Chapter 10

"Any change?"

The question fell like lead under Cutter's heavy tone. There was no change. He could see that. He was only asking out of the faint hope that there might be some minuscule wavering that his own eyes could not detect. He sighed as Connor shook his head in mute reply.

"What about the imploder?"

Again, the silent shrug and shaken head. Connor's silence was starting to unsettle Cutter. He'd never seen his pupil so apathetic. If there was one thing that could be said for Connor, it was that he wore his heart on his sleeve. Whatever was going on in his head, showed. Cutter had seen him happy, sad, madly enthusiastic, furiously angry and heart-wrenchingly grief-stricken. The entire spectrum of emotions had, at some point, played across his features. Now it was almost as if the bottom had dropped out of his world. The closest he could recall was the ice-cold quiet when Abby had disappeared, but that was the calm after the storm and even that had held a simmering fire of rage and pain. Now, there was just nothing.

"Can you build another one?"

A tired nod. Cutter sat down beside Connor.

"It wasn't your fault, you know."

Connor's eyes turned to look at Cutter as if he were raindrops sliding down a window pane: utterly inconsequential.

"Lester ordered you to try it that way first."

The eyebrows rose and fell as Connor looked away.

"You said yourself it probably wouldn't work," Cutter tried to accentuate the positive. "You were right. You said it might enlarge the anomaly. You were right there too. You said it might make it permanent: so far it's holding."

Cutter watched Connor's eyes close slowly as he listed the points. Then he saw Connor draw in a breath and he fell silent.

"I didn't," said Connor slowly, "say it might swallow up three million pounds worth of kit into oblivion. I think Lester might remember that more than the others."

Cutter's eyebrows rose. There was silence while his mind scanned and re-scanned Connor's words, hoping that he had misheard.

"How much?" Cutter gasped.

XXXX

Helen scanned the house from the shelter of the bushes. They really were so utterly incompetent. A valley full of soldiers and she still managed to walk right past them without them noticing. No wonder the human race was in such a mess in the future. The only problem now would be tearing her beloved husband away from his insignificant flunkies. There was one way, of course: a sign that she knew Nick only associated with her, and nobody else, except perhaps Stephen, would ever have known about.

Waiting motionlessly for an opportune moment, Helen planned out her route. Across the small gap between the bushes and the door, through the tiny hallway and up the stairs. After that, it was just a matter of finding his room and her way out again. The guards disappeared on their circuit of the house. Nick was too busy sitting at a computer just outside the half-demolished living room trying to cheer up his resident genius. Helen put her plan into action.

In under a minute, she was at the top of the stairs. Nobody had heard anything, or seen anything. Everybody went about their business without the slightest idea she was there. She slipped silently into each of the upper rooms in turn until she found the one she was looking for. She removed a pen and paper from one of the pockets at her belt and scribbled a few words on it.

There was a water glass by the bed. It proved a useful paperweight. She left as silently as she had arrived and nobody knew she was there.

XXXX

"Look, you're going to have to make sure he understands," Cutter told Becker forcefully. "He ordered it done that way. If Connor couldn't predict that reaction, then no-one could have. It's not his fault."

"I still don't see why it has to be me, Professor," Becker replied, sighing. "You're the team leader."

"Aye, like Lester would listen to anything I said in this case!"

"All the same..."

"Look, you two obviously go back a long way. I've seen your wee chats that you have: they're not formal briefings. You know him. He'll listen to you, even if it is just long enough for him to see that it's his own stupid fault."

"Sir James may be many things, Professor," Becker's tone became a warning, "but he's not stupid."

"You see," Cutter grinned triumphantly, walking backwards before Becker could reply. "You do know him better than me!"

XXXX

"Maybe we could make a, well, mini version," Nigel suggested.

"What do you mean, Nigel," Connor sighed. "The one we had would only just fit round it now."

"Well, without the hoops and all that. Just the magnets."

Connor and Peta turned and looked at each other with identical expressions of utter confusion. They looked at the spindly young man sat between them.

"What?" Peta asked.

"We get, or we make, lots of little electromagnets and fix them around the anomaly, like spotlights, and we use them instead."

Peta looked back over at Connor. He looked thoughtful.

"It might work," he admitted. "We'd need lots of supports though."

"I'll see what I can find," she said, hurrying off.

XXXX

Cutter made a hasty escape and sought refuge up the stairs. His room was at the near end of the staircase, right above what had turned out to be the kitchen. The rooms along the middle of the landing had been deemed unsafe as they hung above the poorly supported living room of the house.

He closed the door behind him and leaned back against it, letting a deep sigh escape him. He hadn't slept well last night, despite the lack of Connor's snores. Ironically, by the sound of it, Connor hadn't had much opportunity to disturb anyone's sleep last night. He'd been up all night trying to work out where his three million pound new toy had gone.

Three million pounds!

Cutter's head spun. Why in the world did it have to be that expensive. You could buy his house three times for that and still have some considerable small change left over! Even at today's prices!

He walked over to the old wooden bed and flung himself down on it, wincing when he heard a crack and hoping it was himself, not the bed. It was silly and irrational, but with a three million pound deficit hanging over them the last thing he wanted was to add the cost of a new bed. As if that would make much difference! Lester would probably just tell him to put the mattress on the floor and live with it!

He rubbed a hand across his eyes and laughed at his own idiocy. A yawn took over his features. He pushed himself up on one arm and reached for his glass of water. As he took a sip, a piece of white paper floated to the ground, catching his eye. He leaned over to pick it up and squinted at the paper in the poor light.

Suddenly he sat up, swung his legs off the bed and onto the ground, and stared at the piece of paper as if it had been an accusation of murder.

In front of him there were four words scrawled in three lines:

Stone bridge.

Dusk.

Alone.

But what really made him stare was not the cryptic taciturnity of the words, it was the familiar doodle below them. A quick, rough drawing of an animal he associated with just one person. It was a sketch of an ammonite.

XXXX

Jenny Lewis sat at her laptop, not working.

She was supposed to be typing up a press release to cover the ARC's extended stay in the gully, but she couldn't concentrate. If she stared at the page, the words blurred before her. If she looked out of the window, her mind drifted back to the Triassic. If she closed her eyes, she remembered Nick.

She'd spent half the afternoon trying to stop grinning like a schoolgirl.