by Mike Ashley
John’s head felt as if his skull had emptied of blood – after all, so much had poured out of him in the last few minutes. Even so, he managed to voice what was on his mind: “I was on the plane with them . . . five years ago . . .’
“What plane? Sorry, John, I can’t make out what you’re saying.”
He smiled up at Kamana. “Oh? I didn’t know you’d come back.”
Thunder boomed across the Welsh landscape. Savage gusts of wind tore apart the tent that housed the broadcast equipment. Debris whipped through the air as people covered their eyes and fled for cover. The director stood on a rock and waved everyone toward the café.
The man yelled in frustration, “It’s over! We can’t do the broadcast in this! The show’s cancelled! Everyone get inside! For pity’s sake, don’t get yourselves struck by lightning!”
As Kamana helped John to his feet, her dark eyes brimmed with concern. “I think the bleeding’s stopped. But I want someone to take a look at you.”
Even though lightheaded, John managed a smile. “You know something? I’m relieved that the show’s been cancelled.”
“And so has their very expensive time travel experiment.” She shrugged and smiled. “Though it would have been a complete failure, wouldn’t it?”
“I suppose it would.”
“What have you got there in your hand?”
“Just a camera. Someone must have left it back there on a chair. I think it belongs to the man in the straw hat.”
“The man in the straw hat?”
“He was in the same carriage as us. Looked pleased with himself. Always smiling.”
Kamana gave a puzzled shake of her head. “No, I didn’t notice a man wearing a straw hat.”
John paused at the café doorway. “You go ahead; I’ll give the camera to the director. He can find whoever it belongs to.”
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I’ll be fine.”
Had she noticed something significant in his face? Because she tilted her head as she glanced at him before going inside.
Blustery winds tugged John’s hair as he walked along the path. It’s funny how imagination can be so vivid, he thought. When he’d pictured himself in the plane he’d watched his wife take hold of that powder-pink camera of hers. Then she’d leaned forward from the back seat, handed him the camera, locked her eyes on to his, and said, “John, you decide whether you keep this. But if you’ll take my advice: get rid of it.” Then she’d leaned forwards even further so she could kiss him on the cheek.
John gazed at the camera in his hand – the one he’d found just a moment ago on the chair. He thought about all the photographs Kerry had taken to preserve those happy moments of their Norwegian holiday. If, by some extraordinary chance, he could recover those photographs – for example, if the lost camera could be miraculously returned to his possession – what would he do? Yes, they’d be precious mementos. But wasn’t there a danger that those snapshots would become nails that even more securely fixed him to the dead, if not forgotten, past? Ultimately, the decision wasn’t a difficult one to make. Without a shred of hesitation, he thrust the camera that he’d found, with its distinctive powder-pink livery, deep into a litter bin. Logic dictated that the camera wasn’t the one that belonged to Kerry, but this had become one of those extraordinary occasions when the rules of logic could be so easily broken. He didn’t want to take the chance of allowing the past to haunt him anymore than it did already.
As John walked through the storm to the café, he passed the man from the train – the winds blew harder and the stranger needed to hold his straw hat tight to his head.
The man’s expression was one of childish delight as he chuckled and spoke in an odd accent that John couldn’t quite place. “Well – so ends our famous experiment. Phew! Isn’t it about time that we all went home now?” Without waiting for a reply, the stranger hurried away through a sudden onslaught of rain; though why he headed out across the barren mountainside John couldn’t say.
John Salvin pulled out his phone – the one that contained the Parting Shot. With the storm breaking overhead this might not, he acknowledged, be the ideal place to watch the footage again . . . although in the past, he’d felt compelled to view the film at odder times than this, and in stranger places. So he touched “play” and focused his attention on the screen, which quickly became speckled with raindrops. The video clip revealed Kerry and Laurel once more, following the pilot to the aircraft. Raindrops beading on the screen acted as tiny magnifying lenses, enlarging random parts of the image. Kerry’s face seemed to loom into striking close-up as she called out her usual farewell. Or what should have been her usual farewell.
Only the words “We’ll be back at one. See you then” failed to emerge from Kerry’s mouth in the way he remembered so well. Instead, with a different expression on her face, this one utterly serious, she said: “You must not grieve forever, John. Don’t let the rest of your life slip away through your fingers and be wasted. Move on. Move on.”
Rain falling on the phone’s screen distorted the image, blood loss fuddled his thoughts to the point where the boundary between the real and the unreal had all but melted away. Surely, this must be the case, because just for a moment he thought he glimpsed, there onscreen, that same man again – the one in the straw hat – only on this occasion he stood next to the plane that would take Kerry and Laurel away. The stranger appeared to gaze out of the film into John’s eyes. He didn’t move or say anything; in fact, he resembled a mourner standing beside a grave.
The haemorrhage, the distorting effect of raindrops on the video footage – surely they were creating this particular miracle, weren’t they? Perhaps no one from tomorrow would ever reach back and touch the actual fabric of this, our present world. However, he wondered, at some point in the future, will there be a remarkable invention that can reach back into the past to touch our minds, hearts and memories? What would our descendants’ motivation be to do this? For their amusement? Or a charitable desire to administer emotional first aid? If he allowed his imagination to wander further he might suppose that the savage thunderstorm had been triggered by the backwash from such a time-ship. Then, of course, imagination can conjure all sorts of magnificent possibilities, as well as disturbing outcomes. He could even picture himself deleting the Parting Shot film, but no . . . there would be no need for that, because from now on he suspected he wouldn’t feel compelled to watch it at least twice a day. Okay, yes, he would replay the Parting Shot every now again, and shed a tear or two. But he would no longer be enslaved by those nineteen seconds of heartache.
John Salvin put the phone back into his pocket and went in search of Kamana. Water running over the boulders transformed them into shining, silvery forms that seemed to be in the process of evolving into living creatures. Their brightness was dazzling. Meanwhile, the easing rain became a strangely soothing, melodious sound, and at that moment he realized he could no longer hear the haunting note of the aeroplane circling overhead. After glancing upwards into an empty sky he looked down to find Kamana standing there in front of him.
She had an extraordinary revelation of her own. “Until a moment ago, I couldn’t remember that as my husband lay dying in my arms he spoke to me. Isn’t that a remarkable thing to forget? Especially, when I recall every other detail so precisely? But just now I remembered his exact words.” Her calm eyes met his. “Murad said: ‘Kamana, I’m so sorry to leave you like this. Promise me that you’ll be happy again one day!’” A sad smile touched her lips. ‘‘Then I asked myself, did I imagine those words of his?’’
‘‘Ever since we started this trip up the mountain I’ve been imagining all kinds of things,’’ he confessed. ‘I even pictured myself starting a new life after losing Kerry and Laurel.’’
‘‘You know something, John? What you said on the train is perfectly true. Yes, we must tell those memory ghosts of ours to leave us alone. We should not let the rest of our lives slip away through ou
r fingers. I now realize it’s time I moved on.’’
He paused. Hadn’t he imagined Kerry using pretty much the same words? In any event, Kaman’s statement, as well as its significance, acquired a special glow in John’s mind as he thought about all that had happened today.
From up here, high on Mount Snowdon, it’s said that you can see many kingdoms, including the Kingdom of Heaven. What he could see clearly was the sun breaking through the cloud to shine on the hills, and into hidden valleys, and a moment later the sunlight illuminated Kamana’s face. What he could not see, of course, was any guarantee, or omen, or even a hint that he and this woman, for whom he had developed such a depth of feeling, would have any kind of future together. Such matters lie concealed, as they always have done, in the lap of the gods.
And yet, as they made their way toward the waiting train, that would take them on to the next chapter of their lives, he found, to his surprise, that he was smiling. After all, who knows what tomorrow might bring?
TIME GYPSY
Ellen Klages
Ellen Klages has been writing reference books for children since 1991 but in 1998 branched out into fiction, mostly science fiction and fantasy but including a novel set at the time of the construction of the first atom bomb, The Green Glass Sea (2006). Many of her stories have been nominated for awards, including the following, and a selection of them can be found in Portable Childhoods (2007), which was itself shortlisted for the World Fantasy Award. Once again we are exploring the manipulation of the past, for good or for ill.
1
Friday, February 10, 1995. 5:00 p.m.
As soon as I walk in the door, my officemate Ted starts in on me. Again. “What do you know about radiation equilibrium,” he asks. “Nothing. Why?’’ “That figures.” He holds up a faded green volume. “I just found this insanely great article by Chandrasekhar in the ’45 Astrophysical Journal. And get this – when I go to check it out, the librarian tells me I’m the first person to take it off the shelf since 1955. Can you believe that? Nobody reads anymore.” He opens the book again. “Oh, by the way, Chambers was here looking for you.”
I drop my armload of books on my desk with a thud. D. Raymond Chambers is the chairman of the Physics department, and a Nobel Prize winner, which even at Berkeley is a very, very big deal. Rumor has it he’s working on some top secret government project that’s a shoe-in for a second trip to Sweden. “Yeah, he wants to see you in his office, pronto. He said something about Sara Baxter Clarke. She’s that crackpot from the 50s, right? The one who died mysteriously.”
I wince. “That’s her. I did my dissertation on her and her work.” I wish I’d brought another sweater. This one has holes in both elbows. I’d planned a day in the library, not a visit with the head of the department.
Ted looks at me with his mouth open. “Not many chick scientists to choose from, huh? And you got a post-doc here doing that? Crazy world.” He puts his book down and stretches. “Gotta run. I’m a week behind in my lab work. Real science, you know.”
I don’t even react. It’s only a month into the term, and he’s been on my case about one thing or another – being a woman, being a dyke, being close to thirty – from day one. He’s a jerk, but I’ve got other things to worry about. Like D. Chambers, and whether I’m about to lose my job because he found out I’m an expert on a crackpot. Sara Baxter Clarke has been my hero since I was a kid. My pop was an army technician. He worked on radar systems, and we traveled a lot – six months in Reykjavik, then the next six in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Mom always told us we were gypsies, and tried to make it seem like an adventure. But when I was eight, Mom and my brother Jeff were killed in a bus accident on Guam. After that it didn’t seem like an adventure any more.
Pop was a lot better with radar than he was with little girls. He couldn’t quite figure me out. I think I had too many variables for him. When I was ten, he bought me dresses and dolls, and couldn’t understand why I wanted a stack of old physics magazines the base library was throwing out. I liked science. It was about the only thing that stayed the same wherever we moved. I told Pop I wanted to be a scientist when I grew up, but he said scientists were men, and I’d just get married.
I believed him, until I discovered Sara Baxter Clarke in one of those old magazines. She was British, went to MIT, had her doctorate in theoretical physics at twenty-two. At Berkeley, she published three brilliant articles in very, very obscure journals. In 1956, she was scheduled to deliver a controversial fourth paper at an international physics conference at Stanford. She was the only woman on the program, and she was just twenty-eight.
No one knows what was in her last paper. The night before she was supposed to speak, her car went out of control and plunged over a cliff at Devil’s Slide – a remote stretch of coast south of San Francisco. Her body was washed out to sea. The accident rated two inches on the inside of the paper the next day – right under a headline about some vice raid – but made a small uproar in the physics world. None of her papers or notes were ever found; her lab had been ransacked. The mystery was never solved.
I was fascinated by the mystery of her the way other kids were intrigued by Amelia Earhart. Except nobody’d ever heard of my hero. In my imagination, Sara Baxter Clarke and I were very much alike. I spent a lot of days pretending I was a scientist just like her, and even more lonely nights talking to her until I fell asleep.
So after a Master’s in Physics, I got a PhD in the History of Science – studying her. Maybe if my obsession had been a little more practical, I wouldn’t be sitting on a couch outside Dr Chambers’s office, picking imaginary lint off my sweater, trying to pretend I’m not panicking. I taught science in a junior high for a year. If I lose this fellowship, I suppose I could do that again. It’s a depressing thought.
The great man’s secretary finally buzzes me into his office. Dr Chambers is a balding, pouchy man in an immaculate, perfect suit. His office smells like lemon furniture polish and pipe tobacco. It’s wood-paneled, plushly carpeted, with about an acre of mahogany desk. A copy of my dissertation sits on one corner.
“Dr McCullough.” He waves me to a chair. “You seem to be quite an expert on Sara Baxter Clarke.”
“She was a brilliant woman,” I say nervously, and hope that’s the right direction for the conversation.
“Indeed. What do you make of her last paper, the one she never presented?” He picks up my work and turns to a page marked with a pale green Post-it. “‘An Argument for a Practical Tempokinetics?’” He lights his pipe and looks at me through the smoke.
“I’d certainly love to read it,” I say, taking a gamble. I’d give anything for a copy of that paper. I wait for the inevitable lecture about wasting my academic career studying a long-dead crackpot.
“You would? Do you actually believe Clarke had discovered a method for time travel?” he asks. “Time travel, Dr McCullough?”
I take a bigger gamble. “Yes, I do.”
Then Dr Chambers surprises me. “So do I. I’m certain of it. I was working with her assistant, Jim Kennedy. He retired a few months after the accident. It’s taken me forty years to rediscover what was tragically lost back then.”
I stare at him in disbelief. “You’ve perfected time travel?”
He shakes his head. “Not perfected. But I assure you, tempokinetics is a reality.”
Suddenly my knees won’t quite hold me. I sit down in the padded leather chair next to his desk and stare at him. “You’ve actually done it?”
He nods. “There’s been a great deal of research on tempokinetics in the last forty years. Very hush-hush, of course. A lot of government money. But recently, several key discoveries in high-intensity gravitational field theory have made it possible for us to finally construct a working tempokinetic chamber.”
I’m having a hard time taking this all in. “Why did you want to see me?” I ask.
He leans against the corner of his desk. “We need someone to talk to Dr Clarke.”
“You m
ean she’s alive?” My heart skips several beats.
He shakes his head. “No.”
“Then—?”
“Dr McCullough, I approved your application to this university because you know more about Sara Clarke and her work than anyone else we’ve found. I’m offering you a once in a lifetime opportunity.” He clears his throat. “I’m offering to send you back in time to attend the 1956 International Conference for Experimental Physics. I need a copy of Clarke’s last paper.”
I just stare at him. This feels likes some sort of test, but I have no idea what the right response is. “Why?” I ask finally.
“Because our apparatus works, but it’s not practical,” Dr Chambers says, tamping his pipe. “The energy requirements for the gravitational field are enormous. The only material that’s even remotely feasible is an isotope they’ve developed up at the Lawrence lab, and there’s only enough of it for one round trip. I believe Clarke’s missing paper contains the solution to our energy problem.”
After all these years, it’s confusing to hear someone taking Dr Clarke’s work seriously. I’m so used to being on the defensive about her, I don’t know how to react. I slip automatically into scientist mode – detached and rational. “Assuming your tempokinetic chamber is operational, how do you propose that I locate Dr Clarke?”
He picks up a piece of stiff ivory paper and hands it to me. “This is my invitation to the opening reception of the conference Friday night, at the St Francis Hotel. Unfortunately I couldn’t attend. I was back east that week. Family matters.”
I look at the engraved paper in my hand. Somewhere in my files is a Xerox copy of one of these invitations. It’s odd to hold a real one. “This will get me into the party. Then you’d like me to introduce myself to Sara Baxter Clarke, and ask her for a copy of her unpublished paper?”