Free Overtime by Tom Holt Page B

Pursuivant replied. ‘Look, boss, in the contract it plainly states that all damage will be made good, and—’
    â€˜Shut up,’ said Mountjoy. ‘You fell over. Go on.’
    â€˜But boss—’
    â€˜Look,’ the chaplain snapped, ‘I should be at an important meeting. Get on with it.’
    In actual fact, Mountjoy was at the meeting - in fact, he’d been three minutes early - but there was no need to mention that. He flickered irritably.
    â€˜I fell over,’ Pursuivant said. ‘Then there was a bang and the bloke’s hat came off.’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜His hat,’ Pursuivant explained. ‘He was wearing a hat and it came off. Don’t ask me why.’
    â€˜I see,’ Mountjoy said. ‘And what happened next?’
    â€˜I died.’
    â€˜I see,’ Mountjoy said. ‘And that was all you saw?’
    â€˜Well,’ said Pursuivant, ‘my whole life flashed in front of me, but I don’t suppose you want to hear about that.’
    â€˜Not particularly, no. What was this other man like?’
    Pursuivant furrowed his brows, thinking hard. ‘Odd bloke,’ he said. ‘About my height, dark hair, wearing a sort of sheepskin coat, no sword. If you ask me, he didn’t seem to have much idea of what was happening.’
    â€˜That,’ said Mountjoy unkindly, ‘would have made two of you.’ He put away his notebook and turned to the doctor. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘how long before this one’s up and about again?’
    â€˜Let’s see,’ said the doctor. ‘Neck partially severed, multiple wounds to lungs, stomach and shoulders, compound fracture of the left leg. I’ll need to keep him in for observation, too. Say about twenty minutes.’
    â€˜Oh for pity’s sake,’ snapped Mountjoy petulantly. ‘Doctor, you are aware of the staffing shortages?’
    â€˜Not my problem,’ the doctor replied. ‘All right, nurse, close him up.’
    The staff nurse put down her visor and lit up the welding torch.
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    â€˜Blondel,’ said Guy, ‘can I ask you something?’
    The tunnel was damp and smelly. The ceiling was low and the light from the torches in the wall-sconces wasn’t quite bright enough. On a number of occasions, Guy had trodden in something. He was glad that he didn’t know what it had been.
    â€˜Fire away.’
    â€˜How do you do that?’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜Go through doors,’ Guy said, ‘that lead to ... well, this.’
    Blondel laughed. ‘This is how we travel through time,’ he said. ‘My agents taught me.’
    â€˜I see.’ Guy walked along in silence for a while. He was getting a crick in the neck from keeping his head ducked. ‘Er, how does it work?’ he asked.
    â€˜On the principle of Bureauspace,’ Blondel replied. ‘Are you all right with the saddlebags or shall I carry them for a bit?’
    â€˜No, no, that’s fine,’ Guy said. ‘What’s Bureauspace?’
    Blondel stopped under a torch and looked at a little book. He was actually rather shorter than he looked, Guy noticed, and didn’t have to lower his head to avoid the ceiling. ‘This way,’ he said at last. ‘I thought we’d taken a wrong turning back there, but it’s all right. Now then, the proper name for it is the Bureaucratic Spatio-Temporal Effect, but we call it Bureauspace for short. It’s really very simple, once you grasp the fundamental concept.’
    â€˜Oh good,’ said Guy. He had the awful feeling that this was going to be one of those questions you regret asking.
    â€˜It’s like this,’ Blondel said. ‘Oh, left here, by the way. Mind your head.’
    â€˜Ouch.’
    â€˜At the heart of all bureaucratic organisations,’ Blondel said, ‘there’s a huge lesion in the fabric of space and time. It’s like a sort of