Gideon the Cutpurse (31 page)

TWENTY - ONE
The Straw Men
In which Dr. Dyer explains the disappearance of the antigravity machine, and Gideon's situation goes from bad to worse

They wanted to be able to speak freely and could not do so with Sidney present. Sir Richard had the idea to ask his neighbor to take Sidney with him to the cockpit in Bird Cage Walk, where he often spent the evening. He gave his nephew three guineas to bet on the cockerels and made him promise faithfully not to tell his mother. Sidney, whose parents had always forbidden him to frequent such places and had never allowed him to gamble, was even happier when his uncle explained to him that Master Schock had wanted to go but Sir Richard had felt that he was too young for such a venue.
So it was that the rest of the party gathered around a candlelit table in Lincoln's Inn Fields to celebrate the arrival of a man not due to be born for another two hundred years. Dr. Dyer was clearly overjoyed that, against all the odds, here he was sitting at the same table as his daughter. As they ate, he continually put down his fork to hold Kate's hand in order to convince himself that he was not dreaming. Molly lay on Kate's feet gnawing at a knuckle of veal and refused to be moved from her beloved Kate even when Kate got pins and needles.
"If only I could phone your mum to tell her that I've found you," said her father.
Peter and Kate all took it in turns to tell Dr. Dyer what had happened to them since their arrival, everyone interrupting and commenting and adding another detail. Dr. Dyer was stunned by how much they had lived through in such a short space of time. They had encountered footpads and highwaymen, the King and Queen of England, Erasmus Darwin, not to mention Dr. Johnson. They had seen the inside of Buckingham House as well as Newgate prison. When Kate told her father about Ned Porter's murder and how they had been kidnapped by footpads, he went very quiet and stroked her cheek.
"I cannot thank you enough for the kindness you have shown to Kate and Peter," he said to Sir Richard and the parson when he realized just how much he owed to the Byng family. "And Gideon Seymour, too--if Gideon had not stumbled across the children in Derbyshire, I do not like to think what could have happened to them. It is tempting to think that fate had a hand in all this. I look forward to thanking Gideon in person. I agree with Kate that we cannot think of trying to return home until he is freed from Newgate prison."
"Do you have the
means
of returning home, Dr. Dyer?" asked Sir Richard.
"Andrew, please call me Andrew. Yes, I believe I do--at least I hope I do--but more of that in a moment. First there is something I must know. There is a massive police hunt underway in the twenty-first century, as I am sure you can imagine."
"Ah," said Parson Ledbury, "999. Police cars."
"Mmm," continued Dr. Dyer. "Well, given how Peter and Kate disappeared, it's not surprising that the police have not come up with anything. There was your message, of course, Kate, etched into the wall at your school--very clever idea, by the way, well done. Naturally we erased it before the police saw it."
"Erased it? Why?"
"Because we, I mean the NASA scientists who came over to help and I--"
"NASA?" asked the parson and Sir Richard.
"They build space rockets," explained Peter quickly.
"The future sounds damned tricky, does it not, Sir Richard?" said the parson. "I think we are better off where we are, what?"
Sir Richard laughed. "I am sure you are right and yet there is a part of me that longs to see what we will achieve, the progress we shall have made."
"I should be satisfied with your own time," said Dr. Dyer. "From what I have seen, we have lost much that should not have been lost, and although great scientific discoveries will be made, I am sorry to say that mankind does terrible, terrible things to itself over the next centuries." He sighed. "Where was I?"
"NASA scientists," said Kate. "Why you erased my message."
"Ah yes. We decided that if, as we were beginning to suspect, you had gone back in time, we did not want the public to get to know about it. You don't have to think very hard to come up with some of the potential dangers. For instance, my history is not very good but England has just won the Seven Years War, yes?"
Sir Richard nodded. "Yes, the Treaty of Paris was signed in February."
"Well, what is to stop some fanatical Frenchman traveling back in time with a large bomb and blowing up the English fleet at a crucial moment? France wins, and bang goes the Treaty of Paris."
The parson looked horrified. "It cannot be! You cannot come back and take away our past! We have earned our history--it is ours!"
"But we already have," said Dr. Dyer. "We've just got to try and minimize the damage, leave, and never come back."
The parson looked shaken.
"I promise you that, as soon as we return, the antigravity machine and all its documentation will be destroyed."
"Is everyone concerned with this antigravity machine of the same opinion, Andrew?" asked Sir Richard.
"I believe so."
"Then have a care, for whoever holds this knowledge has a power greater than any army."
There was a long and profound silence. Dr. Dyer squeezed Kate's hand. It was Kate who spoke first.
"Well, don't keep us in suspense, Dad! How
did
you get here?"
"I will tell you, I will, once you've told me how you two managed to appear like ghosts in the twenty-first century, leaving a trail for me to follow from Bakewell to Lincoln's Inn Fields."
"Oh yes! We haven't told you about blurring! But surely you must have blurred--how long have you been here?"
"About a week."
"But that's as long as us!"
"I know. Carry on. And no, I haven't 'blurred' as you call it. Not once. Tell me what happens when you do."
Kate and Peter struggled to explain to Dr. Dyer what blurring felt like, how at first they blurred without realizing what was happening, and how subsequently they had learned to blur at will.
"So it doesn't happen to you of its own accord anymore?"
"Doesn't seem to. The last time we both blurred together without meaning to was days and days ago. We popped up in a supermarket car park! We got some very funny looks, I can tell you!" said Kate.
"I know you did. I've seen the photograph!"
"No! Someone took a picture of that, too?"
"Yes, you two are celebrities, for what it's worth. But tell me, you say that when you blur, you soon get pulled back?"
Peter and Kate nodded. "It hurts," said Peter.
"You get sucked back and you can't resist it for very long," said Kate. "It's a horrible feeling."
"Fascinating. I wonder why it hasn't happened to me--or Molly for that matter."
"Kate finds it easier to blur than me," Peter said.
"Well, girls are best!" said Kate.
"Could you blur now, so I could see?" asked Dr. Dyer.
"For pity's sake!" exclaimed Parson Ledbury. "Not during supper! I can assure you that it is a perfectly bloodcurdling sight and will give us all indigestion."
Dr. Dyer laughed. "Tomorrow, perhaps. When our stomachs are empty. Why don't I tell you my story, then..."

* * *

The telephone call came, he told them, on the morning of Christmas Eve. Sam was still refusing to come out of his room, but the rest of the family was sitting around the Christmas tree. It was pointless trying to pretend that this was a normal Christmas, but for the little ones' sake they were playing Snap! and charades. Ever since Kate had vanished, the sound of a telephone always made the grown-ups apprehensive. A desperate wish for good news was always accompanied by the fear that this call could bring the bad news they had been dreading. Dr. Dyer picked up the receiver. It was one of the security guards at the NCRDM laboratory. He had been making a routine check on the office that Dr. Dyer shared with Tim Williamson when he heard a message being recorded on their answering machine. It was an unusual message, and he made a note of the number in case it was important.
Kate's father decided to make the call immediately. He got through to the estate manager of a property owned by the National Trust in Surrey. It was called Tempest House.
"Tempest House!" cried everyone at once. "But that's--"
"Lord Luxon's country estate. I know--I found that out for myself."
The estate manager told him that a piece of equipment with a NCRDM security label on it had turned up inexplicably inside the Luxon family crypt. It was a total mystery how the object had got in there, as the crypt was securely locked. Not only that, there was also a crazed tramp in the crypt who fled like a trapped bird as soon as the doors were opened. The estate manager presumed that it was a student prank.
"It was your mum who suggested taking Molly," said Dr. Dyer, "and thank goodness she did. I got straight into the Land Rover, and three hours later I was standing in the crypt. It was Tim's antigravity machine all right, and it seemed undamaged. I watched Molly sniffing about and hoped she might pick up your scent. She didn't, but funnily enough there was a strong smell of fish.... I think I'd convinced myself that you were going to come back for Christmas--the one present your mum and I had prayed for. As I stood there, trying to calm down, the tramp crept back into the crypt. One look at him and I knew he wasn't mad--he was from the eighteenth century. I asked him what the date was."
"What did he say?" asked Kate.
"Twenty-sixth July 1763."
"Yesterday!" exclaimed Sir Richard.
"Yes. Anyway, it was after talking to him that I realized what I must do."
"Who was he, Dad?"
"A poacher. He had been fishing for carp in Lord Luxon's lake. He used the crypt as a hiding place when he thought he had been spotted. There were a couple of loose tiles in the roof and he would squeeze through and drop down into the crypt. He thought Lord Luxon was up in town, but the lord had appeared unexpectedly that morning, and the poacher had thought it best to make himself scarce until it was safe to leave the estate. Only when the poacher landed on the floor of the crypt and lit a candle as he usually did, did he discover that he wasn't in fact alone. There was one of Lord Luxon's liveried footmen in there with him. The poacher was so startled he took a step backward and fell over something. That was the last thing he could remember.
"Of course, it was the morning of the race!" exclaimed Peter. "So they
had
put the machine in the crypt.... It wasn't a trick."
"Go on," said Sir Richard. "I am beginning to understand."
"And so," continued Dr. Dyer, "I had the proof I needed that the antigravity machine was indeed responsible for Kate and Peter's disappearance and that it had gone both backward
and
forward in time. If the children were still in 1763 and their only hope of returning was this machine, I had no choice. I had to get it back to you. I telephoned your mother, Kate. And do you know, she did not hesitate for a second. "Go," she said. "Bring my Katie back.""
Kate burst into tears.
"Don't cry, love. I have hidden the machine on Hampstead Heath. I
shall
get you back to your mum--and Peter to his--I promise. And you know that I don't break my promises."
Peter looked down at the table.
"How did you know that the machine would return you to 1763?" asked Sir Richard.
"I didn't, but what else could I do? I had to try."
Kate grabbed hold of her father's hand and squeezed it.
"There are various settings on Tim's antigravity machine, and a dial. I reasoned that if the machine had gone forward and backward over an identical time span, so long as none of the settings had been interfered with, the machine stood at least a decent chance of being able to replicate that journey. And it did, give or take a few days. Bizarrely, two days before it happened I had visited one of my NASA colleagues in the hospital. She said something to me whilst she was apparently asleep. She told me that the time differential is directly proportional to the quantity of antigravity generated. She couldn't remember saying it afterward.
"Ooh, that's spooky!" said Kate.
"I know. And it's not something I would want to write up in a scientific journal, either, but it did give me the courage to switch on the generator. But she could be right--perhaps there is a direct relationship between energy output and the lapse in time."
He then described how the poacher had helped him move the machine out of the crypt and into the Land Rover, for Kate's father did not want to risk getting to 1763 and then being locked in the crypt! Dr. Dyer drove to Abinger Forest--a truly terrifying journey for the poacher, but he gamely helped unload the antigravity machine once they had arrived. Dr. Dyer said that he had no recollection whatsoever of switching the machine on but remembered waking up in the woods in the middle of the night, owls hooting overhead, and the poacher long gone. Molly was fast asleep beside him and appeared none the worse for her experience.
"We couldn't remember anything about our journey either, could we?" said Kate to Peter.
"No. I couldn't even remember who you were at first."
"But we are talking about short-term memory loss, here, aren't we?" asked Dr. Dyer anxiously. "I mean, you don't have any difficulty recalling the names of your friends at school or the name of the prime minister, do you?"
"Now you come to mention it...," said Kate.
"What?" said Dr. Dyer.
"What were you saying? I can't remember."
"Very funny, Kate. As I was saying, Molly and I woke up in the middle of Abinger Forest. The next day I sold my gold watch to a master clockmaker in Effingham for twenty guineas, hired a horse and cart, and made for London, where I hid the machine on Hampstead Heath and rented some rooms in Highgate. I knew that at some point you were going to turn up in Covent Garden or Lincoln's Inn Fields, so Molly and I have been searching for you ever since."
"When you say 'watch,' Andrew, do you mean a pocket watch small enough to be worn around the wrist, by any chance?" asked Sir Richard.
"Yes, I do."
"In which case I can tell you that King George himself is in possession of your timepiece! No wonder there was such amazement at the delicacy of its mechanism!"

* * *

There was so much more to say and so much more to ask, but after all the excitement everyone was beginning to grow tired. Molly was snoring gently at Kate's feet. The candles were low and Parson Ledbury kept dropping off to sleep and waking up with a start. At half past eleven Sir Richard suggested that they resume the conversation the next day. He had an appointment to keep at Newgate with Gideon and Mr. Leche at nine o'clock, and he wondered if Kate's father would be prepared to join them.
"I should be honored," said Dr. Dyer. "I should like to be able to shake his hand. I can, in any case, swear on oath that Gideon did
not
take the antigravity machine. Although I am not sure that it would be a very good idea for
me
to explain the circumstances of its disappearance."