Barbara obliged by getting into her camp bed but as soon as the others slept, she intended to use the time machine again on her own. Once the others were breathing deeply she extricated herself from Lucille’s embrace. Clean boiler suits, ready for the next day, hung on the wardrobe door. Barbara stepped into one of them, taking care to be quiet. As she left the bedroom, Barbara thought Margaret’s eyes opened and fixed on her, but she turned over without comment.
The time machines ran on pellets of atroposium, encased in a lead briquette to minimise the handler’s exposure to radiation. Barbara went to the fuel stores, which were in a separate building, to collect a couple of briquettes. She slipped them into her pocket. But then she was distracted. Instead of proceeding to the time machine she was transfixed by the storeroom’s overhead light. How beautiful the glow was! The bulb’s reflection on the concrete floor was astonishing – as if Barbara had broken through to a deeper level of sensory awareness. The transcendental nature of time travel had opened up this new world for her. She knelt on the ground, as if she could lap up the reflection like a dog at the waterside.
The following day she was woken by Margaret. Barbara lifted her head from the floor, disorientated. Her thoughts were racing, and they had taken on an unusual quality: she could hear them. They were as loud and indistinct as a rioting crowd. Margaret’s voice competed for her attention.
‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere,’ Margaret was saying. ‘What are you doing in here?’
‘I don’t remember.’ Barbara’s jaw ached. She must have been grinding her teeth in the night. The inside of her cheek was raw, as if she had been chewing it.
‘Never mind, we haven’t the time. I contacted the BBC this morning, to tell them the good news. They’re sending a crew now.’
‘That’s good.’
‘Are you sure you’re quite well?’ Margaret said. ‘You seemed feverish yesterday. If you’re coming down with something I can manage the interview with Lucille and Grace. It’s absolutely vital we make a good impression.’
‘I’m fine,’ Barbara said, although there were black arabesques writhing at the edge of her vision. ‘Will we know the questions in advance?’
‘We can rely on them to ask about paradoxes. They’ll almost certainly raise that hoary canard about killing your grandfather before he grows up.’
‘I think I can handle that.’
‘Good. Wash your face and comb your hair, dear, we need to be presentable. Everyone in Britain is going to see your face! Everyone in the world.’
Barbara did as she was told then kept quiet while the others talked and laughed. The BBC crew arrived shortly, which was the cue for everyone to congregate outside the time machine. Barbara didn’t like the influx of the camera and sound men. Over the past months she’d grown used to seeing only faces that she knew. For reassurance she looked again at her friends, and realised for the first time that Margaret was holding Patrick. He didn’t much like to be held. Rabbits generally prefer to have all four feet on the ground. It was only Barbara’s lap he could ever relax on.
‘Why isn’t he in his hutch?’ Barbara asked.
‘Patrick’s our mascot! He should be here, of course.’
‘Can’t I hold him?’ Barbara would benefit as much as Patrick. His warmth might calm her. She could still hear the rioting crowd of voices in her head.
‘You can’t be jealous of me holding your rabbit!’ Margaret said in surprise. ‘Come on, that newsman’s beckoning us.’
They spent a few minutes rehearsing the interview, so that the questions and answers would flow convincingly. The lights were tremendously hot and bright. Barbara kept staring at them, and the newscaster reminded her to look at him. He was a grey-besuited man with a salmon pink pate. Then the real interview was under way.
The questions began benignly.
‘So which period of history are you going to visit first?’ the reporter asked. ‘Tudors and Stuarts? The Roman Empire?’
‘Sadly, we won’t be shaking hands with Henry VIII,’ Grace said. ‘Time travel requires a particular infrastructure. You can’t go back to any period before the machine’s invention.’
‘Which is no bad thing!’ Lucille exclaimed. ‘For some of us in particular, history would be a dangerous place.’
‘Are there limits on travelling into the future, too?’ the reporter asked. ‘Can you tell me if I have a pools win on the horizon?’
‘At the moment we’re making trips of a short duration,’ Grace explained. ‘But the distance is getting longer all the time. We’ve already met some of our future selves.’
‘How does that work?’ the reporter asked.
Margaret took the lead. ‘Well, for our first excursion, we activated the time machine at ten a.m. on Christmas Day. It transported us, instantaneously, to eleven o’clock of the same morning. At half past eleven we activated the time machine again, and travelled back to one minute past ten. What that means is between ten and ten-oh-one we didn’t exist in the world at all. But between eleven and eleven thirty, there were twice as many of us – and we were able to meet!’
‘I see. Isn’t that rather risky?’ asked the reporter. ‘Everyone’s seen Doctor Who. What if your future self accidentally killed you? What would happen then?’
The question was Barbara’s cue to speak. She replied: ‘That’s called a paradox. A paradise, a paradigm, a patrick…’
‘Say again, Dr Hereford?’
Barbara rubbed her fingers and thumbs in agitation. Her jaw was working up and down again. The crowd roaring in her head had reached a crescendo. ‘Hereford is my name. People have names when they matter. We picked a name for our rabbit because he is pious, I mean a pioneer. I am a pioneer; and I won’t be dissected, not for anyone! Not for you, Mr Salmon Pink Pate, Mr Cat Would Eat You All Up. I won’t be dissected, or neglected, or resurrected!’
Lucille put a hand over the camera. ‘The interview’s over.’
‘But, Dr Waters!’ The newsreader grasped Lucille’s wrist to loosen her grip on the lens. ‘Our viewers will be very disturbed by this outburst. Don’t you have an explanation?’
‘She must be delirious,’ Lucille said. ‘Have you never seen a person with flu?’
‘She’s clearly unwell,’ Grace said. ‘Margaret, go ring the GP, fast as you can.’
Even in her disarray, Barbara saw Margaret’s lips tighten. Margaret rarely took orders, and Grace rarely gave them. But Margaret left to make the call, the rabbit still in her arms.
‘No!’ Barbara cried out. ‘Leave Patrick with me!’
Grace brought her face close to Barbara’s. ‘My poor darling…’
The GP did not diagnose flu. Instead he suspected manic depression and sent Barbara immediately to the psychiatric hospital. It was in the ward that Barbara saw the footage of their interview, played over and over again on the news. Was she on drugs, the reporter speculated? Or had the process of time travelling, of which we understood so little, somehow destabilised her? The nurses switched the TV off when she shouted at the screen. She remained distressed, wondering what the other pioneers thought of her breakdown. Manic depression was a more frightening illness than influenza. She wished they would come to see her, or telephone her, so she could ask them if they were still her friends. Every visiting hour, she looked out, hopefully, for the arrival of Grace or Lucille or Margaret. She was sure they would come any day now. Any day.
2
JULY 2017
Ruby
Ruby Rebello’s grandmother was the time traveller who went mad.
Ruby had known this all her life. Granny Bee’s meltdown had been broadcast to the nation and lingered in the popular memory for decades. Ruby’s mother explained what had happened to Granny Bee when Ruby was quite small, but insisted that they mustn’t mention it again. Well into adulthood, Ruby obeyed. A fascination with these family secrets led her to become a psychologist, yet she still refrained from asking Granny Bee about her past. She assumed this was what Granny Bee wanted.
And then, one afternoon, the past caught up with them.