by Roger Ley
“Well, we had no choice, we had to prove the theory.”
“We didn’t need to place the bets, just knowing the tips were right would have been enough.”
“Yes, but apart from that, since the project started, the Government hasn’t stepped out of line. They’ve always worked for the public interest and disadvantaged nobody,” he said.
“I don’t think the IRA would agree with you.”
“But they’re terrorists,” he said.
“One man’s terrorist Martin….”
He didn’t rise to the bait.
“Anyway, its five o’clock, and I’m going home. I fancy a nice long bath and a glass of Chardonnay, then off to bed, all snuggled up warm under the duvet waiting for you. Don’t be too late or I might be asleep.” She left, leaving the door open to annoy him.
“Fuck this for a game of soldiers,” he said as he quickly logged out. “Wait for me,” he called.
Chapter Five
England the 1990s
Over the next two years, the Temporal Messaging team developed an administrative framework. Riley was head of science and administration. Estella led the mathematics team. Paul Burnley was in charge of internal security and he brought in two teams of agents. The “Gleaners” gathered information, mainly newspaper stories, and then fed them into the Transmogrifier using large format scanners. Their data appeared on the hard drives two weeks back upstream in their past. Riley suspected that they were not the sharpest knives in the SIS drawer, although they were all young, enthusiastic and cheerful, with private school accents and impeccable manners.
The “Scrutineers” analyzed the files, sent by the Gleaners, from two weeks in their future. They were a different type of agent, intelligent, quiet, intense, very pleasant but they never socialized outside their group. The teams had separate offices on opposite sides of the building and were discouraged from talking to one another. Burnley chaired occasional meetings between them but he held them behind closed doors. Two technicians would arrive from London and sweep the room for bugs beforehand. Riley didn’t know what they discussed, even Estella hadn’t been able to penetrate Burley’s security bubble using her, surprisingly successful, water cooler gossip technique.
“I wonder what they’re talking about in there?” said Estella one morning. She was sitting on Riley’s desk again, swinging her legs and eating a piece of fruit cake. The coffee she had bought from the machine in the corridor was beside her. Riley’s cake and coffee were at his elbow but so far, he had ignored them.
He looked up from his paperwork. “What, are they having another one of their bloody meetings? I expect it’s all very mundane. The Scrutineers are probably complaining about something the Gleaners will do in two weeks” time. You can imagine the protestations of innocence. ‘We can’t be blamed for something we haven’t done yet?’ ”
“Yes, but you will do it darling, you will,” he said in an effeminate posh accent.
“They’re not all gay Martin,” objected Estella.
Secretly Riley was self-conscious about his own Estuary accent, but had decided that it was too late to do anything about it. “I don’t envy Burnley,” he said, “he’s a field man, not a bureaucrat. I expect he feels that it’s time to come in from the cold, but he won’t find office politics easy.”
“Drink your coffee Martin, and if you don’t eat that cake I will,” said Estella as she knocked crumbs from her hands and reached for her coffee. “Have you heard about the ‘Mull of Kintyre’ incident?”
Riley’s team was still in charge of the hard drives and so they had first access to incoming information. He expected this to change soon as the security noose continued to tighten.
“No, I haven’t, what’s the story?” he asked, mildly interested.
“Well,” said Estella, taking a breath and obviously anticipating the delicious pleasure of disclosing new gossip, “a report’s just come in, front page in all the papers in two weeks” time. Apparently, this RAF helicopter was flying most of the security experts from Northern Ireland, thirty of them, to Glasgow, and it crashed into the cliffs at the Mull of Kintyre. There were no survivors.”
“Fucking hell,” said Riley looking up at her. “That’ll cause a stink. Was it the IRA?”
“Don’t know yet, we’ve only seen the first reports, we have to wait twenty-four hours for the next scans to arrive. By the way, I heard,” she lowered her voice and leaned forward towards him, “that there’s a new feed on the hard drives. One of the programmers, Wendy, told me they’re encrypted files that even she can’t open. We think it’s something to do with Paul Burnley sending himself secure information from two weeks ahead.”
Riley knew of the new SIS secure feed and saw it as further evidence he was being squeezed out. “It doesn’t really matter what caused the crash, the Government won’t sit by and lose their advantage over the IRA,” he said. “They’ll prevent it and bollocks to the consequences.”
“What consequences, surely if they can save all those lives then that’s a good thing?” said Estella.
Riley stood up and paced around the office, his fists bunched. “Why am I the only person in this organization who understands that altering the present will inevitably change things further down the line?” He was speaking through clenched teeth. “If that helicopter was going to crash and we prevent it, what will be the effects in Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK? We don’t know, but we can be sure that we’re deflecting the Timestream, either that or we’ll be taking a different path, a spur that divides from the main path and where will it lead?”
“Well the main path might be leading us towards nuclear oblivion Martin, so what’s the difference?” Estella stood up and left.
He knew she’d heard it all before. He cleared up the paper cup and other debris she’d left on his desk, threw them in the bin and picked up his phone.
That afternoon he sat at a table in the conference room, the room where Burnley held his security meetings. Burnley sat opposite him and at the top of the table was a personal computer with the monitor turned through one hundred and eighty degrees so it faced towards them. A technician was fiddling with the keyboard. The screen cleared and Oakwood’s face appeared. The technician adjusted the camera mounted on a tripod nearby and left.
“Good morning gentlemen,” said Dr Oakwood. “We have convened at the request of Dr Riley so I think we should let him kick off, so to speak. Martin?”
“Yes, er, it’s about the Mull of Kintyre thing that happens in a week and a half. I want an assurance you will not make alterations to prevent it. The consequences would be unpredictable.”
“I believe some of your colleagues will be passengers Paul,” said Oakwood.
“Yes sir, there will be people on board who I’ve worked with over the years. People with valuable knowledge and experience we can’t afford to lose.” He sat impassively, looking at the screen.
“Friends of yours?” asked Riley. Burnley turned towards him, his face expressionless, he said nothing. Riley shivered, he thought back to the incident with the wire cutters and wished he’d kept silent. He was afraid of Burnley and wasn’t ashamed to admit it to himself.
“I understand your position Martin and I have conveyed it to our esteemed Prime Minister. Apparently, he sees it your way,” said Oakwood, “he’s conservative in both senses.”
“It would be simple to ground all Chinooks for a while,” Burnley persisted. “There’s been talk of a bug in the engine management software.”
“Well I’m afraid the Government will not be intervening Paul. After my recent conversation with the PM and the Cabinet Secretary, they have decided to employ the utmost caution with Temporal Adjustments. We can continue preventing terrorist and criminal activity, and so forth, but incidents of national and international importance are off limits for the moment.”
“ ‘For the moment,’ what does that mean?” asked Riley.
“Dr Riley, you cannot be so naïve as to believe that the Gov
ernment will not eventually make full use of this new technology, technology they have expensively funded over the years? Surely you realize that we will inevitably use it to advance British interests in many different directions?”
“But it’s so dangerous,” said Riley.
“So are nuclear weapons, Dr Riley. I’m afraid that you should have considered the consequences of Temporal Messaging before you developed it. As we speak, a committee is being formed to supervise Government use of TM technology. We have recruited some of the finest minds in the Civil Service to it.”
“That’s a relief,” muttered Riley.
Oakwood continued without pausing. “You can rest assured that our future will be safe in their hands, with all future adjustments or interferences with the, er, Timestream, planned and implemented under its auspices.”
Burnley looked up. “With all due respect, Dr Riley shouldn’t be attending this meeting. The science team shouldn’t have access to the content of the hard drives, it’s bad security. They don’t need to know what information we receive from the future. Their job is to keep the equipment running and find ways of improving it.”
Riley bridled, this was what he had been expecting, although he was surprised that Burnley had brought the matter up in open session.
“If I get taken out of the loop, I’ll resign and so will most of my team,” he said.
All three of them knew that if this happened, despite the Official Secrets Act, TM would become public knowledge. Riley would make sure of it. He imagined the headlines, “The Father of Time Travel,” and the smiling pictures of himself on the front pages of the newspapers, maybe even on the cover of Time magazine. The comparisons with Newton and Einstein, the total eclipse of that has-been Stephen Hawking with his fame and his books and his honors.
There was an awkward silence. Riley imagined that Burnley was planning a horrifying accident that would wipe out the TM team, enabling him to replace them with Government stooges. Oakwood, on the other hand, would be working out how to finesse the situation in his own interests.
“We’ll leave it there gentlemen. I’ve told you what the PM’s decision is, and other matters can be dealt with later when we have more time to thrash them out.” The screen went blank.
Burnley picked up his papers and left without a word. Riley stayed where he was for a few minutes, trying to work out his next move.
It was ten days later; Friday night was curry night, and Riley and Estella were sitting in a booth in the Jaipur Restaurant. Riley was still fretting about his meeting with Oakwood and Burnley.
“Stop worrying, there’s nothing you can do about it. Have a poppadum,” said Estella as she broke one of hers and spread mango chutney on it.
“Anyway,” she said, “the PM saw it your way, so everything’s okay. Eat your poppadum.”
“Yes, that was a surprise,” he said, mollified. He reached across for the bowl of chopped onions and spooned some onto his plate. He leaned across and whispered, “I was surprised they didn’t interfere with the helicopter accident, there were a lot of important people on board.”
“Yes, but not as many as in the original reports,” said Estella.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, there were thirty passengers and four crew, in the reports from two weeks downstream, but when they reported it today, they said there were twenty-four passengers.”
“Probably an error in the first report,” said Riley.
“God Martin, you’re not thinking. Today’s report is the first report. They were both issued on the same day by the same newspaper, but the one from the future said thirty passengers and the one from the present said twenty-four. I expect the Government saved their most important people. A compromise, it’s what us Brits are good at. Ah, here comes my Lamb Rogan Josh.”
Riley toyed with his food and wondered whether the changes to the helicopter’s manifest had been an official intervention, or had Burley’s personal scruples overcome his sense of duty. He was sure that if friends of Burnley had received unofficial phone calls, warning them not to take the flight, the calls would not be traceable back to him. Covering his tracks would be second nature to Burnley, but he would still be punished, proof or no proof if the calls were not sanctioned.
Riley wondered if his own star might be rising after all.
Oakwood rang two days later. “Paul Burnley has been called to duties at Vauxhall Cross,” he said. “He’s still involved with the TM project but it’s felt he has more to offer with the new supervisory committee. Positive vetting and all that I expect. You’ll see him from time to time at Martlesham, but his major responsibility will be for the security aspects of the new committee.”
Back to his old job snooping thought Riley, as an image of a Bloodhound came to mind. He’ll probably be more comfortable. Old dog, new tricks.
“How do you feel about supervising his input and output teams, the, er, Gleaners and the Scrutineers I believe he calls them?”
Riley was pleasantly surprised, but cautious. “Security isn’t my field Dr Oakwood, perhaps you need somebody with more relevant experience.”
“Not really Martin. The new committee will make the decisions, we’ll promote one each of the Gleaners and Scrutineers as group leaders, reporting to you for administrative purposes and to the new committee as far as operational matters are concerned. You’ll still manage the science team of course, with an increase in your remuneration and promotion to grade five. This is rather a good opportunity for you, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
“Do I get a promotion too?” asked Estella playfully when he told her that evening.
“I’m not sure there’s a grade for sex slaves,” he said as he helped her out of her underwear and pushed her onto the bed.
“Oh Martin, you are a naughty boy,” she laughed as he struggled out of his shorts and joined her.
“They’re trying to control the number of people inside the security bubble,” he murmured as he nibbled one of her ear lobes. He moved his head down. “God, I do love a girl with brown nipples.”
“Yes, I can see that,” she giggled.
Chapter Six
England the 1990s
Oakwood had asked Riley to attend a meeting of the steering committee in London, and he was suited, booted and carrying his new leather briefcase, Estella’s present for his thirty-second birthday. He enjoyed first class train travel and used the time to read a physics journal, even the coffee wasn’t bad. He got off the train at Liverpool Street and took the Underground to the new SIS building at Vauxhall Cross, “Legoland” as its inhabitants had already dubbed it. The passes and paperwork, that Oakwood had sent him, got him past the security desk and through the metal detectors. After the uniformed staff had searched his briefcase they politely waved him through to the atrium. He made his way to the room on the third floor that Oakwood’s letter had stipulated. The secretary in the outer office showed him straight through into a large conference room, it held an oval table that seated about two dozen people. Most of them looked up as he entered. He noted the only empty chair at what he assumed was the foot, and sat down before anyone invited him. It was only a small gesture, but he felt more empowered. Some of the occupants watched him with interest; others ignored him and continued their quiet conversations.
Oakwood was sitting at the opposite end of the table.
“Dr Riley, thank you for coming,” he said, rising to his feet. The other delegates fell silent. “I’ve been briefing the newly formed, ‘Temporal Adjustment Steering Committee,’ or ‘TASC’ as we call ourselves.” He paused and smiled, Riley thought he was probably pleased to be associated with such a muscular sounding acronym; it was almost as theatrical as the Government’s “COBRA” emergency committee.
“As one might expect there is some understandable incredulity among the delegates. I’m hoping that you can show them evidence that will corroborate your theories.” Riley noticed that Oakwood had not introduced the individual Committee members,
although he recognized several politicians from their appearances on television. Uniforms advertised the representatives from the military. He assumed that the rest were “spooks” or senior civil servants. He had been expecting to deliver his presentation to a group of “suits” but this was the first he had heard of a “Temporal Adjustment Steering Committee” chaired by Oakwood. They wanted him to feel he was just the hired help, the “little man who does the science.” The whole fucking world is run by arts graduates, he thought, the scientists are pumping in the bilges while these bastards take all the credit.
He noticed that Oakwood’s introduction implied the theories “belonged” to Riley at this point, but suspected that they’d also “belong” to Oakwood if things went well. Slimy bastard.
Riley was nervous, Oakwood had warned him that funding of the project depended on the outcome of this meeting, he was sweating, always a bad sign. He liked to do presentations in shirtsleeves but his under-arm wet patches would be too much of a giveaway. He wondered what level of interference to expect from this band of bums and stiffs from now on. The Government would see TA as a huge political opportunity. The military would see it as a weapon and God alone knew what the security services would want to do with it. They’d see it as a threat because it made them largely redundant. Who needs spies if you can foretell the future?
He stood up, “Ladies, gentlemen, good morning, my name is Martin Riley and I am the inventor of time travel, I am here to tell you that the future is flexible, we can change it.” Despite his nerves he chuckled inwardly at the group’s startled reaction to his introduction. It was always best to begin a lecture with something to make the students sit up and pay attention, and he was pleased that his voice hadn’t quavered.
Riley picked up the long pointer lying on the desk in front of him and felt his confidence return. He was in his element, he’d done this before.