Our story begins – or rather resumes – roughly two centuries earlier. It was dark. There was a storm. It was night-time. The gentle reader is invited to perform the requisite mathematics at their earliest convenience.

The innkeeper drew his raincoat about his shoulders, raised his flickering lantern and squinted into the stinging rain, trying to count the number of horses splashing through liquid mud. Three. No, two, pulling a small carriage.

It drew up with a clatter, spattering his legs with a browny-yellow mixture the less said about which the better. The driver was wrapped up all in black, his face hidden behind many folds and layers. Once his passenger had dismounted and covered sufficient distance between coach and inn to be out of range of flying muck, he urged the horses on with a crack of the whip and rolled squelchingly back into the forest.

The innkeeper watched him vanish from sight and then hurried after his guest. A bird of indeterminate nature (truth be told, most of nature is indeterminate) gave a distant call, warning the world that it had best be on its guard tonight. The bird had no special power of foresight, it was just sound advice.

Once inside, the newcomer pulled back her hood and looked around, dark eyes flashing left and right, quickly and efficiently taking in every inch of the sparsely furnished bar which was, she noted with satisfaction, quite empty. She handed the innkeeper her cloak without so much as a glance in his direction.

"A room, mademoiselle?"

She met his wrinkled eyes for the first time, and looked him up and down. Beneath his damp and muddy raincoat was what was now a damp and muddy night-shirt. At length she replied, her voice like her appearance betraying her Spanish heritage.

"Yes, thank you. A room."

Feeling obliged to maintain protocol despite the lateness of the hour, the innkeeper offered supper but, when it was graciously declined, gratefully retired to his bed chamber.

The woman closed the door to her own room and bolted it. She stood still with her back to its wooden frame, taking in the small corner chamber as she had the room downstairs. Recently lit candle lamps flickered on the left and right walls. There was a small shuttered window on her left, and a larger one directly before her. In a dark alcove to the right, screened from the nearest torch’s glare, was a cupboard. There were two mats on the wooden floor which creaked as she took her first step forward. The single bed looked warm and inviting, but first she had to make certain that appearances weren’t deceiving.

The innkeeper had left her modest bag just inside the entrance, where she now opened it up and removed a few drab garments. With these in hand she stepped neatly to the wardrobe and pulled open its doors. It was empty but smelt nonetheless of dried herbs. She tapped the back and sides. Solid. So far, so good. She hung up her clothes, then crouched down and ran a slender finger over the cupboard’s base. She raised that same finger to her nose and sniffed at the dust now coating it. She frowned, unsure of her interpretation of her senses. Then she closed the cupboard doors and turned thoughtfully back to the rest of the room.

There was a painting hanging to the left of the door. It was nothing special – a mountainous island landscape, in all likelihood painted within the last century by a local artist. The woman lifted it off its hook. It left a light patch on the wall, signifying that it had been in that position for many a year. There was a scrap of paper stuck to its back. Written on it were the dimensions of the room. She hurriedly put everything carefully back into its proper place.

To the right of the door hung an oval-shaped mirror. The woman checked behind it in a similar manner, then stood before it to unfasten the blood red ribbons that tied back her long dark hair in the fashion of the day. She dropped them into her bag, then placed the bag on the bed.

She stood in the middle of the floor for a moment, thinking. Then she took down one of the candles and knelt to look beneath the bed. A mouse darted into its hole. Strange. That was a thin exterior wall, was it not? She got up, restored the candle to its rightful position and walked over to the large window beside the bed. This she opened with a little difficulty and pushed back one shutter. The rain lashed against her face, horses neighed and stamped in the stables, lightning flashed and she drew back, having seen all she needed to see. The wall was thicker than it seemed, with the warming chimney at the bed’s back leading down to the fireplace in the kitchen below.

She sat herself on the bed and thought some more. Idly she fluffed up the pillows. Then she reopened her bag and withdrew a white envelope bound with the king’s seal. Glancing around furtively, as if afraid to find somebody else in the room with her, she produced a small knife and slit it open. Quickly she read the contents. Her face fell and she whispered something unladylike under her breath. She rose with haste and used a candle to set the documents alight. This was the right place. The king’s spies had never been wrong before. Unless… No, she couldn’t start thinking that way. Even stealing a horse, it would take days to get a message back to Paris, and by then war would be once more upon Europe. What was she missing? Black ashes fluttered to the floor. She lay down on the bed.

There was a sound. Mouse in the walls. Then she realised she was staring straight at the answer. Quick as a flash she was at the door. A swift yank and the shiny doorknob came loose in her hand. She poked a finger into the back of it. Dust. And something else. She pulled on what felt like string, and out came a small tangle of grey and silver, with a few coloured markings and a tiny flashing light. Oh, no.

She dropped it to the floor and ground it beneath her heel. With a single fluid motion she snatched up her bag, walked to the cupboard and re-packed her clothes. Outside she could hear many horses’ hooves on the cobbled courtyard and coarse English voices raised in anger. Lights flickered behind the battered shutters.

She again tapped the sides and back of the wardrobe. The back now sounded hollow. Excellent. She closed her eyes, mumbled a few words, then dug her fingernails in between the back and sides, prising it open. A gaping darkness beyond beckoned her. She stepped through, closing behind her first the cupboard doors and then the back itself.

Moments later, four armed men burst through the door. One prodded the disturbed bed covers with his sword. Another noted the fallen doorknob but concluded that it must have come off when they made their less than subtle entrance. Of the grey and silver tangle with flashing lights, no trace remained. They set about the room, looking behind the painting and the mirror and under the bed, tapping all surfaces of the cupboard’s interior.

They were solid.

While the mysterious female was inspecting her quarters, the innkeeper closed his bedroom door, looked down at his muddied night-shirt and swore. He picked up a poker and prodded the dying embers in the fireplace. Outside, the wind was howling and the shutters rattled in fearful response.

As he changed into fresh night-clothes the shivering landlord muttered a few words aloud.

"Establish connection with enforcer relay number 8. Bypass temporal filters and engage security scrambler."

"Establishing connection," the fireplace replied.

Then came another voice:

"Fugitive identified. Request containment squad."

The innkeeper could hear many horses’ hooves on the cobbled courtyard and coarse English voices raised in anger. Lights flickered behind the battered shutters. Irritated that they should make so much noise, he hurried to let them in before they broke down the door.

"She’s upstairs," he told them as they barged past.

Moments later, four armed men burst through the guest bedroom door. One prodded the disturbed bed covers with his sword. Another noted the fallen doorknob but concluded that it must have come off when they made their less than subtle entrance. Of the grey and silver tangle with flashing lights, no trace remained. They set about the room, looking behind the painting and the mirror and under the bed, tapping all surfaces of the cupboard’s interior.

They were solid.

The leader of the group, smaller and wiser-looking than the other three, crouched down and sniffed the dust on the wardrobe’s base. He then stood up again and pointed.

"She went this way. Spinner – bring her back."

One of the larger men pulled out a bottle of brandy, unscrewed it, took a swig for courage and sprinkled a few drops on the dust that his master had indicated. He stepped into the cupboard, knocked on the back wall, and as expected now found it to be hollow.

"Where does it lead?" ventured the innkeeper, who had crept into the room behind them.

The leader replied without turning. "Don’t know. I’ve requested details from the Centre but they have yet to return my call."

"We can’t afford to wait," grunted the man in the cupboard, tugging on the back. It came off easily, and summoning all his nerve he slipped away into the blackness beyond.

"Don’t you think we should have gone with him?" wondered one of his two previously silent colleagues, making no movement to follow.

Before their leader could reply, the floor started shaking, and space seemed to spin inside the secret passageway. The wardrobe began to bounce up and down most irregularly, that is to say in a manner not normally associated with traditional furniture found in French inns in the first half of the Nineteenth Century.

"Bloody hell, she’s got a wormhole inverter," gasped the smaller man. "Everybody outside – now!"

The innkeeper didn’t need to be told twice, but the large man who had spoken before hesitated on the threshold. "What about Spinner?"

The leader stopped and replied sadly, "There’s nothing more we can do for him. Now come on." And they hurried to safety.

It was reported in local history books that on that dark and stormy night a forest inn was caught in a hurricane and blown to smithereens. Small quantities of wooden debris were found scattered for miles around, but most of it was never accounted for. Some believed that the entire top floor had been blown out to sea, others that it had been deposited somewhere on a high Alpine peak where it waited patiently to be discovered until the end of days. Nobody but those present on the night in question ever suspected what had really taken place.

A few days later, Napoleon Bonaparte escaped from captivity and France descended once more into war, as the woman had known with absolute certainty that it would.

She had tried to change history, redraw the map of Europe to her own advantage, but she had failed. Those thrice-cursed extra-terrestrial enforcers had traced her movements despite her best efforts, realised what she was doing and locked onto the electromagnetic emissions of her forbidden alien technology. They had agents and spies like that apparently harmless innkeeper everywhere, it seemed – unwitting ones, perhaps, who believed they were merely doing their patriotic duty to thwart foreign saboteurs, but agents nonetheless.

Some might say she was ungrateful at being the offspring of those few humans given a second chance when the planet Earth faced destruction, but like most of the rest she was simply angry at the rules. Now she had to flee again, and never return.

A different inn, the following day.

Three guys walked into a bar – an Englishman, an Irishman and a Welshman. There would have been a Scotsman, but he had been caught in an exploding cupboard the day before and had his wormhole inverted – not a pretty sight. Anyway, the three remaining rascals picked themselves up off the floor, walked around the bar, which was made of iron and had quite taken the wind out of them, and entered the inn.

The little man, who was English, sat down between two large Frenchmen, oblivious to the fact that they had been talking to one another, and waved carelessly at the man on the right while addressing the innkeeper.

"I’ll have whatever he’s having."

The innkeeper shrugged and put a glass before him. The little man peered suspiciously at its contents. Having second thoughts, he abruptly turned to the man on his left, who was readying a meaty fist with which to clobber the intruder, and thrust the glass six inches in front of his face.

"Drink!"

The Frenchman’s disposition changed immediately, and all became smiles and forgiveness.

"Don’t mind if I do!" he bellowed in Nineteenth Century French.

"Pas du tout," the little man replied in Twentieth Century English.

The beverage appeared to produce no ill effects in his beefy neighbour, so the little man ordered another for himself and swigged it down in one shot. His nostrils flared, his eyeballs rotated independently of one another, steam came out of his underpants, and with tears streaming down his cheeks, he gasped hoarsely, "Good lemonade."

Meanwhile, the Irishman had picked a small round object up off an otherwise bare table and popped it in his mouth.

"Mmm, fine peanuts," he complimented the innkeeper.

"We do not serve peanuts here, monsieur," the owner replied with a sigh, idly wondering what a peanut would order to drink if they did.

"Then what the bleedin’ hell have I just-" the man began in horror, and quickly spat whatever the bleedin’ hell it was out onto the wooden floor. The tiny round object, now covered in Irish saliva, yelled a stream of expletives in an alien tongue. These have been censored by the publisher. The Welshman, remaining silent and without so much as blinking, picked the creature up off the floor and, holding it carefully between thumb and forefinger, headed for the exit (a.k.a. entrance a.k.a. door).

The spluttering Irishman looked sheepishly at his leader, who had by now recovered from his own harrowing encounter.

"It must have been asleep," he muttered defensively.

The Englishman tossed the innkeeper a couple of coins that, while being valid currency, looked rather too perfect and unblemished to have come from France’s existing mints, and followed his men out into the waning sunlight.

The three men and a peanut regrouped behind the inn’s stables.

"Is it over, then?" demanded the Welshman in passable Twenty-first Century Welsh.

"Yup," replied the peanut in fluent Twenty-second Century Sagittarian.

"So that was the last of the humans who we permitted to infiltrate societies of the past and charged with keeping a low profile and restraining their natural impulses to interfere with the rightful flow of history."

"Yup."

"Well they made a twice-digested pig’s breakfast out of that, didn’t they?"

"Yup."

"When is the pick-up scheduled for?"

"Yup."

"Right, that gives us a good half-hour to get out of these bodies and back into something with an even number of heads."

For readers somewhat puzzled by this last exchange, ‘Yup’ has several million different meanings in Sagittarian. One distinguishes between them by noting on which syllable the stress is placed.