41
AUGUST 2017
Barbara
Barbara took Breno back to the flat before leaving for the museum. She rather regretted his absence on the walk from the station; he would have been company, and she felt very alone. The distance to the museum was considerable. Her preference would have been to catch a taxi, but she thought Margaret might be angry if a third party – the driver – witnessed her arrival.
She didn’t meet another soul in the last few streets. A police siren distantly rose and fell. The museum was locked up when she arrived. Had Margaret chosen this place because of its quiet emptiness, the low likelihood that they would be seen? The venue was a strange one.
The walk had given Barbara a queer pain in her chest. She placed a steadying hand on the wall. Nerves, she thought. That was why she was nauseous and a little sweaty. As she contemplated how to get into the museum, she heard the creak of a door, out of sight. She stumbled to the side of the building. A staff entrance was wide open, but there was no one to be seen.
Bee peered inside. She saw a narrow corridor, with a door on the left – presumably to the public areas of the museum – and a stairwell, leading to the basement. First she tried the door handle, but it didn’t budge. The only other way to go was down. Down, to where no passer-by would hear her cry out.
Don’t be silly, Bee scolded herself. Whatever differences had arisen between her and Margaret, they had once been friends. She wouldn’t place Bee in danger. Bee had to believe that, especially now she was so close to getting what she wanted.
She went downstairs and let herself into the boiler room.
Margaret stood opposite the door. She wore a reefer and leather gloves, despite the warmth of the evening. In one hand she held a pistol.
‘It’s just the two of us?’ Barbara’s eyes flickered between Margaret and the gun.
‘As we arranged. Do we need anyone else?’
‘No.’ The room smelt as fresh as April weather. Surprisingly fresh, for an underground boiler room. It smelt like time machines. ‘Why are we meeting here, Margaret?’
‘It has a personal significance to me. A sentimental value, you might say.’
Supposedly – if you had access to state secrets – obtaining keys and alarm codes to buildings that didn’t belong to you was a relatively simple matter.
‘Now.’ Margaret extended her arm, pointing with her gun to a tower of bricks – around four foot high – that Bee had failed to spot by the wall. A Candybox was perched on the top. ‘We’re going to play a game of chance.’
‘A game…?’
‘If you shoot into the Candybox, there’s a twenty per cent chance the bullet will rebound straight back into you. Alternatively, it will pass through time, to the possible harm of whoever operates the machine in the future.’ She held the gun out to Barbara. ‘Call it my variation on Russian roulette.’
‘But why?’
‘It’s a practical test, of my own devising. Willingness to play predicts smooth adjustment to the Conclave’s norms.’
Barbara still hadn’t taken the gun.
‘You want me to endanger myself – or someone else,’ she said.
‘Yes. Those are the rules of the game. You told me you would do anything, Bee.’
‘I meant I would do simple work – menial work, if necessary.’
Margaret let her arm drop.
‘Fine. You can go home.’
Barbara thought her heart would crack. The chance to time travel again had been within reach, and now Margaret was taking it away.
‘Wait,’ Barbara said. ‘Just… wait.’
‘Are you going to play or not?’
‘Please, I just… All right!’
The touch of the gun on Barbara’s palm was cool. Her hand was trembling. She hooked her finger through the trigger guard. Margaret’s insane, she thought; it was insanity to sport with Barbara’s life, and other people’s. Before today, Barbara hadn’t seen Margaret in half a century. What had happened to her since to make her so cruel?
‘I can’t,’ Barbara said. ‘I won’t time travel again at this price.’
Margaret took back the gun, aimed it at the Candybox, and fired.
‘You were never going to shoot,’ she said matter of factly. ‘But I enjoyed watching you consider it. Duck.’
‘What?’
The Candybox spat out the bullet as Margaret dropped to the floor. The bullet grazed Barbara’s arm, spinning her off balance, then blood wept through the cotton of her sleeve. Margaret, unharmed, kept her foetal position at Barbara’s feet, and she laughed and laughed. The seconds elongated. Barbara felt she was watching the scene from far away.
‘Thank you, Margaret,’ she said.
‘What for?’
‘It wasn’t right to cut me out. But I was better off living the life I had.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Margaret sneered. ‘You’re so smug, with your idyllic cottage on the coast, and your dog and your home-spun wisdom. We both know you’re weak.’
‘Strong enough to walk away from you without a backward glance.’
Which is exactly what she did.
Barbara’s perception of time travel had been formed before the Conclave was born or thought of. In those early days, Margaret had been one member of a team where everyone’s input was essential, so her personal qualities didn’t dominate. This meant that the eventual character the Conclave took on came as a shock to Barbara when she tried, at the age of eighty-two, to return. She had the strength to walk away, but she was also glad she’d had the chance to see behind the wizard’s curtain. It meant that when – less than a day later – Barbara died, she could go to her grave without regrets for the life she’d led. She’d loved her family. She was at peace with her health. She’d had years to tend her garden and watch the sea. In another life she’d invented time travel – but that was no longer a glory she needed to revisit.
42
SEPTEMBER 2018
Odette
It was dark when Odette arrived home. Only Maman was in, reading A-level essays at the kitchen table under a crisp circle of lamplight. She took one look at Odette’s face, and put the essay down.
‘You didn’t get it?’ Maman said.
Odette took a seat and undid her shoe straps. ‘The job’s mine. I’ve already signed the contract.’
‘But, Midge, that’s wonderful!’
‘I’m not going back there. The people are terrible.’
Maman tsked, dismissively. ‘Nobody likes their colleagues. Not me, not your father. Do you hear us complaining?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well we still go to work anyway. It might be frightening to leave university but you need to start your career now.’
‘I’m not frightened of leaving university.’
‘What then?’
Odette watched her own reflection in the kitchen window. What was she frightened of? She was comfortable enough with lying, to find out if the time travellers were murderers. But Fay’s ritual had made it clear that blending in might also mean doing unpleasant things to innocent people. This time Odette had resisted. Could she keep resisting, and yet evade detection? Could she keep resisting while earning the time travellers’ trust? Odette feared they might contaminate her. She wasn’t sure you could work in a rotten system and keep your own hands clean.
‘I spoke to lots of time travellers today. And one of them warned me I’d struggle to fit in.’ Odette’s voice trembled. ‘I’m frightened they’ll catch me out as someone who doesn’t belong. And I’m scared that I’ll be compromised – that I’ll end up hating myself – because I’m trying so hard to be accepted. After today I feel so alone.’
To her embarrassment, a tear ran down her cheek. But it made Maman soften. She pulled Odette to her.
‘This was a white time traveller, was it?’ she asked.
‘Yes, but… that wasn’t what she was getting at.’
‘It’s always there when a white woman tells a black w
oman she won’t be accepted – whether or not that’s what she meant,’ Maman said. ‘You’ve shown determination, Midge, going to Cambridge and the Conclave. You must keep being determined. Nobody’s going to hand a black girl anything. But you are not alone. You have me.’
‘I know but—’
‘You’re not alone,’ Maman interrupted. ‘Ou pas tousel.’
The sound of the words in Kreol surprised Odette, and gave her a strange ache in her chest. Maman hadn’t spoken Kreol in years. Odette closed her eyes, and remembered the forgotten language, until they heard Robert’s key in the front door.
43
AUGUST 2017
Ruby
Grace didn’t have to sleep in the Conclave’s dorms. As a founding member, she had the privilege of a private apartment to the rear of the complex, on the thirty-sixth floor. She took Ruby there after they left Angharad to her rehearsals. The rooms were open plan and designed according to 1960s’ Italian principles, which meant the furniture was white and sinuous, and the walls were hung with optical illusions. Grace put the Velvet Underground on the record player. She poured some Steinhäger into a pair of shot glasses and led Ruby out to the balcony to admire the city view.
On the patio table Ruby saw an arrangement of tiny objects: a matryoshka; a pearlescent pill box; a Swiss army knife; a Japanese coin; a ticket to see the Zombies; a dried sheaf of lavender; a pair of sea-green hurricane glasses; a heart-shaped eraser; a pharmaceutical capsule; an escargot fork…
‘What are these for?’ Ruby asked.
‘My next exhibition. They’re all examples of acausal matter. Or what some physicists call “genies” – because they appear out of nowhere.’
‘What d’you mean, nowhere?’
‘One of my future selves gave these to me, wrapped in a plastic bag. Eventually I’ll give them to a past me. The objects only exist in that loop. They aren’t made by anyone. They just exist.’
‘That’s impossible.’
‘No, it isn’t. We don’t fully understand genies, but the laws of quantum mechanics allow for them. A surge of energy can spontaneously create matter from a vacuum. One theory is that the process of time travel creates an excess of energy that generates these objects.’
‘I find that difficult to get my head around.’
‘So do a lot of time travellers, especially the ones who work in support, because they rarely have a physics background. They tend to believe genies have a divine origin.’
‘They’re made by God?’
‘Or a higher power of some sort.’
‘D’you have a lot of them, these genies?’
‘Every time traveller does.’ Grace sipped her Steinhäger and placed the glass on the table. ‘Not all genies are tangible. A genie can be a cake recipe. A piece of music. A mathematical equation.’
‘A list of names on next year’s payroll?’
‘Yes. Using genies to avoid labour can be dangerous. Doing your own groundwork – like going through a recruitment process – means you can reduce the number of possible outcomes. But there are situations where accepting a genie can be beautiful.’ Grace stroked Ruby’s arm. ‘Let’s say my future self tells me that the Conclave ballroom, on an August evening, is the best place to kiss you. And when I get older I’ll say the same thing to my past self. The idea wasn’t my own. It’s a suggestion that circles between my silver-me, and my green-me.’
‘What does your future self say about women on balconies?’
‘Nothing. We’ll have to experiment without her involvement.’
She kissed Ruby again.
Ruby lifted the paisley dress over Grace’s head. She kissed Grace’s scars, and the border where Grace’s shoulders met her oyster corselette. They made short work of Ruby’s checked pinafore – but the unlooping of every hook in Grace’s satin underwear was a slow pleasure – and then their hands were on each other’s breasts, their hips, their thighs. They fell onto the tiles. Through the speakers Nico crooned, halted in a groove. Eeeese, she breathed, over and over. Eeeese. Eeeese. The world was nothing but the rhythm of her voice, and Grace’s mouth on Ruby’s skin.
*
‘Tell me a secret,’ Grace said afterwards. ‘Something no one else knows.’
‘I didn’t have sex till I was twenty-seven,’ Ruby replied.
‘Is that late?’
‘Don’t you think it is?’
‘Not necessarily. These things can take longer to work out, if you’re a woman who likes women. Is that why you waited?’
‘No, I don’t think so. I didn’t wait deliberately. My favourite theory’s that I had a limited communication repertoire. I grew up in a house where nobody got too emotional, so I kept everything hidden, including attraction. I certainly didn’t flirt.’
‘A “limited communication repertoire”! I think that’s nonsense,’ Grace said. ‘You talk to people for a living.’
‘No, I listen, and I ask questions from behind a very crisp boundary. I’m ideally suited to my job.’ Ruby propped herself up on an elbow. ‘Does your job never frighten you – with how dangerous it is?’
‘When I was a little girl, I expected to do dangerous work.’
‘Really? Why ever did you think that?’
‘I’m from a mining family, in the Midlands,’ Grace said. ‘My mother pulled iron nuggets out of the banks of Tipton. That would have been my fate, too, only I was evacuated during the war, and the woman I stayed with offered to pay for my education. She said I was intelligent, which was true, but I think that really she liked the idea of rescuing me. Manual labour horrified her – so did manual labourers – and she enjoyed being horrified. I became a pet project that she could tell people about and they’d praise how generous she was.’
‘That’s horrible.’
‘Hm? Yes. Still. I went to boarding school. When I’d finished, I felt out of place at home, but it didn’t matter any more. I could go to university; I wouldn’t be dead by forty, like my grandparents, or lose my livelihood through mine closures, like my cousins. The risks of time travel seem quite manageable in comparison. Particularly when you think of the benefits. I’ve always loved it. When we invented time travel, I stopped noticing how I didn’t fit in any place. Because time travellers were a new thing, they didn’t have a particular accent, and you didn’t do it because that’s what your mother and grandmother did. I know that changed. People have an idea by now of what time travellers are like—’
‘Mad,’ Ruby said. ‘People think time travellers are mad.’
‘They do,’ Grace said. ‘But I can live with that.’
‘It’s your turn to tell a secret.’
‘I practically have. Everyone’s forgotten I should have been a miner.’
‘Tell me another.’
Grace sat up. She reached for her dress and pulled it back on.
‘How about something from the future?’ she said finally.
‘Ugh. No.’ Ruby shuddered.
Grace didn’t reply. She was looking at the clock on the wall, which read half past eleven.
‘I didn’t mean to be rude,’ Ruby added. ‘It was a kind offer – to tell me about the future. The idea just makes me nervous, that’s all.’
‘No, it’s fine. Ruby…’ Grace tapped her fingers against her mouth, as if trying to raise her words to the surface. ‘Ruby, I think you should go now.’
‘Oh. Have I done something wrong?’
‘No. I just hadn’t realised it was this late. I think it would be best if you went home.’
‘I’m sorry. I knew I’d put my foot in it.’
‘Please, go back to your flat. I can arrange a Conclave car, it’s no problem.’
Ruby put her clothes back on. She felt cold now, even when she was fully dressed. Neither she nor Grace spoke again before the chauffer pressed the buzzer, and then Grace only said goodbye, with no farewell kiss. She watched from the doorway until the lift took Ruby away.
*
Breno greeted Ruby at the door,
but Bee was already in bed. The flat smelt strongly of time machines, meaning Bee must have been playing with the Candybox again. Ruby took a shower and brushed her teeth. She slumped over the sink with tiredness, yet she doubted she’d sleep. She was upset by Grace’s sudden haste to be rid of her. Ruby must have misread the situation. She’d foolishly thought tonight was the start of something. Whereas Grace had clearly got what she wanted, and couldn’t wait for Ruby to leave.
And was Grace being unreasonable? What could exist between them beyond a few hours? You couldn’t get involved with someone who spent most of their life in a different time period from you. What would such a relationship look like? Just thinking about it made Ruby’s head hurt. She put her toothbrush back in its mug and turned off the bathroom light.
On her way past Bee’s open door, Ruby heard her grandmother stirring.
‘Tony?’ Bee mumbled, her voice slurred with sleep.
‘No, Granny,’ Ruby said. ‘It’s me.’
‘Oh, Ruby… come in. Let me see you.’
Ruby did as she was told, and sat on the edge of the bed.
‘I was so sure Tony was here. I must have been dreaming about him.’
‘Does that make you sad?’
‘No. No, not at all. It’s like seeing him again. A chance to catch up. I never fancied remarrying, you know. He was the only man I wanted.’
‘For all that time?’
‘A little time with him was better than all my life with anyone else. I still had Dinah, and you.’ Bee patted Ruby’s cheek. ‘Remember that. When you go, you want to have people you love to think about. You need enough money to feed yourself, and a sense of purpose is nice. But the rest is superfluous.’
Breno leapt onto the bed and curled round Bee’s feet. Ruby kissed her grandmother on the forehead.
‘I love you,’ Ruby whispered – unheard, because Bee had already fallen back to sleep.
Those were the last words they’d exchange. Bee didn’t wake up again. She died, asymptomatically, of a blood-borne infection. It was contracted from Margaret’s bullet.
The Psychology of Time Travel Page 18