by Jodi Taylor
The
Steam-Pump Jump
A short story from
The Chronicles of St Mary’s
Jodi Taylor
Author’s Note
Unlike The Battersea Barricades, which takes place before St Mary’s came into being, and can be read at any time, this story fits very definitely between An Argumentation of Historians and the next book – the title of which is still a matter of some dispute between me and Accent Press. All Hail, Accent Press etc. etc. If anyone has any title ideas, now is the time to step forward and cover yourself in glory. Or, given that this is St Mary’s, cover yourself in something else altogether. I really must stop rambling and do some work.
Anyway, here’s a summer short story I had to come up with because I talked Accent Press into publishing The Battersea Barricades on St George’s Day, because that’s when most of the action takes place. And they did. I was gobsmacked but never underestimate the power of good wine to influence a publisher. Flushed with triumph, I retired to my desk – or a damp corner of the Accent Press cellar – only to be met with the instruction that since now there would be no summer story because they were publishing early– which was my fault – I owed them one, and to be quick about it because I hadn’t left myself much time, had I?
‘I’m trying to finish the sequel to White Silence,’ I snivelled. ‘And start the next full-length St Mary’s, which you’ve brought forward in the schedule. You know, just mentioning. Plus trying to get my head round the Christmas story which, knowing you, you’ll want by the end of the month.’
‘Yes?’ they said. ‘And your point?’
So, here we are. The summer story. Quite a simple intro – Max is injured and tied to Sick Bay but obviously a good historian would never let that get in her way. Step forward Mr Markham …
Dramatis Thingummy
Mr Markham
Head of Security. Matchmaker and lifeguard. Pretty in pink.
Mr Evans
Security guard. Got the best of the sartorial deal.
Mrs Enderby
Head of Wardrobe. A big advocate of pink. Sorry – rose.
Max
Head of the History Department. Non-ambulatory, but still managing to leave her mark on events.
Dr Peterson
Deputy Director of St Mary’s. Temporary Head of the History Department. Struggling, but his friends are behind him. How reassuring is that?
Miss Lingoss
Member of R&D. About to discover there are more interesting things in the world than steam-engines.
Miss Sykes
Historian. About to fall down on the job.
Miss North
As above. The two of them are in trouble.
Chief Farrell
Chief Technical Officer. Recovering from his injuries. At long last.
Sometimes, when I don’t have very much to do – and that doesn’t happen very often, let me tell you – I sit back and trace the path of my life. The moments that led me to this here, and this now.
Not a lot of it is very edifying – there are things I would prefer to forget – but, up until as recently as a few years ago, I was a loveable little scamp with no problems and no responsibilities. Yes, all right, I was riddled with ringworm a lot of the time and I’ll swear I’ve had more than my fair share of rectal parasites – although anyone who’s had even one rectal parasite tends to think they’ve had more than their fair share – but who would have thought I’d be here, head of my own section, respectable (ish) and with looming responsibilities.
And yes, I know I promised to keep my head down – in fact I think I signed something to that effect – and to stay out of trouble and keep a low profile – especially the latter – but then they go and dump me in St Mary’s. Well, if they’re not going to keep up their end of the deal… then why should I?
‘Trust me,’ said Maxwell, weakly. ‘Get this wrong and you won’t live long enough to regret it.’
I was indignant. ‘Well, there’s a nice thing to say. Out of the goodness of my heart I’m visiting you on your Bed of Pain and barely have I started on your grapes than you’re hurling threats at my head. I liked you a lot better when you were unconscious.’
She waved that aside. Conscious or not, historians never hear anything they don’t want to. ‘I need you to do me a favour.’
I sighed. ‘I wondered why you’d adopted the conciliatory approach.’
‘The what?’
‘You know. The conciliatory approach.’ I adopted a typically historian falsetto. ‘Oh, Markham, how lovely to see you. Thank you for obeying my peremptory summons. You’re looking very handsome today. Have a grape.’
Being an historian was hurting my throat so I reverted to my usual voice – mellifluous but masculine. ‘A bit of a revolutionary concept for you, but have you ever tried… oh, I don’t know… actually being nice to the people you want to do something for you?’
‘I am being nice to you. It’s not my fault you’re too thick to notice.’
I decided to move the conversation on before she demonstrated her niceness by walloping me round the side of the head with something heavy, or I just strangled her.
‘What do you want, Max?’
‘I want… I’d like you to do me a favour.’
‘Yes, we’ve covered that.’
She addressed me in what she probably imagined was a conciliatory tone.
‘Would you like a grape?’
‘I am Head of the Security Section,’ I said with dignity. ‘The calls on my time are many and important. Can we get a move on, please?’
She made a rude noise and shifted uncomfortably in her bed and I remembered she was an invalid and I should probably be nice to her, not least because if she suffered some sort of relapse then we’d have Hunter in here and everything would turn out to be my fault again.
‘Do you need anything?’ I said, effortlessly showing her how conciliatory should be done. ‘Pillows plumping? Glass of water? Bedpan?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Well, I’m visiting the sick and that’s what you do.’
‘You come near me with a bedpan and I’ll shout for Hunter.’ She threw a grape at me and it stung.
I rubbed my cheek and told her it was a good job she wasn’t on the active list and therefore revenge was, temporarily, off the table. ‘Anyway, what’s this assignment all about? For a start, is it even legal?’
‘What do you care?’ She passed me the file. ‘But yes, Dr Bairstow has cleared it and his initials are on the assignment sheet if you want proof.’
I flipped through the file. ‘Who’s going?’
‘Peterson and Lingoss – in their capacity as the brains of the team.’
Well, that was hurtful. ‘Anyone else?’
‘Miss North and Miss Sykes.’
‘Bloody hell, Max. Cruel and unusual.’
‘Clerk and Prentiss are on leave and Atherton and Bashford are at Whitehall, watching Elizabeth Fry address Parliament.’
‘Why?’
‘Because,’ she said with exaggerated patience, ‘if you want to see anyone address Parliament then you have to go to Whitehall, don’t you? Tell me again how you came to be Head of Security.’
‘Merit and achievement,’ I said, loftily. ‘As opposed to the workings of the History Department, who generally promote the last person left alive and then buy in a new lot. Anyway, what’s the rush?’
‘No particular rush,’ she replied innocently. ‘But it’s the duty of every department head to adhere to their authorised schedule and with me stuck in here I don’t want us getting too far behind.’
‘Good job you didn’t fall on your arse,’ I said. ‘Otherwise you might not have been able to talk out of
it.’
For a moment I thought I might end up wearing the entire fruit bowl but then she remembered she wanted something from me and slid her eyes from side to side in the manner of one suffering nystagmus. I stared at her, wondering if she’d inadvertently inhaled something from R&D – trust me, that has happened – and whether I should summon aid.
Looking over her shoulder, she whispered, ‘There’s no one else here, is there?’
Well, of course there bloody wasn’t, but falling off the roof had given her a pretty major concussion so, just to show willing, I got up and looked under the bed.
‘Nope – no one here but us chickens.’
‘The thing is …’ she said, trying to shunt a little closer.
‘Yes?’
‘The thing is…’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Max, if you don’t get a move on, your bones will have knitted and then you can lead the assignment yourself. In fact, that’s a brilliant idea. You lead the assignment and I’ll get on with the rest of my life.’
She ignored all of that. ‘The thing is …’
‘Oh God, are we back to that again?’
‘Keep your voice down or we’ll have Hunter in here wanting to know what’s going on.’
‘And she won’t be the only one.’
‘All right. All right.’ She looked around again as if someone might have slipped into the room while we were talking and were even now concealing themselves in the wardrobe.’
To show I was not to be trifled with, I folded my arms and waited.
‘Well…’ she said reluctantly. ‘It’s Peterson.’
She sat back as if that explained everything.
I said cautiously, ‘Yes…?’
‘Well… you know.’
It’s at times like this my heart goes out to Leon. He’s a nice bloke and all the poor sod ever wants is a quiet family life and I’m not sure that’s ever going to happen because, sadly for him, one third of his family is usually batting up and down the timeline leaving a trail of devastation in her wake and another third is living in the future under the probably benign protection of the Time Police. Of course, he can kick considerable arse when necessary and when Leon speaks, people listen. I listen. Even Max listens.
I sighed, because thinking the word ‘family’ was opening up a whole can of worms for me and, if badly handled, things were not going to turn out well. Hunter wasn’t saying anything but I knew she was worrying. As was I – and that’s not something I often admit to. This whole family stuff is a bit of a bugger, you know. No wonder Leon always looked so frazzled – although admittedly, a lot of that is down to the History Department’s treatment of his beloved pods. And it wasn’t as if I’d signed anything – I’d been told any document like that would be unenforceable anyway, but there had been a very hefty hint that I shouldn’t be contaminating the gene pool if I knew what was good for me.
I sighed again. Time to assert Security Section authority otherwise we’d be here all day waiting for the History Department to use its words.
‘No, Max, I don’t know what you mean. I don’t know anything. I knew nothing when I came in, I know even less now and, unless you get a move on, I shall go to my grave – an event probably not that far away – still knowing nothing.’
She lay back on her pillows giving me the injured historian look. They can all do it. I think they practice in front of mirrors. We stared at each other like a couple of cats until I realised I could be here all day at this rate and folded like a broken deckchair. ‘What about Peterson?’
She fiddled with a bit of sheet and I realised she wasn’t messing about. She was really struggling. And she’d been injured. Falling off the roof doesn’t do you any good at all and I should know. Besides, I had a pretty good idea of what this was all about, really.
‘He came to visit me yesterday.’
I nodded encouragingly. ‘Yes…?’
‘I’m… a bit worried.’
‘About Peterson?’
She nodded. ‘He needs a distraction.’
It isn’t often I find myself in agreement with the History Department but, in this instance, she was spot on. If anyone needed a distraction – it was Peterson.
‘Hence this assignment,’ I said.
‘That’s right. And it is genuine. Lingoss applied for it through the correct channels.’
‘Yes, I know. I was there at the time.’
I was, too. Around about the end of every year, Max puts the word out that she can be bought and toddles off to plan the coming year’s assignments. There’s the stuff Thirsk wants us to do – which gets priority since the University of Thirsk are, nominally, our overlords and we’re supposed to do their bidding. There’s other bits and pieces left over from previous assignments, follow-up jumps and so on, but, every now and then, some lucky sod gets an opportunity to check out one of their own personal favourites and this year it had been Miss Lingoss and – and no surprise here – she’d requested a chance to attend the very first public demonstration of a steam-pump – the ‘water-commanding engine’ as it was known, built by Edward, Lord Herbert, son of the Earl of Worcester and first shown to the world at Raglan Castle.
I had been with Max at the time when she – Lingoss, I mean – had bounced through the door. Her hair was blue that day – to curry favour with the History Department, I suppose – and she had the usual R&D you’ll love this because it’s going to be amazing expression. The one that’s nearly always a precursor to explosions, casualties, the emergency services and another telephone call from the chief constable.
Anyway, she’d interrupted two departmental heads in the midst of a complex and important decision-making process – we were trying to sort out what to have for lunch – and she handed Max a data stick.
‘Am I too late?’
‘You certainly are,’ I said. ‘It’s toad-in-the-hole for Max and lasagne with extra lasagne for me.’
I don’t think she was listening. R&D tend to occupy their own position in the spacetime continuum and expect everyone else to keep up.
‘What’s this?’ said Max, turning the data stick over in her hand.
‘Oh,’ she said, oozing what R&D would refer to as enthusiasm and everyone else would call reckless fanaticism. ‘I heard you were doing next year’s assignments and I thought – you know – if there’s time, people might enjoy this one. A nice day out. A chance to relax and see something interesting. Open to everyone, of course. I thought it would be ideal for us. A chance to see the very first steam-engine – it pre-dated Savery, Watt and Newcomen, you know – and there’s no violence, no one dies, and we could have a bit of a picnic in the sunshine. What do you think? Max?’
Max was staring at the data stick, turning it over and over. Her head had obviously wandered off to wherever it is historians go to do their thinking. I recognised the signs of an historian with an idea. The best thing you can do is leave them to get on with it either before the smell of burning becomes unbearable and they self-combust, or you get roped into something unpleasant and/or illegal.
I stood up. ‘Max? Lunch?’
‘Oh. Yes. Of course. Right. Yes. Mm,’ she said. ‘Well, obviously I’ll have to see if there’s room in the schedule, Miss Lingoss. You’ve left it a bit late, so don’t get your hopes up.’
‘OK,’ she said cheerfully and bounced out of the door. Max continued to regard the data stick in a manner rather similar to one either having a eureka moment or anticipating a massive bowel movement. Recognising the signs, I headed to the door because lasagne was beckoning – as it frequently did.
Anyway, I’d forgotten all about that little episode and now it had reared its ugly head again. Lingoss and her data stick, I mean, not the lasagne. Max had obviously managed to find room in the official schedule, talked the Boss into giving it his approval, and was now threatening me with death should something go wrong with what was actually a very minor assignment. It was beginning to dawn on me that something was going on here. We in the Sec
urity Section are by no means as dense as people hope, you know.
Back to the present and a strangely inarticulate historian. I took pity on her and shunted my chair a little closer. ‘What’s the problem?’
She looked at me and said, bluntly, ‘I told you. Peterson.’
Time to recap a little. We’d had a bad year. Max, in particular, had had a very bad year. She’d nearly died in a fire at Persepolis, been marooned in the 14th century for some considerable time, managed to expose herself to some sort of hallucinogenic drug – although for her that might actually have been a slight improvement – and then fallen off the roof with the late and very unlamented Miss Dottle. Peterson’s … well, girlfriend, I suppose you could call her. Only Dottle had turned out to be a traitor and working with that bastard Ronan – on whom the Time Police still haven’t managed to lay their hands, by the way, although that might be down to the fact that he’d been living on our roof and we hadn’t noticed. Anyway, Dottle’s treachery had been exposed and there was a nasty scene up on the roof. To save himself, Ronan had shot Dottle and she fell off the roof, taking Max with her. Max survived – Dottle didn’t.
All this had come as a huge shock to Peterson, still not completely recovered from Helen Foster’s murder. To put it bluntly, a bloke can only handle so many dead girlfriends. These days, he was going about his usual business – walking and talking – and, to those who didn’t know him well, apparently completely over things. Except he wasn’t. I could see he was struggling and obviously Max could as well. I began to have an inkling of what all this was about.
I moved my chair even closer and said, ‘Just spit it out, Max.’
‘The thing is,’ she said, ‘I’ve had a brilliant idea.’ And it was a measure of my concern for both her and Peterson that I didn’t groan and roll my eyes. ‘Do you remember? The night they told me Leon might still be alive …?’
I did remember. She and Peterson had overcome their respective inarticulacy and embarrassment and been all set for a quiet evening out together. Not a date as such – the pair of them were so useless it would probably have taken them years to work up to date status – but a tiny step forward in what had been a very dark time for both of them. And then the news had come in about Leon and Peterson was back in his own lonely world again.