The Trouble With Time (8 page)

“In theory I should be able to get you back to the same minute you left. First we have to go to wherever Quinn left from.”

“Why?”

Jace picked up the cuff from the pile on the table. It was stylish, made from matt silvery metal, and turned out to have a touch screen and buttons and a tiny ice-blue light that pulsed every few seconds. Near the top of the screen the metal was dented and scratched. Jace turned it in his hands, strong capable hands ingrained with dirt, the nails black-rimmed. “This is how Quinn got you here. You set the time and place, and the TiTrav does all the rest. Press these two buttons at the same time, and off you go. Anyone you’re holding on to goes with you. It seems to be working okay, though it got a bit battered in the fight. Only problem is, he’s used the limiter. It won’t go anywhere except the location and time he set.”

“Where’s that?”

“I can’t tell where the co-ordinates are. The time’s 25
^th
March 2050, 7.15 pm.”

“Is 2050 your own time?”

“I suppose it is now. I left in 2045, and I’ve been here five years.”

“So time travel is a thing people do – will do – did do in 2045?” Time travel really messed with your tenses.

“No. The government had it locked down. Time travel to the past’s hardly ever sanctioned. It’s just too risky. The minimum penalty for unauthorized travel to the past is fifteen years, no remission. Part of my job was tracing illegal time travel.”

Floss considered this insight into the future, while simultaneously modifying her assessment of Jace Carnady. He was more intelligent than she’d thought, though still a killer, unpredictable and violent. Short on social niceties, too. Though she needed him, she wouldn’t be sorry to see the last of him.

“Can’t you take the limiter off?”

“I haven’t got the code, and I don’t want to try to get in in case I stop it working. Then we’d both be stuck here. There’s a man I know who should be able to do it, if he’s still around . . .”

“Is that illegal?”

Jace nodded. “And I doubt I have citizen status any more. So, d’you want to come?”

However dodgy, criminal and uncertain his plan, whatever her abhorrence of him, this was her only chance. She said, “I don’t want to stay here.”

“We’ll leave when you’ve finished eating . . . actually, you’re probably wasting your time eating, you’ll just throw it up again.” Jace swiped and tapped the screen, saying absently, “When you do get back, you might want to be careful, in case they send someone else after you.”

At that moment, Floss didn’t care. She just longed to be away from here, back in her proper life, even if Jace Carnady was right and she would be at risk. She wouldn’t mind having to be careful. She put down her spoon.

He glanced at her unfinished plate. “Are you done?”

Floss nodded. She’d lost enthusiasm for the meal after what Jace had said about her throwing it up.

“Then let’s go.” He took off his jacket and undid the buckle of his leather belt, threaded the belt through the cuff and fastened it again.

“Why not put it on your wrist? Aren’t you supposed to wear it?”

“It’s locked. I don’t have the code.”

“So how did you get it off Quinn, then?” Pause, while Floss realized how he had got it off Quinn, and imagined him doing it. “Oh.”

He seemed to find her revulsion faintly amusing. “At least he was dead. There are some nasty stories from the early days, when more of these were kicking around.” Jace put on his jacket and stashed the pile on the table into various pockets. He added a rusty tobacco tin from the shelf, then did a visual check of the room, apparently not finding anything else he needed to take with him. “Hold on to me. Grab my belt.”

He put his arm around her waist. Floss tried not to breathe in the rank stench of his clothes and body.

“I hope he set off from his apartment,” he muttered. “We don’t want to materialize into an office full of people wanting to know where Quinn is.”

Friday, 25
^th
March 2050

Jace’s plan, should they appear in the Event Modification Authority’s offices, had been simple; use Quinn’s gun to threaten the eight or so people likely to be present before they could raise the alarm, then run away. He could see there were various problems with this. Serious problems, problems that would likely result in sudden death. So it was a relief when they arrived instead in a luxury penthouse which had to belong to Quinn. Its floor-to-ceiling windows gave a panoramic vista of City of London skyscrapers, their lights sparkling in the night.

While the girl was spewing macerated rabbit in red wine on to the marble floor (displaying a pleasing rear view in old-fashioned tight jeans) he did a quick tour of the place to make sure it was empty, then sat at the desk. Luckily, given Jace did not know the password, Quinn had left the computer on, expecting to return immediately. “Food. French bread and cheddar. Diary.”

“Does it ever get better?” Floss gasped, gazing up at him, her eyes huge in a white face. She was a looker, no doubt about it, even doubled up heaving her guts out.

“Probably. There are pills you can take.” He turned back to the screen. Quinn had an appointment that evening with a woman called Jinghua. Jace went to his mail and after a bit of research cancelled it, fastidiously pastiching Quinn’s writing style:
Sweetheart, something’s come up. We’re going to have to reschedule
. . . Five years ago the man had been married and living in a Fulham mews; apparently he was now playing the field. Or had been. The bread and cheese arrived and he took a bite.
God, that’s good
. He looked up to see Floss about to clean the floor with a cloth she must have found in the kitchen.

“Vacwash.” The machine hummed into the room, homing in on the mess, nudging Floss out of the way. She perched on the sofa arm and watched as the floor became pristine once more. The vacwash sprayed an ocean perfume and put itself away in the kitchen visible through an archway off the living room.

“What do we do next?” she said.

“Nothing until I’ve had a shower. Make yourself at home. If you want food or anything, tell the computer. Don’t answer the door.”

The shower was fantastic, his first for five years. There had been no running water where he came from, unless you counted the rain. In summer he used to dip in the canal while fishing. No soap, though, or shampoo. He smiled with pure pleasure at the hot water running down his back as the shower went through the leisurely cycle he had selected.

When he’d finished he found scissors and trimmed his beard, then used Quinn’s shaver set to stubble. Jace hadn’t liked his bearded backwoodsman look, but for anyone living rough the style had its advantages; it was effort-free and kept your neck warm.

He walked naked through the bedroom and into the vast walk-in wardrobe. Who needed this many clothes? Quinn had been his height, luckily, and had lost some weight in the last five years, so they were much the same size. His taste wasn’t quite Jace’s, but everything was expensive, stylish and nearly new. He’d clearly done as he intended, and become obscenely rich. Bastard. Jace chose britches, a shirt and a gilet, and put them on.

He picked up his pile of old clothes. He had not realized, while wearing them year after year, day and night, just how much they stank. After taking them to the chute, he went into the living room, carrying his own boots since Quinn’s were a size too small. He had wondered if a bit of polish would make them pass, but now that he took a good look at them, he could see they were beyond redemption.

The girl was sitting feet up on the sofa eating the last slice of a pizza and drinking champagne, vintage music pounding, a light display pulsing. As he walked in she swung her feet to the floor, gave him a startled look, and told the computer to put on the main lights and stop the music.

In the sudden silence she said, “Is that what people are wearing these days?”

He glanced down. “Yes. Why? This is maybe a bit fancier than I’d choose . . .” He handed her a comb and the scissors while she stared at his altered appearance. “I need you to cut my hair.”

“I’ll give it a go.” She swallowed the last mouthful of pizza. “After that we’ll go and see your friend and get me home? How short do you want it?”

“Just shorter. I’m going to catch up with stuff first, find out what’s going on. All my information’s five years out of date.”

“Can’t you do that after?”

“No.”

He pulled out a dining chair and sat in front of a long mirror. Floss combed and snipped carefully, studying the result in the mirror as she worked. He was amused to note his transformation from squalor to respectability had made her less wary of him, more relaxed. Amazing what soap, water and new clothes could do. She started to speak, stopped, paused, started again. “That man. Why did you kill him?”

“I needed his TiTrav. His time travel device.”

“You didn’t have to kill him. You had him overpowered. You could have just left him there.”

“Yeah, I could. That’s what he did to me. Left me to die. After he’d handcuffed my wrists and ankles, then tied them together.”

Jace would never forget that night. When dawn came and he finally got free, he’d realized he had another mountain to climb just to survive. It had taken him three days to trap his first rabbit, two weeks to make fire. Ravenous, disgusted, he’d had to eat the meat slimy and raw. The cold at night had made sleep impossible except in snatches interspersed with jumping about to warm up.

“Why did he leave you to die?”

“Because I found out he was a crook. He’d killed a man, too.”

“Who is – was he?”

“We worked together. He was my boss.”

“When we arrived, you seemed to be waiting for him. You were right there, you jumped him straight away.”

Jace almost smiled. “Ah well, he didn’t search me carefully enough. He missed a locator in my pocket. Careless, that. I’d borrowed it for the job I was working on.” From Kayla. His heart beat faster at the thought of seeing her again. “He didn’t know I’d got one. I’d forgotten myself.”

“What’s a –”

“They give an alert when someone is about to time in. I waited five years for that little beep to go off. Wore it round my neck.”

Jace thought for a minute, listening to the crisp sound the scissors made. They’d been close as brothers; he knew how Quinn’s mind worked. He had stayed in Bunhill Fields in the belief Quinn would begin to wish he had killed him outright; would start to obsess that Jace was not dead, would, in the end, return to check and set his mind at rest. Gradually as the weeks and months passed, this conviction faded; Jace had expected to die alone in that future London. The adrenaline rush when the locator had finally sounded, the almost unbearable revival of hope, the fear he’d somehow cock up the chance to get away . . .

“What if people come looking for him here? Perhaps we shouldn’t be hanging around.”

“I won’t stay longer than I have to. I need to get this sorted out. I’m assuming there’s a warrant out for me. We should be okay for a day or two.”

She didn’t say anything for a while, but concentrated on cutting his hair. She wasn’t doing a bad job. “You’re not a hairdresser, are you?”

She laughed. “No. I used to cut my boyfriend’s hair at uni.”

When she’d finished Jace sat down again at the computer screen. Floss wandered around until she found Quinn’s Kindle and scrolled through the contents. His selection of novels not being to her liking, with Jace’s help she downloaded one of her choice and immersed herself in it on the sofa.

Jace ordered three different pairs of boots his size using Quinn’s Amazon account, figuring that one pair at least should fit him. As an afterthought, he added some motion sickness patches to his order. This done, he searched for
Wanted Criminals UK
, and on the Crimestoppers site selected
London
and
Timecrime
. The first image on the page was his, rotating slowly to show him from all angles. He’d expected this, but that didn’t make it any more welcome. He rated the full five stars, and maximum reward for information leading to a conviction. Beneath the photo it said:

NAME: Jason CARNADY

NICKNAME: Jace

CRIME TYPE: Timecrime

DATE: 2045

CARNADY is wanted on suspicion of theft of a TiTrav and illegal time travel.

SEX: Male

AGE: 34

HEIGHT:

185 cm (approx 6' 1")

BUILD: Muscular

HAIR COLOUR: Dark

This was what he’d expected – no point dwelling on it. He went to the kitchen and found a knife, sharpened it to a razor edge, washed it twice and poured brandy over it. He took off his shirt, wiped brandy over his upper arm, and sat in front of the mirror again. Microchips were not inserted far under the skin – you needed one all the time when paying for things and identifying yourself, so there were few reasons anyone would want to remove them. Pity it was his right arm, and he was right-handed.
Fuck, that hurt
. Blood ran down his arm. He gulped some brandy straight from the bottle, then slid the point of the knife into the cut he had made.

“What are you doing?” Floss was staring at him in horror, book forgotten in her hand.

“Cutting out my chip.”

“I can’t believe people are
microchipped
in 2045, like dogs.” She got up and came over to take a look.

“Once America got them, it was just a matter of time till we did.”

“The civil liberties people are okay with that, are they?”

“It got passed on the nod when New Alliance got its massive majority in ’33. Voters’ main worry back then was timecrime screwing up the future, not personal freedom. They probably still should be worrying, but they don’t know that. And there’s the convenience – a chip and a dataphone and you’re set.” He got back to work, then drew in his breath sharply.
Hell’s teeth
. He couldn’t see properly what he was doing, that was the problem.

“D’you want help with that?” she asked, uncertainly. He handed her the knife. “What am I looking for? How big is it?”

“About the size and shape of a grain of rice.”