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"Overseers," I repeated softly.
One of the suits stepped forward.
"Mr Anderson," he said, not offering a hand to shake. "And this is Mr Smith, Mr Black, Mr White, and Mr Johnson. We represent Parliament's interest in the Royal Academy of Time Surgeons and report to the Prime Minister himself."
"We've never had overseers before," I commented.
"Think of us as your direct conduit to the PM."
"And his to us," I replied.
"Of course. RATS costs the country a lot of money, Dr Evans. Too much money in today's financial climate. It was felt with the recent swath of deaths and lost Orions that a closer eye was required."
"And you're just here to observe," I pressed.
"For now, Dr Evans. For now."
I glanced behind Mr Anderson at the goon squad.
"And these gentlemen?" I asked. "They're here to observe as well?"
"As has been pointed out to the Prime Minister, Dr Evans, time travel is not a walk in the park. There are dangers to surfing Time's waves, and therefore it was thought appropriate that my colleagues and I have suitable protection."
"You can't leave 23rd Century objects in a different time," I said. I waved at their holstered pistols. "Those will be useless in the past. And there's no reason for them to wear them at the Academy."
"Au contraire, Dr Evans," Anderson said. "It was from here that the bulk of your Orions was stolen and a Surgeon was killed, was it not? It was precisely here Sergei Ivanov, your former pupil, infiltrated, subverted your Chief Medical Officer, and captured the entirety of RATS' personnel, holding a dispatcher hostage by gun to her forehead while he awaited your return to negotiate. It was also here that twenty RATS staff were killed by a Lunik flight crew, again while you were elsewhere. And so it is here that I and my colleagues have come and that our protection detail will accompany us."
Listed like that, I had no doubt Parliament had been in a tizzy over RATS for some time. But never had they taken their fears and concerns to such limits.
"Will you be accompanying us on flights?" I asked.
"Yes."
"There's only one extra seat in an Orion, you'll have to leave your security behind."
Anderson shook his head, removed his spectacles and started to slowly clean them with a handkerchief, and then once satisfied they were spotless, returned them to their rightful place and met me, stare for stare.
"For the time being, your Novitiates will be grounded," he said. "I'm sure you can find something for them to learn in a classroom somewhere while we conduct our observations."
I looked at Clive. He said nothing to gainsay our new overseer. He'd been hogtied at a guess. Threatened with removal. And as Clive had so recently told me, removing him from the Academy would doom RATS and allow Sergei to take control of time travel. He'd seen it in a Prophetic Dream. One he'd been doing everything in his power to realise since coming to this time and rebuilding RATS to what we now could all see.
An institution that had lost over twenty of its people, all but two viable crew modules, and had not one, but two staff members out of their time, if not in Bryan's case, out of his reality.
Looking at it like that, Clive was failing badly.
And I could see he knew that in the way he held himself now, the look in his eyes when they met mine again briefly.
We were screwed. Parliament had taken over RATS and there was nothing we could do about it.
"Well, then," I said, straightening. "Please, do let me know if you need anything. I must see to my crew and the roster." Turning to Clive, I said, "I gather there are rips appearing one after the other?"
"As soon as we fix one, another appears," he replied, his voice gruff. "You know something?"
"I've got an idea. I need to check in with Dispatch and see what's happening there first. But we're in for a busy day ahead, no doubt."
"Very well," Clive said, turning and stomping away, his cane echoing through the hangar as it hit the concrete in his pent up rage. "Keep me abreast of what's happening, Jack."
One of the Mr Suits peeled off silently from the whole and followed him, with a black-clad fatigue-covered goon shadowing its charge like a bloody fucking wraith.
