The Trouble With Time

by Lexi Revellian

  She held her breath and pressed the two buttons.

  One side of Granville Place was a porticoed terrace with balconies, bay trees and wrought iron. Facing these pleasant houses, forming their depressing view, was a massive blank grey wall with a scurf of litter bins and bags at its base. A woman smoking outside a building stared and followed them with her eyes as they left. Floss led the way into Portman Street, Jace walking beside her. After her three weeks in the future, everything looked both comfortably familiar and different, as it sometimes does when you come back from holiday. She wondered what Jace made of it. His expression was stern and inscrutable.

  She waited at the lights to cross Oxford Street. Primark was directly opposite. But Jace didn’t stop; he stepped straight out into the road in the path of a black cab. The taxi’s brakes squealed and it lurched sideways, stopping inches from him. The outraged cabbie leaned out of the window and yelled, “You want to get your eyes tested, mate!”

  Floss grabbed Jace’s arm, feeling sick, and pulled him back to the safety of the pavement. “Are you crazy? You nearly got knocked down! Why d’you do that?”

  “I forgot your traffic. I’m used to cars that stop for you.”

  “Five people get killed on the roads and five hundred injured, every single day in the UK. You don’t want to be one of them.” Floss was tempted to take a firm hold of his hand as if he was a child, but didn’t quite like to. He was a grown man, and she found his reserve a little intimidating. “Keep with me. Do what I do.”

  The lights changed and they crossed the road and went into Primark.

  When they got to the men’s department, Jace, faced with unfamiliar fashions, didn’t seem to know where to start; he stood transfixed by a particularly virulent Hawaiian shirt with a repeating pattern of hula girls and palm trees.

  “Men wear these?”

  “Not men with taste. Let’s both choose stuff.”

  She asked him his size and whisked round the racks. It amused Floss to think that she was now enacting the role Quinn had with her. But then IEMA had been footing the bill. Luckily it was not possible to overspend in Primark, which was why she’d brought him there – though she earned a decent salary, most of it went on her mortgage. Of course, she could always sell the ring; but it had grown on her, so elegant on her finger, sparkling with all the colours of the rainbow, and she didn’t want to part with it. Her selection was dark blue straight cut jeans, a plain belt, a black T shirt, a grey hoodie, and white trainers. She totted it up; forty-six pounds. She could afford that. Jace chose boxers and socks, then rounded up his own assortment of garments.

  When they’d both finished, Floss looked the armful of clothes he had chosen. “Okay . . . hmm . . . you have to be joking! You don’t want to look like a gigolo . . . That’s quite nice . . .”

  Jace eyed her, and went through her selection critically. “They’re kind of plain . . .”

  “Welcome to men’s fashions, 2015. These are only cheap, but you can get better quality stuff when you’ve got some money. The main thing’s to make you respectable.”

  “These won’t look right in 2050.”

  “Let’s not worry about that now. One step at a time.”

  Jace went into the fitting rooms. Clothes chosen and paid for, they emerged into a sunset that gilded the buildings and cast long shadows. Floss escorted him carefully across the traffic of Oxford Street and into Selfridges, and waited outside the gents’ lavatories while he changed into his new clothes. She realized she was starving. She’d lost track of her real time; wasn’t sure if it was lunch or dinner she wanted.

  Jace emerged frowning; slightly suspicious, and hotter than ever. He muttered, “Are you sure these are all right? Do I look . . . normal?”

  Floss grinned and his frown deepened. She hastened to reassure him. “Better than normal. You look . . . very nice. Let’s go home and eat.”

  Back in Floss’s flat, Jace used her laptop while she made her fall-back speedy stir fry, doubling up the ingredients. She unfolded the rickety white table and put a chair either side and a candle in the middle as she always did when she had a guest to dinner, then opened a bottle of wine and poured them each a glass.

  “To one’s own time.” They clinked glasses.

  Over the meal she tried to get Jace talking. Conversationally, he was quite unlike Quinn; he tended to lapse into silences or make brief responses that gave nothing away. Maybe it was years of brooding alone in future London. Maybe he was still brooding, having got into the habit. Maybe he was focused on the food; his only voluntary remark was, “This is great,” waving his fork, mouth full. She told him about her time in 2050, and about her job in 2015. He listened.

  In the end Floss gave up what was pretty much a monologue and did a little thinking of her own while she ate; now she had the TiTrav, there was no reason not to put her secret plan into action that same evening. The thought made her excited and nervous. She put the place and date she knew by heart into the TiTrav, and an approximate time, erring on the early side. She stuck a new motion sickness patch on the inside of her elbow. Jace’s dark eyes were on her, watching, but he didn’t say anything.

  They had nearly finished eating when she broke the silence to talk about something that had been niggling her; how he was going to manage when he got back to his own time with no money, the wrong clothes and the authorities looking for him. “Have you got someone you trust in 2050 who’ll put you up and help you?”

  “Yes. There’s a woman I know. Kayla Hartley-Hunter.”

  “I know her, she was my boss while I worked at IEMA for a few weeks.”

  He misread Floss’s expression and explained. “She’ll believe my story and keep quiet about it. Even though she’s a time cop.”

  Floss looked at him. There wasn’t a good way to break the news, but she did her best. “Actually, that plan might be flawed. You have to remember, you were away for five years . . .” He flinched and she ground to a halt.

  “What? Tell me.”

  “And everyone thought you’d done a bunk with the TiTrav. You can’t really blame her . . .”

  “Blame Kayla?” His face set. “Why would I? You’re telling me she’s married or got a new boyfriend? I sort of expected that.”

  Floss didn’t believe him. She guessed that at least a part of Jace had hung on to the idea of Kayla waiting, hoping against all reason for his return. He’d needed the thought of her constancy to keep him going through the long solitary years.

  He said, as if reassuring himself, “I’d have to be really unreasonable to think she’d wait indefinitely . . . but she’ll still help me.”

  “She might not . . .” Just tell him. “She’s going out with Quinn.”

  “Quinn?”

  Floss nodded. Jace got up, walked to the window and stared out. After a few tense seconds he came back, sat down and refilled his glass. “Five years ago he was married with three kids.”

  “He got divorced a while back, I think.”

  Another pause. “What was he like with you?”

  “Charming and helpful. Lying his head off. And going by his journal, waiting for the right moment to pounce.”

  “Two-timing shit. She doesn’t know what he’s like. I’m going to get the bastard.”

  Floss heard the unspoken, and get Kayla back. In her opinion, this was unlikely; Kayla had crossed Jace off and moved on. Floss knew better than to share this view. Instead she said, “Look, I’ve been thinking, are you sure you’re doing the right thing? You could be running your head into a noose. Suppose no one believes you? You’ve got no evidence against Quinn. He doesn’t have his illegal TiTrav any more, and as soon as he knows I took it he’ll get rid of any other evidence. It’s a pity I didn’t make a copy of his journal – I didn’t think to at the time.”

  “There’s Ryker.”

  “Ryker won’t testify. What else have you got? Just Scott maintaining he didn’t kill McGuire, and he would say that, wouldn’t he? On the other hand, there’s pl
enty of evidence against you. As soon as you admit you’ve time travelled you’re in for a mandatory fifteen years.”

  “You could give evidence of finding the TiTrav in Quinn’s apartment.”

  “Yes, and be done for timecrime too the minute I tell them I time travelled. I’ve just got away from 2050, I’d be crazy to go back.”

  “I meant make a video.”

  “Would that be admissible? Anyway, it wouldn’t be fair to implicate Ryker after he helped me, and I don’t see how I can leave him out of it if I’m giving evidence. I can see you want revenge on Quinn, but –”

  “It’s not just that. He’s a corrupt cop. I should do something about it. It’s my job.”

  “It was your job five years ago.”

  “Yes, and it’s his fault I’m not still doing it.”

  For an intelligent man he was being obtuse. She said in exasperation, “You don’t seem to see that he’s holding all the cards. He’s a pillar of the establishment, with friends in high places. He knows Prince – I mean King – William, for goodness’ sake! How will you feel if they don’t believe you, and he’s off the hook and you’re in jail?” He said nothing, just looked mulish. Floss gave up on this. She pushed back her chair. “I’m going to wash up.”

  Jace gave her a hand, and it didn’t take long. Floss blew out the candle and folded away the white table and chairs.

  “I’ve got something I have to do. Make yourself some coffee.”

  He gave her a sharp look. “You’re time travelling somewhere, aren’t you?”

  “I won’t be long.”

  “Tell me where you’re going.” He saw her eyebrows lift and said, “Okay, you think it’s none of my business, but where does that leave me if you don’t come back?”

  “I’ll be back.”

  “You don’t know that. Are you going to the past?” She didn’t answer. “If you’re going to the past you need a damn good reason. It’s risky, not just for you but for everyone. It’s not banned for nothing.”

  “You won’t talk me out of it.”

  He waited. She told him, since he would not talk her out of it, though her reason for going was something she never willingly mentioned or thought about. That didn’t mean she didn’t think about it a lot.

  “Fifteen years ago my father was run over and killed. He’d given me a puppy for my birthday the week before, and we were taking him for a walk. I stopped to do up my shoelace, and let go of the lead. The dog ran into the road and my father ran to get him. A car appeared out of nowhere going too fast and knocked him over. He was killed instantly.” Floss tried to stop her voice trembling as the terrible memory played again in her mind, and she was once more her ten-year-old self standing on the pavement watching her father die. “He was only forty-one, a brilliant scientist, and it was my fault. I’m going to save him.”

  Jace stared at her. “You can’t do that! Insanely bad idea.”

  Floss bristled. “I think your going back to clear your name is pretty dumb. You’re still going to do it. I’ve already been to the past once, with Ryker, and nothing happened then. And what about you, you’re back in the past right now!”

  “That’s different.”

  “Yeah, right. Of course it would be totally different when you’re the one doing it.”

  “I’m not intending to interact with anything or anyone. You are.”

  This was just wasting time. “Don’t bother trying to change my mind, I’m going.”

  She got up and moved her fingers towards the TiTrav on her wrist. Jace leaped across the room and grabbed her arm.

  CHAPTER 35

  Time is, time was, time is past

  Sunday, 16th April 1999

  When the blackness cleared Jace saw a sunny spring afternoon and a peaceful suburban street, with hedges growing behind low brick walls and a scarlet phone box on the corner. Street trees cast long shadows and a blackbird sang.

  Floss was staring at him furiously as if she might hit him. “Why did you do that? Let go of me!” She shook his hand off and glowered at him like an angry teenager. “I don’t want you here!”

  “I can’t let you do this. It’s a stupid, crazy thing.”

  “Why? What difference will it make to anyone except my dad, my mum and me? I wish I’d left you in future London!”

  “Too late to take me back now. Let’s talk about this.”

  He sat on a brick wall warm from the sun, and after a few seconds’ hesitation she sat sulkily beside him, not too close, keeping an eye on the road and ready to jump up again at any moment. Jace took a deep breath, paused to collect his thoughts, and tried to reason with her. He kept his voice unemotional, hoping she’d calm down.

  “As part of my training, I went to lectures by the best physicists in the field. Lectures about time. A lot of it went over my head, but one thing I do remember; time is like a river. If you go upstream and dam it to change its course, then its former course will dry up and cease to exist. There aren’t multiple alternative timelines. We only get one, and you’d better be careful how you mess with it. If you save your father’s life, there’ll be fifteen years of changes his presence will make to the world, all of which will alter our present. Any one of those changes could alter it disastrously.”

  She said, “Why should it alter the world disastrously? My father was a good man.”

  “Can’t you see you’re letting emotion stop you thinking clearly? For an intelligent woman you’re being pig-headed.” Her eyebrows went up and her mouth opened, but he carried on. “You remember when you came for me in future London, you said you could only take me back within a three week window, in order not to set up a time paradox? Your father’s been dead for fifteen years. That’s fifteen years’ worth of potential paradoxes. You have no idea of what will happen if you save his life. You may find you don’t have a life to go back to. There may not be a world to go back to.”

  “I’m prepared to take that risk.”

  “It’s not just your risk, it’s ten billion other people’s.”

  “A tiny risk. Point nought nought nought something, I’d say.”

  “Even if you’re right, that’s a tiny risk of total disaster.”

  “I don’t care!” Floss’s voice had risen. “What does it matter? Humanity is on borrowed time anyway. Everyone’s dead by 2170.”

  Her eyes filled with tears and she looked about fifteen. Jace suddenly remembered Saffron crying for her father. Without thinking, he reached out and took her hand, speaking more gently. “I know how you feel –” She yanked her hand away and he corrected himself. “I can imagine how you feel. But Floss, you’re a scientist. You’ve got to think about this rationally. You can’t put your personal needs above the rest of humanity’s. I’m not going to tell you that’s the worst sort of timecrime, because you don’t care – and anyway, we’re both technically guilty of timecrime already. But it’s unethical. It’s wrong.”

  A short silence was broken by the blackbird’s brilliant liquid notes. A pigeon walked past. High above them a tiny silver plane left a thin vapour trail. The fight seemed to have gone out of Floss, and in the still suburban street Jace sensed the atmosphere of a truce. She said in a small voice, “I’m not even sure this is the right place. I remember the phone box, but the road looks different, it’s smaller . . . maybe I remembered the name wrong.”

  Jace hoped she had. Easier all round. “Memory plays tricks. People think of it as a filing cabinet, but it’s more like a garden. Things left there change and grow.”

  They sat for over an hour side by side in the spring sunshine while nothing happened; sometimes silent but mostly talking. Gradually they both relaxed. Floss told Jace about her father, who was the reason she’d become a research scientist in the first place. Like him, she had worked on the contraceptive virus, getting her first job with the same company, Zadotech – which, of course, was why IEMA had abducted her from her own time. She told him about the early work her father’s team had done on the Mapuera strain, whi
ch they isolated from a bat in South America because it was able to infect other species. The programme was terminated shortly before his death – one Wednesday without warning all work had been stopped on it, and Richard Dryden transferred to different research. The vaccine had turned out to be just too contagious; it spread through the animals like wildfire. Zadotech concluded it was not commercially viable – based on epidemiological modelling, just a few vaccinated rabbits would be enough to treat Australia.

  “By the time I joined Zadotech, they’d restarted the programme, hoping to produce a virus that could be tailored to fit any pest species. That’s much easier now – and cheaper. We’ve got way better computer modelling, crystallography and cryo-electron microscopy. I was really pleased. Dad never thought it should be shut down, he could see the possibilities. But it was a business decision, he didn’t get a say.”

  A Red Admiral butterfly zigzagged past. No people had been by. Jace was wondering whether she’d agree if he suggested they went home now, when her whole body stiffened. He turned. They were in the right street after all.

  A man and a young girl were walking towards them, their progress slowed by a labradoodle puppy who lolloped around, wanting to sniff at everything, winding his lead round the girl’s legs. Her attention was focused entirely on the dog, trying to encourage him to walk to heel. The man was smiling as he looked at his daughter with obvious pride and love. A tear ran down Floss’s cheeks, and she brushed it away impatiently. Her father and younger self were getting nearer.

  Floss took a deep breath, and half rose. Her movement attracted her father’s attention, and he glanced their way with a smile as they drew level. Young Floss was too taken up with the puppy to notice them.

  Now they were past, now they were walking away, now they were out of sight. Floss continued to sit, staring down at her shoes.