Future Tense

by Frank Almond

  Tree looked to me. I shook my head.

  “Stephen’s right, Emma,” said Tree. “This looks like another implant—it’s too much of a co-incidence.”

  “Oh, not you as well!” she cried.

  She tried to raise herself up but we all held her down.

  “Let go of me! I’m going to Casualty—I want this thing removed! Get off me!”

  “Emma—listen to me—is it hurting you?” I said.

  “No.”

  “Then just leave it. It’s just one more reason for us to find the Duck as soon as possible. He knows about these things. He’ll know what to do,” I said. And then under my breath I added, “He probably put it there.”

  “All right!” she snapped. “Now let me up!”

  “You won’t go to hospital?” I said.

  “No. Now get off me—all of you!”

  We let her go. She jumped up, pushed me out of the way and rushed to her cabin, crying. Emily hurried after her, closing the door quietly behind her.

  I went over and got the bags and brought them back to the coffee table.

  “I got all the OS maps—how did Emily get on?”

  Tree shuffled through some papers on the floor and handed me a neatly drawn map, depicting the Castle island, the two islands in the bay, and the horseshoe-shaped coastline. A simple arrow indicated north. She had even drawn a cute cartoon of a family of mammoths crossing the bottom of the page.

  “This is the best she could do,” he said. “She’s made four copies. I estimate the distance from the Castle to the coast to be no more than fifteen miles east—the islands are a little less again—though the one on the right is the farthest away. This is taking the curvature of the earth and a rough idea of the Castle’s height into account.”

  “That narrows it down a bit. You see, this layout—the land shape—this pattern of three islands can’t be that common, can it?” I said. “It’s just going to take a shedload of patience to find somewhere that looks like it on one of these maps.”

  “Then we’d best get started,” said Tree.

  We took a map each and I went over to work on the dining table, while Tree laid his out on the coffee table. Later Emily came out to make Emma a coffee and get her cigarettes. I gave her the two remaining copies of the map she had made and a bundle of the ones I’d bought. She took them back with her, saying that she thought Emma would prefer to work in her cabin.

  We worked all the rest of that afternoon and into the early evening. I went to see how the girls were doing a couple of times, but they had only turned up a couple of possibles, though neither of them quite fitted in with the direction of north on Emily’s map, so they were dismissed. The map-checking continued into the night. Every time one of us found somewhere we thought might be the place, the others pointed out something that excluded it—either the distances were out—the compass bearing off—the presence of other prominent landmarks that would have been visible—something was always wrong. Eventually, we ran out of maps. Everyone wanted to go to bed, but I produced my less detailed Irish maps and we carried on for another hour or so. We drew another blank. Finally, disappointed and beaten, we all turned in.

  But I couldn’t sleep. As I lay there I suddenly thought about the Somerset Levels. Somerset was once encroached by the sea. I didn’t really know how, but I knew the landscape and coastline must have looked very different back in the Ice Age. What if Glastonbury were one of the islands in the bay? And the other was flat-topped Cadbury! The idea excited me—I leapt from my bed and rushed back into the lounge to get out the map of Somerset. That would mean that the Castle was Brent Knoll! It had to be—everything was spot on. The coastline was the Mendips to the north, the Quantocks and Blackdown Hills to the west, and the Dorset Downs to the south.

  I woke Tree, dragged him out of bed, and showed him.

  “Somerset? It can’t be,” he said.

  “Compare Emily’s map,” I said. “See, there—and there—the islands—one pointed and one flattish. It all fits.”

  “It seems to fit,” he yawned. “But how come we couldn’t see the coast of Wales to the north? There was just an ice sheet. We, we were looking at it for seven years—you’re hardly likely to forget a thing like that.”

  “You haven’t,” I said. “What you were looking at was the edge of the Great Ice Sheet itself, beyond the frozen Bristol Channel. It’s an optical illusion—because you were looking at white on white, you couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.”

  “It’s possible I suppose,” he said. “Show Emma and Emily in the morning. Now can I get back to sleep?”

  I could hardly wait till morning, got impatient and went into Emma’s cabin to wake her up at seven a.m. Emily had crashed out in there with her. They were both only half awake as I launched into my brilliant theory.

  Halfway in, Emily muttered, “I thought Cadbury was a man-made hill. It was flattened off much later.”

  “It wasn’t, was it?” I said. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I think so,” said Emily. “Would you be a dear and make us a cup of coffee?”

  “Yeah, sure. But let’s just think about this first—how certain are you about Cadbury?”

  Emma butted in, “The sea-level would have been about four hundred feet below what it is today, anyway.”

  “You’re kidding!” I said. “There was tons of water about—it was the bloody Ice Age!”

  “Yes, but it was all locked up inside the ice sheet—it was thousands of feet thick,” she yawned. “The sea-level sank—you could walk to France, Stephen. Now, about that coffee.”

  * * *

  I walked back to the galley, where Tree, who had heard me moving about, was already up and making a pot of coffee.

  “The theory’s blown,” I said, slumping down on a stool.

  “Yes,” he nodded. “Cadbury’s an ancient earthwork—but not as old as the late Pleistocene. I remembered when I got back to bed.”

  “Well, I wish you’d come and told me,” I said. “I’ve just made myself look a right pillock in there. Also, the water-level would have been—”

  “—Yes, way too low,” nodded Tree. “So, I got to thinking—your landscape fits so well—why couldn’t it be in the future—a New Ice Age, though not as severe—a thinner ice sheet—higher water levels?”

  “Is that possible?”

  “I don’t see why not—what with global warming—maybe the thing was just getting started,” said Tree, pouring four coffees.

  “Ah, but what about the mammoths? You said there were woolly mammoths.”

  “Genetically cloned from the DNA of those frozen Siberian ones and the Indian Elephant, its closest relative,” said Tree. “A new species for a new climate. A lot of that malarkey went on in the third millennium. They were cloning everything from carrots to humans—till the Clone Wars. Then it was banned.”

  “You mean human clones will one day fight real humans?”

  “No I mean carrots will fight humans,” he said. He picked up two of the cups and set off for the sleeping quarters.

  “You are joking!” I said.

  “No—some smart alec developed a self-picking variety—they formed an underground alliance with the turnips and potatoes and revolted in East Anglia and the American Garden States!”

  * * *

  A new plan was made over breakfast. It was decided that Tree would take the time machine forward to the end of the third millennium and find out when the woolly mammoth was genetically brought back from extinction, and what date the mini Ice Age occurred. He would then go to that time period and look up the maps for the Somerset Levels. If a prison or a castle was ever built on Brent Knoll there would be some record of it somewhere. There was no risk, he assured us—he would just look it all up in a Personal Leisure Education And Simulated Ultra Restful Environment-Dome. These things were the twenty-ninth century equivalent of a phone box, the internet and an amusement arcade all rolled into one, but they had a teleportation service an
d access to much more information, as well as realview links to the rest of the world and all the new space colonies. You could receive food and drink inside them, sleep in them, obtain a divorce, or, if you were really bored with life, pay to enter a virtual reality world in which your wildest dreams could be realized. By the last century of the third millennium the old expression, get a life had evolved into, have you got change for a life? The smart answer to which was, yes, but do you really want this change? If there was a danger, Tree informed us, it was that some people found PLEASURE-Domes so seductive that they never came out of them again, even though they were no bigger than a seaside changing-hut. They just signed all their money and possessions over to the company that sponsored or owned the particular one they had taken a fancy to and retired in them. The late twenty-ninth century landscape was apparently littered with these strange cylindrical booths, topped with their characteristic onion domes, which Tree told me were matter transceivers. They sounded to me like the end of civilisation.

  * * *

  Six hours later I was blaming myself:

  “I should have gone with him,” I said.

  Emily was sitting on the lounge bench—crying her eyes out—being comforted by Emma.

  “The best laid plans of trees and men,” I said. “We’re right up the creek now. Literally. Stuck on a barge in Bristol in nineteen-bloody-sixty. Black and white telly, two lousy channels, and the worst food in Europe. Oh well, at least we’ve got England’s 1966 World Cup win to look forward to. I checked the last time I was in the third millennium—thirty years of hurt? England won’t win it again for at least a thousand years!”

  “Oh, shut up, Stephen,” said Emma. “Can’t you see Emily’s upset?”

  “I’m sorry, but this is just typical of the sort of luck I have,” I said.

  “This isn’t just about you, you know—we’re all in this together,” said Emma. “Emily, do you want to go for a walk? We can get away from his moaning.”

  Emily sniffed a nod.

  I watched them climb the wooden staircase and listened to them walk across the deck and go up the gangplank. And then I went and got the big tub of pistachio ice cream from the fridge and scoffed the lot. I did start to feel a bit guilty, not just about eating Emily’s ice cream, but also about not seeming to care about old Tree. Anything could have happened to him. He could have been dead for all I knew.

  * * *

  It was starting to get dark. I lay on the lounge bench and closed my eyes. No sooner had I shut them than I began to have the strangest, most vivid dream—a floating dream. I know I was floating on a barge, but the river was so calm and the barge so heavy that there was hardly any sensation of movement. No, this was a gentle rocking motion, accompanied by a peculiar pulsing vibration. And then I got the impression that I could hear water dripping—thousands of tiny droplets of water. It was quite a restful feeling, even though the dream was so lucid. I opened my eyes and smiled—the whole of the barge’s interior, fixtures and fittings, superstructure—even the cups on the table and the little curtains at the windows—were imbued with blue, green and red light. What I mean is, certain straight lines were turning a neon red, while anything with curvy lines—like the light bulbs, empty ice cream tub, my clothes, were blue, and even green in patches, but not ordinary green, because all the backgrounds to the solids were black, so the colours looked brighter. It was as though someone had sketched the cabin on black paper with crayons made of light. I noticed the pulsing sound was getting louder and changing pitch. It sounded like someone repeatedly opening and closing a squeaky door, only the tone of the squeak was low-pitched and evenly modulated.

  I sat up and looked around me. All the colours were pulsing. I reached over and drew aside the curtain and peered out. The quay was slowly sinking. Two pairs of women’s legs ran by. I heard someone shouting my name. But I was unconcerned. It was just a dream. I lay back down and closed my eyes, a smug smile on my lips. And then I heard a banging on the window and sprang upright, tore back the curtain and saw Emma and Emily’s horrified faces.

  “It’s sinking up!” I said.

  I rolled off the bench and launched myself towards the stairs. The noise had become much louder now and the colours were pulsing quicker to keep up. I could hear myself clattering up the stairs, but my legs and arms felt heavy and I realized my feet were sliding off the same rung and my hands were pulling on the same parts of the handrails. I wasn’t getting anywhere! Then I really panicked. The noise was now deafening—the coloured light a rapid flicker.

  “I can’t get up! Can’t get up!” I yelled.

  The barge was like a coloured X-ray all around me. Although I couldn’t see the outside, I could see through the interior of it to the forward cabins and down into the bilge. I could even see through the wooden rungs I was trying to climb up. It was as if the whole molecular structure of the barge was breaking down. I was terrified. I kept trying to pull myself up but I was only able to scale a few rungs. I heard a voice above me.

  “Steve! Steve! Take my hand!”

  I looked up and saw Emma reaching down to me. I let go of the rail with my right hand and tried to stretch it up to her.

  “I can’t,” I said. “Get off! Go!”

  “No!” she shouted. “You can reach! Try—come on!”

  I made one last effort with what little strength I had left and blindly threw myself up, hoping she could grab my hand. I felt her hand snap around mine and hold me. And then her other hand locked onto my wrist and she was practically dragging my whole body weight up the ladder, though I was helping as much as I could by pulling on the rail and trying to kick off the rungs.

  And then we were in each other’s arms rolling on the deck, desperately trying to keep hold and yet stand up at the same time. I could see the gangplank was gone and we were level with the streetlights on the quay.

  “It’s going up,” I gasped. “We’ll have to jump!”

  We staggered up and were thrown against the gunwale—our bodies naturally bent over the side, like we were both being sick. Suddenly, I really did feel sick—in a few seconds we rose a hundred feet at least, but no one told my stomach. Emily’s face was a pink speck on the quayside. We were rising higher and higher above the rooftops of Clifton and could soon see all the lights of Bristol laid out below us. There was no way either of us could have jumped—the river was already just a thin black ribbon we might easily miss. But then suddenly I was amazed to see Emma trying to climb up on the rail. I pulled her back.

  “Are you mad?” I shouted. “You’ll kill yourself!”

  “We’ve got to try!” she cried.

  But, in the next instant, there could be no second thoughts, no more arguments—the decision was taken out of our hands. The barge suddenly stopped rising and shot off to the west at lightning speed, and it was all we could do to hang on for dear life.

  Chapter 11

  We must have looked like a UFO to the casual observer, out walking the dog, or spending a romantic evening up some lonely country lane. The old barge was lit up like Las Vegas and we were hurtling high up in the night sky over some of the most sparsely populated countryside in England. We headed straight west above the Mendip Hills and angled down into the Somerset Levels—a distance of some thirty miles, covered in a matter of moments. Emma and I watched the whole journey, spellbound, clinging to the safety rail—too terrified to move, in case the wind snatched us away.

  “What’s happening?” cried Emma, as our descent speed slowed.

  The landscape had assumed a sort of monochrome glow—all ghostly pale and streaked with shadows.

  “I can see Glastonbury—and, look—there—is that Brent Knoll?” I said.

  “The light!” said Emma. “It’s getting lighter.”

  She was right. The night was draining away, fading from the zenith point, and leaching back to the horizon.

  “It’s another day—” I started to say.

  “Ice!” screamed Emma, throwing herself on me like
a rugby player and bringing us both down on the decking with a double thud.

  There was a huge jolt, followed by a crunching sound and then a prolonged scraping and bumping. We didn’t dare look up to see what was happening, but it was pretty obvious to us both that the barge had landed and was skidding on ice.

  By now the evening had peeled away and we were squinting up into a glaring grey sky. On and on the heavy boat rumbled like someone bowing a very large violin. We could feel it shudder on every uneven patch and skewing round and round as it raced along, but it was gradually slowing down. Once it had slowed to a safe speed, we both clambered to our feet. We looked around us and then at each other.

  “You know where this is, don’t you?” said Emma, her breath smoking in the cold air.

  “Well, it’s not the Ally Pally Ice Rink, that’s for sure,” I said.

  The barge was back to normal again—all the strange lights had vanished and whatever force had been holding us was gone.

  “No sign of life,” said Emma. She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself. “Brrr—it’s freezing. I’m going down to find something to put on.” She went below.

  I blew into my hands and climbed up onto the roof. I walked forward. Though the barge was still skidding, it was now a gentle slide, and I could easily keep my balance. I was so confident I even put my hands in my trouser pockets. When I reached the end I rested one foot up on the bow, something in the manner of a figurehead. We were barely moving by now and the ice was making a pleasant groaning sound, rather like a long, comfortable fart. Finally, we ground to a halt. And everything fell silent.

  “We’ve stopped, Em!” I shouted.

  “Steve?” said Emma.

  “I’m up here!” I called.

  I looked back and saw her head and shoulders pop up above the flat roof.

  “I brought you this.” She held up a dark brown coat. It was probably Tree’s old army trench coat.

  “It’ll be miles too long for me,” I said.

  “Who cares what you look like out here?” she said.