Allergic To Time (9 page)

“Connie wait!” I’d honestly wanted to warn her, to try to tell her she shouldn’t trust Martin. All other issues aside, I genuinely didn’t want to put her in any danger. But she didn’t stop or turn around. She just headed towards the exit and slammed the door behind her on her way out. I stood there staring at the door for a second, wondering if I had done the right thing, by saying anything to her at all. Not that she’d believed me anyway. After a moment’s thought I turned and headed back towards Martin’s office.
 

***
 

“What took you so long?”

“It took ages to get her to leave,” I said quietly, sitting down across from Martin, feeling lonely, and worried. I wished that Connie had listened to me, had believed what I’d been trying to tell her. I felt like I wanted her to be on my side.
 

Robert was staring down at me with worried expression on his face. I realised that, out of the two of us, he had a much better reason to feel concerned: after all, he was stranded in a time that he didn’t belong. I was just being a baby.

A thought occurred to me. I spun around in my seat to look at Robert. “I wonder if you are still alive?”
 

Robert pulled a face and pointed down at his own body. “Umm, clearly I am?”
 

“No, in this time, I mean. As an old man.”

He thought for a second. “If I’m alive now, in this time — as an old man — that would mean that I make it back home, at some point.” He seemed hopeful as he looked at Martin for a reaction.

Without hesitating, Martin responded. “That’s not possible. Travelling backwards in time, that is.”

I leant forward across the desk. “Alright then —so you’re saying that time travel
forward
through time is possible?” Had Martin slipped up? Accidentally revealed that he believed in some version of time travel?

Martin glanced back at us, almost like he’d been caught out. But he composed himself. “I didn’t say that,” he said slowly, which was technically true. “I just said that travelling backwards in time was impossible. Which is most definitely is.” He turned again to stare at his computer screen.
 

“And travelling forward through time?” I asked.
 

“Anna you know perfectly well what my thoughts are on this matter!”

“Do I? Because I don’t think I know anything about you anymore.” I sat back in my seat, arms folded. “So - what is this bloody file you have on me then?”
 

Martin seemed shocked to hear me swear. Too bad. I was fed up with all his secrecy.

“What did you say to Connie?” he asked me.

“Not much, just the truth.”

His eyes widened. Still standing up beside us, Robert seemed to be enjoying the scene. I gathered that he still didn’t trust Martin as far as he could throw him. I knew the feeling.
 

Martin stiffened. “What the hell do you mean, the truth?”

Robert leant over to get my attention. “Did you tell her about me? About how I travelled through time?”

“No. I didn’t get to that part.”

“THAT part!” Martin snapped. “What part did you get to exactly?”

I stared back at him, all the feelings of distrust and betrayal that had been building up in me over the last six months finally spilling over. “I told her about how you are a lying hypocrite who secretly publishes articles about time travel under a pen name, Martin.” I paused. “Or should I say,
Nick Cooper.
”
 

He stared back at me for an incredibly long minute. If I didn’t know better I would have sworn I saw a blush of red crept up his neck. Although he remained composed, his eyes showed an uncharacteristic fear in them. I knew then that I was right, right about the Nick Cooper pen name at least. Even if he tried to deny it, I wouldn’t believe him.
 

Robert looked back and forth between us. “Who is Nick Cooper?” he asked, breaking the silent tension.

I sat back, still staring at Martin. “Good question.” I shook my head slightly. “A time traveller sympathiser, apparently.”

Robert snorted. “I wouldn’t mind meeting one of those.”

I raised my eyebrows at him. “You already have. Martin Anderson IS Nick Cooper.”
 

Martin replied in the same grave quiet tone he had used on me in the hospital ward the day before. “Anna...” He shook his head. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes I do,” I replied confidentially, even though to be honest I wasn’t 100% sure I did. I knew, at least, about his secret life as a time travel detective. I had read all of the Nick Cooper articles, from start to finish, a dozen times each. Each of them had revealed more and more of his personal back story, about how he had spent years doing that kind of research, that sort of field work. Whenever there was a claim of time travel, whenever some nut turned up on a website, or a tabloid paper, claiming to have travelled through time, Martin Anderson – sorry Nick Cooper – would be there to investigate, to write it up.
 

And yet, by day he would stand up the front of a lecture theatre, claiming to be the country’s leading expert on theoretical physics, lecturing to a bunch of naive, malleable students, telling them that time travel was impossible, when he knew it was anything but.

I was angry. “Why do you do it Martin? Why do you lie to us all? Why do you help the man in black to cover up time travel, when you know that it is possible?”

He stared down at his desk for a minute, then finally raised his head to look at me.
 

“How did you find out?”

Chapter Ten.

“Do you have any weed?” Robert asked me, as we sat on the balcony of my second story bedroom.

“Seriously, is there any second of the day that you are not smoking some kind of substance?” I asked. He had already been through two packets of cigarettes that day, and Martin had been footing the bill so far. Robert hadn’t brought any cash from him from 1974, and I was a broke student, is how I explained the situation to Martin, who’d handed over a wad of cash. Probably out of guilt.
 

Robert shrugged. “Calm down, everyone smokes.”

I looked at him warily. “Not as many people smoke
now
, you know. It’s really bad for you.” I looked out at the view, which encompassed most of the University campus.
 

“So - do you have any weed?” he repeated.

I glanced over at a pot plant on my balcony, which had at one point sprouted the exact kind of plant he was referring to. But I had neglected it and it had died. I shook my head. “No, not on me. I can ask my flatmates. Or we could head down to the skate park...”

Robert pulled a face at the suggestion. He didn’t seem eager to leave the house. I would have thought that he’d be much more eager to get out and about, to explore a
different time era,
but mostly he just seemed terrified. He’d said that the city looked so similar, yet so different, to how he’d left it. He’d shuddered as he remarked how eerie it was.

“It’s okay, we should probably just stay here.” He took another drag on his cigarette.
 

I took a sly glance at the outfit he was wearing. “You know, we should probably get you some different clothes…”

He shook his head. “No way man. The shit you guys wear is crazy.”

I looked down at the plain black dress and tights combo I had on. “This is crazy?”

“Well, not you. But some of things the people at the university were wearing.”

“That’s just students.” I looked out across the road, where the university sat. “Hardly any of them have any sense of style.”

“You don’t seem like an academic,” Robert remarked, flicking ash over the side of the balcony. It landed in the garden below.

“In what way?” I looked at him and smiled, taking his statement as a compliment.

He shrugged again. “You just don’t.” He seemed to be thinking. “Who was that Chinese girl you were talking to before?”
 

I cringed slightly at the way he’d referenced her — there was just something so
70s
about everything he said and did.
 
And not always in a good way.
 

“Connie,” I replied. “She’s another grad student. Another student of Martin’s.”

“Is she your friend?”

“Allegedly.”

I suddenly wondered if Robert had liked her, thought she was hot, which wouldn’t be totally outside the realms of possibility I supposed: underneath her oversized hoodies and constant scowl she wasn’t unattractive. “Why are you asking about her? Do you have a thing for her?”

Robert shook his head, causing his black shaggy Joan-Jett cut to swing back and forth over his face. “It’s not that.” He paused and looked faraway for a second. “I have a fiancé, you know...”

“Shit,” I said, taking in the reality of the situation. If Robert was stranded in time, away from everyone he knew and loved, then on the other side of the time divide, 1974, there must be people who were wondering where the hell he was.

He waved a hand dismissively as though he didn’t want to talk about it, and returned to the subject of Connie. “I’m just worried about her now, about whatever it was that you said to her.” He turned to look at me. “Considering what happened to us yesterday.”
 

I thought back to the hospital, to the man in black and Bianca and the guns.
 

“I just told her the truth about Martin,” I replied, quietly. “Nothing about you.” Still there was an ominous dread filling me, slowly but surely, making me feel that something bad was coming for all of us.
 

***
 

We were supposed to meet Martin later that night, back at the university. Whatever Martin had wanted to show me that morning, his secret ‘file’ on me, was still a mystery. The day had gotten away from us, progressed as a Tuesday at the University usually did, as Martin had shockingly —
 
to me at least — broken our first meeting to go and
teach classes.
 

He’d said we would be better off, safer, meeting back there after hours. At least then Connie wouldn’t be there. She may have enjoyed studying during any waking hour, but I was fairly sure she went to bed at 9pm.
 

After a quick pizza dinner from the pizzeria next to my house, Robert and I headed out at 8:40. We were stopped outside my bedroom door by Jennifer who was still asking about my overdue rent money. She looked Robert up and down suspiciously as she spoke.
 

“Sorry I scared you this morning,” he offered sheepishly, once she’d finished grilling me.
 

“Don’t worry about it. I’m used to Anna having strange men sleeping in her room,” she replied. I gave her a look as Robert smirked at me.

“Is that so?” he asked.
 

“I’ll have the money in two days, I promise,” I cut in, not wanting to get into an argument about the rent, of all things. It wasn’t a lie: I would have my scholarship money in my account by Thursday and I’d be able to back pay her everything I owed.
 

“Fine,” she said, stepping aside to let us through. “Whatever. But you better have it to me by the end of the week, or I’m going to have to put your room up for rent.”

“Whatever,” I muttered under my breath, as we pushed past her.

Robert and I headed out the front door. There had finally been a brief break in the weather that evening: it was still chilly but the rain had eased up. I shivered slightly into my coat but was grateful that I wouldn’t have to run through anymore rain or ruin anymore shoes or hairstyles.
 

We took off at a brisk pace towards the main part of campus. The building opposite my flat was technically a university building, but it housed security offices, not teaching rooms or lecture theatres. The main part, where the physics building was located, was a good ten minute walk away. The campus was almost devoid of students that time of night: there would be a few stranglers in the computer labs and the science library, but at this time of night, at this stage of semester, it would be rare to bump into anyone.
 

We headed up the main road back to the physics building, where we were to have a rendezvous with Martin at 9pm. I pushed on the door to the main entrance, concerned it would be locked at that hour, but it opened easily. Inside we were greeted with the harsh glare of fluorescent lighting and I squinted as it flooded my eyes.
 

“I don’t like this place,” Robert remarked as we walked back up the same corridor to Martin’s office that we had been in earlier that day, passing the student lounge on our left.
 

“I’m not that keen on it either, having spent practically six years of my life inside this thing.”

“You must be really dedicated to your study.” Robert checked out the empty labs and bright white classrooms filled with projectors and crappy plastic chairs sprawled throughout them.
 

I nodded. “I am. It’s everything to me.”

We reached Martin’s office at five minutes to the hour, and I was surprised to find him already there. The way he had been acting lately I half suspected him to arrive late, flustered and barely dressed. But peeking my head inside I saw a Martin I actually recognised for once. He was sitting upright at his desk, poring over a paper and sipping a coffee, his hair and suit jacket neat and unruffled for the first time in days.
 

I knocked slightly to let him know were there. He looked up and waved for us to come inside, looking calm and confident as though nothing unusual had happened in the last few days. I remembered how annoying I could find him when he was acting superior and condescending. He was probably going to reassure us that everything was fine and normal, that we had imagined everything, that time travel was impossible, and he wasn’t Nick Cooper and Robert was actually an escaped mental patient.
 

“Anna,” he greeted me. “Are you prepared for the seminar tomorrow?”

I assumed he was referring to his graduate seminar the following day — it was a special one off lecture on quantum physics that I was supposed to present an introductory paper at. “Are you serious?” I asked him. “That’s what you want to talk about? The seminar tomorrow?”