Overtime. Part 26

Guy was still examining the photograph. 'Whose wedding is this?' he asked.

'No idea,' Isoud replied. 'Oh look, I think that's Mahaud there, in the blue. She never did suit blue, but you couldn't tell her.'

Guy could feel his hand shaking. 'It looks,' he said, 'rather like I'm meant to be the bridegroom.

'Yes,' Isoud replied, nodding, 'it does rather, doesn't it? Now this one here...'

'So who,' Guy said, 'is the bride?'

'You can't see,' Isoud replied. 'She doesn't seem to be in the photo. Oh look, there's Mummy. What a big hat she's wearing.'

Guy stood up. 'Well,' he said, 'thank you ever so much for the tea. I don't think I'll wait for Blondel if you don't mind.' He could feel the sweat running off his forehead. 'So if you'll just tell me where the time tunnel is ...'

'Are you leaving?' Isoud said.

'Better had,' Guy said firmly. He had always previously believed that he was too young to die, but now he was absolutely positive that he was too young to get married. 'This door here, isn't it?' He opened it and walked through. A moment later he came back again, immediately followed by three raincoats, a hat and an umbrella.

'No,' said Isoud, 'that's the coat cupboard.'

'I rather thought so,' Guy said. 'Which door leads to the time tunnel, then?'

Isoud looked at him. 'I don't know,' she said. 'Blondel deals with all that sort of thing.'

'But you must know ...

Isoud smiled grimly. 'It keeps changing,' she explained. 'One day it's one door and the next day it's a different one. Terribly difficult to know where to put your coat sometimes.'

'Ah,' said Guy.

'Not to mention,' Isoud went on, 'the empty milk bottles. I expect there's a doorstep in the future or the past somewhere with hundreds and hundreds of our milk bottles on it. The milkman must wonder what we do with them all.'

'Quite probably.' Guy could feel the hairs on the back of his neck rising. 'You don't mind if I just, sort of, investigate, do you? Only...'

'Oh look,' Isoud said, 'here's another one of the same wedding. Oh look!' She lifted her head and stared at him. 'Mr Goodlet!' she said.

'Goodbye,' Guy said firmly. He opened a door, saw with great relief that there was nothing on the other side of it, and stepped through.

'Mr Goodlet,' Isoud said, a few moments later. 'You seem to have fallen into the coal cellar.'

'Yes,' Giovanni said, 'but can you do it?'

The man scratched the back of his head doubtfully, and then made a few rough sketches on the back of an envelope, ending up with something that looked perilously like the Albert Memorial. Then he played with a calculator for a while, looked some things up in a price list which seemed to have an awful lot of noughts to each digit, and spat on the floor.

'Dunno,' he said. 'It's the stresses, see. Could tear the wings off, the stresses we're talking here. Then there's your frame. Got to be t.i.tanium.'

'Is that expensive?' Iachimo interrupted. He was making a parallel set of notes on the back of another envelope. In fact, the place was beginning to look like a sorting office.

'Ignore him,' Giovanni said. 'Look, I don't care what it costs. Can you do it?'

'And then there's your PCVs,' the man said. 'I can put you in Bergsons, no difficulty there, mind, Bergsons, but what's that going to do to your lateral stability? You put too much stress on your laterals, you're going to be really stuffed up. Mind you...'

The man seemed to pa.s.s into a sort of coma or trance, from which it would probably be dangerous to arouse him. Any minute now, Giovanni said to himself, he'll be asking if there's anybody here called Vera.

'Mind you,' said the man, recovering, 'if you use t.i.tanium alloy throughout' - he made the word throughout sound so expensive that Iachimo winced, as if something had bitten him - 'then you might get away with it. Hard to say. Wouldn't want to be responsible, really. I mean, t.i.tanium alloy B-joints could pack up on you just like that. Real dodgy.'

Giovanni breathed out heavily through his nose. 'Look ...' he said.

'All right,' replied the man severely, 'all right, hold your water a minute. Let the dog see the rabbit.' He bent down and started to leaf through a huge pile of dusty, cobwebby magazines on the floor. 'Saw something like what you're after in one of these once,' he said, 'twenty, twenty-five years ago now, mind. One of them big mining companies did it, only they used carbon fibre. Can't use carbon fibre now, of course.'

Giovanni asked why not but the question was obviously beneath contempt. 'Now then,' the man said. The three brothers leaned forward to look. 'See that?' the man said, pointing to a picture of something or other, 'that was one of mine, that was. Nothing to do with what you're after,' he added. He threw the magazine to one side and went on looking.

'Look,' Giovanni said, 'all we need to know is -'

'Magnesium,' the man said suddenly. 'You just wouldn't believe what some people do with magnesium. No,' he added.

'No what?'

'No, I can't do it. Impossible,' he explained. 'b.l.o.o.d.y silly idea to start with.'

'Thank you so much,' Giovanni replied through gritted teeth.

'I mean,' the man went on, 'drill a probe through the Archive walls, absolutely out of the question. What do you want to do that for, anyway?'

'Pleasure to have met you,' Giovanni said, putting on his hat and pocketing the card he had put on the table at the beginning of the interview. 'Send us your invoice.

'What invoice?'

'Any b.l.o.o.d.y invoice,' Giovanni said, and closed the door quickly.

'Overtime,' said White Herald, suddenly.

The others looked at him as if he'd just gone mad. The bus went over a patch of turbulence, jolting them about. The sort of turbulence you get in time travel makes a little bit of rogue c.u.mulonimbus over the Alps seem like a feather bed.

'We could all claim overtime,' White Herald continued. 'Dunno why I didn't think of it before.'

n.o.body said anything. Pursuivant looked at Clarenceaux and then nudged Mordaunt, who giggled. Clarenceaux glared at them both, as if challenging them to make something of it. They beamed at him. Just when he thought he was safe, Mordaunt turned to Pursuivant and said, 'If we went around asking for overtime, we'd end up with egg on our faces all right, eh?'

'Look ...' Clarenceaux said angrily. They smiled at him.

'Sorry?' Pursuivant enquired sweetly.

'Just watch it,' Clarenceaux replied. 'That's all.'

'Sure thing,' Mordaunt replied, and turned back to his companion. 'No, the yolk would be on us then, wouldn't it?'

'Did you say something?'