Cherry Picking

by Tim Heath

  Unlike the other Door though, from his side there seemed more depth to it than before, and by looking into the Door there was further to go through it in order to pass the threshold. Taking one last look around, as if in his heart he was saying goodbye to what would remain the future, he stepped forward, never indeed intending to return other than to maybe hand over Nigel to the authorities. He turned back to the Door and stepped through the mist that seemed to form. In reality it was just part of the complicated science behind the breakthrough invention of Austin Wentworth, the least known but surely greatest genius of the three brothers. Robert had never indeed been able to track down where he was buried, the guy seemingly disappearing from the face of the earth, maybe his mind leading him to some unknown death, maybe going the same way as his older brother on the lake just up the road.

  Having gone over the threshold, he found this Door was quite different from the others. It was almost a small room within itself, some three metres between the Door he’d just come through and the exit in front of him. Some form of metal panelling seemed to cover the walls, big square sections of the same metal that the framework of the Door itself was made with. Test results had never quite been able to confirm its precise make-up, such was the complexity of the Door’s design. Carrying straight on, Robert came out through the other side, the light streaming in through the windows, snow obvious on the nearby mountains.

  It had worked, which was a relief to Robert, and he looked out onto the strange new world that awaited him, now further back than anyone had ever gone. He was now the man with the head start, and yet nothing in him desired to go his own way like Nigel had so tragically done. The trees looked much the same, though noticeably thinner and smaller in places, identifying the reality that he was in fact back in time.

  The small sheds still looked old and run down, though as he got near to what had previously been the old abandoned asylum, he saw a light on inside. Wanting to keep well clear of it, he backtracked a little, to take a large diversion to avoid being spotted.

  Still standing only about forty metres from the shed that housed the Door, he was startled to hear a crash of metal coming from inside. He turned in surprise, expecting to see maybe someone having gone over to it, but no one was obvious. He’d assumed it would have shut itself down already, as with the other Door, when once he’d gone through it, it had switched off.

  Walking back over towards the shed again, Robert was surprised to see the Door still open, the mist still visible. Glancing through the mist he was uncertain of what he could spot, but walking in was alarmed to see that a metal section of the covered corridor wall lay on the floor. Going over to pick it up, he noticed that there was a hole in there not much bigger than a few feet wide. There was also quite a smell, and it was while taking a closer look that things started to sink into place in his mind. Lying on the floor was a scruffy-looking battered old notebook, and reaching in to pick it up, Robert noticed straight away the same handwriting as on all those other pieces of paper he’d seen, that same distinctive scribble that he knew was Austin Wentworth’s style.

  The room started to shake, the mist becoming a little clearer, and Robert sensed it wouldn’t hold for much longer, so grabbing the notebook he went back the way he’d come, puzzled by what had just happened.

  He walked a little way from the hut. The Door had now shut down and returned to its usual state and he had covered it with the sheets that lay on the floor. Robert then ran down into the village, and sitting on a small patch of grass, he opened the last page in the notepad and a pencil fell out. The date scribbled at the top of the page was a little earlier than he imagined, which he could check later, but it detailed, just like a diary, what Austin was doing and thinking. At the front of the notebook were all the drawings and locations that Robert had found reference to earlier, and the diary section only started quite late on, each day dated correctly, and only fifteen days in total from start to finish, each day one after the other.

  Robert glanced down out of curiosity noting that in the first entry Austin mentioned going into the Door and hiding himself. He flicked through the pages until he came to the last entry, which simply said:

  ‘March 15th, 1969

  Finally, I hear the sounds of movement that I have waited all these days for. I feel therefore my waiting is over. I write this not for me but for you now reading this. I myself am long gone, eager to live out my days in the time you have come from. You do not have to worry about my returning, as I do not wish to ever come back to a time such as this.

  I am now going to explore your world just as you have no doubt come back to put things right in my world. My brothers did not understand what I was planning and indeed their imitations have no doubt led to problems. I regret what I did to Christopher but that will remain between us. This invention was only ever meant to be used once, but they couldn’t help but open it up to trouble by doing what they did. At the front of this notebook you’ll find where they were working and therefore where their Doors will no doubt be. If my mind is correct I guess it was through one of them that you have already come, though only now through this Door can you put right any wrong.

  The Door will not work again and therefore the knowledge of the science now remains with me only. Though those other Doors might physically remain, they will never take people as far back as you. I suggest that once you have finished what you came back to do, you destroy them.

  You’ve now started the machine so I’d best stop writing. Once you are clear through the other end I will leave this hole that has been my resting place these last fifteen days. How many years or decades it is in fact that I have been here I have been unable to calculate.

  Remember me fondly. We may meet one day, who really knows?

  Yours gratefully, Austin Wentworth.’

  It was the most amazing thing Robert had ever read, the words of a man way beyond anyone, his mind able to almost see into the future. He sat there stunned, just trying to figure it out, but struggling to. Had this been what Austin had planned for the Door all along? Though the details were hard to know for certain, Robert realised through a science that only Austin had mastered, Austin Wentworth had made some type of vortex between the two points in time. And though for Austin it had only been fifteen days, decades had actually passed for everyone else. Now Austin was in the time that had once been Robert’s world, a time that would now always remain the future it seemed as far as Robert was concerned.

  The other thing that got Robert was that if the date was real, then he had nearly sixteen years to wait for Nigel’s appearance, and not the ten he had at first thought. He got up slowly, making his way down to the main road, the going a lot easier down the mountain than when he’d come up it a week before.

  An hour later, while sitting in a small coffee shop that overlooked Lake Geneva, he thought to himself how out there, beyond the borders of Switzerland and France, there was the young child, maybe even still a toddler, Jessica Ponter, and the school boy Tommy Lawrence. He lived in a world now of famous names, leaders of the future that he’d get to rub shoulders with, if he chose.

  Robert spent the rest of the day just sitting there, taking it all in, reading every word of Austin’s treasured notebook, each word the word of a genius, for it was clear to him having studied all the greatest scientists to have ever lived, that none of them had ever thought so far beyond their time as had Austin Wentworth. Robert wondered about what he’d written, wondered what he would be doing in the future, wondered whether one day they would indeed meet. The opportunities for such a mind in the modern world would be endless, it seemed. Some of the theories Austin had touched upon in his fifteen days of waiting would have all the potential for success given the greater technology and options open to him in a world of computer science.

  Robert had time therefore, and he liked that part of Switzerland very much. Maybe he’d base himself there for sometime, or should he travel some more? He knew the date, time and now location of where Nigel would
be, and though he’d check it out in person way before then, he was sure that Austin knew exactly what he was talking about.

  Just then, into the café, walked a girl that would turn any man’s head and she certainly caught Robert’s attention, he smiled at her and went over to introduce himself. In her strong French accent, she said her name was Eleanor — Robert was captured instantly, spending the rest of the evening just talking, falling for her as the night went on.

  **********

  Nearly sixteen years later in England.

  Robert sat nervously in the car, Eleanor next to him, looking as beautiful as the first day he’d met her. Two girls sat talking in the back, Aimee the oldest at nearly ten, her younger sister Mia just having turned five.

  “How long do we have to wait here, Dad?” Aimee said in French.

  “Just about twenty minutes, sweetie, I promise,” Robert answered in English.

  “And then, Daddy, can I go to Jessica’s, like you promised?” Mia chipped in.

  “Yes, Mia darling, you can.”

  It had just gone twenty past six in the early evening on a sunny early September day. Robert had waited for this day a long time, and knowing it was nearly time, said a quick goodbye to his girls, telling them he wouldn’t be a minute and getting out of the car, he walked down the road.

  The street was quiet, the building across the road painted yellow, so that it reflected the bright morning sun. Next to it stood the town’s cinema, the film being shown at the top saying, “ET,” but it was that kind of town, always a little behind the times, having had a long running battle to get the film to show, so much so that this was its first run, some three years after it came out. What brought Robert there on that day was that this was where Christopher’s Door had been located, Christopher having once used the workshop at the bottom of the block of flats opposite the cinema, something that like most places around there now sat empty.

  Robert glanced down at his watch, now showing 6:23pm. Robert made his way into the empty workshop, gaining access through a door in the side passage. Finding himself in the dimly lit workshop he stood there in the dark, waiting for the Door to light up.

  Only one minute later that forgotten sound returned, the Door kicking out a mist before the figure of a young man was seen coming through it. He looked about twenty or twenty-one, clean shaven, though even then he had the eyes of someone who’d done too many bad things in his time. He glanced around back at the Door as the noise stopped and the mist disappeared.

  “I did it!” he said to himself, before taking a step forward.

  “I’ve been expecting you!” came Robert’s voice from the darkness. Such was Nigel’s surprise that he almost leapt backwards. Robert stepped forward, a silenced gun raised.

  “Who the hell are you?” Nigel said in disgust, looking at the man standing before him, clearly in his mid-forties, though dressed smartly, an air of authority about him.

  “I’m your worst nightmare!” Robert said, a smile on his face as he came forward, the gun never taken off Nigel.

  “I don’t understand?” Nigel said.

  “I don’t think anyone will, but I’ve been waiting a long time for you. Not that it hasn’t been worth it.”

  He thought of Eleanor, his beautiful wife waiting for him in the car, along with his two beautiful girls who had done so much healing within him. He could now relive a childhood through them, the childhood he’d never had. They’d stayed in Switzerland for seven years, just a few miles from Vers-Cort before moving to England where the girls entered school. They lived not far from Mia’s best friend, another girl her age, named Jessica. Aimee and especially now young Jessica and Mia showed great flare for acting and it was Robert who suggested they all went to acting school together, offering his time in order to help them out, working as a kind of mentor and agent for them. Somehow he knew that things were going to work out just fine.

  “Anyway, we both know what you’ve just done.”

  “How?” Nigel replied, still puzzled, his young mind not working quite as quickly as it once had.

  “Oh, it’ll make a great story one day. Maybe I’ll write it all down, who knows?”

  He paused for a second, having thought about this moment for so many years, but there was just no other way around it. There was no other option, no other way out that would make any sense or allow him to keep his life back there. Nigel needed to be stopped. Robert looked deep into those evil eyes one last time and with a squeeze of his finger, the gun barely making a sound, two shots were fired, catching Nigel in the chest so that he fell backwards with a crash onto the floor and lay there still, silence now returning to the old workshop. Robert cleaned the gun, deciding just to leave things all there, to walk away and never think again about what happened. Shutting the doors carefully, the emotion now rushing from him in one final burst, tears rolling down his face like they had never done before, he took a moment to compose himself, before returning to the car, to his girls, his family, his life.

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  *********

  Now read what people are saying about Tim’s other books!

  The Last Prophet

  (And get your FREE copy here: www.timheathbooks.com/books/the-last-prophet/freebook/)

  The Tablet

  The Last Prophet (published January 2015)

  “I wish I could write a review as well as the author wrote this book to do it justice. Another magnificent literature masterpiece from Tim Heath. I really enjoy the concept of the story-line which I must recommend to anybody into thrillers and high tech espionage. The frightening thing about it is this could actually be fact one day!”

  “Thrillers don’t normally encourage you to ask such questions: Is this all there is to life? Can there be hope despite the certainty of death? Once bad, always bad — but can a person perhaps change? Is it possible to redeem oneself — perhaps through a heroic act or through one’s love for others? Can one person sacrifice himself for everyone? Is it ethical for the community to sacrifice one person’s life for everyone else’s survival? Is it ethical to lie or even to build a web of lies in order to save many from destruction? And yet despite — or perhaps because of? — these deep philosophical questions we are kept in suspense until the last page.”

  “I have to say that I massively enjoyed this book from beginning to end. I enjoyed the plot, the characters, the ideas, the developing urgency of the story and the underlying theme of sacrifice.

  I enjoyed the mixture of covert teams operating against each other and the ensuing action well researched and thought through .

  In fact I can actual see something like this taking place one day-who knows, this may well be a Prophetic book!”

  “International espionage and sneaky twists provide the backdrop to some heart-wrenching decisions for the people we meet along the way. Not afraid to ask the big questions, The Last Prophet foretells a journey none of us would ever wish to make. If you like your thrillers with a dash of apocalypse and a side order of sacrifice, check this one out!”

  “Very good read. Couldn’t put it down. Brilliant from beginning to end and very thought provoking. We are going to read it at our Book Cub next time. Thank you Tim.”

  See all the best reviews for The Last Prophet here — http://www.timheathbooks.com/books/the-last-prophet/

  The Tablet (published December 2015)

  “Read this book in three days, a record for me! This is an amazing story line that keeps you guessing throughout with lots of twists and turns.The characters are real and with lots of depths and have the chance to be really developed through future books. Well done and let’s have another soon!”

  “Once again Mr. Heath delivers a fantastic read in this fast paced espionage thriller on par with the likes of Frederick Forsyth and John le Carré.”

  �
��I greatly enjoyed reading The Tablet! I found the story to be well crafted, with plenty of twists to keep me guessing. I could easily see it as a movie one day. Great characters, too. Overall it’s a fast-paced novel perfect for fans of Bond or Bourne.”

  “Absolutely loved this third novel from Tim Heath. Having read The Last Prophet, the suspense level for what The Tablet is was magnified. Does it or doesn’t it? Mix that in with a fast paced crime and spy thriller storyline and I was hooked and didn’t want to put it down. Looking forward to seeing what happens in the next in the series. Get writing Tim!”

  “I received an advanced review copy of The Tablet and have to say I wasn’t disappointed. Nicely paced, the tension ratchets wonderfully as the clock ticks to unearth the truth and save Bill, while international animosity escalates. The number of twists were set up and revealed well. All in all a great read. Tim’s best yet!”