For King & Country (5 page)

The moment the door was closed, Blundell started to apologize.

"No, don't bother," Stirling waved off the flood of embarrassed words. "He doesn't want me here any more than I care to be here myself, so we're even on that score. Show me round the place anyway, then we'll stop at the Falkland Arms and meet everyone, shall we?"

Blundell's worry faded at once. "Right. Frightfully glad you understand about Dr. Beckett. He's a bit of a stickler, you see, utterly dedicated, doesn't see the need for all the security fuss."

"Let's hope he's right," Stirling muttered.

Blundell gulped, quivering like a frightened rabbit, then escorted him on a bizarre tour of an utterly empty facility, allowing him to memorize the laboratory's layout, the location of every door—particularly those left unlocked—and the placement of each piece of equipment. He was careful to ask which equipment required outside maintenance. The laboratory wasn't much to look at, really, just a lot of computers, an innocuous enough hospital-style ward with several beds and a cabinet for medical supplies, and a tangle of high-tech equipment that might have come straight out of some American science fiction film. If there were a time machine hidden amongst the jumble, he couldn't place it by sight.

When Blundell attempted to explain what each item did, Stirling's eyes crossed.

"You can give me the detailed explanations tomorrow," he muttered, vowing to get a decent night's sleep before attempting to comprehend the science behind this crackpot setup. "I'd like to meet the staff now, if you please."

"Of course, Captain."

A quarter of an hour later, the battered Land Rover pulled to a halt in a muddy carpark outside the brightly lit pub where Stirling had occasionally stopped for a pint on his way to and from university classes at Edinburgh. Blundell set the brake and shut off the engine. "We'll speak to Mrs. Falkland about a room at one of the cottages, shall we? Get you settled, then join the others?"

"No," Stirling shook his head, "introduce me round, then speak to Mrs. Falkland yourself, while I'm busy making everyone's acquaintance. I'd rather make my impressions of them before they've a chance to make them of me, which won't happen if I arrange lodgings first. Get a room as close to the road as possible, even if it means shifting someone else, so I can keep track of comings and goings."

"Very well." His request clearly disgruntled Blundell, who probably didn't relish being spied upon any more than the others would, once they found out.

The roisterous interior of the Falkland Arms public house hadn't changed much in four years. A wave of nostalgia washed over him, accompanied by the scent of ale and bitters, chips in the deep-fryer, tobacco smoke, and spiced curry and popadums, a London import. The pub was full to capacity, mostly with tourists who'd come for the region's favorite outdoor pastimes. The roar of voices talking incessantly about the fish, the weather, the grouse, and the golf, was punctuated by spurts of laughter and the clink of glassware. The research team comprised the largest group in the pub, occupying one whole corner, tables scooted together to accommodate a clutter of empty dinner plates and an impressive collection of glasses.

It looked to Trevor Stirling like a major celebration was under way.

"Ah, there they are." Blundell spotted them at least sixty seconds after Stirling did.

Stirling navigated the crowded pub with care, not wanting to trip himself up with the crutch-cane, which would leave a fine first impression. They'd nearly reached the table when one of the women, a graduate student, Stirling realized, placing her from her dossier photo, spotted them. Young and pretty, her whole face lit up. "Blundy! You're back!"

Marc Blundell turned red to the roots of his hair.

The curious stares leveled his way led Stirling to a singularly unpalatable conclusion: nobody had told the research staff they were to be saddled with SAS security.
Lovely.

"Where've you been, old bean?" one of the men asked in a teasing tone. Cedrick Banning, Stirling nodded to himself, the Australian—decked out in the polo-snobbery variety of high style, with a paisley silk scarf tucked into his shirt collar and some fraternal pin Stirling didn't recognize decorating his lapel. Christ, another bloody colonial from the outback, trying to prove how very English he was.

Banning grinned in a friendly fashion. "You've ruddy well missed all the fun!"

"Fun?" Blundell blinked uncertainly.

"Beckett's Breakthrough," the Aussie chuckled, capitalizing both words. "Couldn't tear the old bastard away from the lab tonight with an atom bomb. We," he swept a gesture at the gathered team, "decided to celebrate in style, since he won't." Banning's friendly gaze landed on Stirling, and the Aussie greeted him with a cheery grin and an outstretched hand. "I say, old man, frightfully good to see you. SAS, isn't it? Jolly good, a captain, no less. Bit of a cock-up with that leg, eh?"

Christ, the man sounded more like Oxford than Outback. Must have an inferiority complex a kilometer long. Stirling shook his hand, anyway. "You could say that," he allowed tightly. "Belfast."

Banning's eyes widened and several of the women emitted sharp little gasps and cooing sounds of sympathy. Stirling's gaze, however, was riveted on Brenna McEgan, whose admittedly lovely mouth had tightened at mention of Belfast. One of the dark-haired brand of Irish women, with a complexion like cream-colored silk, sparks of suppressed anger jumped in her eyes—and she wasn't at all shy about returning his narrow gaze. Her own was as cold as glittering sapphires. "I see you ran afoul of our Orange brethren," she said coolly. "At least, they're claiming the victory from the fighting, aren't they?"

Dismay ran like lightning round the conjoined pub tables, as party mood abruptly gave way to realization that the unpleasantness occurring across the Irish Sea might well overtake
them.

"In my experience," Stirling said quietly, holding those chilly eyes in a steady gaze, "Belfast has no winners."

A vertical line twitched into existence between her brows. "How very odd. An SAS captain who actually understands Northern Ireland?"

Blundell cleared his throat nervously. "Captain Stirling will be joining us for a bit. He wanted to meet everyone, this evening. I'd love to hear about the breakthrough, Ceddie. I'll, ah, just go and arrange the captain's lodgings, then rejoin you."

Blundell fled, leaving Stirling to cope with social niceties on his own. He shook hands all round as introductions were made. Brenna McEgan watched him narrowly as he greeted each team member in turn. It took a concentrated effort to study the others, distracted as he was by her disturbing attractiveness, combined with her equally disturbing connections to Belfast. Stirling scolded himself for attempting security work while short of sleep and concentrated on the half-dozen senior staff, promising to sort out everyone else later.
Might at least have kept their bloody staff to a decent minimum,
he groused.
Security bleeding nightmare.

"Sit down, Captain," Banning invited, leaning over to hook an empty chair from a nearby table. "Name your poison," he added, waggling fingers to gain the barmaid's attention.

The barmaid took one look and broke into a broad smile. "Trevor Stirling! Whatever brings you home, luv? Does your mum know?"

"Ah, no," he cleared his throat, aware of stares from every quarter. "I'm on duty, as it happens. How've you been, angel?"

Cassiopia McArdle had blossomed in his absence, filling that barmaid's uniform to an improbable degree, looking, at eighteen, like a soldier's favorite wet dream. He remembered her in braids and orthodontic braces. She winked. "I've been lonely. You look to need a bit of R and R, Trevor. I'm off at eleven. Pint of stout?"

"You
are
an angel. Give my best to your mother."

She grinned and went in search of his pint. He held back a sigh and met the surprised stares of the scientific team. "Well, then, what's this about a breakthrough?" he asked too brightly.

Cedric Banning recovered first, although his eyes continued to blaze with unspoken curiosity. "Beckett's Breakthrough. Yes. Old Terrance has finally done it, is what. We're no longer a theoretical concern."

"Beg pardon?"

Fairfax Dempsey, one of the graduate students, leaned forward eagerly. "He's done it, Captain! Went back in time! Full translation for sixteen minutes, right into the court of King Henry II, he said. He listened to Henry discussing the invasion of Ireland with his privy council! Beckett's bloody well made history today!" The young man chuckled as he realized the double meaning. "Twice, in fact. Once going
into
it, once making it."

"Why he chose
that
time and place to visit," Brenna McEgan muttered, "baffles me. Henry II, for God's sake, bloody-minded butcher..."

Stirling scarcely heard her, wondering if the sickening lurch in his gut were disbelief or terror. "D'you mean to say, you've actually
perfected
time travel?"

"Perfected it?" Brenna McEgan echoed, her tone droll. "Hardly. Beckett very nearly died, before we managed to retrieve his consciousness." Stirling gave her a sharp stare, which she returned with uplifted brow, faintly amused at his shock. "Dr. Beckett may have succeeded in testing his apparatus today, but we are a very long way, indeed, from running a full-bore field test. Naturally, that is precisely what he intends to do, first thing tomorrow morning. He wanted to go again today, but we managed to veto the notion. His heart did not cope well with the first translation—and he was gone only a quarter of an hour. Frankly, the last thing we need is for Beckett to drop dead."

Stirling tried to digest that, while wishing the room would stop lurching about as his equilibrium played catch-up. "Perhaps," he cleared his throat and tried again. "Perhaps someone had better explain all this in more detail?" Like it or not—tired or not—he needed to absorb the science
now.

Zenon Mylonas, who'd remained silent until now, nodded. "Very well, Captain."

Dr. Mylonas was one of those perpetually mournful-looking chaps one expects to find in a mortuary, but seldom does. Sitting in the crowded pub, with his lesser colleagues ranged about him, he reminded Stirling of a gawky adolescent, all elbows and knobby shoulders and a discomfited awareness of not quite fitting in properly. His eyes held the look of a man who's faced the worst humanity has to offer itself and has not come up on the winning side.

Realization struck like an electric shock: Mylonas was utterly terrified.
By his own research.

The implications were sickening, like a bottomless hole opening out under his feet, when he hadn't expected so much as a crack in the pavement. What the IRA could do with
real
time travel... The crowded pub crashed back into Stirling's awareness with a roar of voices raised in laughter and snatches of drunken song, the perpetual clink of glassware, the blue haze of cigarette smoke, all combining like the clattering of an unseen train roaring past in the fog. An ominous tremor began in the pit of his stomach, worse than pre-combat jitters. Stirling unfroze long enough to completely drain his glass in one long gulp, before gesturing for another. "All right," he finally managed. "Give me a lesson in time travel, professor."

"We'll begin with the basic physics of the project," Mylonas leaned forward, rolling his own empty bar glass between his hands. "You understand, surely, the concept of infinite potential futures? If I do
x
instead of
y
and you respond with
b
instead of
c
and so on, multiplied by all the physical factors in the universe? A crushed butterfly that robs some bird of its dinner, which prevents the offspring from transmitting a fatal disease that would have wiped out half of Asia. Or a supernova or meteorite being taken as a sign from God, prompting someone to invade a neighbor, abandon a revolution, or engineer a new religion which in turn kills several million people under the guise of saving their souls. If one accepts this as fact—or, perhaps I should say, as unchallenged hypothesis, as we are all scientists laboring under the scientific theory—then one must also understand there are an infinite number of potential
pasts,
as well. I didn't do
x
, but did
y
instead, you didn't respond with
b
, but rather did
c
."

"Well, I suppose so," Stirling frowned, "but look here, this doesn't make logical sense. How can
both
x
and
y
have happened, when clearly, only
x
did
happen?"

"It's a matter of quantum physics," Mylonas said patiently, "or rather, a matter of
fractural
physics, which is not something even your average quantum physicist has begun to grasp."

"
Fractural
physics?" Stirling echoed. "What the devil is that?"

"A bloody Nobel Prize," Cedric Banning grinned, raising his half-drained glass in a salute.

Mylonas shot Banning a quelling glance. "Quite.
If
the Home Office will ever allow us to publish our data." The haunted look in the man's eyes deepened. Stirling narrowed his gaze, realizing abruptly that Mylonas
wanted
the Home Office to keep his work classified. Oddly, none of the others appeared to be so deeply rattled. Rampant delight was the operative word at this table. What did Mylonas know, that the others hadn't glimpsed, yet?

"Go on, please," Stirling said quietly, sipping from his second glass of stout. "What
is
fractural physics?"

"A mathematical way of describing, of accounting for, the impossibilities in observation which neither quantum physics nor its mathematical system can explain. Surely you knew, already, that the simple act of observation literally brings a thing into being, at the quantum level? Observation equals creation. If you ask the right question, in other words, the universe obliges you by providing a previously nonexistent answer. And if a thing exists, it can be fractured into something else; time is no exception. In fact, without fractural physics, nothing would—or could—exist."