*
All four of the pioneers were still working together when the military agreed to subsidise tests with humans. Most of the money that flowed through was spent on fuel. The pioneers’ small prototype machine had minimised fuel requirements by using existing wormholes, but this cheap, crude technology was only suited to small inanimate objects – or expendable travellers like Patrick – because the risks of malformation were high. Safe time travel was more energy intensive.
Money was also allocated to labour. Transporting people through time required a machine the size of a tennis court. A fleet of engineers came to the Fells to assist with the build. They sheltered in a circle of caravans, while the pioneers continued to sleep in the lab. One of the engineers mentioned to Barbara that down in the village, the locals were convinced the time travel project was a ruse: the engineers were building a nuclear weapons site, and the secrecy was meant to prevent demonstrations. The idea of a functioning time machine seemed too absurd to believe. Barbara was faintly amused by this, but didn’t dwell on it, because the villagers seemed so remote from her day-to-day work. All the world seemed distanced from her. She knew Margaret cared a great deal about public perceptions, and was driven, in part, by a need to make her mark before everyone. Whereas Barbara was excited by the prospect of time travel itself, and loved her colleagues because they were going to help her achieve it. Her life had shrunk to the size of the lab, but she felt it was about to grow – grow as far as the time machine allowed her to travel. It was easy then, to throw herself into the complex, grinding mathematical work the team needed to make their project succeed. It was easy to forget to rest, or to eat, until the others made her. Three in the morning would roll round and she would still be at her desk. Grace would pad across the workroom, her satin eye mask high on her head – the one Lucille had adorned with curly eyelashes in permanent ink – and she would implore:
‘Come to bed, Bee.’
‘In a minute.’
There was always another minute needed, so Grace would have to drag her by the arm into the dorm. There were four iron beds, but once the frosts started and their breath misted indoors as well as out, the women doubled up for warmth like babes in the wood. Often Bee didn’t sleep even once she was under the covers because her mind raced with her work. But it was comforting to feel Lucille’s arm slung over her in slumber, or to hear Grace’s soft breath.
In waking hours the others were as diligent as Barbara. She concentrated on minimising the amount of fuel they would require; Lucille perfected the warping of wormholes to maximise the speed of travel; and Grace carefully tested the composition of objects that passed through the time machine for any changes that might pose a safety risk. Their endurance paid off. The time machine was completed by the first week of December. Rather than switching it on, the pioneers announced the machine would be activated in the New Year. Margaret told the engineers this was because most journalists were already thinking about their holidays and it would be easier to get their attention in January. Barbara wondered whether they believed her. The invention of time travel, surely, would be a big story for any journalist, however demob happy they were. Privately, Margaret had said that they should proceed with a December date for their inaugural trip, but she didn’t want an audience. If anything went wrong she wanted full control over who knew.
All the engineers accepted Margaret’s instruction to take leave. They were eager to see their families, and loath to spend more time in poorly heated caravans, no matter how cheerfully adorned with tinsel and red baubles. Barbara knew that her parents would expect her in Cornwall – that Margaret would be expected in Windermere by her aunt, and that Lucille would be expected in Liverpool by her mother. Grace would have been welcome at any of the pioneers’ homes. But by consensus the pioneers stayed in the lab instead; now that their work was nearly complete, none of them wished to leave. They were going to change the world.
*
On Christmas morning the pioneers donned their boiler suits and trod the brittle white grass to the time machine. Barbara set it to transport them one hour into the future. The women held hands. They stepped, in unison, through the machine entrance, and heard the doors slide shut on the present. Barbara’s eyes did not adjust to the darkness. She smelt ozone and heard steel parts screech against each other. Her ears rang as the machine fell quiet. Behind her the doors slid open again – she could feel winter sunshine on her neck, and see her own shadow on the smooth grey floor. The pioneers dropped each other’s hands and turned to face the light.
At the entrance to the time machine, the women’s future selves stood on the grass. They looked as gleeful as the hosts of a surprise party. The future Grace hopped on the spot in excitement.
Barbara’s gaze was drawn to her own twin.
Your face is the wrong way round, Barbara thought. You’ve been burning the midnight oil – that’s why you’re pale. You are trembling – you are blinking over and over. Has the hard work been worth it? You can remember my feelings. But I don’t know what you’re feeling at all.
Barbara tentatively extended a hand in greeting.
Her older self laughed and crushed her in a hug.
‘Isn’t it funny?’ the elder Barbara whispered. ‘I feel protective of you.’
Barbara laughed too then. What could she do but laugh? It was absurd, to embrace one’s self. She was still laughing when the pioneers stepped back into the machine to go home. She was still laughing when they arrived in their own time. The world she returned to seemed brighter and more deeply coloured than before. Wasn’t it wonderful, she thought, that time travel had granted her a new joy in her surroundings?
‘Are you hearing things differently?’ she asked the other pioneers. ‘Your voices sound musical to me.’
Her friends exchanged puzzled glances.
‘Someone’s had too much excitement,’ Grace told Barbara fondly. ‘What’s for Christmas dinner?’
‘Tinned turkey,’ Barbara said. ‘And baked beans. Lovingly decanted.’
*
On Boxing Day they made their second trip into the future – in fact, they made numerous trips, returning to Boxing Day in between each one without stopping to rest. The effect was dizzying. If the pioneers left their home timeline at noon, they might arrive in the next late at night, and the transition felt instant. Their daylight hours shortened and lengthened drastically.
‘Enough,’ Lucille said when they returned home for the fifteenth time. ‘I need sleep.’
‘I don’t,’ Barbara sang. ‘I don’t. I don’t.’
‘You oddball,’ Grace said. ‘We always have to wrangle you like a toddler at bedtime.’
Margaret appraised Barbara. ‘I think we should all get some rest.’