* * *
Count Carlos Scarlioni faced Romana and Duggan at gunpoint across a vast dining table heaped high with French pastries. He sipped his favourite tisane and regarded them with benevolent amusement while Hermann gloried in relating the story of their capture.
Their clothing was tattered and they both looked utterly miserable. Hermann had marched them in with their hands up just when the Count had been expecting his three-minute eggs. Still, this was just as enjoyable. He helped himself to another croissant, slathering it with butter before popping it into his mouth.
‘. . . as soon as the alarms sounded, Excellency,’ Hermann was saying. For once even he seemed to be amused. ‘He was halfway through the window, she was outside.’ Romana and Duggan winced at the memory. ‘I thought you might wish to speak to them, so I called off the dogs.’ A trace of regret. ‘They cannot be professionals, Excellency.’ Hermann ended his speech with a chiding cluck.
Romana estimated that the croissant, a delicate combination of flour, egg, sugar and fat, would provide a good enough set of complex carbohydrates and protein chains. That should stop her head from trying to leave. She eyed Duggan scathingly. She’d found the low wall, she’d got them over the broken bottles cemented into the top of it, she’d got them safely through the overgrown ornamental jardin, past the peacocks, and she’d even found a small window with a catch that would surrender ideally to her sonic screwdriver. She was just reaching for it when Duggan had smashed the window and it had all gone horribly wrong.
She glanced at the table. Seating for twenty-four, at least 470 years old, bits of it had been revarnished in the last century, one of the legs had been replaced. There were two place settings. At one end of the table, the Count, and at the other, a plate with the remains of a single croissant sliced into neat slivers. The Countess. She was sat ignoring them magnificently.
The Count tore into another croissant, smearing jam onto it and cramming it into his mouth. He was in a delightfully good mood. He licked traces of jam from his fingers, and then drummed them happily on the table top. When he spoke, he addressed Romana with the sweetness of honey.
‘My dear, it was not necessary for you to enter my house by, well, one could hardly call it stealth. You only had to knock on the door.’ His smile projected seventy-three per cent bonhomie, mixed with the merest hint of social reproof. ‘I have been very anxious to renew our acquaintance. Indeed, I was on the point of sending out search parties.’
‘Listen, Scarlioni,’ snapped Duggan.
The Count wiped some crumbs from his velvet smoking jacket. ‘I was talking to the young lady.’ He smiled dangerously. He stood courteously, bowing Romana to take a place by him.
The Countess, with complete poise, turned the page of her newspaper and loudly ignored the whole room.
Romana sat down, hands still held wearily high.
‘Tush,’ clucked the Count, motioning that of course she could lower her hands. They were friends, after all.
Romana lowered her hands gratefully.
Duggan did likewise, but a vicious jab from Hermann convinced him that he was not included. Sourly, Duggan raised his hands again.
The Count offered Romana a plate and gestured to the table. Eagerly, she helped herself to the most ridiculous pastry she could find. Spoilt for choice, she eventually settled on what appeared to be a pastry galleon with custard cargo and glazed fruit sails. It was annoyingly wonderful.
The Count leaned forward. The Countess affected magnificently not to notice.
‘My dear,’ purred the Count confidentially, ‘I think you can be very useful to me.’
Do go on, thought Romana. She may be stranded in time having an adventure on her own, but she definitely got a better class of villain than the Doctor. Did Davros wheel out a fruit platter? He did not.
‘You better not touch her,’ growled Duggan from the wall. More for something to say, than anything else, guessed Romana. Bless.
‘Do be quiet,’ murmured the Count as one would to an ill-trained dog.
‘Thank you,’ Romana reassured Duggan. ‘But I’ll look after myself. I feel safer that way.’ He looked hurt, but Romana didn’t notice. She’d just discovered a slice of kiwi fruit. Delightful.
The Count was fixing Romana with an attentive gaze and a most welcoming smile. ‘Well, my dear?’
‘Well what?’ Romana spoke with her mouth full.
‘I do believe you have some highly specialised knowledge that will be of immense service to me.’
‘Who me?’ Romana looked the picture of total innocence.
The Count leaned even further forward, captivating and hypnotic. His smile was a perfect blend of respect and regret that she would not confide in him. ‘I am talking of temporal engineering. You are, I believe, a considerable authority on time travel.’
‘Look here, I was only joking about that!’ boggled Duggan desperately. ‘She knows nothing.’
‘Duggan’s right. For once I know as little as he does.’ Romana reluctantly put down her pastry and firmly pushed away her plate. When she spoke, her voice was cold as sorbet. ‘I’m afraid I really don’t know where you got that idea from.’
‘No no no, that really won’t do,’ tutted the Count’s smile. He paused, with the mild embarrassment of someone about to betray a confidence. ‘Your friend the Doctor let it slip.’
‘The Doctor!’ He was alive. But . . . ‘But he’s in . . .’ Well, could be anywhere.
‘Sixteenth-century Florence?’ The Count finished her sentence smugly. ‘Yes. That’s where I’—he coughed—‘we met him.’
The Countess pointedly failed to look up from her newspaper. If she was surprised at this turn of events, she somehow neglected to show it.
The Count and Romana gazed at each other across the table. Even though her eyes lacked their usual lustre, he could see that she was working things out frantically, slotting things into place and opening things up. Rather like his Chinese puzzle box earlier. Take your time, my dear, his smile said. We have a lot of work to do together and I should like us to start out understanding each other perfectly.
Duggan made some noise. ‘Can anyone join in this conversation or do you need a certificate?’
The Count winced, as though hearing an untuned violin in an orchestra. ‘Hermann, if the Englishman interrupts once more, kill him.’
Hermann assented happily. Duggan shut up.
The Count stood, and, with elaborate courtesy, pranced round and drew back Romana’s chair. The Countess watched all this without comment. ‘Now then, my dear, perhaps you’d care to come downstairs and examine the equipment in more detail.’
Romana stood gracefully. ‘And if I refuse?’
The Count hid a yawn. ‘Oh, do I really have to make vulgar threats? Let’s just say I will destroy Paris if it will help you make up your mind.’
‘Am I supposed to believe you can do that?’
‘Well,’ the Count smiled teasingly, ‘you won’t know till you’ve had a look at my equipment, will you?’ He swept Romana to the door, and then nodded to Duggan. ‘Hermann, bring him.’
Left alone, the Countess surveyed the remains of her croissant, slotted a cigarette into her holder, but did not light it.
* * *
For Professor Nikolai Kerensky it was the last straw. A few short months ago, there was a waiting list for his seminars. Now he was being made to stand at the back of his own laboratory while a schoolgirl marked his homework.
The Count had swept in with these two strangers. The man was crumpled and dejected, as though he was having a bad day with the first theory of relativity. The girl looked completely unbothered, as though she was popping in to have a polite look at a reupholstered settee.
Kerensky made to interrupt, but the Count smiled him his most dangerous smile and Nikolai remembered about the gun that Hermann was pointing at the
man whose knuckles scraped across the floor.
When the Count had first entered, Kerensky had armed himself with all he had to hand, which was knowledge. He had reasons why he had not yet begun work on the Kerensky Accelerator. Not excuses, but reasons. He had valid questions, he had points of concern, he had issues and he had things that needed discussion. He had got no further than ‘But’. The Count had simply pooh-poohed him. That doesn’t matter, not now. This young lady is going to have a look at your work and tell me what she thinks of it.
The utter crushing humiliation of it all. Kerensky slunk dejectedly on a stool.
‘Can he?’ hissed the crumpled ape.
‘What?’ said the schoolgirl, poking at a compressor.
‘Destroy Paris?’
‘With this lot?’ she snorted.
‘Yes.’
‘No trouble.’ She stood back, her nose wrinkled in disgust.
Destroy Paris? What nonsense. Kerensky really must protest. He got to his feet, but the Count’s smile made him sit right back down again. The Kerensky Process, he still validly believed, held the key to the salvation of the human race. Chicken Experiment #1 proved it. Thanks to the Count, things had taken a worrying turn, indeed, but destroy Paris? What a horrific accusation, as though he, Nikolai Kerensky would ever permit such a thing! The girl must be denounced. Surely the Count could see the patent absurdity of her words.
And yet she carried on talking, her air a trifle dejected. ‘If he chose, he could blast the whole city through an unstablised time field.’
Well, yes, he supposed she had a point. But you’d have to try very hard. A rebuttal needed to be issued.
The bullish man sneered at her. ‘You don’t seriously believe all this time-travel nonsense do you?’
‘Do you believe wood comes from trees?’ the girl snapped.
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s just a fact of life one’s brought up with,’ she sighed.
Despite his fury at her, Kerensky warmed to her. Perhaps, just perhaps, once he had entirely refuted her allegations, he might allow her to join his research team.
The Count cut across all of them. ‘You see the truth of my words, don’t you, my dear?’
The girl turned to him. ‘That you can destroy Paris? Yes.’
That was it. He needed, nay demanded, an explanation. ‘Why all this talk of destruction? What are you doing with my work?’
The Count coughed, as though covering a minor social embarrassment caused by a child, and then turned his most inviting smile on Kerensky. ‘Professor, tell you what, I shall show you. Perhaps you would care to examine the field generator?’
He’d used the exact same tone at their first meeting when he had invited him to examine the list of dessert wines. That seemed so long ago.
The Professor left his stool and walked stiffly over to the field generator using all the dignity he could muster. His work may have been called into question, but he was genuinely puzzled. Despite the crackling air of menace in the room, perhaps, just perhaps, between them, the girl and the Count had uncovered something, some weakness in the field generator that was possibly directly harmful. It was, after all, just possible that he, Nikolai Kerensky had overlooked something. The endless hours of work, the lack of sleep. Well, if there were some flaw, he would shoulder the blame. Some of it.
But no. Nothing wrong. Thought not.
Standing in the heart of the device, he tapped one of the three prongs over his head, just to make sure that there was stasis. Yes. The Kerensky Accelerator was working perfectly.
He straightened up, pleased to find the Count smiling at him.
Then the Count said something that would haunt Kerensky for the rest of his life.
‘You will now see how I deal with fools.’
And then the Count had flicked a switch.
‘No!’ screamed Kerensky desperately, ‘Not that sw—’
* * *
Itch.
For a moment nothing happened. And then, for many years, nothing happened.
It took Nikolai Kerensky the rest of his life to die.
Standing at the heart of his machine, looking out at those four faces staring in at him. All of them frozen, all of them unmoving. Watching him.
Once a year, one of them would blink. It would happen in turn, like the changing of the seasons. The stupid man, the clever girl, and then Hermann. The Count would never blink. It had taken Kerensky this long to realise that the Count never blinked.
He was a fool not to have noticed. But then again, he had plenty of time now to dwell on his mistakes. His biggest mistake had been never building a field interface stabiliser. The Count had asked him often enough, and he had always nodded and said it was on the list. The truth was that it was tricky and there were so many other things to do. After all, he had argued to himself, why would you need to cross between two time fields while the device was running?
Now here he was, trapped inside the Accelerator while it was running and completely unable to ever leave it. Outside the bubble, his life was racing past in the blink of an eye. He tried to imagine what that must look like, his features blurring, his limbs jerking, his hair growing long, his skin sagging.
But, inside the bubble, life went on at very much the same pace as usual.
Nothing happened.
Ever.
He had a long time to dwell on his mistakes. On the things that he had got wrong. What he could have done better. What he could have said. The irony was that he now had plenty of time to build a field interface stabiliser but no way of doing it. He went through his pockets on that first day. Two pencils. A scrap of paper. He spent ages working out a message, a formula to write on that piece of paper, something that could tell them how to build an interface stabiliser in time to save him. He waved it at them. But he knew, even as he did it, that, although he had managed a remarkable breakthrough in temporal theory all squeezed onto a single side of paper, it was fruitless. The time it would take to read the paper and react to it, the time it would take to talk about it, even to find a screwdriver, in that time he would already be dead.
His time passed so quickly for them. But for Kerensky so slowly.
He was so bored. He memorised the entire contents of the laboratory. He spent days just staring at the Mona Lisa casually propped up against a wall. No one in history ever looked at that painting in the same way that Kerensky did, squinting to perceive every element of the mystical city of domes and valleys in the background. What world was that, what fantasy of rocks?
Kerensky would never know, but he visited it in his mind. He paced the confines of his bubble, retracing childhood walks through the streets of Budapest. He tried to recollect songs, he thought of books. He begged for hunger to kill him. Or thirst.
But nothing did.
For ages, the sound of his last syllable echoed through the air. ‘Itch.’ A famous last word if ever there was one.
Sometimes he sat down on the platform. Sometimes he slept on it. Then stood up again. Regretfully. Starting another day. An endless day.
For a few years, he watched the girl stretch out her hand, trying to reach through the bubble towards him. Every day her hand got closer. It was something to look at. He knew what the end result would be, of course. Her hand took so long to get so far. And then, one month, it stopped.
No field interface stabiliser, he told her. He knew the exact week, the very day in which the stopping would happen and had prepared a speech. His hand was there, fingertips out to touch hers. Just in case the impossible happened and she broke through.
He then watched the years go by as the hand drew slowly back. Done. Finished, retreating. Leaving him there. Alone for ever.
He looked at his own hand, older now. The skin as frail as parchment. His bones ached. But not enough. There was still a lot of time ahead of him.
He remembered the advice of his doctors. Nikolai, you must eat less of this, you must drink less of that. You don’t want to die a young man. He bitterly regretted ever listening to any of them. In the end, it had made little difference.
It was taking so long.
He looked at their faces. He did so a lot. At the face of Hermann, impassive, curious. He had never in his life known exactly what the butler was thinking.
The baffled man, whose name he had never learned, stared at him in puzzlement for a couple of decades.
The young girl, the one who had reached out to him, stared at him, oh so slowly, in terrified horror and awful understanding.
And the Count beamed broadly at the entire room as though the horrible death of Professor Nikolai Kerensky was some wonderful joke. ‘You will now see how I deal with fools.’
A fool? Sometimes he argued at the injustice of the verdict, at others he accepted, bitterly, that perhaps he had been a fool after all. He screamed and raved at the Count. He composed epic poems, he wrote them on the other side of the scrap of paper which held Kerensky’s Final Equation. In the end he just screamed.
The Count’s only response was a surprising one. The man never blinked, he’d seen that. But, just once, he had winked.
In the end, Professor Nikolai Kerensky died of boredom.
The last thing he saw was the face of Count Scarlioni. And that smile. That dreadful lingering smile.
PART FOUR
Edmond: J’veux changer d’air. Ma vie n’est pas une existence.
Raymonde: Ah ben si tu crois que mon existence c’est une vie.
(Edmond: I’d like a change of air. My life is no more than an existence.
Raymonde: What, you think my existence is a life?)
Hôtel du Nord
15
THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE
Romana was appalled. She watched as the Professor blurred and shrivelled away to a skeleton in an instant. She turned furiously on the Count.
City of Death Page 20