“Any idea where we are?” Boswell asked Lovelace in a low purr.
The smell of sunflowers was distracting, but she refused to let it get the better of her. “Not a space station. Not a time period I recognise.”
“Too far back?”
“Too far forward,” she guessed.
“It’s the thirtieth century,” snorted Nero from his self-imposed exiled in the corner. “You can tell by the self-congratulatory boredom that seeps from the walls.”
“How do you know?” Lovelace retorted. “How did this happen? We’re not supposed to travel forward.” Not a rule, but she’d assumed it was an impossibility.
Nero let out a short scream. “Why can’t you let me brood in peace? I am, as it happens, extremely familiar with this century. Don’t waste your time disbelieving me.”
“We want answers,” Boswell insisted. “What are you going to do otherwise, nap?”
“Chance would be a fine thing.” Nero whirled back to face them, losing some tufts of fur along the way. His eyes blazed at them both — not quite as blue as they used to be. “I’m from here, you fools. Twenty years of freedom, over in an instant. Congratulations, you’re stuck in the worst time period that ever existed. And I don’t think I can escape it again.”
“Cressida,” breathed Ruthven, relieved to see her. At least he wasn’t alone in this rose-coloured cell.
She had lost her Viking apron and operatic two-horned helmet, but it was clearly Cressida Church. She wore a soft jumpsuit in the same rich blue colour as those strange bald ladies in robes, and her hair was longer than he remembered. Longer than her statue, anyway.
Ruthven discreetly checked himself and realised he was also wearing the blue jumpsuit. Best not to worry too much about what had happened to his trousers, and who exactly had changed his clothes while he was unconscious.
“Have we met?” Cressida asked. “It’s not always easy to be sure, as a time traveller. Memories have a nasty habit of disappearing.”
“You and I travelled together recently,” said Ruthven, confused. “We sort of share a cat.”
Her eyes lit up. “You know Boz?”
“Boswell was my Professor at Chronos College. You wouldn’t remember me from there, though. I was a first year when you, uh. Have you been here this whole time?”
“Heh. A professor, you say? Good old Boz.” Cressida warmed up to him slightly, it seemed. “Sounds like you might have met one of my copies. Any version of me you met without a cat wasn’t actually me. Hope I’m not breaking your heart.”
Ruthven blinked slowly. “It wasn’t you in Event Space? Viking Britain, the time aisles? Cleopatra?”
“Never spent any time in Event Space,” said Cressida. “I heard about it from some Anachronauts, back when they were trying to recruit me. That bloody moggy Abydos tried to use the Violet Sunflower to force my hand, and Scattered me instead.”
“You lost memory?” Ruthven had heard about some pretty nasty Scattering effects.
Cressida laughed bitterly. “Scattered can mean different things. Sometimes you lose memories. Sometimes different versions of yourself are literally scattered through history. I’m not the only one it happened to. Apparently there are like, twelve Fleur Shropshires out there causing havoc.”
Even for a devoted fan of Fleur Shropshire, that seemed like too many.
“I ended up in 1964 with a doppelgänger who had no memories at all!” Cressida went on. “Had to pretend we were twins and she’d been in some kind of road accident.”
“You’re the one who set up the cry for help in the pilot episode of Cramberleigh!”
Cressida grinned. “Figured that out, did you? The hard part was getting my scatty ‘twin’ Bunty the job as production assistant. That job is like, 90% tea and messages and holding things for people. She got really into it. Hope she’s doing okay. I wasn’t there long — the Grimalkins pulled me out of the Sixties before I got to see how it all played out.”
“We came to rescue you,” Ruthven assured her. “At least, we tried. It all got a bit messy.”
“That’s time travel for you,” said Cressida. “Look at me. I was the best, and I’ve been stuck in here for goodness knows how long. Days. Weeks? A whole bunch of futuristic cats reckon I have useful information for them about some bloody pineapple.”
“Um,” said Ruthven. He had so many questions. Futuristic cats? How far in the future? What the hell was going on?
“Hey,” said Cressida softly. “Do you have a postcard? I still had mine when they stuck me in here. I wrote like, a hundred messages to Boswell. It shorted out in the end — and disappeared! Who knows when it ended up.”
Ruthven dug through his satchel. He found the postcard and stylus easily enough, but the stylus didn’t seem to work. Words did not appear on the soft surface when he tried to write.
“I think mine’s broken,” he said.
“Bugger,” said Cressida cheerfully. “Keep waiting, I guess. See how many more expert witnesses they’re pulling together for this shindig.”
“Shindig,” Ruthven repeated, his attention still on the postcard. For a moment it looked like someone was writing a message to him. Three dots appeared, and vanished. Appeared again, vanished.
“You know, the trial,” said Cressida. “Didn’t they tell you anything about where we are, and why we’re here?”
Ruthven shook his head. “Who’s on trial?”
“Us, I guess. Time travellers in general.” Cressida shrugged, looking sheepish. “You know how Chronos College always said there are no rules for time travel? Turns out, there were a whole bunch of rules. And we’ve broken like, all of them.”
Boswell could not recall when he first met Nero. The other cat was always there, from the beginning. He had an air about him, as if he had been at the college longer and knew more of its secrets than anyone else.
Boswell had always assumed that was just Nero being Nero. Pompous, egotistical, grandiose.
