Frozen in Time

by Ali Sparkes

  Rachel noticed how Polly kept saying ‘is’ instead of ‘was’ and ‘have’ instead of ‘had’. Maybe she still thought it was all a bad dream and she’d wake up tomorrow, back in 1956, in time to go to Hilary’s party after all.

  ‘Ooh! I’ve read this! I just love this!’ Polly pulled a dusty red book off Rachel’s shelf, beaming. It was Five Go To Smuggler’s Top. ‘I’m in the Famous Five fan club! Are you? I’ve got the badge—it costs a shilling to join and you get special letter and your badge. Enid Blyton is just super! I mean—gosh—to think! You’ve got this book after all this time! It’s just like the one I had—it’s—’ She paused, opening the cover, and then gasped. ‘It is mine!’ She showed Rachel the neat, rounded writing, in blue ink, on the first page. ‘This book belongs to Pauline Emerson.’

  ‘Wow,’ said Rachel. ‘I never thought I’d get to meet the girl who first got that book!’

  ‘Do you have any more?’ asked Polly, looking eager and bright for the first time.

  ‘Yes—I think so—downstairs mostly. I’ve kind of moved on from Enid Blyton now,’ confessed Rachel. ‘More into mags really.’

  ‘Mags? Who’s Mags? She can’t be better than Enid!’

  ‘No,’ laughed Rachel, ‘magazines … like this.’ She handed SWEET over to Polly—a flimsy cluster of luridly coloured pages, all about the latest music in the charts, pop groups, girl bands, boy bands, film stars, and celebrity stuff. The front cover featured a sulky looking pop starlet, her tanned arms around the neck of a boy band star who was wearing only jeans. Polly stared at it, her mouth dropping open in shock, and went crimson. Next to the photo were the words: JAMIE RICE—HOW SNOGGABLE IS HE?! Polly read the words, mouthing them silently, and then stared up at Rachel.

  ‘Does your father let you read this?’ She looked absolutely appalled and Rachel began to shuffle, embarrassed, on her wood-effect flooring. Listed down the front page she could see further shocks in store for poor Polly. STEP IN TO SEXY SUMMER SWIMSUITS had Polly’s hand flying to her mouth and DOES MY BUM LOOK BIG IN THIS? had her eyes ready to pop out of their sockets.

  ‘Um—didn’t you have magazines like this?’ she asked, feeling peculiarly self-conscious.

  ‘Well—I get Girl, of course,’ said Polly, still staring at SWEET as if it was the work of the devil. ‘But that’s nothing like this!’

  ‘What is it like?’ asked Rachel, taking SWEET out of Polly’s hands and tucking it hurriedly under her bed with MISSS and JJEM and other shocking publications.

  ‘It’s super! Full of adventures stories, like “Wendy & Jinx” and “Belle of the Ballet”. They have the most amazing things happen to them—and they certainly don’t worry about the size of their backsides! I love them. I always wanted to have adventures and amazing things happening to me …’ She tailed off, gulping, and her round blue eyes fixed upon Rachel with a wet glitter. ‘And now I’ve got my wish.’

  ‘This used to be Father’s room,’ said Freddy, as soon as he stepped into Ben’s bedroom. It was a wide room with a double sash window which overlooked the wild garden and the woods beyond. Ben slept in the top of a metal bunk bed. The floor was covered in blue carpet and drifts of Star Wars Lego, and luminous ‘glow-inthe-dark’ planets were stuck all over the ceiling. Ben kept meaning to take them down—he was thirteen now, after all, and they’d gone up when he was six— but he still liked the way they glowed gently in the night.

  ‘This must be really weird for you,’ said Ben. ‘What did it look like?’

  Freddy shrugged. ‘Cream and beige. Oak stuff. Ghastly old curtains which must have been there since 1900, I reckon! It’s better now, I can tell you. That bed is whizzer! Can I have the top bunk?’

  ‘Well,’ Ben shuffled, awkwardly. ‘It’s kind of m-my bed. It’s got all my books and stuff on the shelf.’

  Freddy grinned. ‘It’s all right, you clod. I’m just joshing you. I’ll be perfectly happy in the bottom bunk. I say—this is going to be fantastically odd. Maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow in 3009! Maybe you will too!’

  Ben sat down on the spinning metal seat which went with his white desk unit (also covered in Star Wars Lego) and stared at his great-uncle. ‘You really are something!’ He shook his head. ‘You’re just supercool about this, aren’t you?’

  ‘Certainly have been,’ said Freddy, opening the built-in wardrobe and eyeing Ben’s clothes and shoes. ‘Super cooling is part of the process. That’s how Father put us to sleep.’

  ‘Did you ever think that was—a bit—dodgy? Him putting you to sleep like that?’

  Freddy shrugged. ‘It was the obvious thing to do. He needed to do research and it’s no good always doing it with rats or dogs. He only did it after he was absolutely certain it was safe. We didn’t mind. He never put us in any danger.’

  Ben found it hard to agree. What if those cryonic torpedo things had gone wrong? Freddy and Polly would surely have suffocated. ‘He’d never get away with it today,’ he said. ‘Social Services would be round before you could blink. Mind you—I bet there’s not a parent alive that wouldn’t hope it could work. I mean—my mum and dad often talk about how great it would be to put us to sleep. In long car journeys mostly. They say they’d like a glass screen to slide up between the front seats and the back seat, and some kind of gas to pump in, so as soon as we went “Are we nearly—” they could freeze us. Five hours later when the car got to Cornwall they’d just hit the defrost button and we’d go “there yet?”.’

  Freddy chuckled. ‘That would be the tops! Imagine—I could freeze Polly and never have to hear her drooling over Miss Rosebud all the way to the seaside! When we find Father, I’m going to get him to invent that! It’d sell like hot cakes! Good grief! Is this yours?’ He pulled a hanger out, from which dangled a colourful floral Hawaiian-style shirt, which Ben had worn to a beach barbecue last summer. Freddy was looking at it incredulously. ‘It’s your mother’s, right? In the wrong wardrobe.’

  Ben bit his lip. ‘Didn’t you ever see Elvis in that kind of gear?’

  Freddy squinted at him. ‘Elvis?’

  ‘Yeah! Elvis! Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of Elvis Presley!’

  Freddy stuffed the shirt back in the wardrobe. ‘Elvis Presley … Oh—that Elvis. Yes—I’ve heard of him. He’s an American, isn’t he? I think he’s doing quite well in the popular music charts with his song— top ten, I think. My chum Frankie’s got the record. He thinks it’s whizzer. He does this lunatic dance to it, all hips wiggling and stuff. What’s it called? Something about a hotel, I think.’

  ‘“Heartbreak Hotel”,’ said Ben, at once. He wasn’t really into Elvis, but his mum had a ‘Best of Elvis’ CD which she sometimes played at parties.

  ‘Yes—that’s it. Gosh. He must have made it to number one then. Father thought he was dreadful. I thought he was a bit of a peacock, really. He sounds as if he’s being hit in the chest with a road drill. Did he do well then?’

  Ben laughed. ‘You have no idea!’

  ‘Well, I can see I’m going to have to go back down the hatch,’ said Freddy, closing the wardrobe door decisively. ‘There’s no way I’m wearing your stuff! Honestly! Your clothes are all shiny, like girls’ clothes. I prefer to look like a boy!’

  ‘With a haircut like that?’ retorted Ben. ‘You look like the Prince of Wales. And trust me—that is not a look you want in 2009!’ His own hair was a fairly credible mess. In spite of all the drama of the past couple of hours, Freddy’s straight dark brown hair was still neatly parted to one side. ‘Anyway, that’s just party gear. I normally wear T-shirts and jeans. Don’t you have any jeans?’

  Freddy shrugged. ‘Not me. Some of the town boys do, but Father says they’re working men’s trousers. I think they’re all right, actually. Wouldn’t mind some. The Americans wear them all the time, according to Poll. She wants some.’

  ‘Do you think she’ll be OK?’ said Ben. Polly seemed very young compared to Rachel, even though he now knew they were about the same age.

  �
�What, Poll? Certainly. She’s tough as old boots, that girl. She’ll stop the blubbing soon and start having fun. She’s just worried about Father.’

  ‘Aren’t you?’ asked Ben. He knew he would have been blubbing worse than Polly if his father had vanished without trace and was wanted for murder. Freddy stood up straight and shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his grey flannel shorts.

  ‘As I see it, this is a mystery,’ he said. ‘Nobody knows anything for sure, so what’s the point of blubbing about it? I want to find out what’s happened to him, of course.’

  ‘B-but, even if he’s still alive he’d be … what … ninety—a hundred?’

  ‘Ninety-one,’ said Freddy. ‘And he is still alive. I’m certain of it. I’ll get a good night’s sleep and some decent food in me—that’s if you still have decent food in 2009—and then I’m going to search for him. First thing in the morning. Until I find him. Emersons don’t give up. That’s what Father always said and that’s why he did such amazing things. You wait, Ben—you’ll see. I’ll find him. Emersons don’t give up.’

  Ben nodded, impressed. ‘You’re not really like a teenager, are you?’ he said, folding his arms and peering at Freddy.

  ‘What’s a teenager supposed to be like?’ asked Freddy.

  Ben opened his mouth to answer, but then he was silenced by the door being bashed open violently, and Polly hurtling in, followed by a confused looking Rachel.

  ‘FREDDY!!!’ yelled Polly, in panic. ‘FREDDY! We’ve got to go back down! Now! Oh, Freddy! WE FORGOT BESS!’

  Freddy looked stricken.

  ‘Oh no! Poor Bess! We left her down there.’

  ‘Who’s Bess?’ asked Ben and Rachel, at the same moment.

  ‘Oh, how dreadful we’ve been!’ whimpered Polly. ‘So selfish and caught up about ourselves that we left her down there, all frozen, on her own!’

  ‘Well, come on then!’ Freddy propelled her back through the door and soon all four of them were racing down the stairs, slithering through the garden and splashing across the stream to get back to the hatch. It was hugely different from their first trip. Now, instead of fearful, Ben and Rachel were utterly intrigued by it and thrilled beyond measure that someone else was about to be defrosted, before their very eyes.

  Uncle Jerome had been down there for the past fifteen minutes, while they’d been showing Freddy and Polly their rooms. They found him in a state of absolute rapture.

  ‘It’s perfect! Just perfect!’ he gasped as soon as they ran into the sitting room. He’d been rifling through some of the supplies boxes. ‘It’s a 1950s time capsule! Imagine! Untouched for fifty-three years, until today!’

  ‘Yes, yes … amazing!’ said Freddy as they all flew past him and straight through the next door. By the time they reached the torpedoes chamber Uncle Jerome was right behind them, demanding to know what was going on.

  ‘Come right in,’ ordered Freddy. ‘We have to seal the room again first.’ He ignored Uncle Jerome’s urgent questions in a way which hugely impressed Ben and Rachel, while he went to the console and punched the red button which Rachel had first hit that morning. Once again there was the hissing noise, followed by the mechanical workings noise, and the door locked itself.

  ‘That’s what happened the first time,’ Rachel whispered to Uncle Jerome. ‘We thought we were sealed in like Egyptian mummies, for ever.’

  ‘It has to seal, to equalize the air pressure before the chamber can be opened,’ said Freddy.

  ‘You mean to tell me there’s someone else in here?’ gasped Uncle Jerome. ‘But I looked in them all. The end one is shut, of course, and I couldn’t open it, but I could see through the glass—there’s nobody else in it!’

  Freddy went to the first chamber and peered into the glass. He gave a grin and said: ‘You didn’t look hard enough.’ As the hissing noise eased off there was a click and the glass window smoothly rose up, as it must have done for Freddy and Polly earlier, only Ben and Rachel had been too hysterical to notice. Polly ran to Freddy’s side and gasped ‘Bess! Oh, Bessie! Are you all right?’ Then Freddy leaned over, reached right down into the chamber, to where his feet would have lain had he been in it, and pulled something out. Something sneezed. Something snuffled. Polly took the something from him and cuddled it with a sigh. ‘She’s all right! She’s waking up!’ And she turned to face them, delight all over her face, and a puppy in her arms.

  ‘Good lord!’ said Uncle Jerome, while Ben and Rachel just groaned with delight. The puppy was a brown Labrador with liquid eyes and shining fur, floppy ears, and big paws which dangled sleepily from Polly’s arms as she hugged it to her. ‘A fifty-three-year-old puppy!’ added Uncle Jerome. ‘Astonishing! Truly astonishing!’

  ‘We only got her a week before we got frozen,’ said Polly. ‘We came home from school and found that Father had already frozen her six times. She’s actually six months old, but she’s spent half that time frozen, so she’s only three months really … if you know what I mean.’

  ‘He froze a puppy! How could he?’ said Rachel— even more shocked about puppy-freezing than child-freezing.

  ‘Well, it doesn’t hurt her,’ said Freddy. ‘Any more than it hurts us! Don’t make him out to be some kind of monster. He’s not. He’s a genius!’

  ‘I know, I know,’ said Rachel, playing with Bess’s silky brown ears as the dog nuzzled into Ben’s palm. ‘And, actually, I’m really glad he did. We’ve never had a puppy!’

  ‘Well, she’ll be very useful,’ said Uncle Jerome. ‘We can test her—see how she’s holding up biologically and physiologically after such a long time in stasis. We’ll have to test you two, as well. Just make sure the extended suspension hasn’t caused any damage. Don’t want you going over too fast, like frozen strawberries. They never last an afternoon after they’ve been defrosted!’

  ‘Uncle!’ Rachel shoved his arm and glared at him and whispered, ‘Don’t! You’ll scare them!’

  Uncle Jerome nodded and tapped his nose. ‘Yes, good point,’ he muttered and went to run his hands over the cryonic machinery, his face a picture of reverence. Ben thought it was a bit like watching a pilgrim arrive at a holy shrine. ‘So,’ breathed Uncle Jerome, ‘the liquid nitrogen—I assume—must pass through these pipes and circulate around the interior of the chamber … cold enough to chill you into suspension, but not making actual bodily contact, thereby not burning your skin off or leading to a nasty multiple-fracture situation when you go to move again … Oh! This is magnificent! How does it feel? When you’re suspended?’

  ‘Um—I don’t know really,’ said Freddy. ‘We just go to sleep.’

  ‘Ah yes, of course, yes. Are there any special preparations beforehand? Do you have to eat or drink anything specific or …?’

  ‘Not really. We just get in. Although Polly always makes a point of going to the lavatory first. Don’t know why. I’ve told her enough times, her bladder’s just as suspended as the rest of her. You know what girls are, though. Bess just snuggles down in the bottom bit where your feet go. She likes it there—that’s why you couldn’t see her.’

  ‘And when you wake up again? Do you feel odd?’

  ‘Pretty queer sometimes,’ said Freddy, now stepping over and joining in the puppy petting. ‘Usually a bit foggy for a minute or so. But it doesn’t last. Of course this time it was worse, because our joints didn’t work too well for a bit. I suppose fifty-three years in cryonic suspension’s going to give anyone a bit of a dead leg.’

  ‘So how is it all powered?’ Uncle Jerome was pondering now. ‘Your father must have laid power down deep underground somehow. What would it have been connected to? Maybe there’s a generator somewhere here. Maybe it leads off the power from the house? Or—or solar energy panels somewhere. Or hydro-electric from the stream. I don’t know. So much to study—so much to find out! I must get the department out—I must get this properly recorded and studied, and—’

  ‘NO!’ Freddy shouted so loudly that Bess whined and Polly glared at him. />
  Uncle Jerome blinked and stood up from examining the base of the nearest chamber.

  Freddy stood with his arms folded, lifting his chin. ‘You can’t let anyone else in! Father always told us this was top secret!’

  ‘But—but, my dear boy, he worked for the government! They must have known about his research!’

  ‘Not this research!’ insisted Freddy. ‘We know. We were there. He didn’t share this with anyone at the government. Me and Poll were the only ones who knew about it. He said it was more than his life was worth to let anyone else know about it.’

  ‘But, Freddy, that was fifty-three years ago,’ said his nephew, taking off his glasses and rubbing them with his handkerchief. ‘The government today is not the same as the government back then! They will be astounded by all this. Your father will be a hero! Think of it. We could carry on with his research—I—I could carry on with it … don’t you think? Don’t you?’

  ‘And we could clear Father’s name,’ said Polly, unexpectedly siding with Uncle Jerome. She gave Rachel the puppy to hold and stepped across to stand next to her brother. ‘It’s beastly that everyone thinks he’s a murderer! It’s not right.’

  Freddy frowned. ‘Of course I want to clear Father’s name … but … well, I think we need to wait a bit. It’s only been a few hours since we got defrosted. I don’t like the idea of rushing into anything with governments. Father did work for the government and he was jolly proud of it … but he also said he didn’t trust everyone there. That’s why he didn’t do all his research in their labs. He didn’t even tell his closest colleagues that he’d done all this—not even Uncle Dick, and he was his best friend. He came to the house sometimes, but Father never showed him this.’