‘But you kept trying to get back in. That couldn’t happen. You’d been a liability to the project. Stealing fuel was one thing, but you utterly shamed us on television. That was the worst of it. We looked terrible to the public. To the public, Bee.’
‘Did you all feel that way – that you were ashamed of me?’
‘When all’s said and done, it doesn’t matter how we feel about you – what matters is the Conclave’s public image. Everyone outside these four walls thinks time travellers are liable to lose our minds, because of your behaviour. We’ve been fighting the image you left us with for fifty years.’
‘What if we could change that?’
‘How?’
‘Give the public a new story. People love a reconciliation – let me come back, sane and ready to make my contribution.’
Margaret threw back her head and roared.
‘Oh, Barbara. You are the limit. I’ve just said you wouldn’t accept your time-travelling days were done! Stirring up people’s memories of the whole affair would be foolishness. Why would I give you a job?’
‘Because I have something to exchange – the findings of some independent research I’ve conducted. It could save you millions each year.’
Bee outlined her idea for recycling fuel. When she’d finished, Margaret looked thoughtful.
‘It’s an interesting proposal,’ she said. ‘But we’ll never adopt it.’
‘What? Why not?’
‘Vested interests, my dear. There wouldn’t be the political will for this kind of change, because too many of the individuals who say yay or nay to funding our missions also have a stake in the atroposium industry. We’d cause immense damage to their bottom line if we reduced our atroposium consumption on the scale you’re suggesting.’
Bee sagged. Her bargaining chip had been refused. What else could she say to convince the Conclave to let her in? All that remained was to beg. She stood and placed her hands on the desk.
‘Please, Margaret,’ she implored. ‘Let me time travel again. I’ll do anything – the most menial, out of the way job you have. ‘
She was inches from Margaret’s eyes, and Barbara thought she saw a glimmer of interest.
‘You’ll do anything?’ Margaret queried. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Absolutely.’
Margaret massaged her temples.
‘Very well,’ she said. ‘You can’t publicly rejoin us. That is out of the question. But we do occasionally want covert employees. First, you’d need to take a few preparatory tests. There are other people in your position, ones we had to let go but who have skills that are still of use.’
‘What do they do, these covert employees?’
‘One step at a time. Do you want to take the prep tests?’
‘Yes, definitely.’
‘You can meet me tonight. Not here. I’ll be at the toy museum in Rotherhithe. Come at eight o’clock on the dot. Don’t mention where you’re going to anyone.’
Barbara’s smile froze. The demands for secrecy made her uneasy.
Go home, Bee heard Ruby say. This is a trap.
But time travelling again was what Barbara wanted to do most, and Margaret said time travelling was on offer.
‘I won’t be late,’ Barbara said.
30
SEPTEMBER 2018
Odette
Odette took her seat in the small exam room. The candidates sat one behind the other, with Odette at the back. A draught from the door played on her bare ankles. The walls were marble, and when Elspeth spoke her voice echoed.
‘You have an hour to write your reflections and conclusions on this morning’s activity. I will notify you at half an hour, and five minutes, before your time is up.’
Behind Odette, the door whined open. Jim Plantagenet hastened past her.
‘When I give you the instruction,’ Elspeth continued, ‘you begin.’
Jim reached Elspeth. Their heads drew close in whispered conference. Then both of them turned to look at the candidates.
Or to look at Odette. Their eyes were trained squarely on her – she was sure of it.
Elspeth straightened.
‘I’m afraid,’ she announced, ‘there will be a short delay to the start of the exam while one of you is removed.’
Odette’s legs shook. Robert had called the Conclave. She was sure of it.
She smoothed her tweed skirt as Jim walked back down the aisle. He was headed straight for her.
The man halted at the desk in front.
‘Ms Morris. The technician has brought to my attention that you didn’t wait for the time machine to decontaminate before you exited. You’re now a threat to public health. You must leave with me at once.’
His face was scarlet. Tartan burst into tears.
Odette felt nothing but relief that her secret was still intact. If Tartan had been foolish enough to forget the rules, that was her failing.
Jim marched Tartan from the hall as she sobbed.
‘You may now start,’ Elspeth announced.
Odette opened her exam paper. There was the question in black and white: How can we use time travel to prevent crime?
Odette chewed her lip, considering how to respond. She jotted down an opening paragraph: Detectives can interact with the past. But the outcome of their actions will always be consistent with events in their original timeline. The primary purpose of time travel must be to collect evidence, rather than prevent the offence. Justice can then be appropriately administered with all the information to hand.
She detailed her own evidence, including the plaque and Grace Taylor’s response to her questions. Lastly she noted that she had switched on the security camera, which would have captured the vandalism, should the video footage be required at trial.
Odette had failed to stop the crime, and that made her fear for her prospects. But she had done her best and answered honestly. She had to hope this was enough to get her the job.
31
APRIL 1994
Julie
Veronica Collins might have been the first person Margaret threatened with expulsion, but she wasn’t the last. Angharad’s daughter, Julie Parris, joined the Conclave in 1993 as an environmental conservationist. When plants became extinct, it was her role to retrieve samples from the past in the interests of preservation. She had been born to time travellers, and might have taken to Conclave life as her dynastic birthright. But she didn’t. From her first field trip she had felt frightened.
Seasoned time travellers can spend more of their lives in the past or future than their purported ‘home’ timeline. Julie had grown up observing this rootlessness in her parents. Before joining the Conclave herself, she had thought that she was familiar with all of the job’s joys and challenges, and was ready to take them on. She had underestimated how upsetting she would find her own detachment from time. As soon as she stepped from a time machine, at the age of twenty-one, she felt like a ghost – what other name could be applied to a woman who walked among people born centuries after herself? To them, she should be dead. The feeling of dislocation outlasted her return to 1993.
The way that Julie expressed her fear was through food. She wouldn’t try delicacies that were new to her, and she rejected her hosts’ attempts to make her welcome with meals. Soon she rejected familiar meals, too, associating them with an old life that she was permanently severed from. Her body acquired hollows and sharp points. It was gratifying to watch her belly turn concave. The more weight she lost, the closer her physical form matched her inner self: she would be as thin and pared down as the air. Ghosts had no flesh.
Eventually, the circumstances in which she would eat anything at all narrowed to one very specific point in time. If she wished to eat, she would travel to the day of her birth in 1973, and make her way to the local park for 11.52 in the morning. She would only eat at this moment of her birth; and each time she travelled there, her other ‘selves’ were simultaneously in place. To have this moment marked out for meals reassure
d her, and gave her the sense of control that she otherwise felt was lacking in her life. All her silver selves in the park were close to her in age, so she knew that something would eventually interrupt the ritual she had developed, and take that control away. Whenever she returned to the park, she also saw a future version of her mother, with a stooped back and loose grey hair, watching from a nearby slope. This must have been an attempt on Angharad’s part – still yet to happen – to gain insight into her daughter’s distress.
*
For months, Julie concealed her shrinking body from those who loved her with artful clothing. But her face grew gaunt and furred with lanugo. Dr Joyce recognised the significance of this, and sent Julie to Margaret’s office.
Margaret was now fifty-six. She had been secure in her power for a long time, and paid decreasing attention to social niceties. As testimony to her growing eccentricity, a rabbit – one of Patrick’s descendants – watched them from the side of the room. He sat in the middle of the bookshelf, his nose twitching.
‘Julie had the highest aptitude scores of her cohort,’ Siobhan was saying. ‘Nothing has happened to change that. At no point has her illness stopped her carrying out her duties.’
‘But what might she cost the Conclave?’ Margaret’s voice was icy. ‘That must be weighed against her contribution. Do you deny that every trashy paperback, every second-rate film, every cheap tabloid that dares to mention my work must reference Barbara Hereford’s lunacy in the same breath? I will not pander to their view of us by indulging mental deficiency.’
Thus far Julie had been silent. Margaret’s rabbit leapt from the bookcase and ran to Julie’s feet. She picked him up. He settled in her lap.
The sight enraged Margaret.
‘Parris! Have you nothing to say for yourself? Your weakness disgusts me. Are you so incapable of defending yourself that you must hide behind this doctor’s skirts?’ Margaret walked to where Julie sat with surprising speed and lightness. She lifted the rabbit from Julie’s lap. ‘Give me one reason why I should treat you with anything but contempt. Fussing over a lab rabbit as if it were a pet – you have the attitudes of a child.’
‘Sometimes I think I am a child.’ Julie spoke mildly, almost to herself. ‘Or an animal – like a rabbit. Don’t you ever wonder what it’s like for the lab animals?’
Margaret stared, her expression incredulous.
‘Julie,’ said Siobhan, ‘I don’t think that question helps.’
‘The lab animals in the time machines. The first ones.’ Julie turned her head towards her psychologist. ‘Rabbits have body clocks, you know. They must be sent askew by time travelling. Out of joint, like me. I just want routine and to forage and dig and sleep. Normal life, you know.’
‘So take your normal life and go.’ Margaret exuded contempt. ‘But do not breathe a word of the reasons for your failure.’
‘I can’t go,’ Julie said, matter-of-factly. ‘My entire family are time travellers. It would break my mother’s heart if I left.’
‘Your mother would understand,’ Siobhan said. ‘Please, Julie. You’ll die without intervention.’
‘Get out!’ Margaret barked at Dr Joyce. ‘The girl’s made her decision. If she’s going to stay, she’ll be following the rules I set. Your contribution is no longer needed.’
32
AUGUST 2017
Ruby and Barbara
The bar Grace took Ruby to favoured Victoriana: the wallpaper was flocked, and a piano with candleholders and covered legs stood in the corner. A small bay window let in very little light. Grace bought two tulip glasses of genever, which Ruby hadn’t tried before. They sat in a booth and Ruby sipped her drink.
‘Good?’ Grace asked.
‘Very,’ Ruby said. ‘But I’m not here to discuss gin. How can the body be Margaret’s? If the body isn’t Bee’s, what made you send her the inquest announcement?’
‘I didn’t send it. An older-me will.’
‘That’s just semantics.’
‘It isn’t. I don’t know much more than you.’
‘Oh, come on. You’ve seen the future!’
‘I’ve seen some of the future. But my older-selves have always seen more. And they haven’t deigned to explain why they left an origami rabbit on Barbara’s doorstep.’
‘Brilliant. So you don’t know why we’ve been on a wild goose chase.’
‘I have some guesses! Did you ever receive a save-the-date card before a wedding? Maybe they’re like those. But for an upcoming death. The next few months are a bad run for the pioneers. You’ve already seen what happens to me, Margaret goes in the New Year, and then it’s Lucille’s turn in the spring. Hey!’ Grace exclaimed suddenly. ‘Did you work out what those engraved numbers meant on the ring? They’re Lucille and her husband’s birth and death dates. That’s what time travellers engrave on their engagement rings.’
‘Hang on, Grace.’ Ruby spoke gently, because she wasn’t sure this woman was right in the head. ‘Why on earth would Bee want a save-the-date card for your deaths? She’d like a normal letter, or to meet you for coffee. If you’re going to die, she’d like a chance to say goodbye. That doesn’t mean she wants riddles about when it’s going to happen. Do you think this is a game?’
‘No?’ Grace bit her lip in consternation.
Ruby waited for her to continue explaining.
‘Gahhhh.’ Grace raked her hair. ‘I don’t think it’s a game. My future selves do. They drive me loopy, quite loopy. Have you met any veteran time travellers?’
Ruby shook her head.
Grace clasped Ruby’s hands across the table and looked at her intently. For a moment Ruby thought Grace was going to kiss her.
‘Believe me,’ Grace said. ‘Old time travellers are an odd bunch. They’re all so strange about death. It’s like the longer you time travel, the more cavalier you get about people dying.’
‘And that’s true of you?’
‘Evidently! I’ve spent a few Christmases with future Graces. They’re a barrel of laughs, I can tell you. Would you want to spend Christmas with several versions of yourself?’
Ruby grimaced at the thought.
‘Sad to say it, but I become very annoying.’ She let go of Ruby’s hands, and relaxed back into her seat. ‘Though I’m not as bad as some. Margaret turns into the worst person. When I first met her she could be a bit of a control freak but she had a whip-smart brain – and she was always sensible. Everything she did was for a practical reason. It was a bad move for her to head the Conclave.’
‘Oh?’
‘Maybe being in charge of time and space would give anyone a god complex, but she’s such a mean god. And it sets the whole tone there. She’s cruel to the time travellers, and the old time travellers are cruel to the wenches, and they’re all cruel to civilians. I can hardly stand to be around them, Margaret least of all.’
Grace’s complaints reminded Ruby of her own feelings about university friends. People you’d once die for take appalling paths. It’s not that they become unrecognisable. They become more like themselves. Personality quirks grow more pronounced, and so do values, until you wonder how you ever ignored the differences between you.
‘How does Margaret die?’ Ruby asked.
‘She plays a dangerous game with a gun. One day it goes wrong.’
‘No one else involved?’
‘A rather lovely femme fatale – or so I’ve heard.’
‘Fine. I’m relieved it’s not my grandmother’s body. That’s all that matters to me.’
‘If you want to know when Barbara does die, I can tell you,’ Grace remarked.
‘No!’ Ruby almost shouted, thinking of how distressing the past few weeks had been. ‘I don’t want any advance warning. I’ll enjoy the time I have with her, and when she dies it will be completely out of the blue. I won’t have wasted a moment anticipating her death.’
‘OK, OK.’ Grace eyed her empty glass. ‘Let’s order another round.’
She went back to the
bar, and Ruby took the opportunity to call Bee. There was no answer on the flat phone or her mobile.
‘It’s me,’ Ruby told Bee’s voicemail. ‘The body’s not yours. Ring me as soon as you can.’
Laughter travelled from the bar. Ruby watched Grace flirt with the barman. A shaft of evening light fell on Grace’s face, and the illumination flattered her. She might be in a Terence Malik film.
Don’t fall for her, Ruby warned herself. She’s very odd.
But also beautiful, and a genius. Why wasn’t Ruby angrier with Grace, for making her fear Bee would die horribly? Was it because Grace shifted blame onto her future selves, as if she were a different person completely? She’d acted as though they’d embarrassed her – as if she and Ruby were on the same wronged side. That was cunning.
Grace came back with the genever bottle, which she uncorked efficiently.
‘By the way,’ she said, ‘don’t tell anyone the body belongs to Margaret. That information’s embargoed. If you pass it on, you’ll be committing treason. Breaking a Conclave embargo is a capital offence and you won’t want to lose your head.’
She sat down and topped up their glasses. Ruby stared at her.
‘You passed the information on,’ Ruby said. ‘You’ve committed treason. Aren’t you worried about being executed?’
‘Me?’ Her eyes were wide. ‘I died of a brain haemorrhage this morning, remember? Nobody’s going to execute me.’
*
A hundred and thirty miles south, another time traveller – Ruby’s grandmother – was browsing the Conclave store, which was the only section of the building open to the public. They specialised in the exclusive sale of food from other time periods. People could buy meals-in-pills, sonic-enhanced meat and fish, rum served in clouds. The candy accounted for most of the shop’s wares. CitronGlows. Frozen Butter Pies on sticks. Sweet Algae. Cricketsnap and Honeyed Kernels. Everything looked good to Barbara. The colours on the packets zinged. All the songs from the speakers were exuberant. Soon, if Margaret’s offer was genuine, Barbara would be travelling to new places – and experiencing the worlds her old work had promised. Barbara bought some biscuits for Breno, and a single tub of astronaut’s ice cream for herself. She walked through the doors of the shop, back into the foyer.
The Psychology of Time Travel Page 14