The Trouble With Time (9 page)

“Okay.”

He clenched his teeth while she poked delicately around in the bloody hole he had created. Though outwardly calm, she bit her lip and apologized each time he involuntarily flinched. After what seemed like a long time she said, relief in her voice, “Is this it?”

He took the tiny cylinder from her. “Yes. Thanks.”

She cleaned the wound for him and applied a plaster, then went back to her book. Jace put on his shirt and looked around the room. He picked up a small bronze of a reclining woman, placed his chip on the marble floor, and smashed it. After throwing the fragments over the terrace wall, he returned to the computer.

He did a quick sprint around the internet, picking up on the major stuff he’d missed in the past five years; less than he’d imagined. A general election (the same lot won), terrorist attacks, celebrity scandals, minor wars in far-off places. Most things remained much the same; the big news item he was looking for was not there. Something though was niggling him: why had Quinn abducted Floss? Was it IEMA business or private enterprise? Both seemed equally unlikely. He looked her up. Nothing at all, and this struck him as peculiar, particularly since privacy rules had been a lot more lax thirty years before. You’d expect to find
something
, if only an archive Facebook page.

Finally he started poking around in Quinn’s digital life, tracing the sites he had used, the people he had contacted. Quinn had been promoted, had been running the whole of IEMA Intelligence. Kayla’s name cropped up. He let out a laughing gasp – she’d got the job that used to be his own, then taken over Quinn’s. Predictable, once he thought about it – she’d had the potential right from when she joined.

He searched for emails from her to Quinn. They filled two pages. As he read them in chronological order his face set. These were work emails, starting with routine queries as she adjusted to her promotion; crisp and business-like emails from a woman getting on top of her job. But the sign-offs . . . intimate, witty, delightful. He remembered when he had been the recipient of emails like that from Kayla, the effect they’d had on him.

Quinn’s appointment diary: search
Kayla
.

From mid-2046, the entry
7.30 am
Kayla’s flat
cropped up most weeks, always on a weekday. By the end of 2047, he was taking her to the Ritz, the Opera and Hoxton Studio. He must have left his wife by then and could see her openly; had evenings and weekends free, and was out to impress. That’s when he’d got himself fit, no doubt. 2049, and they went less frequently to the classy venues; she was coming to his apartment.

Jace tried to calm his breathing. He thought of all the nights he’d lain fully dressed under the thin duvet, hungry, too cold to sleep. He’d warmed himself at thoughts of Kayla, remembering her, imagining what she was doing, thinking she’d be missing him. She had waited a year or so, it seemed. What had he expected, that she’d wait five years for him?

He felt he could forgive her anyone but Quinn. He told himself he was not being reasonable. On the heavy side five years ago, his hair cut short to camouflage male-pattern baldness, Quinn hadn’t been handsome, but women hadn’t seemed to mind. They liked the intelligence and humour in his eyes, the directness of his gaze, the way he focused his attention on them; and he was unquestionably an alpha male. Kayla hadn’t known what the man was really like any more than he had; also doubtless hadn’t known that his diary was scattered with other girls’ names, Jinghua being the latest of a long line. Kayla was the only woman who’d lasted more than a couple of months – but then she was exceptional. Jace had started proposing when they’d only been going out for nine weeks. Kayla, not yet ready to settle down, used to tease him about it.

He got out Quinn’s dataphone and scrolled through the messages till he got to:
Q, where are you? Call me. K.

With an effort, he went back to non-Kayla emails, trying to work out what Quinn had been up to. After a while he got absorbed in this task. Then he did some different research, on luxury items for the man who has everything. He had completely forgotten Floss’s presence. When he finally thought of her and looked around she was sound asleep, curled up on the sofa clutching her book. Clearly the day had got to her. The computer told him it was 12.13 am. He decided to leave Ryker till the morning, make an early start. His boots should have arrived by then. He fetched a blanket from one of the bedrooms and dropped it over the girl. She didn’t stir.

He got into Quinn’s ridiculously opulent king-size bed and lay for a while thinking, trying not to imagine Kayla lying where he lay now. He stared into the dark at the intermittent lights of passing aeroplanes; welcome confirmation he was back from the future, however much trouble awaited him here.

He regretted killing Quinn. It had let him off too easily. He should have been left there alone, without even a box of matches. Getting progressively weaker on a diet of nettles and blackberries, while he taught himself by trial and error how to catch rabbits and hunt deer and make fire and do without, scavenging for the few useful things time had not destroyed.

For year after year.

Gradually despairing of rescue.

Defeat and anger eating into his soul.

There was a clunk as the drone delivered his boots to the package bay. He listened to the whirr of its rotor blades fading into the night.

Jace turned on his left side, closed his eyes and slept like the dead.

Floss woke to an early spring morning, and took a few seconds to work out where – and when – she was. She’d never slept in her clothes before. No sign of Jace; for a moment she panicked, since he represented her only hope of returning to her own time. She walked softly round the vast apartment, decided he was probably asleep in the room behind the closed door, but didn’t like to look in and check. So she locked herself in one of the bathrooms and had a shower, which apart from a settings selection – she went for Manual – was reassuringly like 2015 showers. The towels were thick and soft, and she found a hair dryer in the bedroom.

She dressed, asked the computer for breakfast (its idea of breakfast, or possibly Quinn’s, turned out to be hot croissants and coffee), sat at the computer and checked its browsing history. She had to adjust to using a sensitive area on the desk to control it, and at first her fingers kept reaching for the non-existent mouse. Also the computer seemed to be responding to her eye movements, which both helped and confused. The interface was super-fast, different of course from what she was used to, but intuitive and she quickly adapted.

She was curious to find what Jace had been so engrossed in the evening before. Floss liked to have all the facts, and felt at a disadvantage in her current state of ignorance. She was not going to make the mistake of trusting Jace when she knew so little about him. It was possible he had not told her the truth, or not all of it. She paused for several minutes at his Crimestoppers page, skipped over the world news and extravagant gifts for men (he was thinking of compensating for his years with nothing, perhaps) to focus on Jace’s associates and Quinn’s social life. Curiosity satisfied, conjectures made and confirmed, she cleared her own and Jace’s browsing data and turned to Google Street View. It now showed real time by default, and had sound. Floss leaned forward, fascinated, watching blurred-out people walking around like ghosts. There was not nearly so much traffic, though lots of bikes. With a few exceptions, most cars came in three sizes and were all rather similar, with adverts on the sides and blue or green lights on top.

Jace appeared in the doorway, nodding at her. The jacket he wore casually unbuttoned was military dress uniform meets pirate; braid, buttons, high collar; outrageously becoming. He didn’t seem at all self-conscious wearing what was to Floss’s mind fancy dress. Men’s fashions had certainly changed in thirty years. He crossed to a hatch in the wall, got out a cardboard box and took it to the sofa to open.

“Catch.” He chucked a small packet at her, which turned out to be travel sickness patches, and started trying on high boots with straps and buckles. He walked experimentally round the room and over to the computer. “What are you looking at?”

“Google Street View. I want to see what my old flat looks like.”

She’d found it now. The house had gone up in the world; railings guarded the basement area instead of the old brick wall, the door was mulberry red, the stucco immaculate, the windows authentic replicas of the Victorian originals. Her tiny attic studio had been replaced by a roof extension with huge panes of glass and a narrow balcony with bay trees at either end. She clicked on Past Views and gazed nostalgically at the flat in 2015 when it was run down, affordable and hers.

Jace ordered coffee, egg, bacon and fried bread, and tried the second pair of boots while the kitchen prepared his meal.

“Why did you buy three pairs of boots?”

He said deadpan, “Because I’m not the one paying for them.”

Floss thought again how much better he looked without the beard and grime. Now revealed, his face was interesting; uncompromising planes and angles, direct dark eyes that gave nothing away. As he was there she might as well get him to supply information unavailable on the internet.

“You know London in the future? Where did all the people go?”

“No one’s supposed to know they’re gone. It was classified when Quinn told me, and I’ve checked and the public still don’t know. But since you’ve seen it for yourself . . . just don’t tell anyone, okay?” Floss nodded. “A contraceptive virus wiped them out.”

Floss stared at him silently, dumbfounded. This could not be a coincidence. In the end she said in a strained voice, “How do you know it was that?”

“Quinn worked for IEMA like me.” He pronounced it EEMA. “International Event Modification Authority, the Intelligence Department. They made forays into the future at specific intervals, to see how stuff like global warming was developing, and check for any avoidable threats we hadn’t seen coming. Epidemics, meteorites, riots.”

“I thought time travel was hardly ever allowed?”

“Trips to the past, yes, it’s just too risky, but the future’s safer. Even that’s strictly regulated, every trip vetted and recorded. Anyway, Quinn told me before he dumped me in the future that in a hundred and fifty years’ time humans are extinct because of a rogue virus. What they hadn’t worked out five years ago – and I’m assuming still haven’t, since you and Quinn showed up there – is which button to push to prevent it happening.”

Floss gazed out of the window, wondering whether to keep quiet or tell him. He was almost a complete stranger, ruthless, and likely to be untrustworthy . . . still, he was in danger from IEMA too, plus she owed him; had it not been for Jace she might right now be stuck in future London with wolves, the odd lion, and very little else. She made up her mind.

“I think I know why Quinn grabbed me. You see, I’m a research scientist . . .”

Now Jace was staring at her. “You don’t look like a research scientist.”

“Ah.” Floss’s eyes narrowed. “So what in your opinion do research scientists look like? Older, perhaps, plainer,
maler?
”

“Okay, you got me on older and plainer, but in 2050 jobs are gender-neutral. Not like in your day. No one burns bras any more, no need to.”

“
Bra burning?
That was back in the 1960s! Like, more than twenty years before I was born! Anyway, it was a myth. Never happened. Don’t they teach history any more?”

He rolled his eyes. “Can we get on? Fine, so you’re a research scientist. I am neither surprised nor impressed. I accept this as normal. Continue.”

Floss gave him a quelling look and continued. “I’m a research scientist, a very good one too, working on species-specific contraception contained in a genetically engineered virus. We’re looking to develop a safe way of dealing with invasive non-native species.”

“Like cane toads in Australia?”

“Yes, though we’re working with mammals not amphibians. Imagine if you could eradicate all the rabbits in Australia, what huge benefits there’d be to the environment. And it’s humane, unlike other methods of control.”

“It’s been done, about fifteen, twenty years ago. Worked like a charm. No more Aussie rabbits. Still got the cane toads, though.”

She frowned. “I don’t see how it could have mutated to affect humans. The virus escaping from one continent to another was our main concern. You wouldn’t want to get rid of rabbits in Europe, for instance, where they belong. Spontaneous cross-species mutation seemed impossible. But if it
did
mutate – well, we were working to make it as potent and contagious as possible. There’d be no stopping it.”

“Perhaps someone thought of adapting it as a human contraceptive.”

Floss shook her head. “There’d be far too much risk. Virtually impossible to make it safe enough. Companies would be incredibly wary of taking it on. They’d never get a license for use. No, it can’t be that. Look, all this time stuff is confusing me, but maybe whatever set it off hasn’t happened yet.”

“That’s possible.”

There was a thoughtful pause. Floss said, “I don’t understand why Quinn took me to future London. Was that normal procedure, whenever IEMA reckoned it had located the catalyst for an undesirable outcome?”

“No. Theoretically, you’d be compulsorily resettled in our time, given compensation, somewhere to live and helped to find a job. Lifting someone from the past is exceptional. I don’t know about the last five years, but before that it’s only happened once before, in the States. I’ve no idea what Quinn was up to.”

At that moment there was the click of a lock releasing. They both looked towards the sound, and the gun appeared in Jace’s hand, smooth as a conjuring trick. The door opened and a woman walked in. She was tall, plainly dressed in a superbly cut grey trouser suit, with a soft camel coat draped casually over her shoulders and an air of unassailable confidence. Floss knew instantly who she was.
Can those violet eyes really be natural?

Jace got slowly to his feet, staring at her, putting the gun away. Kayla’s eyes widened.