What Could Possibly Go Wrong (The Chronicles of St Mary's Book 6) Read online

  ‘What would happen if you tried?’

  ‘The pod would warn you – just once – and then after a short period, if you did not extricate yourselves, the pod would automatically instigate emergency evacuation. Whether you were inside or not.’

  ‘So we would be …?’

  ‘Stranded forever with no means of getting home,’ I said, deliberately brutal, because some rules are unbreakable.

  ‘So how does the Time Map work?’ persisted Lingoss, still fascinated. She was tracing a tiny silver arc with her finger.

  ‘No idea,’ I said cheerfully. ‘Historians and Pathfinders upload the info to Professor Rapson and he and Dr Dowson incorporate the findings into the Map.’

  I wasn’t sure they were taking it in. Hoyle appeared to be in a world of his own and Lingoss was making love to the Time Map.

  ‘There are patterns,’ she said, dreamily.

  ‘That’s part of what we do,’ I said. ‘We look at History as a whole and try to establish patterns or recurring themes. After all, they do say that History repeats itself.’

  I could see the wonder in her eyes.

  ‘So we don’t actually get to build it?’ She sounded disappointed.

  ‘Well, no. The practical stuff is usually done by R&D, Dr Dowson, and the IT team,’ I said, pleased to have this opportunity to showcase inter-departmental cooperation and, wisely I think, skipping over the disagreements, the shouting, and the sometimes quite major academic tantrums.

  I shut down the map and they resumed their seats.

  ‘You will be obliged to nominate a specialist subject. I believe you have already discussed this with Dr Bairstow. Mr Atherton – the Age of Enlightenment?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Mr Hoyle – The Late Middle Ages with especial reference to the Wars of the Roses and the Tudor succession?’

  He nodded. I held his gaze for a little while. Who did he remind me of?

  ‘Miss Lingoss – The Machine Age?’

  She nodded.

  I couldn’t help myself. ‘Why?’

  She grinned. Her big black Mohican was tipped with blue today, to match the History Department’s jumpsuits.

  ‘It’s fascinating. All that giant machinery. The noise. The smell. Wondering whether the equipment will be a success or blow up taking half the factory with it. I built myself a steam pump in college.’

  I remembered she had been born in Halifax, centre of the cotton and wool industries with their giant machines and steam-powered mills.

  ‘Miss North – The Renaissance?’

  ‘That is correct.’

  Hers were the cut-glass tones I had been hearing around the building all morning. I wondered how long before they started to grate on people’s nerves and then kicked myself. As a trainer, I shouldn’t allow myself to be irritated just by her voice. I was sure there were plenty of other things about her that would irritate me as well.

  And Miss Sykes. She grinned at me amiably.

  ‘The Dark Ages?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Dr Dowson, whom you also just met, is in charge of our Library and Archive and will order you anything you require to keep abreast of your specialised areas. Are there any questions so far?’

  Miss North’s hand was first up. Of course it would be.

  ‘How long before we actually …?’ She hesitated.

  ‘Jump?’ I said.

  ‘Yes. Jump.’

  ‘That depends entirely on the progress you make. If you don’t make any then you won’t jump at all.’

  I could see her deciding she would be the first to jump. I could also see Lingoss watching her from the corner of her eye and grinning.

  Hoyle put up his hand. ‘About the … coordinates?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do we work them out?’

  ‘Usually they’re provided by IT and laid in by the Technical Section, although obviously, it makes good sense for you to be able to calculate your own. Learning to do that is part of your training.’

  ‘Do we … jump … alone?’

  ‘No. We very, very rarely initiate solo jumps,’ and remembered not to say that that was usually because we needed someone to bring the body home. Too early in the schedule for historian humour.

  I paused but there were no more questions.

  ‘A special note for the ladies. You will be required to learn to ride sidesaddle. See Mr Strong for a schedule.’

  I paused, struggled, and then completely failed to resist temptation. You can only channel a certain amount of goodness in one day.

  ‘I recommend old Turk as your horse. I did my own training on him and he knows his business.’ Which was perfectly true. It’s just that his business was dumping any rider into the nearest bramble bush and then pushing off, leaving them to do the walk of shame back to St Mary’s. He was lean, mean, and carnivorous. An unfortunate encounter with Mr Markham some years ago had soured his already evil disposition even further. Markham, on fire at the time and understandably having other things on his mind, had run full tilt into Turk’s bottom, and knocked himself unconscious. It would be interesting to see how they handled him. Turk, I mean. Markham was generally reckoned to be unhandleable, and as Peterson always said, ‘Who would want to anyway?’

  ‘You will all be required to grow your hair. Ladies, as long as possible. Gentlemen, around chin length.’

  Atherton raised his hand. ‘No short hair at all?’ He had the same accent as Kalinda. Broad Manchester.

  ‘Not unless you contract lice or mange. Then, I’m afraid it all has to come off.’ I paused significantly. ‘All of it.’

  Lingoss grinned at him. ‘What a great title for a book –St Mary’s and the Inadvertent Brazilian.’

  He looked horrified, although whether at the awful joke or the actual thought of follicle trauma was difficult to say. Speaking of which …

  ‘With regret, Miss Lingoss, the Mohican must go.’

  She nodded, presumably unperturbed. ‘Can I get it out on high days and holidays?’

  Sykes snorted and attempted to turn it into an unconvincing cough.

  ‘Of course. Any time there’s an X in the month.’

  My com unit bleeped.

  ‘Right, everyone, you can leave your stuff here. We’re going to Hawking Hangar. Members of the History Department are about to set out on their next assignment. I thought you might like to see the reason we’re all here.’

  I led them down to Hawking and installed them out of harm’s way up on the gantry. They fell silent, looking down on the scene below.

  We have eight regular pods, numbered – amazingly – one to eight, and a big transport pod – TB2. Pods are our centre of operations. From the outside, they look like small, unobtrusive stone shacks. Inside, there’s the console with two seats whose design has apparently been stolen from some medieval torture chamber. Above the console is the screen so we can see what’s going on outside. Lockers contain the equipment needed for whichever assignment we’re on. The first-aid kit is huge and situated next to the kettle so we have all of life’s necessities together in one place. Thick bundles of wiring and cables are bunched around the walls. Think shabby hi-tech. They can sleep two or three people in moderate comfort, or four to five in extreme discomfort. We live and work in them during whichever time period we’ve been assigned. They’re slightly claustrophobic, the toilet never works properly, and they smell of cabbage. They’re frequently eye-wateringly squalid. I once went to the Cretaceous for three months and when I got back, the Technical Section swore blind the smell was making the paint on the walls bubble.

  Orange-clad techies were running around, lugging umbilicals out of the way, and carrying out last-minute checks. I saw Dieter checking things off on his clipboard and talking to someone inside Number Three.

  I nudged Atherton and gestured to the historians approaching from the other end of the hangar. Prentiss and Bashford, now apparently fully recovered from boot trauma, were off to 11th-century Coventry to look for evi
dence of the Godiva legend.

  Personally, I thought this was just asking for trouble – a view shared by Peterson who had warned Prentiss for God’s sake to keep an eye on Bashford, saying that he would hold her personally responsible for any trouble that might arise during this assignment. A warning to which the two of them had responded with looks of almost supernatural innocence.

  ‘You do know that’s where the legend of Peeping Tom originated, don’t you?’ I’d said to Peterson afterwards. ‘And he went blind.’

  ‘If Bashford comes back even mildly short-sighted, there will be trouble,’ he muttered. ‘Seriously, Max, I’d forgotten what a pain in the arse your people are. Can I have my old job back?’

  ‘No. Close the door behind you.’

  Anyway, Prentiss wore the usual nondescript woollen dress in muddy brown. Forget television and sweeping around in beautiful flowing gowns. Ours were always ankle length. If you had ever seen a medieval street then yours would be ankle-length too. Or possibly, you’d wear a hazmat suit. Piss, entrails, rotting vegetables, wet straw, dead dogs – yes, you’d definitely want your hem sweeping through that little lot, soaking up the good stuff and then wrapping itself around your legs for the rest of the day.

  Prentiss’s head was covered in a grey hood that extended down over her shoulders. No hair was showing. She carried a wicker basket.

  Bashford wore matching mud tones, boots, and carried a staff.

  I turned to my trainees. Time to start earning my meagre pay.

  ‘Miss Prentiss and Mr Bashford. Off to 11th-century Coventry. What we call a basic bread-and-butter jump. Someone at Thirsk will want some information, so off we go. You will notice the unobtrusive dress. We never stand out. Our behaviour is always discreet and unremarkable.’

  I paused for a moment in case I was struck dead on the spot but no, as usual, the god of historians wasn’t paying attention.

  ‘Concealed about their persons will be – for defensive purposes only – a stun gun and pepper spray, together with water-purification tablets, a compass, and anything else they feel appropriate. This is a two-day assignment. They’re due back tomorrow, around three.’

  It was Atherton who asked the question. ‘What if they don’t come back?’

  I turned to face them because this was important.

  ‘Then we go and get them. We take everyone who can be spared, and we go after them and we bring them back, because we’re St Mary’s and we never, ever, leave our people behind.’

  Sykes said in her deceptively soft Scottish accent, ‘I heard a couple of people were lost for ten years.’

  Bugger! I had forgotten that at St Mary’s, rumour defies the laws of physics and travels considerably faster than the speed of light.

  ‘Yes, that’s true. But it was ten years for us. Not for them. According to Grey and Bashford, they were only missing for a few hours. And we found them in the end. We always do.’

  Yes, we always did. Even when it was four hundred years too late and we were staring at a broken body folded into a box and left for us to find centuries later. Schiller was buried properly now, in our little churchyard. A peaceful sunny spot, marked with her name.

  I stood with my trainees and we watched Bashford and Prentiss walk down the hangar. There was the familiar banter and the dreadful jokes. They entered Number Three. Dieter, the other Chief Technical Officer, followed them in. I couldn’t see Leon anywhere.

  Five minutes later, Dieter exited the pod and waved his team back behind the safety line.

  I stepped to one side to watch my trainees, because I wanted to see their faces.

  The pod blinked out of existence in its usual unexciting manner and people filed past me until the gantry was empty except for us. Slowly, Hawking returned to normal. Orange techies shouted to each other and began to heave the umbilicals back into place. Somewhere, a metal tool tinkled on the concrete floor and someone cursed.

  They still stood, all five of them, staring at the spot where Number Three had been. North drew a long breath and turned to look at me. Naturally, she was far too cool to show any unseemly excitement. Not so Sykes, who had a huge grin from ear to ear and said, ‘Wow!’

  Atherton nodded. Hoyle’s face showed no emotion, but I noticed his white knuckles as he gripped the handrail. Apart from his questions to me, he’d barely spoken, just standing quietly and watching everything around him. He spoke now. ‘How long? How long before that’s us?’

  ‘That,’ I said, ‘is up to you. Not this afternoon anyway, so you may as well all go and get something to eat. We’re finished for today. Please be in Training Room 2 at 09.30 tomorrow for your first session. Dismissed.’

  They disappeared.

  Down below, the radio started up again and somewhere, I could hear Polly Perkins, head of IT, calling read-out figures to someone unseen. Just another day.

  I sighed and turned to go and found Leon standing directly behind me. For how long had he been there?

  He drew me away from the railing. ‘What’s the matter?’

  I smiled. ‘Nothing. Nothing at all.’

  He didn’t speak.

  ‘Well, maybe just a faint stab of nostalgia. I might call in and see Dr Foster and see if she’ll put me back on the active list ahead of schedule.’

  He didn’t move.

  ‘Something wrong?’

  He sighed and looked around, but we were quite alone.

  ‘Leon, what’s wrong?’

  He took my hand. ‘You know I would do anything you ask?’

  I nodded. This sounded serious. ‘Yes, I do know that.’ I tried to lighten his mood. ‘That’s why I never ask you for anything. Too easy!’

  He tightened his grip. ‘So you know why I never ask you for anything, either?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, I’m asking now. I’m going to ask you for something.’

  ‘All right. Ask away.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He appeared to take a breath.

  ‘I know you’re desperate to get back to your old job. I don’t hold it against you and when the time comes, I’ll encourage you to get back on the horse – or into the pod – but you have six months off. Take it. I love knowing you’re here. I love leaving in the morning knowing you’ll still be here when I come back. We have six months and I really, really want us to have this time together. I’ll happily let you go when the time comes, but please, Max, just give me these six months.’

  I swallowed hard, and then nodded. ‘All right, I will.’ I grinned at him. ‘What will you do when you discover that after only six weeks you can’t stand the sight of me?’

  ‘Six weeks? That long?’

  ‘Techies have a short attention span. I was giving you the benefit of the doubt.’

  Chapter Three

  Their first assignment.

  I’d compressed months of training into just a fraction over seven weeks. A little longer than I’d anticipated, but we’d had two sprained ankles and a dislocated shoulder to contend with. Leon had whirled them through the first part of the pod familiarisation course. The Security Section had beaten the basics of self-defence and first aid into them, and under the erratic but usually benign supervision of Professor Rapson, they had immersed themselves in the theory and practice of nearly everything. In my day, we’d been obliged to have secondary areas of expertise as well as our primary subject but I’d kicked all that into touch. They’d nominated their primary specialities and that would do for the time being. It would mean a lot of intensive research for individual assignments, but we’d address that later.

  Today, they were about to start work on their first assignment. This was when we would begin evaluating the success of the new training programme. My new training programme.

  I stood in front of them in one of the small rooms off the Hall. The sun streamed in through the windows, highlighting the dancing dust. Outside, late winter was thinking about giving way to early spring. I could hear the comf
orting roar of the History Department at work on the other side of the wall. There were worse places to be on a Wednesday morning.

  ‘Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. If you open the folders in front of you, you will find details of your first assignment.’

  I could almost feel their little shiver of anticipation. They opened their folders. Inside was a single piece of paper, which read:

  Assignment: SM/TC46/VOK

  Objective(s):

  To survey and map the Valley of the Kings.

  To identify any previously undiscovered burial sites.

  To record their location.

  To pass details to the University of Thirsk for future exploration.

  They looked up at me.

  ‘There are many pharaohs whose tombs have yet to be discovered. It may be that some of them lie in the Valley of the Kings. Or not. That is for you to ascertain. You will survey the Valley, note the position of anything previously unknown, and pass details to Thirsk for them to check out at a later date.

  ‘I’ve deliberately not given you any other instructions because you will have complete responsibility for planning this assignment and I want to see how you set about it. You will decide the date to which you will jump. And the location. Yours will be the selection of personnel and equipment. On your successful return, you will work up your findings and present them to Dr Peterson for onward transmission to Thirsk.

  ‘Today’s session brings together everything you have learned over the last month. You may work alone or as a team. At the end of the day, we will look at what you’ve produced. This is your first assignment, people. Let’s see what sort of a job you make of it.’

  They were already reaching for their scratchpads.

  ‘Right, the time is 09.45. At 15.00, you will present your findings to me, answer my questions, and muster all your powers of persuasion. Please bear in mind that your work today will be subject to intense scrutiny by me as your primary trainer, Dr Peterson as Chief Operations Officer, the rest of the History Department, and the Security Section. To say nothing of Dr Bairstow. So no pressure. Good luck.’