After Eden

Chapter 13

Ben was standing in the middle of the kitchen.

‘Take a seat, Eden,’ he said, gesturing towards the kitchen table.

I had the uncomfortable feeling I was about to be lectured on under-age drinking.

Ryan pulled out two chairs. We each took one.

‘You’ve told her,’ Cassie said simply.

Ryan caught my eye. I tried to tell him with my eyes that I hadn’t confessed to anything, but all three of them were looking at me.

‘I don’t know what she’s talking about,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure what it is that I’m supposed to know.’

‘She told me that she’s been helping you with your mission.’

‘I didn’t say that.’

Cassie narrowed her eyes and looked at me appraisingly. ‘Not in so many words perhaps. But you told me.’

‘I have no idea what you mean,’ I said as I raced through my recent memory, trying to remember what I might have said.

There was a jug of water and a stack of glasses in the middle of the table. Ryan filled two glasses and pushed one across to me. My hand shook as I lifted it to my mouth. What would happen if Ben and Cassie found out that I knew why they were here? Ryan had said things about laws, and about how much trouble he would be in if anyone found out.

Ben turned to Ryan. ‘You may as well tell me the truth.’

Ryan swirled the water in his glass. He didn’t look up. ‘She worked it out herself.’

Ben was calm. ‘What exactly does she know?’

Ryan looked up. Up until now he’d always seemed mature, confident, in control, but now he looked like a boy who was in big trouble with his dad. ‘She knows why we’re here and where we’re from.’ His voice was barely more than a whisper.

Cassie swore and sat down. ‘We should never have agreed to let him come with us. I knew he’d be a liability.’

‘Be quiet,’ Ben told Cassie. He looked back at Ryan. ‘Explain how this happened.’

‘Eden worked most of it out for herself.’

Ben turned to look at me. ‘What did you work out, Eden?’

I shrugged. ‘Lots of little things didn’t seem right. There were strange gaps in Ryan’s knowledge. He hadn’t heard of some really famous people and he didn’t recognise pizza. I knew there was something not right about him the first time I met him.’

‘That doesn’t explain how you figured out where we’re from,’ said Ben. I noticed that he had made no mention yet of them being from a different time.

I looked at Ryan. He gave me a faint smile. ‘You can’t get me in any more trouble than I’m already in.’

‘I saw Connor’s autobiography. It was on the floor in the living room.’

Cassie laughed sarcastically. ‘Which is why we don’t bring people back to the house, Ry.’

‘So I screwed up!’ he said to her. ‘Just like you screwed up when you didn’t tell me about pizza. You’re supposed to be the researcher, but you forgot to mention one of the most popular dishes in twenty-first century Britain. And you weren’t so great on twenty-first century fashion either! I should’ve been wearing one of those sweater things with a hood!’

‘Quit squabbling,’ said Ben calmly. He looked at me. ‘Tell me everything you know.’

I glanced at Ryan.

‘Don’t look at him,’ said Ben. ‘Ryan doesn’t expect you to lie for him. He knows we have to know how much you know so we can figure out how to make this right.’

I swallowed hard, trying to calculate how much or how little I should say. I didn’t want to get Ryan into any more trouble than necessary. Nor did I want to put myself in harm’s way. ‘I know that you are from the future and that you are here to alter history,’ I said. ‘I know that you don’t want Connor to discover Eden.’

Ben nodded, his expression unreadable. ‘What else do you know?’

‘Nothing really. Ryan wouldn’t give me details. I do know that a parasite from Eden destroys Earth’s ecosystem. I know it’s important that your mission is a success.’

‘Do you know what will happen if we’re not successful?’

I glanced at Ryan again.

‘Look at me,’ said Ben.

‘Billions of people will die. The planet might die.’

Ben nodded thoughtfully. ‘Is there anything else he’s told you?’

I shook my head.

‘Ry?’ Ben asked.

‘I think that’s everything,’ he said quietly.

Ben turned back to me. ‘How long have you known?’

I concentrated. It seemed a long time ago now. ‘About six or seven weeks,’ I said.

‘And how long have you known that she knows?’ he asked Ryan.

‘About six weeks.’

‘Six weeks!’ said Ben, raising his voice for the first time. ‘You’ve known we have a serious problem for six weeks and you didn’t tell me.’

‘She won’t say anything. You can trust her.’

‘Maybe I can. But can I trust you? This isn’t a game, Ryan. This isn’t a little vacation to the past where you get to meet a celebrity and pick up a pretty girl before heading home to your old life. This is everything. This is the past and the present and the future.’

‘I know I screwed up.’

‘You’re so immature,’ Cassie said. ‘You couldn’t keep your eye on the prize. You allowed yourself to become infatuated by a twenty-first century girl and then spent half your days hanging out with her instead of working on Connor, which is what you should have been doing.’

‘It’s not like that,’ Ryan said, his voice rising. ‘I know I messed up! I shouldn’t have brought her home and let her find the book. But I did and she did. I’m not wasting my time with her. She’s important.’

‘Is that right?’ said Cassie. ‘I thought your brief was rather straightforward: make friends with Connor Penrose and make sure he doesn’t discover Eden. I don’t remember the part that instructed you to fool around with a high-school girl.’

‘I’m not fooling around with her.’

Cassie’s laugh was razor-sharp. I could sense a pounding on the periphery of my senses. It pulsed to the beat of my heart. Bang-bang thump. Bang-bang thump. I gulped a mouthful of cold water.

‘What would you call it, Ryan?’ asked Cassie. ‘Falling in love?’

‘Eden isn’t just some random high-school girl. She’s the girl Connor falls in love with. His best friend. The one who breaks his heart. The one he argues with just before he discovers Eden.’

Cassie looked at me and then back to Ryan. ‘And how exactly does you falling in love with her help us?’

Ryan’s jaw clenched and he glanced at me. I was waiting for him to announce that he wasn’t in love with me. ‘She’s helping me.’ He went on to explain how we had plotted together to get Connor to the ball and to spend his money on a games console.

‘And you never thought to include this information in your daily debrief?’ asked Ben.

Ryan frowned. ‘Of course I thought about it. But I worried that if I said anything she’d be vulnerable in the clean-up mission.’

Cassie and Ben looked at each other.

‘He’s broken the First Law of Temporal Integrity,’ she said. ‘You know what that means.’

The clock on the wall chimed eight.

‘Could we finish this conversation another time?’ I asked, standing up. ‘I really should get going.’

‘Sit down again, Eden,’ said Ben. ‘I think you’re going to need the whole story.’

Ben made a fresh pot of coffee and ordered in pizza. The headache that had been sprouting deep within my skull for a couple of hours was now beginning to bloom. Privately I promised myself I would never again touch raspberry Juiska – or any alcohol – if the pain would go away now and let me think. Ryan poured me glasses of cold water and encouraged me to eat lots of pizza.

Ben began by going over the stuff that Ryan had already told me. Connor would discover a habitable planet on the twenty-third of June. Thirty-two years later Nathaniel Westland would discover a method of travelling great distances through space and time. One of the first places was Eden. But I knew this already. I knew from the pictures in Connor’s autobiography that it was a pink-rock planet with a lush jungle of green plants under a clear blue sky. By the time he had reached the part about Earth’s habitats dying out and billions of people dying, the dusk was deepening from blue into purple and the shimmering moon was a hard, white scar in the sky.

‘Fast forward to 2122,’ said Ben, ‘and you get to our timeline. Do you know the population of Earth today?’

‘Over six and a half billion?’ I offered.

‘That’s close enough. In our timeline there’s less than one billion. Some people think that’s a good thing. No overpopulation, more space and resources for everyone. Of course, they’re not the people who watched their own children dying from starvation.’

‘It’s even more serious than the deaths of billions of people,’ said Cassie. ‘The way things are going, many scientists believe the human race won’t survive another fifty years. So you see, we can’t fail.’

‘So you had to travel back in time,’ I said.

‘Not everyone saw it that way,’ said Ben. ‘Some people felt strongly that there is never a good enough reason for backwards time travel.’

‘But surely, if the human race is dying out, if the planet is dying, you have to? How could anyone oppose that?’

‘It’s gone terribly wrong before,’ said Ben. He hesitated. ‘Do you know why the dinosaurs died out sixty-five million years ago?’

‘A meteor in Mexico?’

Ben laughed. ‘Is that the current theory?’

‘I think so.’

‘There will be many theories. But it was time travellers from the late twenty-first century. One of the travellers had influenza. He was symptom-free when he left his timeline, but began to get sick after returning. The flu virus wiped out the dinosaurs.’

‘I need a moment,’ I said, pouring myself a mug of coffee. ‘You mean to tell me that there was no meteor?’

‘There were several, actually,’ said Ben. ‘But the dinosaurs were already dying out long before any meteors crashed to Earth.’

‘The dinosaurs died of flu,’ I said to myself. I began to laugh. More in disbelief than anything.

‘I know it’s a lot to grasp,’ said Ben gently. ‘And because you’ve always been told something else, this must seem absurd. But it’s important for you to understand why our mission protocols are so strict. The extinction of the dinosaurs isn’t the only massive disaster caused by time travel.’

‘What else?’ I whispered.

‘The Black Death which wiped out one third of the population of Europe,’ Ben continued.

‘The bubonic plague,’ I said.

Ben shook his head. ‘A different bacteria altogether. A bacteria that is well tolerated in humans in the twenty-second century, but was deadly in the fourteenth.’

‘How many of these disastrous missions have taken place?’ I asked.

‘Those two are the worst,’ said Ben. ‘They happened in the early days of four-dimensional travel. Very few time missions have been approved since then. But this one was allowed because so much is at stake.’

‘I understand,’ I said. ‘But if it’s so important that Connor doesn’t discover Eden, why not kill him? Surely that would be a safer bet.’

‘We’re not assassins,’ said Cassie. ‘We’re here to do a job, which is to prevent Connor discovering Eden. We don’t have to kill him to do that.’

‘But wouldn’t it be easier?’

‘It would be easier,’ said Ben. ‘And perhaps if Connor went on to become a nobody who did nothing with his life, our mission would be to eliminate him. But Connor’s descendants are very influential.’ He glanced at Cassie. ‘They only approved this time mission provided Connor’s timeline was left largely intact.’

‘I see.’

‘The only person around here in danger of being killed is you,’ said Cassie.

‘Cassie,’ said Ben. ‘Cut it out.’

‘It’s true. She knows about the planet, she knows about time travel. If our cleaner gets wind of what she knows, she’s history. And Eden needs to know that.’

‘Our cleaner isn’t going to know,’ said Ryan. ‘Eden can keep a secret.’

‘For the rest of her life?’ said Cassie.

‘Be quiet!’ said Ben. He turned to me. ‘Did Ryan tell you about cleaners?’

I vaguely recalled him saying something about them all those weeks ago when I first found out he was from the future, but I didn’t think it would be a good idea to admit it. I shook my head.

‘Every time mission has a cleaner,’ said Ben. ‘Someone who arrives in the timeline before the rest of us and leaves after we have gone. They make sure we follow the mission directive and don’t stray from it. They also make sure we obey the Laws of Temporal Integrity. One of those laws is that we don’t alter the timeline by revealing the future to inhabitants of the past.’

‘Which is exactly what Ryan has done,’ said Cassie, her voice loud in frustration.

‘If our cleaner discovered what you know, your life would be in danger,’ said Ben.

‘What’s so bad about me knowing your mission?’ I asked. ‘I’m on your side.’

‘The thing is,’ said Ben, ‘you know there’s a planet out there somewhere that harbours life. You know that humans can live on it. You also know that one day it will be possible for humans to travel there. In many ways, even if we stop Connor from discovering the planet, our mission has failed because you know about Eden. You could choose to discover it. Or you could mention it to someone else in a throwaway remark one day.’ He sighed. ‘I hope to God Ryan wasn’t foolish enough to tell you which star the planet orbits.’

‘No. He didn’t,’ I said quickly.

‘That’s one blessing, I suppose,’ said Ben. ‘But you still know about things that haven’t been invented yet and events that haven’t happened yet. That’s dangerous for the timeline.’

‘But I won’t say anything.’

‘I believe you. But our cleaner won’t.’

‘What will happen to me if your cleaner does find out?’

‘He’ll kill you,’ said Ben.

My hand trembled as I poured myself another glass of water. ‘Why is it OK to kill me but not Connor?’

‘As I said, Connor’s family in 2122 is powerful and influential. You, however, are just a regular person. There’s no one here to look out for you. Our cleaner would consider you collateral damage. He would take a risk that your death wouldn’t significantly affect the timeline. Not as much as your revealing the truth about the planet Eden.’

‘What do I do?’ I asked.

‘We have two options,’ said Ben. ‘The first is that we do nothing.’

‘How is that an option?’ asked Cassie, her voice rising again.

‘Our options are few,’ said Ben. ‘Doing nothing may be the best thing. Eden keeps her mouth shut for the next hundred years.’

‘I can do that,’ I said.

‘And the second option?’ asked Ryan.

‘She comes with us when we leave. Any knowledge of the future comes with us. The cleaner won’t have anything to clean up.’ Ben looked at me. ‘Travel to the future is perfectly legal. It doesn’t affect the timeline too much.’

‘What about her descendants?’ asked Ryan.

‘Again, collateral damage,’ said Ben. ‘A risk worth taking, given the circumstances.’

‘Shouldn’t I be the one to decide if I go to the future?’ I asked.

‘No,’ snapped Cassie.

‘It will affect our fuel supplies,’ said Ben. ‘We’re only equipped to transport three people. We might not be able to stabilise the portal for long enough. It’s not without risk.’

‘So we put all our lives in danger,’ said Cassie.

Ben nodded. ‘I’m leaning towards option one. Less lives in danger.’

‘Just mine,’ I whispered.

Ryan squeezed my hand. ‘You know how important it is never to reveal what you know. So long as you do that, everything will be OK.’

‘So what happens now?’ I asked.

Ben smiled at me. ‘We’ll finish our mission, save the planet and go home. Everything will work out.’

‘What happens if you fail?’ I asked.

‘We fail,’ said Ben. ‘That’s it. End of story. This is our only chance to get it right.’

‘Couldn’t you just come back and try again?’

Ben shook his head. ‘No. We distort four-dimensional space when we travel through time. It becomes dangerous and unstable. The more times you travel the same route, the more likely the portal will collapse in on itself.’

‘Like a black hole,’ Cassie explained.

‘You don’t go back to the same place twice,’ said Ben. ‘It would be like playing Russian roulette. You might get there safely. But probably not.’

‘It’s down to us to get it right this time,’ said Ryan.

Ryan drove me up the lane in silence. There was no parking space left at our usual hidden away spot around the corner from my house, so he parked up at the end of my street. He switched off the ignition, unbuckled his seat belt and turned to face me.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he said.

‘It’s not your fault.’

‘It’s entirely my fault. I should never have dragged you into my life.’

‘I wasn’t exactly kicking and screaming.’

He laughed. ‘There was a bit of kicking and screaming when you thought I was using you to complete my mission. Actually, it was more like sulking and the silent treatment.’

I gave him a playful shove. ‘Well, I think this afternoon put any lingering doubts to rest,’ I said, smiling at him. ‘It’s clear to me that Cassie and Ben wish you’d never met me.’

Ryan reached across for my hand and squeezed it tight. ‘I’m glad I’ve met you.’

I felt the now familiar blush sweep across my cheeks. Except that now our time was running out, every moment of pleasure was accompanied by an aching anticipation of loss.

‘Are we still going to spend the day together tomorrow?’ I asked.

‘Definitely. Come down to the farmhouse at noon and I’ll make lunch.’

He was still holding my hand, still looking deep into my eyes. Feeling self-conscious suddenly, I lowered my eyes and turned towards the door.

‘Oh, crap,’ I said, recognising the couple ambling along the pavement hand in hand in the dusky twilight. Miranda and Travis. They hadn’t seen us yet.

And then she locked eyes with me.

‘Incoming,’ I said.

Ryan squeezed my hand and then released me. ‘It can’t be worse than the Cassie and Ben interrogation.’

‘Miranda does guilt really well,’ I replied, watching her slow march towards me.

‘Shall I speak to her?’ he whispered.

I shook my head. The last thing I needed was an audience when Miranda tore me to shreds. ‘It’s OK. I’d prefer to face this one alone.’

‘How gallant of him,’ Miranda said stonily as Ryan pulled away from the kerb.

‘He offered to stay,’ I said, rising to his defence. ‘I told him to leave.’

‘Wise advice,’ she said. ‘If I get my hands on that boy . . .’

‘Miranda,’ I began.

‘Home!’ she said. ‘I’m not having this conversation out on the street.’

We walked in silence down the street to the house. Travis stood by the front door holding a carrier bag of beer from the corner shop. He gave me a sympathetic shrug behind her back.

Miranda slammed the front door and marched into the kitchen. ‘I don’t even know how to begin,’ she said.

‘I’m sorry I let you down,’ I said. Usually the best way of handling Miranda was to fess up and apologise. Repeatedly.

‘Let’s hear it,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘Your account.’

‘Ryan’s dad invited me to stay to dinner,’ I said. ‘And then, since it was getting dark, Ryan offered to drive me home.’

‘Let’s hear the rest of it.’

I took a deep breath. ‘That’s all there is to tell.’

Miranda shook her head. ‘So you didn’t spend the afternoon in Perran Park drinking vodka with your friends?’

‘Oh,’ I said flatly.

‘Oh,’ she repeated sarcastically. ‘Connor’s mother called me a couple of hours ago. Apparently Connor was really sick when he got home this afternoon. He confessed to his mother that he’d spent the afternoon in the park with you and your friends drinking vodka.’

‘I didn’t drink vodka,’ I said.

Miranda put a hand on one hip and looked me up and down. ‘I never thought you’d lie to me, Eden. I thought we were closer than that.’

‘I had a raspberry-flavoured drink. It might have had vodka in it. I only drank one.’

‘According to Mrs Penrose, Connor was concerned because he saw you staggering out of the park, barely able to walk, and he believed you were going to accept a lift home from Ryan.’

I was going to kill Connor.

‘Why would you, of all people, get in a car with an under-age driver who’s been drinking?’

‘Ryan doesn’t drink.’

‘You expect me to believe that?’

I nodded. ‘He doesn’t drink because he drives.’

She sighed dramatically. ‘Let’s talk about the car. Where did he get that from? Was it stolen?’

‘It’s his dad’s. He borrowed it.’

‘He borrowed it? Are you suggesting his father gave him permission to use his car?’

If I said no, Ryan had stolen it. If I said yes, Ben was irresponsible too. I couldn’t win.

‘No,’ I said eventually. ‘But he has his licence back in the States.’

‘Does he have his licence here?’

‘No. But it was just along the coast road from Perran to Penpol Cove.’

‘Your parents died just driving along that same stretch of road. They nearly killed you too.’

I shut my eyes. We never talked about how my parents died. Or how close to dying I’d been.

‘I’ve spent the last ten years trying to keep you safe from boys like him.’

I said nothing. The rest of the conversation remained unspoken, but the message was loud and clear. Miranda had tried to keep me safe. Miranda had taken care of me even though she was only twenty herself when my parents died. Miranda had abandoned her law degree and dream of becoming a lawyer to take care of her six-year-old niece. Miranda had a string of failed relationships and no children of her own because she had sacrificed her own future so that she could take care of mine. And I had let her down.

‘I’m sorry I upset you,’ I said quietly. ‘I’m sorry I let you down.’

‘I’m disappointed,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m going to have to think about Saturday night.’

‘What do you mean?’ My voice shook.

‘I’m not sure I can trust you to go to the ball with your friends. I’m not so old that I don’t remember what happens at the leavers’ ball. I know there’s alcohol and parties afterwards.’

‘I won’t drink anything,’ I said. ‘And Megan’s parents are paying for a limo to drive us.’

‘I’ll have to think about it.’

I poured myself a large glass of water and went out of the kitchen door into the back garden. The purple sky from earlier was now a deep, endless black and the faint stars were turning on and slowly brightening, like a chain of fairy lights. I went over to the picnic table in the middle of the lawn and lay down on it so that the whole black canvas of night was stretched above me. Instinctively I scanned the sky for Cassiopeia, the reassuring w-shape that reminded me the universe was not an empty swirling mass of chaos. I scanned my eyes across the sky to Perseus and Algol, the winking star that was a sun – three suns – to Eden. Home. Ryan’s home. About to become the best-kept secret in the universe.

‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’ said a quiet voice.

Travis. I sat up on the table. He flicked open his lighter and held the flame to the end of his cigarette.

‘Spectacular,’ I said. ‘Do you know any of the constellations?’

‘The Big Dipper,’ he said, pointing up at the sky. ‘Everyone knows that one. And there’s Polaris, the North Star. That’s about it though. What about you?’

‘I only know a couple. You see that w? That’s Cassiopeia. And that over there is Algol, the demon star.’

Travis chuckled. ‘Between us we know half the sky.’

‘Did you know that Algol looks like one star, but actually it’s three?’ I asked.

‘How do you know that?’ Travis inhaled deeply on his cigarette.

‘Someone told me,’ I said. I gazed at the sky. Sea mist was heading swiftly inland. In a few minutes the stars would be hidden from view. ‘I wonder if there’s anyone out there, lying in the garden and looking up at the stars and maybe looking at our sun, wondering if there’s anyone out there looking up at the sky and wondering . . .’

‘How much did you drink?’ Travis interrupted. ‘Or are you high?’

I giggled. ‘Stone cold sober. Although from Miranda’s response you’d think I’d spent the afternoon turning tricks on the high street so I could get my next fix.’

‘Did she rip you a new one?’ he asked.

I smiled. ‘You could say that.’

He perched himself on the seat. ‘She’ll calm down. She’ll let you go. I’ll speak to her.’

‘I have to go. Ryan is leaving on Saturday night after the ball. He’s going home and this is my last chance to see him.’

‘You really like this boy.’

It wasn’t a question.

‘I like him more than I can put into words.’ Somehow the darkness made it easier to say.

‘He’s from New Hampshire, right?’

‘Right.’

‘The world is not so big, Eden. You’ll stay in touch.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s complicated. I can’t explain why. But I know I’ll never see him again after Saturday.’

‘Oh, Eden,’ he said sadly. ‘I really am sorry to hear you say that.’