by Alex Marks
I finally came to a stop at a small café, its tiny metal tables occupying a space opposite a shop displaying pictures of Oxford. I managed to order a coffee, and then sat and stared and stared at them, the images of familiar landmarks gradually soothing my mind, until my hands had stopped shaking and my heart had slowed down to something approaching normal levels.
I ran my hand over my head, and took a deep breath. I had – I hoped - very carefully covered all my traces. I’d dismantled the electromagnet, and the phone battery was now in my pocket. I’d deleted the photo of the equipment from my PC, downloaded all the research data I’d been generating over the last month or two onto a flash memory stick, and then wiped my hard drive. I’d deleted the image from my phone, and then flushed the memory card down the toilet. Finally, I’d shoved the sample of 122 back into the safe as if nothing had happened.
I sat and turned my coffee cup round and round. Crazy or not, it had worked. I hadn’t really thought it would, and to be honest I hadn’t wanted it to work. Now I felt as if a second bomb had gone off in my life and without Sarah I wasn’t sure if I could cope with it.
The tourists sitting all around me chattered away, enthusing in loud voices about the quaintness of Oxford. I wondered, if I told them they could go back in time and see some real history, would they want to? Like everyone else I knew about the grandfather paradox, and I now called to mind innumerable science fiction stories, films and TV programmes that foretold dire consequences of messing around with time travel. Admittedly, so far only a small piece of rock had gone anywhere, but even so it made me go shaky at the knees thinking about it. I was Dr Kitchener, not Dr Who.
My gut instinct was to try and forget everything that had happened that afternoon, give back the sample, and then bugger off and become a taxi driver or something, anything away from here. It was too big, too much, too life-changing. But, fucking hell, I was a scientist and now I knew what 122 was, I couldn't unknown it. I had to find out more.
I reached into my pocket for my phone, and my fingers curled around the letter I'd picked up earlier. It was a plain white envelope, cheap-looking, with the same familiar writing as the note I'd got on Saturday. I ripped it open, and unfolded the single sheet of paper inside.
So the 122 can travel in time. So what. Can a living creature go with it? Time for Terry to take one for the team.
I stared at the note, incredulous. How could anyone know about the unbibium? An icy grip of paranoia clutched my mind. Was I being watched? I automatically glanced up, scanning the crowded space anxiously, but instead of mysterious surveillance to my horror I saw Maggie, Sarah's mother, advancing towards me. She was encased in a skin-tight white outfit and hat that looked like she couldn’t decide whether to go pole-dancing or to Ascot. For a second my battered brain refused to connect, and whilst my mental wheels were spinning she was on me, cutting off any possibility of escape.
‘Adam!’ her polished tones were imperious, as usual, snapping my eyes back to look at her. I felt absurdly vulnerable, sitting at the little table, her looming over me. With a small smile of triumph she strode up to me and leaned down to clutch my arm with sharpened fingernails. ‘Darling, where have you been? We’ve been so worried about you.’
‘Oh, really?’ With revulsion I instinctively ducked my head away from the kiss she tried to plant on my cheek, and so she unpursed her lips and instead turned them upward into a gruesome smile.
‘Richard said that I simply must come and try and find you when I was in town next. But you weren’t in your lab and your friend Dave said…’
‘You went to the lab?’ My flesh went cold, even though I knew I hadn’t left anything incriminating behind me. ‘What do you want, Maggie? I’m busy.’
She stepped back slightly, hand to chest as if I’d slapped her. It was a convincing pantomime move, but I could see her eyes remain calculating. I wondered if she had looked as shocked when her handsome and charming husband had raped her children. She was giving me the full force of her you’ve-hurt-me-darling face but I must have looked unmoved. Her eyes flashed and she stopped smiling, instead, sinking gracefully onto the chair opposite.
‘Anyway, Adam,’ she twisted her mouth into a cruel line, ‘We just wanted to let you know that we feel that there are some problems with Sarah’s will. She wasn’t in her right mind, was she, those last few months? I mean, she didn't even tell you about the house she owned.'
'She didn't know about it,' I growled.
Her immaculate face twisted into a sour smile. 'No? Of course not, darling. You keep telling yourself that if it helps.' She patted my arm until I snatched it away. 'No, she wasn't quite herself,' she continued blithely, 'And committing suicide in that way does rather prove it.’
I felt my face and neck flush red with rage. ‘Suicide? What are you talking about?’
Maggie smiled with triumph at seeing me angry, the manipulative cow. ‘Oh, Adam, you poor thing,’ she said, again laying a hand on my arm, ‘did you really think it was an accident?’
‘No, not an accident,’ I said, my voice thickening. I was damned if I was going to cry in front of this vicious bitch. I shook her arm off. ‘It was murder.’ With satisfaction I saw her crocodile eyes widen with surprise, and this made me reckless, wanting to follow up the strike with a verbal knock-out. ‘She told you and your sick bastard of a husband that she was going to the police about Helen, and you threatened and frightened her until she couldn’t drive safely.’
Maggie’s well-tended face sagged and I leaned forward into her space. ‘You didn’t think I knew about Helen, did you? Sarah sent me a video message before she died to tell me all about Beechcroft Road, and the abuse, and her sister being killed. And you know what? I've already been to the police about it. I expect you'll be hearing from them soon, darling.’
I slammed back in my chair, breathing hard, leaving her reeling back with her face a blank of panic.
‘Adam –‘ she said, faintly.
‘Fuck off,’ I said with satisfaction, standing up and grating my chair back across the floor. People at neighbouring tables looked at me in surprise. 'I hope the next time I see you or your paedo husband it's on the fucking news, being shoved into the back of a police van.' All heads swivelled to Maggie, but she was sitting completely still, as if turned to ice.
I pushed through the tables, people leaning hurriedly out of my way. I felt a snarl on my face and my mind was filled with rage. My little voice of reason seemed a long, long way away. As I walked, I looked at a new resolve which seemed to have formed in my mind while I wasn't looking. Fuck everybody. Fuck everything. I was going to find out what that 122 could do.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Tuesday, 7 April 2015: 17:12
I made one stop on my way back to the lab, but as I approached the Physics Building I felt as if every eye had zeroed in on me and knew exactly what I was planning to do. I drew a calming breath and managed to walk into the building and not sprint. Across the foyer - nodding to Norman - and up the stairs, and still no-one appeared to stop me. Finally, I got into my lab and double-locked the door.
I pulled the blinds down and didn’t turn on the lights, but in the gloom went straight to the safe and retrieved the unbibium sample. Just like before, I got down my box of random bits from the shelf and then reached into the carrier bag that I'd picked up at my stop at Boswells, the local department store, to pull out one of my purchases: a cheap cordless drill. I turned it over in my hands and then smashed it down hard on the corner of the bench, cracking the rigid plastic of the handle. I grabbed a screwdriver and worked the blade into the fracture, managing after a few seconds to break off the grip altogether to expose the long tube-like batteries inside. Some more calculated smashing and the tubes, wires, and control dial were looking naked and exposed on the desk, like the innards of some poor creature. I cast the thought aside and busily began building my new components into the circuit, packing most of it inside the plastic box.
The final touch was including
my other purchase, a grey plastic cooking timer with a digital display. I ripped off the back and with a bit of ingenuity I wired that into the circuit so that the current would be switched on and off according to the timer's settings. I set it to four minutes, as a conservative test. A bit of rummaging found the lid for the old lunchbox and I snapped it on firmly, leaving the timer hanging out on its own wires. I took out a roll of duck-tape from the Boswell's bag and taped all round the box just to be on the safe side. Then I grabbed up the paper carrier bag of Sarah's office possessions which I'd parked on a shelf the other night, tipped out the notebooks and biros, and shoved the box inside. A moment’s thought sent me to cover the bottom of the door and the keyhole with taped sheets of cardboard, ripped from an old box: I didn’t want anyone to even know I was here and the super white flash of the thorium would hardly been unnoticeable. The phone rang, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. I picked up the handset, slammed it down, and then left it off the hook.
I crossed to Terry’s cage and gently shelled him from his cocoon of fluffy bed material. He was sleepy and docile, and I felt myself calm down a bit as I automatically stroked him as I did every day to make sure he was happy to be handled. It crossed my mind that if this didn’t work, then I would be wasting a life – albeit a hamster’s life – but I pushed that thought away to join the buzzing cloud of unwelcome thoughts that were plaguing me at the moment, and instead took the little animal over to the bench.
I was wondering how best to get Terry into the bag without him chewing anything when a blinding white flash sent me staggering back against the wall. Instinctively I clutched the hamster to my chest as I blinked away bright splotches of pink and orange, made much worse by the gloom, and then found myself looking down at an identical paper bag sitting innocuously on the bit of bench near the window.
Shaking, I placed Terry carefully back into his cage and then walked over to the second bag. I felt unreal, disconnected, watching my hands opening the bag as if they belonged to someone else. I shook my head, and pulled it open to reveal a second Terry, happily eating a sunflower seed, sitting in the clear plastic play-ball that I often put him in to allow him to roll around the lab. The ball was just the right size to be jammed into the bag, resting on top of the 122 sample. I gulped. I had just been wondering whether to use the play-ball.
I lifted the ball out of the bag, revealing the face of the kitchen timer underneath: it was counting down to cut off the charge from the battery in another two minutes and fifty-two more seconds. I had time to see how the trip had affected Terry. I carefully opened the play-ball and caught the rodent’s surge for freedom with a practised hand. He carried on walking across my hands as he normally did, and I moved them back and round to keep him centred. Superficially, he looked totally fine, and judging by the small black poo he delivered into my palm he obviously felt fine too.
With an eye on the timer I snapped him back into the play-ball and folded the bag closed again just in time for the timer to emit a single bell-like ping and the whole bag to vanish in its white flash.
It took a few minutes to get the Terry who was still in the present with me and snap him into his plastic ball. I gently wedged it into the bag, set the timer, and then pushed the neck of the bag closed. I licked my dry lips and waited for the charge to build. After a few seconds came the flash of white. The bag was gone, reappearing only six minutes later.
If you could only turn the clock back, Judith had said to me the other day, and Sarah would still be alive, turn the clock back … and I could.
I put my fists to my temples and took a deep breath to try and get my brain to slow down enough to catch some of the ideas bursting through like hot wires. If the sample of 122 had gone back in time for four minutes and three seconds, then could it be persuaded to go back further? It seemed that the duration of the battery charge was the limiting factor, so what charge did I need? I put Terry back into his cage, and attached the drill battery to its charger and plugged it into the wall socket. Then I sat down to do some serious maths.
By the time I looked up from my notebook the day had darkened into evening. The lab was illuminated only by the streetlamp across the carpark, coming through breaks in the slatted blinds.
I felt elated and calm at the same time, and carefully fed and watered Terry, sent Dave a quick text asking him to look after the hamster for the time being, then picked up the birthday bag and the charger. I’d got down the stairs again and was half way to the doors to the outside world when a voice cut across the foyer and stopped me. Energy was fizzing in my veins and my head was popping with insane hope, and it took a few seconds to realise that the voice was hailing me.
'Hey, Kitchener!' it was Freddy, I couldn't believe this shit was still hassling me. 'I hope you don't think you're going to be driving home!' He was practically dancing with malicious glee.
I shoved past him; I just had no time to be talking to this moron. I needed to get home and get hold of a bigger battery and...
I skidded to a stop beside my car, which sat drunkenly in the car park on four punctured tyres. A web of silver cracks decorated the windscreen, and even in the orange sodium lights I could see scratch after scratch across the doors and side panels.
'Shit!'
Freddy Wright had come into the car park alongside me, but his expression of joy at my misfortune morphed into one of terror as I grabbed him by collar of his pretentious tweed jacket and threw him across the bonnet of the car.
'What have you done to my fucking car! You stupid bastard!' I was screaming in his face and shaking him. His face went a dark purple and belatedly I realised I was actually strangling him. I let go at once and he slumped to the ground, gasping and holding his throat.
'You're crazy!' he croaked, but seeing the rage on my face he held up his hands in surrender and squeaked: 'it wasn't me! It wasn't me!'
I paced up and down in an agony – I needed to be home now, working on the 122, getting it ready, not pissing about with the bloody AA. Sod it, I thought, who cares about a stupid car, I'll just leave it.
Freddy flinched as he saw my head come up and my steps immediately turn in his direction, but I hardly noticed him as I strode quickly out of the carpark and down South Parks Road. The Physics Lab was soon swallowed by the darkness, forgotten too, and I decided that it would be quicker to cut down Museum Road and through the Lamb and Flag Passage to St Giles where I could be sure to pick up a taxi. I almost ran past the looming fortress-like blocks of Keble on the corner of Blackhall Road, and jogged past the gate that blocked the half-street of elegant mews houses and Victorian villas from the traffic. At the end of the row, the old wall of St John's College crowded in from the left, its new student accommodation seeming to step over it on heavy concrete legs. The road dwindled to a narrow alley, heavily shaded by the plane trees in their new leaves, and lit only with a couple of Victorian streetlamps. I hurried on, slipping slightly on the damp flagstones, focussed only on reaching the traffic of St Giles.
I stepped past the bike barriers outside the barred gates of St John's and turned towards the final section to the pub. I heard the college clock strike the quarter hour. A soft night-time drizzle had started to fall, blurring the rough stone surface of the old college wall into unreality, a stage set lit by the orange cone of the street lamp, and I had just stepped into one wedge of darkness when my head seemed to burst as an immensely heavy weight smashed down on it from behind. I crumpled to my knees, my bags falling to the ground and bursting open beside me. As the world twisted sickeningly sideways, a kick connected with my ribs and lifted me several inches into the air, spinning me over to crash onto the wet cobbles on my back. It was dark, and all I saw of the foot that stamped down on my stomach was the gleam of its polished shoe, then I was curled up and coughing in agony. Something connected with the side of my head and I was spun over again, nose down now in the leafmold at the bottom of the wall, my eyes seeing bright white shapes like flickering sparks. Distantly, I felt more stamps or bl
ows connecting with my kidneys and some primordial part of my brain told me dispassionately that I was about to be beaten to death.
Fighting the desire to just drift away, I scrabbled with my right hand until I found the birthday bag, which lay discarded a few inches away. My hand wasn’t invisible, though, and got a vicious stamp that made me choke out a scream. Whoever this bastard was, he hadn’t seen what I had been reaching for and while he kicked me repeatedly in my left side I drew the bag to me and fumbled my swollen hand inside. Another kick and I gasped with the sharp pain that seemed to drive the air out of my lungs, and I almost drew my hand towards my stomach in an instinctive defensive move. But I managed to fight that urge and instead, hoping the timer was still set to four minutes, I pressed the button and grabbed the bag to my chest as hard as I could, bringing my knees up and curling into a tight ball around it.
The white flash had never been so welcome.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Wednesday, 8 April 2015. 22:04
There were no Dr Who time tunnels, or glimpses into the fabric of the universe, I just found myself lying on the damp flagstones four minutes earlier. I gasped at the pain of my battered ribs and my splitting head, and when I could think straight my first thought was to fumble the battery out of its connection; my second to get away as fast as possible – whoever that maniac was he was probably on his way here already and I really didn’t want to meet him again.
I grabbed the bag and rolled up onto my knees. A wall of pain crashed over me and I bit my lip to stop myself screaming out. As soon as it had passed, I dragged myself onto my feet and staggered down the lane. I had never really imagined what real pain felt like, now every step sent jolts of agony up and down my spine, stabbing into my kidneys, crushing through my skull. Aside from the darkness I could hardly see through a film of blood dripping into my eyes, and even blinking it away just revealed a more profound blurring that took away the edges of my vision. An ancient tree loomed into sight out of the gloom and I shied away from it, almost giving at the knees.