The Trouble With Time (22 page)

Floss hurried to the gate and grabbed Ryker’s outstretched hand. She clambered over, sweating and palpitating. “D’you think they can get in here?”

“Let’s take a look.”

Together they walked round the perimeter of the Fields. Though the edges were overgrown they could make out that all the walls and railings were still intact. The gate at the far end from the one Floss had climbed was padlocked.

“Maybe that’s why there are so many rabbits.”

“I dunno, foxes and cats can get in between the bars.”

“Shall we try another five years’ time?”

“Okay.” He thought of something and turned towards her. “How long are you thinking of spending on this?”

“As long as it takes.”

“It could take weeks. Longer. Look, I’m sorry for the geezer, but I got stuff to do.”

“You don’t have to come with me. I’ll be all right on my own.”

Ryker’s eyebrows went up. “Oh yeah? I just saved you from being a tiger’s dinner. I can’t save you if I’m not here. If we don’t find anything in 2185 let’s go home and talk about what to do next over a cup of tea.”

Thursday, 5
^th
May 2050

Quinn wasn’t told that Floss had failed to come in to work until he was about to go home, an hour later than usual. He’d had a lunch appointment with the Secretary of State, and meetings all afternoon and into the evening; he was just clearing his desk before leaving when Kayla knocked and walked in to his office.

“Ansel, I thought you’d want to know. Floss hasn’t come in today. She called Farouk to say she’d overslept and would be in late, but she hasn’t arrived and she’s not answering her phone.”

Quinn frowned. “You should have told me earlier. Why didn’t you ring me?”

“I did. I rang this afternoon. If you checked your phone more often . . .”

Quinn ignored this. “Maybe she’s ill. Have you sent someone round to her flat?”

“No. I couldn’t see the point.” Kayla added, barely concealing her satisfaction, “Perhaps she’s run off. She didn’t want to be here, after all.”

“Where could she go? She doesn’t know anyone here. You should have done something this morning.”

“D’you want me to send someone to her flat now? Farouk’s still here.”

“No.” Quinn got to his feet. “I’ll go myself.”

On the way Quinn rang Floss, and got her voice mail. He wondered what had happened. Even Kayla admitted that Floss was a conscientious employee; if she was ill, she would have rung the department. She’d rung to say she would be late. Perhaps she’d had some accident. It even crossed his mind she might have attempted suicide; though she seemed level-headed enough, he did not know her well and she might be more fragile than she appeared. If, as he was convinced, she was in love with him, she might have heard that Kayla was his girlfriend and despaired, alone in a strange world. He remembered her telling him he was her only friend.

He reached Floss’s block of flats and pressed bell number 633, paused, then rang it again, allowing plenty of time for her to answer. When she didn’t, he went inside and explained the situation to the concierge, prepared to write a warrant if the man was awkward. In the event he was helpful; he got out his master key and went up in the lift with Quinn, opened the door and let him walk in first.

The place was just as Quinn remembered it; as neat and tidy as if she had never been there. Then he noticed her phone lying beside the computer. He checked the bathroom; empty; then looked inside the wardrobe. The clothes they had bought together were hanging there. No note. The concierge, though he recalled Floss, could not remember when he last saw her. Quinn got rid of the man and opened her computer. Nothing at all; it had been restored to factory settings. His frown deepened.

Quinn left the building. Whether something had happened to her or she had run off, he would have to alert the police. He did this on the short walk between Floss’s block and his own, sending them a photo of her and confidential details of her move from 2015.

Back in his own flat a couple of hours later than usual, he poured himself a Glenfiddich single malt and ordered a meal. He remembered it was a Thursday, his day for checking out the future. Perhaps his journal could throw some light on Floss’s disappearance. Before writing up the day’s events as he would normally do, he went into his dressing room, knelt by the ottoman and reached for the TiTrav in its hiding place. It was not there. He felt around, thinking it had slipped off the ledge. His fingers encountered stiff paper. He pulled out an envelope with his name handwritten on the front, and tore it open.

Hi Ansel,

You always said if there was anything you could do to help me, you would – so I imagine you must be pleased to find there was a way after all. Fancy your turning out to have a TiTrav, the very thing I need!

Thank you so much,

Floss

X

Quinn sat down heavily on the ottoman, staring at the disingenuous note. He’d misread Floss; had thought her resigned to her new life; had missed her determination to return to her own time. Had he even guessed right, thinking her in love with him? This no longer seemed likely to be the case. She’d played him. He’d known she was intelligent; had not realized she was intelligent enough to run rings around him. He didn’t understand how she had got into his flat and discovered his TiTrav. No one knew about it except Ryker, and he didn’t know where it was hidden. And Floss didn’t know Ryker. Even if they’d somehow met, he had no reason to help her – he was a self-serving cowardly little rat. And if Ryker
had
been involved, what could Quinn do? Blustering at him would be humiliating and achieve nothing; shooting him would be foolish. He would need Ryker once he had got the TiTrav back or obtained another one, which he was determined to do.

Floss now had proof that he, the Chief of IEMA Intelligence, was involved in timecrime. On the plus side, she was unlikely to use this knowledge. Having got what she wanted, she had no reason to return to 2050 to make trouble for him. All the same, he went to the living room and sat at his desk. With the TiTrav gone, the only incriminating evidence that remained was his journal.

“Computer.”

Quinn had an emergency deletion system already in place. He now went through the process, which overwrote the files multiple times, scrambled the file name, and truncated the file size to nothing before finally and irrecoverably unlinking it from the system.

He fetched a lighter, went on to the terrace and set fire to the edge of Floss’s note. A crescent of flame, bright in the twilight, spread across the paper, consuming her writing. Grey flakes scattered in the wind, until only the corner he held remained, burning his fingers. He let go and watched it swirl away from him into the heart of the city.

June 1
^st
2185 was hot and humid, but the temperature wasn’t the first thing that struck them. Bunhill Fields had changed. There were trodden pathways through the trees, and stacked timber and galvanized water tanks surrounded the warden’s house. A sizeable pyramid of empty wine bottles glinted greenly in the sun. Behind the house an attempt at a vegetable garden doubled as a rabbits’ café, with a naked shop window dummy standing in the middle. Probably intended as a scarecrow, she was covered in bird droppings and leaned at a drunken angle with a pigeon on her bald head. Floss and Ryker stood and contemplated this incongruous sight.

“Be fair, it’s sort of working,” said Ryker. “I can’t see any crows.”

They walked towards the little house and Floss knocked on the door while Ryker peered through the window into the dark interior. When no one answered, he joined her, pushed the door open and went in. Floss followed him. They were assailed by a badgery smell of unchanged bedding made worse by the heat, and a fly buzzed and banged against the window panes. But the room was tidy and organized; someone had been living here for some time. There were stacks of books, and tools in a row. A church candle burned inside a tall glass jar, strings of onions hung from the ceiling and there was a bowl of small apples on the table.

“D’you think it’s Jace?” Floss said. “Or maybe Quinn dumped someone else here, without leaving him tied up.”

“Only one way to find out,” Ryker said, helping himself to an apple. “Let’s wait for a bit, then if he doesn’t turn up, try again this evening.” He took a bite, then looked closer. “Ugh, this one’s got a maggot.”

They went outside again. Ryker took off his jacket. So did Floss. They sat on a nearby tombstone under a shady tree to wait.

For a long time after his arrival in 2180, Jace had felt uneasy going more than a few minutes’ walk away from the Fields, afraid he might miss a chance of escape. Gradually, as the years went by, though he still wore the locator on a chain round his neck day and night he’d given up hope; he no longer expected Quinn or an IEMA research team to appear. At night he dreamed of escape; but in his dreams something always went wrong at the last moment, and he remained stuck here.

For the last year or two, he had taken to foraging further afield.

On this sweltering June day he had gone fishing in the Regents Canal. While waiting for the float to bob he was doing his best to wash himself and his underwear, an unsatisfactory process without soap, but pleasantly cooling. After ten minutes he levered himself out of the canal and draped his ragged boxers over a shrub to dry. He checked his fishing line and chucked a few more worms in the water.

He had taught himself to fish by trial and error, having no experience of it in his former life. At first he had thought fishing in the abundance of nearby ponds might be easier than trapping rabbits. It was certainly easier than attempting to grow food, as he had later discovered – the sheer variety of pests and blight you could attract with one small vegetable patch had to be seen to be believed. There were plenty of fish swimming about wherever water had gathered, lots of different types he could not identify, all presumably edible. Lacking rod or line, he had attempted to catch them with his hands. The fish were too quick and slippery for him, even in shallow water; he wasted many hours in futile pursuit. Discouraged, cold, his clothes never dry and with each passing day shorter and colder, he had focused his efforts on the rabbits.

He would never forget that first winter; the bitter cold, the gnawing hunger, the constant struggle against overwhelming odds, the loneliness, depression and sense of loss. Bottles of wine and spirits had survived better than almost everything else, and huddled in an indestructible orange nylon quilt each night, shaking with cold, Jace drank to drown out the silence. But after a while he knew he had to stop. His determination not to be beaten mattered to him more than temporary alcoholic escape. He imagined Quinn finding him a bleary-eyed drunken wreck, and putting him down with contempt. Hate was a big motivator to survive.

The next spring he’d got lucky scavenging in derelict apartments, and found a reel of nylon thread. He’d thought he was on the home stretch, and that all he needed now was hooks, which he made out of wire coat hangers bent and filed to shape. But after many hours of fruitless hanging about various pond margins, he had done some research in a tattered encyclopaedia and realized he needed a float – a cork from a wine bottle would do – plus something to weight the line. It had taken him some time to finesse the equipment to a point where he caught his first fish; but time was something he had plenty of.

These days he was quite good at fishing and if the weather was fine, enjoyed it. The biggest fish lived in the canal.

Seeing the float dip, he tugged the line smoothly towards him, feeling something resisting; then he saw his catch beneath the water and flipped it on to the bank. The fish struggled against the air, twisting silver and white with orange fins. He killed it quickly with a blow to the head from the heavy stick he kept for that purpose. The fish wasn’t all that big, about eight inches long, and he needed more. He set the line again, and sprawled idle and naked on the warm stone, reading in a desultory fashion, one eye on the float, until the heat got too much and he moved into dappled shade. He had hacked his beard as short as he could for summer, but it still made him hot. Bees hummed on the flowers, loud in the silence, and he glanced up to see the brilliant blue flash of a kingfisher darting from the greenery. The air smelled of honeysuckle. For a moment he felt almost happy. Summer was his best time, winter a recurring ordeal he avoided thinking about. The heat made him drowsy and his eyes closed. He drifted off . . .

He was lying in bed at home, breathing in the scent of Kayla’s hair, her warm body curled next to him . . . the alarm sounded, an insistent beep rousing him from sleep. Time to get up. Jace’s eyes opened to sunshine, blue sky and green leaves. The hard ground dug into his hip. For a moment he was disorientated, then he realized what had woken him. The locator round his neck had gone off. He sat up with a jolt and checked the distance and direction. Bunhill Fields.
Shit
. He jumped to his feet. Someone was about to time in, and he was the best part of a mile away, and whoever it was might go before he reached them.

Cursing, he grabbed his britches and zipped them hastily, pulled on his boots, abandoned everything else and set off at a run for Bunhill Fields, hope and fear raging inside him. Though he’d cleared a pathway to the canal, its surface was uneven, tangled with roots and debris. Jace hurtled down the rough track, preferring to chance a broken ankle or an encounter with a lion, rather than risk missing whoever had timed in. He did not slacken speed, sweat stinging his eyes and running down his chest, until he reached City Road. Near the big gates he slowed to get his breath and see who – if anyone – was there, before they saw him. Quinn would have a gun, and use it. If Quinn was there, Jace needed to take him by surprise. If Quinn was there, Jace was going to kill him.

Floss, dressed for April in her smart wool blend trousers, was too hot. She tied up her hair to get it off her neck, and took off her boots and socks. Ryker wandered over to one of the tanks, and splashed his face with water. A black tomcat emerged from the undergrowth and stared at Floss as if he’d never seen a human female before. He probably hadn’t. She held out her hand. “Who’s a beautiful pusscat, then?” After considering this compliment carefully, the cat walked warily towards her. “Come on, I won’t hurt you . . .”