AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"It's science," Fawkes said quietly. "It's not guesswork or prophesies or hocus pocus or whatever new-age name you want to give somethin' you don't quite understand. It's precise, it's exact, it's specific, and it requires meticulous attention to detail to get it right. 'You know what I mean' does not cut it. You are messin' with somethin' you don't understand and it is gonna come back and bite you — and every poor sod near you — in the ass."
I'd never heard Fawkes speak like that before; speak like he was a hardass Surgeon who had studied and toiled and worked his butt off to get where he was in an area of science that only a few managed to succeed in. He was, right then, the picture of a contemptuous Surgeon with all the self-righteous fury the truly genius in a little-understood field of expertise can affect.
He was stunning. And I could see why Sally got all hot under the collar for him.
Black, on the other hand, was not in the slightest impressed.
"This is the problem with you RATS freaks," Black hissed. "You think you know better than everyone. You underestimate everyone else's intelligence. You fail time and again to realise that without us, you would have nothing.Benothing. You are simply paid performers in a production thatyoucan't possibly understand. There is more going on here than your precious and precarious Time, Fawkes. And the sooner you get on board with that notion, the smoother it will go for you and RATS. Old school is out. The new headmaster is in. Pay attention, class, because if you fail this lesson, you will be expelled from the Academy."
We stared at him in stunned silence. The console emitted a single beep. Nobody turned to look at it. Inside the Vehicle, it was debatable what would set things off first. A simple turn of the head by us. A scuff of the shoe. An alarm.
The beep sounded again; more insistent this time.
I took the risk of flicking my eyes — but not move my head — towards the console. The sine wave was bigger than I had ever seen a sign wave get. Granted, I hadn't seen thousands of them yet, but what with the hours of training I'd had and all that time I'd spent on the flight simulator and actually flying a fair bit, Ihadseen hundreds. And this one was big.
It was Sergei. I was sure of it. He'd got what he came for and the rip was about to explode, tearing this Time apart.
"Fawkes," I said in warning.
"I hear it, Mouse," Bryan replied, not moving an inch.
"It's gonna blow," I murmured.
"Then it blows."
My eyes darted back to him. He was calling Black's bluff. I didn't think Black had it in him to back down from this. Bryan was risking Time itself to make a point.
"Any time now," I said pointedly, licking my lips as my throat had gone dry. My hands shook slightly. My breathing was a little too rushed.
Bryan remained mute and immobile.
Black, for his part, said nothing. Did nothing. Just stared down his nose with a superior, gloating look on his pinched face. Grumpy was still stroking his pistol, eyeing me and not Bryan. Bryan, as far as the Idiot was concerned, had been neutered already.
Son of a gun, this was bad. Sergei had stolen what he'd come here to get, and we'd done nothing, nothing at all, to stop him. The best we could hope for was that what he'd got was too early in the programme to lead him to Orion and time travel. The worst was he had it all and when we returned to RATS, they would be speaking Russian.
A softwhoop-whoopstarted up and then gradually got louder.
"Are you going to get that?" Black finally said, breaking their standoff.
"We've still got time," Fawkes said, not moving an inch.
"Intern," Black snapped. "Fix that."
"I'm not as good at making Time as Dr Fawkes, Mr Black," I said steadily, praying Bryan knew what he was doing. "I'm only an Intern."
"Then what good are you in a Vehicle?" he snarled.
"Well," I said, casually, "I can hit the Return when it all turns to shit, and I'm pretty good with a med-kit when someone takes a bullet, and I'm a dab-hand at catching and stitching, which is what we usually do when we're not being held at gunpoint and prevented from attempting a safe and successful mending of Time. Oh, and I can say, 'Where's the toilet?' and 'No' and 'Yes' and 'Put down your gun, you're under arrest' in Russian."
Black finally looked at me, freeing Bryan up to turn to the console and start remaking Time. From the corner of my eye, I saw his hands flying over the console. I also saw the small drop of sweat as it trickled down his neck.
"Why the hell would you need to speak Russian?" Black asked.
I stared at him. He stared back. Then the alarm stopped whooping, and the sine wave turned from orange to pink to purple to blue. All that was left was the slow ticking of the module at rest.
"I've got nothing to say to that," I told Fawkes.
He looked up at me and shrugged. "His funeral," he muttered and buckled himself up for the return trip.
