Finally, on the twenty seventh try, she hit gold. With Hadrian.
Hadrian D. Macduff was an ex-pat from Greater Scotland who worked as a calculor carder. A computer programmer, Noys figured out. He worked for a firm involved with space launch projects. He loved hiking in the mountains, experimenting with Tongan cuisine, and thought The Stones of Tara, a fantasy movie about a pair of sisters drawn into intrigue in a Celtic themed otherworld, was the greatest movie ever made. He apparently not only owned a kilt, but knew how to put it on. And he looked good in one, judging from the pictures of them together.
And Noys could sink into those blue eyes of his and be lost forever.
After a long conversation over dinner (shredded pork wrapped in taro and banana leaves) Hadrian carried her off to bed, although it was really more a case of each of them dragging the other.
Noys sat up in the bed and watched the news on the flat panel screen as the dark haired man beside her slept soundly. Early dawn light filtered into the bedroom. He didn’t even snore, she thought. And her core still tingled from the night before. He was so very attentive and passionate.
Those fond memories melted away as she watched the news. There was nothing else. No baseball games. The Olympics had been cancelled. A naval shooting war between the Kingdom of Hawaii and the Tongan Confederacy had apparently stopped of its own accord. Even the weather report was delivered in a manner that was perfunctory at best. The vast majority of the newscast was all about the same thing. Every newscast on every channel was. The sepulchral tones of the talking heads caused Noys to shiver uncontrollably.
Six days. Six days left until Hareb-Sarep hit Earth. Scientists calculated it would likely hit somewhere in the Pacific basin (here called the Lemurian Ocean). Global cooling, already an issue in this world, would accelerate into a full blown ice age, and the tsunamis and earthquakes following the projected strike suggested the death toll would be in the 8 or even 9 figure range.
Los Santos, what they called a city covering the majority of what she knew as the Los Angeles basin, would likely be wiped off the face of the earth. And where could Noys and Hadrian go to escape? The Unified Dominions were roomy, to be sure, but life anywhere in the world after impact would be nasty, brutish and likely short.
No wonder, Noys thought, Hadrian was confused over dinner. Perhaps he thought her in denial. But even so, he had treated her with such kindness that she could believe the version of Noys here had been handfasted (their version of marriage) to Hadrian for six years already. And to hear him wax rhapsodic about anything and everything made her soul sing. He was the man with whom she could make the family she desperately craved.
But what price the perfect mate, if the world was for naught? The machine was created by her, tuned to her. She couldn’t take Hadrian. She could probably re-attune it to send Hadrian from this world, and leave herself behind before the end. She expected that he would not even accept such a Faustian bargain, were she despondent enough to offer it to him.
Six days wasn’t nearly enough to redesign the machine to take both of them. She wasn’t even sure it was theoretically possible. She probably created this world, and thus created him, with a unique resonance not her own. They might well be sent off to completely different destinations without major adjustments to the machine.
There was not enough time to research the problem. Even if she headed back to Homeline to do the work, the underlying theory predicted that time marched forward equally in all of these worlds. She didn’t have enough to save herself and Hadrian.
Not enough time by far. There was only one option left.
I can fix this, she thought, sadly, as she got carefully out of their bed and crept to the computer room.
Ellie Danger, Girl Daredevil
Alasdair Stuart
Ellie Danger had gravity. She stood, arms folded, the over-sized flight jacket that was her trademark bulking out every inch of her 17-year old frame, and watched a priest who had never met her mentor babble through a eulogy that sounded like he was reading it off cards. He was the best man for the job, the Grief and Recovery Team had assured her. Quantum had left her the labs and the mansion in his will, she knew that much, but there was no word on anything that mattered, not the plane, or the robots, or the other house, the one where the fun stuff was kept. The Dee Institute could grab all the toys it wanted, even from there, but if they touched the plane? Things would get dangerous.
Ellie scowled, watched the priest race the storm, and tried once again to keep her temper in check. Clouds had been building above Elysian Island for the last ten minutes and the priest had got steadily faster as Ellie hunkered lower in her flight jacket, glowering at him. Every one of the committee members had made their apologies, whether in person or in writing, but they’d all, somehow, found a reason to not turn up to the funeral. They’d ignored Professor Niles Quantum whilst he was alive, so it only made sense they’d ignore him now he was dead. It didn’t help, it didn’t bring her any comfort at all or make her any more sympathetic towards the priest, but she could understand it.
He stumbled over the final few lines and she almost snapped, almost went for him. What stopped her was the image of Niles Quantum’s precise, fox-like nose twitching slightly, his head shaking in a small but definitive ‘no.’ She swore under her breath, shoved her hands up into the flight jacket he had given her and tried very hard to think about something other than punching a priest in the face.
Finally, he stopped talking, sagging with relief, and the coffin was lowered into the ground. It was cardboard, just like Quantum had wanted. He’d always insisted on keeping his experiments as ecologically friendly as possible and had drawn up strict instructions in his will that his body be placed in a bio-degradable container. He’d made a joke about compost and she’d laughed politely, and then they’d had tea.
And then he’d died.
The priest, looking like he was late for an appointment, muttered hurried, awkward condolences to her and set off back towards the chapel. She turned away when she saw him break into a jog.
Ellie closed her eyes, bit the inside of her cheek as hard as she could and refused to cry. She took a deep breath, looked up at the storm clouds, then turned and headed back towards the airfield. If she was lucky, she could get airborne and out of the area before the storm really hit.
As she turned to go, the storm clouds began to accelerate, roiling and turning over one another until, suddenly, the rain broke over the northern end of the island, a great curtain of water that obscured everything behind it. Everything except a tall woman in her late-30s, her long red hair tied back in a loose ponytail. She was dry, despite the rain, and she moved cautiously but definitively, picking her way through the tombs until she found the grave Ellie had just left. She stood and watched the Nants replace the soil, a stream of golden points that glowed as they patiently moved every grain of soil back to its original position. She didn’t cry, she didn’t let her eyes close. She didn’t blink. Then, without looking up, she spoke.
‘You must be soaked.’
She was dressed in good boots, a dark red leather trench coat with a white tunic underneath it, and had a pen stuck behind her ear, long loops of red hair breaking free of her ponytail and framing her face. Ellie could see the symbol of the Institute seared onto the coat’s left breast; an Ouroborous. Knowledge without end. The woman smiled crookedly, looking across at Ellie and speaking with an accentless voice. ‘I’m sorry, I wanted to wait until the mourners had gone. I was trying to be discreet. I thought the rain would cover my ClockGate opening.’
Ellie nodded, still unsure of herself and refusing to show it.
‘The Institute likes to schedule rain for funerals, helps with the mood. The lightning?’ Ellie raised a hand, waggled it from side to side. ‘Little bit much after the third strike. Time traveller, right?’
The woman smiled broadly, the loose strands of hair by her ear already plastered down by the storm. ‘Well done. I’m Professor Tachyon. You can
call me Lucy.’
‘You didn’t answer my question.’
‘Yes, I’m a time traveller. Call me Lucy.’
Ellie folded her arms, part of her revelling in the way the bulky flight jacket made her look bigger than she was. ‘I was always told not to speak to strange time travellers.’
Lucy laughed, and sat down against the tomb across from Quantum’s. It read:
MATTHEW CHANCE, GENIUS OF NO FIXED ABODE
BINGO, FAITHFUL COMPANION TO THE END
THEIR ABODE IS FIXED, AND THEY HAVE COME HOME
Lucy drew a leg up under herself, ignoring the damp, and nodded approvingly. ‘Good girl. Niles taught you never to take anything at face value.’
‘He was Professor Quantum. Now what do you want? A quick gawp at the last hero of Edinburgh’s funeral?’
Lucy smiled. ‘Oh, he’s not the last. No, I actually came to take a look at this place.’ She looked around at the island, at the rows of graves and tombs extending for miles in every direction. The rain had passed over them and Ellie could see it working its way down the island. She hoped it caught the priest before he got inside.
Lucy nodded down the island, towards the dock. ‘Did you know the Dee Institute bought it from the crown? Dee himself said that science demanded sacrifice and those who were sacrificed should have somewhere of their own. An Elysium of geniuses. A necropolis of the New Renaissance. In my time, the entire Wyngard section, over there? Covered in genetically engineered hallucinogenic flowers. The old bugger turned his entire family into seed beds for a gentle, psychotropic high. Ninety nine percent of the people who experience it say they meet their loved ones on a hilltop overlooking countryside like nowhere on Earth. They think it might be heaven.’
Ellie swallowed hard, trying and failing not to think about asking if Lucy had the drug with her. ‘Why are you here?’
Lucy didn’t answer her, instead walking forward and brushing a hand over Quantum’s gravestone, also made of cardboard. There was a small blue spark as she did so. When she looked at Ellie again, her face was completely serious and utterly composed. Her voice, when she spoke, was cracked and hoarse. ‘Because in my time this cemetery is so much bigger. They had to move the heliport out to sea to make—’ Her voice caught and she looked away.
Ellie steeled herself, in that way Quantum had remarked she always did when she was about to do something stupid, then walked over to the other woman, winced slightly and placed a hand on her shoulder. There was a SNAP! and the cooking smell of tachyons and heated leather rose from her gloved hand. The woman whipped round, looking at her shoulder, then at Ellie, who was grinning widely, looking at her hand. Dangerous.
‘You could have killed us!’ The older woman spoke without thinking and stopped short. Suddenly her right hand half rose to her mouth, realisation flushing her face.
Gotcha, Ellie thought.
After a moment, Lucy composed herself and smiled. ‘That was very dangerous, you know.’
Ellie inclined her head, conceding the point. ‘Ellie Danger, Girl Daredevil. Localised electrostatic discharge caused when the same matter at different times is somehow brought together.’ This time when she spoke it was that voice Quantum had used whenever he was dealing with someone who could be a threat, chatty but iron hard just below the surface. ‘Why exactly do I change my name?’
Lucy opened her mouth, closed it, struggled for words.
Ellie spoke, not unkindly. ‘You choose this day and this spot and this time to visit a grave that’s still there in your time? I don’t think so. You’re in better shape than I am, but you’re older, more time to work out. You’ve got four inches on me but everyone in my family was a late developer. You favour your left knee very slightly which is the same knee I injured last year diving out of Doctor Nadir’s blimp and…’ she pointed down at Lucy’s feet, ‘you’re wearing the boots I’ve wanted for the last year but aren’t quite big enough to own yet. So come on, spill. What do you want?’
Lucy thought for a moment, folding her arms and tucking her hands into her sleeves, just as Ellie had done. Finally, she looked up at her younger self.
‘You understand there are things I can’t tell you.’
‘I’ll just guess them.’
‘You’ll guess wrong.’
‘How do you know?’
‘You honestly think I’ll tell you?’
Ellie conceded the point and Lucy smiled. ‘I’d forgotten how awkward I was. You’re going to carry on his research and what you’ll find… wow…’ She looked out to sea and beyond it. ‘We’re entering a new age, Ellie. One filled with wonders that eclipse everything we’ve been taught. A new wave of exploration and understanding is sweeping out across the world and it starts here, and now, with you. You’re going to hold every key and open every door and be magnificent and terrible and wonderful and it’s all ahead of you.
Ellie folded her arms again. ‘Bollocks.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘No, you’re bloody not! You knew I was going to say that and you knew I wouldn’t buy the half-baked temporal bullshit you decided to peddle because you were too embarrassed to come here honestly. You came here, now, to see me, here, now, so once again, but slightly louder, what do you want?!’
Lucy opened her mouth, closed it again, and turned to the sea, her toe kicking at the ground. Ellie found herself doing the same thing and stopped before Lucy could see.
‘I want you to do something else.’
‘What?!’
Lucy swept an arm across the cemetery. ‘Two hundred extra bodies! Two hundred, Ellie! Almost everyone you meet will die. None of their deaths will be easy and none will be quick and some of them… some of them will be because of you. You’re still young, you can still make a different choice.’ There was something plaintive, desperate in her voice. ‘I’ve seen things, Ellie, things that no one should have to see. I watched my best friend turn into glass, I saw St Paul’s burn, and I was there when…’ She blinked and set her jaw, a motion Ellie had seen a thousand times in the mirror.
‘Don’t be in Moscow next year. Just don’t.’
Ellie blinked. ‘You could warn them, you could stop it.’
‘It’s not my job.’
‘And this is?’
‘NO!’ Her right arm swept upwards, taking in the span of the island behind them. ‘Right now I’m supposed to be helping seal Moscow, visit the Comet Oracle, consult on an excavation in the Pacific Abyss and save my wife! None of which I would have to do if you just turned away!’
Ellie stood her ground, holding her older self’s gaze. She watched the tears roll down Lucy’s face, noticed with interest the star shaped scar on her temple, the slight discolouration around her eyes. She said nothing, and finally, Lucy spoke, her voice hollow and cracked.
‘She’s trapped. It’s a pocket universe, on a wide temporal orbit. It only intersects with us once a year, but time moves faster there and she’s been there a year. Please, Ellie, please. Do something else, anything else. I can’t do—’ Her voice broke again and she rubbed a hand fiercely over her eyes, turning away as she did so.
Ellie closed her eyes and rested her head against the thick, deep red leather of her jacket.
She blinked. ‘That’s a lot to think about.’
Lucy sagged with relief. ‘I know it’s a lot to take in.’
Ellie nodded. ‘You’re damn right it is, I mean, I didn’t even know I was gay.’
Lucy blinked. ‘Pardon me?’
‘I suspected, of course. I thought I might be bisexual. Are we bisexual? Do we have boyfriends too?’
Lucy scowled. ‘I should have known you wouldn’t take this seriously.’
That was it. All the pent up rage, grief and frustration bubbled over and Ellie was moving, stalking towards her older self until she was an inch away, eyes blazing and fists bunched. ‘I watched him die! For you that was God knows how many years ago but for me, it was last Tuesday so don’t you dare say I’m not taking this seriously!
You say our wife’s trapped in a time loop? Then get her out! You do the job, whether it takes a day or a year but you do the damn job! Whatever! It! Takes! And from where I’m standing, that doesn’t involve moping around on a sodden bloody graveyard on the worst day of your childhood with a bossy teenager who thinks she knows better than you!’
‘Do you?’ Lucy had barely spoken before Ellie slapped her. It was the blow meant for the priest and it knocked Lucy off her feet. She was up again in a second.
‘You little bitch!’
Ellie smiled savagely, fists bunched, her guard up. Physical fights were easy. ‘Decades younger and faster, so take your best shot.’
Lucy scowled and they stared at one another, Ellie silently begging her older self to try something. Finally, Lucy turned away. After a second, she began to cry. Ellie stared at her, and finally sat down too. She was surprised to hear her own voice crack when she spoke.
‘The motto hasn’t changed has it? The Institute’s?’
‘No.’ Lucy’s voice was hollow.
‘Then what is it?’
‘Per ardua ad conscentia.’
‘Per ardua ad conscentia. I wanted to get a tattoo of that, you know.’
Lucy sniffed and then rolled her right sleeve up. The words gleamed silver on her forearm and Ellie tried very hard to focus on them and not the scars that ran under the fabric of her sleeve. Ellie forced a smile.
‘What’s her name?’
‘Who?’
‘Our wife?’
Lucy smiled. ‘Her name is Moira.’
‘Is she pretty?’
Lucy’s smile widened. ‘She’s beautiful.’
Ellie clapped her hands together and stood. ‘He told me, us, to always focus on beauty. You remember that?’ Lucy sniffed and nodded. ‘So you do that. You focus on Moira, and her smile, and her laugh and what she does for you and makes you feel. You do that, and you’ll… we’ll get her back. Now, how long have you got left? Until your tachyon charge runs out?’
Lucy stood, wiping her coat down. ‘It doesn’t work that way anymore. We can, um, we can stay as long as we like.’
Tales of Eve Page 2
