Part Three
They found themselves sprawled against the wall of what appeared to be a corridor. The smooth white walls on either side curved seamlessly into the ceiling above. A domed full-length window a short distance away showed them to be elevated high above ground-level among many other towering buildings.
Dan spoke first. “Wassup? Gruff a tank.”
Vanda groaned, then her brow puckered in concentration. “Just to be clear, we are in a lot of trouble. This, obviously, is the future to you. But if you think hard, you’ll be able to speak as you normally do, because your time is now in the past.”
Trixie frowned, thinking. “Where and when are we?”
“I know, but I’m not telling.” The other woman held a hand up. “Don’t argue, okay? We don’t have time for it. Suletu found us far too quickly the last time. And it’s insane for the anachronism and the trigger item to be the same thing. It doesn’t make sense at all.”
“The egg beater did the same thing as the robot did,” Di noted, her face creased in concentration. “Does that mean that all the – what did you call them? triggers? – do that?”
Vanda nodded. “That’s right, but we have to move. We’re going this way. Don’t talk to anyone, okay?”
“But what if they talk to me?” Trixie asked.
“Do what you did last time – introduce me into the conversation,” Vanda answered.
“You think we’re going anywhere dressed like this?” Di asked, grimacing at the tight-fitting orange top and black pants she wore. “We must look ridiculous!”
Trixie examined her own outfit – a billowy blue pants suit – and shrugged indifference. The others showed various levels of discomfort, according to how outlandish their clothes seemed to them.
“You look totally normal – for here.” She gestured them forward, just as several strangers passed in the opposite direction, none of them taking the slightest notice of the Bob-Whites. “And if we don’t hurry up, she’ll find me and you’ll be stuck here for the rest of your lives.”
“We’re coming,” Mart answered, with a grimace at his wide-legged blue pants teamed with red shoes.
“Hey! What’s this thing?” Trixie asked, leaning closer to a panel of controls of some kind.
Vanda grabbed her arm and jerked her away. “Don’t touch anything! You have no idea what kind of trouble you could cause.”
Trixie cast the panel a longing glance, but allowed herself to be guided down the corridor, looking around herself in fascination.
As they passed the window, however, Diana shuddered visibly and leaned away.
“Oh, I wish I hadn’t seen that,” she murmured.
“What?” asked Honey, trying to glance back at the window while Vanda firmly moved her onwards.
“We must be hundreds of floors up! I couldn’t even see the ground.”
“Well, no. Of course not,” Vanda answered, distractedly. “Somewhere here… Yes!”
She stopped at a strange panel, similar to the one Trixie had looked at earlier, and began tapping parts of it in a sequence only she could understand. After a few moments, she stepped away from it and stood, looking expectantly down the corridor.
“What now?” asked Mart.
“It will be here in a moment,” she answered. “Stand back against the wall.”
Even as he opened his mouth to demand an explanation, a smooth, white vehicle approached them, drawing to an almost silent halt in front of Vanda. Its door opened automatically with a soft swishing sound.
“Get in. Quickly.”
Trixie did not hesitate. “Mmm. Comfy. I like it. Where are we going?”
“Away from here,” Vanda answered. She touched a button and the door swished shut at once.
“Are we really moving?” Trixie asked, peering out of one of the small windows. “It doesn’t feel like it.”
In a matter of moments, they retraced their path along the corridor as far as the window. Only the slightest sensation of movement could be felt as they turned towards it. Diana screamed as the window opened and the pod floated outside.
“Don’t do that so close to my ear,” Vanda snapped. “What did you think would happen? Was I going to let us all die?”
“You could have warned us!”
Something sped past the window, causing Dan to blurt out admiringly, “Gruff a tank!”
Diana, on the other hand, shuddered.
Mart laid a calming hand on her arm. “Just close your eyes. It’s like we’re not moving at all.”
“Just look at that!” Trixie cried, pointing out of the window. “Did you see that thing fly through that teeny weeny gap? This is amazing! I love this place!”
Their pod swooped through the gaps between the enormous towers, joined a stream of similar pods, left it to join another and finally peeled away to push through a window into another building. The door opened and Vanda gestured for them to get out.
“Now, come along,” she urged, leading the way along a similar corridor to the first they had seen, this one tinted faintly blue. “We have to keep moving.”
“Where are we going?” Trixie wondered aloud, for the second time.
“My place,” Vanda answered. “But we have to be careful, because for me, this is just last week. And I was here.”
“What happens if you meet yourself?” Brian asked.
Trixie did not give time for an answer, but asked, “How can you be so sure when we are?”
Vanda shook her head. “I can’t answer either of those because I can’t tell you things about your future. But just trust that I know this time and I know this place, okay?”
She opened a door and ushered them all into what at first appeared to be a bare room. The door sealed so perfectly that its edges could not be seen.
“Sit,” Vanda directed. “We need a strategy and we’re not going to get one just by wishful thinking.”
“Where?” Trixie asked, but when she looked around, a sleek white conference table and matching chairs had appeared. “How did you do that?”
“Sit,” Vanda repeated, ignoring the question. “Now, while we’re here, I have resources and I’m going to use them.”
A 3D map appeared in mid-air, right above the table – a forest of enormous tower blocks made of thin green lines with shimmering white paths between them. Here and there places were marked with dots of different colours, some of them moving and others stationary.
“We’re here,” Vanda explained, pointing to one of two blue dots. “And there’s my other self – that’s my apartment, by the way. It’s just down the hall from here.” She moved her hand in an arc. “And the thing we’re looking for is somewhere in this purple patch.”
“So, we just have to go over there and find it?” Trixie asked. “What are we waiting for? Let’s go.”
Vanda shook her head. “No. I need to put Suletu off my track and the best way I can think of is to let her follow the other me.” She pointed to a red dot moving across the map. “Look: that’s her. She’s arrived in this time already and she’s headed this way.”
“But we didn’t see one of those flashes that we saw when she arrived the last time,” Di pointed out.
“They’re suppressed here, otherwise… well, let’s just say that wouldn’t be a good thing. Not everyone thinks that time travel should be allowed.” She looked at the device in her hand, which had transformed into some unknown material almost like polished stone, its surface sleek, with a hint of an inner glow. “If I leave this here, she won’t be able to find me. But I won’t be able to blend in when I make the next jump, or get help if something goes wrong. And you won’t be able to understand anyone, especially if we land in your future again, or anywhere another language is spoken.”
“And we’d be stuck in these clothes?” Mart asked, plucking at his shirt, which billowed away from him in a disconcerting way. “It’s coming with us.”
Vanda shook her head. “There’s another option. I have another one, an older model. It doesn’t have all of the same capabilities, but it has enough to get by. And it does have one limitation the new one doesn’t have, which we might be able to use to our advantage. I just need to switch this one for it and trick my other self into taking this one when she leaves in a few minutes. That way, Suletu will follow her instead.”
“How?” Brian asked.
She looked around at them and pointed at Trixie. “Beatrix will divert her attention.”
Mart hooted with laughter at the look on his sister’s face.
“I think I’d better do the introductions all over again,” Honey decided, then proceeded to do so.
“Sorry, Trixie.” The Traveller gave her a sympathetic smile. “I should have remembered that we met in a more formal age.”
The blonde shrugged. “It’s okay. Now, what do you want me to do?”
Vanda turned back to the map, which began emitting a low beeping noise. A group of six yellow dots marched along the hallway outside in formation. The beeps remained soft, but quickened as they neared.
“We wait for those to go past,” she directed. “Then you’ll follow them to my door, but keep your distance. They won’t come back this way if they don’t see you, or hear anything strange. My other self will answer the door and you’ll have to engage her in conversation for a minute or two. I’ll do the rest.”
“But won’t she see you?” Trixie asked.
“I’ll take care of that. They’re gone. Let’s move. The rest of you stay here, okay?”
“Not like we have much choice,” Mart muttered. “We don’t know how to open the door.”
Trixie followed Vanda into the hallway and the door closed behind them.
“You need to ask for directions to the ellelldee – the lower loading dock,” she explained as they walked. “Ask a lot of questions. I’ll give you a signal when I’m ready. Oh! And don’t try to talk like yourself. You need to just let the words come out.”
Trixie nodded. “I can do that.”
They stopped at another door and Vanda did something to it, which caused a chime. She turned her attention to the device she held, touching its various buttons in rapid succession.
The door opened.
Trixie opened her mouth to speak, but the words she had rehearsed in her head came out in an unintelligible jumble. Here and there, she recognised a word or two, but mostly because she already knew what they should be.
The Vanda who had arrived with her slipped inside the apartment, apparently unseen. The one in front of her replied to the question and Trixie was awed to find that she understood every word, even though the other woman spoke what sounded like another language. Just as she had been asked, she interjected question after question until finally the other Vanda stepped out beside her and gestured that they should leave.
Trixie breathed a silent sigh of relief and said, “Oh! In the snargaster. Getcha. Thanks.”
“Probs.” The other woman closed the door, a slight frown visible on her face at the very last moment.
“I think I annoyed her,” Trixie noted in a low voice as they hurried back to the others.
The Vanda beside her snorted. “Yeah. I remembered you as soon as we got here and I saw you in that suit.”
Trixie did a clumsy pirouette through the now-open door of the conference room. “You don’t like it? I thought, if it came in white, I might pass for Princess Leia.”
“With that hair?” Mart quipped.
“Yeah, the hair is a bit of a problem,” she answered, “but I’m willing to overlook it if I get to have a blaster.”
“They’d sure come in handy sometimes, but no,” Vanda replied. She turned to the map. “Now, I don’t think we’ll have long to wait. Look: there I go.”
They watched the blue dot move along the hallway, then speed up. As it travelled away from the building, the red dot – which had come quite close now – diverted to follow it. The yellow dots were now two levels below them.
The map disappeared and the table and chairs whisked away, tipping them all onto their feet as they did so.
Dan, Mart and Honey all blurted, “Gruff a tank!”
“What does that mean?” Trixie wondered.
“It doesn’t matter. This is our best chance,” Vanda decided. “Just to be clear, we’re travelling the same way we did last time. And, yes, we’re going to fly through a window. And if anyone screams…”
“No one is going to scream,” Trixie interrupted. “Di is fine now, aren’t you, Di?”
“No. But I won’t scream,” Di answered. “Much.”
“She’s joking,” Trixie assured Vanda.
“I’m not,” Di countered.
Honey reached over and gave her a quick hug. “Well, it’s okay anyway, because we’re all going to be together and we know sort of what to expect this time, which we didn’t last time, and it won’t be such a shock when it happens, so you probably won’t even want to scream, but even if you do, I’m sure that you could maybe find some way to muffle the sound, so that it doesn’t hurt anyone’s ears or anything.”
“Quit talking and hop in,” Vanda directed.
A pod had silently arrived and stood with its door open. They took their seats and were off.
“The thing I don’t understand,” Vanda mused, as they left the building and joined a stream of other pods, “is who placed these things. We’d definitely identified all of Sef’s trouble-making and I’d started fixing it all, but neither of these locations were in my chain. And there’s no one else I’d suspect of doing something like this. It’s not like any of them would want to sabotage our work that way. All our lives are at risk if this goes wrong.”
Something within the pod began to beep.
“What’s that?” Honey asked.
“Just a warning signal,” the Traveller answered dismissively. “It just means there are some of our enemies nearby. Don’t worry about it.”
The beeping continued, just as it had in the conference room, picking up speed as it went along.
Trixie peered out the window. “Are they following us? Is that what that is?”
Vanda shrugged. “Probably not. It’s probably just a coincidence. There’s lots of traffic out there. I’d be more suspicious if we didn’t get any warnings.”
They moved over to another stream and the beeping faded away for a moment, then began again. It remained fast, but steady, until they zoomed off to another building. The window opened to admit them and the pod drew to a stop.
“Let’s go,” Vanda urged, as the door opened. “We need to find the item as quickly as we can.”
“What are we looking for?” Brian asked.
She shrugged. “No clue. But it’s here somewhere; I can feel it.”
The pod, which had been moving away from them, made an abrupt stop and changed direction. From around a nearby corner came the sound of marching feet.
“Step aside,” Vanda ordered.
The Bob-Whites crowded into an alcove, just as half a dozen uniformed soldiers of some kind appeared, in two rows of three that took up the whole width of the corridor. None of them seemed to take the slightest notice of their surroundings. One trod heavily on an object on the floor, breaking it with a sharp cracking noise, but not hesitating in the slightest. In another moment, they passed by and disappeared from sight.
“What were they?” Trixie demanded, in a low voice. “And what are they doing?”
Vanda glanced after them, hesitating. “It’s a patrol of the Imperial Forces. They’re the ones trying to get rid of the Travellers. And that’s pretty much all I’m telling you about them,” she added, as Trixie opened her mouth to ask another question. “Let’s just say that we don’t want to mess with them if we want to get out of here alive. Now, come on. We don’t have much time. If I remember correctly, Suletu caught up with me about now – and that means she’ll be on her way soon.”
She led the way through the building, stopping now and then to try to sense the object. At last, she ushered them into a small room filled with rows of shelves.
“This is an archive,” she explained. “All these things are from the past.”
“Sort of like a museum?” Di asked.
“Close, but not for quite the same purpose.”
“How are we going to find the item?” Brian asked. “Any of these things could be it, couldn’t they?”
She shook her head. “All of these things are old. The thing we’re looking for hasn’t lasted since it was made; it was brought here from the time it was made, or not long after.”
Di’s eyes widened in comprehension. “So, we’re looking for a new old thing?”
Vanda nodded. “Spread out, but don’t touch anything – all the things that are supposed to be here are alarmed. If you think you’ve found it, tell me and I’ll come and check.”
Just as they began to look, a low groaning sound came from the far corner of the room.
“What was that?” Di wondered. “Is someone else here?”
Trixie, who was closest, stepped into the last aisle and gasped. Without a word, she leaned down to look more closely.
“What is it?” Di demanded, but Trixie didn’t turn to her.
“He’s dead, Jim!”
“Let me see.” Vanda pushed past as Jim folded Trixie into his arms. “No, he’s not dead; he’s just in stasis. And it would just have to be him. This really complicates things.”
“Who is it?” Trixie asked, pulling away from Jim. “You know him?”
“It’s Sef Rider, of all people.” She began to pace back and forth. “What to do? I can’t take him with us – without the proper support, he’ll die – but can I leave him here?”
A loud bang sounded, just outside the closed door.
“Gruff a tank!” Di jolted in surprise. “What was that?”
“I’ve jammed the door, but they’ll be inside in a minute. No time to think. He has to stay and we have to go.”
“Who will get in?” Trixie peered at the door, but Vanda pulled her back.
“No time! Gather around. Diana, pry whatever that is out of his hand and set it going.”
“Me?!”
“You did the last two; you have to do the next one.”
Di took a deep breath, squeezed her eyes shut for a moment and reached down. She worked the stiff fingers loose until a black marble dropped onto the still chest. She grabbed it before it rolled to the floor, but looked up, bewildered.
“Now what do I do?”
Vanda stared around wildly. “There must be another piece – like the track for the robot; remember? It must be close by.”
Another blast came from outside and the shelves shook.
“Here!” Trixie cried, grabbing a board with red, yellow and blue plastic tracks mounted on it. “Run it on this.”
Di dropped the marble onto the track as everyone grabbed on. The now-familiar glow filled the air. At the same time, Vanda leaned down and did something to the recumbent figure on the floor, who disappeared with a flash. The marble wound around the track, going uphill to complete the infinity sign, just as the door gave way.
“Shoot to kill!” a voice ordered, but the world turned black and they were gone.