Overtime. Part 30

The match went out and he struck another, which flared up, managed to find a gust of wind in the entirely draught-free environment of the cellar and blew out. Guy stretched out a hand and felt for the door he'd just seen.

As Aristotle said, when caught between a ravening tiger and a process-server bearing a legal doc.u.ment, it's always worth looking for the fire escape.

The Chief Warden returned to his office tired, worried and upset. In the s.p.a.ce of a single day he had broken all the laws and regulations of his vocation, only to discover that his aiders and abettors were responsible for the annihilation of (in his opinion) the greatest musical genius who had ever lived, who had perished in one of his own Archives. As if that wasn't bad enough, he remembered, his wife had told him they had people coming to dinner and he was on no account to be late. As he unlocked the office door, he toyed briefly with the idea of nipping back through time to half past six and thus at least saving himself a degree of aggravation. It would be a flagrant breach, of course, but compared with what he'd done, it was a mere parking ticket on the windscreen of his honour. Still, perhaps not. Now, all he had to do was open the safe, put the key back in it for the night, and think of a reasonable excuse on the way home...

There were people in his office. They had been sitting in the dark, because the light was off when he walked in; almost as if they were waiting to catch him unawares.

'Good evening, Chief Warden.'

Even if he'd contemplated turning and trying to make a run for it, there wouldn't have been any point; a very substantial security officer had filled up the doorway. The Chief Warden relaxed. After all, since it was all such a foregone conclusion, there was no point in getting all tense about it.

'Come in and take a seat, please.' Although it was - what, two hundred years? About that - since the selection committee meeting when he'd received his appointment, he recognised the voice instantly; and when the speaker swivelled round in the chair and faced him, he was ready for it. But he still couldn't help making a sort of mouse-in-a-blender noise and turning his head away. The Chief Warden was, after all, human, and no human being, however cool or laid back, can hope to face a man split down the middle with equanimity.

'That's all right,' said the half-man, pre-empting the apology. 'I'm used to it by now, Lord knows. I won't be offended if you look the other way.'

'Thank you, sir,' the Chief Warden said, to the opposite wall. He sat down.

'Now then,' the half-man continued, 'you can't see them, but sitting on my right is His Holiness Anti-Pope Julian II, whom I believe you've met. Yes? And on my left,' the half-man continued, with a chuckle, 'is His Holiness Pope Julian XXIII. Before you say anything, yes, they are one and the same person; as you know, Julian was Pope of Rome, died, and now commutes from the sixteenth century to be Antipope. Well, he's kindly agreed to make two simultaneous trips, one in each capacity. Apparently it's the first time it's been done, so he asks you to make allowances. For a start, it means he can't speak.'

The Chief Warden's curiosity got the better of him. 'May I ask...?'

'For fear,' replied the half-man, 'of contradicting himself. Since he is speaking ex cathedra in both capacities, the results might be extremely unfortunate. He will therefore communicate with me by means of sign language, which does not qualify as a medium for Infallible statements, and I will relay his points to you myself. Since you cannot, understandably enough, bear to look at me, you'll have to trust me to interpret accurately. Are you agreeable to that?'

'Perfectly,' said the Chief Warden.

'Splendid,' said the half-man. 'Finally, as these are judicial proceedings, we have a shorthand writer present who will take a transcript for the record. You have no objection?'

'None whatsoever.

The half-man nodded to Pursuivant, who was sitting at the end of the desk. Pursuivant sharpened his pencil, opened his notebook, and wrote down the date. He spelt it wrong.

'Right,' said the half-man. 'Here goes, then. You are John Athanasius, Chief Time Warden, of "Hourgla.s.ses", Newlands Road, Bleak City, Atlantis?'

The Chief Warden nodded. 'Yes,' he said.

'John Athanasius, you are - can't read my own writing, dammit; Julian, what does that ...? Oh yes, thank you - you are charged with contraventions of the Chronological Order, in that you did knowingly and for purposes of private gain admit unauthorised persons into one of the Time Archives, contrary to Sections 3 and 67 of the said Order. How do you plead, guilty or not guilty?'

'Guilty,' said the Chief Warden.

'Oh,' said the half-man. 'How tremendously unimaginative of you. We've been to a great deal of trouble to track you down, you know. I've got a whole corridor full of witnesses all hauled back from temporal oblivion just to say they saw you at it. Are you sure you won't change your plea?'

'I'm sure.'

The half-man shrugged - difficult to do, with only one shoulder - and reached into his bag for half a black cap. 'Is there - where is the dratted thing? - anything you wish to say before sentence is p.r.o.nounced upon you?'

'No.'

'Ah, here we are. Are you sure?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Be like that. Now, which way round does it go? You'll have to take my word that I've got it on, of course. Just as well you aren't looking, you'd probably get a fit of the giggles, which'd be Contempt, and you're in enough trouble as it is. John Athanasius, you have been found guilty of a wholly unforgivable breach of the sacred truss - confound it, that's a T -trust which has been reposed in you. You try reading this with only one eye and see how you like it. I have listened with patience to your attempts at mitigation ... No, scrub round that. Pity. You have made no attempt to mitigate your crime, and I am therefore obliged to sentence you to filing in the Main Archive. Now have you anything to say as to why such sentence should not be imposed upon you?'

'No, sir.'

'Nothing at all? Not even It's a fair cop, bang to rights, guv? Nothing at all?'

'No, sir.'

The half-man sighed. 'Fine,' he said. 'The whole evening has been a complete frost. Had we known, we could have entered judgement by default, Julian could have stayed at home, I could have gone out to dinner, Mr ... whatever his name is here could have gone to the greyhound races, or whatever it is his sort of person does in the evenings, but there it is. Sentence accordingly.'

The Chief Warden hung his head, waiting for the feel of the guard's hand on his shoulder. Instead, he heard the half-man's voice again.

'I told the driver to come back in five hours' time,' he said, so we re stuck here till then. How about a game of something?'

'Thank you,' said the Chief Warden, 'but I don't really feel in the mood for...'

'I wasn't talking to you,' the half-man said. 'Julian, what about a rubber of bridge? You and you against me and Mr ... Oh, sorry, I forgot. Can't bid when you're being Infallible, might go two no trumps and get doubled, and what would that do to the Ninth Lateran Council? Oh well, this is going to be a jolly evening, isn't it?'

There was a long silence, during which the Chief Warden stared at the wall. By now, his wife would have given up waiting and served the cold beetroot soup with sour cream and chives. Where he was going, he reflected, not only would he never taste his wife's cooking ever again; he would also never have eaten it in the first place. The corners of his lips rose involuntarily.

'I spy,' said the half-man, 'with my little eye ... Literally, in my case, of course. Let's see. Something beginning with ... Chief Warden, is this a complete set of Blondel recordings?'

The Chief Warden nodded.

'Including the 1196 White Alb.u.m?'

Without wanting to, the Chief Warden smirked. 'Yes, sir,' he said.

'The pirate edition, naturally?'

'No sir,' the Chief Warden replied - O grave, thy victory -'the official recording, sir. With,' he added vindictively, 'Gace Brule on drums.'

'I see,' said the half-man. 'Chief Warden, have you, er, made a will?'

The Chief Warden nodded.

'Yes,' said the half-man, 'I expect you probably have. Invalid, of course. If you never existed, you can't have made a will, which means that all your property will be forfeit to the -'

'If I never existed, sir,' replied the Chief Warden, with relish, 'then I could never have bought the very last copy of the official recording of the 1196 White Alb.u.m. Which means,' he added happily, 'that somebody else must have bought it, sir. Don't you think?'

'I...'.

'Which is a pity, sir, wouldn't you say, since I left it to you in my will.'

'I...'.