Second Lives Read online

  This one's for Thomas, whose good humour and kindness are an inspiration to me every day.

  The woman who called herself Quil stood on a ridge with oak trees behind her, looking down into a shallow dell. The morning air was cool and crisp, the sky was blue and the pollen- rich air was alive with insects and birdsong. Below her, within an ornate garden hidden behind tall hedges and ancient brick walls, a familiar building stood, swathed in ivy.

  Sweetclover Hall.

  Quil knew there were guards within and without, pressure pads, laser grids, cameras and traps surrounding the place, but they were skilfully hidden. From her vantage point she could have been looking at any old English pile, home to some blue-blood descendants of a once-powerful family. But she knew the truth - this discreet, sheltered building was one of the most secure holding facilities in existence at this point in time. Behind its walls interrogations were being conducted, pressure brought to bear on political dissidents, terrorists, activists - whichever undesirable sector of society was currently designated enemy combatants. Fully authorised, fully deniable,

  officially non-existent, Sweetclover Hall was the place people went to when they disappeared.

  The men and women who ran the facility sat smugly in the house, safe in their control centres and meeting rooms, watching the inmates on CCTV, feeling powerful and in control, the unassailable enforcers of the powers that be, ruling absolutely the forgotten and misplaced human flotsam that washed up in their cells.

  Somewhere in the house, Quil knew that her younger self was sitting in a nondescript little room talking to a nondescript little man, beginning a battle of wits she knew she would lose.

  Quil looked up into the sky, raising her hand to shield her eyes from the rising sun. She squinted, searching the heavens for a sign.

  There, high in the stratosphere, a flash of light heralded the arrival of a new star in the sky. It hung there silently, growing larger at a leisurely pace until suddenly it seemed to elongate into a ribbon of flame, arcing down from space trailing fire and smoke, screaming towards the ground. The sonic boom hit her just as the star fell to Earth, knocking her off her feet and making her head ring.

  The missile detonated in the heart of the ancient building, the very structure of time itself shattered in a billion places, and the dark secrets hidden beneath Sweetclover Hall came spilling out into the light of a frightened world.

  Quil sat up, smiling.

  All was as it should be.

  Professor Yasunori Kairos did not like giving lectures.

  Today he was attempting to explain imaginary time, and the blank looks of all the students in the front row of the lecture hall were making his temples throb. They had understood the linear directionality of real time within specific light cones, but once he had stepped beyond that and tried to explain the mathematical possibilities of imaginary time, he had seen their eyes glaze over. When the bell rang to signal the end of the lecture he breathed a sigh of relief, sat down and rested his head against the surface of his desk, closing his eyes and picturing equations to calm himself as the students filed out gossiping.

  When silence had finally fallen, Kairos opened his eyes and sat up, only to find himself staring across at three students, two young women and a young man, sitting in the front row.

  'Oh, hello,' said Kairos, somewhat discomfited. 'Can I help you?'

  One of the young women, the white one dressed entirely

  in black, smiled softly. 'I hope so,5 she said. 'My name is Dora Predennick, and I want to show you something, if I may.'

  The young woman rose from her chair, walked up to Kairos's desk and held out her hand. Kairos regarded it suspiciously, but she leaned forward and grabbed his hand in hers before he could react. He was immediately overcome with the strangest feeling. His hand tingled, as if with pins and needles, and red sparks flew from it. Alarmed, he tried to pull his hand back but the woman's grip was too strong for him. The feeling that had begun in his hand flashed quickly up his arm and then across his chest. He briefly wondered if he was having a heart attack, and became certain of it when his vision began to blur and darken. The tingling soon engulfed his whole body, his head felt tight and painful and he felt his feet leave the ground as if he were floating weightless - a sensation he had experienced once before, on the outward journey to Mars, and which he had not enjoyed at all.

  He cried out, but could not hear himself do so. He felt the deepest, most profound sense of panic. Had she drugged him, perhaps? Some kind of chemical patch on her hand? Was he being murdered or kidnapped?

  Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the sensation began to abate, he felt solid ground beneath his feet and his vision began to clear. But this didn't make sense at all. He was outside. He squinted in the bright sunlight that warmed his skin. He could smell grass and flowers.

  He felt Dora unclasp his hand and his legs gave way beneath him. He crumpled to the ground and cried out in alarm.

  'Don't worry, Professor,' he heard Dora say, from somewhere above him. 'You'll be fine. It kind of messes with your head the first time.'

  His eyes adjusted to the light and he looked around him. Trees, shrubs, a wide plain ahead of him. Blue sky, hot sun. The air smelled and tasted like nothing he'd ever known, and the sounds of the birds were alien but soothing.

  'Where,' he stammered, 'where am I? What . . . what happened?'

  'Calm down, Prof, you're hyperventilating,' said Dora.

  He nodded and took control of his breathing. There was a soft trumpeting sound close by, animal rather than instrumental. Kairos sat stock-still, feeling a primitive fear deep in his belly.

  'What was that?' he whispered.

  Dora leaned over him smiling, and whispered, 'Look behind you and see.'

  Gulping, Kairos turned his head and looked up into the eyes of a woolly mammoth, which was staring down at him curiously, its trunk swaying like the pendulum of a long-case clock. He held its gaze for a moment, then turned back to Dora.

  'Welcome to history, Prof,' she said, smiling broadly. 'Now, can we talk about quantum effects in interaction with large amounts of temporally unstable materials?'

  Kazic Cecka sat on the black rubber seal of an old skyscraper roof, the concrete lip at the edge digging into his back. It was hot and silent up here, high above the bustle of the city streets yet beneath the opaque gaze of the buildings that towered over him. They were totally unlike the skyscrapers of his day, the solid, blocky type like the one he was sitting atop. These taller buildings curved and twined around on themselves like huge silver tree trunks corkscrewing out of the ground, reaching high up where the air was thin.

  Kaz knew that he was in New York in the year 2141. He knew this because Jana, the young woman who lay unconscious beside him in a pool of her own blood, had brought them here by accident as they fled 1645. Focusing on the point of her departure, she had jumped into time and materialised herself and Kaz at the very time and place she had originally left on her first trip, when she had flung herself off the roof to escape a group of men intent on killing her.

  These men now lay before Kaz in various pieces, their blood mingling with Jana's. There really was a lot of blood.

  Standing in the middle of the spreading puddle was Dora, the young woman who'd spilled most of it.

  Take my hand,' said Dora, sheathing her dripping sword with one hand while reaching out to Kaz with the other.

  Kaz looked up at her in amazement. The Dora he knew was a fourteen-year-old girl from a seventeenth-century English village - curious and capable but young, unworldly and, the last time he'd seen her, deeply traumatised by her experiences. She had pulled away from Jana and him as they'd joined hands to jump into time. He had no idea where and when she had been whisked off to, but the Dora who
stood before him, who had appeared in the nick of time and saved Jana and Kaz by cutting down their attackers with ruthless efficiency, bore little resemblance to the girl he'd known.

  'We need to get her to a hospital,' said Kaz, leaning over towards Jana, who lay face down taking short, shallow breaths.

  'I've taken care of it,' said Dora briskly. 'Let's get out of here; this is one place we really shouldn't linger.'

  Kaz reached out and took Dora's right hand, while she grabbed Jana with her left. He felt the world around them shift, his stomach felt hollow and his vision swam, and then they were in a lavish reception area - large glass doors, fancy desk, sofas.

  The instant they had solidified, the internal doors slid open and a man and two women in clean white medical coats ran out, wheeling a stretcher and a trolley laden with instruments of all sorts.

  'Come on,' said Dora as the doctors lifted Jana on to a stretcher on the count of three. 'We should get out of their way and let them work.'

  'Yeah,' said Kaz, knowing she was right but unwilling to leave Jana without a friendly face while she was in such bad shape. 'Where and when are we?'

  'Kinshasa, 2120. Trust me, this is the best clinic there is,' said Dora, placing a reassuring hand on his shoulder. 'She's going to be fine.'

  Reluctantly, Kaz allowed himself to be led away. One of the attackers in New York had kicked Kaz square in the mouth, and now he tongued his teeth to find two missing and one split in two. 'I think I'm going to need some painkillers and a dentist myself,' he said as Dora led him out of the room into a pastel-coloured corridor lined with expensive-looking prints of African tribal designs.

  'No problem,' said Dora, leading him three rooms down and pushing the door open to reveal a fully equipped dentist's surgery and a tall blonde woman standing by the big chair waiting for him.

  'I hate dentists,' moaned Kaz through his bruise-swollen lips, hovering on the threshold.

  'I shan't take it personally, sir,' said the dentist with a wolfish smile. 'If you'll please take a seat.'

  Kaz turned to Dora. 'Fill me in while I'm being tortured by the scary lady with the nasty drill?'

  Dora nodded, followed Kaz inside and perched on a table by the door.

  The dentist's chair was deeply upholstered leather, and Kaz relaxed into it gratefully; he was bruised all over and dog-tired.

  The dentist handed him a glass of pink mouthwash and he swooshed, gargled and spat the foul medicinal stuff, expecting pain but surprised to find it made his mouth feel pleasantly numb.

  'Wass tha?' he said, his tongue feeling like a lump of useless meat.

  'Dentistry has improved a bit since your time,' said Dora.

  'Wa yeer agai'?' asked Kaz, frustrated by his now useless mouth. 'Oh fa fu sa.'

  Kaz was a bit annoyed that Dora didn't even crack a smile at his discomfort, which he was playing up for laughs. But then, he mused, he didn't really know this older version of Dora at all, although there was perhaps a line to be drawn between the girl who had snatched Jana's gun and dispatched a group of Roundhead soldiers in 1645, and the black-clad warrior who sat opposite him now.

  'We're in Kinshasa. The year is 2120,' replied Dora patiently. 'This hospital is very private, very discreet and very expensive. The staff have all signed non-disclosure agreements and we have this entire wing, and all its staff and resources, at our disposal for as long as we need them.'

  Kaz tried to incline his head by way of mute question, but the dentist firmly pushed it back, pulled open his mouth and shoved some kind of buzzing implement inside it. He grunted in annoyance.

  'Lottery win,' explained Dora, finally cracking a smile. 'Lotteries are a time traveller's best friend.'

  Kaz grunted his appreciation - anything to distract him from the sounds emerging from his mouth. Oh God, did something just go scrunch?

  'I knew I'd need a place where everybody could be looked after,' said Dora, 'and this clinic is ideal.'

  'Everboy?' asked Kaz as the dentist swapped tools and grabbed a pair of pliers. He felt a tugging in his jaw and something in his mouth went pop and then crunch and then a kind of slurping scrapey noise that made him want to vomit.

  'It's been a long time, for me, since that day in Pendarn,' said Dora, hesitantly. Kaz could tell she didn't want to explain in much detail and was picking and choosing what to reveal.

  Kaz remembered seeing Dora's mother, father and brother lying in a heap on the floor of the house's undercroft. Her mother had been unconscious, her brother looked like he'd been run through with a sword and her father, Thomas, had been cradling them both as the computer screen in front of him had counted down to the moment when a bomb would detonate and demolish the building around them. Dora had screamed as he and Jana had dragged her away into time, forcing her to abandon her family to their fate.

  'One by one, I've scooped everyone up and brought them here,' said Dora. 'My family, Mountfort, you and Jana, that kid Simon from 2014. Oh, and Steve too.'

  Despite the importance of what she was telling him, Kaz was distracted by Dora's speech patterns. The girl he had known spoke seventeenth-century English with a rich Cornish burr. This older Dora spoke with a different accent - hints of Australian and maybe Spanish, he thought - and her vocabulary and phrasing were what he, a product of the twenty-first century, would have considered modern.

  Her speech patterns weren't the only thing that had changed - now she dressed like a ninja and moved with a lethal mix of martial arts readiness and cat burglar stealth. She was as graceful as she had been gawky, as controlled as she had been skittish. She was a different person altogether. He wondered what could possibly have happened to her since they'd last met. It had been only minutes for him but for her it had been, he guessed, at least four years. She had been fourteen when they first met, three years younger than him. Now he reckoned she was one year older. She was slightly taller than she had been, although she would still have been short by twenty-first-century standards. She was stronger and leaner; her figure had filled out and lost its puppy fat.

  His attention shifted when he caught a glimpse of something big and red emerging from his mouth between the pliers' jaws. He tried to sit up, but the dentist pushed him back down again, brandishing a scalpel.

  'I'm going to leave you to get your mouth fixed up,' said Dora. 'We'll talk later.'

  Now the dentist was holding a clean white tooth between pliers and looked to be about to bang it into his gums with a little silver hammer. He was pretty sure that wasn't how these things were supposed to be done even in his own time, let alone in the future, but he couldn't voice his protest, not least because his head rang with every hammer blow.

  Dora's face hovered into view over the dentist's shoulder. She grimaced as she looked into his mouth, which was hardly reassuring.

  She surprised him again, this time by leaning forward and planting a kiss on his cheek, which earned her a glare from the dentist.

  'See you in a bit,' said Dora.

  'Right, now for the hard part,' muttered the dentist, reaching for what looked like a tiny chainsaw.

  Kaz sat beside the hospital bed waiting for Jana to wake, trying to think what he would say when she did. Speaking was a bit difficult for him at the moment - he had developed a slight lisp as a result of his new teeth.

  He dismissed 'Morning' or 'Hi' as too flippant, briefly considered 'Well, hello sleepyhead' before reminding himself he wasn't a middle-aged character in a bad sitcom, plus he should probably avoid sibilants, and was mulling 'Welcome to the future!' when she opened her eyes, blinked and said 'Hi' in a sleepy voice.

  'Hi,' he said softly, smiling.

  It had been a week since Dora had brought them to the clinic, and the doctor had kept them updated on Jana's progress throughout. The knife Quil had plunged into Jana's chest had just missed her heart, but it had collapsed a lung and done serious internal damage, all of which had now been repaired. She had regained consciousness on the fourth day, although she'd been groggy and confu
sed, and now, after a few days of mostly sleeping, she had sent a message via a nurse that she wanted to see Kaz and Dora for 'a proper talk'.

  The beige room was small but private, boasting a single bed ringed by all sorts of monitors and instruments, a small desk and a couple of chairs.

  'Help me up,' said Jana, bending feebly at the waist; her dressings and deep bruising made it hard for her to sit up under her own steam. Kaz held her hand and pulled her into a sitting position, ignoring the red halo that flashed around their fingers as the temporal energy they both possessed interacted. He then bent forward and plumped the pillows behind her so she could lean back comfortably.

  'Thanks,' said Jana. Her face was pale, her cheeks sunken, but there was a spark in her eyes that pledged the swift return of her old self.

  'Sleep well?' asked Kaz.

  Jana nodded, turning to look out of the window. The clouds were low and threatening above the green of the city park that began at the clinic's front door.

  'Yeah, but I'm happy to wake up,' said Jana, turning back to Kaz. 'I mean, lucky to wake up. Very lucky.'

  She glanced down at her hand and it took Kaz a moment to realise he was still holding it tightly; and it was still surrounded by an aurora of red. He blushed slightly and withdrew it.

  'Where's Dora?' asked Jana.

  'Right here,' said Dora, as she entered the room. In the week they had been in Kinshasa, Kaz had only once seen Dora wearing what he would have considered normal clothing - on one particularly hot day she'd worn a white cotton dress - but now she was back in black.

  Dora was carrying a tray bearing a jug of iced tea, three glasses and a plate of biscuits. She placed it on the desk, poured everyone a drink, then placed the plate on Jana's lap and pulled a chair up to the opposite side of the bed to Kaz.

  'Has Mountfort gone?' he asked, referring to the Royalist spy they had met in 1645.

  'Yes,' she said. 'He will never quite be the same man, of course. There is only so much even modern medicine can do for a body as broken as his wras, but he is alive and back in his own time with a healthy coffer full of gold for his troubles. He told me he intends to spend the rest of his days in quiet contemplation of nature.'