The Psychology of Time Travel

by Kate Mascarenhas

  ‘So, in practice, a time traveller receives a lump sum as soon as they get a wristwatch, and this lasts them till they die. Grace Taylor, say, gets her first wristwatch in 1969, and it already contains a billion achrons. But for tax purposes, the Conclave may not have paid her those achrons in 1969. For the paperwork, she can ask to be paid in any year that she likes, on a mission-by-mission basis. A hundred thousand achrons in 1991, another five hundred thousand in 2137 – the date is completely immaterial to when she has access to the money.’

  ‘How convenient.’

  ‘Isn’t it? Time travellers must declare their earnings to the tax man at least once in a twelve month period, but they can load their payments into the years where tax conditions are most favourable. They get paid with government money but can avoid paying their own share into the country’s upkeep.’

  ‘How’s this connected to the body in the museum?’

  ‘Hang on, I’m coming to that.’ Zach waited until two runners had passed out of earshot. ‘Someone sent me a database of time travellers’ finances.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘An anonymous source. Clearly someone with access to confidential data at the Conclave, but so far I haven’t been able to identify them.’

  ‘A source within the Conclave?’ An employee on their side could be very useful. ‘So what did their database tell you?’

  ‘It contained banking transactions from all the time travellers’ wristwatches. Ninety per cent of Conclave payments were officially made in 2097 to 2113. This makes sense if you know that no tax on earnings is collected in those years. I was most interested in the senior time travellers, because they were making the biggest money. There was something strange in Margaret Norton’s transactions. Between 1969 and 2017 her investment habits were remarkably consistent. She had the kind of varied portfolio you’d expect for a woman of her background and income. But at the start of 2018, she sold multiple assets to the Conclave – including all her residential properties. And then she never withdrew another achron. Not a single penny. The database covers three centuries and she never made another transaction. What does that tell you?’

  ‘She was expecting to need a lot of ready cash, but something happened to stop her spending it,’ Odette said.

  ‘Yep. It’s the behaviour of someone in trouble. I wasn’t sure what kind, although Norton does have some shady political associates. So all of last year I kept tabs on her whereabouts, in case there were any clues in the company she was keeping or any sign she wanted to relocate in a hurry. And I kept a close eye on the different coroners’ courts. By the time you found the corpse in the museum, I was pretty primed to write about the violent death of a woman in her eighties. And then the coroner said he couldn’t identify her!’

  ‘You thought it was a cover-up?’

  ‘I thought it might be. In February, a month after you found the body, the Conclave announced that Norton had retired, and a woman named Angharad Mills became interim director. Fair enough, perhaps, no one could begrudge someone in their eighties retiring. But there was no word of farewell from Norton herself, and it’s not like her to miss a PR opportunity. So I put pressure on the coroner. Questioned him about whether he was in cahoots with the Conclave.’

  Odette remembered how Yelland had spoken of journalists. ‘He thought you were a pest.’

  ‘I was. Somebody had to be. Then, one sunny morning, some disgusting pictures landed on my doormat. Pictures of my relatives, dead, lying in mortuaries. They could only have come from someone at the Conclave because all the people in the photos are alive and well now.’

  ‘Photoshop?’

  ‘Whether the pictures were real or doctored, they were a threat. If it had been a photograph of me, I’d have said screw it, I won’t bow to pressure. But involving people I care about? I backed off.’

  Conversation ceased while an old man threw crusts at the ducks a few feet away. Odette wondered how long Zach would keep watching people in this way – suspicious that they may be collecting information about him. After less than fifteen minutes, Odette felt paranoid herself. If she were wise, she would drop her pursuit of this mystery before the paranoia took permanent hold. But she thought it might already be too late for that. After months of revisiting the details of the case, she was ravenous for what Zach had given: a possible identity for the corpse. Odette wasn’t going to abandon her own investigations now.

  ‘Let me get this straight,’ Odette said. ‘Margaret Norton dropped off the face of the earth round about the same time I discovered the body in the museum. Then you pressed the coroner for more information but stopped because of the Conclave’s intimidation?’

  ‘That’s about the size of it.’

  ‘Your source, the one who sent you the directory. Can they tell you anything about Margaret’s disappearance?’

  ‘I emailed them. They’ve only ever made contact through encrypted messages, and they’ve never used the same address more than once. I emailed the last address they used, and asked whether Norton had any connection to the inquest. My message bounced back – the account had been closed.’

  ‘We need someone on the inside.’

  ‘Speak for yourself. I’m not touching this story again.’

  ‘I understand,’ Odette told Zach. ‘Thank you for talking with me.’

  *

  Zach had given Odette a lead, and the only way to follow it was to get inside the Conclave. As soon as she got home, she looked up the Conclave’s recruitment webpage, and dialled the number for their careers line.

  ‘I’m a recent graduate,’ Odette said. ‘I’d like to make an application.’

  ‘In which field?’

  Odette scanned the webpage, which included a list of departments. Criminal investigation was third from the bottom. That made Odette smile.

  ‘I want to be a detective,’ she said.

  The rep took her details, and explained the selection process to her. Odette didn’t need an inside source to learn what was happening in the Conclave. She could find out on her own – as soon as she’d passed all the tests.

  19

  NOVEMBER 1973

  Margaret

  Although many of the time travellers lived at the Conclave’s central headquarters, Margaret did not. She had several homes across the country, including a substantial Georgian property just outside London. One evening, as the car approached this residence, she saw a man waiting by the front gate – an Indian, from the looks of him, in a suit that was fifteen years out of date.

  He waved his trilby, as though to flag down the passing car. ‘Dr Norton! Dr Norton!’

  His voice was muffled by the glass. Margaret didn’t have the faintest idea who he was.

  ‘Don’t stop,’ she told the driver. They proceeded up the drive, and the gates closed on the Indian behind them.

  Half an hour later he returned to her thoughts. She was in her drawing room, by the fire, unwrapping a parcel that had arrived from the royal taxidermist. Beneath the paper and string was Patrick. He’d died a month before, of quite natural causes, and left a healthy dynasty at Margaret’s home in the Fells. Margaret was delighted with his new appearance. The taxidermist had captured Patrick’s shrewdness. The rabbit had always been wily, and she disciplined him accordingly. Margaret never coddled Patrick, as Barbara had done.

  Thinking of Barbara gave Margaret a hunch. She was sure she remembered hearing Barbara married an Indian man. Called Ronny, or Danny, or some other not-very-Indian name. Might it have been him outside – perhaps to petition on Barbara’s behalf, at her instigation? That would be just typical of Barbara. How irritating. Margaret positioned Patrick at the side of the fireplace – in his alert pose you might imagine he was ready to jump over the flames – and crossed to the telephone.

  It was Lucille she contacted.

  ‘Has Barbara’s husband been bothering you?’ Margaret asked.

  ‘Not bothering,’ Lucille said. ‘He did get in touch. Barbara’s in hospital and he was keen
that we should visit.’

  ‘Surely you didn’t say you would?’

  ‘No,’ Lucille said, with audible reluctance.

  ‘Whatever’s the matter with her? The old trouble?’

  ‘Yes. Some business with a razor. Lucky she didn’t kill herself.’

  An alarm sounded in Margaret’s thoughts. If, one day, Barbara did do herself in, it would reawaken everyone’s interest in her first, public breakdown. The Conclave should prepare for that eventuality, in case they needed to hush up the circumstances of Bee’s death. Keeping things quiet would be in everyone’s interests – not just the Conclave’s. No doubt Danny, or Ronny, would want to grieve in peace. He should be grateful for the discretion.

  ‘Lucille, could you obtain some documentation? I’d like to see Bee’s eventual death certificate. In fact – obtain all our death certificates.’ Might as well check whether there were any other surprises on the horizon.

  *

  The certificates were ready and waiting for Margaret when she arrived at work the next day. She perused them at her desk. Bee’s was first: septicaemia, in several decades’ time. Well, good. No scandal implied there. Lucille would die of cancer. Grace of a brain haemorrhage. And Margaret…

  Margaret’s death certificate had a blank space where the cause of death should be.

  She picked up the phone and dialled Lucille’s number.

  ‘What can I do for you, Margaret?’ Lucille asked.

  ‘What’s the meaning of this blank space?’

  ‘It’s the only certificate on record. I did check quite extensively.’ Lucille sighed. ‘The registrar told me a blank space is unusual, but not unheard of. It means something interrupted the certification process. The cause was contested for some reason.’

  ‘For some reason?’ Margaret was incredulous. ‘You’ve been to the future, Lucille. Are you saying no one knows how I die?’

  ‘There are rumours.’ Lucille said. ‘My own theory…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Maybe your death arose during covert operations. It had to be kept a secret.’

  Margaret rather liked the sound of that. A covert death. Most likely a noble one.

  ‘At any rate,’ Lucille went on, ‘you live to a grand old age, don’t you?’

  Yes, Margaret said to herself; she had several good decades ahead of her, and a likely death in the field. She felt a little better about the blank space now. But she locked the certificates in the bottom drawer of her desk, which was where everything went that she didn’t want to see.

  20

  AUGUST 2017

  Barbara

  On the third day of Bee’s stay in London, Ruby said she had a conference to attend in Birmingham. Luckily Bee had plans of her own, and they included experiments.

  As soon as Ruby left for her train, Bee set up her apparatus on the kitchen table. She’d been thinking about how to reuse spent fuel, and wanted to try out some ideas. From her reading she knew that the Conclave still used solid atroposium to power their time machines. In the sixties this made economic sense: the same material was already being produced for nuclear armament, and the pioneers were able to tap into the same supply chain. But there were limitations on this choice of fuel that had never been addressed.

  The greatest problem was inefficiency. While a time machine’s running, radiation causes damage to the fuel’s structure, which means only a fraction of the fuel’s potential energy can be used. Bee speculated that if the solid fuel waste were dissolved then some of the untapped energy could be harvested, because liquids are less susceptible than solids to radiation damage.

  Bee intended to try this out for herself with the Candybox. When Ruby dispatched the engagement ring into the future, the Candybox had extracted all the energy it could from Bee’s stolen fuel. Bee had estimated the ring would return after forty-eight days. If dissolving the briquette, and accessing its remaining energy, allowed the machine to run for longer, then the ring might travel even further into the future. Bee removed the spent briquette from the Candybox. She used her miniature lab kiln to melt the briquette in salt, at a temperature of around six hundred degrees Celsius. The kiln was connected to the Candybox via a ceramic attachment, so that the liquid fuel titrated directly into the machine. To Bee’s delight, the Candybox quaked into life. She whooped in triumph – and Breno, who she’d left sleeping in the bedroom, barked in return. A few seconds later she heard his scratch at the kitchen door.

  ‘Hold your water,’ she called to him. It wasn’t safe for Breno to be in there with all the equipment strewn about. She packed the pieces away, singing as she did so. Her experiment had a real, meaningful result. At the very least it showed that she still had a scientist’s mind and was capable of innovations on the Conclave’s behalf. By proposing this recycling method to the pioneers, she might open up a tiny crack of possibility, a slim chance of working alongside her old friends that she’d feared she’d never have again. And if she could work with them, she’d have access to proper time machines. Bee was a step closer to her real goal: experiencing the thrill of time travelling once more.

  Who should she contact first? she wondered. Grace was the only one of the pioneers who’d been in touch. That made her the best starting point. Bee opened the kitchen door and picked Breno up on her way to the phone. She punched the Conclave’s number from memory.

  ‘All Grace Taylors are off site today,’ the secretary told her, once Bee had been put through to the correct department.

  ‘Is she in this period?’ Bee asked.

  ‘Yes, two of them are, but only until tomorrow morning.’

  How inconvenient. Bee chewed her lip.

  ‘Can I make an appointment to see Grace when she’s back?’ Bee asked.

  ‘There’s no availability in her diary for three months.’

  Damn. Bee wanted to move faster than that. She had no time to waste; life was fleeting. That was the message Bee took from Grace’s origami rabbit. She told the secretary she’d telephone back when she’d checked her own schedule. It was pointless asking to be put through to Margaret or Lucille – they’d refuse her call, if the past was any indication. What Bee needed was to see them face-to-face. It would be hard for the pioneers to turn her away if she was there in the flesh.

  ‘Right,’ she said to Breno. ‘We’ll have to put the back-up plan into action.’

  21

  SEPTEMBER 2018

  Odette

  Odette told her parents of her Conclave application, but not that she intended to spy on the other time travellers. As far as they were concerned, she had finally selected a graduate career. So, on the morning of the Conclave’s recruitment tests, Maman was voluble, firing questions even as Odette put her jacket on to leave.

  ‘How many other applicants will there be?’ Maman fretted.

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ Odette said.

  ‘I bet they’ve been preparing for months. Why didn’t you apply earlier? You’ve had no time to revise.’

  ‘It’s not that kind of test, Maman. They want to know how I think. I don’t have to remember any facts.’

  ‘But if you’d only planned ahead instead of taking that silly job waiting tables—’

  ‘We need to set off,’ Papi interrupted. He was giving Odette a lift.

  Odette kissed Maman on the cheek. ‘Do I look smart?’

  ‘Yes,’ Maman said cautiously. ‘But a tweed suit, Odette? Pinstripe would be more usual, no? Tweed is for academics… or… or… foxhunters.’

  ‘She thinks she’s Miss Marple,’ Papi said flatly. ‘We’re going to be late.’

  His tone troubled Odette. All week he had seemed distracted, and she wasn’t sure why. They walked to the car and got in. Claire stood on the step to wave. She was still waving when they turned out of view.

  ‘She really wants me to get this job,’ Odette said.

  ‘Your mother wants you to have a successful career,’ Papi corrected. ‘It doesn’t have to be with the Conclave.’

 
The traffic halted at a red light. Rain speckled the windscreen and Papi turned on the wipers. They swept the glass three times.

  ‘Why shouldn’t I work for the Conclave?’ Odette asked at last.

  ‘I looked up their recruitment criteria. You don’t meet it.’

  ‘I’m not good enough?’ Odette asked, dismayed.

  ‘How could I think that? You’re every bit good enough. But you need to have a clean bill of health to time travel.’

  ‘I am healthy.’

  ‘They include mental health. Only a few weeks ago you were in shock from finding that body.’

  ‘Months, not weeks. I’m better now.’

  A car behind beeped; the lights had changed. Robert swore and the line moved on again.

  ‘I’m worried about you, Odette. Any episode of mental ill health is enough to rule you out,’ Papi said. ‘Surely the Conclave asked for your medical notes?’

  ‘Yes. But my sessions with Dr Rebello aren’t in my notes. She doesn’t work for the NHS.’ Odette looked out of the window to avoid eye contact with Robert. A pedestrian was struggling with an upturned umbrella.

  ‘So you lied on your application,’ Robert said.

  ‘I didn’t lie. I just… didn’t volunteer extra information.’

  ‘That’s still a lie.’ He shook his head. ‘Rules exist for a reason.’

  ‘Yes, to stigmatise people.’

  ‘No. To stop them getting sick. What you’re doing isn’t safe. If you have an avoidable relapse, I’ll never forgive myself.’

  ‘So you’re going to tell the Conclave I was traumatised?’

  ‘I don’t know, yet. But you can apply for other jobs, Midge.’

  ‘Papi, I want to work at the Conclave. If you get in the way how will I ever trust you again?’

  ‘Don’t be melodramatic. It’s my responsibility to protect you. Even if you disagree.’