Allergic To Time (28 page)

Martin nodded gravely. “When you turned up the next morning and told me that they’d tried to kill the both of you, that’s when I knew I had to do something. That’s when I decided we had to go to Nelson Bay and stop him, destroy his equipment, something.”

Rob let out a slight laugh. “Although,
that
plan didn’t exactly work either.” He turned to face me. “Word of advice: when this guy says he has a plan to stop someone doing something, do not listen to it.”
 

“Well, it’s funny you should say that...” Martin began. “Because I actually have a plan...”

Robert groaned, but we were interrupted by Fanny, who was walking towards us.

“Fanny!” Rob explained, jumping up to greet her with a hug. For a second I wondered how he could possibly even know who she was, and then I remembered that he’d been in Sydney for years. The two of them probably hung out at secret time traveller’s anonymous clubs or something.
 

While the two of them were hugging and catching up I turned my attention back to Martin. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this? About Robert, I mean.”

He sighed. “I didn’t want you to get even madder at me. I figured it was Robert’s lie and you would figure it out eventually and get angry at
him
for lying to you.
After all, it was all his decision to appear at RPA hospital that day. He DID lie to you. I didn’t want you to find out from me though.”

“So you just kept making passive-aggressive hints to me about it?”
 
My tone was not happy. “Rather than just being honest?”

“Anna...” he began.

“Seriously, Martin, why are you so concerned about me disliking or distrusting Robert?”

He glanced at Rob, who was still mingling excitedly with Fanny and shook his head. “Because I don’t like the guy!” He looked back at me sheepishly and added, quietly. “And I didn’t want you to like him either.” He shot me a meaningful look, but I pressed him to explain himself further.

“And why wouldn’t you want me liking Robert?”

“I guess I was...” he looked down at the table, fiddling with his fingers. “Jealous, I suppose.”

Chapter Thirty-Five.
 

Martin, Fanny, Robert and I all met up in a courtyard outside of the hospital. Across from us was a Nando’s fast food restaurant, which of course made Robert hungry. “Come on, let’s just get some food first,” he whinged.

“There’s no time to think about food right now,” Martin snapped.
“Why, because your next ‘brilliant plan’ just can’t wait?” Robert asked sarcastically, his British accent slipping out more than usual.
 

Martin rolled his eyes. “This plan is actually quite good, okay. You haven’t even heard it yet, so listen before you judge it.”
 

I stifled a laugh. “Are you sure? Because from what I’ve heard so far...we might be better just leaving the matter up to fate.”

Fanny patted Martin on the arm reassuringly, and I bristled a bit at the sight of the gesture. “It’s okay,” she said. “Just tell the other two what we intend to do.”

“Well,” he began, looking around at the rest of us. “We have to make sure Connie is safe, first of all. So the first step will be to wait until she is conscious, and then we will extract her from the hospital. Next: we have to get into Raymond’s office after hours, some time when neither he or his assistant — what’s her name?” he asked, looking at me.

“Naomi...”I began slowly.

“When neither him nor Naomi are there. Then, it is simply a matter of setting up Fanny’s time machine in there, and when they return: Bob’s your uncle,” he said, looking around at us triumphantly. “They will be sent through time never to bother anyone ever again.”

I must looked uneasy with this plan because Fanny stopped and asked me what was wrong.

I took a deep breath. “Well, firstly, do we really need to get Naomi involved with this? She seems pretty innocent to me. It’s John Raymond who does all of the killing.”

“Yes, we do need to get her involved.” Martin replied quickly. “She is on their side. They’ve both had access to my files all this time. All the people — all the time travellers I’ve been trying to protect — are at risk.”

“Come on Martin, let’s leave her out of it…”I began. But the concept of ‘sides’ led me guiltily to my next point. “And, um, also...” I began, really not wanting to tell them what I was about to say. “I...kind of told them what you were planning.”

“WHAT?” Martin exploded. “Are you freaking kidding me Anna? What were you thinking!”

“Shh,” I said, not wanting to attract attention to us. “We are in a hospital for crying out loud.”

Martin was furious. “What do you mean you
told them what we were planning?
”

“Well,” I began, looking at Rob, hoping I might at least get some sympathy from him. I didn’t. “It was earlier this evening, before we got the call about Connie, after I found Robert’s bag in your living room. I thought you and Rob were in on some evil scheme, that the two of
you
were the bad guys, and I thought I needed to warn John Raymond about you.”

“Unbelievable...” Martin said, dropping his face into his hands.

Rob raised his eyebrows. “Another brilliant plan come unravelled then.”
 

Fanny looked worried. “So they’re expecting us then?”

I nodded. “I wasn’t sure how, or when you were going to do it exactly, but I warned them...”

“What exactly did you say?” Martin cut in.

“I told them that you were going to ‘send them through time’,” I replied. “Nothing more nor less.”

“Anna I seriously can’t believe...”

“I didn’t trust you okay!” I yelled at him in the middle of the dark courtyard. “I didn’t know what to think. You have lied to me so much.” Smoke was very nearly coming out of my nostrils, I was so mad. How could he turn around and blame this on me? “You brought this all on yourself!” I concluded and stormed away.

Robert ran after me, catching me just as I got down to Parramatta Rd “Ann! Where are you going?” he called, struggling to catch up.

“Don’t think I’m not mad at you as well,” I said, hurrying straight ahead. “You have been lying to me this whole entire time Robert! I trusted you.” I slowed down only slightly so that I could catch a glimpse of his ridiculously made-up face. “How could you lie to me, when I was the only one who believed you?”

“Anna I’m sorry-“

“So you didn’t actually travel through time when Martin and I did either, just last week, at Nelson Bay?” I asked, interrupting. “That’s how you were able to bring me into the hospital…”

Robert nodded. “Yeah. That was three real months for me. I was left behind in the lair, with your father. After you and Martin disappeared. I grabbed him, threatened to kill him with his own time machine unless he told me how far through time you would travel. When he told me it was only a few months, I knew it was just a matter of waiting there till you reappeared. I stayed at his beach house in the meantime. He was long gone.”

“Because he sent himself through time?”

Robert nodded.

He slowed down his jogging a bit in order to catch his breath. We had to push past a crowd of people at a bus stop as we continued our descent down Parramatta Rd.
 

“I wasn’t entirely lying to you all along…” he pointed out. “It was just a few years off. And I did wait for you to reappear at Nelson Bay.”

“I guess,” I said, softening. “But still, it was a lot of lying, Robert. All that time I was so worried about you finding your family. I looked them up myself you know,” I said, pausing to look for a reaction.

“Really?” he seemed surprised. “What did you find?”

“Well, nothing obviously!”

“Oh, right.” He kept walking besides me. “I’m sorry Ann, really, really I am. I guess I liked that you believed me. And I didn’t want to tell you the truth, because I liked you so much.” He sighed.
 

I slowed my pace a bit. “It’s okay,” I said, finally. “It’s mostly Martin’s fault anyway.”

Robert sighed audibly at the mention of Martin’s name.
 

“Why are you two so antagonistic towards each other?” I asked him. “Aren’t you supposed to be working together?”

“I don’t even know,” Robert said, shoving his hands in his pockets. “After all, he did almost get me killed on several occasions.”

“Accidentally,” I said, defending him. “He just isn’t very good at the whole...action adventure thing.”

“He should have stuck to academia,” Rob said. “I don’t know why he ever got involved in any of this stuff. It seems so out of character. And he’s so bad at it!”

I stopped in the middle of the footpath. A kid on a skateboard headed towards us and almost knocked me over, so we stepped to the side farthest away from the traffic. “You don’t know?” I asked him.
 

“Know what?”
 

“About...me?” I asked, shooting him a slightly suspicious look.
 

“What about you?”

“About how I travelled through time, when I was only three years old...” I began.
 

“Christ, what?” he asked, obviously genuinely surprised.

I turned around and slowly kept walking. I wasn’t sure where I was even going. The university, I supposed, more out of habit than any real reason at that point. “I was the first case he ever investigated...” I started, searching Rob’s face again. “He really never told you?”
Rob shook his head. He thought for a minute or two, keeping silent. “I guess he was trying to protect you.”

I wrapped my jacket around myself tighter as we slowed down and the cool spring air hit me. “That’s why he’s ‘involved’ in any of this at, you see?” I started to feel awful. As though I’d been acting like a horrible ungrateful brat this entire time. “Even though he is so bad at it. Oh my god, this is all my fault...” I slowed to a halt.
 

“No, it’s not,” Robert said, putting his hand on my shoulder. “How can any of this possibly be your fault?” He put his hand up to my face and stroked my cheek.

“Rob...” I began, backing away from him slightly.

“I know, I know,” he sighed. “Martin.”
 

“It’s not...”

“Yeah it is.”

We walked together in silence for the rest of the trip.

***

We were back in John Raymond’s office.
 

“Is there any particular reason we’re back here, again?” Rob asked, emphasising the word ‘again’ with a hint of annoyance.
 

“Naomi said that she and Raymond were ‘taking good care’ of Martin’s files,” I said, opening the bottom drawer of Raymond’s stark white desk. I riffled through the contents.

“And you think they would be keeping them in here?”

“Yep,” I said, slamming the drawer shut when I didn’t find what I was looking for, moving onto the next one. “Are you going to help me look?”

“Anna, we already looked for this earlier today...” he began.

“Before you disappeared,” I said, spinning around. “Hey, where
were
you all day? I was seriously worried.” I turned back around towards the desk. “Then again, that’s when I thought that you weren’t familiar with the modern world.” I couldn’t help the slight tone of resentment that snuck into my voice.

Rob walked over and leant down to help me. “For what it is worth, I’m still
not
that familiar with the modern world.”

“You have an iPhone,” I pointed out.

“Yeah,” he admitted. “But I still don’t really understand it.”

I stopped riffling for a second. “Are you happy here?”

“In Sydney?”

I shrugged. “Sydney, the year 2014…”

He looked unsure. “It’s as good as anywhere, I suppose.”
 

“Do you miss your home?”

He nodded. “Well,
 
I did for ages. I’ve kind of gotten used to it.” He sifted half-heartedly through the top drawer of the desk.
 

“Would you go back if you had the option?”
“Time travel to the past is impossible, that’s what Dr Grumpy says,” he shoved the drawer shut.

I sighed. “He also said time travel to the future was impossible,” I pointed out. “But I just mean, if you could. Hypothetically.”

“I don’t really like to dwell on it.”
 

“So?” I asked again. “You never told me where you’d been all day.”

He still didn’t answer me but a flush of red crept onto his cheeks.

“Rob!”

“Okay, okay,” he said, straightening himself up. “I was kind of with Naomi.”

“Naomi? What do you mean?” I slammed the door shut. “God, Martin goes and gets mad at me for conspiring with them, and then I find out you’ve been doing the same thing.”

“No, not ‘conspiring’,” he replied, a slight grin appearing on his face.
 

“Oh. Eww. Really? Naomi?”

“I think she’s hot.”

“Oh.” I sat back down and rested upon my ankles. I cleared my throat. “So you’re not...interested in me then?”

He looked at me in surprise. “Well, yeah, I am. Or rather I would be, if you and Martin didn’t have your weird thing going on.”

“We don’t have any ‘weird thing’ going on,” I tried to object.
 
But before I could get my explanation out, Rob seemed to think of something.

“Hang on,” he said, suddenly jumping up and heading towards a Mac computer screen on the left side of the room. It was one of those models where the screen also houses the ‘computer’ part, so he pressed a button to turn it on.
 

I sighed, “You won’t find anything in there. It’s all paper files, there were no electronic copies. Unless they transferred it all to computer, but...”

“I’m not looking for the folder,” he said, waving his hand at me as a gesture that he wanted me to keep quiet.
 

“Then what are you looking for?”
 
I asked, refusing to be quiet. I had to know.

He looked up at me, resigned at having to slow down to explain.

“What did you say was the idea behind your thesis?”

I sighed, not really wanting to have to explain my obviously wrong theory. “I thought that time travel could be a simple matter of a piece of computer code...” And I suddenly remembered what Martin had said to me earlier that day, about how there was ‘more than one way to skin a cat’.