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He winced.
'I'd love to, Sweetpea, but I've really got to watch my Ps and Qs for a few decades. Do you like the office?'
I looked at the sixties decor in the tiny room.
'Bit small, isn't it?'
My father, who was clearly in an ebullient mood, grinned. 'Oh yes, and over seven hundred of us work here. Since we could not all be here at one time, we simply stretch the usage out across the timestream like a long piece of elastic.'
He stretched his arms wide as if to demonstrate.
'We call it a timeshare.'
He rubbed his chin and looked around.
'What's the time out there?'
'It's 14 July 1988.'
'That's a stroke of good fortune,' he said, lowering his voice still further. 'It's a good job you've turned up. They've blamed me for the 1864 war between Germany and Denmark.'
'Was it your fault?'
'No – it was that clot Bismarck. But it doesn't matter. They've transferred me to another division inside the Historical Preservation Corps for a second chance. My first assignment occurs in July 1988, so local knowledge right now is a godsend. Have you heard of anyone named Yorrick Kaine?'
'He's Chancellor of England.'
'That figures. Did St Zvlkx return tomorrow?'
'He might.'
'Okay. Who won the Superhoop?'
'That's Saturday week,' I explained. 'It hasn't happened yet.'
'Not strictly true, Sweetpea. Everything that we do actually happened a long, long time ago – even this conversation. The future is already there. The pioneers that ploughed the first furrows of history into virgin timeline died aeons ago – all we do now is try and keep it pretty much the way it should be. Have you heard of someone named Winston Churchill, by the way?'
I thought for a moment.
'He was an English statesman who seriously blotted his copybook in the Great War, then was run over by a cab and killed in 1932.'
'So, no one of any consequence?'
'Not really. Why?'
'Ah, no reason. Just a little pet theory of mine. Anyway, everything has already happened – if it hadn't, there'd be no need for people like me. But things go wrong. In the normal course of events, time flies back and forth from the end of then until the beginning of now like a shuttle on a loom, weaving the threads of history together. If it encounters an obstacle then it might just flex slightly and no change will be noticed. But if that obstacle is big enough – and Kaine is plenty big enough, believe me – then history will veer off at a tangent. And that's when we have to sort it out. I've been transferred to the Armageddon Avoidance Division, and we've got an apocalyptic disaster of life-extinguishing capability, Level III, heading your way.'
There was a moment's silence.
'Does your mother know you wear your hair this short?'
'Is it meant to happen?'
'Your hair?'
'No, the Armageddon.'
'Not at all. This one has an Ultimate Likelihood Index rating of only twenty-two per cent: "not very likely".'
