TIME QUAKE (47 page)

‘Come,’ said the Tar Man.

Gideon sensed that they were already fading.

‘Not yet! Wait!’

Gideon ran out of the field onto the road, dragging his brother with him. The wintry light passed through them. The two brothers had scarcely any substance left in this world.

‘Wait, Nathaniel! Just a little longer!’

Gideon reached out a hand to Kate who was throwing a stick for Molly, her cheeks rosy and her eyes sparkling. He reached out as if to touch her hair.

‘How good it is to see you well and whole, Mistress Kate.’

‘Gideon! Do not resist me!’

‘One moment more!’

Gideon stood behind Peter as he talked to his father on the phone, smiling as if all the cares in the world had just lifted from his shoulders.

‘Farewell, Peter, be the man I know that you can become.’

Peter turned, and looked all about him, but saw only the wind rustling the sparse leaves of the hawthorn hedge.

When Dr Dyer arrived at the research laboratory on that Saturday in December he was met by a security guard. He asked Dr Dyer to come with him straight away. Someone had broken into Tim Williamson’s laboratory. The anti-gravity machine which Dr Dyer had come here to adjust now lay scattered in a thousand pieces over the floor. He surveyed the scene of destruction. Nothing else had been touched. Who would want to do such a thing? he asked himself, and, more to the point,
why
?

The Universe contains mysteries we cannot even dream of, and it is right that its mysteries push us ever onwards. Who knows what echoes will resonate through the world on account of our accidental discovery of time travel. Ordinarily, we can only ever truly know our own stories, and are rarely allowed more than a glimpse of those of others. I have been privileged to tell the stories of those characters who, as you have seen, in their own ways, and within their own limitations, pulled us back from the brink of an apocalypse.

As for the two brothers, the last remaining witnesses – along with myself – of these remarkable events, how will they go on to live their lives? What will Gideon and the Tar Man do with the knowledge that they gained and the memories that they still
possess? As for me, I have not forgotten the promise that I – or rather an alternative version of myself – made to Kate as she was overcome by the ravages of time. I no longer hear my voice from a parallel world – how could I? For at the instant that Peter’s stone hit the window a multitude of universes calmly winked out of existence. Now I must learn to live with the ghosts of parallel worlds and the paradox that I can remember events which have not happened. I have become a witness, a living testimony to something that must not be. So I remain ever vigilant – for who knows how long it will be before Time itself is threatened again by our curiosity – or our greed.

Yet as I write these final sentences, I can safely say that Peter Schock and Kate Dyer go happily about their daily lives; that the Marquis de Montfaron never ceased conducting his experiments nor corresponding with the great and the good; that the professors of Princeton continue to conjecture about the What If ’s of History; and that the sun still shines down on the many castles of Manhattan. Indeed, I believe that I can say – or at least for now –
that things are as they should be
.

Acknowledgements

I first had the idea to write
The Gideon Trilogy
in June 2000 and said my final farewell to the characters I have grown to know so well in February 2009. Along the way these books have brought me into contact with people on both sides of the Atlantic whom I count myself privileged to have met and whom I would not have encountered otherwise: readers, publishers, agents, booksellers, writers, teachers and librarians.

I should firstly like to express my gratitude to the Arts and Humanities Research Council without whose support this project would have stalled in its early stages.

My profound thanks are due to Caradoc King, for his impeccable judgement and enthusiasm, and to all at the incomparable literary agency, A. P. Watt: Christine Glover, Elinor Cooper, Louise Lamont, Linda Shaughnessy, and Teresa Nicholls.

Much of the trilogy was written whilst undertaking research at the University of London and I shall always associate it with Goldsmiths College – my thanks to Professor Blake Morrison, Professor Chris Baldick, fellow novelist, Emma Darwin, and, above all, to the poet, Maura Dooley. It was during conversations with Maura that my approach to writing the trilogy was shaped. I am also very grateful to David Hunter, Imelda and Isadora for their timely and insightful notes. Thank you.

I have been privileged to work with editors from Simon & Schuster’s offices in both London and New York. A huge thank you, for their keen editorial eyes, to David Gale and Venetia Gosling. Many thanks, also, to Navah Woolfe for her editorial input, to Matt Pantoliano for introducing me to Fraunces Tavern in 2006 (and thereby planting the idea of sabotaging the Revolutionary War in the first place) and to David Gale and Laurent Linn for diagrams and advice on how to murder one of my favourite characters in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

I am indebted to Professor John M. Murrin, of Princeton University, who responded so generously to my question: ‘If you wanted to sabotage the American War of Independence (Revolutionary War), how would you go about it?’ Professor Murrin was good enough to propose several options for my counterfactual endeavour. Any historical errors and inaccuracies are, of course, wholly my own responsibility. I also owe a debt of gratitude to the Grafton family: to Professor Anthony Grafton for his advice on the sartorial habits of Princeton students, to Louise Grafton for showing me where General George Washington crossed the Delaware, and to Anna Grafton for giving me my first American history lesson at the NFT in London.

I am grateful to Dr Adrian and Christine Fowle for their advice and support, and to Heather Swain for her initial encouragement and for reading the first draft of
The Time Quake
. My thanks, as ever, to my friends at G.W. for listening to the work in progress: Stephanie Chilman, Jacqui Lofthouse, Louise Voss, Kate Harrison and Jacqui Hazell. And the final ‘thank you’ must go to R., L. and I. without whom there would not have been a story in the first place.

L. B.-A.
London, February 2009