FicWad

The elevator had been cleaned and thoroughly examined by the tech staff. Several weakening connections had been found, and corrected. And Jack Henderfield, the electrician who had been put in charge of elevator maintenance, was waiting outside Sir Richard's office for Sir Richard and Sir Paul to come and question him.

Sir Richard had had several long conversations with his department heads, and had examined Henderfield's personnel file in detail. He was fairly certain of how the interview would finish, and he knew it wouldn't be good. He wasn't looking forward to it.

The two men strode past Clara, Sir Richard's secretary, without looking at the figure waiting on one of the hard, extruded plastic chairs that Clara had replaced the comfortable armchairs with at Sir Richard's request.

Sir Paul quickly flipped through the file that Clara had left sitting on Sir Richard's desk, to refresh his memory. He had, of course, seen the file already - but there was no sense in being unprepared. As he gained a second opinion of the man - an opinion as unflattering as the first had been - Sir Richard turned his security monitor on to see how Henderfield was behaving.

"It looks like the little piggie is nervous," Sir Richard commented bleakly.

"As he bloody well should be," Sir Paul replied, and put the file down. He came over to look over Sir Richard's shoulder. "The more nervous the better. It will be so much easier to get him to squeal that way."

With a mental shudder at the satisfaction in his old friend's voice, Sir Richard pulled several files out of his filing cabinet, and carefully arranged them so that part of some of the labels could be seen. Just poking out could be seen "elevator repa" and "maintenance sch". Then he opened Henderfield's file to the page headed "Complaints index" and put it on the desk in front of his chair.

Sir Paul opened his briefcase, took out some battered envelopes, and put them next to the file before sitting down in a corner of the room where anybody who came in would not see him. This was an act that they knew very, very well. They had performed it many times in the past, and neither had any doubt of how it would happen this time.

Sir Richard opened the intercom. "Clara, ask Henderfield to come in, please."

Glancing at his security monitor, he saw Henderfield put on an air of false bravado as Clara told him to come in. The man was clearly talking himself into a much braver mood than he should have. He squared his shoulders and marched into his office.


Later, as they drank gin and tonics, they reflected over the interview they had conducted that morning. Henderfield had behaved exactly as they had expected him to.

"No child of mine would ever behave in such a manner," Sir Paul snorted. "To waste the advantages and talents given to him, and then blame the older generation for his failings, is unacceptable behaviour."

Sir Richard, who had heard this many times before, merely nodded. At least, he reflected, Paul's attitude had mellowed slightly over the years. He couldn't help but remember when Sarah had come to see him, nearly in tears at the thought of being pressed into a Civil Service career, and asked him to persuade her father to ease off a bit. She had been ten years old at the time, and he had had to admit that Paul could be pretty overbearing at times. That had been seven years ago. It had been a struggle, but finally he had accepted the position that perhaps his daughter didn't want to be a civil servant, and that perhaps she should be allowed to make up her own mind over her path in life. The discovery of his own alternative career two years previously had helped greatly.

The intercom beeped. "Mr Harrison to see you," Clara said.

Sir Richard reached over and activated the intercom. "Send him in," he replied. The visit was not entirely unexpected. Henderfield had uttered a few choice parting words before he left, and Sir Richard had no doubt that he had asked Harrison to intervene on his behalf.

George came in. Sir Richard noted in passing that he did not look very happy.

"Sir, what's this about photos?"

Sir Richard blinked, a little nonplussed by the question. "Photos?"

George took a deep breath, paused, and let it out again. "I've been hearing rumours about photos with me in them."

Both civil servants frowned. "I left orders that you were to be shown them when you were hired," Sir Paul said.

"I've seen no photos. Just heard a few rumours about them. Just what is going on here?"

Sir Richard looked over at his friend. "He was supposed to be in the loop."

"Who recruited you?" Sir Paul asked.

George's face twisted with frustrated anger briefly before he said, "Joseph Porter."

Sir Richard's eyes narrowed. "That one has spent far too long playing office politics," he said softly.

"Indeed," Sir Paul replied, and then paused. "You'd better explain, Richie," he said. "It's your show."

Sir Richard gave George a steady look. "Have you spent any time in the labs?" he asked.

George shook his head. "No. The others do the lab repairs."

The two men stood up, and put their tumblers on Sir Richard's desk. "Come on," Sir Richard said. "It'll be easier to show you."

They walked out of the office, George trailing after them. Sir Richard briefly told Clara where they were going, and then they were striding down the corridor.

The labs were a mess of electronics and circuitry. The head of the research department was an untidy sort of fellow, and none of his subordinates were tidy enough to counteract that influence. Sir Richard thought they should be tidier, and judging by the disapproving look on George's face so did he.

The staff in the lab were all clustered around a complex mess of cables, wires, unidentifiable electronics, and several computers. They were watching two people sitting at the computers fiddle with the settings with a breathless hush that told the newcomers that they thought they were on to something.

"Tuning in now," said one of the seated figures, a bespectacled figure with long, unkempt hair and several days' growth of beard. He wore faded jeans and sandals that hadn't been fashionable for at least ten years, and a t-shirt with "Not all who wander are lost" written on it. Sir Richard had often seen him in the labs, but he'd never managed to find the time to do more than exchange nods with him.

An image started to appear on the central monitor. Sir Richard could pick out people walking back and forth - it didn't look like any of the television broadcasts he had witnessed previously.

"Yes!" One of the people exclaimed, pumping his fist into the air as the image steadied, and swam into focus.

"We have done it!" said Bern Schmidt triumphantly. "We have successfully tapped into a security camera!"

Sir Richard's eyebrows went up. "Well done!" he said.

"Where is it?" Sir Paul asked, somewhat tensely.

"It's a little early to say," Bern said thoughtfully, "but it looks like..." he peered more closely at the monitor. "Yes. There's the seal on the floor. Yes. It's the Democratic People's Republic of America."

Sir Paul frowned. "People's Republic?" he asked. Sir Richard could see that he still did not really understand what Bern had achieved.

"Yes, indeed," Bern confirmed. "Like all Democratic People's Republics it is, of course, a military dictatorship run by a man whose ambitions far outstrip his resources."

Sir Paul opened his mouth to say, with some bewilderment, that if there was a Democratic People's Republic of America in the remains of world's third superpower, he would know of it, but was prevented by the ringing of his mobile phone.

Sir Richard sighed with relief. "And that diverts another hour or so of trying to explain for the umpteenth time just what exactly we're doing here," he said.

"Indeed," Bern confirmed, nodding.

"What exactly are we doing here?" George asked.

"I thought that Mr Harrison knew?" Bern asked, frowning slightly.

"So did I," Sir Richard said. "Apparently, somebody has been playing politics behind our backs again."

"Not Joseph Porter again," said the man in the chair.

"He's who recruited me," George shrugged.

"I'm Harry Benson," he said. "Bern's deputy. Porter recruited me, too. I was supposed to get full security clearance to work here, but he only saw fit to grant me limited clearance. Which meant that security wouldn't let me into the labs to do what I was hired to do."

"In any case," Bern said, cutting across the conversation to bring things back to where they were supposed to be, "I discovered a means of looking into other dimensions several years ago, and managed to get funding from the Government to continue my research."

"Sir Paul thinks he's going to get a window into the USSR," Sir Richard sighed. "It would be a major coup if we did, but while it's theoretically possible, it's practically impossible."

Bern nodded. "There are so many other versions of reality out there that the chances of our finding a window into the Soviet Union are remote."

"Oh, I see," George replied, somewhat blankly.

Sir Richard exchanged dubious looks with Bern.

"Conditions in some of those other realities are very different to the way things are here," Sir Richard told him. "And we are all very different people in them."

"Different how?" George asked.

Bern rummaged around in a draw and pulled out several photos. "There are a whole collection of realities which feature a rock band known as the Beatles. It is a band made up of four people, who are generally identified as being John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Richard Starkey, and George Harrison."

"We've examined the photos very carefully," Sir Richard said cheerfully, watching George's face. "There's no doubt as to their identities."

"There are a couple of other people who are also identified as being band members at various stages, but we are unsure as to who they are," Bern said, spreading the photos out on the bench. George went forward to examine them carefully.

"That one is Stu Sutcliffe," George told them. "He's an artist. Macabre sort of fellow. I think the other one is Pete Best, but I'm not too sure about that."

Sir Richard's jaw dropped. "We've had MI6 trying to identify them for ages!" he exclaimed.

"They're both perfectly law abiding citizens," George said with a shrug. "Never even got a speeding fine. There is no reason why they should be identifiable by security forces."

Sir Richard wheeled around and headed for the intercom. Quickly, he got onto Clara. "Contact MI6," he barked. "Tell them to track down Stuart Sutcliffe and Peter Best. And make sure they aren't actually picked up. We just need their identities confirmed."

"Yes, sir," Clara said.