of rainbow fluid.
‘Shit,’ she shouted accurately. ‘The bloody thing’s gone again.’
Leon appeared, closely followed by Dieter, both wearing the traditional techie expressions of doom.
‘Mind your feet,’ I said, which, although well meant, didn’t help matters at all.
Leon folded his arms and stared down at Sykes. ‘What did you do?’
Sykes, however, was made of sterner Caledonian stuff than us English wimps. She folded her arms and stared right back. ‘I hardly had time to do anything meaningful. In fact, I had to stop in mid-flow and evacuate pretty sharpish.’
‘I meant – what did you do to the toilet?’
‘I sat on it.’
‘And . . . ?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘And . . . ?’
‘And nothing.’
‘You must have done something.’
‘Well, I didn’t,’ she said stoutly. ‘It’s always doing this.’
‘It always does it,’ said Leon, ‘because once upon a time some people went to the Pleistocene period and subjected a fragile but expensive piece of kit to stresses for which it was not designed and it’s never been the same since.’
Since one of the stresses for which the toilet had never been designed had been a small, orphaned mammoth – the introduction of which had been initiated by Sykes and her fellow trainees – she fell silent.
‘Right,’ said Leon, pursuing his advantage. ‘Latrine inspections.’ He passed Sykes a spade. ‘You remember where they were. Check nothing sinister has evolved in our absence. Or whether a family of bears has taken up residence. Or whether the contents have started to glow. Don’t just stand there.’
He picked up another spade, looked at me and raised an eyebrow.
‘Site survey,’ I said hurriedly, backing away.
‘Security check,’ said Markham, backing away even more quickly, and we left them to it.
Everything was going well. The weather was good – crisp, sparkling days with just a nip in the air. There were no further lavatory catastrophes. The work wasn’t that hard but it was meticulous. We picked up tons of debris from the site, sorting and checking as we went. Anything wooden could be left – it would happily degrade back into the soil. Anything metal was picked up and brought back to the pod for packing away.
Leon and Dieter spent a long time dismantling Professor Rapson’s Patented Making Liver into Fuel Device – don’t ask. Seriously, don’t ask. This had been one of Professor Rapson’s brilliant ideas – an attempt to turn liver into fuel. Now you know why I said don’t ask. He’d patented the process on return to St Mary’s because, he said, he had high hopes of future fame and fortune. Should he ever get it to work. Lack of liver, however, was a major factor in its current failure. Most of us had had to agree to donate the appropriate organ – ‘after death’ had been a hastily added stipulation after Dr Stone had pointed out this basic flaw – just to get him to go away.
Actually, this might be a good time to say the professor’s liver-processing machine formed the basis for one of David Sands’ more successful stories. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned, he’s a writer as well. And a good one. One of his books is supposed to be turned into a movie – although given the amount of shouting and script throwing, that wasn’t going quite as well as it could.
Anyway, his story was set in the future. Oil was now a thing of the past and mankind was desperate for fuel and somehow – it wasn’t clear – had discovered fuel could be distilled from livers. The animal kingdom was happily sacrificed in the need to fuel the engines of technology and when the animals had all gone, they’d had to start on people. The undeserving were the first to go, shortly followed by the elderly, the disabled, the terminally sick, and finally, everyone else. By the end of the story, the only humans left alive were those actually servicing the liver-processing engines. The story ended with them turning on each other. Not a very cheery subject, I think you’ll agree, but he won an award for that one.
Anyway, back to the nearest any of us ever got to a holiday. The days were pleasant. We would rise early, breakfast inside because it was still nippy at that time of day, and work throughout the morning because the light was good. The work was painstaking and we couldn’t afford any shortcuts. Every inch had to be covered and certified clear.
Using canvas tape, Atherton and I had marked out ten-foot by ten-foot squares. One team would do an initial sweep, north to south, then move on to the next square, leaving a white marker to show where they’d been.
A second team would follow in their footsteps, checking east to west, and then leave a blue marker showing it was confirmed cleared. We’d discovered the fastest progress was made when we went slowly. I began to think Dr Bairstow’s estimate of a week had been overly optimistic.
We’d take a longish lunch – have a game of football, do a bit of fishing or something – and then back to work until the sun went down. It was still warm enough to eat outside and our evenings were spent around the campfire, carefully located just far enough away from TB2 to avoid setting fire to it, but close enough to get back to it should we have an emergency in this vast and apparently unpeopled landscape. Then off to bed to do it all again the next day. There were worse ways of passing the time.
And then, one evening . . .
It was getting dark. We’d eaten and we were beginning to pack up for the night, prior to moving back inside. The evening was growing chilly. Leon picked up the teapots to empty the contents into the river.
‘Careful,’ I said. ‘This will be America one day. You don’t want to set a precedent.’
Leon grinned and he and Matthew set off into the dusk.
‘Bags first in the facility,’ said Mikey, and disappeared towards the thunderbox.
Everyone else headed into the pod to lay out their sleeping modules and get ready for bed. I checked our campsite and then began to douse the fire, kicking dirt over the red embers. We never leave a campfire unattended. I heard someone shout for Mikey and what had she done with such and such. Otherwise all was silent. Life here was very peaceful.
I thought I’d also avail myself of the facility while everyone else was busy and I’d just set off latrine-wards when I thought I heard something. I don’t know what – I just know I heard something, and it wasn’t right.
I stopped, and turned a couple of times to listen, taking a few paces towards the river in case it was Matthew, but there was only silence. My heart rate kicked up a notch.
Night falls swiftly at this time of year and I really couldn’t see much at all. I stood a minute longer, turning my head this way and that and listening hard, but there were only the gentle sounds of wind in the trees and the far-off gurgle of the river.
I looked over my shoulder to TB2. They’d closed the door against the night and there were no lights showing. The pod was just a big shape in the darkness. The silence of the night closed around.
I knew – I just knew – there was something . . .
I had no earpiece and no com with me because I’d finished for the day and taken them out. Historian instinct kept me from shouting and giving away my position. Other than us, there were no people here, but it might be a bear. Or a wolf. Or a mountain lion. Or something. And if I shouted and everyone came pouring out . . . right into whatever was out here . . . I decided to head for the river where Leon and Matthew were, and set off for where I thought the river should be.
Well, that didn’t work. I walked quite a long way before I realised it wasn’t there. It seemed unlikely that some bastard would have moved it, so I was obviously heading in the wrong direction.
I stopped and stood still to listen for the sound of water, my head cocked. There was a faint . . . something. So faint, I couldn’t identify it. A rustle of clothing, perhaps? A sigh? Or was I imagining things and this was just the gent
le night breeze?
Because if there was someone here, I couldn’t think of a reason why they wouldn’t speak. Unless they were up to no good, of course. I had a sudden image of someone standing stock-still, as I was, listening . . . waiting for me to give myself away.
I looked around. I’d killed the fire so there was no soft glow of firelight. Because they’d shut the pod door – as they should do during the hours of darkness – and although the sky overhead was full of stars, everything down here was as dark as something that was very dark indeed.
I had no idea where I was in relation to the river, the trees, or our campsite. Obviously, I’d got turned around somehow. It has happened before. My bump of direction had been bulldozed flat years ago. Leon has frequently commented on the ability of birds, whales, elephants, whatever, to navigate themselves from one side of the world to the other, and my complete failure to correctly obey the instruction, ‘Turn left.’
This was ridiculous. I couldn’t stumble around all night. Someone must surely have missed me by now. Trust me, the time I need to spend in a latrine can usually be measured in nanoseconds. Especially when it’s too dark to read.
I thought I heard a cry somewhere but it was far away and I couldn’t tell which direction it came from. It was the worst possible time of day to be groping my way around the landscape. Faint fingers of light lingered in the west, but they were too pale to be of any use and the moon had yet to rise. I squinted, but everything was just indeterminate patches of dark and semi-dark. Nothing was clearly defined.
For a long few seconds, there was just the night silence and then, so close that their breath was hot in my ear, a voice whispered, ‘Hello, little girl.’
There were two ways to go. Fight or flight.
I flew.
I took off into the night. I had no idea where I was going but wherever it was, it would be better than here, where something stood behind me in the dark and whispered in my ear. I could still feel the hot breath. Hear the words. ‘Hello, little girl.’