Part Four

This section contains an accent. In many instances, I’ve provided an interpretation, which will appear when your mouse is over that paragraph.

“Ugh! That was far too close!” Vanda moaned, as she rolled over from the place she had fallen and started to dust herself down. “Where are we now?”

“Oh, this is not good,” Honey answered, staring over her shoulder.

Diana groaned. “What is that turrible smull? And why is there smoke everyweer?”

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Dan added, with the slightest hint of a grin and forcing his own accent onto the words.

Mart thumped his arm. “Shut up, Mengen. Thet usn’t funny.”

“Oh, I thought it was rather umusing,” Brian countered. “All things consudered.”

“Hey! You’d better git out of there, or you’ll git in trouble!” a young voice called to them.

Vanda turned and stared at the small boy, dressed all in black, with a piece of fabric across his shoulders as a cape and a toy Darth Vader mask pushed up on his head. He waved his plastic lightsaber at them in what he probably imagined to be a menacing manner.

Between them and the boy stood a sturdy fence with signs on it that faced in the opposite direction. Columns of steam rose here and there and at the edge of hearing, something made a sound like a boiling pot. Beyond the fence lay parkland, dotted with trees and shrubs. Wherever they were, it was clear that they should really be on the other side of the fence.

“We’re lost,” she told the boy.

“You’ll git boiled up if you don’t git out of there,” he answered. “And you’ll git in trouble.”

“Okay, everyone carefully go over to the fence and climb over,” Vanda directed. “Hold on. Are we missing someone?”

“Truxie and Jum,” Honey answered, almost at once. “Oh, noo! Didn’t they come wuth us when we… well, whutiver it wus that we dud to git here?”

Vanda glanced at the device in her hand and her eyes widened.

“What’s thet?” asked the boy. “Give us a squizz.”

“Someone get rid of him!” Vanda whispered, without the accent. “Quickly!”

Diana stepped forward. She climbed over the fence and smiled at the boy.

“That’s a great costume you have there,” she told him, while walking towards a nearby clump of bushes. “Do you like Star Wars?”

“I’m Darth Veder! And I’m gunna git you!”

She play-acted fear. “Oh, noo. I’m really scared.”

He ran ahead of her, still brandishing his plastic weapon. In a minute or so, they disappeared from view.

“Has he gone?” Trixie’s voice called, from somewhere out of sight.

“Truxie! Weer are you?” Honey called.

“Yus, he’s gone,” Brian added.

“Good! Now, will you all stop calling me ‘Truxie’? Where-iver we are, I don’t want to luv heer.”

“I’ll sittle for luving heer, as opposed to dying heer,” Jim put in.

Dan and Mart, meanwhile, had hunted around among the bushes until they found the source of the voices. Only a short distance from where the group stood, a large hole opened up. At the bottom, a pool of mud boiled lazily. The missing pair clung to the trunk of a small and raggedy shrub, partway down the slope. Trixie’s feet hung a short distance from the boiling mud, but the loose surface gave her no way to move higher.

“Now, hulp us out of here!” Jim begged.

“Hold my ligs,” Dan asked Brian and Mart. “I’m going down.”

He lay flat on his front and wriggled into position. The Belden brothers took position, while Honey hovered fretfully to one side. Vanda kept a look-out for other observers.

“Let me go lower. I can’t reach.”

“If we let you much lower, you’ll go in, too,” Brian argued.

“Do you want them out or not?” Dan snapped.

“Just a little more,” Jim urged.

Dan grunted. “Ready?”

“More than ready,” Trixie answered. “Pull us up!”

Mart and Brian heaved and the three below inched upwards.

“Let me help somehow,” Honey asked.

She grabbed hold of Dan’s leg and leant her weight to the effort.

“Not too far in the other direction,” Vanda warned. “There’s another vent behind you!”

All three glance backwards, seeing the dark hole belching puffs of steam.

“Easy now.” Brian stepped a little towards the fence. “Pull again.”

Dan slid back a short distance and Jim’s hand came into view. On the next pull, his head appeared. In moments, Jim was on his feet and pulling Trixie up behind him.

“Now that’s what I call too close,” she commented. “Where are we?”

“Rotorua, New Zealand,” Vanda answered. “But I can’t put my finger on exactly when. It could be almost any time from the 1980s onwards, but probably before about 2030.”

She ushered them over the fence and they stood there, dusting themselves off. Vanda began to pace back and forth.

“There’s something wrong, isn’t there?” Trixie asked her.

The Traveller laughed, without humour. “You could say that. Someone is obviously trying to kill me. And I think I’m beginning to see what this is all about.”

“What do we do now?” Brian asked. “Do you need someone to go and find Di?”

She nodded, but said nothing. Brian set off to do just that.

“We need somewhere to hide for a little while,” Vanda decided, a short time later. “I need to think this through, but if we stay here, she’s sure to find us.”

“Weer can we go?” Mart asked. “And how can we git theer?”

“It has to be somewhere we can walk.” She looked up. “Great. Here they are. I’ve decided; let’s move.”

“What’s heppening?” Di asked, as she trailed along after the group.

Trixie shrugged. “We need to hide. I don’t know weer.”

They emerged from the park onto the side of a busy road.

Vanda sighed. “Okay. We must be somewhere in the 80s. I thought as much.”

She led them through the streets, past shops and houses and over a low hill. The lake came into view, glinting in the sunshine.

“You’ve been here before, heven’t you?” Trixie asked, once they reached a lakeside park and could all walk together in a group.

Vanda nodded. “A few months back. But I don’t think this is exactly the time I came to.”

Trixie frowned. “Something went wrong here.”

Again, the Traveller nodded. “I was being pursued. I’d arrived in my own time with… some cargo, I guess you could say. And I was in that exact archive we just left, when some Imperial Troops started beating down the door.”

“Exactly like what just happened to us?” Honey asked.

“Pretty much. So, I made a jump out of there and I landed here – though not in the middle of a geothermal hot spot. I hid the cargo and jumped back. But when someone came here to retrieve the cargo, it wasn’t where I left it.”

“Where did you hide it?” Trixie asked.

“Not all that far from here.”

“Let’s go and look,” Trixie urged.

“But I don’t think it’s the right time,” Vanda argued. “What good will it do?”

“At least we should check and make sure.” Honey looked around to see if the others agreed. “And it can’t hurt, can it?”

Vanda sighed. “I guess not.”

They roughly followed the edge of the lake, until they reached some gardens.

“I think our next Bob-White trip should be to New Zealand,” Honey mused, as they strolled across the lawn. “This is quite lovely.”

“What’s that building over there?” Brian asked, as a huge half-timbered edifice came into view, its red tiled roof littered with little towers.

Vanda frowned. “I think it’s a museum. It’s where we’re going, actually, but not inside.”

“You hid something there?” asked Trixie. “In the most conspicuous place around?”

“Sometimes, the best hiding places are in plain sight. And it’s not like I had a lot of choice. I landed among those trees just there and I only had a few minutes to hide it and get out of here.”

She guided them towards the end of the building and around the back.

“It’s here,” she murmured. “It’s right here, right where I left it.”

She walked up to the side of the building, to an unmarked door, sheltered by a little tiled roof. Standing on tiptoe, she reached up onto the curved wood supports that held the roof and took down a small package which had rested there, out of view to anyone standing below.

“We need to move,” she told them. “I don’t want to be caught near here.”

“But where can we go?” Diana asked.

“Anywhere. Just away from here.” Vanda stopped and thought. “No, not just anywhere. We need to be where the tourists are – it will be safer. Come on; I think there’s some kind of geothermal thing over that way.”

They walked along the entire length of the front of the building and followed the road around the curve to a place where a low stone fence guarded a pool of rising steam. Another building partly concealed them from view of anyone standing in their previous location.

“Now, come and stand over here,” Vanda directed, gathering them close to the wall.

On the opposite side, a tourist tried to take a picture, camera pointed down into the void.

“Should we be expecting Boba Fett?” Trixie asked, suddenly.

Vanda only looked confused. “Who?”

“I mean, have you told us about all of the people involved in this?” Trixie clarified. “There’s not any other people who might suddenly turn up, are there?”

The Traveller frowned and slowly shook her head.

“So, who was disadvantaged when you left the package here?” Brian asked, while appearing to watch what was happening below. “You, I assume?”

She nodded. “I got in a lot of trouble – especially when Sef couldn’t find it. Sef! You don’t suppose he’s behind this, do you? Maybe he couldn’t find it on purpose.”

“I thought you said he couldn’t set chains?” Trixie replied. “Does this mean that he might have?”

Vanda shook her head. “No. I’m certain he’s not skilled enough to do it.”

“Which means that the only other person it could be would be Suletu, wouldn’t it?” Trixie asked. “Or is there someone else?”

Again, Vanda shook her head, but more slowly this time. “No. No. Please, not that. I mean, she was angry, but she didn’t blame me. She said it wasn’t my fault.”

“Could she have set the chain for another reason and we kind of got on it accidentally?” Honey asked.

“No. It doesn’t work that way.” Vanda squeezed her eyes shut. “I thought we were lurching around randomly, but these last two jumps can’t be a coincidence. Which means that they were part of my chain all along.”

“We didn’t break the chain?” Brian asked.

“No. This must all be part of the same chain and I was supposed to travel it alone. But taking extra passengers skews the landing places. If I’d been on my own, I probably would have missed the building altogether in my own time, and I probably would have landed in the boiling mud here.” She stared at something in the distance. “I know where to find the next trigger item and I think I know where it’s going to take us. But I still don’t quite know why.”

“Where do you think we’re going next?” Diana wondered, as they began to walk again.

“Twenty-second century Greece,” Vanda replied. “That’s going to be pretty hard on all of you, but if I’m right, I know what I’m doing now. Either this jump or the last one was supposed to finish me off and then the chain will return to the same sequence I was supposed to be on, so that if someone examines it to try to find out what happened to me, they wouldn’t see these extra jumps. I would be lost forever.”

“And dead,” Trixie put in.

The Traveller shrugged. “That, too. But I meant that no one would ever know what had happened to me and to those at home, I would be lost.”

Honey shivered. “Does that happen much?”

“Sometimes. I try not to think about it too much.”

They crossed the gardens, heading back in the direction they had come from initially, until they reached a rose garden in bloom. Vanda wandered between the rows of plants, looking for something. The others followed.

“Here, somewhere,” she muttered. “But what could it be?”

“What’s this thing?” Diana asked, pointing to something half-buried in the soil.

“I think it’s an old-fashioned carpenter’s measuring tape,” Jim suggested. “You turn the handle to wind it in. My father had one like it – but I don’t know who it originally belonged to; it was older than he was.”

“That could be it,” Vanda told them. “Pick it up, Diana, but don’t let the handle turn until we’re all touching it.”

Diana brushed away the soil and tugged on it until it came free. She waited until they had all gathered around and then set the handle moving. A golden glow surrounded them. Instead of the usual circle, it moved in a figure-eight. Everything went black.

Continue to Part Five

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