Timeslip

by Bruce Stewart

  22

  ‘Liz, for goodness sake, come on!’ Simon dashed back through the pressurized door, aware of alien shapes in the entrance area, aware of danger. He grabbed Liz’s hand.

  ‘But, Simon—

  Waiting for nothing, Simon thrust a headpiece over her head, and hauled her bodily for the tunnel and the ice field beyond.

  ‘Stop!’ roared Bukov, suddenly coming to life. ‘You mustn’t go out there. Come back! ’

  He dashed for the cupboard himself, wrenching out a thermal suit and climbing rapidly into it. And the woman who looked for all the world like Liz’s mother, Jean, simply stared; uncertain, bewildered, visibly shaken. Her hand went to her head. It was as though she might drop in a dead faint.

  Bukov got his suit and headpiece on, and dashed after the now vanished Liz and Simon. It was an effort running up the slope to the outer atmosphere, particularly with the bulk of the suit to impede his movements, but the big Russian stormed out the ice-encrusted entrance to the tunnel to see his fugitives only some yards away, over by the symmetrical slabs. He started at once towards them, but in his haste slipped and fell; heavily perhaps he subsequently thought, because for a moment — or what then seemed but a moment — there was blackness; and seconds later, when he dragged himself to his feet again, the two children seemed to have vanished from sight. Bukov couldn’t understand it. The cold slabs, the vast ice field, the peaks rising to velvet blue beyond, but of those he sought, no physical sign. He made a routine check, turned for the tunnel entrance again. What he didn’t see was a little bundle composed of two thermal suits, hastily bunched together and concealed behind the foremost slab by Simon, as he and Liz had found the comforting hole in the barrier, divested themselves of their encumbrances, and pushed through.

  * * *

  Liz sat where she had fallen in the Ministry field, nursing a bruised knee and crying lightly. Simon was clambering to his feet, jubilant.

  ‘It’s all right, Liz!’ he cried. ‘We’ve come back to our own time.’

  ‘Yes,’ sniffled Liz.

  Simon frowned at her. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Oh, Simon, you don’t understand ... I saw Mummy in that place.’

  ‘You ... what?’

  ‘I did! Just as you ran out into the tunnel and Doctor Bukov arrived in the lift — well, another door opened, and this woman came out. Mummy.’

  ‘You’re cracked!’

  ‘No...’

  Liz sniffled afresh, deeply confused and upset. Simon moved to her, bending down. ‘Look — that’s not possible,

  Liz.’

  ‘Mummy being in there? Why not?’

  ‘Well, it was the future, we found out. 1990.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And this is now. So you must have made a mistake.’

  ‘I didn’t.’ The more Simon pointed out the idiocy of the proposition, the more Liz felt obliged to adhere to it. ‘It was Mummy...’

  Simon sighed. It all seemed much more than he should be asked to bear under the circumstances, but he supposed in some part of himself that people who got mixed up with girls like Liz just had to learn to expect such things. He raised the damp female before him to her feet. ‘Don’t cry,’ he encouraged. ‘Crying’s weak-minded. It’s all a bit weird I know, but we’ll find the-answer somehow. We’ll try, anyway.’

  ‘All right, Simon.’ Liz made an effort and controlled her tears. ‘Thank you,’ she added. ‘You’re so nice to me.’

  ‘I’m not,’ retorted Simon immediately.

  ‘Yes you are.’

  ‘I’m not! What makes you say a stupid thing like that?’

  ‘Because it’s true.’ She was looking earnestly at him now, and in spite of himself he was forced to notice how gentle a brown her eyes were. ‘Oh, I know, you like to pretend you’re wet, but you’re not when it comes down to it. Not really at all...’

  Simon decided he didn’t like the trend of this conversation at any price. He rallied his forces to restore things to their normal safe and practical plane, and might have succeeded in doing so, except that at this moment Liz again burst into tears and buried her head in his shoulder.

  ‘It was just such a shock, Simon,’ she sobbed. ‘Such a shock seeing Mummy in a place like that...’

  While appreciating that the whole situation was fatheaded, wrong and a waste of time, Simon grudgingly had to admit to himself that having a girl crying on your shoulder can sometimes afford curious and novel sensations.

  * * *

  ‘... I don’t know whether to believe you or not,’ grunted Frank Skinner, pacing the lounge of The Bull in doubtful mood. ‘Honest I don’t.’

  Liz sat close to Jean on the sofa, her mother’s arms around her. Simon was farther over, alone, and Traynor stood at the window, brooding out over the grey-green countryside.

  ‘Well, it’s true. Daddy,’ replied Liz. ‘We went into the future — 1990. There was this place they called the ice-box, and they were doing all sorts of queer scientific experiments there.’

  ‘Oh, not queer, Liz,’ corrected Simon. ‘Just...’ But then he seemed lost for the word himself.

  ‘Advanced, Simon?’ Traynor had turned back from the window, eyeing him carefully.

  ‘Yes, Commander. For one thing they told us they’d perfected brain-computer links — that was in 1986. Well, at the moment brain-computer links aren’t even properly talked about in science, are they?’

  Traynor puckered his brows, made very thoughtful by this. Skinner stopped in his motion around the room.

  ‘But how do people go into the future, exactly?’ he asked. ‘How is it managed?’

  ‘And you say I was there, Liz dear?’ Jean was speaking now.

  ‘Yes, Mummy.’

  ‘In this — ice-box in the Antarctic.’

  ‘Yes, I’m certain of it! ’

  ‘Darling, why? And was I alone? What about your father?’

  ‘Traynor.’ His face set suddenly, Skinner strode over to confront the other man. ‘I simply ask — how do people go into the future? When you explained about the children going into the past, you said it was because energy had been released and was still around to trigger off their hallucinations. But you can’t say that about the future. The future hasn’t happened yet.’

  ‘No, that’s true,’ agreed Traynor. ‘So probably we’d have to talk in terms of — possible energy, wouldn’t we?’

  ‘Possible energy?’ Skinner seemed confused.

  ‘Possible or potential. Energy that was going to be released some day — in the future.’

  ‘But that doesn’t make sense.’

  'Doesn’t it?’

  ‘No! ’ Skinner’s tone was scathing. ‘How does energy that doesn’t even exist yet have an effect on people living in the present day?’

  ‘Oh, the energy’s always the same,’ replied Traynor mildly. ‘Yes. It’s simply put to different uses at different times.’ And it was on the tip of his tongue to repeat ‘More things in heaven and earth, Horatio’, but he thought better of that and merely added brightly: ‘Anyway, the fact that the children went into the future at least explains why Mrs Skinner lost touch with them.’

  ‘I don’t see that,’ said Jean.

  ‘Well, you’re a telepath. That means you can communicate with other minds — but in your own time, or a time that’s known to you, like 1940. To communicate with other minds in the future, you’d probably have to have a different kind of gift... the thing that’s called second sight.’

  His expression was bland enough, but somewhere in the words there seemed to be an odd little menace, which carried over to Liz. She gave a quick shiver. Jean hugged her tightly.

  ‘What scrapes you two get into!’ she exclaimed cheerfully. ‘But I really don’t understand how I could be in this ice-box in the year 1990. Goodness, I’d be a very old lady by then.’

  ‘No, Mummy,’ replied Liz, ‘that’s the funny thing. You looked just as you look now.’

  ‘Well, that would b
e the effect of HA57,’ Simon said.

  ‘Of what?’ Traynor’s tone was suddenly intrigued.

  ‘HA57. That’s a longevity drug they told us they’d been developing there. It means you don’t age.’

  The three adults stared at him blankly a moment. Then Skinner gave a loud laugh, cutting away again. ‘He’s barmy! ’ he announced. ‘If that boy was a couple of years older, I’d say he’d been on the bottle.’

  ‘That’s what they told us, Mr Skinner! ’ Simon insisted. ‘A drug that stopped people getting any older. It was worked out by the Director of the place, a man called Devereaux.’ ‘What was his Christian name?’ asked Traynor with shrewd interest.

  ‘Morgan,’ replied Simon, who up till that moment might not have been certain that he actually knew. ‘Yes — Morgan C. Devereaux, Director of Experimentation. I saw the plate on his office door.’

  Traynor’s gaze intensified. Suddenly Simon was uncomfortable under the scrutiny. There were things about Commander Traynor, he began to realize, that had the power to disconcert him; and more than that, to make him mistrustful. It is always so in life with people you become closely associated with, only to discover when the relationship has reached certain proportions, that you have never really known them. Skinner was saying somewhere:

  ‘Well, it’s all very peculiar. But thank the Lord, we don’t have to be fussed with it. We’re going home now. The holiday is over. We’re finished with St Oswald. With past and future ... time barriers ...’

  Simon heard these remarks as though from a distance, and gave to them a correspondingly remote assent. The penetrating eyes across the room still pryed into him, as though he were a book, an ancient manuscript but recently come to light; in which might be read strange secrets, and mysteries unravelled since the foundation of the world.

  * * *

  Home to Liz was an ordinary little house in an ordinary little street. Her parents had acquired a bungalow on the reasonably up-to-date Wilmott Estate, where at least some houses were different from others, and she had been brought up to believe there was a virtue in being completely detached. Home for Simon, of course, was elsewhere, but as his father was still occupied on business in other parts, it had been arranged that he should spend the rest of the time before he went back to school with the Skinners. Very few days on the Wilmott Estate had passed before Simon began to doubt the wisdom of this provision. Liz was moody, uncommunicative and a burden to him. It never crossed Simon’s mind that he might have appeared exactly the same to her. They had not precisely been forbidden to talk about the time barrier and their strange adventures, but Skinner, in a fatherly chat the night before he returned to his work, had given them a pretty clear indication that they would be better off to occupy their minds with other considerations. Dismayed by what he had learned about himself and 1940, Liz’s father was plainly disenchanted with the whole ‘scene’, and wished his daughter in particular to have no more to do with it. That much at least was beyond question. One morning over breakfast, Simon thus attempted:

  ‘How about the pictures today, Liz? I looked up the paper and there’s a couple of good ones at the Classic. Renoir’s La Grande Illusion, and another by Jean Luc Godard—’

  ‘Films in French' groaned Liz. ‘And with you?—’

  It was the red rag to the bull. ‘Now look,’ said Simon hotly. ‘I’ve done everything I know to be nice to you. I’m blowed if I know why, but I have. When we came back through the barrier, you said I was kind to you, and so I ruddy well am—’

  ‘Never mind what I said when we came back through the barrier! ’ snapped Liz.

  ‘Why not? Didn’t you mean it? I hope you didn’t, because I’m sick of all this, I don’t mind telling you. Sick of going off into other times, sick of always being treated like an idiot. Sick of you.’

  Liz snorted loudly, bashing a boiled egg with a spoon, and so matters stood when the doorbell rang.

  It was Commander Traynor.

  ‘Goodness,’ cried Jean in apprehension, having gone to answer the summons in her apron. ‘My husband’s gone to work. I didn’t know—’

  ‘That’s all right, Mrs Skinner. I only wanted a word with the children.’

  ‘I’m not sure he’d permit that. He was saying only the other night—’

  ‘Do I smell coffee?’ inquired Traynor, sniffing the air. ‘How very kind of you. I came straight up from London first thing.’

  Jean was still trying to restrain him when he marched straight into the kitchen and beamed expansively at Liz and Simon.

  ‘I know what you want,’ said Jean suddenly. ‘You want the children to go back into the bubble, to find out more about the ice-box. Isn’t that right? But they’re not going. My husband has forbidden it.’

  ‘The children can’t come to any harm,’ replied Traynor mildly. ‘And you, Mrs Skinner — surely you must be anxious to know what on earth you could be doing in a research establishment at the South Pole at some time in the future. As anxious as Liz is, perhaps ...’

  Jean looked quickly to her daughter. She was used now to this kind of suborning tactic from Traynor, and able to see that it could still have its effect. Her expression hardened.

  ‘That’s unfair,’ she said crisply. ‘Of course there are mysteries. But we’re not concerned in them any more — can’t you understand that?’

  ‘Your loyalty to your husband is very touching.’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with Frank!’ He was annoying her now, and she disliked him for it. ‘I thought the whole thing over for myself and came to the same conclusion. It’s a simple matter of making up one’s mind.’

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ replied Traynor. ‘It’s a matter of making up several minds. Simon’s as well as anyone else’s.’

  ‘Simon? What about Simon?’

  Traynor transferred his gaze to the other. ‘Well, my boy? You’re a scientist at heart, you know it. That longevity drug, eh? All sorts of intriguing developments...’

  The voice was one thing, but those eyes were quite another. Again Simon felt the look going right through him, opening him out as it were; and had to admit that what was perceived was a kind of truth. But Jean had stood about enough.

  ‘Commander,’ she said formally, ‘I’ll have to ask you to leave now. You’re no right to talk to the children like this. You only want them to go back because they can find out things that would be of use to you. The secret of the longevity drug, say — it would be a real feather in your cap if you could get hold of that and claim it as your own.’ Traynor had the good grace to be stung by this, which gratified her. ‘We’re busy here of a morning, and I’m sure you must have a full day ahead. Don’t let us detain you. Come, Liz.’ She moved for the door, then stopped again. ‘Liz,’ she commanded.

  ‘Yes, Mummy..

  She had seemed in two minds for a moment; but now, with a little sigh, rose from the table and followed her mother out of the room. Simon gave it a moment, then got up to go too.

  ‘It won’t do, you know, Simon,’ Traynor said gently.

  Simon paused. ‘Oh, I don’t know, sir.’

  ‘You surprise me.’ Traynor laughed suddenly. ‘I took it for granted you’d be on my side.’

  ‘No. No, I don’t think I’m on anyone’s side. I’m just — not sure. I didn’t like the ice-box. It was a creepy sort of place.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Traynor. Then, rather surprisingly: ‘Come to think of it, that’s probably just about the right word for it. Creepy.’

  Simon didn’t understand what he meant, and could only frown. Traynor’s expression was oddly calculating now.

  ‘Morgan C. Devereaux,’ he said, ‘the Director of the icebox. You’re sure you’ve got the name right?’

  ‘It was the one I saw on the door.’

  Traynor nodded. ‘Now that’s very interesting. Morgan C. Devereaux has been the world's leading authority on biology for a number of years now.’

  ‘You mean — in our time?’

  ‘Yes.’

&nb
sp; Simon saw it. ‘Well — he invented HA57. So I suppose after he’d done that, he dosed himself first off.’

  ‘Quite. But I wonder how?’ Traynor’s voice abruptly had a little edge to it, and the eyes bored into Simon again. ‘You see, old chap, in June of last year — Morgan C. Devereaux died ... Oh, no doubt about it,’ he added in answer to Simon’s astonishment. ‘He was an old friend. I attended his funeral.’

  23

  ‘The scientific ice-box,’ Traynor murmured reflectively, his crisp hair disturbed by the strong wind. ‘Yes, it makes sense. A place apart, eh Simon, where new techniques could be tried out, new developments initiated. A place constructed around the progress of science. And a major scientist in charge — to direct the experimentation ...’

  It was even bleaker than usual in the Ministry field at St Oswald. Simon wondered as he took the cold air in the face if perhaps it was ever really fine here; or if, perhaps, in some way neither he nor anyone else understood, the place was permanently rendered chill by that ice field a generation away in time, but mere yards across the rank grass in space. Traynor’s voice came again:

  ‘Well, Simon? Sure in your mind?’

  ‘Yes, Commander. Quite sure.’

  ‘The Skinners will raise holy hell, you know. I’ll be in terrible trouble. Could even finish up in jug on an abduction charge.’

  Simon had no time for these whimsicalities. He had made up his mind to go back to the ice-box because the mysteries were now too compelling for his inquiring mind to resist; and because — though he was far less ready to admit it to himself — he was annoyed at Liz for being fed up with him, and felt the need of some larger cause or concern to absorb his impatience. Liz, he had finally decided, was an inconsistent person, unhappily capable of saying one thing one minute and then quite the opposite the next. He had heard, however, that even when women say the same thing all along, they generally mean the opposite, so perhaps it was no reliable analysis. The fact simply remained that he was going, and it was a solemn moment.