Out of Time Read Free Page A

She chose the obvious gift, one that was sure to delight, a model of a jet, painted white with a red stripe. As she walked to the car that was waiting to take her to the airport she detoured to give the model to the child. He saw it in her hand, stared, grabbed at it. Then he said, in urgent, perfect English: ‘Fasten your safety belts. Put your head between your knees.’ He ran away, through the dust, across the yard, away from the astonished face of the young Californian sister.
    JAMES CAME UP the steps after school, zigzagging from side to side and missing every third step. The cockatoo’s cage was swinging on the verandah, as though it had been given a push by a passer-by. A leaf dropping lazily from an elm tree reached something – a gap in the air? – and skidded downwards in a quick and sudden spiral. James slipped around it and continued along the verandah, to enter the house by a side door.
    He visited the kitchen before going upstairs to his room. The woman there turned around when he came in.
    â€˜Oh, James,’ she said. ‘Do you want a sandwich? I’ve made myself a late lunch.’
    James waited for his sandwich, then took it, on its plate, along with a glass of milk and his schoolbag, upstairs: a journey that was a triumph of balance and coordination. He ate the sandwich at his desk, watching the oak tree with practised eyes. Its green was too green, its brown too brown for him to believe in it, but he liked its daytime softness and colour, so different from the silver and grey of night.
    A fragment of music drifted up the stairs and slipped into the room like steam. James cocked his head, mouth open, the half-eaten sandwich stuck in the air.
    â€˜Coming to the signpost,’ the husky voice on the tape sang,

    â€˜Coming to the signpost
I can’t look where I’m going to,
I can’t see where I’m going,
Till I first see where I’ve been.’
    The tape was abruptly turned off, there was a clatter of laughter, loud voices and footsteps. A door slammed. James reached out over the windowsill, almost past his centre of balance, and touched the branch of the tree. He ran his warm hand along it, prodding at the little bumps and buds. The surface looked rough but felt smooth. Through the crowds of leaves he could see people moving across the square: tiny snapshots of black or pinkish-white skin, a cap, a moustache, a pair of boots, a smiling mouth, a Security badge on a grey-green lapel. Framed in the widest gapwas the portico and door of the main Administration building. As James scanned the square, the door of the big white building opened, and the Director came out. He paused on the top step for a moment, and stood glancing around him. James became very still. The Director, perfectly groomed, trim in his light-grey suit, nodded as one of the Americans passed him, then continued his perusal of the quadrangle. Suddenly his face tilted up a little until he seemed to be looking right at James’ window. James stood back in the shadows, his mouth slightly open, not daring to move. After a moment the Director’s mood changed: as though a button had been pressed he set off briskly towards the new lab, Building H. But for some minutes after he had gone from sight, James still stood aside, the shadows of the leaves dappling his body.
    JAMES SLIPPED SILENTLY into Mr Woodforde’s lab. A metre inside the door he braked, waiting, then tiptoed forward. Mr Woodforde, old and tired and overdone, was asleep, head down on the front desk, glasses slanting across his nose. James stopped again and watched. Then something about the stillness of the man caused him to wait on his breath, to open his mouth, and prickle all over. Nothing moved in the lab, not the fly on the window, not the electric fan overhead, not the eyes or mouth or chest of the still man. His stillness was not sleep. His stillness was suddenly reflected in James,who himself went into a kind of death,