Ripples of the Past

by Damian Knight

  ‘That’s what I’ve been trying to explain,’ Humboldt said, glancing back up. ‘The healing gene is a trait unique to the men of our family. We are of the same bloodline, you and I, and the sabotage of Flight 0368 was intended to stop me finding you.’

  6

  Sam recoiled against the armrest of the sofa. ‘Family?’ he repeated, spitting the word back. ‘Have you completely lost the plot? I’ve never even met you before, in this timeline or any other!’

  ‘Maybe, maybe not,’ Humboldt said with a dismissive shrug. ‘We only have the memories of what we experience, so who’s to say what may or may not have taken place in other timelines? Either way, it doesn’t change the fact that we’re related.’

  Sam’s stomach churned again, bile stinging the back of his throat. ‘You’re lying,’ he croaked. ‘You have to be.’

  ‘In recent months researching my family tree has become something of a hobby of mine,’ Humboldt said. He raised his walking stick and began inspecting the handle with great interest. ‘Tell me, Sam, how much do you know about your ancestry?’

  Sam stared back across the sofa, his jaw clenched. Although it pained him to admit, he didn’t know much beyond his immediate family. His mum was estranged from her parents over some ancient quarrel that had never been resolved, and the only relatives she even loosely kept in touch with were her cousins from Cardiff. On his dad’s side there were Grandma and Grandpa, of course, and Auntie Laura, his dad’s childless sister. But apart from that…

  Humboldt lowered his stick and gazed at Sam with eyes that pointed in slightly different directions. ‘Allow me to give a little of my own background, if I may. I was born in Missouri in the spring of 1950. My father was Kurt Humboldt, a violent drunk who told me next to nothing of his own upbringing, meaning that what little I learned of my paternal lineage came from my mother, rest her soul. My paternal grandfather, Gerhardt von Humboldt, was a German immigrant who, along with his wife and sons, fled to the United States in the 1930s during the Nazis’ rise to power, dropping the ‘von’ part of the name along the way.’ He reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a photograph and passed it to Sam. It showed a couple posing with two young boys in matching sailor outfits. Although printed on glossy modern paper, it was black and white and looked like it had been taken at some point in the early twentieth century. ‘Last year, as part of my research, I even visited Ottendorf, the fishing village Gerhardt hailed from. Apart from my grandfather there was no record of anyone by the name of Humboldt ever having lived in the area, and while Pa was alive he never so much as hinted at the fact he had a brother.’

  Sam handed the photograph back. ‘Fascinating as this is, I don’t see what any of it’s got to do with me.’

  ‘I’m coming to that,’ Humboldt said. ‘So, after a bit of digging, I discovered that my father’s brother, Bernard Humboldt – or Uncle Bernie as I like to think of him – joined the marines shortly after the outbreak of World War II. Military records show that, after a brief stint in North Africa, he was posted to England in the build-up to D-Day. It was here he met Beatrice Rayner, your great-grandmother. Although their relationship lasted only a few days, Beatrice fell pregnant. Uncle Bernie was killed on Omaha Beach less than a month later. There’s no way of knowing whether she ever told him she was expecting their baby, but Beatrice listed his name on the birth certificate of her son, Alfred Rayner.’

  ‘Grandpa?’ Sam said, everything slotting into place.

  ‘My first cousin,’ Humboldt said. ‘Which makes you and me first cousins twice removed, if I’m not mistaken.’

  Sam drooped forwards, his head in his hands. The tightness in his chest felt like the early stages of a heart attack, but try as he might he couldn’t help but be drawn in by what he was hearing.

  ‘However indirectly, I suppose that does make me responsible for what Esteban did to you,’ Humboldt said. ‘You see, I trusted him to lead the search for my relatives. Obviously he discovered more than he let on and, when he turned on me, tried to kill you and your family before I could reach you. In fact, Sam, it was only the news of your arrest that alerted me to your existence. Had I known sooner, all of this would have been unnecessary.’

  Sam raised his head. ‘But if you’re like me, why not just travel back and find me sooner? And what about Thames House and Malcolm Fairview? How did any of that stop you finding me?’

  ‘Again with the questions?’ Humboldt gave a rueful smile. ‘I expect, however, that this time the answers all boil down to the same thing – Tetradyamide.’

  ‘Tetradyamide?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Humboldt said, gently massaging his scalp. ‘I’ve spent nearly five decades trying to recreate the stuff. Even without it and only my limited ability to work with, I’ve built a business empire simply by learning to take advantage of my seizures whenever they come on.’

  ‘A business empire? Is that what they’re calling drugs and arms trafficking these days?’

  Humboldt’s eyes twitched, his brow creasing. ‘I see you already know something of my history then. Like you, Sam, I never asked for my ability, but it seemed a waste not to use my talents for my own benefit. I take it the idea’s never crossed your mind then?’

  ‘I…er…’ Sam mumbled, remembering his brief business venture with Lewis and Lance.

  ‘Hmm, as I thought,’ Humboldt said. ‘Anyway, in the absence of Tetradyamide I’ve only ever been able to travel a day or two into the immediate past or future. For a while this was enough to evade capture. When the coastguard intercepted one of my shipments, I would simply bring on a seizure, travel back to the day before and redirect it. Unfortunately the accumulation of wealth tends to leave a paper trail and, while the authorities were never able to catch me in the act, during the 1980s the IRS built a tax evasion case against me. I’ve been on the run ever since.

  ‘Esteban was well aware of my attempts to recreate Tetradyamide, and knew that I’d recently found out about Dr McHayden’s work for the Tempus Project. I can only assume that both the Thames House bombing and Malcolm Fairview’s assassination were attempts to cut off a new supply of the drug before I could find it.’

  ‘Okay,’ Sam said, ‘even if I accept what you’re telling me, it still doesn’t explain what I’m doing here.’

  The night sky through the window was lit by another flash of lightning, brighter and closer than the first. ‘You’re here because I need your help,’ Humboldt said, raising his voice to be heard over the rumble of thunder. ‘I’m dying, Sam, and you’re the only person who can save me.’

  7

  ‘You want me to save you?’ Sam said, hardly able believe his ears. ‘You’re not actually serious, are you?’

  Humboldt let out a sigh and stared down at his walking stick again. There was something sad, almost vulnerable about his expression. ‘Without warning my seizures dried up on me last summer,’ he said, ‘and with them my ability to travel through time. I began suffering headaches – blinding, excruciating headaches during which I could hardly move. My doctor performed a series of tests and scans that revealed a tumour around the size of a dime pressing against my basal ganglia,’ he turned his head and tapped the scar at the base of his skull again, ‘the region of the brain where that build up of scar tissue gives me – I mean us – our powers. The tumour was deemed inoperable under any existing medical procedure, so naturally I did the only thing available to me and diverted the entire resources of my business operations to finding a cure. I even tried a few alternative therapies, everything from acupuncture to visiting a faith healer in Chile.’

  ‘Chile?’ Sam said, remembering the missile strike he had averted in the December-only-he-could-remember. ‘You don’t mean the Atacama Desert, do you?’

  ‘I was there until a few days ago,’ Humboldt said. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Just a lucky guess,’ Sam lied, and bit his lip. ‘We did a project about it at school last year. It’s one of the driest places on Earth, I think.’

  Hu
mboldt frowned and then shrugged. ‘I’ll take your word for it. Regrettably the healer turned out to be a fraud. There are plenty of people out there willing to make a quick buck out of others’ misfortune, it would appear. And despite the increased funding, my research team’s progress on a cure was initially slow after a number of false starts. In recent weeks, however, they’ve reported promising results in the development of several potential treatments, including chemotherapy, radiotherapy, proton beam therapy, carmustine implants, stereotactic radiosurgery and several tumour-shrinking drugs intended to reduce my tumour to an operable size. But with so many potential treatments in the pipeline, I’ve had to spread my bets, channelling equal funding into each. At the moment I have no way of knowing which projects, if any, will prove effective.

  ‘It’s late January now, and my doctor says I won’t live to see April.’ He paused, his miserable expression replaced by one of steely determination. ‘But with you here, Sam, I wouldn’t need to spread my bets anymore. Instead, I could focus funding into a single project and begin that treatment immediately. With Tetradyamide, you could then travel forward to the summer and find out if it’s worked. If not and I’ve punched my ticket by then, you could simply return to the present, report back to me and I’ll drop that line of treatment and focus on a different one instead. We could repeat the process until we find a cure that works.’

  ‘Is kidnapping people how you normally go about asking for their help?’

  ‘I’ve resorted to it before,’ Humboldt said. ‘However you’re not a prisoner here, Sam. You’re free to leave any time you choose.’

  ‘Really?’ Sam asked, rising unsteadily to his feet. ‘You mean I can just walk out of here and you won’t stop me?’

  ‘By all means,’ Humboldt said, and spread his hands, one of which, Sam realised, was a prosthetic so realistic that it was almost impossible to tell it apart from the real thing. ‘If you don’t want to help me, I can’t force you. Just say the word and I’ll have Donna, my assistant, arrange to drop you off at the nearest town in the morning. But before you make a decision, remember that the police are still looking for you and your escape from Knotsbridge isn’t going to reflect too well.’

  ‘But I didn’t escape – you broke me out. And Haufner killed Malcolm Fairview. I haven’t actually done anything.’

  ‘I know that and you know that,’ Humboldt said nonchalantly. ‘The police might see things differently, however.’

  ‘You could always try telling them the truth,’ Sam said.

  ‘Help you when you won’t help me? That’s not very fair, is it? Besides, they’re hardly likely to believe the word of a wanted man, and you haven’t even heard what I’m willing to offer you in exchange yet.’

  Sam eyed Humboldt up. It was hard to fault the man’s logic, and if Sam walked out now then the only thing waiting for him was probably another prison cell.

  ‘All right, let’s hear it,’ he said, sitting back down. ‘What are you offering?’

  ‘The very thing you want most of all,’ Humboldt said. ‘I can bring your father back.’

  8

  Sam’s muscles all seemed to go loose in the same instant, and he briefly felt himself sliding down the cushions of the sofa before grabbing the armrest to halt his descent to the floor. Ever since that fateful day at the end of last summer, he had wanted nothing more than to undo the plane crash that had torn his family apart. Reversing that event had been his primary motive for joining the Tempus Project, but after discovering he couldn’t pass back to a time before his injury he had reluctantly arrived at the conclusion that it wasn’t something he’d ever achieve.

  Humboldt was watching him intently. ‘I sustained my injury way back in 1969,’ he said, a faint smile on his lips. ‘Once my tumour is successfully removed and my ability to travel through time returns, I could theoretically use Tetradyamide to return to any point after that date, including last September, if I so wish. With prior knowledge of what Esteban’s planning, it shouldn’t be too difficult to intervene before he brings down Flight 0368, creating a new timeline in which your father was never killed.’

  Sam stared back, again at a loss for words.

  Humboldt’s smile had grown into a broad grin. ‘Do what I ask of you, Sam, and this will be your reward. It’s a straight swap – you save my life and I’ll save your father’s.’

  Tears of joy clouded Sam’s vision, but then he saw an obvious flaw in Humboldt’s plan. ‘Tetradyamide,’ he said. ‘You told me Haufner bombed Thames House and killed Malcolm Fairview to stop you getting it. I, er, may have sort of found a bottle at Fairview’s flat, but the police confiscated it when they arrested me. How am I supposed to travel all the way to next summer without Tetradyamide? I can’t even decide when one of my seizures comes on, let alone where it takes me.’

  ‘There’s a knack to it. I could show you some time, if you like. But for now, suffice it to say I’ve finally managed to acquire a small quantity.’

  ‘Of Tetradyamide? But how?’

  ‘I have my ways.’ Humboldt chuckled and, using his stick for support, heaved himself up. ‘But it’s getting late and you must be hungry. Why don’t you freshen up and we can discuss the finer details over dinner?’

  9

  George took a sip of lukewarm mineral water and surveyed the stuffy, low-ceilinged interior of the country pub in which he’d spent the last half hour waiting. On the far side, sitting below a mediocre watercolour depicting a fox-hunting scene, Esteban Haufner faced the other way, a newspaper spread out on the table before him. He had drastically altered his appearance in the two months since the CCTV cameras at Thames House had captured his grainy image, but in spite of the shaven head, beard and thick-framed spectacles, George would have recognised his old friend anywhere.

  A bell rang behind the bar and the burly landlady called, ‘Time, ladies and gents! Last orders please!’

  George glanced at his wristwatch. When he looked up again, Esteban’s table had been vacated, a crumpled newspaper and an empty glass with froth settling at the bottom all that remained.

  Muttering under his breath, George snatched his coat from the back of his chair. Monday night was quiz night and the place was busy, costing him valuable seconds as he elbowed a path to the door. He stepped outside to find that the wind had picked up, blowing in clouds that cloaked the starlight. There was a dense quality to the air that hinted at a coming storm. As he peered up and down the dark, deserted lane, panic briefly flared within him until he caught sight of a figure disappearing into the shadows to his left. He tugged his tweed flat cap low over his face, pulled his gloves on and, swinging his arms, strode after.

  Throughout their training at MI5, George and Esteban had been closely matched, with George holding the upper hand over the obstacle course. Now, on his unfamiliar prosthetic leg, he struggled to keep up. After a few hundred yards the residual noise of the pub had dwindled behind them, lost to whistling of the wind, and his stump began to ache. He gritted his teeth and picked up the pace, desperate not to let Esteban out of his sight a second time.

  Before long Esteban turned onto a narrow path that ran beside a row of thatched cottages on the edge of the village. George followed, sidestepping puddle-filled potholes. At the gate to the last cottage in the row, Esteban glanced over his shoulder, forcing George to duck into a gap in the hedgerow, where he paused for a moment to savour the rush of adrenalin.

  He peered out again just as the door of the cottage swung shut. A few seconds passed and then the light behind a first-floor window came on, throwing a rectangle of illumination onto the front garden. George stepped out of his hiding place and crept up the path. The weather-worn door sported a lock that looked almost as old as the cottage itself. Stooping, he withdrew his trusty lock pick and then, on a hunch, tried the handle first, and was mildly surprised when the door opened unimpeded.

  The interior of the cottage was dark apart from a dim glow emanating from the top of a staircase towards the back of the b
uilding, from which the patter of running water could be heard. An undercurrent of stale cigarette smoke lurked beneath the prevailing aroma of cleaning fluid.

  George stepped inside, a smirk on his lips, but no sooner had his foot hit the mat than a bright light snapped on, aimed directly in his face. Blinking, he raised an arm to shield his eyes. The source of the light was several metres to his left, where he could now make out the shape of a man in an armchair, a double-barrelled shotgun cradled in his lap.

  He gulped and lowered his arm, realising too late that he had walked into a trap.

  ‘George, what a pleasant surprise!’ Esteban said jovially, and angled the lamp on the side table next to him towards the floor. ‘Please, do come in. There’s a light switch on the wall to your right. And if you’d be so kind close the door behind you, you’re letting the warm air escape.’

  George did as instructed, noticing how sparsely furnished the cottage was, with an overflowing ashtray on the kitchen counter the only break in the otherwise fastidious level of cleanliness.

  Esteban gestured to a second armchair across from his own and tracked George with the barrel of the shotgun every step of the way as he went to sit. ‘You look as though you are recovering well,’ he said. ‘I do apologise about the leg – nothing personal, I hope you understand.’ He lifted a hand from the shotgun, reached for a bottle of scotch and poured a healthy measure into a waiting tumbler. ‘I would offer you a drink, but as I recall you do not enjoy the loss of control. Well, never mind. To old friends!’

  ‘Old friends,’ George echoed, his pistol a tempting weight in his shoulder holster. There was little doubt that if he went for it, Esteban would empty both barrels into him before he had it out of his coat.

  ‘Emotional as the reunion is, am I to assume you’re here on business?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  Esteban took a swig of scotch and rolled it over his tongue before swallowing. ‘In that case I really must insist on your gun. No sudden movements, please.’