by Jodi Taylor
It went well. They listened. One or two actually took notes on their scratchpads. I think there was a general air of things having gone better than anyone – including me – had thought they would. I didn’t stay for the rest of the briefing, slipping out of the door before we all suffered the embarrassment of me being asked to leave.
I went straight back to the library, did my best to enjoy the cup of lukewarm brown water that could have been either coffee or gravy because they’re very similar, and reckoned things weren’t going too badly.
Obviously, not everything went that well. They were the Time Police and I was St Mary’s. There was always going to be friction, which I intended to exploit to the best of my ability, and it wasn’t very long before the first opportunity arose. They’d scheduled me for weekly sessions of self-defence and there was trouble right from the word go.
‘Right,’ said Ellis. ‘Pair off. One of you to disarm the other. Disarm only. I don’t want any casualties due to over-enthusiasm. Pretend your opponent is a little old lady.’
‘No problem there,’ said my partner, a thickset yob named Grint, sneering unpleasantly at me. So, bearing in mind Ian Guthrie’s advice – always get your licks in first – I hooked my leg behind his and helped him to the ground. It was only an unfortunate coincidence that he banged his face on my knee on the way down.
There seemed to be an enormous amount of shouting and one second later I was surrounded and two seconds later we were all in Commander Hay’s office. I don’t remember my feet touching the floor at all.
I think ‘irked’ is the best word to describe her expression. ‘I understand there has been an incident.’
Everyone else was silent so it was obviously up to me. ‘I was disarming my opponent. As instructed.’
Ellis said in exasperation, ‘With your knee?’
‘The situation appeared to warrant the element of surprise. I didn’t realise I was being too rough for him.’
He was even more angry. ‘You broke his nose because you didn’t adhere to the approved protocols.’
‘Why would I? The unexpected is always good.’
‘They are designed to keep you safe.’
‘I can do that for myself. As this morning proved.’
‘You were lucky.’
‘No – I was underestimated. By everyone.’
‘You’re part of a team. Your team is there to protect you.’
‘Seriously? Do I look like I need protecting?’
‘I am responsible for you and I’m following my orders. You should try it some time.’
‘Your man was about to shove a gun in my face. What was I supposed to do – scream and collapse on the floor?’
‘In moments of crisis – yes. It takes you out of the game and we can get on with things without injuring you. Although why that’s such a priority is a mystery.’
‘Everything’s a mystery to the Time Police.’
As one they took a step towards me, fists raised.
I screamed and collapsed on the floor.
I lay there, inhaling carpet and praying someone had a sense of humour. This used to happen to me a lot during my training at St Mary’s. They pit one short historian against three security guards and then get upset because she doesn’t play fair.
A pair of boots appeared right in front of my face and Captain Ellis said, ‘You see – you can do it if you try.’
‘Get her up,’ said Commander Hay and I was hauled to my feet.
‘In the phrase popularised by idiots down the ages, I think lessons have been learned today.’ She paused. ‘By everyone.’
I smiled brightly because I’ve been told that’s very irritating.
She sighed. ‘I am about to return to my desk and open a file. When I look up none of you will still be here.’
She did and we weren’t.
5
Yes, there were a few bumps along the way, but from my point of view, everything was going quite well. This was a strange new world and I was eager to investigate. Unfortunately, that wasn’t so easy. They had a library. Actually, they had three, scattered around the building, but for me, certain books were banned. And I certainly wasn’t allowed just to browse. Books were selected for me. Almost all non-fiction was banned and if I did get what I wanted, most of it was so redacted as to be almost useless.
I picked up various bits and pieces along the way, of course. They worked me hard but I kept my eyes open because, as I said, as an historian it was my duty. They did let me outside – which surprised me because I thought they’d be completely up their own arses about the future contaminating the past and so on. I did have to sign an enormous number of documents promising never to divulge anything about the future. I probably shouldn’t say this, so look away now if you don’t like spoilers, but if anyone wants to put their money into zeppelins, canals, dirigibles, energy-generating walkways, green roofs, intelligent glass and especially [Information Redacted] then now’s the time. You didn’t hear any of that from me.
Some things had barely changed at all. Doors and windows were still in the same place – although they were now voice controlled. As were the light panels in the walls and ceilings. Clothes were made mainly of a cotton mix and rarely required washing. Which was good. And, for me, there were still the same anti-period injections but without the side effects – which was even better.
I have to say the weather was dreadful. They’d had a bash at climate control, apparently, but it was as hit and miss as normal weather so hardly worth bothering with. In fact, I thought they’d just made things worse. Until they told me how unstable things had been until recently, and then I had to concede they hadn’t done a bad job at all.
Interestingly, there were now three official worldwide languages – English, Spanish and Mandarin – and because people lived all over the place these days, each news bulletin was in all three languages. So that everyone could check they were all getting the same news, Ellis told me later.
As always, the main concerns were with the US. America had found yet another way to be at war with itself and was now split along roughly east-west lines with California as a separate country. No one would answer any of my questions about it so I can’t tell you any more. Sorry.
Marriage was finished. A couple of years ago I’d have led the cheers, but now I wasn’t so sure. These days people signed a contract for either seven or ten years – there were tax breaks for those undertaking the ten-year sentence – at the end of which term the contract could either be terminated or extended. I was intrigued enough to do some digging around on the internet. I was looking for statistics on which gender terminated most, but either the figures weren’t available to anyone or just not available to me. I’d learned not to probe too deeply into matters not strictly related to the Time Police because if I did, sooner or later, someone would appear in the doorway of my carrel and frown at me.
Sex was no longer for the purposes of reproduction and most women were artificially inseminated with the sperm of their choice at the time of their choice.
‘So,’ I said to Matthew Ellis. ‘Sex is for pleasure only.’
‘Depends how you do it,’ he grinned and would say no more despite my gentle probing.
Doctors were scarce and worked only in hospitals. Most people had home-scanners that diagnosed and prescribed. If you opened your eyes and found a real doctor bending over you then you were in serious trouble. Nothing new there then.
World population had peaked and was now declining slightly, but not by enough and not quickly enough. The deserts were being greened, which was interesting, and attempts were being made to farm the oceans. With mixed success.
Taxation was sky-high, with most resources being poured into slowing climate change. The Gulf Stream was all over the place and the temperature in London was now slightly cooler than before. Winters in north-west Europe were co
lder and wetter and snow was so frequent that even England had stopped grinding to a halt every time a teaspoonful of the stuff drifted across a motorway.
Around the world, some cities were moving underground. Canada was almost completely subterranean. I asked if I could visit and was told no.
Most interesting of all – if you were politically inclined – there were a handful of major international corporations now more powerful than most governments. I gathered this was causing a certain amount of friction.
So, we hadn’t managed to blow ourselves to bits, or completely exhaust the world’s resources, but it certainly wasn’t the Utopian paradise so beloved of all science-fiction writers and – and this, for me, was the real tragedy – still no flying cars.
Matthew and I established a nice little routine. I often saw him during the day even if it was only to wave. He would visit on Friday evenings and we’d do a holo and pizza together. Sometimes, afterwards, he would stay to talk about his schoolwork, or to show me something he’d made. One night, when it was much later than either of us realised, he stayed in the other bedroom. And the next Friday as well. Then he moved one or two things in and, after a while, staying with me on Friday nights became an accepted thing. Captain Ellis congratulated me on my strategy.
But I was lonely. Very, very lonely.
I missed Leon a lot. Much more than I thought I would. We’d been apart for long periods before, but I was usually too busy trying to survive to have time for moping and feeling sorry for myself. Here, I had plenty of time on my hands and thoughts of Leon filled most of it. And not just Leon. I missed Peterson and I worried about him. And Markham. Even Rosie Lee. The people here were perfectly pleasant and we were all making heroic efforts to get along together – we could have done a holo for the UN had they still been in existence – but they weren’t St Mary’s. Evenings were the worst, with no Leon to curl up with. I even missed all the football I’d had to watch because he’d fallen asleep on the remote and I didn’t want to disturb him.
I threw myself into my work and my briefings went well. My room was bland but comfortable. The food wasn’t bad. The facilities offered inside the building were excellent. Sadly, they weren’t a light-hearted bunch. Well, they were the Time Police, so frivolity had no place in their lives. As I said, some of them were quite pleasant, but bloody hell, it was dull.
I had no means of communication with Leon but I had to do something so I wrote him letters in my head, telling him how Matthew and I were getting on. He was working hard at his reading and writing. Matthew, I mean. He still attended a normal school in the mornings and got his Time Police education in the afternoons. They were treating him well and he seemed happy. His old, suspicious, glowering look had all but disappeared.
All in all, I had no complaints. I kept my head down and my mouth shut and people actually listened to my briefings. I think they were surprised I wasn’t preaching at them, but if they were able to rampage through History and get away with it, then who was I to interfere? I just stood up, gave them the facts and sat back down again. On a good day, one or two people might come to see me afterwards to seek clarification on one point or another.
So, there I was – working for the Time Police, and mainly doing a good job. There was the odd incident – there probably always would be; Captain Ellis usually smoothed everything over afterwards but I knew that, in one or two areas, there was bad feeling. No one ever sat with me to eat and my evenings were pretty solitary.
But – things were going fairly well. Right up until the moment when they weren’t. The moment when the manure heap well and truly impacted the ventilation system and nearly derailed all my careful plans. And – before anyone says anything – it wasn’t my fault. It was Matthew’s.
6
I’d expressed a curiosity and Captain Ellis had invited me to the Map Room. Officially, it was on the list of places where they would shoot me if they found me unescorted, but I was interested and he offered, so off we toddled.
We fought our way through Commander Hay’s public attempts to convince people the Time Police were members of the human race, across the echoing atrium with its exciting visuals, professional landscaping and teeth-gritting Time Police tour guides and back into the private areas.
The room housing the Time Map was just around the corner, through a discreet key-coded door, along another anonymous corridor and through another, heavy door which required not only Captain Ellis’s card, but his thumbprint as well.
Being the Time Police, of course, the equivalent of the St Mary’s version of the Time Map wasn’t anything like good enough for them. I think they thought ours was a bit girlie. Theirs did not sit within the confines of a data stack. Theirs was a giant holo, about three storeys high. I suppose that, in an almost exclusively male organisation, size is important, but even I had to admit it was spectacular. I made a note to keep Miss Lingoss away because if she ever clapped eyes on this then I’d lose her forever. I know the Time Police are a bunch of idiots, but this was one thing they really had got right. And yes, it did make our Map look more girlie than a pink handbag in Girlie Land.
Unlike the St Mary’s version, which is vaguely hourglass-shaped, theirs was a huge sphere, incorporating two axes – one horizontal and the other vertical. The horizontal axis denoted space and the vertical showed time. Where the two intersected was the ever-changing here and now. Everything above now was in the future and everything below denoted the past. I tilted my head back, trying to take it all in at once.
I had no idea how many streamers they’d needed to keep this going. Hundreds – possibly thousands – of pinpoints of light glittered like stars from the ceiling, the walls, even the floor, all converging on this enormous, impressive Time Map.
‘You’ll get a better view from the observation ring,’ said Ellis. ‘This way.’
He steered me along a curved corridor and out on to the observation ring. As I stepped into the silver light, I could hear a low, droning hum as the Map slowly rotated.
The ring was situated about halfway up the Map, thus giving an excellent view both up, down and all the way around. A giant silver filigree of light stretched way up above my head and down to the floor beneath. Thousands and thousands of tiny, glowing silver points were all connected in a vast network of fine, shimmering lines. Scattered throughout, tiny blue, green and purple dots of light denoted various jumps. Almost every jump that had ever taken place, as Matthew Ellis proudly informed me, although I doubted it. Yes, they’d tracked down Matthew when he’d been taken, but they’d failed to capture Clive Ronan . . . or Adrian and Mikey . . .
Superimposed over the jumps, glowing red dots indicated major historical events.
‘Points of reference,’ he said. ‘They’re only there to enable us to navigate our way around the Map. They’re just history. It’s Time that’s important.’
I nodded politely because what else can you do in the face of such folly?
Each dot was joined to the others around it because, as anyone from the History Department will tell you, nothing exists in isolation. Everything is connected to everything else. If you interrogated our St Mary’s Map and pulled up our Troy jump – although I’d rather you didn’t because it’s still a bit contentious, even today – not only would you find details of the establishing Pathfinder jumps, but all the known circumstances leading to that particular event. Trade wars, border disputes, kidnappings, murder – all the rich pageant of human History. And the consequences, too. The subsequent fall of Troy. The increased importance of Mycenaean culture, the murder of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra – been there, seen it, got the T-shirt – and so on. Which reminded me that one day I really was going to have to go back and observe Odysseus’s adventures as he hacked his way around the Aegean and Ionian Seas trying to get home, because who wouldn’t want to check out a Cyclops?
Anyway, back to their Time Map. Which, admittedly, was magnificent
. As was the structure in which it was housed. Three floors high – and beyond, possibly. I tilted my head back but still couldn’t see the very top, lost in darkness. A bit of a metaphor for the future if you think about it.
The room was curved, to follow the shape of the Map. People hunched over consoles built on gantries at all levels around the walls, constantly updating and amending, because, as we all know, time waits for no man. And the Time Police don’t hang about, either.
Captain Ellis stood back to let me take it all in. And it took some taking in, I can tell you. I stood watching the constant interchange, trying to trace the almost imperceptible but never-ending passage of time. To watch a point emerge over there, or a line extend itself by the tiniest fraction just here. The whole thing was quite mesmerising. I have no idea for how long I stood, face lifted, watching time – sorry, Time – unfold in front of me.
I was so absorbed in the Map, working my way from point to point around the ring, that I didn’t notice the other people in the Map Room until Ellis nudged me. I looked away, blinked to refocus my eyes and saw the top of Matthew’s head, down on the ground floor below us.
I assumed it was one of his tutorials because he was clutching his scratchpad and listening with the sort of rapt attention I, as his mother, could only dream of inspiring.
The Map Master herself was demonstrating something and, as I watched, one of the frighteningly young people at the consoles leaned aside for Matthew to have a better look at his screen.
‘Want to go down and say hello?’ said Ellis.
I nodded and we slipped away from the viewing area, down a discreet spiral staircase and back into the Map Room itself. The Map reared above us, humming more loudly at ground level. From down here looking up, it was colossal.
Unfortunately, being so close meant I could hear the ongoing dialogue between Matthew and the Map Master.