Part 16 (1/2)

Summerfield was not.

'Which year?'

'I'd rather not say.'

'Are you shy about your age?' But she laughed at his suggestion: either the drug was having more of an effect, or she was genuinely beginning to relax. Whichever was the case, he ought to be able to get a few more answers now.

No, no. I know I'm in my mid-thirties,' she was saying. 'If I had to name a figure I'd say thirty-three, but I'm not sure.'

She was very strong-willed, still capable of holding back the whole truth.

'But you can tell me what year you were born?'

'No,' she said quietly. She seemed convinced she was right. She was also trying to keep her answers as short as possible. Forcing an interrogator to fight for every last bit of information was a standard technique used by captured agents. He had won many such battles of will in the past.

'My dear, you must know which year you were born.

1909? 1908?' He was trying to jog her memory. Odd that she could forget such information. It must be a side-effect of the sleep deprivation.

And then the words came pouring out. 'It would be quite difficult to give you the precise date the way you understand it. Time is a relative concept, and when humanity started flying around in sleeper s.h.i.+ps, everything got mucked up.

Once we had hyperdrive, and people started arriving places before they set off because they were travelling so fast, the whole thing became somewhat meaningless. The big corporations and most of the people on the Inner Worlds use their own local time, in which case the days and years aren't always the same length as Earth. Those of us b.u.mming around the Outer Planets, or outside Human s.p.a.ce entirely, tend to use Terran Mean Time, simply for convenience. You see the problem? I could give you the date relative to Galactic Centre Adjusted, that would be about three-quarters of a century before the same date on Earth. In your terms, I'm from the mid-twenty-sixth century.'

Before she had finished Steinmann had asked, 'What is she babbling about, Joachim?'

'I have no idea.' The Standartenfuhrer was bored, and would clearly rather be abusing the prisoner in some way.

'Sir, if I may speak?'

'Yes, Kitzel?'

'At the end of Standartenfuhrer Wolff's interrogation, the prisoner claimed to be from the future. She is doing it again,'

Kitzel said softly.

'It's not much of a cover story, is it?' Steinmann asked, exasperated.

'Sir, she has now made these claims on two separate occasions while under great stress. I'm not suggesting that she is right, but she might believe that she is telling the truth.'

Kitzel spoke with some authority.

'She is mad? The British sent a madwoman to spy on us?' Wolff sneered, 'No, sir, she is just pretending. Trying to convince us she is feeble-minded.'

'I'd hardly do that, would I, Joachim?' the prisoner snapped. 'I know what you gits do with the mentally handicapped.'

'Sir, these island populations are rife with inbreeding.

This dulls the mental faculties. She might just be a simpleton.

Perhaps she is not even involved.' Kitzel's suggestion seemed plausible enough.

'The descriptions of the murderess were somewhat confused,' Steinmann noted.

'Excuse me. Who's ”she”? For that matter, what the h.e.l.l sort of interrogator doesn't wait to hear what his prisoner has to say?' Summerfield asked. She sounded personally aggrieved by his behaviour.

'Professor Summerfield, under torture, you claimed before that you were an archaeologist from the future.'

Benny blanched. 'Did I? You didn't believe me, I take it.'

She was sticking to this story, then.

'If you are from the future,' began Wolff sarcastically, 'how did you get here? Is there a double-decker bus that stops off in 1941? You rang the little bell and stepped off? All change here for Earth, Mars and the Moon!'

'No, if you must know, it's a police box. And, yes, I've been to all three of those places.'

Steinmann ignored her flippancy, allowing her to build up this peculiar cover-story. 'A what?'

'A police box. Yes, it's quite obscure, I know. Apparently the British police used them before they invented the walkie-talkie. The light on the top would flash whenever the police station had a message for one of their bobbies on the beat, and he'd know to phone them. People could phone the police from it, too, if they needed help. Cute, really.'

'And what exactly is a walkie-talkie?'

'Oh, sorry, you've not got them yet. Portable radios.

They're about the same size as a packet of cigarettes.'

Steinmann had been noting all this down.

'I see. When are these portable radios invented, then?'

'Oh, quite soon. The 1960s, I think. They had them in the '70s when I was there.'

'You've been to the future?'

'She was born there, remember?' Wolff reminded him.

'Quite right. 1976 was the past. Except, of course, that it wasn't the real 1976. At least not at first. I think it was at the end.' Summerfield was apparently working it out for herself as she spoke.

'So you travel around in a police box. How big is it?

Bigger than a packet of cigarettes?'