No Time Like the Past

by Jodi Taylor

  ‘Did you manage to salvage anything?’ I gasped, displaying the correct grasp of priorities.

  Van Owen rolled off me and shouted something about Schiller.

  Markham was yelling at me. ‘Come on, Max. We have to get out of here.’

  We were all shrieking at each other over the noise of the roaring flames. Somewhere to my left another explosion, further off this time, sent a huge fireball into the sky. Sparks and small burning pieces of stuff rained down on us.

  ‘Wait, wait,’ shouted Guthrie, gesturing. ‘Come back inside a moment.’

  It was a good idea. We stepped back into the comparative calm of the cathedral. I took a moment and stared.

  It was packed. Jam-packed. Packed solid with piles of paper, books, wooden boxes, furniture, and household goods. This was no hasty last minute, hurl-it-in-any-old-how-we’ll-sort-it-all-out-later, stacking. Everything was neatly piled. Narrow walkways threaded their way between the stacks. Massive pillars arose out of towering piles of books piled around their bases. Tarpaulins covered the more valuable items. The whole place reeked of wood, tar, dry paper, dust – and smoke. If someone had said, ‘How can we ensure St Paul’s is completely destroyed in the coming conflagration?’ they could not have made a better job or it. A huge space filled with every inflammable material known to man and encased outside with a wooden framework. Great job, guys!

  I dragged my mind back. ‘What’s this about Schiller? Where is she? Who saw her last? And where?’

  No one seemed sure.

  Van Owen spoke up. ‘We’d formed a chain and were passing stuff up from the crypt. She was at the top of the steps. I didn’t see her leave. Did anyone?’

  People shook their heads.

  I said, ‘Could she be in here somewhere? Unconscious? Do we need to search? Or is she out there in the flames?’

  No one knew. All attempts to raise her had met with failure.

  I could have screamed at them. I would scream at them. But not now. Guthrie was already organising search teams. They dispersed, calling to each other through the smoky gloom.

  I sagged against a pile of books. An arm appeared with a bottle of water.

  ‘Drink,’ said Dr Foster and disappeared.

  ‘Let’s have a look at your hands,’ I said to Markham.

  He grimaced at his shredded gloves. I could see burned flesh. ‘Actually, Max, no offence, but I think it’s best to leave them for the moment. No time. We must go.’

  ‘Not until I know Schiller’s safe.’

  ‘Not your problem, Max. You’ve done what you came to do. Time to go.’

  ‘I’ve got fifteen minutes yet.’

  ‘No. There’s a burning churchyard to negotiate. It’s hell out there. It’s going to take us twice as long to get back as it did to get here.’

  ‘Schiller …’

  ‘Is not your problem. Time to go.’ He spoke into his com. ‘Major, I have to get Max back to St Mary’s. We’re leaving.’

  ‘Copy that. Thanks for your help, Max. We’ll revise our jump times and see you back at St Mary’s in a couple of days.’

  I tried again. ‘Schiller …’

  ‘We’ll find her. Leave your gear. We’ll pick it up. Get out of here. Run.’

  Markham was physically pulling me towards the door. ‘Come on, Max.’

  I shook off his arm. ‘What is the matter with you?’

  He stood in the doorway, looking out at the hell that was London on 3rd September 1666. We’d both pushed up our visors. I could see he was white-faced with pain and drenched with sweat and there was a strange expression on his face.

  ‘Ten minutes remaining to terminal event.’

  ‘We’re leaving. Now.’

  ‘Just a few minutes. Please. Schiller’s missing.’

  He pulled his gun and slapped in a clip. ‘No. One way or another, you’re leaving.’

  I said slowly, ‘What are you doing?’

  He swallowed. ‘He’s not a stupid man, is he? Dr Bairstow, I mean.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  He drew himself up and was suddenly different. ‘He foresaw all this. He knew something had gone wrong. He knew you’d refuse to leave. That you wouldn’t be able to help yourself, so I’m telling you, Maxwell – no arguing, no nothing – get your arse out of that door and back to Number Six.’

  I’d never heard him use that tone before. ‘Markham?’

  He raised the gun. ‘I’m begging you, Max, please. Don’t make me do this.’

  ‘Do what? I don’t understand.’

  But I did.

  ‘Dr Bairstow’s instructions. If you refuse to leave before the countdown expires, or you’re prevented from leaving for some reason – then I’m to shoot you. Dead. Only one living person etc.’

  I stared at him. ‘You’d do that?’

  ‘You know I would. So I’m saying, Max. Don’t make me do it.’

  I stared at him in shock. His small, determined face and the pain in his eyes. Yes, he would do it. Only one version of one person could be present at any given time. One living person. If I couldn’t or wouldn’t leave then he would shoot me. Only one living person …

  I nodded.

  ‘Five minutes remaining to terminal event.’

  ‘Bollocks,’ he said, grabbing my arm. ‘Move.’

  We moved. We really moved. It wasn’t far as the crow flies but our path was not an easy one. We should have picked our way between the piles of burning rubble, eased our way carefully around dangerously leaning buildings, dodged the burning debris dropping from the sky, and we did none of that.

  We really motored, kicking aside the smaller stuff, running straight over the top of the bigger stuff. I could feel the heat searing through my boots. My face was scorched. My lungs were scorched. My gloves were in shreds. My boots were melting. And all the time, we ran.

  ‘Four minutes remaining to terminal event.’

  We weren’t going to make it.

  Markham seized my arm and tugged. I held the other up to protect my face. We’d left blasters, fire axes, everything behind us so we could move more quickly.

  ‘Three minutes remaining to terminal event.’

  We ran for our lives. Ducking, dodging, weaving. My lungs were heaving and my rasping breath was hurting my throat. Worse, Markham was limping. He was doing his best to hide it, but his leg was still weak.

  ‘Two minutes remaining to terminal event.’

  Actually, we were running for my life. Because he would do it. I knew he would. How he’d cope afterwards, I had no idea, but, whatever the cost, he would carry out his instructions from Dr Bairstow. He wouldn’t even need to take my body back. They could just leave it here to be consumed in the fiery holocaust that was London.

  ‘One minute remaining to terminal event.’

  I panted, ‘That bloody countdown thing might be faulty, you know.’ He didn’t bother with an answer.

  We raced through Paul’s Gate. Even now, there was the possibility that our pod was buried under the burning remains of someone’s house and if it was then I was finished. The other pods were far too far away to reach in the little time remaining to us.

  ‘Thirty seconds remaining to terminal event.’

  ‘Jesus,’ said Markham. ‘Run, Max.’

  We ran. My whole attention was fixed on Number Six. It wasn’t that far away but it didn’t seem to be getting any closer. I felt an old, familiar pain in my chest.

  ‘Twenty seconds remaining to terminal event.’

  My legs were failing. No matter how hard I pumped, I wasn’t covering the ground. My lungs were failing. I couldn’t see. Time, for so long my friend, was now my enemy. Time was spilling away and taking my life with it.

  ‘Ten seconds remaining to terminal event.’

  I wasn’t going to make it. It was just too far away. Markham let go of my arm. He was going to shoot me.

  ‘Nine seconds.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Max. I don’t want to do this.’

 
‘Eight seconds.’

  This time I grabbed him. ‘We can do it.’

  ‘Seven seconds.’

  We skidded together over the rough ground.

  ‘Six seconds.’

  ‘Five seconds.’

  I shouted, ‘Door.’

  ‘Four seconds.’

  The door opened, I could see inside the pod. See the console lights blinking a welcome.

  So near and yet so far.

  ‘Three seconds.’

  Something hit me hard in the small of my back. I fell forwards, my momentum giving me that little extra spurt of speed. I shouted, ‘Computer …’

  ‘Two seconds.’

  We crashed headlong into the pod. Markham was already shouting for the door.

  ‘One second.’

  ‘…emergency extraction…’

  ‘Zero.’

  ‘…Now.’

  The world went black.

  Chapter Eight

  Our landing was a bit of a disaster.

  We landed so hard, we slid off the plinth completely, skidding across the hangar, leaving smoking grooves in the concrete floor.

  Markham and I were both on the floor anyway but I swear we bounced. The locker doors flew open but worst of all, the toilet exploded, which wasn’t something that had ever happened before. A great tsunami of blue water surged across the floor where it was absorbed into the carpet at a rate that would gladden the heart of any producer of sanitary product commercials.

  Sadly, we didn’t stop with just a couple of bounces. The pod slithered on, spinning across Hawking, colliding heavily with Number Two, and knocking it half off its plinth where it lay at a crazy angle. Our own pod tilted precariously and finally rocked to a bone-breaking halt.

  Something inside the console went bang. The lights flickered wildly and the fire extinguisher fell off the wall, missing Markham’s head by a fraction of an inch. He uttered a curse, which probably curdled milk for a half-mile radius, and the console coughed out another bang, which made me jump. Smoke spiralled from the front panels. The pod was suddenly full of the smell of burning fish, mixed with the chemical smell of the toilet. Apart from all that, we were back safely.

  Silence fell.

  ‘Shit,’ said Markham, faintly, possibly having exhausted his repertoire of more colourful expletives.

  ‘Well, at least we’re not on fire,’ I said, in an effort to look on the bright side. He refused to be comforted.

  ‘For God’s sake, Max, look at this place. Look out there.’ I rolled over and looked at the screen. ‘It’s total devastation. We’re going to be paying for this lot for the rest of our lives. I’m going to have to have at least forty kids to inherit the debt.’

  Fortunately, at that moment, Mr Lindstrom’s voice came over the com. ‘Max? Markham? Can you hear me?’

  ‘Tell them I’m dead,’ said Markham, making no move to get up off the floor.

  ‘I’m fine, but Markham says he’s dead.’

  ‘He will be when Chief Farrell sees this little lot.’

  Markham groaned.

  ‘Is Dr Bairstow there?’

  Of course he was. ‘Doctor Maxwell. Another of your spectacular landings?’

  Two. I’ve had two bad landings. Just two. Well, three now. Compare that with Peterson who bounces his pod every time. Where’s the justice?

  ‘What bad landing, sir?’

  ‘Ah. I must have been mistaken and this … devastation … is in no way related to your recent remarkable appearance.’

  ‘Personally sir, I blame Mr Lindstrom. Who leaves all these pods lying around anyway? It’s just asking for trouble. Incidentally, sir, mission accomplished.’

  ‘I never doubted it for one moment,’ he said calmly and inaccurately, and closed the link.

  They kept us overnight in Sick Bay. We were both sprayed with medical plastic and rehydrated. I dictated my report for Dr Bairstow and then settled back for a quiet evening.

  I kept expecting them to bring in Mary Schiller. They’d find her. She was almost certainly in another part of the cathedral. Where else could she be? Injured or unconscious, obviously, since she wasn’t answering her com, but they’d find her.

  Markham limped in to see me. I’d been waiting for him.

  Unexpectedly, he dumped a bottle of Syrup of Figs on my bedside table.

  I stared at it. ‘I’ve already been once this year. At the summer solstice, if memory serves.’

  ‘Oh God, no,’ he said hastily, and unscrewed the cap. Tequila fumes floated across the bed. ‘Your very own Margarita. Compliments of Mr Lindstrom. Look he’s even rubbed salt around the lip.’

  ‘My compliments to Mr Lindstrom. He is now officially my second favourite techie.’

  A silence fell between us.

  ‘Max, my report is for Dr Bairstow’s eyes only.’

  ‘That’s OK.’

  He fiddled around with the things on my bedside table. ‘I would have done it, you know.’

  ‘I do know.’

  ‘And if it had been the other way around, so would you.’

  ‘Yes, I would. Although I don’t know what I would have done afterwards.’

  ‘I don’t know either.’

  ‘Did he think of that, I wonder?’

  ‘Who?’

  Dr Bairstow.’

  ‘He gave me a choice. When I stayed behind after our meeting. He told me that if I felt I couldn’t do it then there would be no rescue mission. He weighed the survival of his unit on one hand against the survival of the timeline on the other and made exactly the right decision. And if you or I would have hated ourselves afterwards, think how he would have felt.’

  I shivered.

  ‘But,’ he said, suddenly cheerful. ‘That’s us. We’re St Mary’s. From total disaster to resounding success with but a single bound.’

  ‘What about Mary Schiller?’

  ‘She’ll turn up,’ said Markham. ‘Stop worrying. And Van Owen will tear the place apart to find her.’ He paused. ‘You do know they’re … together, don’t you?’

  I nodded. I did know.

  He continued. ‘They’ll find her and go straight on to the second site to bury the stuff they got from Old St Paul’s. Stop worrying.’

  But they didn’t. Find her, I mean.

  Two days later, as promised, they were back. Markham and I bruised, scorched, and still smelling faintly of chemical toilet cleaner, assembled with the rest of the unit to welcome them home and celebrate their triumph.

  The Technical Section had levered Number Two back onto its plinth. One side was dented and part of the stone casing had come away. And then there were the long black skid marks across the floor. We could only hope that in the excitement of their return, no one would notice.

  The pods materialised almost simultaneously. After a minute, the doors opened and they filed out.

  I knew immediately.

  They hadn’t found her.

  Around me, people fell silent.

  They looked terrible. When we last saw them, they were singed and smoke damaged. Now they were soaked to the skin, muddy, and exhausted. I counted heads. One missing.

  Shit.

  I went down to speak to Van Owen who was thanking them individually for a job well done. They nodded quietly and allowed the medical team to usher them away.

  I caught Leon’s eye and smiled. He nodded towards the damaged pod and raised an eyebrow. I indulged in a complicated piece of mime, which indicated it had all been Markham’s fault.

  He smiled for me alone and was led away with the others.

  Van Owen was sitting on the plinth outside Number Three. She sat with her forearms on her knees, her head bowed, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. I sat beside her. ‘Greta, talk to me.’

  She took a deep breath and came back from wherever she’d been. ‘We didn’t find her, Max and it was too dangerous. Guthrie pulled us out. We had to leave her.’

  ‘We’ll go back,’ I said, without thinking. ‘We’re St Mary
’s. We never leave our people behind. We’ll find her.’

  ‘Who?’ she said, angrily. ‘Who will find her? Who will go back? We’ve all been there once. There’s no one else left. Whom would we send? Mr Strong? A couple of typists?’

  I said nothing.

  She calmed down. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘It’s OK.’

  ‘Actually, Max, it doesn’t matter. You could send an army and you’d never find her. Things were bad when you were there, but they got much worse very quickly. If she was in St Paul’s, she died when the roof came down. If she was outside the building then she was caught in a raging inferno. Or perhaps she was crushed under a pile of burning rubble. There was nothing on the tag reader. She’s gone, Max.’

  ‘Greta, I’m so sorry. I know the two of you were very close.’

  She shrugged. We sat in silence for a while. I fingered her wet clothes. ‘So why are you so wet?’

  ‘Oh,’ she gave a short laugh. ‘When we jumped to 17th-century St Mary’s, it was pissing down. Seriously, Max, you’ve never seen rain like it. One minute we’re all burning to death and the next we’re half drowned.’ She pushed her wet hair back off her face. ‘But we got it done, Max. It’s all out there.’ She nodded in the direction of the gardens. ‘Safely buried one hundred and twenty-five yards from the south west corner of the Great Hall. Just waiting for us to dig it all up again.’

  ‘Good job, Greta. Thank you. And Dr Bairstow will want to congratulate you personally. He’ll talk to you about Mary, as well. Listen to him. Let him help you.’

  She nodded.

  ‘You should get yourself upstairs.’

  She nodded again.

  ‘Would you like me to walk up with you?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I would, please.’

  Mary Schiller’s memorial service was two days later. We assembled in the chapel. Full formal uniform. I looked at the serious faces around me. Van Owen sat on my right, her face very solemn under her hat. Everyone looked solemn. Schiller had been a popular and respected member of the unit.

  Dr Bairstow spoke, as he always did. He spoke movingly and well. As always, I was astonished at how well he knew his people. He took good care to appear remote and distant, but he knew us all better than we knew ourselves. I saw him speaking to Van Owen afterwards. People moved away to give them some privacy. I couldn’t hear what he said, but I knew his words would be just right and she would be comforted and supported.