Ripples of the Past

by Damian Knight

  So when the phone rang for a twelfth time, waking her from a fretful slumber in the early hours of Wednesday morning, Chrissie had all but given up hope of it actually being Sam.

  For a moment there was nothing but static on the other end of the line, and then, in a voice that sounded weak and distant, she heard her brother say, ‘Chrissie, can you hear me?’

  ‘Sam, it’s actually you!’ she squealed, and jumped up from the sofa. ‘Where are you? Is everything all right?’

  ‘Yeah, everything’s fine now,’ he said. ‘I’m in Canada.’

  ‘Canada? What are you doing there?’

  ‘I’m with Sergeant Hinds. Trust me, it’s a long story, but the main thing is it’s over now and I’m safe. I’ll tell you all about it when I’m home.’

  ‘So you are coming back then?’

  There was a pause at the other end of the line. ‘Soon,’ he said after a moment. ‘There’s something I need to do first.’

  3

  Sam placed the receiver of the payphone back on its hook and turned to find the woman who had saved his life standing by his side.

  ‘Thought I’d better call my sister,’ he explained, ‘just to let her know I’m okay and everything.’

  Nora gave a slow nod. ‘And Sergeant Hinds?’

  ‘She’s waiting in the café,’ he said, glancing to the far end of the terminal, where Hinds was talking to a waiter who’d stopped at the table to refill her coffee.

  ‘Good. I just finished meeting with my brother’s contact. He knows someone on the local police force who can help with the bodies. He also managed to secure me a plane.’ She pointed through the wall of glass at the back of the terminal to a row of small, twin-engine propeller planes. ‘Perhaps not as comfortable as the jet, but it’ll get us to where we need to go.’

  ‘What about Captain Litchfield?’

  ‘The man’s a pilot for hire specialising in clients involved in disreputable activity of one kind or another, which means it pays to be discreet. Once his payment goes through at the triple rate Michael promised him – which I’ll make sure it does – I doubt we’ll ever hear from him again.’ She paused and smiled. With the submissive stoop straightened out of her stance, she appeared several inches taller than she had as Donna. ‘So, have you given any more thought to what we discussed yet?’

  Sam bit his lip and stole another glance at Hinds, who was still talking to the waiter and didn’t appear to have noticed Nora’s return. As exhausted as he was and as much as he wanted to get home, see his family and begin the process of clearing his name, the opportunity offered to him might never present itself again.

  ‘I have,’ he said, turning back, ‘and I want to come with you.’

  ‘What do you say we make a quick exit before Sergeant Hinds notices your absence then?’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  Nora Rutherford smiled again. ‘The family home, of course.’

  4

  It was almost ten o’clock the following morning when Sam and Nora touched down in Greenland, but so far north the sun was scarcely more than a suggestion on the eastern horizon. In spite of the thick, fur-lined coat Nora had given him, Sam felt his teeth begin to chatter the moment he climbed from the plane.

  The airfield was just a strip of flattened dirt carved into the snow and surrounded by several low buildings. There was an ancient Land Rover parked up nearby. Standing by its side was a man with long white hair that had fused together with his beard to form a single mega-dreadlock.

  Sam stopped and stared: it was the person he had seen watching him on the day he and Eva had visited the Prince Regent pub back in the December-only-he-could-remember. Nora hurried over and threw her arms around the man’s neck, hugging him tightly.

  Eventually they separated, and he stepped forwards, offering his hand. ‘You must be Sam,’ he said. ‘I’m Isaac.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ Sam said. It was only then, standing before him, that he realised there was another reason Isaac looked so familiar. Although much older now, he was the same man Sam had seen in a faded black-and-white photograph behind Lara McHayden’s desk at Thames House. ‘Hang on, you’re Isaac?’

  ‘The one and only.’ Isaac grinned, then narrowed his eyes. ‘Judging by your reaction, I’m guessing we’ve already met in a different timeline.’

  Sam hesitated. On Christmas Eve, Isaac had provided Lewis with the vial of silvery Tetradyamide that had saved everyone in the Tempus Research facility and brought Chrissie back to life after Agent Steele had shot her.

  ‘Not so much met,’ Sam said, ‘more like seen from a distance. Either way, I think I’ve got a lot to thank you for.’

  Isaac laughed and opened the rear door of the Land Rover. ‘Very cryptic, but don’t mention it, Sam. Although I’ve also been known to start them now and then, putting out fires across multiple timelines is what I do best. Now hop in and let’s get going. We’ve got a three-hour drive ahead of us, and I for one want to make it back in time for lunch.’

  5

  Sam was so tired that he fell asleep in the Land Rover, which was an impressive feat given that the suspension was even shoddier than Lance’s Volvo. He woke shivering in an icy breeze blowing in through a hole in the canvas roof. Pulling his coat around his body, he stared out of the window. They were shuddering along a rough track cut into the side of a hill. The landscape was a desolate blanket of snow in all directions, with mountains to their left dropping down to a choppy sea spotted with huge chunks of floating ice .

  After a while the track forked before them. Isaac followed the right-hand branch for a couple of miles before arriving at a rusty gate, which he climbed out to open before steering them through.

  There was a wooden farmhouse with a slanting slate roof about half a mile ahead; pretty much the first sign of civilisation they’d encountered since leaving the airfield. As they parked outside, an old man with sparse white hair and bushy eyebrows stepped out onto the front porch, where he stood waiting with his arms folded.

  Nora clambered from the rear door, dashed over and wrapped him in a tight embrace. ‘Marcus!’ she cried. ‘I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to be home! The place hasn’t changed a bit.’

  ‘It’s good to see you too, sister.’ Marcus eased Nora back and held her at arms’ length. ‘What happened to you? You’ve grown old!’

  ‘You’re one to talk!’ She gave him a playful slap on the arm and beckoned Sam over. ‘Marcus, I’d like to introduce you to Sam Rayner, Joseph Rutherford’s great-great-grandson. Sam, this is Marcus, my twin brother and the current head of our family.’

  Sam climbed onto the porch. The man before him was almost the spitting image of his own grandfather, Alfred Rayner.

  ‘An honour and a pleasure,’ Marcus said, and rested a hand on Sam’s shoulder. ‘Please, come in out of the cold. I hope you like seafood. Lunch is almost ready and we have a great deal to discuss.’

  6

  From his chair at the head of an age-stained wooden table, Sam glanced around at his elderly companions. With Nora and Isaac sitting on one side, Marcus on the other and Marcus’s wife, Katherine, dishing up bowls of fish stew at the stove, it felt a little like he’d dropped in for lunch at a retirement home.

  The interior of the Rutherford house resembled that of a large cabin. It was surprisingly bare, and the mishmash of furniture looked as though it had been accumulated at a car boot sale several decades ago. The unpainted timber walls bore little by way of decoration besides the occasional stretched animal fur, the exception being the far wall, where the portrait of a young man hung. Apart from the early-1900s clothing, formal side-parted hair and stern expression, Sam might as well have been looking into a mirror.

  ‘Stephen Rutherford, painted in 1920,’ Katherine said, and placed a steaming bowl of stew in front of him. She had the hooded eyes of a native Greenlander and, despite her advancing years, not a strand of grey in her jet-black hair. ‘You look a lot like him, you know.’

 
; ‘I was just thinking the same thing,’ Sam said.

  Marcus offered him a slice of bread from a wooden chopping board and then took one himself. ‘I’m not sure how much my sister told you already,’ he said, dunking it in his bowl, ‘but I expect you must be curious about the history of our family.’

  Sam swallowed a spoonful of stew. It may have been the combination of hunger, exhaustion and relief, but it was pretty much the best thing he’d ever tasted. ‘Yeah,’ he said once his mouth was empty. ‘Curious is an understatement.’

  ‘Very well.’ Marcus rested his elbows on the table and clasped his hands together. ‘In that case the most logical place to start is at the beginning. Both of our families, in addition to that of Michael Humboldt, are descended from two brothers, Stephen and Joseph Rutherford.’

  ‘I think I know this bit already,’ Sam said, remembering what Nora had told Humboldt on the plane. ‘They were sailors on a boat that sank a hundred years ago.’

  ‘That’s right. The Northern Star, it was called. Stephen – Nora’s and my father – suffered a cranial injury similar to those both you and Humboldt sustained. As he recovered from his injuries, he began to experience seizures during which the flow of time was disrupted and he found himself transported into the recent past or future. He began documenting these in a series of journals which he continued to pen up until his death in 1989.’

  ‘I know a thing or two about seizures,’ Sam said, and filled his mouth with another spoonful of stew.

  ‘I’ll bet you do.’ Marcus smiled and nibbled at his bread. ‘Anyway, in the years after his injury, Father learned that his seizures were often brought about by changes in his mood or emotion. Using meditation and training, he came to realise that it was possible to induce such episodes at will, bringing back information gleaned from the future in order to alter events in the past or present. With practice he was able to gain greater control over his ability, choosing when his seizures occurred and extending the length of time he could travel to almost one month in either direction.’

  ‘You mean like Michael Humboldt without Tetradyamide?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Exactly,’ Nora said, ‘although Michael had neither the patience nor the innate ability to fully master the techniques. The thing is, Sam, our father believed his power to be a gift from above that should only be used for the greater good of humanity, and never, under any circumstances, for personal gain. After the Second World War, he made several investments that continue to bring in a significant income to this day, but we use this to maintain the network of contacts that help facilitate our operations, such as the man I met with back at the airport back in Canada.’

  ‘There’s something I don’t get,’ Sam said. ‘If your father was so interested in the greater good of humanity and all that, why didn’t he just stop World War II from taking place? History was never my strongest subject, but I’m pretty sure something like sixty million people died. How could he allow that if there was something he could do? I mean, why didn’t he just use his power to stop it from happening in the first place?’

  ‘A noble sentiment,’ Marcus said, ‘but there’s only so much a single person can do. There are tragedies and disasters around the world every day, Sam. It’s something that caused me great distress as a younger man, but even with the power to alter the flow of time, it’s impossible to prevent loss of life in every earthquake, motorway pile-up or political coup that takes place. You see, it’s one thing to possess knowledge of a future event and quite another to use it to influence the actions of other people in order to prevent that event. In spite of these limitations my father and I have helped shape the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries for the better.’ He dipped his bread in his bowl again and took another bite. ‘Secrecy has always been our family’s greatest defence, you see. How do you think the rest of the world would react if they knew we were out here, invisibly shaping their destinies?’

  ‘If it’s for their own good, I would’ve thought they’d be grateful.’

  ‘If only.’ Marcus shook his head and gave a wry smile. ‘In my experience, human nature makes people remarkably reluctant to have decision-making taken out of their hands. The notion of free will, no matter how illusionary, is a powerful lure, which is why we keep our location hidden. In fact, you’re the first visitor we’ve had in many years, and you’re only here because you’re family. If word were to get out of our existence, how long do you honestly believe it would be before we’re hunted down and turned into some sort of scientific curiosity, or worse?’

  ‘I think I see your point,’ Sam said, remembering everything Lara McHayden had done to try and harness his ability.

  ‘But things aren’t as bad as all that,’ Marcus went on. ‘While human history under our stewardship has still been rife with injustice and bloodshed, things could have been a lot worse. Hitler was defeated in World War II, wasn’t he? And the Cold War never descended into the nuclear apocalypse everyone expected. Had it not been for our work, the outcome of both events would have been decidedly different.’

  Until then Isaac had been steadily devouring his food, but now he pushed his empty bowl away, dabbed the bristles of his beard with his napkin and turned to Sam. ‘After I joined the Rutherfords in 1976, both Stephen and Marcus began using Tetradyamide to enhance their powers, travelling farther and with greater accuracy than ever before. But there’s always more we could do, and that’s why you’re here.’

  ‘Me?’ Sam said. ‘What could I do?’

  Marcus laid his right hand on the table, palm up. ‘Tell me, what do you see?’

  ‘Er, your hand?’ Sam replied, suspecting it was a trick question.

  Marcus nodded and looked across to Nora. ‘Now your turn.’

  She glanced to the ceiling and gave an exaggerated sigh, but laid her hand on the table too. Running across her palm was the line of an ancient scar.

  ‘What happened to you?’ Sam asked.

  ‘The same thing that happened to me,’ Marcus said. ‘When we were children, our father performed a simple experiment, slicing both our palms shortly before our thirteenth birthday.’

  ‘Within a week Marcus’s cut had almost completely healed,’ Nora said with a touch of bitterness, ‘whereas mine…well, you can see for yourself.’

  ‘You don’t have the healing gene Humboldt told me about?’ Sam asked her.

  ‘The genetic trait that enabled you to recover from your brain injury and created your ability to alter the flow of time is shared only by the men of our family, specifically those who share a direct paternal line of decent to either Stephen or Joseph Rutherford. I, as a woman, missed out.’

  ‘Not that she’s sore in the slightest,’ Marcus said, an impish twinkle in his eye.

  ‘Less than an hour in your company and you’re already beginning to grate on my nerves,’ Nora said, and gave him a scathing look before turning back to Sam. ‘After it was confirmed that Marcus shared the family healing ability, our father performed surgery to recreate the cranial injury he had sustained in the sinking of the Northern Star. While my brother has spent his life perfecting Father’s techniques and continuing his work, I was reduced to more of a supporting role, which is how I wound up babysitting Michael Humboldt for the best part of fifty years.’

  At that point Marcus reached across to his wife, who had taken the chair beside him, and squeezed her hand. ‘Unfortunately Katherine and I were never able to have children of our own,’ he said. ‘I’m an old man now, and I don’t know how many years I have left. When I die, my bloodline will die with me. Until recently I’d consigned myself to the fact that our family’s brief guardianship over humanity would soon come to an end. But then, as a result of Nora’s insights into Humboldt’s family tree, we discovered the existence of Bernard Humboldt’s illegitimate child – your grandfather, Alfred Rayner.’

  All four of Sam’s elderly companions were now watching him in a way that made him feel distinctly uncomfortable. He shifted his weight in his chair
and looked from one expectant face to another.

  ‘Apart from my brother, you’re now the only living person that we know of with a direct paternal line of decent to either Stephen or Joseph,’ Nora said. ‘That makes you the last person we know of to have inherited the healing gene they both possessed.’

  ‘What about Grandpa?’ Sam asked. ‘Surely he’s a direct descendent too, isn’t he?’

  ‘True,’ Isaac said, ‘and in his youth he would have been an excellent candidate for surgery. However, as the brain ages it loses plasticity, meaning that surgery is no longer viable after a subject reaches full adulthood. The same would apply to your father, were he still alive.’

  ‘Michael Humboldt was nineteen when he sustained his injury,’ Nora said. ‘The very upper boundary, which explains his limited ability.’

  ‘That’s what makes you so important,’ Marcus said. ‘We’d like you to join us, Sam, and take your rightful place in our family. I’d train you in the techniques both my father and I have used to alter the flow of time, and with Isaac here you’d have access to an unlimited supply of Tetradyamide. With our guidance, you and any sons you might have could continue the work we’ve started, safeguarding the future of the human race for generations to come.’

  The atmosphere around the table had grown so thick you could probably smash it with a hammer and use the pieces to grit your drive. Sam broke eye contact and looked down at his hands, once again noticing the thin white scar on the ridge of his knuckle. No matter how honourable all this talk of the greater good was, it reminded him a little of what Dr McHayden had promised him when he’d first joined the Tempus Project, and although Sam had no reason to believe the Rutherfords might have ulterior motives, he didn’t need any reminding of how that had turned out.

  ‘And what about my old life?’ he asked, looking back up.