Silver Chapter 7

CHAPTER 7

Silver looked up. Somebody was well paranoid. Granted, she hadn’t expected the sign to say 'Top secret project going on here', but a jam factory, for crying out loud? Jam factories, in her admittedly limited experience of them, did not have military jeeps bumping in and out of them at the dead of night. Preserved strawberry pieces did not require the frankly impressive array of satellite dishes on the roof, nor did they require guarding with deadly force, which was exactly what the guard with the gun at her chin was proposing. None of the little tricks Silver had spent so long perfecting would be much good at this angle.

"Y’know," she said aloud, "in the movies and what have you, the hero looks down the barrel of a gun and pauses just long enough to beat up whoever’s holding it, but in real life it’s a surprisingly big deal, scary enough to leave said hero just gabbling uselessly-"

"Shut up." The guard knew his job, for which Silver was grateful, at least he wasn’t jittery and armed. "Who are you?"

"Like I’m going to tell some guard!"

"Okay. Turn out your pockets. And the pouch at your belt."

Silver had to stop herself grinning. There wasn’t much in her pockets, just a packet of tissues and some chewing gum, but in the pouch... the guard went through it.

"Loose change, computer microchips, ball of string, needle and thread, black, packets of Polos, wallet-" He snatched up the wallet. There was about fifteen pounds in there, along with a video hire card from a chain of village shops, a photo of a strange-looking man holding a baby, a selection of plasters, and a driving license, in the name of Francesca Holmes.

"Okay, Miss Holmes, you’re coming with me."

Silver put up a token resistance, but really she was feeling far too pleased with herself. Not only had the little fool missed the cosh and Graham’s keycard, but also the library card of a Davina Bannerman, the credit card of Patricia Argent, the passport of Susan Winters...

Silver had a lot of skills.

It was, she thought ten minutes later, a project down on its luck. It was, after all, officially closed down. A few idealists, scientists and rather dubious Ufologists kept it going, sometimes out of their own pocket. Silver had been dumped into a deserted office, along with a BLT sandwich. She didn’t credit her captors with the ruthlessness and presence of mind needed to spike it, so she took a few cautious bites. Of course, she considered, as far as they were concerned, she was just some silly cow who wandered where she shouldn't have. That’s the problem with getting your own prophecy. It’s tempting to think significant parts of the universe revolved around you. The Bell Cycle, thought Silver gloomily. I’m going to ring a bell that was destroyed eons ago, set the entire smegging dimension free and shatter the Unity. Possibly. It wasn’t her fault. The first time she was taken to Layers, the knights had been so shocked at her name they’d stopped drinking for thirty whole seconds, just staring. Let’s face it, thought Silver, I’m hardly the all-action hero, am I? Eventually, another uniform arrived. Silver decided she could be quite laid back about this. She’d carefully hidden her cosh in one corner of the room, just in case she needed to leave in a hurry, but she wasn’t too worried. After all, she’d gotten far further inside the project then she thought she would.

"Come with me." Another one who knew not to waste time chatting. Silver lifted herself out of the chair and followed silently. She could hear the voice half way down the corridor. "Couldn’t you have just directed her back to the road? Have you no bloody sens- ah, Ms Holmes. Terribly sorry about all this, I’m Charles Weaver. I’m afraid my men got a little too enthused." He leaned forward confidentially. "They know they’re guarding rubbish, I imagine it’s quite frustrating for them."

"And for you. Stargazer won’t work if it’s not in orbit."

Weaver blinked. "Who are you?"

"Your lucky day."

Tom leant back. Jake had trouble reading his expression, but shell-shocked seemed to be about right. He hoped he didn’t look like that when he’d discussed it with Silver.

"It’ll be Du Cray all over again." Will hadn’t raised his voice.

"So the Unity did destroy it!"

"What? Jake, the Unity didn’t destroy it, they wouldn’t have dared. It was probably the Sisters."

"Sisters?"

Stella muttered what sounded like ‘newbie’.

Tom sighed. "The Sisterhood of time. Possessed of ancient arcane abilities, they worship their goddess-leader, the Mother, or Mater. Completely cold and clinical, they are incapable of compassion or mercy. Luckily, they spend so much time fighting the Unity they’re not a serious threat. They have temporal abilities, hence their name, but whether it’s science or magic is not something anyone’s been able to decide."

"Carke’s law says that any sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic."

"Exactly." Tom sighed. "Enough chatting. We’d better take you back to our place, we can discuss it better there."

Will opened a Portal. The sticks he used were engraved differently, and slightly longer, and the result was a turquoise colour.

"Coming?"

Weaver looked as though Silver had dropped from heaven. He hadn’t felt like this, he said, since he’d leant about the ‘Wow’ signal. Silver didn’t have the heart to tell him the Cáirneach had a warped sense of humour.

"This is so exciting."

"Your idea of exciting is other-dimensional beings destroying your world?"

"Well, no, but you know what I mean. They’re out there."

"Yes they are. And I know how to keep ‘em there, as well. The Stargazer projector can be linked into the repulsion net and used to blast any unwelcome visitors. That should take care of the physical attacks, and if turned inwards, it should interfere with the opening of some Portals. Earth will be alone again."

"Why should we want this? We want to announce our presence to the entire universe, remember?"

Silver sat down, composing her thoughts. "You do? What, ‘Co-ee, over here, completely unprepared mineral-rich planet for the taking’? Does this strike you as sensible? Anyway, sacrifices must be made."

Weaver sat opposite her. "Interesting that. All through history, it’s always the people who say that who don’t actually end up making those sacrifices-"

"I have a Portal. If I shield Earth while I’m here I’m going to be trapped in one little world that I don’t really understand any more. If I’m elsewhere, I’ll never see my home planet again. So this person does, okay?"

"Okay. What do you want us to do?"

"Three things. Firstly, get the projector into orbit, secondly, give me the home address of Steve Watson."

"And third?"

"Is there no decent tea in this place?"