Time's Eye (5 page)

7: CAPTAIN GROVE

Bisesa and Abdikadir were walked to the fort they had glimpsed from the air. It turned out to be a box-shaped enclosure surrounded by stout stone walls, with round watchtowers in each corner. It was a substantial base, and evidently well maintained.

“But it’s not on any map I ever saw,” Bisesa said tensely. Abdikadir didn’t reply.

The walls were manned by soldiers in red coats or khaki jackets. Some even wore kilts. The soldiers all seemed short, wiry, and many had bad teeth and skin infections; they wore kit that was heavily patched and worn. Native or otherwise, the soldiers all stared with open curiosity at Bisesa and Abdikadir—and, regarding Bisesa, with undisguised sexual speculation.

“No women here,” Abdikadir murmured. “Don’t let it bother you.”

“I wasn’t.” Too much had happened to her today, she told herself, for her to allow a few leering troopers in pith helmets and kilts to worry her. But the truth was her stomach churned; it was never good for a woman to be captured.

The heavy gates were open, and carts drawn by mules passed through. What looked like a stripped-down artillery piece was carried on the back of a couple more mules. The mules were driven by Indian troopers—what Bisesa heard the white soldiers call
sepoys
.

Inside the fort there was an air of bustle and orderly activity. But, Bisesa thought, what was more remarkable than what was here was what was
lacking
, such as any kind of motor vehicle, radio antenna or satellite dish.

They were taken into the main central building, and led to a kind of anteroom. Here McKnight issued a blunt order: “Strip.” His sergeant major, he said, wasn’t about to let them into the Captain’s hallowed presence without a thorough check of what was concealed under their bulky flight suits.

Bisesa forced a grin. “I think you just want to take a peek at my butt.” She was gratified by the look of genuine shock on McKnight’s face. Then she start to peel off her layers, starting with her boots.

Under her flight suit she wore a load-bearing harness. Into its pockets she had crammed a canteen of water, maps, a set of night-vision goggles, a couple of packs of chewing gum, a small plastic first aid pack, other survival rations and gear—and her phone, which had the sense to keep itself inert. She crammed her useless wraparound microphone into an outside pocket. Off came shirt and trousers. They were both allowed to stop when they got down to their dirt-brown T-shirts and shorts.

They were unarmed, save for a bayonet knife Abdikadir carried strapped under his harness. He handed this over to McKnight with some reluctance. McKnight picked up the night goggles and peered through them, evidently baffled. Their little plastic boxes of kit were snapped open and rummaged through.

Then they were allowed to dress again, and were given back most of their gear—but not the knife, and not, Bisesa noted with amusement, her chewing gum.

After that, to Bisesa’s astonishment, Captain Grove, the commanding officer, kept them waiting.

The two of them sat side by side in his office, on a hard wooden bench. A single private stood guard at the door, rifle ready. The Captain’s room had a certain comfort, even elegance. The walls were whitewashed, the floor wooden; there was rush matting on the floor, and what looked like a Kashmiri rug hanging on one wall. This was obviously the office of a working professional. On a big wooden desk there were piles of papers and cardboard folders, and a nib pen standing in an ink pot. There were some personal touches, like a polo ball set on the desk, and a big old grandfather clock that ticked mournfully. But there was no electric light; only oil lamps supplemented the fading glow from the single small window.

Bisesa felt compelled to whisper. “It’s like a museum. Where are the softscreens, the radios, the phones? There’s nothing here but paper.”

Abdikadir said, “And yet they ran an empire, with paper.”

She stared at him. “
They?
Where do you think we are?”

“Jamrud,” he said without hesitation. “A fortress—nineteenth-century—built by the Sikhs, maintained by the British.”

“You’ve been here?”

“I’ve seen pictures. I’ve studied the history—it’s my region, after all. But the books show it as a ruin.”

Bisesa frowned, unable to grasp that. “Well, it isn’t a ruin now.”

“Their kit,” murmured Abdikadir. “Did you notice? Puttees and Sam Browne belts. And their weapons—those rifles were single-shot breech-loading Martini-Henrys and Sniders.
Seriously
out of date. That stuff hasn’t been used since the British were here in the nineteenth century, and even they moved over to Lee Metfords, Gatlings and Maxims as soon as they were available.”

“When was that?”

Abdikadir shrugged. “I’m not sure. The 1890s, I think.”

“The 1890s?”

“Have you tried your survival radio?” They both carried tracking beacons sewn into their harnesses, as well as miniaturized survival radio transceivers, thankfully undetected during McKnight’s inspection.

“No joy. The phone’s still out of touch too. No more signal than when we were in the air.” She shivered slightly. “Nobody knows where we are, or where we came down. Or even if we’re alive.” It wasn’t just the crash that spooked her, she knew. It was the feeling of being
out of contact—
cut off from the warmly interconnected world in which she had been immersed since the moment of her birth. For a citizen of the twenty-first century it was a unique, disorienting feeling of isolation.

Abdikadir’s hand slipped over hers, and she was grateful for the warm human connection. He said, “They’ll start search-and-retrieve operations soon. That crashed Bird is a big marker. Although it’s getting dark outside.”

Somehow she had forgotten that bit of strangeness. “It’s too early to get dark.”

“Yes. I don’t know about you but I feel a little jet-lagged . . .”

Captain Grove bustled in, accompanied by an orderly, and they stood up. Grove was a short, slightly overweight, stressed-looking officer of perhaps forty, in a light khaki uniform. Bisesa noted dust on his boots and puttees: he was a man who put his job before appearances, she thought. But he sported an immense walrus mustache, the largest facial growth Bisesa had seen outside a wrestling ring.

Grove stood before them, hands on hips, glaring at them. “Batson told me your names, and what you claim are your ranks.” His accent was clipped, oddly out of date, like the British officer class in a World War II movie. “And I’ve been to see that machine of yours.”

Bisesa said, “We were on a peaceful reconnaissance mission.”

Grove raised a graying eyebrow. “I’ve seen your weapons. Some ‘reconnaissance’!”

Abdikadir shrugged. “Nevertheless, we’re telling you the truth.”

Grove said, “I suggest we get down to business. Let me tell you first that your man is being taken care of as well as we can.”

“Thank you,” Bisesa said stiffly.

“Now—who are you, and what are you doing at my fort?”

Bisesa narrowed her eyes. “We don’t have to tell you anything but name, rank, serial number . . .” She faltered to a halt as Grove looked baffled.

Abdikadir said gently, “I’m not sure if our conventions of war apply here, Bisesa. And besides I have the feeling that this situation is so strange that it may be best for all of us if we are open with each other.” He was eyeing Grove challengingly.

Grove nodded curtly. He sat behind his desk, and absently waved them to sit on their bench. He said, “Suppose I put aside for the moment the most likely possibility, which is that you are some sort of spies for Russia or her allies, sent on some destabilization mission. Perhaps you even engineered the loss of contact we are suffering . . . As I say, let’s put that aside. You say you’re on temporary assignment from the British army. You’re here to keep the peace. Well, so am I, I suppose. Tell me how flapping about in that whirling contraption achieves that.” He was brisk, but visibly uncertain.

Bisesa took a deep breath. Briefly she sketched the geopolitical situation: the standoff of the great powers over the region’s oil, the complex local tensions. Grove seemed to follow this, even if most of it seemed unfamiliar, and at times he showed great surprise. “Russia an
ally
, you say? . . .

“Let me tell you how
I
see the situation here. We’re at a point of tension all right—but the tension is between Britain and Russia. My job is to help defend the frontier of the Empire, and then the security of the Raj. About all I recognized from your little speech was the trouble you have with the Pashtuns. No offense,” he said to Abdikadir.

Bisesa found this impossible to take in. She was reduced to repeating his words. “The
Raj
? The
Empire
?”

“It seems,” Grove said, “we are here to wage different wars, Lieutenant Dutt.”

But Abdikadir was nodding. “Captain Grove—you have had trouble with your communications in the last few hours?”

Grove paused, evidently deciding what to tell him. “Very well—yes. We lost both the telegraph link, and even the heliograph stations from about noon. Haven’t heard a peep since, and we still don’t know what’s going on. And you?”

Abdikadir sighed. “The time scale is a little different. We lost our radio communications just before the crash—a few hours ago.”

“
Radio?
. . . Never mind,” Grove said, waving a hand. “So we have similar problems, you in your flying roundabout, me in my fortress. And what do you suppose caused this?”

Bisesa said in a rush, “A hot war.” She had been brooding on this possibility since the crash; despite the terror of those moments, and the shock of what had followed, she hadn’t been able to get it out of her head. She said to Abdikadir, “An electromagnetic pulse—what else could knock out both civilian and military comms, simultaneously? The strange lights we saw in the sky—the weather, the sudden winds—”

“But we saw no contrails,” Abdikadir said calmly. “Come to think of it, I haven’t noticed a single contrail since the crash.”

“Once again,” Grove said with irritation, “I have not the first idea what you’re talking about.”

“I mean,” Bisesa said, “I fear a nuclear war has broken out. And that’s what’s stranded us all. It’s happened before in this area, after all. It’s only seventeen years since Lahore was destroyed by the Indian strike.”

Grove stared at her. “Destroyed, you say?”

She frowned. “Utterly. You must know it was.”

Grove stood, went to the door, and gave an order to the private waiting there. After a couple of minutes the bustling young civilian called “Ruddy” came to the door, slightly breathless, evidently summoned by Grove. The other civilian, the young man called Josh who had helped Abdikadir get Casey out of the downed chopper, came pushing his way into the room too.

Grove raised his eyebrows. “I should have expected you to sneak in, Mr. White. But you have your job to do, I suppose. You!” Peremptorily he pointed at Ruddy. “When were you last in Lahore?”

Ruddy thought briefly. “Three—four weeks ago, I believe.”

“Can you describe the place as you saw it then?”

Ruddy seemed puzzled by the request, but he complied: “An old walled city—two hundred thousand and odd Punjabis, and a few thousand Europeans and mixed race—lots of Mughal monuments—since the Mutiny it’s become a center of administration, as well as the platform for military expeditions to see off the Russkie threat. I don’t know what you want me to tell you, sir.”

“Just this. Has Lahore been destroyed? Was it, in fact, devastated seventeen years ago?”

Ruddy guffawed. “Scarcely. My father worked there. He built a house on the Mozang Road!”

Grove snapped at Bisesa, “Why are you lying?”

Foolishly Bisesa felt like crying.
Why won’t you believe me?
She turned to Abdikadir. He had fallen silent; he was gazing out of the window at the reddening sun. “Abdi? Back me up here.”

Abdikadir said to her softly, “You don’t see the pattern yet.”

“What pattern?”

He closed his eyes. “I don’t blame you. I don’t want to see it myself.” He faced the British. “You know, Captain, the strangest thing of all that happened today was the sun.” He described the sudden shift of the sun across the sky. “One minute noon, the next—late afternoon. As if the machinery of time had come off its cogs.” He glanced at the grandfather clock; its faded face showed the time was a little before seven o’clock. He asked Grove, “Is that correct?”

“Nearly, I suppose. I check it every morning.”

Abdikadir lifted his wrist and glanced at his watch. “And yet I show only fifteen twenty-seven—half past three in the afternoon. Bisesa, do you agree?”

She checked. “Yes.”

Ruddy frowned. He strode over to Abdikadir and took his wrist. “I’ve never seen a watch like this. It’s certainly not a Waterbury! It has numbers, not hands. There isn’t even a dial. And the numbers melt one into the other!”

“It’s a digital watch,” Abdikadir said mildly.

“And—what is this?” Ruddy called out the numbers.
“Eight six 2037 . . .”

“That is the date,” Abdikadir said.

Ruddy frowned, working it out. “A date in the twenty-first century?”

“Yes.”

Ruddy strode over to Grove’s desk and rummaged in a heap of papers there. “Forgive me, Captain.” Even the formidable Grove seemed out of his depth; he raised his hands helplessly. Ruddy extracted a newspaper. “A couple of days old, but it will do.” He held it up for Bisesa and Abdikadir to see; it was a thin rag called the
Civil and Military Gazette and Pioneer.
“Can you see the date?”

It was a date in March 1885. There was a long, frozen silence.

Grove said briskly, “Do you know, I think we could all do with a cup of tea.”

“No!” The other young man, Josh White, seemed very agitated. “I’m sorry sir, but it all makes sense now—I think it does—oh, it fits, it fits!”

“Calm yourself,” Grove said sternly. “What are you jabbering about?”

“The man-ape,” White said. “Never mind cups of tea—we must show them the man-ape!”

So, with Bisesa and Abdikadir still under armed guard, they all trooped out of the fort.