The Woman Who Died a Lot

“Luckily for us, we’ve got a seriously righteous man lined up. He’s a real pip—not even a shred of malice, ego or selfishness. Even a whiff of him will be enough to divert the stream of destruction away from the sinful.”

“Don’t let Goliath find out,” I said.

“Don’t worry,” he said with a smile, “we’ve got him in a safe house where he is being looked after by semirighteous people— who are in turn being protected by people who are quite happy to be not righteous at all when it comes to protecting the main guy.”

He climbed into his car, slammed the door and wound down the window.

“Give my love to Landen and Tuesday, won’t you?” he said. “And although I don’t want to add any pressure, if Tuesday could find the value of U_c before midday on Friday, it would save a whole lot of uncertainty—and we can keep our righteous man in reserve for another time.”

“She’s doing her best,” I said, “but she is only sixteen. Most scientists don’t start achieving this level of success before they are old, gray, cantankerous, forgetful and smelly.”

“I know,” said Miles. “The planet’s lucky to have her. Cheerio!”

He started the engine, and we waved as he drove off.

“So, Mum,” said Friday, “the timepark?”

“The timepark.”

27. Wednesday: Kemble Timepark

The C-90-F Reverse Fluxgate time engines, despite being shown to not work, still maintained a residual capacity to bend space-time and exhibit time-dilation phenomena. Physicists had argued long and hard over the apparent contradictions, and concluded that time travel might exist in an entangled intermediate state of working and not working, with no apparent contradiction. In that respect time is very like a tiresome soap star: wayward, petulant and unpredictable.

Norman Scrunge,

Time Industry Historian

Kemble was situated about twelve miles to the northwest of Swindon. The 720-acre site had been home to the Main Temporal Transport Device ever since the service was inaugurated in 1932 and had seen six different engines built on its land. The last ones built here had been the C-90-Fs, which had been used for only three years until decommissioning. Since then they had remained empty and abandoned. The engines were silent, and the massive seven-story containment domes dominated the surroundings. The interior of the base was designated a no-go zone, but trespassing wasn’t a problem. The hazardous nature of the timepark was well known, even to idiots with mischief on their minds.

“So,” I said as soon as we had made our way back on to the A419 and were heading north, “why am I missing the Wingco’s pizza evening to take a trip to visit the Kemble Timepark?”

“Here,” Friday said, handing me a folder. “Shazza and I have been doing some research. We set up a bulletin board for anyone else who was now Destiny Aware to make contact. Do you know how many people have done so?”

“First things first: How are you getting along with Shazza?”

Friday thought for a moment. “Not brilliantly, but we’re working on it. Trying to prekindle a spark that will make us inseparable soul mates in two decades’ time is proving a bit tricky. I think she’s a whiny foul-mouth with a victim mentality, while she thinks I’m an arrogant middle-class ponce with an attitude so patronizing she would throttle me if it weren’t illegal. We tried sex to see if that would cement the relationship, but it didn’t help: She told me she’d ‘had better,’ and I told her that yelling out the titles of Tom Hanks movies was . . . well, distracting.”

“So not going too well?”

“No. And with less than forty-eight hours before I’m arrested, it’s not likely to improve.”

“That might not happen. Besides, people have different needs at eighteen than at forty. And if those needs diverge, it can cause serious conflict. Probably accounts for breakups. Your father and I didn’t hook up properly until ten years after first going out. If we’d stayed together, we might not have survived. As it is, we’re still very—”

“Mum, I’m going to stop you before you start getting all smushy about Dad.”

“All right,” I said with a smile, “have it your own way. Do you want me to tell you how much I love you all, too?”

“Definitely not. Look at the folder.”

“Okay. What were you saying?”

“I said that Shazza and I had set up a bulletin board for anyone else who had received a career summary from the Union of Federated Timeworkers. Do you know how many people have gotten in contact?”

“A thousand?” I suggested.