The Trouble With Time

by Lexi Revellian

  The trip started well. When he arrived just outside the building, at first he only had eyes for its magnificence. He could not help smiling with delight as he stood, eyes narrowed against the brilliant sunshine, and gazed upwards at a sight unseen for two thousand years. The white travertine stone cladding dazzled. Of course, he’d visited Rome in his own time and viewed the ancient ruins, but the Colosseum in its pristine state was something else. Huge, superb, embodying the might of Rome. Just for this, it had been worth the trouble of obtaining the TiTrav.

  After a moment he looked about him. He was in an area lined with market stalls selling food, drinks and knick-knacks, all of which he could see clearly because of the total absence of milling crowds. Apart from the stallholders, beggars, a few bored soldiers a hundred yards away, and a dog scratching itself in the sun, the place was deserted. Thunderous roars from inside told him the show had already started.

  Not a problem – he would reset the TiTrav to take him back half an hour. He had lifted his wrist to set the time when a feeling of being watched made him look up. The stallholders were staring at him and muttering in little groups. Perhaps they had noticed him materialize. Probably not the best idea to disappear while they watched; the last thing he wanted was to cause a stir, given that he planned on spending a few hours there. A man wearing a short belted woollen tunic detached himself from the huddle, approached and said something incomprehensible.

  Quinn dropped his arm to his side and said, in his public school Latin, “Greetings. Can you tell me where I might purchase a ticket for the games?”

  The man frowned and gabbled something else, a question.

  Quinn said slowly and clearly, “I am a stranger here. Perhaps you can tell me how to obtain a ticket? I have valuable goods to barter.”

  More men had arrived, short sunburned men smelling of sweat and garlic and fish. They gathered around him, pointing at his sandals and toga and fingering the fabric – the seams fascinated them – making comments he did not understand. The TiTrav came in for some attention, too, and he tried to keep his left arm by his side so the screen was out of sight. One man held out a broad-brimmed hat he seemed to think Quinn should buy. They seemed amiable enough, just very interested.

  Quinn felt a sudden urge to impress these simple folk. He delved in his bag, got out a disposable lighter, and flicked it on. The men all started back with murmurs of astonishment, then pressed closer. He handed the lighter to the first man.

  “A gift from the future.” He spoke in English, momentarily giving up on Latin. The man tried and failed to make the lighter work; Quinn demonstrated and handed it back. The man produced a flame, gave a gap-toothed grin, and raised his eyebrows, pointing to himself.

  Quinn smiled benignly. Back to Latin. “Yes, the fire maker is yours, you may keep it.”

  The man bowed, and left quickly with his loot. The others, though, remained, looking expectant. Perhaps the gift had been a mistake. Quinn found himself hemmed in, unable to move. He said firmly, “It has been delightful meeting you all, but now you must excuse me.” When this had no effect and they still stood there, plucking at his garments, he looked grave and said, “I really must go, I am missing the entertainment. Unless you are able to help me with the purchase of a ticket, please return to your stalls. I am sure you have work to do.”

  A red-bearded man seemed to take this amiss. He addressed the group, gesticulating as he did so. Quinn could only make out a couple of words, nobile genere, but the gist was unmistakable; the man was mocking the way he talked, his toga, his sandals. Now he was crudely mimicking Quinn: strutting around, speaking in a superior, patronizing way. His fellows grinned. The mood of the group changed subtly, became less friendly. One or two of them cast glances towards the soldiers.

  Resolutely, Quinn turned on his heel, but they tagged along, surrounding him, jabbering in their incomprehensible patois. He stood still and crossed his hands then moved them apart decisively, miming enough, and walked with determination towards the nearest arch, hoping the men would lose interest. Someone inside the Colosseum would tell him where he could buy a ticket. However, the men stuck with him. They had time on their hands and nothing better to do.

  From inside the amphitheatre the crowd was bellowing like a monstrous animal, baying for blood. It irked him to be missing the show. Stepping through the archway into cool shade, he found himself in a spacious corridor curving out of sight left and right. Ahead were steep stairs. It was deserted. His companions became bolder and rougher, jostling him and tugging at his bag. He realized that they were now out of view of the soldiers, and perhaps coming inside had been a mistake. He gripped his bag. Someone seized his left arm in strong fingers and turned his wrist to show the TiTrav’s screen, poking at it like a chimp with a stolen dataphone, exclaiming at the changing display. This was too much and without thinking, he lashed out. Quinn had little experience of hitting people, but this time he got lucky – or unlucky. He felt the bone crunch as the punch connected with the man’s nose. Blood poured out.

  With that blow a line had been crossed.

  For a moment all was still. No one was smiling any more. Then knives appeared in their hands like a jagged row of shark’s teeth. For the first time in his successful and confident life, Quinn felt seriously frightened. Red-Beard pushed him hard against the wall with his hand, scowling. He hawked and spat, then thrust his knife at the top of Quinn’s chest, stabbing through the cloth and lightly piercing his skin. He moved the knife lower and did it again, then again, staring into Quinn’s eyes, hissing something unmistakably menacing, speaking slowly and emphasizing each syllable, so for the first time Quinn was able to distinguish some of the words – the rest he could guess. The pain was shocking.

  He dropped the bag, fumbled for the TiTrav and pressed the two buttons.

  The National Theatre did not refund his deposit on the toga. He had to be careful not to let his wife and Kayla see the cuts on his chest until they had healed. But that was the least of it; the experience gave him an unshakeable aversion for trips to the past.

  In spite of this, he made a couple of further forays, neither of which re-ignited his enthusiasm. The Titanic had at first seemed rewarding. Its doomed splendour, the indefinable texture and flavour of a bygone age, enchanted him. He wandered around the vast first class areas, and mingled successfully with passengers in the Verandah Café. But after less than an hour a suspicious purser started to hound him and ask awkward questions in front of the people he’d been chatting to and, humiliated, he’d had to leave.

  His trip to the grassy knoll to solve the classic riddle of who killed JFK proved a much worse experience – he was very nearly shot by a police officer.

  Quinn was accustomed to power, to being in control of events. He had hated being out of his depth, pushed around, the butt of lesser men; these were not experiences he wished to repeat. Not on his own. Quinn was big and reasonably strong, but he was not a trained fighter. Jace would have been good in a situation like the one at the Colosseum – had been good in situations like that, when their work had taken them to rough areas. There was that time in Rotherhithe . . . No one pushed Quinn when Jace was around. Quinn felt his absence on the team. He missed him, and once his fury had faded even felt some guilt about leaving him to die – though not enough to go and rescue him. Pity Jace had been so holier-than-thou when offered an opportunity others would kill for. Literally.

  There was another reason Quinn regretted leaving him hog-tied in an empty London. He could not be absolutely certain Jace was dead. At the time there had seemed no possibility he could escape. His subconscious mind thought otherwise. In Quinn’s nightmares Jace was alive and vengeful, and Quinn would wake, sweating. And if anyone could get out of such a situation, it would be Jace. He was resourceful, tough. If he had survived, it was just conceivable he might encounter one of IEMA’s expeditions to the future, with disastrous consequences. Quinn could not now understand why he hadn’t shot him – yes, he’d lost his temper an
d wanted him to suffer, but if he’d shot him in the leg he’d still have died slowly, and with no hope of survival even if he managed to escape his bonds.

  He told himself he was worrying about nothing. With an effort, Quinn stopped thinking about Jace, who was almost certainly dead, and returned to considering his options. He no longer wanted to be – what was it Jace had called him? A time tourist. Unthinkable to leave the TiTrav mouldering unused in its hiding place. So what to do with it?

  Forget the past for now. The future existed, and could be visited; which did not mean that it was set and could not be altered. There was more to life than money. He had always kept a journal, adding to it whenever something interesting happened, but now he took care to make meticulous notes each day. Then every Thursday when he got home after work he travelled one week into the future, in his own flat, in order to consult the diary for the week ahead. As well as details of each day’s events, he wrote suggestions in red; for example, Do not let Farouk interview Reece, he’s cocked it up. Get Kayla to do it. Exceptionally, if data warranted it, he would check one month ahead.

  This method of passing information from the future to the past prevented a host of small annoyances, and won him a reputation in the department for godlike prescience and the luck of the devil.

  CHAPTER 20

  A blank page

  Wednesday, 23rd March 2050, 7.15 pm

  How politicians loved the sound of their own voices. Only Quinn’s frustration stopped him falling asleep. Maintaining a bland and attentive expression, he waited for Lord Clanranald to finish. This was the fourth time he had sat through this same speech. One by one the man made exactly the same points as last time and the time before and the time before that; Quinn’s carefully calculated adjustments had made no difference at all to the outcome. Various countries’ IEMA representatives slumped in their green leather seats, eyes on their notes, or gazed blankly at the vast dull oil paintings that adorned the panelling, not appreciating their own luck to only hear it once.

  Thank Christ, Clanranald was getting to the familiar peroration, his measured cadences slowing down for emphasis.

  “We must not play God with people’s lives. Removing this young woman from her own time would be a gross infringement of her personal liberty. However great the catastrophe we are united in wishing to avert, the end must not be used to justify the means. Particularly when we have no way of being one hundred per cent certain that she is indeed the key factor in the calamity in prospect. And without that certainty, we cannot go forward. Mr Quinn, persuasively though he has spoken, has not produced the solid evidence we would need to take such serious action: action, I feel bound to add, that would not be without its own consequences.”

  He sat, removed his spectacles and polished them, grave and complacent, while a murmur of conversation began in the panelled room as the meeting broke up. Quinn’s little group gathered their papers, stood and moved towards the door. Kayla gave him a sympathetic look.

  “Bad luck. No one could have done more than you did.”

  “That pompous fool is the only one with the power to do anything.” Quinn eyed him with loathing as he chatted to the American representative. “And he’s too cautious to want to do anything – except talk, which he’s proved he can do at inordinate length.”

  Outside the Palace of Westminster Quinn said goodbye to his colleagues and stepped into a pod. He knew Kayla had expected to come home with him, perhaps have dinner out first; but he was not in the mood to appreciate her tact and understanding. His exasperation would not let him relax. He had been so sure that this time he’d prevail, yet the outcome remained the same. Confident in his own analysis, he was certain Florence Dryden had been the catalyst for humanity’s destruction: if she was only taken out of the equation, the contraceptive virus would fail and the future of the world be secure. His repeated failure to convince Lord Clanranald of this incensed him.

  Back in his apartment he ordered filet mignon and a salad. He opened a bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape while the kitchen prepared his meal, and walked to the window glass in hand, sipping. After this latest meeting, he had to concede that no matter what approach he used, he would never carry Lord Clanranald with him. Sighing, he sat at his computer and wrote up the day’s notes methodically in his diary.

  Thursday, 17th March 2050

  Quinn stood in his apartment, TiTrav on his wrist, setting the date and place; here, one week’s time. As was his habit, he also set the return journey, back to where and when he was, using the limiter. Doing this meant that if anything untoward happened in the future, just by pressing two buttons he could be safely home.

  Blackness, a spinning sensation, then his living room materialized around him. The light was different; rain dashed against the big windows. Quinn sat at his desk.

  “Wake. Diary.”

  He read his future-written account of the meeting and Clanranald’s obduracy. Though not given to dramatic gestures, he thumped his fist on the desk before leaving for his own time.

  Returned to his living room he paced to and fro, itching to prove himself right and Clanranald wrong. A thought came to him: why not? No one would ever know. From the start, he had always been exceedingly careful; he was surely entitled to branch out now. He had laughed five years ago when Jace suggested he might be intending to use the thing for altruistic purposes. Strange if that turned out to be the case.

  Averting humanity’s extinction had proved to be more interesting than anything else on offer, probably because it was the only real challenge in his life. He excelled at his job – given with a little help from knowing in advance what would happen – and women had a regrettable tendency to fall into his hands like ripe plums before he’d got round to asking them. Even Kayla, who had objected to his married status – it had taken him less than three months to charm her out of her scruples and into his bed. He had enjoyed the three months’ seduction almost more than her capitulation, remarkable woman though she was.

  Florence Dryden. Now, that was a challenge worthy of his intellect. After five years of restraint, he faced overwhelming temptation to make a major intervention. A quick trip to pick her up, then – it came to him – drop her off where he’d left Jace. This would kill several birds with one stone. If London in 2185 was not depopulated, that would prove that he was right about Florence Dryden. He could safely leave her there in the future with no repercussions for himself in his own time. That he would get no credit for saving humanity did not trouble him. His own satisfaction would be enough.

  If, on the other hand, London was still deserted five years after he had taken Jace there, he could reassure himself with the sight of Jace’s shackled bones where he had left him. The idea grew on Quinn. He would go now, intercept Florence Dryden on her doorstep as she arrived home after work. Why wait? But first, he would check his journal. He pressed the buttons on the TiTrav to return to the 24th March. Blackness, turmoil, his living room on a rainy evening. Once more he turned to eight days from that day’s date, Thursday 24th March. His impatient retailing of Clanranald’s verdict was no longer there.

  The page was blank.

  Quinn stared, then clicked backwards through the journal. Every page since the entry he’d written the day before on Wednesday 16th March was equally empty. In five years, this had never happened, and it could only mean one thing; his future self had not been able to fill in the diary. Something major had occurred to prevent him, and it didn’t take a genius to guess what that something was.

  If he went this evening to pick up Florence Dryden to take her to future London, he would not return. He wondered what had/would have – tenses became confusing when you had the power to travel in time – happened. He might have met with some mishap, such as a ruined building collapsing on him, or a pack of lions eating him. This was not as fanciful as it sounded. With man, their only predator departed, big cats were thriving in future London. The final act of the last Regent’s Park Zoo keeper, before he succumbed to old age, must ha
ve been to turn them loose.

  Or just possibly his dreams were accurate, and Jace had escaped his bonds five years ago. Somehow he had managed to survive and was still there, eager for vengeance, waiting for Quinn to return.

  That settled the matter. The trip was off.

  Perhaps he had given up the attempt to persuade Clanranald too easily. He had thought he had tried everything . . . but had he thought hard enough, were there options he had missed? An inspiration came to him. What about Clanranald’s wife? She lived in his country seat in Scotland, and seldom came to London. Quinn made up his mind to visit her, find out if she was charmable, and if so, enlist her help persuading her husband to Quinn’s point of view. He brought up City Airport, and booked a flight to Edinburgh the next morning, then emailed Kayla to say he would be away from the office all Thursday.

  That done, he visited the future for the third time that night and consulted his diary, a little apprehensively. All was well; the pages were no longer blank. It seemed Lady Clanranald, though surprised to see him, had been receptive. She had given him lunch and promised to do her best. He had got the impression she was a little lonely and welcomed having someone civilized to talk to, had taken a liking to him. Apparently she wrote historical fiction. He read on. His idea was going to work; at the Palace of Westminster meeting, Clanranald had decided that in these exceptional circumstances, with humanity facing the grave risk of total extinction, and considering the weight of evidence that her role in the disaster was key, if inadvertent, the removal of Florence Dryden from her own time would be warranted. Quinn was given the mandate he asked for.

  Smiling with satisfaction, back in the present, Quinn went to Amazon and downloaded Lady Clanranald’s latest book. He would read it on the plane. In his experience, any author who was not a best seller was invariably delighted when someone had read her work and praised it. She had earned – would earn – this extra effort on his part.