Part 17 (1/2)

'Sir!' called Stanley. 'Look!'

A soldier was running towards them on the other side of the barrier, waving his arms urgently. 'Ah, good, now we'll get some answers,' muttered Wrightson. 'Hey there, who are you with' The thought died in his mouth as he recognised the Royal Artillery shoulderflash. Somebody from his own regiment in fact... Oh my G.o.d,'

Stanley whispered. The man on the other side of the barrier was Stanley too.

'Don't touch it!' he was shouting. 'Don't -'

The Stanley on this side of the barrier thought of himself for a moment, and then he was the dome, stretched across the countryside in an arc, and glad to be everywhere the dome touched at once. He resolved himself into being a hundred yards down the road, and saw his former self, that silly old thing, trudging up to the barrier. He ran forward, shouting for him not to touch it.

Torrence, who was a lot less of a churchgoer than Stanley, found that he'd lived in the past and would live in the future. He saw the view from the longhall in Dublin and felt the bones of a roe deer between his teeth as the sun rose over Ethiopian plains. He saw Torrence continued, his name and his cell memory, across generations. He saw that he would have children and that they would prosper. And here he was, as yet unmarried.

He fell from the barrier, his mind blinking off like a speck of static, dead.

Wrightson flashed upwards through the atmosphere, yelling as he encompa.s.sed the globe of the Earth inside his body.

Suddenly he stopped. Great stellar teeth flashed at him. 'Is it time?' enquired a surprisingly soft voice from a bright star that flashed past. He was left stumbling in its trail.

'I don't know. Is it?'

Whatever was a.s.sociated with the object turned, and Wrightson caught a look of agonised imprisonment from it... from her. And then she was gone.

Earth returned like a knot in his stomach. He took his palms off the barrier, and looked down to see Torrence lying there. He would have done something, but Stanley was running towards the barrier again. This time he wasn't alone.

A young man was holding his hand.

The soldier and the boy ran right through the barrier. Stanley collapsed into Wrightson's arms.

Timothy looked around at the soldiers. 'More of you? Well, don't do anything rash.'

'Now, wait a moment,' Wrightson began, 'what...'

'Actually,' Tim interrupted him, 'don't do anything at all. Especially to this wall, whatever it is.' With a grin of accomplishment, he turned on his heel and ran back through it.

The soldiers watched him go. Wrightson got a stretcher party together for the unfortunate Torrence.

'Sir,' said Stanley, grabbing his superior by the forearms, 'did you see it? Is it the Lord, sir?'

'If it is,' Wrightson spoke loudly, so his men could hear, 'then he's got the Artillery here to guard him. We'll form a perimeter round this thing, one man every hundred yards. Keep an eye on your neighbour, don't touch the wall. Meanwhile, I'll try to get a wire through to HQ.' He lowered his voice again and disengaged from Stanley's grip, patting the man gently on the shoulder.

They shared a long release of breath. 'In short,' muttered the major, 'holy flaming cow.'

Benny and Alexander ran through the forest, carrying the big metal sheets on their backs.

'How far is it to this blacksmith of yours?' Benny panted.

'It's over the hill.'

[image]

'So am I. This is the sort of thing they tried to make me do when I was in military training.'

'You were going to be a soldier? Do they let ladies do that in the future?'

Benny was about to reply with something apt, but then she saw a figure standing behind the trees in front of them and a surge of fear swept through her. 'Alex, look!'

As Alexander swung his burden to see, the lithe figure broke from cover. It was a schoolboy, Benny was relieved to see, albeit a very messy one. He stood watching them for a moment.

Benny noticed that he was holding something. Was that a cricket ball? Then she realised. Just as Timothy turned and ran.

'Wait, stop!' Benny yelled. 'He's got the b.l.o.o.d.y Pod!'

She tried to run after him, but fell, halfway up the slope that Timothy had scrambled away up. Alexander hobbled over, and with much effort, got her back to her feet again.

'We, loved one, are in no position to take part in a chase.'

'I know, d.a.m.n it,' Benny sighed. 'But unlike everybody else, we now know who's got what we're looking for.'

Nathan Bottomley was a blacksmith, farrier and metalworker. He was known to everybody in Farringham from those occasions when he'd come into a house and bash the boiler with a spanner, listen to the chime and then mutter: 'No, that's absolutely ridiculous. You were hoping for hot water at Christmas?'

He was currently attending to the first of a pair of new shoes for the old Lucas mare, hammering the red hot metal against his anvil, holding it in the clamp. An edition of Sons and Lovers Sons and Lovers was propped open by a metal doorstop beside him. He had opened up the big doors to his workshop by the stream to let the cool breezes in, but it wasn't as satisfying a day as he had expected. It wanted to storm, but couldn't. A bit of rain would be a relief. was propped open by a metal doorstop beside him. He had opened up the big doors to his workshop by the stream to let the cool breezes in, but it wasn't as satisfying a day as he had expected. It wanted to storm, but couldn't. A bit of rain would be a relief.

'Nathan!' Bottomley looked up at the urgent call and saw a bizarre sight trudging into his yard. Alexander Shuttleworth and a girl in trousers, with dirty great sheets of metal on their backs. 'Nathan...' Alexander leaned heavily on the wheel of a thres.h.i.+ng machine that was in for repair. 'Help...'

Hoff looked up at the sky and shook his head. 'That dome's doing bad stuff with time.'

The aliens had taken up a place in a cl.u.s.ter of trees above the town and were training a variety of scanning devices on the valley below.

'Oh?' August looked up for a moment. 'I thought you had the technology sorted out?'

'I thought so too.' Hoff shook his head again, and was silent.

'This is a complete waste of time.' Greeneye was pacing back and forth, twirling the dials on his particular scanning unit randomly. 'The Pod isn't showing up as a mutation agent or broadcasting on any electromagnetic wavelength. We'd need to be psychic.'

'That,' hissed Serif, grabbing the scanner off him, 'is one of the things we shall be, if we can find the Pod!'

'Greeneye's just hungry!' Aphasia teased. She didn't have a scanner. She'd just narrowed her eyes and was turning her head in an imperceptibly slow arc.

'She'll still be there when we get back,' said August. 'I just hope that you do your business behind the screen or something.'

'I want to watch!' moaned Aphasia.

'You can.' Greeneye ruffled her hair. 'Tell you what, you can have her pancreas afterwards.'

'I've got the pancreas, I've got the pancreas!' sang the little girl, glancing up at Serif. 'And you haven't, and you haven't...'

Serif raised a dangerous eyebrow and stalked off.

'Got something!' Hoff stabbed a stubby finger on to his scanner unit. 'A source producing rapidly decaying particles in negative time. Way beyond the technology levels here.'

'Could be an effect of the time s.h.i.+eld?' August glanced at the figures. 'Except - it's moving! Come on!'