Time Leap (25 page)

We were led out of the
Palace area and up some steps to take us back to where we came
from. As we were leaving, the guard said something in a serious
tone to us all. Magic nodded and replied in a similar tone. Once we
were outside of the main entrance, I asked him what was
said.

“
He stressed
that we must not breathe a word of what we have seen here today. He
helped us because he sees us as brothers, and we should all help
each other – but other guards would not have allowed us to leave
with our lives. He thinks Qin Shi Huang was a great man who
accomplished what none had managed before him – to unite so many
kingdoms under one country. He fears for the future because there
is no–one else like Qin Shi Huang, and there are too many against
the Qin government.”

“
We were lucky
that he found us then,” I remarked. “How’s the ankle
Nik?”

“
Much better,”
she said. “At first, when he put the bandage on, it felt cold, but
now it feels warm. The heat is soothing, and I’m glad it’s not
broken.”

“
Well, we
don’t know how long we’re going to be here, so you’d better get a
good rest,” I said.

“
Still nothing
from your phone?” she asked.

“
No, nothing.
It’s as dead as…” I was going to say, ‘as dead as Emperor Qin,’ but
thought better of it. “A dodo.”

“
What’s a
dodo?” asked Magic.

“
Oh, it’s a
flightless bird which will become extinct in about nineteen hundred
years’ time,” I replied. Magic looked at me blankly. “You still
haven’t got your head around this time travel idea, have
you?”

Magic shook his head.
“It’s hard to take in… it feels like a dream just now. A very real
dream.” Magic paused for a moment, and then said, “Joe, what will
happen if we can’t get home?”

“
Don’t worry
about that – we’ll get home, I’m sure of it.” But the truth was, if
I couldn’t get my phone to work, we were going to be stuck in the
year 209 BC.

***

Thirty–Six

Having accepted that we
were not going to return home for a while – if ever – we looked for
somewhere to spend the night. There weren’t really a lot of
options. In the distance, Magic spotted smoke rising from some
buildings, and we decided to investigate. We had already consumed
the food supplies we’d brought with us, and I didn’t know where our
next meal was coming from, or where we would rest our heads that
night. So finding food and accommodation was a priority.

As we reached the
buildings, we realised this was temporary accommodation – probably
for the labourers who were employed on the building of the
Mausoleum. I had read that 700,000 people were hired to complete
the tomb, but all of them had to be redeployed by the government to
fight with the army and quell the peasants’ uprisings.

If this was a labourer’s
camp, then understandably there was a quiet and deserted feel to
the village, though we could hear children’s and women’s voices at
one end. We walked in that the direction of the sounds to
investigate. A woman must have heard us approach, and carefully
came out of a small wooden building brandishing a large
knife.

“
Stay away!”
she said in Xi’an dialect.

“
We mean you
no harm,” Magic replied. “We seek only shelter for the
night.”

“
Where are you
from?” the women asked, dropping the knife to her side.

Magic told her we were
from the West, and had come to visit relatives who were working on
the building of the Qin Mausoleum. We had not realised they had
been taken away to fight with the soldiers. The woman seemed to
believe his story, and said we could stay the night if we didn’t
mind helping her with a few things. Her husband and his younger
brother were away with the other labourers and she had no–one to
help with gathering food or with other chores. We said we’d be glad
to help. The woman also asked about Niki’s ankle, and offered to
take a look at it for her.

As we were helping to
harvest the vegetables that had been planted in a neighbouring
field, it was a chance to talk to Magic.

“
I’m
impressed, Magic,” I said.

“
Impressed
with what Uncle Joe?”

“
You speak the
language, and you know the right things to say.”

“
Ah yes – my
parents taught me a lot. But they never told me about time
travel.”

“
I guess not.
How do you feel about staying here?”

“
In 209 BC you
mean?” I nodded. “I don’t know… maybe I could get used to it. I’d
miss my phone and computer though. And I’m not sure I’d like to eat
traditional food all the time.”

“
I know what
you mean.”

We took the food back to
the make–shift home for cooking. Niki and the woman, whom was
called Yong, were trying to have a conversation.

“
She’s
teaching me the local dialect,” Nik explained. “It’s not so
difficult.”

“
What are you
teaching
her?
” I
asked.

“
About men,”
she replied with a smile.

“
Which is
harder?” I asked.

“
The
language.”

We ate a simple dinner
made by Yong and Niki, with home–made wine. After we’d finished,
Yong sang to us. It was a beautiful melody, and we all clapped in
appreciation. Magic sang his favourite Karaoke song, which Yong
thought was very funny and very beautiful at the same time, though
she couldn’t understand a word. I wondered what she thought of us…
we must have seemed very strange to her. By this time, we were all
tired, and Yong showed us where we could sleep. Nik and I shared
one bed, and Magic the other. It was warm and cosy there and we
felt safe in Yong’s small home. I soon drifted off to
sleep.

*

We awoke the next morning
to the sound of voices. It was light, but couldn’t have been much
more than seven. Yong came to our bed urgently.

“
Soldiers here
– are they looking for you?” Niki understood the words ‘soldiers’
and ‘you’, which was enough to get us out of bed
quickly.

“
Someone must
have told them,” I said, “maybe the doctor?”

We had no time to
philosophise about who informed on us or why; we just had to escape
as soon as we could. Magic was already awake and getting dressed
when we went to his room.

“
I heard… we
have to go now.”

We quickly said our
goodbyes and hugged Yong, who gave us some food to take with us.
Soldiers were searching other homes, and would be at Yong’s very
soon. Nik could not run with her damaged ankle, so Magic carried
her. We had reached about fifty metres from the house when I heard
a ringing noise, and then a swoosh as an arrow landed just a couple
of metres behind us. We stopped to see four soldiers, two of whom
were aiming crossbows in our direction. There was nowhere to hide,
and nowhere to go. We turned to face the soldiers. They did not
look at all friendly, and were getting closer and
closer.

“
You two run!”
urged Niki, but there was no way we would leave her at the mercy of
these killers.

I was mentally preparing
myself to fight, as the soldiers were now just a few yards away.
This was not the way I wanted this trip to end.

“
What’s that
sound?” asked Magic as the ominous–looking warriors stopped just
two paces from us.

“
Oh my god –
it’s the alarm on my phone!” I whispered. I quickly removed the
phone from my pocket – it was working! “It must have been the
heat…”

“
Joe, just do
it – now!” Niki hissed as one of the soldiers grabbed her arm. I
changed the date as Niki kneed the soldier in the groin and she and
Magic grabbed my arms – and we were gone.

The scene had changed.
The workers village was no more and the soldiers had vanished.
Instead in the distance we could see tanks driving across the
countryside. “What year is this?” Niki asked.

“
It looks like
the Japanese invasion of China,” Magic said, “so it must
be…”

“
Nineteen
thirty–six,” I said. The others looked at me with puzzled
brows.

“
I just
entered any number!” I exclaimed. “I thought you wanted to get away
as quickly as possible! Ready to go home now?”

“
That would be
nice,” replied Nik.

*

Back in 2015, we returned
to the tree where we’d left our twenty–first century clothes and
caught the local bus back to downtown Xi’an. We didn’t even change
our clothes; if people wanted to stare, let them stare. We’d just
escaped death in Ancient China.

On the way back to town,
I sat next to Magic.

“
Thanks again
for all your help Magic – we couldn’t have done it without
you.”

“
You’re
welcome Uncle Joe… I’ve never had an experience quite like that
one. And I know that it’s true now… time travel I mean.”

“
Oh really…
and what convinced you?”

“
Believe it or
not, it wasn’t seeing the winter snow, or marvelling at the
underground Palace, or being chased by the soldiers.”

“
Then what was
it?” I asked.

“
It was seeing
the Japanese tanks.”

“
Really? Why’s
that?”

“
Nobody would
ever allow Japanese tanks to be driven across the countryside again
– not even in a War movie. Not after what happened in the past in
China. It had to be real.”

***

Thirty–Seven

Having returned home to
London via Shanghai, we needed a couple of weeks to recover from
our time trip to ancient Xi’an. For one thing, Niki needed time to
mend her ankle and get that better. I thought it would magically
fix itself merely by returning to the present day – but no such
luck. Perhaps we could have reverse engineered the accident by
jumping back to a time just before it happened and making sure she
didn’t fall – we did consider that. But seeing as it was only a
sprained ankle, it wasn’t worth the trauma of another trip to the
same place in 209 BC. The thoughts, feelings and sounds of the
crossbow–wielding soldiers still haunt us. (I’ve since changed the
ringtone on my phone; but every now and then I hear it on someone
else’s mobile, causing my heart to skip a beat!).

After
satisfying our curiosities in ancient Egypt and China, what next
for the time–travelling duo? Early retirement perhaps? We did
seriously think about this, after nearly getting ourselves killed
in China. But we couldn’t
not
time travel – it was the ultimate thrill, and
there was still the hope that we can use it to do something really
worthwhile. And there was always more money to win, of
course.

One thing we had not yet
done was visit the distant future. I had been reading my copy of
‘The Time Machine’ by H.G. Wells which Niki gave me for my
birthday. This had fuelled my desire to travel in that direction
for a change. In Wells’ novel, a young man travels 800,000 years
into the future and discovers a very, very different world to his
present one. Should we jump to the same period of time to verify or
refute his picture of humanity in that era?

In the end, we decided
that since this had already been done (albeit in a work of
fiction), we would leap as far into the future as we had recently
gone back in the past – that is, 2,200 years forward in time. We
thought this was far enough forward to make the Earth a very
different place, but communication with the natives should still be
possible to some degree. So 4,200 CE it was.

*

Preparing for a trip to a
future World was not easy. For starters, we had no idea what sort
of climate would greet us on arrival. Scientists had been talking
about Global Warming for a long time now – could the future be much
warmer and wetter? Would sea levels rise to such a height that many
coastlines around the World would disappear – perhaps whole
countries sinking beneath the waves? Or would parts of the planet
be wiped out by the sort of nuclear war that we had managed to
avert in 2056? The choice of where and when we jumped back in time
was therefore rather important. Finding ourselves fifty metres
under water would not be the best start to a trip.

It had been known for a
quite a while that the UK’s landmass was tilting, with the
South–East of England going down and the North–West of Scotland
rising up. Travelling to Scotland therefore seemed a safe bet. I
had been a student at the University of Edinburgh and recalled the
large hill known as Arthurs Seat within the city. Niki agreed that
the place sounded safe enough, and it would also provide the
opportunity to see how the city had changed in over two thousand
years. So Edinburgh in the year 4200 it was. Now, what should we
take with us?

“
Smirnoff,”
replied Niki without hesitation after I posed this question one
Saturday afternoon.

“
The vodka or
the contract killer?” I asked.

“
The hit–man.
You know I hate vodka, Joe – it’s worse that
Bai Jiu
.”