Making Plans For Nigel

The boy was sitting where Peterson knew he would be, on a park bench overlooking a small boating lake. He was eating a packet of cheese-and-onion flavoured crisps, slowly and methodically; beside him on the bench was a sports bag decorated with an Arsenal team badge. He looked thoroughly miserable. Peterson understood entirely.

Trying to affect a nonchalance that he didn't really feel, he strolled out of the cover given him by a stand of elderly sycamores and onto the footpath. Within ten more strides, he was clear of their shade and into the boy's line of sight. Still unnoticed. So far, so good.

Peterson sat down on the bench, placing himself somewhere close to the centre. He sighed, a little too ostentatiously, perhaps. The boy made no response. Of course he wouldn't, Peterson thought; who am I, that he should talk to me? He placed his hands on his knees, pushed them forward to iron out imagined creases. He would have to say something first, as he'd always known he would, and soon. There was too little time to wait for the moment.

'Afternoon,' he said. Still silence. 'No school today?'

'Course there is,' the boy replied. 'It's September. There's always school in September.'

'But you don't fancy going,' observed Peterson. 'Well, it's a nice day. Still some summer sun in the air. Too nice a day to be cooped up indoors.'

'Suppose so.' The boy was looking at Peterson from the corner of his eye; for a moment their gazes locked, and Peterson had to suppress a start.

The boy fell silent again. After a pause, he asked, 'You from the council, mister?'

'Council? No, I'm... between positions at the moment.'

'Oh, you mean you're on the dole.' The boy considered the implications of his statement for a moment. 'That's all right, then. I thought you were from the council, looking for kids who'd bunked off school.'

'Oh, you mean the truant officer. No, nothing like that.'

'You're an office pogue, though, aren't you? That's what my dad calls them. I can tell by your hands. My dad hates people with soft hands. He says they don't know what hard work means.'

Perceptive, Peterson thought. 'I suppose I am,' he conceded. 'That is, if you call working in a laboratory "being an office pogue".'

The boy's face brightened for a moment. 'Laboratory?' he said. 'Like science and stuff? Cool.'

'You're interested in the sciences?'

'Yeah, it's fun. It's about the only thing at school that is,' said the boy, his face clouding for a moment with a frustrated expression that the man recognised.

'What don't you like about school, then?' Peterson asked, knowing how the boy would answer.

For the first time in their conversation, the boy shifted on the bench to look directly at his questioner. 'Nothing much, except it's three miles from home and it's dropping to bits and it's full of scuzzbuckets.'

'Three miles is a long way to go to school.'

'It wasn't my idea.'

'Of course not.'

'My mum's new bloke talked her into it. "It wouldn't be right to subject Nigel to such an upheaval, not so close to his GCSEs,"' said the boy, in a whining, nasal accent quite different from his own. 'As if he wasn't enough of an upheaval in himself.'

'You don't like this fellow much, I take it.'

Nigel shrugged. 'Robbie's okay, I suppose. I just don't see why we had to move house. It's not like he and Mum are threatening to get married or anything like that.'

Peterson shifted uncomfortably on the bench. 'You like anything particular about science classes?' he asked, trying to sound casual.

Nigel frowned. 'You sound just like Blakey.'

'I do?' No, shouldn't have said that. 'Who's Blakey?'

'Our physics teacher. Little bloke, Welsh, curly hair. Bit suspect, if you ask me. He's like, I could be a dab hand at physics if I put my mind to it. Said I've got good maths. You need that to be really good at physics, he said.'

'That's true. But you're not sure.'

'Chemistry's more interesting. Mixing stuff in test tubes and like that.'

That would be better, thought Peterson. Run with this. 'I understand organic chemistry can be quite fascinating. More to learn, true - it's a huge field - but the job prospects are better. That's an important consideration these days.' An appeal to self-interest never hurt any.

'That what you do, mister?'

'Me? No, I went into the physics side of the sciences.' Understatement; but no need to explain in detail. 'Rather tedious. Sometimes, I look back to when I was your age and I wonder if I wouldn't have been better off doing something else entirely. Maybe something using my hands more.'

'That's what my mum says. "Never mind all this highfalutin stuff, you find something you can make a good living from," she says.'

'Doesn't sound like she has much time for learning.'

'Too right. She said she left school first chance she got, she was straight down the road into Marks and Spencer and behind the children's clothing counter the next Monday. And she's still there. I can do better than that. I know I can.'

'You have anything particular in mind?'

'Well...'

'It's all right, your secrets are safe with me.' For the best of all possible reasons.

'I'd really like to be a policeman. I think Mum would quite like that. I'm pretty sure Robbie would, he's ex-Army, he's really into all this discipline stuff.'

There was a lengthy pause. 'But there's a problem with that?' suggested Peterson.

'Depends.'

'On what?'

'Well... it's not that Dad's a crook, exactly, more like he knows a few people who are. And I think the police might check up on things like that before they'd let me sign up. They probably have rules about stuff like that. It'd be a bit embarrassing if I got to be a rozzer and then I had to nick my own Dad, you know?'

They've got to be on to me soon, thought Peterson. I have to take this chance. 'Then go into the police force as a forensics specialist,' he suggested. 'Then you can use the scientific skills you enjoy at the moment, help to catch criminals and get paid for it. Quite well, I believe.'

A slow smile crossed Nigel's face. 'Yeah... now that'd be really cool,' he murmured. He looked over Peterson's shoulder for a moment. 'There's a policeman over there. Maybe I should ask him what I have to do.'

Peterson turned around. His face blanched. 'I knew it,' he said. 'I have to go. Now.'

'It's only a policeman.' Nigel began to look nervous. 'You done something, mister?'

Peterson didn't answer; instead he rose from the bench and walked towards the policeman. That uniform looked too light a blue; someone was slipping. Not that it should matter, in the end.

When he thought he was out of the boy's earshot, he said, 'It's all right, officer. I'll come quietly.'

'Good,' said the 'policeman'. 'My name's O'Neill, Temporal Division.' He shook his head slowly. 'Professor Peterson. You're the last person I expected to be sent after.'

'Sorry to disappoint you.'

'Professor, you have to know that we have that boy's whole life on record. Every moment is monitored. Even his family is kept under surveillance going back five generations.'

'Don't worry, I haven't killed him.'

'Right now, that's the only thing standing in your favour.'

Peterson noticed now just how young this fellow looked; probably just out of the Academy. From what he'd just said, he betrayed his weakness in the theory of temporal mechanics. But then, he, Peterson, was quite old. What was it they used to say about age making the policemen seem younger? 'Well, I'll take my chances if we get back,' he said.

'If?'

'Slip of the tongue. Where's your referent?'

The 'policeman' pointed to his left. 'In those trees over there. About four hundred metres. We'll be back in our own time in no time at all.' He smiled faintly; he must have been in the service long enough to know how old and tired that gag was.

'Good. Let's go, then. I'm anxious to get back and see how everything is.' Maybe I've done enough, Peterson thought. The power of a single idea can be astonishing. Perhaps I'll have been happier in the police force.

The other man nodded, beckoned his prisoner forward. Professor Nigel Peterson, the man who discovered time travel, and the man who had lived with that folly ever since, was going home.