Saving Time

by Jenn Lees

  “And you didn’t think to tell me?”

  “I thought you were reading it. Oh, I forgot, you got caught up with your cappuccino.” Murray waggled his head from side to side as he spoke. “Again.”

  “He’ll think I’ve made it up because of that. We mustn’t be as early as we planned,” Rory said. “We’ll be right in the middle of it by the time we manage to convince him.”

  “We’re going back to the professor?”

  “Of course. Give him a day to think about it. Especially now it’s happening. Well, it may be to our advantage. Anyway, we aren’t going back to our time until we get what we need from him.” A twinge of guilt swirled in the back of Rory’s mind as he spoke gruffly to his wee brother, but this was too important to bother with people’s feelings.

  Chapter 8

  They walked back to the shopping centre and bought fish and chips for dinner.

  “Must get some ocean fish off the old man at Ewe. This is delicious,” Rory said around a mouthful of hot battered cod.

  “The guy from the Loch Ewe Community?” Murray shoved salted chips into his mouth, one after the other.

  “Said there was plenty o’ fish now.” Rory rolled his head to the side, indicating the future. “Then.”

  “So, where are we sleeping?”

  “There’s a wee forest near to town. We’ll camp there.”

  “You know we can get into trouble for that? They call it vagrancy.”

  “They’ll no’ catch us.” Rory shook his head again but this time with his mouth open, for emphasis, and to cool the fish in his mouth.

  “So, tomorrow we’re just doing nothing?”

  “The professor will need the day to mull it over, see what’s happening around the world and come to believe us, aye. We can keep an eye on the news, like.” Rory popped a chip in his mouth.

  “Well, I might sightsee Oxford.” Murray glanced sideways at him.

  “You keep your head doon.” Rory’s was voice low, commanding.

  “Uh, huh.”

  They walked through the town, through Christ Church Meadow and by the River Thames. It was calm here; the traffic noise was distant, and copse of ash and birch trees edged the green meadows. Rory had never seen so many, pine being the most common around Invercharing. The fresh comforting scent of forest wafted into his face, soothing him with its familiarity.

  People walked their dogs in the cool evening and picked up their dog’s faeces in plastic bags. Huh? There were a variety of dogs; small white fluffy ones with ear-piercing high-pitched barks, ones with faces that looked as if their snouts were punched in at birth, and the larger breeds he was more familiar with. Their father had said that early on after The Stock Market Crash, packs of larger dogs would kill the smaller breeds of dog when they lost their masters. These dogs of larger breeds then began their roaming in packs. His parents had recounted being attacked a couple of times. The Community trained and bred larger dogs, the community members’ pets, to be guard dogs. ‘An early warning system’, his father would say.

  They approached the Kidneys Nature Park and Rory soon found a copse away from the track and nearer the river where they could spend the night.

  THE NEXT MORNING THE sound of a rhythmic splash on water woke Rory. A canoe-type boat, with four girls holding an oar each, passed by on the river below him. Each pulled on their oar to the time counted by a smaller girl who sat in the very front of this boat.

  “We’d better move, Murray. Oxford is awake.” Rory sat up and stretched.

  They began the morning at a café and ordered two English breakfasts. Piled high on the plates placed before them were bacon, fried eggs, beans in a red sauce and fried mushed potato, which looked like a greasy biscuit.

  “That’s baked beans and they’re hash browns.” Murray explained as Rory poked at the items. Murray ate his with noises of appreciation.

  “You’re enjoyin’ this food, aye?”

  “Aye,” Murray said between mouthfuls.

  The large screen on the wall was a constant noise accompanying the chatter of the patrons in the café. Rory focused on the words moving along the bottom.

  Run on banks. Three of the ‘Big Five’ fold.

  “What are the Big Five?” Rory placed his knife and fork beside his plate, his meal only half eaten.

  “Oh,” Murray swallowed his mouthful. “That’s the banks folding,” he said into Rory’s ear. “The violence in London will probably start today.”

  Rory glanced around at the patrons in the cafe. Few were concerned; others barely lifted their heads from their breakfasts and conversations.

  So, it had begun.

  “Hopefully by the end of the day our man will be ready to listen,” Rory said.

  They finished their meal and wandered into the street.

  “One question, brother. How do you ken so much about the twenty-first century? I mean this part of it, not ours.”

  “Research.” Murray pressed the walk button on the traffic lights.

  “But we left immediately. When did you have time to research it?”

  “Before you went the last time, I looked up life before The Stock Market Crash. There wasn’t a lot. Well, there were magazines and books. Newspapers would’ve been helpful too but, according to Mr Stobbart, they used most of those for lighting fires until people realised they could be a valuable source of history, and in fact, were history themselves.”

  The pedestrian lights changed from a red man standing to a green man walking. Murray stepped off the curb and walked onto the road. Rory trod beside him as they crossed the street.

  “But the information, like what was good to eat, came from Aunty Bec and Uncle Brendan. He likes Stamina Bars.” Murray looked up at Rory with a broad grin, and the corners of his own mouth tugged as a smile emerged. “So, I’ll go fill my day. What are you going to do, Rory?”

  “No, wait. We need to find the gear they wear and buy some. You know, the radiation protection suits? We’ll Google it, won’t we?” Rory wiggled his eyebrows. “Hey, I’m getting to know the language, aye?”

  “Rory, they won’t sell those suits to just anybody. Even if you could order them from the internet, it would take days to deliver and you need an address.”

  “Well, we could find out where they make it and go get some.” Rory opened his eyes wide and stuck his chin out, hoping his brother would get the hint.

  “Rory, we can’t steal them. It’s not that simple. Security. The police and so on.”

  Rory’s heart sank. Taking desperate measures wasn’t like him. Normally, he’d never consider taking anything that wasn’t his.

  Why else had they come then? They needed information and equipment.

  “We could try,” Rory persisted.

  “We don’t have a car down here, and if the police pursued us, we’d have to make a quick escape, on foot and public transport. And we’d still have to speak to the professor. It wouldn’t work, Rory.”

  “We’d get caught.” Rory put his hands to his face and rubbed. It was getting complicated. “When we get back to Edinburgh, we’ll head for the nuclear power plant. They’ll have some,” he added. Rory had to have a plan.

  Rory passed the day walking through the many green parklands of Oxford. He felt refreshed and finally the tiredness, which had hung around him since travelling back in time, was receding. By late afternoon he walked back to the café where they’d had breakfast. He ate a cold pork pie and watched the news. There was now rioting in most of the large cities. He stared out at the street. People walked by in their usual hurry. Oxford was still peaceful, but how long would it last?

  Murray walked past the window with a group of students, the same physics summer school students they’d met yesterday. Rory paid for his food and hurried outside to follow them. Murray held his own in an intense conversation with a student.

  When they reached the corner, Murray said farewell and turned around to face Rory.

  “Had a good day?” He asked Murray.
r />   “Uh, huh.” Murray beamed as he walked beside him.

  “What have you been doing?”

  “I sat in on one of their summer school lectures. During questions afterward, they held a discussion on time travel.”

  “Oh, no.” Rory stopped walking. “What’ve you said?”

  “I’m not stupid. I kept it all theoretical. No mention of being a time traveller myself,” Murray whispered as Rory recommenced walking and they crossed the street and headed for the professor’s home.

  Murray rummaged in his backpack and brought out a wad of paper held together with big fat staples. “Got you something.” He handed Rory the handmade book.

  “What’s this?” Rory’s brow tightened with his frown. The book was heavy and flicking through revealed small print tightly packed on most pages, interspersed with diagrams of gauges and control panels.

  “During the lunch break—you get an hour—a student let me into the library computers with his password and I Googled.”

  Rory blinked. “Googled...what is this?”

  “How to drive a submarine.” Murray’s smile was very much a smirk. “Some light reading for you.”

  The street was quiet as they passed houses with several bicycles in their small front yards. They approached the professor’s door, and Murray reached up to knock. Before his knuckles landed on the door, it opened, and the professor stood there.

  “Come in,” the professor commanded.

  Rory exchanged a brief glance with Murray before they walked inside.

  “Please tell me how you knew.” The professor ushered them into the same musty-scented book-filled room as yesterday.

  “We are from the future,” Murray said. “The kind of future that develops after the events caused by the activity on the stock market, which is occurring right now. But it isn’t why we are here—”

  The professor held up his hands. “So, the world is to descend into chaos, and yesterday you tried to tell me there’s another problem? Wait. What year are you from?”

  “2061,” Rory answered. “And there’s an unstable nuclear warhead on a North Korean submarine in the North Western Scottish Highlands, which may blow, but we want to try to disarm it. How do we do that?”

  “We are sure it’s leaking radiation as Rory has seen submariners suffering from radiation sickness,” Murray added.

  The professor blinked a few times. “What equipment do you have? Are there cars? Is there fuel? Do you have electricity?’ Who’s manning the nuclear power stations? Who’s in pow—"

  “Wait!” Rory raised his hand. “We have little modern technology. There’s no oil being refined; electricity, well, any power, is in only a few hands. Those who have power have the power, so to speak. Vehicles are rare. We haven’t heard from the government for years, except to spy on us with drones...”

  “Who is ‘us’?” Professor Kensington-Wallace asked.

  “Those of us who live in self-sufficient communities and want to live peacefully. Others, who are not so friendly and live outside of community-life and its values, make it difficult for those of us who do—let me put it that way.” Rory’s summary would have to be enough. They had to get on with the solution to their nuclear problem.

  “Daddy, what’s wrong?” The little girl’s voice came through the door beside Rory. She held a doll in her arms and ran over to her father and placed her head in his lap.

  “It’s okay sweetheart, these men are friends. We have lots to talk about. Why don’t you play with your dolls?’

  She shook her head and frowned. She twiddled with the corner of her dress and scowled at Rory and Murray in turn.

  The centre of Rory’s chest softened. He’d seen enough children scared; he didn’t want this wee girl to be one of them.

  “What’s your dolly’s name?” Rory reached out and touched the doll’s dress. “She’s pretty. Almost as pretty as you, lass.” His thick Scottish accent lilted once more.

  “Amy.” She rocked her doll and the corners of her mouth curled, brightening her face.

  “Go play with your dolls, Siobhan. There’s a good girl.” Her father ushered her out. “My wife was Scottish, hence my daughter’s Gaelic name.”

  Within moments the lass was back, dragging a doll’s house into the room. She placed it to the side of her father and began opening it to show the miniature furniture it contained. She played quietly for a while, content to be in the same room as them.

  “North Korean, you say?” His daughter’s antics hardly disturbed the professor.

  “It’s an old Russian cast off. Not nuclear.” Rory enlightened the professor.

  “You’ve seen it?” The professor’s eyes widened.

  “Aye, the sub. We’re assuming the radiation leak is a warhead,” Rory said. “Well, that’s what the man from the Loch Ewe Community thinks. He’s a seafaring fisherman and seems to know what he’s talking about.”

  “You will need to detonate the warhead because you probably don’t have the means or the time to seal the leak.”

  “Detonate it!” Rory spoke in unison with Murray.

  “Yes. I’m referring to a safe detonation. Drive it out to sea first, well away from any land, and set a timer. Loch Ewe is a sea loch.” Kensington-Wallace shook his head slightly. “Nuclear warheads usually detonate on impact, but you can switch it to a timer. If it’s your usual nuclear device.”

  “What do you mean by ‘usual’?” Murray asked.

  “It depends who made it. If it was a country that is part of NATO you should have no difficulty, but if a rouge state assembled it, say India or Pakistan, well then...” The professor twisted his mouth to the side. “I can’t really say.”

  Apart from the sounds of the little girl playing with the tiny furniture and making soft comments to herself, the room was quiet for a time. Rory clenched and unclenched his fists; Murray jiggled his right leg making the whole couch shake.

  Rory took a deep breath.

  “Do you like my house?” Siobhan stood in front of Rory, holding two miniature dolls, a man and a woman, just the right size for the house. “I’ll show you where they go. Come.” She hooked her arm through his and pulled back.

  Rory leaned forward and knelt on the floor in front of the tiny house. Behind him, the professor asked Murray more questions on their life in the future.

  “You see this is the kitchen, and she’s making the daddy his dinner.” Siobhan explained her demonstration of the doll’s activities in the small house. “The children are in their rooms doing their homework. They must finish it all first. Then, and only then, can they go play on their computers.” She was beside him and tilted her head to the side, expecting an answer.

  “Oh, aye.” Was all he could think of to show his interest. Rory was interested, as he’d never seen such a thing before, nor had a little girl explain it to him.

  His response seemed enough, as she continued. “So, they are having roast beef with Yorkshire Puddings for dinner. I love roast beef. Do you like Yorkshire Puddings...what’s your name?”

  “Rory. It’s the Gaelic, like your name. It’s spelled diff—”

  “Yes, I know. I spell it like this, S-io-bh-an. But you say Shivonne. My teachers get stuck when they read my name and I have to explain it to them every time.” She spoke like it was a chore. “How do you spell your name? Wait!” She ran out of the room and soon skipped her way back in with a notebook and a pencil in her hand.

  “So, here’s my name.” She put the notebook on the floor in front of Rory and wrote her name using the pencil in her left hand.

  Then she swapped hands. “Spell Rory for me, please.” She waited, pencil poised in her right hand.

  “R-u-a-i-r-i-d-h.” He spoke slowly as she wrote the Gaelic spelling of his name. Her writing was perfect in both hands.

  “Ambidextrous.”

  “Yes, that’s correct. Are you a genius too?” Her dark-blue eyes looked intently at him. They were mesmerising.

  “Och, no. I leave that for my we
e brother there. Murray’s the mathematician.”

  Rory spoke his comment into the quiet, as the professor paused his conversation with Murray and listened in to Rory and Siobhan’s, before he turned back to Murray.

  “You did the calculations for the time travel?”

  Murray nodded.

  Rory tried to listen to the conversation as he watched the little girl play with the house.

  “When I grow up, I’m going to be a scientist and a mummy. I want lots of babies. I like babies. Do you?”

  “Oh, aye.” Rory hadn’t thought of the impending birth of his niece or nephew for a while, at least not since they’d arrived in the past. It would’ve been his parent’s first grandchild. And if things had gone differently, it would have been his child.

  His throat thickened. This wee lass would probably never see her dream of a house and children. She might be one of the lucky ones who survived the coming violence and grew to adulthood. History recorded many children of this time didn’t make it. If the violence didn’t get them, then the ensuing food shortages and disease with scarce medical supplies would. He blinked. This aspect of the past had never touched him so closely.

  Poor wee lass.

  Rory continued to respond to her questions and keep a smile on his face, despite the thoughts of her future.

  Siobhan chatted away happily for a while and Rory caught snippets of the conversation behind him.

  “...protective gear,” Murray said.

  “Aye.” Rory twisted to the professor. “We need some and we dinnae have time to buy—or procure it by other means. Can you help us?” Rory sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the doll’s house.

  The professor crossed his arms over his chest and his shoulders rose with a deep breath.

  “It is exceptional circumstances.” He seemed to speak to himself. “I’ll see what I can do.” Kensington-Wallace left the room, and in the kitchen had a one-sided conversation with someone. Rory looked over at Murray, raised an eyebrow and lifted his shoulders in a shrug.