‘It’s just binary,’ Bertie mumbles, ‘but, like, I made one and Dad said I totally couldn’t make another one and, but, no, totally . . .’ He stops talking to nod eagerly as Miri processes the last sentence back to herself.
‘You had plans in your workshop for the same thing but with a red portal. Is it the same?’
‘Haha!’ Bertie says, getting the back off the tablet and staring at the inner workings.
‘Bertie, is it the same?’ Miri asks.
‘He doesn’t work like that,’ Ria says.
‘Totally. S’just binary.’
‘What colour do you need?’ Ria asks, long-practised at fielding comments and questions for her brother.
‘No colour. Invisible.’
That does it. His head snaps up as his entire features show instant, laser-like focus.
‘And smaller. Something a person can carry and use easily.’
He drops the tablet and stands quickly. ‘How would you see it?’ he asks, staring intently at Miri.
‘Not the apparatus, just the field. That needs to be invisible, see-through.’
‘An invisible time machine?’
‘Yes. Smaller.’
‘A portable, invisible time machine?’
‘Yes.’
‘That,’ Bertie says, his eyes narrowing, ‘is, like, totally the best idea ever.’
Twenty-Eight
Steaks sizzle on the big, gas-fed barbeque grill bought from Walmart. Onions fry in a skillet. The air fills with smells of cooking. Old Greek café tunes play through speakers in the background.
Ria takes the bowl of salad over to place down on the table as everyone else chats and relaxes after a hard day’s training in the pouring rain outside the bunker. Bertie sits between Ben and Harry opposite Safa and Emily, beaming from ear to ear. Miri and the doctor at one end talking quietly.
A beautiful Aegean evening. The water surrounding the island is blue and calm. The sky deep and clear.
Ria goes back to the grill. Busying herself cooking the evening meal of steaks, jacket potatoes and salad.
It’s been two months since Miri finished debriefs, and while Ria has developed a routine, she still feels weird. Her days are spent outside her hologram home throwing flash-bangs at the others and firing blanks in the rain. Her evenings are spent cooking and doing laundry and chores.
Thinking of Cavendish Manor makes her think of her mum, a fresh surge of emotion welling up inside. Why can’t they go back and get her? Bloody Miri. Bloody bunker. Bloody everything, all because of bloody, sodding Bertie. He’s a genius and a pain in the arse. He had to go and invent a time machine, the bloody idiot.
There isn’t time to rescue her mother. She knows that. The portal has to be set back far enough to be away from any ground troops and protected from satellite view by the dense foliage of the big trees bordering her house. Safa and the other three have to run close enough for Harry to use the heavy machine gun. She knows they then have to run to higher ground for Ben to use the sniper rifle before they sprint to the back of the house for someone to fire the missile launcher at the helicopters.
She pokes the steaks and turns the potatoes. Having a time machine is confusing. She asked why they couldn’t just keep coming back to do the different things at different times. Miri said they had to do it in one go, and that having multiple sets of them helping them would get messy, confusing and dangerous – and what if the wrong Harry, Ben, Safa or Emily went through the wrong portal at the wrong time?
She also knows two heavily armed gunships crash through the roof and probably kill everyone inside. Including her mum, if she’s not already dead by then.
‘Can I do it?’
She blinks from her train of thought to see Safa standing next to her looking at the meat cooking on the grill. ‘Can I turn them,’ Safa says in her way of asking while telling.
‘Sure,’ Ria says. She hands the tongs over and moves along to start unwrapping the potatoes from their silver-foil jackets.
‘Train with us,’ Safa says, poking a steak.
‘What?’ Ria asks.
‘Do some phys – good for you, releases endorphins. I don’t want you getting moody like Ben did.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Up to you,’ Safa says. ‘No more red meat this week. Bad for the arteries. Get some chicken or fish, or something.’
‘Okay, Safa.’
‘Going without meat won’t hurt them either.’
‘Okay.’
‘You depressed?’
‘What?’
‘Are you depressed?’
‘My mum just died.’
Safa pokes a steak. ‘Get over it. World moves on.’
‘It was a few weeks ago.’
‘Three months, and so? Go mad. Cry. Scream. Take a training stick and batter Harry. He’d love it. Get drunk. Run about. Do what it takes. Get it out. That shit’s no good inside.’
‘I’m not like you,’ Ria says quietly.
‘Like what?’
Ria shrugs and winces at the hot potato burning the tips of her fingers. Safa watches her, puts down the tongs and picks a wrapped potato up in her bare hands. Ria stares as Safa starts unwrapping it, heedless of the agony she must be feeling.
‘Know what pain is?’ Safa asks. ‘Pain tells you when something is wrong, but not all pain has to be listened to. The pain receptor in my hand is telling my brain to let it go. My brain is telling my hand to fuck off and get over it cos my brain knows the heat isn’t bad enough to cause damage. So I can hold it for a bit without it doing anything bad. If it gets that bad I can swap hands, but that’s giving in to it, so you hold it and man up and ignore it – that tells the pain to do one.’
She unwraps the potato and holds it naked in her hand while looking at Ria. ‘It hurts, but I control what I do.’ She places the potato down in the bowl with the others and goes back to poking the steaks on the grill. ‘These need turning?’
‘Please,’ Ria says. She looks at the potato, as though wanting to pick it up and hold it and tell the pain to fuck off and do one. She wants to control what she does. She wants a six-pack and muscles in her legs, and for her cellulite to fuck off. She wants to go back and get her mum.
‘Come here,’ Safa says, moving back to pick up the potato. ‘Hold your hand out.’ Safa takes her wrist and places the hot potato in her palm. Immediate heat. Immediate pain. A signal to pull back her hand. A signal to drop it, to throw it, to do anything except hold it. Safa doesn’t say anything, but watches her closely. Her own hand still on the top of the potato. ‘Man up, it’s just pain.’
Ria nods. It hurts like mad. It hurts like crazy. Tears threaten to prick her eyes. She swallows. Safa lifts the potato away and looks at it. ‘I’ll have this one.’
‘I want to get her.’
‘Your mum? Not happening. No time.’
‘I’ll train and get fit . . . I’ll do it.’
‘No. Some things can’t be done. We can’t open the portal into the mess inside the house. We can’t go into the house with the choppers coming through the roof . . . And anyway, Ben said if we had done it, we would have done it. Confuses the hell out of me, but he’s an egghead.’
Ria just stares, feeling stupid for asking. Feeling weak and soft next to Safa.