*
I was jostled to a small electric vehicle and made to climb aboard. It was like a golf cart, but without a canopy. They wedged me between two guards. A technician did something to my wrist band and I briefly felt the frightening tingle shoot up my arm. We set off and sped along the cavern’s main gangway, passing laboratories, test bays, and workshops. There were dozens of white coated technologists working in every section.
We sped into a brightly lit corridor. Doors opened automatically at our approach and closed behind us. Smaller doors, each with entry control lights above them and fingerprint or voice recognition security switches, lined the corridor. One set of double doors we passed was partially open and I glimpsed a large canteen crowded with people. We turned left into a darker, cooler corridor. The walls were at first, simply the stone tunnels that remained after the mining process. They were patched here and there with concrete blocks.
At a metal door the vehicle stopped. One of my guards prodded me to move. The other unlocked the door. I was pushed though into a cell and its door locked behind me.
It was pitch black inside. I felt walls of solid rock, and moved around them trying to get some notion of where I was. I found a metal framed bed with a wire base but no mattress. There was a blanket but no pillow. I kicked a bucket, and smelled disinfectant. The floor was concrete. Air was coming in from above. I found a small wire faced air vent and next to it an electric lamp bulb in a wire cage.
After what seemed an age the door was unlocked and pushed wide open. I blinked in the light. In the corridor, two guards flanked Sindra who stood there glaring like an Incan statue. She had changed from the powder blue ensemble she had worn earlier and was now a vision in grey and midnight blue silk. Her eye patch twinkled with bead work of facetted jet. She carried a silver bodied torch.
‘Do you recognise this?’
‘Of course, it’s a torch.’
‘Don’t be smart. Do you know whose it is?’
I realised it was the torch that one of the two cave men had been holding, but it suddenly dawned on me that it could be Jack’s torch. She held it out to me and I took it gently from her. I could not be a hundred percent certain, but it could be the one I had seen in Jack’s back-pack. If it was his, it probably meant they could pin point where he was and we could get him back to this time. But then, I wondered, wouldn't he be safer where he was? Would it be better if I denied knowing anything about the torch? If I did maybe I would get the chance to time leap back for him later, when it was safe and Sindra was in jail. But when would that be? What if it never happened? Jack would have to stay where he was forever.
I thought about it and eventually decided it would be tantamount to murder to admit that I thought it was Jack’s. I was sure she wanted him dead. She would not bring him back and allow him to be free to tell the world about time travel. Jack would be killed as soon as he arrived back in this age. Sindra would seal all leaks and close down even the remotest chance that her big secret would escape. That was why I knew that sooner or later, when my own usefulness was at an end, she would kill me too.
‘I’ve never seen it before,’ I lied, handing it back to her.
She turned to her sergeant of the guard. ‘That’s good enough for me. She’s obviously lying. Get a precise temporal fix on this. That is where the boy will be found. I want him eliminated.’
‘Why? What harm can he do you?’ I blurted.
‘He can speak out, even from there. Do you think I don’t know about the binoculars he buried? What if he has other little messages planted for the press to find, lots of little publicity bombs ready to explode in the media. Your friend could do us a great deal of damage, even from where he is.’
‘See to it captain. And don’t fail me this time.’
The vicar man snapped to attention. ‘Yes ma’am - immediately.’
‘Do it yourself. Don’t trust anyone else. You and your men have already cost me a Time Wand. Fail me again and you'll be taking a long trip yourself.’
‘Yes ma’am.’ The merest flash of rebellion burned in his eyes as he started to leave. She stopped him with her hand on his sleeve.
‘Send your two best men,’ she ordered. ‘Configure their Time Wands on preset. I don’t want them leaving us for some other time if they fail. I want to be able to pull them back when we want to. In future nobody time leaps except on a preset. That’s my new rule. Make sure it is implemented at once.’
She turned to me and sighed as if relinquishing a heavy weight. ‘You, my little sweetie, will have to wait to take your trip. You’ll go tomorrow. Now let’s see, where are we sending you? Aah yes, I remember, you’re going skiing aren’t you?'
……….