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"There seemed to be a problem with our communication, Mr Anderson," I declared. "I thought this might bypass any glitches in the system."
Everyone turned to look up at the screen.
Rafe looked momentarily amused and relieved in equal measure and then pasted on an insouciant smirk. Holt and De Francillon simply looked relieved. Margaret looked nervous and worried, and it must be said, fragile in the extreme. The black-clad security officer had reached for his pistol, although what he could do to a virtual image on a screen was anyone's guess; not the brightest bulb in the packet, that one, then.
And Anderson was slowly going an alarming shade of red.
"Evans!" he shouted, making spittle fly everywhere. "How are you doing this?"
"I told you, Anderson," — if he wouldn't do me the honour of using my title, I would not do him the honour of using his, either — "I have access to the system. To all of it."
"How? How do you have access?"
I was about to repeat my previous statement that it was irrelevant. But I didn't think Anderson would leave this alone. I had to move things along, and as I'd already stated, it didn't matter now that Anderson knew what I could do. He would spend every second and all of his energy on discovering it, anyway. I'd save him the bother. We didn't have time to muck around.
"I have administrator access, as does Clive Crawford. We are the only two Surgeons at RATS to have such unfettered access to the system. Someone had to create it and maintain it, after all, and that role has always fallen to Clive and me. Well, now, I suppose it falls to just me since you've bundled Dr Crawford up and returned him to his own time. Did it ever occur to you that he was here for a valid reason?"
"You will remove yourself from the system immediately. No, wait! First, you will appoint administrator access to me.Thenyou will remove yourself from the system. As you are no longer an employee at RATS, you are illegally occupying the workings of the Academy, and any further trespass will be added to the charges already brought against you."
"I haven't heard what those charges are yet, Anderson," I said levelly. "Nor have I been read my rights or allowed to converse with an attorney. As far as I can tell, and the system backs me up on this, I am still very much an employee at RATS and you and your team are the interlopers. The system does not recognise your authority."
"That will be rectified right now!"
"No," I said softly. "It will not." This was the dangerous — as if anythingwasn'tdangerous right now — part of the plan. Outright denying Anderson access to the Academy's computer system would not enamour him to me. But I could not give up my ace in the hand.
I would not roll over that easily.
"The system has failsafes, rather like Time itself," I said. "I am Clive's backup, should something happen to him. If something should happen to me, the system will appoint the next most senior Surgeon to the position automatically. And so on and so forth. It does not, however, allow a change of an administrator without two administrators approving the change. In light of retirement or voluntary removal from the Academy, that sort of thing. It cannot, therefore, be altered under duress. This situation — you and your team being here at RATS, Clive being forcibly removed to his own time — is grounds for duress. I'm afraid the system will not allow me to simply add you to the roster, so to speak."
"Who is the next most senior Surgeon?" Anderson demanded.
I'd already checked. Clive had been busy before he'd been removed. The changes had been possible because he was still Chief Surgeon at the time and I was the second administrator. Even if Clive had made the changes without advising me, he'd had the ability to move ahead. It was all a shadow and mirror game, of course. But Anderson didn't know that.
"Let me see," I said, pretending to check the Academy's hierarchy for the first time. "Here we are," I declared. "I am now the Chief Surgeon, according to the system and ... well, would you look at that? How interesting."
"What? Who is it? Tell me!"
I looked directly into the camera on my console, so it would appear I was looking directly at Anderson on Dispatch's main viewscreen.
"Dr Bryan Fawkes is 2IC."
"Fawkes?" Anderson sputtered.
I noted Holt and De Francillon share a glance in the background. It surprised them too, but not for the same reason as it did Anderson, I should think. This Bryan was not our Bryan, so why would he be given such a powerful role in the system?
The answer, of course, was becauseourBryan had been next in line after me. The system readily agreed to his reinstatement, having never had cause to consider an alternate universe replacing the original Dr Fawkes. Once Clive reinstatedaBryan Fawkes, the system simply assumed the deceased Bryan Fawkes had been a mistake.
Bryan wasn't dead, he wasn't even resurrected, and he sure as bloody hell hadn't been replaced. There had simply been an error, according to the system, and now it had been corrected. Clive could have, I supposed, appointed someone else as 2IC; say Winchester, who had nominally shared third position with Fawkes. But I thought, perhaps, he'd been operating under time constraints. Anderson and his goons were probably knocking on his door when he did all of this. The guillotine had already started to fall.
Lacking time to use any finesse, Clive had done the only thing he could; tricked the system and reinstated Fawkes. Considering Winchester was next on the list despite his recent mental instability, probably sealed the deal. It would have taken too long to convince the system that Bauer was a better option. I bet Clive had been lamenting not having sorted out Winchester's position in the Academy sooner when he did all of this.
With nothing else for it, and needing to secure the succession lest Anderson got his name in there before the deed was done, Clive did the only thing he could do. He put his faith in an alternate universe Bryan Fawkes. This new Bryan's acceptance into RATS was now complete.
We just all had to catch up to reality. Which seemed to be the story of my life, recently.
"So, there you have it," I said, drawing everyone's attention again. "I can't change it now. It's done. The system does have its quirks, I will admit, but it hasn't failed us yet. RATS has been using this computer system and its failsafes for over a decade now. To alter it would require a completely new programme which would inevitably ground us as the current system is intricately tangled up in the maintenance and launching of our MPCVs."
"Tangled up," Anderson repeated. "Rather like you are tangled up in the system itself, Evans."
