TimeBomb: The TimeBomb Trilogy: Book 1 (31 page)

‘You must be Quil,’ replied Jana. ‘It’s nice to finally put a face to the name. Sorry, mask. I meant mask.’

‘Jana.’ That was Dora, rising to her feet, smiling.

‘Dora,’ said Jana coolly, not taking her eyes off Quil. ‘What’s all this about you and Quil reaching an understanding?’

‘She has promised to help me fix my family and then leave me be,’ replied Dora. ‘She has no quarrel with me, nor I with her.’

Jana couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘Fix your family?’

‘She has a machine that can change a person’s mind. She used it upon my mother, to make her more biddable. She will reverse what she has done to her, and she has agreed to use it to return my brother to the man he once was. I will have my family again, Jana. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.’

‘And what do you have to do for her? What does she get out of it?’

‘Dora stays here and lives her life as if she’d never met me,’ said Quil. ‘It’s a good deal for both of us. She gets her life back, and I turn a potential enemy into a friend. Win win.’

‘So we can end this whole thing before it even begins, that’s what you’re saying?’ asked Jana.

‘Not exactly,’ replied Quil. ‘It’s simple for Dora. For you and me, it’s a lot more complicated.’

Jana didn’t like the sound of that but before she could ask Quil what she meant, Dora interrupted.

‘He is still alive,’ she said. Jana glanced over to see Dora kneeling by the man on the floor. ‘Help me save him.’

‘Mountfort was not part of the deal, Dora,’ said Quil.

Dora rose to her feet. ‘He is now.’

Quil’s shoulders slumped wearily. ‘All right, all right, by all means let’s focus all our attention on the insignificant local spy and ignore the great big army that is about to open fire on this building. Yes, let’s do that. What a
spectacular
idea.’

Jana took a step forward and pointed the flintlocks square at Quil’s chest. ‘If Dora says that’s the deal, that’s the deal.’

‘Fine,’ said Quil through gritted teeth. ‘Get him into the sickroom.’

Jana gestured towards Mountfort with the pistols. ‘Oh no, I’m keeping you in my sights. You carry him.’

Quil stomped over to Mountfort, leant down and grabbed his hands. Dora took hold of his feet and they lifted him, which provoked a strangled cry of agony from Mountfort. Together they carried him, blood dripping on their shoes as they staggered under his weight. Jana followed, keeping the pistols trained on Quil at all times.

‘On the bed,’ said Quil. She and Dora laid Mountfort on the covers. Dora took Mountfort’s hand and stood by his head as Quil began to work.

‘He’s lost a lot of blood,’ she said as she busied herself in the tray of equipment that stood next to the ECG and animal-bladder drip. ‘I have to fix the physical damage before I can transfuse him.’ She turned back to the bed holding a small silver device which she laid on the counterpane next to Mountfort, whose smock she then ripped open to reveal the nasty, oozing wound in his stomach.

‘Dora,’ she said. ‘I need you to hold the wound open for me.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Dora looked at the blood queasily.

Quil leant across Mountfort and grabbed Dora’s wrists, pulled her hands down to the wound, and shoved her fingers deep into Mountfort’s belly. Dora squealed and turned white.

‘Now hold the wound open so I can get to his innards,’ said Quil as she picked up the silver instrument. She bent over the now-gaping injury and inserted the silver tool into the wound. Jana was unable to see exactly what Quil was doing, but the smell of burnt flesh began to waft towards her, so she assumed she was cauterising the internal injuries. The stench made Jana gag, and Dora looked as if she was about to faint. Quil, on the other hand, was a model of calm efficiency.

‘You’ve done this before,’ said Jana.

‘When you’ve fought in as many battles as I have,’ replied Quil, ‘you get good at patching people up.’

‘I have a whole world of questions for you.’

‘I’m very good at being interrogated. Lots of practice. Fire away,’ said Quil, without looking up from her work.

Jana hardly knew where to begin, now that Quil was being so open. ‘The woman who was in this bed. That was you, first time around, yes? You’ve lived the same five years in this house twice over – first as the patient, then as the nurse. That right?’

Quil nodded. ‘I wish Hank understood it as quickly as you did. He gets this look when I try to explain time travel to him, like a cat when it sees its reflection in a mirror.’

‘Very neat.’

‘Thank you,’ said Quil, still focused on Mountfort’s intestines. ‘I kind of had to rescue myself. Nobody else was volunteering for the job.’

‘And Sweetclover’s your husband. How did that happen?’

Quil allowed herself a quick glance up at Jana. ‘That’s your question? Everything you could ask me, and you want to know about my relationship?’ She shook her head in wonder and returned to her work. ‘Honestly, young girls.’ She sighed. ‘You think I used the mind-writer on him, don’t you? I used it to deal with all the servants, and was perfectly willing to use it on Hank. He’s useful. He knows this time and this area, he is my public face when I need one. And he’s essentially a kind man. Pampered, lazy, indolent … but not cruel.’

Dora, her fingers still holding Mountfort’s wound open, scoffed.

‘OK,’ admitted Quil. ‘Sometimes he gets a bit ornery. But not often. Anyway, during my first time in this house, as I was recuperating in this bed, he would come down here and read to me. I think I fell in love with his voice. It took me years before I could even open my eyes and take solid food, but for all that time, I heard his voice, soft and deep, like a lifeline. I used it to pull myself out of the darkness. So when I came back here a second time, healed, ready to nurse my younger self, I’d already fallen for him.’

‘And he returned your affections? In spite of your disfigurement?’ asked Dora. Her voice was sceptical.

‘I didn’t think he would. I was ready to use the mind-writer on him, like I said, but not for that. That would be … wrong. But I didn’t need to use it at all. He listened, was patient. I asked him to help me and my younger self, and he willingly agreed. I suggested he read to her, and he was glad to do it. I think he fell in love with the mystery long before he fell in love with me. But the servant girls of this time are, well, enthusiastic but insipid. He had gone to London, more than once, in search of a society wife, but they bored him. Say what you like about me, but I am not boring. Before I knew what was happening, we fell in love. Go figure.’

‘But you’re … y’know.’ Jana waved at Quil’s mask and wig.

‘What, burned to a crisp? I’ve had time to heal. Pretty much back to normal now, apart from my face and hair. Those require skills I don’t have access to yet.’ She leaned across and whispered, conspiratorially, ‘But I think he kind of likes the mask, if you know what I mean.’

To which Jana could only respond, ‘Eeuuw.’

Quil chuckled at Jana’s discomfort as she stood upright. ‘OK, you can let go now.’

Dora pulled her hands from Mountfort’s innards and held them as far from her body as possible, looking for something to wipe them on.

Jana couldn’t help but smile. ‘Dora,’ she said. ‘You examined how many dead bodies in Pendarn earlier? You had blood up to your elbows, and now you’re squeamish?’

‘I did not sink my fingers into their wounds,’ replied Dora, wincing.

‘Just wipe them on the blanket,’ said Quil, who had returned to the instrument tray and was rummaging again. ‘Nobody’s using this bed any more anyway.’

Jana registered Dora’s confusion. ‘She means the counterpane,’ she explained, thanking the chip for providing the requisite archaic term. Dora wiped her hands as clean as she was able and once again took Mountfort’s hand in hers.

‘Can I ask you a question?’ Quil said to Jana, returning to Mountfort’s stomach and swabbing the wound with some liquid antiseptic. ‘On the day you vanished from your life, in 2141, what exactly happened?’

Jana was taken aback by Quil’s specificity, and wondered how much she already knew. ‘I was sick of being mollycoddled and escorted everywhere by big thugs in cheap suits,’ she explained. ‘I decided to skip school, hang out at the Science Museum. So I gave the guards the slip, but on the way there I was attacked and chased by a gang of men.’

‘Who were they?’

‘Don’t you know?’

Quil looked up curiously. ‘Why should I?’

Jana considered her next words carefully. If she was right, it was a future version of Quil who had sent the men to kill her in 2141, but this Quil didn’t know that because she hadn’t done it yet. In which case, telling Quil the truth now might be the very thing that inspired her to send those men after Jana in the first place. Jana’s head began to swim with the complexity of the paradoxes she was trying to negotiate. Finally she decided to tell the truth and see what happened; it was the best plan she could come up with.

‘I got the impression you sent them to kill me,’ she said. ‘They were after my ENL chip, I think. And they were working for a woman.’

‘A woman?’ Quil said sharply. ‘They said that? They definitely said a woman?’

‘Yes,’ replied Jana, uncertainly. ‘I assumed it was you.’

Quil shook her head firmly. ‘Not me. Depending upon how this conversation goes I might try to kill you now. I certainly tried to kill you last time I met you. But on that specific day, at that point in your timeline? Never.’

‘Why not?’ asked Jana.

‘Jana, listen to me,’ said Quil urgently, Mountfort momentarily forgotten. ‘That day is important. What happened to you is important. More important than you can possibly know. Would you let me take a download of your chip? All the data you’ve got, the recording of that day and anything still left in the buffer.’

Jana was baffled. ‘Um …’

‘Trust me when I say it could save countless lives.’

She was so confused by Quil’s remarkable claim that Jana made a dreadful error and asked: ‘Is that why you wanted my chip when you captured me in 2014?’

The instant she’d said it she knew she’d screwed up. She cursed her idiocy. She’d been wondering how they had known to keep Sweetclover Hall under surveillance in the future, and now she knew – she’d just stupidly told Quil when to wait for them.

‘That’s not actually happened for me yet,’ said Quil, obviously choosing her words with great care. ‘But there’s no reason it has to. If you give me access to your memories, direct from the source, then I can offer you the same kind of deal I offered Dora. There would be no need for us to be enemies. You couldn’t go back to your life, I’m afraid. There’s no way, it would be too … complicated. But together, you and I, we could make history. Right a great wrong.’

Jana realised her mouth was hanging open in astonishment and clamped it shut. ‘If I did that, gave you my chip, you’d have to tell me what is going on. What you’re doing here. About the army downstairs, the base in 2014, everything.’

‘Everything,’ nodded Quil. ‘Full disclosure. Then, if you decide not to help me, but promise not to try to stop me, you’ll be free to go wherever and whenever you want. We can end this little war of ours before it even begins.’

Mountfort gave a low gurgling moan and Quil returned her attention to his wound. She used the silver tool a last time, to burn the flesh closed.

‘Think about it,’ said Quil, smoke from Mountfort’s cauterized wound wreathing her masked face.

Jana was thinking about it. It sounded like a good deal. She had expected Quil to be a cackling super-villain, but the burnt woman was more complex than that: impossible to read, impossible to understand. She spoke about righting wrongs and correcting injustices, and obviously loved her unlikely husband. Jana couldn’t see an obviously correct choice.

Perhaps Dora had been right to make a deal with her.

‘I will think about it,’ she said. ‘You’ve overseen this place yourself. Scavenged the equipment, built what you couldn’t get. You’re clever. A scientist, I think. So maybe you can tell me – how are we travelling through time? And why us?’

‘A scientist,’ said Quil wistfully. ‘Yes, I suppose I was, once upon a time.’

‘What are you now, then?’ asked Jana.

Quil shrugged as she stood away from the bed and dropped the tool back in the tray. ‘Terrorist. Freedom fighter. Freak. Wife. Take your pick, your mileage may vary. But you asked about time travel. I wish I could give you all the answers. My understanding is theoretical and incomplete.’

‘Give me the bullet points.’

Quil busied herself with the drip and the ECG, and began to connect Mountfort to them. She spoke as she worked.

‘They found an asteroid out in the Kuiper Belt. It was composed of a kind of substance that messes with time somehow,’ she said. ‘I spent years experimenting, trying to understand its properties and powers. It changed me. Literally. Some of it was absorbed through my skin, I think, like mercury. Anyway, when the war got really bad, when I thought my forces were going to be utterly defeated, I used the asteroid to make a weapon. The greatest discovery in a century and I turned it into a bomb.’ Quil shook her head, as if even she could hardly believe what she had done. ‘And of course, as all great scientific mistakes inevitably do, it destroyed its creator. It blew up right on top of me. The explosion threw me back to 1640, burnt to a crisp, and cracked the structure of time, which for the purposes of this explanation you can think of as crystalline. I shattered time itself. Can you imagine such a thing?’

Jana shook her head. ‘Not really, no.’

‘Me either, and I did it.’ Quil laughed mirthlessly. ‘I’ve spent a lot of time down here trying to work it all out; the equations, the mechanics of it. I’m still none the wiser. I hate to admit it, but I think I’m just not clever enough. There is one guy, back in my time, who might have been able to figure it out. When I finally get back there I plan on giving him my findings, see if he can make sense of it all.’

Jana considered Quil’s answer. ‘But that doesn’t answer my main question. How are
we
– Kaz and Dora and me – travelling through time?’

Quil shook her head. ‘Beats me. I think, to stick with my analogy, that we’re kind of navigating the cracks in the crystal to different times and places. It’s a consequence of having been exposed to the raw asteroid.’