The Trouble With Time (25 page)

“By the time I joined Zadotech, they’d restarted the programme, hoping to produce a virus that could be tailored to fit any pest species. That’s much easier now – and cheaper. We’ve got way better computer modelling, crystallography and cryo-electron microscopy. I was really pleased. Dad never thought it should be shut down, he could see the possibilities. But it was a business decision, he didn’t get a say.”

A Red Admiral butterfly zigzagged past. No people had been by. Jace was wondering whether she’d agree if he suggested they went home now, when her whole body stiffened. He turned. They were in the right street after all.

A man and a young girl were walking towards them, their progress slowed by a labradoodle puppy who lolloped around, wanting to sniff at everything, winding his lead round the girl’s legs. Her attention was focused entirely on the dog, trying to encourage him to walk to heel. The man was smiling as he looked at his daughter with obvious pride and love. A tear ran down Floss’s cheeks, and she brushed it away impatiently. Her father and younger self were getting nearer.

Floss took a deep breath, and half rose. Her movement attracted her father’s attention, and he glanced their way with a smile as they drew level. Young Floss was too taken up with the puppy to notice them.

Now they were past, now they were walking away, now they were out of sight. Floss continued to sit, staring down at her shoes.

Let’s get her out of here. Fast
. Jace stood. “Time to go.”

A faint thrum in the distance grew louder. The peace and quiet was shattered by the roar of an approaching engine, as a big black four-by-four sped towards them from the same direction young Floss and her father had come from. It shot past and screeched out of sight round the curve of the road. Floss leaped up and raced after it, feet pounding the pavement. Jace ran after her.

In the distance screened from their view, a screech of tyres, a car’s horn blaring, a thump, a high-pitched scream that went on and on. Floss stopped and burst into tears, sobbing uncontrollably, lost in misery. Jace stood, feeling utterly inadequate, wondering whether she’d be comforted or hate it if he put his arms around her.

After a while her sobs quietened and he said, “He looked nice, your dad. I’m sorry. Let’s go back.”

“I had the chance to save him, and I chose not to. I feel even worse than before.”

“You did the right thing.”

“Maybe. Doesn’t help.”

He started to extend a tentative arm towards her, but Floss moved away. Something had caught her eye, and she went and picked it up; a fat little notebook in a blue cover, lying by the kerb. She opened it and turned the pages. He craned over her shoulder. It was hand-written in biro, with dated entries like a diary, and diagrams and formulae here and there.

“It must have fallen out of his pocket.” Her brows drew together and she looked Jace in the eye defiantly. “I’m keeping it.”

Jace hadn’t the heart to argue. She just wanted something of her dad’s. What difference could a few random jottings about an abandoned project make? “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”

Thursday, 23
^rd
July 2015

Back in Floss’s flat, Jace made coffee while Floss curled up in the one armchair, poring over the notebook. She took the mug he handed her absently without saying thank you, intent on reading. He let her be. Quinn could wait till tomorrow. He picked an elderly paperback from her shelves, an early John le Carré, and sat on the floor with it. As he opened the book the front cover came away in his hand. The paper felt rough, and was darker cream around the edges. He had got used to these old-fashioned paper books in future London – they were surprisingly durable. Now he gazed at the print without taking it in. He had to admit that, clearer-headed in his case than her own, she’d been right about the problems involved with bringing Quinn to book. Perhaps he should let it go, though to do that went against his every instinct. Plus he hated the thought of Kayla with Quinn. He could go and talk to her, tell her what had happened . . . the trouble was, he’d be forcing her to make her choice between them, and she might choose to trust Quinn. He couldn’t believe she’d shop him though . . .

“Jace!” Floss’s face was flushed, her eyes bright. “I think . . . there’s something here that might be the answer.”

“The answer to what? Life, the universe, and everything?”

“Humanity dying out.”

“What is that anyway? A journal?”

“No. It’s my father’s ideas book. Sort of an unofficial lab notebook. The real ones have to stay in the lab because they’re important as a record for patents, they’re legal documents with page numbers and a permanent binding. A record of procedures, observations and thought processes, that sort of thing. Dad liked to have something with him to jot things down in case he forgot. He said his best ideas came to him when he wasn’t thinking about them. I remember he thought he’d lost it once – the relief when it turned up . . .”

“So how does it help?”

“I’m not certain it will. I’m just guessing. You know I’m working along similar lines of research to my father, even though we’re further advanced, obviously. IEMA believed the work I was going to do resulted in disaster, so they removed me before I could do it. But the last entries in this notebook, just the last day or two, show my father was still thinking about the virus. He hadn’t written up his ideas in his lab notebook because the programme was closed. They’d drawn a line under it. Then he was killed. No one picked this notebook up. It must have lain in the gutter until it was swept away.”

“What does it say?”

“I’ll have to tell you the background or you won’t understand. At Zadotech they – we – want a virus that’s highly contagious and causes infertility in pest mammals, but can’t be passed to other animal species. The mumps virus is the right sort of virus, plus it mutates easily, but they couldn’t use mumps because its host is human. Instead, they found a related bat virus, and modified that. The Mapuera virus, like mumps, is a single-stranded RNA virus. Obviously there’s a bit of a conflict when you need a virus to mutate, but then once you’ve got it right you want it to resist mutating. It’s got to be stable. That’s what I’m working on now.”

Jace nodded.

Floss went on, “Now suppose we think we’ve cracked it, but it mutates and infects humans? Which we know now is what actually happened. Will happen. What you’d need then is to develop, fast, a new disabled human vaccine that is highly transmissible, so it’ll protect everyone, because some people won’t agree to be vaccinated. The worry is that the new vaccine will revert. To avoid this, you have to understand the sequence of mutations that originally gave rise to the contraceptive virus, also the variant that cropped up with the propensity to infect human cells.”

“I see,” Jace said. “More or less.”

“I’m knee deep in genome sequencing data. I’ve sometimes wondered about sequence data from the first-generation programme, because it would be really useful. They said none exists, that virus samples were destroyed on programme termination, as was normal practice at the time. My dad would have been told to do this. But he didn’t. He kept some in an off-site facility, all labelled and coded. He’s listed them here. Ten to one they’ll still be there. I think they’re the answer.”

Jace looked at her sitting there, all young and bright-eyed and ready to save the world. She made him feel time-worn, the more so because he could remember when he had felt like that himself. “So what are you going to do about it?”

“Steal the samples and take them to my boss, Bill Caldecot. In 2050. He’s retired, but he’ll know what to do with them, who to give them to.”

“I’ll come with you.” She narrowed her eyes at him, so he added, “I can help if you get into trouble – say someone gets curious, or wants to check your chip.”

“I’m going to appear on his doorstep, no reason I should meet anyone else. Why do I get the feeling you have an ulterior motive?”

She was sharp, no doubt about it. The eagerness in her blue eyes had been replaced by a steely intelligence. He said casually, “I thought I might drop in on Kayla while we’re there. Sound her out. See if she’ll help me.”

He could see her thinking about this. In the end she said, “Okay, but I’m coming with you. I’m not leaving you alone with her. And you have to agree to do what I say. Especially if I say leave. Else I’m not taking you. And I’ve got the TiTrav.”

This last argument was unanswerable. “Agreed. When are we going to steal the samples?”

Floss smiled. “I don’t have to actually steal them. I can do this in plain sight, like Dad did, just requisition them from the facility via the usual channels. No one’s going to check what they are. I might order some other virus samples at the same time as cover. I’ll use the high containment lab at Zadotech to unpack them – I only need a spot of each on filter paper, with a note of the code. Then I can send them back.”

“How long will it take?”

“Tomorrow’s Friday, so I’ll be going in to work. I’ll get them couriered over. We can take them to Bill in the evening.”

Friday evening, and Floss’s flat under the roof was sweltering. That afternoon Jace had been to New River Walk and lain on the grass by the water, watching the ducks and thinking about Kayla. He felt guilty; if only he had told her his suspicions of Quinn . . . she wouldn’t have been able to do anything about bringing him to justice, most likely, but she would at least have been wary of him. On the other hand, maybe she’d have been dumped in future London too . . . which would have made his stay considerably more pleasant . . .

He fell asleep, and for a nasty moment on waking thought he was in future London, until the sound of an ice cream van’s jingle welcomed him back to civilization. He strolled through Islington, marvelling at the endless lines of vehicles parked at the kerb, making the streets so narrow that in places a car couldn’t pass a bicycle. London was one big car park. The main roads were not much better; the cars moved sluggishly, with massive tailbacks at road works. No wonder the drivers all seemed bad-tempered.

He returned to the unbearably hot flat, opened the windows wide and had a tepid bath, tried to get into a book, and was really pleased when he heard a key in the lock. Floss was flushed and windblown from the bike ride. He noticed she was still wearing the ring.

“Did you get them?”

Floss nodded. “Ready? Let’s go.”

Friday, 6
^th
May 2050

Kayla hung her jacket in the wardrobe and slipped off her high heels, glad to be home. The day was windy, and one of the pair of olive trees on her balcony had blown over; she went outside, picked it up and noticed how dry the compost was. The automatic watering device must have failed days ago. Annoyed – it had been that sort of week, one petty frustration after another, culminating in Floss Dryden’s disappearance – she fetched a jug from the kitchen. Plants watered, she had a quick shower, redid her make up, applied perfume and put on a svelte black dress in case Quinn should want to take her to dinner. She sat on the sofa, thinking she’d give him an hour before eating alone.

When Quinn, normally so imperturbable, had come (late) into work that morning, he had been quite unlike himself, agitated and absent-minded. Kayla had wondered at first whether something had happened to one of his children. Then when it became clear it was the business over that tiresome girl that had disturbed his normal equanimity, the worse thought occurred to her that he might have been in love with Floss. When she had asked him if he was all right, if there was anything she could do to help, he had been brusque and dismissive. She was shocked to see the cold fury in his eyes, turned briefly on her. As she left his office, she had suddenly experienced the most dreadful sinking feeling. In two months she would be thirty: she and Quinn had been together for more than three years, and marriage had never once been mentioned.

She had been so certain he was the one, a certainty she had not felt with Jace. Yes, Jace had been great – attractive, nice, good in bed, devoted to her – but she had always believed she could do better, needed more of a challenge. Quinn was something else; though charming, he was exacting, and his occasional piercing, unsmiling stare from beneath lowered brows if she stepped out of line both frightened and excited her. He was like a spirited horse she wasn’t sure she could control.

She remembered that time she had taken Jace home for the weekend, because her parents had wanted to meet the new man in her life. He’d been on his best behaviour, a little over-awed by their country house with its grounds, swimming pool and tennis courts; the antique furniture and the Labradors. He and Kayla were given separate bedrooms well apart. Her parents had been very polite, and questioned him, delicately but with persistence, about his background. They hadn’t discussed him at all with Kayla, but it had been very clear that they thought he wasn’t quite good enough for their daughter. Jace had not been asked back. Her mother had taken to saying, “Are you still seeing Jason?” whenever she called.

The weekend with Quinn was a different matter. She had waited until his divorce came through to mention him to her parents, as they would not have approved of her affair with a married man. When she did take him home, Quinn had been completely at ease as he always was in any milieu, and her parents had fallen instantly under his spell, had become animated and chatty. They hadn’t taken exception to the dandified clothes he wore with aplomb, clothes which would normally have raised a disapproving eyebrow. When he charmingly disagreed with them about the recent political scandal, they had striven to see his point of view, had even changed their minds.

Her mother got Kayla on her own within the first half hour and hissed, “Now you’re not to let this one get away.
Very
nice. Our sort of person.”

On parting her father had told him he was welcome back any time, and invited him to come pheasant shooting when the season began.