His expression was
fearful. It was hard to tell if he was afraid of her, or afraid of
the consequences of his not arresting her immediately. Either way,
this was a very dangerous time for her.
She drummed her fingers
on the arm of her chair and thought for a few moments as Phillip sat
himself in his usual seat and stared at her; eyes flickering but
generally focussed on her. She had no particular plan for getting
through this. It had been several days of thoughts around this one
subject and nothing had formed – no resolution, no construction or
even a clue as to the best step to take.
Now, as she looked at
him, she decided that there was only one thing to be done. She
retrieved the device, held it out for him to take a handle and took a
leap of faith.
They arrived in the
future; the choking fog and flame surrounding them. The wasted people
– not yet as horrendously deformed as they would be within five
years when starvation and desperation and the wastelands of the earth
had taken them to the very edge of humanity – were still conscious
enough to be intrigued by unusually dressed individuals –
especially when one was gasping and choking while the other stood
tall and still.
Melissa touched a few
buttons and leaped across time and space to another scene. This one
was of control and antagonism: a political forum where the politics
had fallen out of the window. Here the air was clear and the earth
stayed still long enough for Phillip to take a deep breath and a look
around. He was staggered again. They had gone three or four decades
back in time and to her the scene was quaint, but to him it was
astonishing. The previous scene nothing had been visible and other
than the change from indoor to outdoor he could pretend that he was
in London still. Now, it was as though he had entered an alien world.
Once he'd got an
eyeful, she took him on again: scene after scene of devastation,
chaos and confusion.
Some time later they
returned to her sitting room where she let Phillip fall into a chair.
She returned the device to its safe place and once she reached the
room she took in his state in a swift glance. Spurning Mary's go to
response of laudanum, she called for brandy and a platter of tea.
Allowing him a few minutes to recover she poured him the first
generous slug of brandy which he knocked back speedily. Within
minutes he had poured a follow-up and, although his hand shook
slightly, he held it casually and partook on occasion.
Finally his gaze turned
to her and asked in a voice so calm and relaxed that underneath she
could imagine him being utterly impossibly rigid and wholly
controlled by his upbringing and schooling: “What exactly did you
and I experience?”
Briefly she recounted
the meaning of each of the scenes they had visited, unfolding for him
the story as it had first been revealed to her. Taking him into the
details she described the story she had gleaned from her researches.
He sat staring at her,
those huge dark eyes completely impenetrable. When she had concluded
her speech, he stared at the brandy swilling in the glass and once
again took a large gulp. “You can travel instantaneously from
location to location and arrive at any time in the past or future you
desire.”
“Yes, I can.”
Silence fell again.
“How many people can
you transport?”
She shook her head and
jumped to her feet. “Don't think like that, Phillip!” Her cry was
urgent. “Don't you think what you saw was bad enough? This
technology is in the wrong place! It's in the wrong time! I had to
get Andy out of the hands of the French before they learned what the
device does, because when they found out, they wiped out the British
and everyone who stood in their way. Their technology developments
vastly outpaced their understanding of managing it and they brought
the world to a different kind of destruction.
“I can't even
contemplate the horrors that would be wrought by the deliverance of
the device to another pair of hands who use it to influence the
world. I have to stop this – this war that is coming, but I am
desperately afraid that I might do more harm than good.” She sighed
and gazed into the fire.
