Allergic To Time

by Crystal Gables

  “I mean, the most obviously strange thing is that he doesn’t want to track down his family. It’s only been 40 years: some of them might still be alive.” I looked at Martin. “Do most time travellers want to track people down, once they’ve come to terms with what has happened to them?”

  He nodded. “Definitely,” he said firmly. “They are usually desperate to find anyone they still know. If they are lucky enough have anyone still alive on the planet.”

  I nodded slowly, reluctantly. I thought back to Nelson Bay again. “But then, there are the less obvious things. This probably isn’t going to sound like much, but when we were in Nelson Bay, last week, or three months ago, or whatever. He asked me if the weather was ‘always like this here’. It’s not like the WEATHER could have changed much in 40 years...” I trailed off a bit, thinking about that strange exchange.

  Martin was staring back at me thoughtfully. “So what did he mean by that?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know, it was weird,” I admitted. “He was really quick to change the topic, as well.”

  “I bet he was.”

  I sighed disapprovingly. “Fine, if you think he is lying, why do you think he is? What reason could he have for pulling this hoax on us? He has nothing to gain.”

  Martin pulled a face. “Isn’t it obvious?”

  I shook my head. “Err, no?”

  He stood up and dusted off his knees. “He’s working for them.”

  “Oh come on,” I objected. “For my father?”

  “Your father, John Raymond, them. Think about it Anna: why didn’t they kill you that day in the hospital when they had the chance? Because I’m sure they don’t have any qualms about killing anyone. If Robert had been a real time traveller they would have disposed of him in a heartbeat. They can’t have them walking around, talking about it.”

  I didn’t want to admit it, but he had a good point. Why hadn’t they shot us that day in the hospital? I mean, wasn’t that the entire point of the secret ward, and having the medical staff in on the secret? So that no one ever woke up, and escaped from the joint?

  But I didn’t say anything. I still didn’t want to cross the line, admit any real doubt over Robert, out loud. Martin might have made some valid points, but they still didn’t discount my original gut feeling I’d had when I had first seen him lying there in that hospital bed: I had known beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was telling the truth.

  Hadn’t I?

  Martin returned to the kitchen to put the cloth away, and as I was about to stand up, I noticed something shoved under the lounge I had been sitting on. It only caught my eye because it was 70s style red knapsack, the sort that Robert had told me he’d been carrying the day he’d travelled through time...

  I looked around quickly to see if Martin was coming back into the room. I didn’t know if I would have time to pull it out and go through it without Martin catching me. I leant my head back down and looked at the bag again. But why would Martin have that here, if it really were Robert’s? And hidden in such an obvious place. Then I remembered: hidden in plain sight. I started to reach my hand under the seat.

  “Anna,” Martin called, coming back into the room. I quickly snatched my hand away and tried to look innocent.

  “Yes?” I asked.

  “Fanny is just about to get off the bus on Glebe Point Rd. I’m just going to walk up to meet her: she doesn’t like walking around the streets on her own at this time of night.”

  I nodded. “I’ll just stay here. I’m still not feeling well after all those Jack and Cokes,” I replied quickly.

  “Okay.” Martin grabbed his jacket off a coat rack and shoved his arms into the sleeves. “We’ll be back in about fifteen minutes or so.”

  I nodded. “Okay.”

  He left and shut the door behind him. I watched out the window until he was out of eyesight, and then I reached back under the seat for the bag as fast as I could move, tearing the buckles apart and upending the contents onto the floor.

  I was praying that it just be a coincidence, that Martin just happened to own a bag that looked like this, and that it was just misplaced under the lounge room chair. The contents scattered out before me and I took a long look at them, trying to take it all in - the contents of the bag and the situation were overwhelming me.

  I glanced out the window quickly and told myself to calm down. I had fifteen minutes to look through the items, so I had to be methodical and do it properly.

  Right. I ran my hands through all the stuff that had fallen out onto the still damp rug, sorting and separating them. There were bits and pieces: key rings, cigarette lighters, notepads. There was also an old leather wallet, so that was the first thing I reached for. I looked at it. There it was: an ID sticking out over the top. I took a quick breathe before I snapped it open to see who it belonged to.

  Robert’s driver’s licence. So it was his bag.I dropped the wallet onto the floor in shock. My heart was beating faster than I thought possible. Why the hell did Martin have this in his house?

  But then something else occurred to me. If it was Robert’s driver’s licence it would have a birthdate on it.

  With trembling hands I picked the wallet back up and pulled the leather flap open.

  “Robert Smith. DOB: July 22, 1983.” And then, in amongst the piles of crap, I noticed a smart phone.

  Chapter Thirty.

  I didn’t wait for Martin and Fanny to come back.

  I left the content of the red knapsack splayed out on the floor and got the hell out of there as fast as I could. I turned right, headed away from the bus stop where Martin was meeting Fanny so that I wouldn’t run into them. My heels tapped on the concrete as I ran down St John’s Rd as fast as I could. Screw them, I thought. Screw all of them.

  I ran up the back roads towards the university campus, partly because it was the best way to escape from Glebe without being seen but also, because I wanted to see John Raymond. If I couldn’t trust either Martin or Robert anymore, then perhaps the only person I actually could trust was the person who I thought I couldn’t.

  After a few blocks I had to slow down because my breathing had grown ragged and I could no longer keep up the pace. I tried to keep a brisk walking pace for the rest of the journey, as it was almost dark and I was in a dodgy part of Glebe. I stayed close to the road, underneath the street lights.

  By the time the university was in my sight I began jogging again, though by that stage my ankles were hurting from the strain of running in heels. I finally reached Parramatta Rd, where a footbridge connected Glebe to the main part of campus. As I walked over the sea of car lights below where a thousand angry commuters trapped in peak hour traffic sat, I could see RPA hospital one block down in the background. I wished I had never followed Martin and the man in black - John Raymond - there that day.

  Once I was on campus I began striding towards the physics department as fast as I possibly could. A mission had overtaken me: I was convinced that I had to find John Raymond, the man in black, so that I could warn him. I kept thinking about Fanny and Martin’s plan, about how they intended to “send that bastard through time” to teach him a lesson, to show him what it was like to wake up in a strange time and place, unable to breathe. Well, now I no longer trusted those two whatsoever, I had to at least save John Raymond from the same horrible fate that we had all experienced.

  As I jogged through campus at dusk I looked at all the old sandstone buildings with a certain sadness. My home. This place had been my home for the last six years. And it had been more of a home than that beach cottage at Nelson Bay had ever been. And now it was all taken away from me. I’d probably never get my job back, or my place on the PhD program. My thesis had all been based on a lie anyway, I thought bitterly, fighting away the tears of anger I had welling up in my eyes. A lie, all thanks to the years of lies from Martin Anderson.

  I had to slow down for the last part of my walk as I was struggling to breathe properly. Maybe I was allergic to this whole damn time
, I thought bitterly. After all, I wasn’t even supposed to be here. I didn’t even know what time I was from. But it wasn’t this one. I wondered how my father could have risked my life like that at such a young age. I mean, I knew we’d never been close, but it hurt me far more than I thought it would. The idea that he had never cared about me at all, had never cared whether I’d lived or died, even when I was a baby.

  The sun had almost totally set, and I had to wonder if I would even find John Raymond on campus at all at this time. It was after business hours. Regardless, I had to try. I wouldn’t even begin to know where else he might hang out. Apart from the dungeon ward at RPA hospital. But unless any new time travellers had arrived recently I doubted he would be there.

  I reached the old familiar wood-panelled glass doors of the physics department and pushed through them. They felt heavier than usual and I almost struggled to get through them. I supposed I was just tired. Well, completely exhausted more like it. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d gotten any proper sleep. Probably in Newcastle hospital when I had been unconscious. Which had been days ago.

  I stumbled wearily down the corridor towards the office of John Raymond, not even seeing Naomi Stone as she headed towards me, almost knocking her over.

  “Anna! What are you doing back here again?” She seemed to be very wary of me.

  “What are you still doing here?” I shot back at her, more than a little suspicious over Naomi Stone’s 180 degree turn: from worst student in the department to the kind who spends ten hours a day on campus? This was not adding up.

  She screwed up her nose and shot a look at me that said ‘I don’t have to explain myself to you.’

  Well she didn’t have to. But I was going to make her. “Seriously,” I said. “Why are you here after hours?”

  She stood up straight and crossed her arms. “What am I doing here after hours? Um, I’m still a student here remember? Unlike some people.” She was referring to me.

  “Are you and Dr Raymond having an affair?” I demanded to know.

  She backed away a bit, a look of embarrassment crossing her face. She looked over her shoulder, her red curls spilling over her chest. She shook her head. “No. I told you: we’re working on something.”

  “Are you working on a time machine?” I blurted out. I immediately realised how insane it sounded as it was coming out of my mouth. Well, that me done then: the lack of sleep and food, combined with the ungodly amount of caffeine and alcohol in my system had set me over the edge. But she nodded. She just stood there and nodded.

  “What?” I hissed, stopping in my tracks. That had not been the reaction I’d been expecting. I had been expecting her to lead me out of the department by the shoulder before dialling me an ambulance. I took a step closer to her. “Are you freaking kidding me?” Did everyone on the planet have a time machine besides me?

  She nodded again, her curls bouncing energetically. “We talk about you all the time, you know. Me and Dr Raymond.”

  “Do you just.” I backed away again. “I thought you didn’t know anything about what had happened to me…”

  “We didn’t, well, not for sure!” She sounded very over-excited. “We just hoped. And we didn’t know how far though time you’d actually travelled. We thought we might have to wait for decades to see you again, if you even reappeared during our lifetime at all, that is. But you’re like, some kind of super girl. You’ve survived time travel twice.” She grinned at me. “The only person ever to have achieved that.”

  No, I thought, there was also Rob... but then I stopped myself. That bastard probably hadn’t even travelled through time once, let alone twice.

  Naomi grabbed me by the arm and started leading me up to Raymond’s office, chattering to me excitedly. “I mean, he didn’t really want to get you involved. After you ran off at the hospital that time. But I kept telling him that you are exactly the person we need on our team. After all, we’ve read your PhD thesis and it is brilliant, if a bit wrong...”

  “Hang on!” I cut in. “You’ve read my PhD thesis? How did you get a hold of my stuff?”

  She looked guilty. “Well, after you disappeared, and we assumed you’d gone through time or whatever, we went to your house and took it all.” She shrugged apologetically. “Your housemate was really mad at you…”

  I groaned. Jennifer.

  “She thought you’d skipped town because you couldn’t pay the rent. She wanted to kill you. She’s the one who started the rumour about you and Martin, you know. About how you’d run off together and killed Connie to shut her up.”

  “Oh my god, that bitch.” I had never trusted Jennifer.

  “People probably would have come to that conclusion anyway,” Naomi said. “The two of you always seemed way too close.” She raised her eyebrows. “There were rumours even before you disappeared.”

  I stopped just before we reached Raymond’s office and grabbed Naomi’s arm to stop her as well. “And Martin’s stuff?” I asked. “What happened to that?”

  She smiled. “Oh, we still have all of that.”

  My stomach sank a little. I was angry at Martin, sure. Furious even. But I still didn’t like the idea of these two having access to all those files. “Relax,” she reassured me, catching the look on my face. “We’re taking good care of it all.”

  We walked a few more paces before reaching the office door. Naomi pulled it open with confidence and walked inside, gesturing for me to follow her. I took a deep breath and thought, well, why the hell not.

  Inside, the man in black, John Raymond, was sitting behind Martin’s old desk, his head buried in a book. In this setting he looked far less menacing and far more like an ordinary, boring academic. He looked up at me and greeted me with the same slow, uneasy smile he had used that day in the hospital, and I suddenly found him menacing again.

  “Anna,” he said in his usual slow monotone. “We’ve been expecting you. Well, sort of. Take a seat.”

  I really did not want to, but I was so utterly exhausted. I collapsed in one of the cushioned, steel framed chairs across from his desk. He shot a look at Naomi and I remembered what she had said about him not wanting to get me involved. It seemed strange that the man in black could be wary of me, could find me threatening. He was the scary one.

  He cleared his throat. “You know, I always wanted you on our side. To help us. I told you that day in the hospital, when Robert Smith was brought in.”

  “Then why did you try to kill me.” My voice had also taken on a monotone, not even rising at the end of a sentence to indicate that I was trying to ask a question. All emotion seemed to have left me.

  He looked confused. “I didn’t.”

  “You pulled a gun on me.”

  He shrugged and nodded, but only just perceptibly. “That’s not really trying to kill you though, is it? I never used it.”

  I glanced at Naomi, to see if she was horrified by this exchange. Did she even realise that the man she was working with — or for — was a gun-totting lunatic? But her face also failed to register any emotion, let alone surprise.

  “So where is your friend?” He asked, narrowing his eyes and leaning forward slightly. “Robert Smith,” he added, just to make sure I understood.

  “I’m not sure,” I had to admit, shaking my head. “He took off this morning. I haven’t seen him since.”

  “How has he been adjusting to the twenty-first century?” Raymond asked. Connie turned around to look at me as well, eager for the answer.

  I eyed them both suspiciously. I wasn’t sure how much they actually knew about Robert. Did they know he’d been faking it the entire time? Maybe they were testing me. To play it safe, I answered simply, flatly: “He seems to be coping with it fine.” Not a lie, not nearly the whole truth. Not that I even knew what the whole truth was.

  Naomi looked worried. “He shouldn’t be out there wandering around on his own. It’s dangerous.” She looked between Raymond and I for a response from either of us.

  Okay,
now I was really suspicious. Naomi’s concern seemed genuine. She continued on. “Come on, we need him to stay alive, for our research. We have to find him.”

  I glanced back at John Raymond for his reaction. He seemed to be nodding, agreeing with Connie, though whether it was genuine or he was only playing along, I couldn’t tell.

  Naomi kept staring at me like she was waiting for a response. “Well, Anna? Aren’t you worried about him?”

  I wasn’t sure I was worried, anymore. After all, I didn’t even know who this ‘Robert Smith, DOB: 1983’ was. Some 31 year old hoaxer, apparently. Or worse, he was working with the bad guys, tricking Martin and I into believing him so that Martin would reveal everything to him and Robert could pass it all back to my father.

  But hang on: Martin had stolen Robert’s bag. And hidden it. I thought about that driver’s licence ID. All this time Martin had been telling me that Robert was faking it, that he was pulling a hoax. But Martin had always framed his suspicions like they were just a theory, like he couldn’t explain the discrepancies in Robert’s story, that he hadn’t known for certain that Robert was lying. But he had known for certain. He’d had that ID all the time. He’d known all along that Robert was born in 1983. So why hadn’t he just shown it to me, if he wanted me to believe him?

  I suddenly had a very bad feeling about Martin Anderson. I remembered the reason I had come to find John Raymond in the first place. I’d been a little thrown by the whole ‘Naomi and Raymond working on a time machine’ thing and forgotten the original purpose of my visit.

  I pulled my stare away from Naomi, not answering her question. I turned to face the man in black. My face was serious.

  “Martin is coming here tomorrow. To kill you.”

  Chapter Thirty-One.

  If the time had come to choose sides, I still wasn’t entirely sure which one I was on. Come to think of it, I wasn’t even sure who’s side anyone was on. But something told me that — by uttering that warning to John Raymond — I had made my choice whether I liked it or not.