Jana registered Dora’s confusion. ‘She means the counterpane,’ she explained, thanking the chip for providing the requisite archaic term. Dora wiped her hands as clean as she was able and once again took Mountfort’s hand in hers.
‘Can I ask you a question?’ Quil said to Jana, returning to Mountfort’s stomach and swabbing the wound with some liquid antiseptic. ‘On the day you vanished from your life, in 2141, what exactly happened?’
Jana was taken aback by Quil’s specificity, and wondered how much she already knew. ‘I was sick of being mollycoddled and escorted everywhere by big thugs in cheap suits,’ she explained. ‘I decided to skip school, hang out at the Science Museum. So I gave the guards the slip, but on the way there I was attacked and chased by a gang of men.’
‘Who were they?’
‘Don’t you know?’
Quil looked up curiously. ‘Why should I?’
Jana considered her next words carefully. If she was right, it was a future version of Quil who had sent the men to kill her in 2141, but this Quil didn’t know that because she hadn’t done it yet. In which case, telling Quil the truth now might be the very thing that inspired her to send those men after Jana in the first place. Jana’s head began to swim with the complexity of the paradoxes she was trying to negotiate. Finally she decided to tell the truth and see what happened; it was the best plan she could come up with.
‘I got the impression you sent them to kill me,’ she said. ‘They were after my ENL chip, I think. And they were working for a woman.’
‘A woman?’ Quil said sharply. ‘They said that? They definitely said a woman?’
‘Yes,’ replied Jana, uncertainly. ‘I assumed it was you.’
Quil shook her head firmly. ‘Not me. Depending upon how this conversation goes I might try to kill you now. I certainly tried to kill you last time I met you. But on that specific day, at that point in your timeline? Never.’
‘Why not?’ asked Jana.
‘Jana, listen to me,’ said Quil urgently, Mountfort momentarily forgotten. ‘That day is important. What happened to you is important. More important than you can possibly know. Would you let me take a download of your chip? All the data you’ve got, the recording of that day and anything still left in the buffer.’
Jana was baffled. ‘Um …’
‘Trust me when I say it could save countless lives.’
She was so confused by Quil’s remarkable claim that Jana made a dreadful error and asked: ‘Is that why you wanted my chip when you captured me in 2014?’
The instant she’d said it she knew she’d screwed up. She cursed her idiocy. She’d been wondering how they had known to keep Sweetclover Hall under surveillance in the future, and now she knew – she’d just stupidly told Quil when to wait for them.
‘That’s not actually happened for me yet,’ said Quil, obviously choosing her words with great care. ‘But there’s no reason it has to. If you give me access to your memories, direct from the source, then I can offer you the same kind of deal I offered Dora. There would be no need for us to be enemies. You couldn’t go back to your life, I’m afraid. There’s no way, it would be too … complicated. But together, you and I, we could make history. Right a great wrong.’
Jana realised her mouth was hanging open in astonishment and clamped it shut. ‘If I did that, gave you my chip, you’d have to tell me what is going on. What you’re doing here. About the army downstairs, the base in 2014, everything.’
‘Everything,’ nodded Quil. ‘Full disclosure. Then, if you decide not to help me, but promise not to try to stop me, you’ll be free to go wherever and whenever you want. We can end this little war of ours before it even begins.’
Mountfort gave a low gurgling moan and Quil returned her attention to his wound. She used the silver tool a last time, to burn the flesh closed.
‘Think about it,’ said Quil, smoke from Mountfort’s cauterized wound wreathing her masked face.
Jana was thinking about it. It sounded like a good deal. She had expected Quil to be a cackling super-villain, but the burnt woman was more complex than that: impossible to read, impossible to understand. She spoke about righting wrongs and correcting injustices, and obviously loved her unlikely husband. Jana couldn’t see an obviously correct choice.
Perhaps Dora had been right to make a deal with her.
‘I will think about it,’ she said. ‘You’ve overseen this place yourself. Scavenged the equipment, built what you couldn’t get. You’re clever. A scientist, I think. So maybe you can tell me – how are we travelling through time? And why us?’
‘A scientist,’ said Quil wistfully. ‘Yes, I suppose I was, once upon a time.’
‘What are you now, then?’ asked Jana.
Quil shrugged as she stood away from the bed and dropped the tool back in the tray. ‘Terrorist. Freedom fighter. Freak. Wife. Take your pick, your mileage may vary. But you asked about time travel. I wish I could give you all the answers. My understanding is theoretical and incomplete.’
‘Give me the bullet points.’
Quil busied herself with the drip and the ECG, and began to connect Mountfort to them. She spoke as she worked.
‘They found an asteroid out in the Kuiper Belt. It was composed of a kind of substance that messes with time somehow,’ she said. ‘I spent years experimenting, trying to understand its properties and powers. It changed me. Literally. Some of it was absorbed through my skin, I think, like mercury. Anyway, when the war got really bad, when I thought my forces were going to be utterly defeated, I used the asteroid to make a weapon. The greatest discovery in a century and I turned it into a bomb.’ Quil shook her head, as if even she could hardly believe what she had done. ‘And of course, as all great scientific mistakes inevitably do, it destroyed its creator. It blew up right on top of me. The explosion threw me back to 1640, burnt to a crisp, and cracked the structure of time, which for the purposes of this explanation you can think of as crystalline. I shattered time itself. Can you imagine such a thing?’
Jana shook her head. ‘Not really, no.’
‘Me either, and I did it.’ Quil laughed mirthlessly. ‘I’ve spent a lot of time down here trying to work it all out; the equations, the mechanics of it. I’m still none the wiser. I hate to admit it, but I think I’m just not clever enough. There is one guy, back in my time, who might have been able to figure it out. When I finally get back there I plan on giving him my findings, see if he can make sense of it all.’
Jana considered Quil’s answer. ‘But that doesn’t answer my main question. How are we – Kaz and Dora and me – travelling through time?’
Quil shook her head. ‘Beats me. I think, to stick with my analogy, that we’re kind of navigating the cracks in the crystal to different times and places. It’s a consequence of having been exposed to the raw asteroid.’
‘But Dora, Kaz and I haven’t been to your time; we’ve never touched this asteroid thing,’ Jana said.
‘And that’s the great talent of this particular material. It starts working before you are exposed to it. The effect travels backwards down your timeline from the moment of exposure. In a few months of your subjective timeline, you’ll be exposed to it. Which means all three of you are heading for the future soon. But I already know that, ’cause I met you there.’
Jana’s head was beginning to spin. ‘This is so confusing,’ she said softly.
‘You get used to it soon enough,’ said Quil. ‘Just accept that you’re never going to work it all out until it’s over. Go with the flow.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s the only way.’ She stepped away from the bed.
Mountfort was now connected. His heartbeat was weak but the ECG showed it to be steady. Quil waved her hands at him distractedly.
‘That’s the best I can do,’ she told Dora. ‘I stopped the internal bleeding, patched the wound. He’s getting antibiotics through the drip. The shock might still kill him, unless I can find a suitable blood donor. So I’m going to type his blood, then yours and he
rs, OK?’ Quil gestured at Dora.
Dora looked to Jana for reassurance. ‘She’s going to take a sample of our blood and see if we match Mountfort’s blood type,’ explained Jana patiently. ‘If we do, she can take some of our blood and put it in him. It will save his life.’
Dora’s face was a picture of horror and disgust.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Jana, smiling at Dora’s primitive fears. ‘It’s a very common thing in the future. Happens every day. You’ll be fine. If you want to save him, we need to do it.’
Dora nodded tentatively. ‘Very well,’ she told Quil. ‘You may take my blood if it will save him.’
Quil walked over to a cabinet and removed a syringe, a bowl and some chemicals in small bottles. She set to work, using the bedside table.
‘I have a question,’ said Dora. ‘What year do you hail from? When did you start … everything?’
Quil shook her head, as if Dora had asked a very tough question indeed. ‘There are lots of possible answers to that. The date I was born. The date I first travelled in time. But let’s go with May twenty-seventh 2155.’
‘And what occurred upon that day?’
‘If you keep to our deal, you’ll never need to know.’
‘Tell me, then,’ said Jana.
‘If you keep to our deal, you can see for yourself. Believe me, it’s something you need to experience. Being told isn’t adequate.’ Quil looked up from the bowl where she had just squirted a syringe of Mountfort’s blood. ‘Since we’re being so open, there’s something else I want to know,’ she said. ‘The boy, Kaz. Who is he?’
Jana shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Wrong place, wrong time, I think. He was there when Dora and I arrived in 2014. He seemed surprised to see us, so I don’t think he was there on purpose.’
‘He may not have chosen to be there, but that doesn’t mean that he wasn’t supposed to be there,’ said Quil. ‘Someone wanted him to meet you and Dora, you can count on that.’
Jana suspected that someone might have been ‘Steve’, but she wasn’t going to mention him; she’d already given away too much by accident. She was acutely aware that as relaxed and friendly as their chat seemed, she was still holding Quil at gunpoint. Who knew how their talk would have gone if their positions had been reversed.
Quil was about to take a sample of Dora’s blood when two things happened at once.
First there was the sound of a huge explosion somewhere above them, the room shook and dust showered from the ceiling.
Then Jana felt sharp, cold steel at her throat.
27
Dora let out an involuntary squeal as the house shook, and then a second louder one when she saw Sweetclover standing behind Jana with his knife at her throat.
‘Don’t kill her,’ shouted Quil as she dropped the bowl of Mountfort’s blood. ‘We need her alive, Hank.’
Jana was looking at Dora, mouthing ‘Sorry’ as Quil ran past her out into the main chamber.
There was another heavy impact in the house above and another shower of dust and mortar.
‘Up,’ barked Sweetclover.
Dora got to her feet.
‘Drop the pistols.’
Jana did so.
‘Outside.’ He pushed Jana forward.
Jana and Dora walked out the door as Sweetclover scooped up the pistols from the floor, then both jumped and turned in horror as a single shot rang out from the sickroom. Sweetclover was standing over Mountfort’s bed, a smoking flintlock in his right hand. Dora flew at him through the doorway, hands out, scratching at his face, kicking and wailing. He batted her away with a mighty swipe of his hand and she crashed to the floor.
‘You bastard,’ spat Jana as Sweetclover strode out of the room. ‘He was defenceless.’
He raised the second pistol and pointed it at Jana’s right calf. ‘Do not test me, wench,’ he said, although he sounded more tired than angry. ‘My wife forbad me to kill you, but she did not say I could not hurt you.’
‘I will see you hang for that,’ said Dora as she rose unsteadily, her head swimming from the impact of Sweetclover’s blow.
‘In case you haven’t noticed,’ shouted Quil from the computer terminal, ‘the house is being bombarded. Could everyone please sit down and shut up while I deal with this? Hank, don’t hurt them but don’t let them leave. Girls, our deal still stands. Just keep out of my way and let me work.’
There was another concussive blast from above, louder and closer than the last two.
‘They are finding their range,’ said Sweetclover as he waved the pistol to indicate that the girls should sit against the wall. Dora ran to her mother, who was still unconscious. She rested Sarah’s head on her lap and looked up at the bank of floating screens. Jana came and sat beside her.
‘Sorry,’ said Jana, looking crestfallen. ‘I kind of forgot about him.’
Dora wanted to lash out, to blame Jana for Mountfort’s needless death, but in truth she had also forgotten about Sweetclover.
‘Do not fret, Jana,’ she said.
‘Is this your mom?’
‘It is.’
Jana reached over and placed her hand on Sarah’s neck. ‘What are you doing?’ asked Dora.
‘Just checking her pulse. She’s fine.’ Jana smiled. ‘So they brainwashed her, yeah?’
‘I do not know what that word means,’ replied Dora impatiently. She was getting a little sick of the way future-people spoke to her.
‘Sorry. Quil mentioned something called a mind-writer?’
‘Yes, a machine from the future. It has made my mother gullible and stupid. She is asleep now, for the alarums and excitements of this day have overwhelmed her senses. When she wakes, Quil has promised to restore her to her right mind.’
Jana looked sceptical. ‘I wonder how many of her promises she’ll feel like keeping now she’s got a gun.’
‘I was not armed when she offered me a truce,’ Dora pointed out.
‘I hope you’re not plotting against me over there,’ shouted Quil.
‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ Jana replied, sarcastically.
‘You should come watch this.’ Quil waved at the screens. ‘Should be fun.’
Dora exchanged a glance with Jana, who shrugged. ‘Why not,’ she said.
Dora removed Sarah’s apron, balled it up to use as a pillow and rested her mother’s head upon it. Then she and Jana walked over to stand beside Quil at the wall of floating screens. More impacts rattled the house above.
‘So,’ said Quil, as if addressing a classroom. ‘Before us we have four main screens. This one, top right, shows us an aerial view of the ridge to the east. As you can see, parliamentary forces have occupied the ridge and set up their cannons. I thought they might. It’s the best vantage point. They got our range very quickly, which is impressive, but their fire won’t be able to penetrate the forcefield I’ve erected around the house.’
‘A forcefield is a kind of invisible wall,’ said Jana. Dora swallowed her frustration and nodded thanks for the translation.
‘I have a surprise in store for them,’ said Quil. ‘But let’s allow them a little time to try and work out why their cannonballs are bouncing off thin air. First I think I’ll deal with these gentlemen.’ She indicated the screen below, which showed another aerial view, this time a column of men carrying pikes and muskets marching through the gate that marked the boundary of the Sweetclover estate.
‘How are you seeing this?’ Dora asked.
‘Eyeskys. I have flying machines that send me pictures,’ said Quil as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
Dora watched the screen, imagining what it would be like to see such a view for real, to be flying above the ground looking down on it like a god. What would that do, she wondered, to a person’s sense of power, seeing people scurrying below like ants?
‘My dear, should you not be closing your invisible door?’ said Sweetclover, mildly.
‘Patience,’ replied Quil. ‘I need to wait for the last man to pass th
rough the gate. That’ll take a couple of minutes yet. So let’s see how the cavalry are getting on.’ She indicated the top left screen on which a group of twenty mounted men were trotting, as casually as could be, across a large field, again seen from above but with a much steadier picture. ‘That’s the view from one of the cameras on the roof of the hall’s central tower,’ explained Quil.
‘We are under attack on three fronts,’ observed Sweetclover.
‘Yes, we are,’ agreed Quil. ‘And none of them poses any threat to us.’
‘Will you send your militia to fight them?’ asked Dora.
‘Militia?’ asked Quil.
‘The blue-faced guards.’
‘Oh, you mean the Celts.’
Dora was not sure that she did, but did not argue.
‘No need,’ explained Quil. ‘I’ve only got ten of them awake at the moment. They’re good fighters, but they’re not quite enough to win this battle. I’ve got them manning the tower guns. Oh look, they’re through.’ She pointed to the screen that showed the infantry, who had now all passed through the gate and were fanning out as they began to approach the outer edge of the hall’s gardens. Quil turned to her husband and grabbed his arm, as if she were an overexcited girl. ‘I’d forgotten how much I missed this,’ she said. ‘I love a good battle.’
Dora did not believe that anyone who enjoyed battle could be quite right in the head, but she kept the thought to herself.
‘Can we please begin our defence,’ replied Sweetclover, who looked far less enthusiastic than his wife about watching an army converge upon his home.
‘Sure,’ said Quil. ‘Pick one. Who goes first?’
‘Cannons, I think,’ he said with a strained smile.
‘Cannons it is,’ said Quil, pushing one of keys on the board before her. ‘Fire in the hole!’
The top right screen turned bright orange and a moment later they felt the ground beneath their feet rumble and ripple as if some great giant were stomping towards them. The screen filled with fire and smoke and then went dead.
‘Damn, got the eyesky,’ cursed Quil.
TimeBomb: The TimeBomb Trilogy: Book 1 Page 25
