Out of Time by John Marsden Page B

while men, with excited cheers, struck it. James ran from the spot. He zigzagged through some tired weedy-looking trees and then made his way among a few older buildings, until he was at Mr Woodforde’s lab. The door was closed and barred, with a padlock through the clasp. The padlock was large and looked strong but when James poked at it he saw that it was a trick: the two parts were joined together but not locked. He opened it, took it off, then opened the door and went in.
    The room was dull and dusty. Though few of Mr Woodforde’s possessions remained, nothing new had been added. The impression was one of emptiness, bareness, and cobwebs. James circled the room gingerly, his heart beating a little faster and a little louder. He ran a finger through dust, liking the line it left but uncertain of how to finish the design he had started.
    Reaching the front desk where Mr Woodforde had done most of his work, James pulled out his old stool and sat on it. He gazed around him. It was like being at the museum and seeing the skeleton of a dinosaur. This room was the bones of a life, the dead outline of something that once had flesh, movement, a lively eye. James had been told in Social Studies of the tribute to Christopher Wren, written over the door of St Paul’s Cathedral: ‘If you would see his monument, look around.’ He remembered it now, and sighed. There wasno monument here, perhaps no monument anywhere to his friend. It occurred to him that he did not even know where the scientist was buried. In the dust he wrote: ‘I am James, I am me.’ There was a mirror on the wall, which he went and gazed into for several long minutes, until his face grew unfamiliar to him. He began to think that if he stayed there long enough he would see Mr Woodforde’s face looking back at him from the mirror. He drew away nervously, but a little reluctantly.
    On his way out of the lab James paused to examine the noticeboard near the window, where Mr Woodforde had pinned various notes and reminders. Nothing much was left on it now except a calendar, a yellowing memo from the Security Department about night-time movement around the Centre, and a newspaper photograph of a one-legged high jumper. The calendar was three years out of date but James took it down anyway and thumbed through it, for the sake of seeing Mr Woodforde’s handwriting again. Sure enough there were occasional notations on it: a dental appointment, a committee meeting, a lecture by a man named Tipier. James finished his desultory scanning and prepared to pin the calendar up again, but as he did so something on the back of it caught his eye. He turned it over and read with pleasure the familiar writing:

    It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
    James set off slowly for his house, closing the lab door behind him. His mind was crowded with images: the rats, the bare room, the poem. He was confused.
    GILES GREW SLOWLY in the suburb of Elmo. His father was an accountant and his mother a kindergarten teacher. His first memory was of a tree, in the garden across the road, being struck by lightning. It was a vicious storm. Giles heard the thunder ripping apart the sky but did not know until the next morning that the tree had been split. He went across the road and fingered the burnt trunk in wonder. Uneasy thoughts came to him and he returned home to find his blanket.
    His blanket was pink and had a name. It was called Zella, though no-one knew where the name was from. The blanket had been Giles’ companion and solace for a long time. He was so attached to it that it was wearing away: it had become dirty and torn. Every time his parents had washed Zella Giles had made a scene, until eventually they cut the blanket in two. Then, while one half was being washed, Giles could comfort himself with the other half. He hugged it and held it and dragged it behind