The present itself had so many strands converging on it that it looked like a frayed rope end. As he watched in awe, he could see some of the possible futures weaving together into the main trunk while others were discarded, separating and dying off like a dead tree branches.
‘Tomorrow can never be known entirely. We who study the past must use it to forge the foundation of a better future.’
He turned slowly round, taking in the size and complexity of the model. There were so many layers; information hid microscopically so that detail was only revealed when you focused on a particular area of it.
He shifted his attention to the earliest part of the timeline, searching for the period in which he and Caitlin had been lost— the Mesolithic. There was no record. The first date, the datum point, was a simple symbol with one line branching out from it. Year zero was only twelve thousand years ago. Josh knew that there was something else before it. As he pushed his consciousness past the date, it expanded, and other symbols appeared.
‘Enough!’ commanded the voice, and the timelines emanating from the cube contracted and the lights went out.
‘Open your eyes,’ she whispered.
He could feel her breath on his skin. She was close, and the hand that had been inside the box was now being held by another.
He blinked back the intensity of the light as his eyes acclimatised to the vibrant colours of the real world once more. His arm was still tingling, and he looked down at it to find the snake tattoo now burned into his skin. The goddess released his hand, and he lifted his arm closer to his face, tracing the already healed scar tissue with his fingers. There was no pain, just a fading warmth as if something hot had been lifted from it a few minutes before.
The tattoo was different to Cat’s.
In the centre of the circle made by the snake’s tail was a small dot, like a tiny island. He turned to Caitlin and showed her the anomaly.
‘It is the mark of the one,’ she whispered quietly.
The goddess stood before him. The box had disappeared, and she was holding the staff once more. He saw her eyes widen at the symbol on his arm. She went down on one knee and touched her free hand to her forehead
‘The continuum has selected a chosen one. May all the paths of time bend before him.’
Josh wanted to laugh, to tell them to stop messing around, but saw in Caitlin’s expression that they were all taking this very seriously
‘Quite,’ said the founder, breaking the reverie. He was obviously finding the over-dramatic performance a little too much. ‘Now that all the formalities have been dealt with, I believe there are quite a number of people who will be wanting to talk to you, my boy.’
68
Golden Hour
Lenin was strapped to a hospital bed surrounded by machines. His head had been shaved, and an array of wires were taped to his skull.
Professor Fermi was making the final adjustments to one of the machines and checking the various monitoring devices. This was to be his epiphany, his moment of glory — after so many years of researching he had the proof he needed to demonstrate the potential of his research. A group of very influential people were watching from the observation booth, a mixture of high-ranking officers from the military and various other government departments.
He turned to the large glass window and signalled to one of his assistants to switch on the mic and start the video recording.
‘Welcome, ladies and gentleman. Thank you all for coming today.’
He walked over to one of the larger machines, a white ring-like torus with an object suspended in the central field. As he neared, a blue glow began to radiate from the edges of the ring.
‘This is a quantum field generator, a research project I have been working on for some time. You will have read in the briefing notes that this is a unique device, similar in power to the Large Hadron Collider, but with a considerably smaller footprint and energy consumption.’
He could see some of his guests were amused by that remark.
‘So, the question on your minds is — what can this do for us? I hope you don’t mind if I answer that particular concern with a practical demonstration.’
The professor motioned to another of his assistants, and a series of medical diagnostic interfaces appeared on the displays beside him. They were paired to screens in the observation room.
On one of the monitors, the observers watched as a guard walked up to Lenin’s bed, took a gun from his jacket and shot Lenin directly in the chest.
The observers seemed unconcerned, and Fermi explained: ‘As you can see from the diagnostics, our patient has suffered a severe gunshot wound to the chest, his organs are in the process of shutting down due to blood loss and the prognosis does not look good.’
A remote camera moved over Lenin’s body, pausing at the site of the wound. X-ray images overlaid the video footage as the professor continued.
‘As you can see, the bullet entered just below the heart, and pierced one of the lungs. The doctors inform me the patient has less than a ten per cent chance of survival, something that under the Injury Survival Scoring system would be deemed as unsurvivable.’
Fermi moved to Lenin’s side, pulled back the bedsheets and picked up a device from the tray beside his bed.
‘In any medical emergency, time is always seen as critical factor. Any battlefield surgeon will tell you that the first hour is the most important and can be the difference between life and death. I believe they call it the “Golden Hour”?’
Fermi activated the device and the lights dimmed momentarily as the light from the quantum field generator flared.
‘No need to be alarmed — the energy levels contained within the unit are carefully regulated. Now observe the wound closely.’
He ran the handheld device, which resembled a glowing magnifying lens, over Lenin’s wounds. As he focused the light on the edges of the flesh, small flickers of energy glistened over them.
‘Time doesn’t have to be our enemy. By accelerating it in a localised way, we can encourage the body to heal more rapidly.’
The video feed from the camera focused on the wound as it began to close; the skin and tissue knitted together at an incredible rate. Those in the observation room stared in amazement as the wound healed in a matter of minutes.
Lenin’s vital signs improved almost instantaneously; both pulse and blood pressure monitors registered a return to normal levels.
‘This is just one of the ways quantum distortion could revolutionise our world — troops healed and back on the front line in under an hour — imagine the effect it would have on morale. They would be virtually invincible!’
There was a round of applause from the observers, although Fermi had already turned away from them. He knew that he had just secured the extra funding to make this project a reality.
He powered down the quantum field generator. Josh’s watch sat floating in the middle of the torus. He carefully plucked it from the magnetic fields that were holding it in place and put it in his pocket.
Lenin groaned as the anaesthetic began to wear off. Fermi motioned to the medics to attend to him. He was still comatose, but his signs were stable. They pulled out the bed from the wall and wheeled it into the corridor and down to a waiting ambulance.
Fermi turned back to his audience. ‘Now, I believe drinks are being served in the executive suite. If you would be so kind as to meet me there, we can discuss terms.’
69
Retirement
Josh walked into the kitchen and put the basket of freshly picked vegetables on the worktop. They were still caked in mud. He took each one and washed the dirt off under the tap, scrubbing at their surface until they were shiny.
The colonel had shown him the best years from which to harvest: the farms and allotments of the 11.900s were his particular favourites. There was a different pattern to life back before the First World War. It was hard to describe — there was a sense of innocence back in that era. The people he met th
ere were almost like children. They were kind and trusting, and their doors were never locked — mainly because they had nothing worth stealing. Josh had spent days wandering through the countryside of Kent in 11.902 without any idea of where he was going, and had been overwhelmed by the kindness and hospitality of the people that he met.
They had no comprehension of what was happening beyond their village, no television or internet to show them the terrible things that war could do — nor did they seem to care. It was a simple way of life, slow-paced and stress-free.
There was a shout from the study and Josh walked in to find his mother and the colonel in some kind of deadlock. The colonel was clutching a small stack of newspapers tightly to his chest, while his mother was wearing an apron and a pair of rubber gloves and was wielding a large black rubbish sack.
‘Mrs Jones, I must insist that you leave my things as you found them!’
His mum looked well. She’d spent the last two weeks in the room next to his. He’d requisitioned some of Marie Antoinette’s bedroom furniture from the Antiquarians. It was good to think of her sleeping in a bed made for a queen.
Once Josh had convinced her that the house came with his new job and that she would never have to go back to the flat or her sister’s, her recovery seemed to accelerate — especially after he showed her the garden.
Each morning he would bring her breakfast in bed and find her staring out of the window, planning what she was going to plant and where.
As soon as Dr Crooke had declared her well enough to get out of bed and resume ‘light duties’, she’d put her plans into action — like a woman possessed.
‘Madam, unhand me!’ cried the colonel as his mother tried to wrestle something from under his arm.
Josh couldn’t help but smile. He’d seen the man fight against the most formidable enemies, go toe-to-toe with Nazi soldiers and Irish bomb-makers, but he’d never seen him look as scared as he did now. His mother was a force to be reckoned with once she got an idea in her head, and the poor man was about to lose any hope of retaining his old bachelor lifestyle.
In his mother’s eyes, the house was a tip, an anathema of all things tidy and organised. Josh knew that there was a system to the colonel’s storage, but to an outsider it bore all the hallmarks of a kleptomaniac or a compulsive hoarder.
‘Now, now, Mr Westinghouse, we both know that these old papers are a playground for mice and beetles. Won’t do to have them cluttering up the house now, will it?’ his mother said as if talking to a small child.
She wrenched one edition out from his grip, and it tore slightly as it went.
‘Look at this one. It’s from 1834 - what an earth could you possibly want with something that old?’
The colonel looked pleadingly at Josh for some kind of support, they obviously couldn’t tell her the truth, but Josh could see that the old man was having trouble coming up with another reasonable alternative.
‘He used to work for the papers, Mum,’ intervened Josh, much to the colonel’s relief. ‘They’re like a hobby for Mr Westinghouse. They sell for quite a lot, especially the old ones.’
Josh had gone with a two-pronged approach: giving the colonel a profession in which she would have no real interest, and the vaguest hint that the thing she was trying to throw away might have some value.
‘Well they can’t stay up here. It’s unhygienic,’ she replied, ‘and there taking up so much space.’ She went back out into the hall and disappeared through the basement door.
The colonel slumped into one of the chairs, which were apparently leather, something Josh had not known until his mother had tidied the study the day before.
‘This isn’t going to work,’ the colonel sighed.
Josh nodded. He knew it was unlikely the two of them were going to get along. They were too set in their ways to change, and they had mutually incompatible lifestyles.
‘Give her a minute, she’s up to something.’
The colonel smiled. ‘While I have you to myself, I’ve been meaning to speak to you about taking a sabbatical.’
‘Do we get holidays? I never checked the small print on the job description.’
The colonel laughed.
‘Kind of a holiday — one with no end date. The Order has a policy of allowing old dogs like me to go off-road at the end of their service. Some call it the “long walk”. I get to study some of the more remoter parts of time and add to the corpus, while they get rid of an old interfering fart to make way for new blood — it’s all part of the cycle.’ He pointed at the tattoo on Josh’s arm.
‘Ah. Cool. Where were you thinking of going?’ Josh asked, hoping that it meant he wouldn’t need to move his mother out after all.
‘More a case of “when” actually. I was thinking more like a sojourn around the Mesolithic. I have always wanted to see the Holocene spring.’
Josh remembered the view from the cave and the smell of Caitlin in the furs beside him. He could relate to the old man’s desire to go somewhere uncomplicated, untainted, and just chill out.
‘How long for?’
‘No idea — until I get bored or something else takes my fancy. Don’t worry, you can always come visit. I’ve been told you’re a bit of an expert yourself in that era.’
They could both hear his mother crashing around downstairs. ‘Do you think they would let Mum and me stay here for a while?’
‘Of course, this is your home now. There are going to be a lot of changes in your life. The Order has been waiting for you for a thousand of years. The Determinists will want to disprove your existence; others will see you as some kind of Messiah. Whatever happens next, you must always remember you have a place here, somewhere where you can be yourself, not what they want you to be.
‘Are you sure you don’t want to hang around and remind me?’
The colonel thought for a moment, as if weighing up the offer, then shook his head. ‘No, I’m afraid you have outgrown me. I would just be holding you back. You have to find your own way.’
Josh’s mother reappeared with a large crate and began to transfer newspapers from the shelves into it. ‘There’s plenty of room downstairs for your archive,’ she smiled. ‘I take it you wish them kept in chronological order?’
‘Yes, thank you, Mrs Jones,’ the colonel replied.
‘So when are you going?’ Josh asked.
‘Soon, but first I have some things to attend to,’ he said, watching Josh’s mother carefully out of the corner of one eye. ‘The council is still in something of a mess after your inquisition and the founder wants me to assist him with some of the more dissident members. Bring them into line, as it were — bloody politics, I hate it.’
The colonel spent the new few weeks coming and going from the house, appearing at random hours of the night with large, old trunks and packing various mementoes carefully inside them. Josh helped him sometimes, and they would talk about the adventures that had been connected to each of them.
It was a time for reflection — as the colonel called it. The accumulated mementoes of more than ten lifetimes had to be sorted, categorised and stored by a team of Antiquarians. Josh’s mother was soon organising that, and more than one mentioned to Josh how useful it would be to have her look at the Great Library, but he reminded them she was still a sick woman, even if her MS seemed to be in total remission.
Josh had begun to see another side to the colonel, and considered asking about the woman and the child he’d seen in his timeline, but there was never a right time and the colonel seemed distracted by too many other things. The Council had returned to some semblance of normality, but the colonel still seemed concerned with something that he wouldn’t discuss.
The day came too soon when the curiosities room was cleared, and the last of his personal belongings were being wheeled out by a team of Antiquarians disguised as removal men, a typical cover for them apparently. He and the colonel sat in the kitchen while Josh’s mother was out weeding in the garden.
‘You�
�re not going to the Mesolithic, really, are you?’ Josh asked.
The colonel scratched his beard. ‘I might do.’
‘Caitlin reckons you’re going after the fates. Did you ever find out who made the Greek computer?’
‘Who made it, yes, but not who gave them the design. I do have a new lead to follow, and, no, I can’t take you with me.’
Josh smiled. ‘She said you’d say that.’
The colonel stood up and put his cup in the sink, and the cat jumped up on to the worktop to scavenge any last dregs of tea.
‘Do you remember the day I broke in?’ Josh asked.
‘You mean the day I left the door open?’ the colonel corrected him, stroking the cat.
‘Do you ever wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t?’
The colonel laughed. ‘There were many times when you didn’t.’
Josh looked a little stunned. ‘You mean —’
The colonel silenced him with a raised finger. Looking at him with deep, kind eyes he sighed. ‘Sometimes fate needs a helping hand.’
He took out the small gear wheel he had removed from the analog computer on the ship.
‘I’ll miss you, Joshua Jones. Take care of the cat.’
Then, with a wink, he disappeared.
70
Paradox
The Copernicans spent the next two months investigating every corner of Josh’s life. There wasn’t a secret moment left that hadn’t been documented in triplicate and stored on the punched cards that their strange little typewriters produced. A senior investigator called Xavier Lusive had spent an entire week trying to prove that Josh was some kind of spy or infiltrator from the Fatalists, which was the first time he’d heard a member of the Order talk about them without laughing — he’d gone away empty handed. There was no proof and no amount of interrogation by his seers made any difference.
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