My eyes widen as her words sink in.
‘You can do that? I ask slowly, cautiously. ‘I mean … it’s possible?’
‘You should apply,’ Kessa says, her voice hushed. ‘I’ve asked Dad and he’s going to find out the right department to go to. You just have to show them what you can do. I mean, this is an absolute breakthrough. Time travel.’ She grabs my shoulders and shakes. ‘We’re talking freaking time travel, Scout.’
I’m so scared and grateful and bewildered at once that I’m not sure what to think. All I say is: ‘You told your dad?’
‘Don’t worry. No names. And nothing about time travel either. He works for the Department of Infrastructure, so he’s not much help anyway.’ She grins. ‘I’m going to wait until I’ve learnt how to do that thing myself and blow their minds the way you did to me.’
My mouth lifts at the edges. ‘I didn’t exactly blow your mind …’
‘Yes. You did.’ A wink. ‘And worth every moment. But this is brilliant, don’t you think? You just have to demonstrate ways that it will contribute to our quality of life, and all that jazz.’
‘Well, that’s a cinch. Time skipping can save your life,’ I say quickly. ‘Anyone can escape danger once they know how to jump …’
Even as I say the words, I hear an echo from another place: Thousands died. So many dots marked ‘deceased’ on the grid. Even if we manage to stop the firestorm that’s coming, there will be others. Teaching citizens to skip could save so many lives.
‘I could organise an online tutorial,’ I whisper. ‘As part of the submission, I mean. Everyone could learn … eventually. Like, during an earthquake or something, people could jump forwards until it’s over.’
‘Yes!’ We’re both leaning forwards, huddled together. ‘It’s like you’ve invented a new way of understanding time. Or whatever. And you don’t have to mention the woman you found. Like maybe pretend you grew up outside the city limits with other illegals –’
She breaks off and pushes her lips together as if worried that it’s an insult to suggest I lived with other illegals.
I just shake my head. Don’t worry about it. But it still burns a bit.
‘Once they know what you can do, they’ll have to make you a real citizen,’ Kessa continues, still lost in the idea. ‘You could get your own chip inserted and then sit the entrance test for Karoly High again next year, maybe using a different name. I bet they’d make an age exception. We’d still be at school together. Except this time you’d be totally legit.’
She leans back and grins.
I blink three or four times, suddenly unsure.
‘What’s wrong?’
I find a smile. ‘This is great. Really. It’s a brilliant idea. It’s just …’
‘Just what?’
‘You’re thinking like a citizen. But … people like me, we don’t have the same rights as you. I mean … what if they reject me?’ I know how hard they tried to catch me in the other timestream.
Kessa shrugs. ‘They can’t put you in jail just for being illegal. They’ll just send you out of the city, right? But you’re not chipped so they wouldn’t be able to follow you. So you can come back. You just give a different name when you apply so they won’t be able to trace you either way.’
She’s right. But I’d still be fronting up and admitting I’m an illegal who can time skip. The burst I felt when I first heard the idea is already fading.
‘You can trust them,’ Kessa says. ‘I get that … it must have been hard, growing up the way you have. But … it’s not like they singled you out. They’re just trying to limit resource use because of shortages. Which is fair enough, I think. The government is trying to do what’s right for everyone. They’re not evil, you know.’
It’s only when I hear her tone rise near the end that I realise what’s bothering her. Her dad works for the government. Of course she doesn’t think they’re evil.
‘Maybe the system hasn’t been fair to you,’ Kessa continues. ‘But it’s not all bad.’
‘I know, I’m sorry,’ I say quickly. ‘I’m not saying that the system’s … unfair or anything.’ Not for citizens, it’s not.
Even though I’m thinking straight again, the idea has left a sting in my heart, like saltwater in an open wound. Just for a moment, I thought I had a chance at being a real citizen. No more hiding. Legit.
After a while my eyes slide to look at Kessa, only to find her doing the same to me.
‘It’ll be worth it, Scout,’ she says softly and dips her head. ‘You’ll be famous …’
I don’t have the heart to admit I’m not sure about this anymore so I just say, ‘Don’t want to be famous. They’ll probably try to use time travel to sell make-up or something.’ But I can’t help snorting at the idea as I say it, and Kessa cracks up too.
Mum’s sitting on the edge of her armchair when I come home, squinting at the comscreen, scanning the crowd at the rear of the presenter. I’m not surprised when I see that it’s a news segment about the bombing of a church in Egypt.
She won’t find him, my dad, no matter how hard she searches, but I’d never say that outright. If he managed to escape persecution once he was sent back, he wouldn’t be dumb enough to get his face on international TV. I think Mum knows that too; it’s just easier for her to watch, in case he might be there, than to accept the alternative.
The news segment finishes and I head over to the kitchenette while she scrolls to the next report. Dinner is pretty much cooked by the time Mum’s finished trawling through the news segments. I flip one half of the omelette on top of the other, then slice it in two and slide half onto each plate.
I settle into the armchair beside her and rest the plate on my knees. ‘Did you know that Christophe Eichmann was illegal?’
‘Really? No. Never heard that.’
‘Yeah. Kessa said they don’t like to publicise it much. He applied for citizenship once he invented the thermal inverter. In exchange for the invention, I guess.’
‘Well … I never knew that,’ says Mum. I can see her mulling it over. ‘I wonder if …’ Our eyes meet and she shakes her head. ‘Pity you don’t have any blueprints for the latest energy breakthrough.’ A soft laugh.
‘Yeah. I know.’ Using the edge of my fork I cut off a corner of the omelette. ‘Pity.’
I pop it into my mouth, thinking about Kessa’s faith in the system. How must it feel to live with that confidence, the sense of security?
When I turn to Mum she’s watching me with narrowed eyes, like a clairvoyant examining my aura. ‘What is it?’ she asks slowly.
How does she do that? ‘What is what?’
‘What are you thinking?’
‘It’s nothing. I mean, it’s risky so there’s no point.’
One of Mum’s eyebrows rises slowly. ‘Try me.’
We’ve been meditating every day, but I don’t bother to talk Mum through it anymore. Instead I sit on the edge of the tunnel, as close as I can to reaching the point where I could let go without actually dropping in. I’m getting really clear now about the point between staying and falling away.
Mum’s getting the hang of it too, says that she feels better than she has in weeks. But I still haven’t told her it’s more than a magic trick. I’ve been waiting for the right moment to explain. And I think that moment just arrived.
‘We need to ask Alistair,’ Mum says evenly. The whole time I’ve been talking she’s held a hand pressed over her mouth, but now she lets it drop to her lap. ‘I want to hear what he thinks.’
I showed her two jumps as I explained how it works, selling it as natural and super easy, like an extension of meditation.
Each time I saw the flicker of a frown, I leapt straight to how useful it is. In an earthquake … or a fire … it’s the perfect way to escape. Could maybe save your life.
Could maybe save thousands.
It still scares me, the idea of coming out to apply for citizenship, but I already see this as an ‘in’ to show Mum and Alistair that ti
me skipping is possible. It’s the first step towards teaching them how to do it.
Already Mum’s calling Alistair, asking if he has any time to drop round. If I needed any more evidence that Mum gets what this opportunity could mean, here it is. The whole time Alistair’s been our friend, teaching me how to code and offering advice, we’ve never once said out loud what’s really going on. None of us has come out and said the word: illegal.
Even on a Sunday evening, there’s no guarantee Alistair’s not working. But two minutes later we hear the buzz of an entrance request.
The door slips open but no-one appears for a minute. Welcome to the slow-mo world of a ninety-one-year-old.
He steps in, and lifts an arm as Mum grasps his hand in both of hers. He’s dressed in a pair of dark-grey slacks and a crisp white shirt, same as always.
‘Alistair, thank you for coming,’ she says, guiding him to an armchair. ‘Please, take a seat. Can I offer you some tea?’ A standard welcome.
‘Thank you, no.’ A standard response.
As he makes his way across to the armchair, an image flashes in my mind of him lying in the hospital bed, his eyes rimmed red and crusty with age. It’s hazy now, like a dream, but the feelings are sharp. More than anything I remember the fear of him dying, of never seeing him again.
Mum gets straight to the point, explaining about Christophe Eichmann and asking if Alistair knows anything that might help us. She doesn’t need to explain who would be applying for citizenship status.
‘It’s been done,’ he says, after a long inhale. ‘Twice, that I know of. From what I understand, the application needs to be … exceptional.’
‘I can do exceptional.’ I was leaning against the kitchenette, but I can’t help standing away from the bench. Suddenly, it’s hard to stay still. ‘Remember the stuff I was telling you about Relative Time Theory? I can do it now. For real.’
Alistair’s white eyebrows narrow. ‘You’re saying you can –’
‘Totally. Yep.’ I’ve told him about this already; before I managed my first-ever skip. Not that he believed it was real. ‘I’ll show you.’
‘Wait,’ Mum says and lifts a hand. ‘We’ll get to that in a moment. First I want to ask about the … risks involved. What do you think, Alistair? I’m worried we might be exposed.’
It takes a while for him to pull his gaze away from me. I can tell he’s intrigued. This is the first time he’s considering that the stuff I’ve told him about time travel might actually be true. After all, this time I can prove it by jumping in front of him.
He looks away as he thinks. ‘Well … illegal status in itself isn’t breaking any law.’ He doesn’t need to mention the laws against bribing a GP into faking an abortion certificate. Or stealing a chip from a dead woman’s wrist.
‘You’d have to pretend that you were born to a mother who was also illegal,’ Alistair continues. ‘Hide any connection to this life.’
Mum leans forwards. ‘To me.’
Our eyes meet, both aware of the risks we’ve taken and the price we’d pay if we were ever discovered.
‘I don’t know why we’re even talking about doing this,’ I mutter, and lean back against the bench. ‘I mean, this is just shy of walking in and giving myself away. It’s such a dumb risk.’ ‘Risks can be calculated.’ Alistair shifts stiffly in his chair and rests a hand on his knee. ‘If you really can travel through time … then I think you have a case. A strong one, in fact. I think you should apply.’
‘Really?’ I wasn’t expecting this. Now that I’m hearing Alistair say we should apply, I realise I have to spell it out. ‘Once I admit I’m illegal, I’ll have no rights. What’s stopping them from making up any excuse to chuck me in jail?’ Or worse, developing their drug and testing it on me?
Mum stays quiet, looking at Alistair.
‘Even the government has to stay within the law,’ he says. ‘As long as there’s no way of tracing you to the stolen chip, they’d have no legal right to detain you.’ Alistair shifts in his chair and swaps to rest his other hand on a knee. ‘If we plan this carefully, even if they reject your application, we can make sure you’re protected.’
‘But we can’t be sure, I mean –’
‘You’ll be okay. I promise.’
‘But you can’t promise that. There’s no way to protect an illegal.’ I make a point not to look over at Mum, sure she’s shooting me a goggle-eyed warning. It’s borderline rude to be arguing like this, but I don’t stop. He’s trying to help, but he hasn’t seen the wall of Feds in black fatigues, their hidden motion-sensors. ‘That’s the whole problem. No-one can –’
‘I can.’ Alistair’s voice rises above mine as I break off, pulled up by the force in his tone. He seems almost angry. The muscles in his jaw are clenched and both hands are clasped in fists.
‘I can protect you, Scout,’ he says as his head lowers, ‘because I work in the Department of Illegals.’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
‘YOU WORK AT the DOI?’ It’s Mum who breaks the shock in the room, her eyes as wide as mine. ‘All this time?’
Alistair hasn’t moved. ‘We monitor illegals who enter the city, at least those we manage to find. Usually we catch them via the black market. Sometimes fraud. Citizens sometimes give them away, paying illegals credits on the black market, and being found out when the credits are spent in unusual places.’
‘But why didn’t you turn us in?’ Mum and I say in tandem.
Both bushy eyebrows go up as Alistair shakes his head. ‘For six years you were living right under my nose. Six years and I never knew. It wasn’t until Scout unlocked your door that day that I realised what was going on. But by then, I suppose … I couldn’t –’
Mum glances my way with a slight head-shake. How close did we come?
Alistair keeps going. ‘Most parents who keep an illegal baby end up buying something that gives them away. Nappies, or a nanny-bot. They’re easy to catch because they can’t help accessing the ration system. But Miya …’ He lets out a snort, more with respect than anything else. ‘My own next-door neighbour and I never knew.’
‘How did you cope without nappies?’ I ask her.
‘Made them from old towels. I had so few credits, I was studying online at the time.’ Mum lets out a light laugh. She almost sounds embarrassed. ‘I used to rinse them at my feet in the shower. I was even too scared to buy proper nappy soak.’
Too smart, more like. For some reason she seems shy to be talking about this, but I don’t think I’ve ever been prouder of her than I am now. It’s not just the sacrifice she made to keep me, but the way she kept us both safe all this time …
She’s worked too hard for me to mess it all up. She deserves way more than she has right now. Way more than she got in the firestorm.
‘And Scout.’ Alistair turns to me. ‘Even when you were little, I saw the potential. You had the smarts to survive, although there were times …’ He drifts off.
‘What?’
‘Well, sometimes I had to step in, steer a colleague down a different path by asking for help with other work. The selection committee at Karoly High were monitoring your combehaviour so I created a fake comscreen history …’ He drifts off, thinking. ‘The thing is … I couldn’t turn you in now. Not that I would. But you see, I have a lot to lose as well.’
Alistair keeps his eyes on the rug at his feet, as if he doesn’t want to see the way we’re looking at him. I don’t want think about how close I’ve come to being caught without even knowing it.
How many times did Alistair step in and save us? Save me?
How many illegals has he caught?
For the first time since Kessa told me, I feel a quickening in my chest. A whole pile of ideas tumble on top of each other. It’s beginning to dawn on me that if I show them how to time skip, the government wouldn’t need to lock me away in order to study how it works. I’d already be offering to help.
A low voice comes into my mind, an echo from my last moments in the
streets outside Sunshine Hospital: I can’t help you unless you trust me. You’ll be okay.
Could I work with the government scientists? If I agreed to help, would I be safe? I’d be able to explain everything I know about the wildfire. They’d be able to stop it before it gets out of control.
I grab Mum’s shawl from the end of the bed and chuck it at her. ‘Count ten seconds okay? And hold this up for me?’
‘Right. Yes.’ This time she doesn’t try to stop me.
I turn to Alistair. ‘There’s something you need to see.’
Kessa’s about to send me info about the application process when I stop her. Nothing about the application can link to my name, our comscreen, our room. None of this can come anywhere near Mum.
She gets it straight away, popping her eyes. ‘Gosh, sorry. Of course.’ It’s funny though, something about the way she’s biting her lip makes me think she’s enjoying this. Agent X, secret spy. That’s me.
Kessa explains enough for me to find it myself, so I leave the chip at home and head into the state library, wearing a loose coat and a beanie pulled low, hacking into a library terminal with an old compad that I scrounged at the tip. Already I’m playing the role of the person I’ll need to be if this is going to work: an illegal born outside the city limits, with no connection to citizens here. Invisible once more.
‘You’ll have to use a different name for the application,’ Mum says once I come home. A small cloud of steam rises as she pours water into her mug. ‘And I think you should change the way you look. Maybe dye your hair. Thank goodness for the extra credits. We’ll need them to make sure everything’s right.’
‘Dad’s surname … what was that?’ I ask. I’ve been searching and planning a whole heap, but I haven’t begun the application yet. Everything has to be dead-set certain before I do.
‘Karimi.’
‘Okay, I’ll use the name Coutlyn Karimi on the application. Coutlyn’s pretty common these days.’
‘What about Carolyn?’ Mum asks. ‘It’s similar, but you’d have no more ties to this identity. Or the stolen chip.’
Split Infinity Page 12
