The Trouble With Time (15 page)

“Floss, then. Call me Ansel. I owe you an apology. There’s been a mammoth fuck up. We thought – IEMA thought –”

“Who’s IEMA?”

“The International Event Modification Authority. Stupid name. It’s an international body that deals with time travel, regulation, enforcement, forward planning, things like that. I’m head of IEMA Intelligence in the UK. We know, from trips to the future, that there is a problem heading our way. A big problem.”

Floss thought instantly of an asteroid on a collision course with Earth. “What sort of problem?”

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you the details. It’s classified.” Floss stirred, but Quinn hadn’t finished. “We worked out that you were the unwitting catalyst that set off a chain of events ending in disaster.”

Probably not an asteroid, then
.
I’m going to have a child who turns into a future Hitler-type person
. . .

“But we got it wrong. Now we’ve taken you out of the equation, the results are still the same.” Quinn rubbed his face and swept his hands over his short hair. For a moment he looked exhausted.

“Well, I can see that’s frustrating. But I’m sure you’ll work it out in the end. Just take me back to my own time, no harm done.” A tremor in Floss’s voice betrayed her nervousness. If it was that simple he wouldn’t have brought her here to explain. She waited anxiously for his reply.

“I’m really, really sorry about this. I accept full responsibility. We can’t take you back to your own time.”

“Why not? You have a time machine.” He didn’t reply at once. Floss said, “You made a mistake, but you can put it right. I don’t see why this should be a problem.”

Quinn sighed. “Time travel is subject to rigid regulation. As it happens, you’re the first person we’ve lifted out of the past in this country, because it’s kind of a big deal. You would not believe the lengths I had to go to to get permission to do it in the first place. This sort of thing is controlled by an incredible number of rules. And one of them is, if you remove someone from the past, he or she has to stay in the future. No going back, because of the possible contamination that might occur.”

Floss gave him a dangerous stare. “So you are saying you’ve abducted me from my own time for reasons that turned out to be spurious, you won’t take me back, and you won’t even tell me what this is all about? That’s . . . completely unacceptable. There must be some kind of legal appeal I can make to get this reversed.”

“I’m afraid not. If it was possible to appeal, I’d help you do it. This is a special case, under the jurisdiction of IEMA and the World Government.”

“If my knowing about it is potentially disastrous, why didn’t you inject me with a soporific while you brought me here? Then you could have taken me back without my knowing I’d gone anywhere.”

“It doesn’t work like that. With you unconscious, the future would be a quantum superposition. Like Schrödinger’s cat. The future does not change, the cat is not dead or alive, until one opens the box. We opened the box, and here you are.” He added softly, “I’m sorry.”

Floss experienced a horrible sinking feeling. She recognized a brick wall when she saw one. Only desperation made her say, “I won’t tell anyone I’ve been to the future. I’ll be absolutely discreet. You can rely on me.”

“I’m sure we can. Unfortunately, the rules governing this are inflexible. If there was anything I could do, believe me, I would do it.”

“But my mother – she’ll be –” Gripped by sudden anguish, Floss couldn’t speak for several seconds. Her eyes filled with tears. “Me just disappearing, her not knowing what’s happened to me, imagining the worst, waiting and hoping and dreading for the rest of her life – you can’t do this to her. My father died when I was ten, she didn’t remarry, I’m her only child.”

Quinn looked his sympathy, but said nothing. Floss needed to be alone to get control of herself. She got up and stumbled to the Ladies, tears spilling down her cheeks. Locked in the cubicle, she fought down misery and panic and made herself stop crying. After five minutes, she came out, washed her hands and stared in the mirror above the basin. Apart from the fear in her eyes, she looked normal. Though she felt like screaming and sobbing and smashing glass, she knew that would do no good. She said quietly to herself:

“Right. Get a grip. I can do this. I do not need to panic, because I am going to get back to my own time. I do not need to worry about Mum, because I will be returning to my own time, and she won’t even know I have gone. I will do whatever it takes to achieve this. Including staying calm, and working out the best way to get my hands on one of their time travel devices. They exist, therefore it is possible to steal one. Fear and panic will hinder my doing this.” Floss took a deep breath, and shut her eyes while she visualized cramming her fear and panic into a suitcase and turning a key in the lock. She tried an experimental smile. “I am now going to go and sit down and eat my dinner and be very nice to Ansel Quinn, because he is head of IEMA Intelligence and may be able to help me.”

She left the Ladies and headed for the corner table. Quinn got to his feet and pulled out her chair for her, concerned and attentive. Floss sat and drank some wine, then looked into his eyes. Making a massive effort, she smiled.

“I have thirty-five years to catch up on. By the end of this meal I want you to have told me everything I don’t know. Every single thing. This is your mission for the evening, should you choose to accept it.”

She read two things from his smile; relief that she was not going to be difficult, and speculation that her company this evening might even be enjoyable.

He said, “I’d be delighted.”

“So, why not start by telling me about time travel?”

“Your wish is my command. Ben Culcavy is the inventor of time travel and probably the most famous recluse in the world. He’s a maverick with a hint of mystery about him. Also rich; at twenty-one he was orphaned and inherited the family fortune, which his father had made from computer games. Strifer Max and his companion spider, Mortuus? After your time, maybe.”

The hors d’oeuvres arrived. During the break in the conversation, Floss considered Culcavy’s possibilities. She made a mental note to look up where he lived. He’d be certain to have a time machine. If you’d invented the thing, you’d hang on to one however illegal it was. Maybe she could persuade him to take her back to her own time . . .

The waiter left and Quinn resumed. “Back in 2029 or thereabouts he did some breakthrough work moving primitive organisms through time. Single-cell organisms, and less than a second of time, but still, when he published his results there was a lot of excitement and respect in scientific circles. Then the Daily Mail got hold of the story and did an interview with him, in which he said humans would time travel within ten years. They took a photo which made him look like a walking cliché mad scientist. The piece caused general merriment and ridicule among his peers. So he went off and got on with it. Stopped writing papers, turned into a hermit. People forgot about him. On his own, he made the first TiTravs. The next thing anyone knew, he was selling them for ten million pounds each on the open market.”

“That’s incredible, doing something so fantastically complex alone in just a few years. I mean, you’re not just moving in time, but in a constantly shifting galaxy, space too. How do you sort out the logistics of that? Then miniaturize it to wear on your wrist?”

“How indeed. Incredible is the word. Culcavy’s first crude model occupied an entire barn. It’s been speculated that he used it to travel to the future and bring back the final refined version.”

“Ah, I’ve read about this. A consistent causal loop. So that actually works, then?”

“Who knows?”

Floss said demurely, “I assumed you would, Mr Quinn.”

“Ansel. I hate to break it to you, but I do not know everything. Just . . . almost everything. How is your bruschetta?”

“Delicious, thank you. What happened next? How did time travel become illegal?”

“Culcavy sold some TiTravs – no more than a few dozen, probably, to rich men who had everything. He had offers for the technology, from airlines who wanted to use it to transport passengers, and from Amazon. Culcavy was in discussion with Jeff Bezos, who was dead keen and prepared to pay any amount of money. He wanted it so Amazon could make deliveries within seconds of the customer ordering. Then, six days after the first device went on sale, the World Government outlawed time travel, made it a crime carrying a minimum sentence of fifteen years.”

“That seems a bit draconian.”

“It’s dangerous, random time travel to the past, because of the potential to affect the present and the future. With unrestricted time travel, chronology would cease to exist. The result would be mayhem, a constantly fluctuating present. You couldn’t walk down the road without things changing around you.”

“I can see that, but fifteen years . . .”

“Once the new law had been passed, the WG – the World Government – tried to track down the TiTravs that had already been sold. That wasn’t made any easier by the fact that Culcavy hadn’t kept records and wasn’t being particularly cooperative. We’re still trying to locate a few rogue TiTravs we’re certain are out there.”

Aha. If illicit TiTravs exist, then maybe I could get hold of one
. . .

Floss did not want Quinn to notice her interest in this subject and guess the reason. He was not a fool; though he was relaxed, and she could tell he was enjoying her company, this did not mean his brain was switched off. She did not underestimate him. Time to change the subject.

“Driverless cars – when did they take over? They’d only just been thought of in my time.”

“Pods, we call them. TFL – Transport for London – started a fleet, and they became so popular that private cars turned into an indulgence for the very rich. In the end there were so few left it was possible to ban them from cities without public outrage.”

As the meal progressed, they covered robotics, politics, film, television and literature. Quinn proved an amusing and well-informed companion. By the time they reached the coffee stage, they were getting on really well. Floss felt almost – almost but not quite – as if she was there by choice. But every now and then a black lurch of panic assailed her; a bit like eating a picnic with a friend on a sunny cliff top, and sporadically recalling that your feet dangle over a sixty-foot drop.
I am going to get back to my own time
.

She sipped her Armagnac. “Fashions. What you’re wearing is – would have been – fancy dress in my time. When did men become peacocks?”

Quinn glanced down at his clothes. “I’ve never thought about it. It happened gradually, I think . . . actors and rock stars started a trend, and it spread. These things go in cycles. Men were drab for more than a century.”

“You’re nearly done. Tell me what I should be wearing. From what I observe it’s not skinny jeans.”

Quinn smiled. “Is that what they’re called? They may be vintage, but on you they look charming.”

“I bet you say that to all the women you abduct from the past.”

“I’ve told you, you are unique. As for telling you what to wear, women’s fashion is not my area of expertise. But, and this is something I have never said before, even to my wife when I had one, I will take you clothes shopping tomorrow. You can buy a whole new wardrobe, courtesy of IEMA. This is part of the process of settling you in.”

Playing along as if reconciled to her fate, Floss said, “What are the other parts of the process? Where will I live?”

“IEMA has provided you with a flat. It’s small, but will belong to you, and it’s fully kitted out. I’ll take you there tonight.”

This was a relief. She had been afraid they’d keep her in a detention centre or prison. “Thank you. And what about getting a job?”

“That’s Jess’s department.”

Floss said with a lack of enthusiasm she did not trouble to hide, “Will she be coming shopping with us tomorrow?”

Quinn smiled. “Not if you don’t want her to.”

Quinn paid the bill, thanked Giovanni and summoned a pod which pulled in to the kerb as they left the restaurant. Quinn put his hand for a moment on Floss’s slender waist to guide her towards it, with a surprising feeling of well-being. An evening he had expected to be tiresome had turned out to be the most enjoyable he’d had for months. Floss was good company, and pretty too: actually,
pretty
did not do her justice, was hardly the
mot juste
. Beautiful, distinguished even, with that bone structure and those intelligent eyes. Beside her, Kayla’s familiar beauty seemed insipid. And she had a remarkably attractive voice, melodious and distinct . . . Thank God she hadn’t made the scene she was entirely entitled to make.

This had been a bad day for Quinn. Admittedly with a little help from the TiTrav, he had won himself a reputation for infallibility over the last five years. Now he had publicly and with maximum effort proved himself cataclysmically wrong. Single-handedly, he had persuaded IEMA to make its first major intervention in the past by permanently removing Florence Dryden – Floss. He had staked his reputation; then those who had fought him every inch of the way turned out to have been right all along. They would never let him forget that. He remembered the moment he and Voss had returned from the trip to the future with the bad news that nothing had changed. Lord Clanranald and Sir Douglas Calhoun, who had intended to be part of the reception to celebrate averting humanity’s demise, left immediately in order to distance themselves from the affair. The responsibility, they made clear, would be Quinn’s alone.

And worse, the debacle had been completely avoidable. He had been so elated at finally winning his point, and so cocksure of the results that he had taken a risk. He should have found some excuse to delay picking up the girl, waited for Ryker to mend the TiTrav, and checked the outcome first.

As the pod moved off Quinn saw Kayla had texted him:
Q, I hope your evening is now over and wasn’t too grim. K
. Kayla would have preferred the abductee from the past to be male, he knew, or older, or plainer. She took pains not to appear proprietorial and pretended she was as relaxed about their relationship as he was, but he saw through her play-acting. Sometimes she just couldn’t help herself. He knew she wanted to move into his apartment, marry him, have his children, the whole bloody caboodle. She hadn’t felt like that about Jace. A quotation from Thucydides came into his head;
It is a general rule of human nature that people despise those who treat them well, and look up to those who make no concessions
. Without replying he turned off the phone and pocketed it.