by Dave Weaver
She struggled to speak. “I’ve… told you about the things he said in his sleep, about the… the drug,” her voice was muffled yet desperate. “I got you that copy of his memory file.”
“I need more than that to spare your brother’s life. Have you brought the blood sample?”
He let her go, and she reached quickly into her coat pocket. Her hand shook as it pulled out a small phial of blood, causing the man’s eyes to widen in alarm.
“Drop that and your brother’s as good as dead!” He took it from her and held it up to the light. “And you swapped this with an uncontaminated one of his own blood group?”
“I did exactly as you told me, I was very careful.”
“I hope you were.” He patted her cheek, then pushed a button on the chair. The two guards re-entered. He motioned one to approach. “Get this to the lab immediately. I need full authentication and a breakdown immediately.”
The young officer wrapped a clench-fisted salute to his chest, identical to that of his ancestors. “Governor General!” He turned with a click of his heels and exited the room, holding the tiny phial carefully.
“My brother?” Her voice was plaintive.
“Let’s have a look.” He span around and pointed at one of the bubbles showing a bare room. The image grew larger until it was almost life-sized. It showed a young man in filthy prison clothes. The cell walls were a scum-stained mess. His face and chest was caked in dried blood.
The girl gave a gasp of shock.
“Brusus doesn’t like taking his medicine so we have to use a little persuasion.”
Two guards entered the cell and began to circle the young man as he backed away from them, arms raised weakly in protection. One grabbed him from behind and held his face while the other produced a plastic tube and rammed it into the young man’s mouth. The guard took a large blue pill from his pocket and slid it down then blew. The captive spluttered and swallowed. The men threw him across the floor and banged the cell door shut behind them.
The girl was now white-faced with fear. “Please don’t hurt him anymore.”
“Well, okay. I think he’s told us everything we need to know about his friends anyway. We’ve destroyed his personal loyalty programming but what you’ve brought us will ultimately destroy so much more. Those like him will follow me then; do my bidding.”
He turned to study her, reaching a scrawny hand to ruffle her hair as if she were a pet dog he was disappointed with. “Don’t forget we that we test you regularly and poor old Brusus would be the one to suffer if you were ever found to be clean.”
“I’m still infected, don’t worry.”
“Your kind are the infection, my dear. When I get what I want from this boy you’ll all be under my control. Then I’ll be able to protect this state properly at last.”
“Protect from who?” She flinched as he sprang from the chair. He pushed her up against the consul.
“From chemically-created scum like you and your brother who, need I remind you, shouldn’t even exist. We know who your pathetic group of renegades are, where they live, everything about them. We can get them anytime we want. Remember child; the Gods created man in their own image, then man created you! And if you don’t behave, if you cause sabotage and insurrection and continue to refuse your lowly place in the grand scheme of mankind, then mankind will destroy you! Ask your grandparents about the EG Riots. Ask them about the price they had to pay for their so-called rights!” He ranted, almost out of control, at the shaking girl. “Now get out!”
He motioned for the remaining guard to haul her off. “Remember that your brother’s fate hangs on your loyalty to me, not to the Empire.”
She was dragged out of the room.
Now there was just the little man on his own, standing with arms crossed like some kind of cheap rate Napoleon in front of the bubble images. He sank down into the chair again and turned away from Jack’s view. A thin hand reached out to touch one of the bubbles. An image of the old town of Fulchestorium expanded until it pushed all the other views aside. Another bubble inside it expanded until Jack could plainly make out the image of a man he’d never wanted to see again.
It was Drucillus.
Chapter 12
He awoke with a start to find himself lying in a strange bed. He experienced a few panicky moments, then, as the last face seen before the fainting fit hovered over him, he remembered: Portia, framed in bright sunlight streaming through the large window of a sparse airy room.
“Wake up sleepy-head! And for the Gods’ sake don’t say ‘Where am I?’ A hand was held out to him over the thin sheet half covering his virtually naked body. “Let me introduce myself properly this time. I’m Portia.”
She waved the hand in front of his face again and he shook it. “Jack.” He groaned. “Sorry about last night, I was a bit knackered.”
“I’d say totally exhausted. Dad blamed himself for giving you a hard time yesterday. Said he probably should have left you back in the medical centre rather than drag you home. I think the guys want to keep you a secret as long as possible. They feel you’re safer here for the time being.”
“Safer from what…?”
“Well, let’s face it, you are a bit unique aren’t you? ‘The Boy from the Past’ I dare say the authorities would like to lay their hands on you if they only knew, especially one of them.”
She smiled, giving him the opportunity to study her properly for the first time. She had a tomboy-ish attractiveness. Her mouth wore the same mischievous smile as her father and she seemed to have inherited his dry humour. What must she think of him? What had Lucas told her? Some freak from the past materialising out of nowhere, and not even from her own past. He returned the smile cautiously but it turned into a yawn.
“Sorry, I’m still a bit…”
“Knackered, I know. I’ll let you get up in your own time.” She stood up. “I’ve left you some clothes. Dad chose them quickly last week so they’re pretty awful I’m afraid.”
“Where’s Lucas?” Jack asked quickly as he felt panic at being isolated from the scientist. He immediately felt ashamed at his reaction but the guy was his only link to present day Fulchester. That was the only important detail he needed to keep in mind at the moment.
“He’s gone in to work for a few hours to check on your return jump. He said from what he’d seen of your memory file you seemed to be a very nice young man and could be trusted alone with me. I hope you’re not going to be too dull, Jack. We could do with a bit of excitement around here. By the way, they’re all quite stunned by the quality of your memory. Apparently it’s the clearest they’ve ever downloaded. Do you realise that you’re a…”
“Yes, at least I do now; a duo-memory as Lucas called me.”
“Well, there are worse things to be… Let me know when you want breakfast.” She left.
The dream! The details of it flooded back into his head; the confusion of the night-time crowds, the Ministry of Security’s dark forbidding headquarters, the sallow-faced little man and his cruel treatment of the nurse and her brother. For whatever terrible reasons she had betrayed the Centre, and him! If the whole thing had been real he was in big trouble, they all were. Should he tell Portia? Tell her what? That he’d had some sort of weird nightmare. It was probably just the result of shock, or the after effects of the medical treatment.
He climbed slowly out of bed, a normal one this time much to his relief, and began to explore. The room he’d been given was close to what he’d expected, with softly glowing walls and plain functional furniture.
The adjoining bathroom was even plainer. As he stepped inside a glass cubicle a jet of freezing cold water hit him full in the face. There were no taps or knobs to regulate the temperature and flow and no soap or towels to be seen so he’d just have to grin and bear it, or miss his first decent wash in days. Back in his room he put on the clothes selected for him, a thin figure-hugging blue tunic and pair of dark grey trousers, light but surprisingly warm.
Gingerly venturing outside, he found himself in a high-ceilinged hall, and this time the house’s interior really did match up to its outward appearance. It was like he’d been transported back to a large sixteenth century Tudor cottage; heavy wooden furniture, richly coloured tapestries and landscape paintings hanging on white oak-beamed walls, with a cold flagstone floor adding to the impression he’d wandered into a museum.
The whole place was a good deal larger than it had seemed the previous evening. He noticed a heavy door half open and went to investigate. Lucas’ kitchen was comparatively small. The place was almost bare, apart from a sink area and a metal box affair set into an alcove. The box had a glass door and looked like a microwave oven but where the settings should have been there was just a small red light.
“Jack, I’m out here…” The morning sun streamed through a glass door at the far end of the room. He found Portia on a terrace that gave way to a large lawn rising gently away from the house towards a thickset wood. The sun-dappled setting looked idyllic.
Portia grinned at his hastily arranged wardrobe. “Well, I guess you look okay considering my Dad’s taste. I hope you had a nice shower.”
“It was a bit cold.”
“Oh dear, didn’t dad tell you this is a smart-house? You just tell it what you want; hot, cold et cetera. It might look classic but it’s all just a kit. We’re not really living in the sixteenth century you know.”
He felt stupid.
“Anyway, join me.” She patted the seat next to her. No sooner had he sat down than she was on her feet. “I’ll get us breakfast, you must be starving!”
“I’m really not that hungry.” He told her, remembering the multi-coloured dog biscuits in the Institute’s restaurant.
“Dad told me about the EG food. Apparently your face was a real picture. We’re not eating that stuff here of course. I’ve programmed something especially in honour of your stay.” She dashed into the house and quickly returned propelling an anti-grav tray containing two plates of egg and bacon and two tall glasses of juice. “Surprised? We can order anything we want from the wall Compu-chef; it’s got over forty thousand recipes. I saw you eating this in your memory file and thought it would make you feel at home. Looks a bit disgusting for breakfast actually…”
“You saw my memory file?” He failed to hide the note of alarm.
“A bit of it… I haven’t seen any dark secrets, if that’s what you’re worried about, just some of your everyday life. School looked like fun, I have a home-teach programme because we’re stuck out here and Dad’s a high security risk. Most kids don’t go to school now anyway.
“It’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” Jack replied, thinking of Bruce and his mates.
“At least you get to meet other people. I’m virtually a prisoner here, only get to go into Calleva at the weekends.”
“Erm…where’s Calleva?”
Portia stared at him, a forkful of bacon frozen half way to her mouth. Slowly, she put down the fork. “So it’s true! I thought dad was teasing me when he said you came from another past than ours. Wow! Jack, who are you?”
He squirmed uncomfortably under her gaze. This is what it would be like if he couldn’t get home again; he’d be the freak from another world that everyone would gawp at.
“I’m sorry Jack.” He must have looked truly desperate. “I’m being rude and you’re our guest. Dad should have prepared me a bit more for this but he never talks to me about anything important anymore.” A spasm of annoyance crossed her face, quickly supplanted by another smile. “I’ve been asked to spend today giving you a history lesson and now I know why. It’s fantastic isn’t it?”
“Not the word I’d choose,” he replied morosely, “I didn’t want any of this to happen. I just want to go home.”
She gave a look of concern. “I’m sure you will, Jack. Dad and Uncle Dario are both brilliant men. If they were responsible for getting you into this mess they’ll get you out of it again.”
“Uncle Dario?” The two men’s over-familiarity suddenly made perfect sense; they acted more like petulant relatives than colleagues.
“My mother was Dario’s kid sister. They were Italians who met my father and Atticus at the Science Academy of Firenze. Dad is a Romano Briton but he got a scholarship to study there from the government as one of the top five science students in Caledonia. They only take a hundred new pupils a year from all over the world because they’re the very best. Most of the great inventors and scientists over the last five hundred years studied there. Anyway, they ended up sharing a house together, all four of them, and my parents fell in love.” She smiled to herself. “It must have been very romantic; young students thrown together in a strange city, studying, arguing, debating, drinking… especially drinking. They developed a kind of bond with each other. Dario is Dad’s brother-in-law but, along with Atticus, they’re also best friends. They were all obsessed with the study of time. WCTS was always created to explore the possibilities of time travel although politically no one could admit it. If successful it would have given the Empire power to an incredible degree; imagine being able to control your enemy’s past! Now that it’s finally happened I’m scared for them all. It’s like a big game but in other hands it could be a really evil thing.” She shuddered at the thought. “They’re so naive! Dad’s being used by some very dangerous people.”
“You mean the Senate in Rome,” Jack offered, remembering what Atticus had told him about the Institute’s original funding.
“No, I mean someone far closer at hand.”
“Who..?”
“Nothing, forget I said that.” She waved her hand to indicate the subject closed. They continued with the meal in awkward silence broken only by the cawing crows in the trees above the cottage.
“Feel like a walk?” Portia asked. Jack followed as she led them up a pathway from the house towards the surrounding woods.
“So you’re British, I mean Romano British?” he asked, attempting to keep up with her springing step on the winding path up the hillside.
“I was born in Rome, but as my father’s Caledonian” (Scottish, Jack thought) “I have dual citizenship under Empire law so you could say I’m Italian as well.”
“Have you ever been back to Rome?” he continued, glancing up at her slim athletic figure as she led the way.
“Dad’s taken me a few times.”
He searched for something else to ask. “That badge thing they all wear at WCTS. It’s on the portal as well; a T in a circle. What’s that about?”
She laughed. “Ah! That was my idea.” Portia stopped and turned back to face him. “Dad told me once that when I was a little girl he and mum and Uncle Dario were moaning over a couple of bottles of wine one evening about how boring and official the name WCTS was. I mean it’s a bit of a mouthful, isn’t it? Anyway, they wanted something that would make it sound more fun. I think they were missing their student days what with all the pressure for getting results and the huge amount of Empire money tied up in the project.
“‘So basically, what are we really trying to achieve here?’ Uncle Dario asked.
“‘Capture the past I guess,’ Mother replied.
“Apparently I then turned to mum and said, ‘But where will you keep it when you capture it, and who’s going to be able to see it anyway if you keep it to yourselves?’ I was only six at the time and misunderstood her words.
“‘That’s not what I meant honey’ Mum told me. ‘I meant to say that when we find out what it was really like we can show it to our children and their children too.’ (I told you they were naive!)
“Dario and Lucas liked the idea straight away though; that they should be attempting to bring the past alive for the kids of today. But they also realised they all shared an incredible responsibility to see nothing they did interfered with it. They had to safeguard it from outside contamination.
“‘She’s right,’ Dario said. ‘If things work out past time will be in our hands alone. We’ll be its guardi
ans, its keepers, with no one else to blame if we screw it up. We’ll all be time-keepers.’
“The name stuck as a reminder of what the project was actually about and the care and attention they attached to everything they did. They discussed it with the others at WCTS and some wit decided to create those little badges. The T is for time and the circle is meant to represent the closed loop that brings the jumper back home. It started off as an in-joke but I think it made everyone feel even more dedicated to the work; not just being part of a team but a brotherhood that would look out for each other no matter what happened, EG or Normal.”
Jack smiled at her obvious enthusiasm. Then he asked the question that had been bugging him since his arrival at Lucas’ home. “Where’s your mother now, Portia?” Straightaway he realised it was a mistake.
A dark cloud crossed the girl’s face. She bit her lip before replying in a monotone voice. “She’s dead, Jack. A bomb in a café in Calleva killed her six months ago. She was waiting to meet my father for lunch but Lucas was late as always; he was just crossing the street when the blast went off. He would have been killed as well if he’d been on time; as it was, twenty-three people as well as my mother died. The authorities blamed an EG Rights group they said was operating in the city, but I know the truth. It was a set-up but I don’t know who by.”
“How do you know that?” Jack’s mind was reeling; this supposedly civilised world he’d fallen into was full of complications and ambiguities he’d never imagined. Slaves and freedom fighters, violent death… It seemed the old Empire’s ways weren’t so dead and buried after all.
“I just know, that’s all.” She told him. “I think its time for you to do some studying now.”
Portia walked stiffly past him, back towards the odd house nestling in the valley below.
Chapter 13
Jack was certainly finding his history lesson ‘interesting’; to be shown the life story of a new world, so similar and yet so entirely different from his own, was always going to be ‘interesting’. In fact after four solid hours of it his mind was reeling. He was sitting in the large central room of Lucas’ retro-Tudor cottage, although by now he’d begun to realise, as the scientist had informed him, that the mock-timbered beams and stone-tiled floors were indeed a typical pastiche of the Empire’s Ocardian Dynasty. This was one of the many ages of a new past that chimed almost exactly with their doppelgänger period in Jack’s own version. The school book he’d been shown had been a coarse but accurate enough foundation on which to base what he was getting now: a factually accurate download of the Empire’s last two thousand years of dominance.