The Einstein Line

Silver and Gabriel were sitting in a long low hut surrounded by a lot of angry shouting people.

‘I’ve got my visa, I can travel!’

‘Can’t you see that I’m on business here?’

‘My husband has already gone – we’re just joining him.’

‘This is simply not acceptable in the modern world.’

The problem was simple. Everyone in the hut wanted to travel back in Time, but the Time Police wouldn’t let them. Time travel was forbidden. Well, almost forbidden.

Which meant that Silver and Gabriel had broken the rules.

The policeman with the double-headed dog asked them all kinds of questions about where they had come from, and Silver tried to explain about the Time Tornado blowing them off the bridge.

‘Blow-ins, are you?’ he said. ‘That’s what they all say.’

‘Is this the future – where we are now, I mean?’ asked Silver.

‘Not as far as I’m concerned,’ said the policeman. ‘This is Now – 2:45 p.m. precisely – and I am on duty for another six hours. If it was the future, I would already be at home.’

‘But is it the future for me?’

‘Not exactly, because you have no future. You will be deported back to your own Time, once all the paperwork has been done, and if the paperwork can’t be done, you will be Atomised.’

‘Atomised? What does that mean?’

‘It means you will be No More.’

‘You can’t kill us. We’re children, and we haven’t done anything wrong.’

‘That’s what they all say. Now you come along with me.’

Gabriel and Silver followed the policeman to the long low hut on the inside of the checkpoint. The hut and the checkpoint were ugly, but the sky was deep black and shining with big stars. In the East were three crescent moons.

‘Are we still on Planet Earth?’ asked Silver.

The policeman shook his head. ‘This is Philippi, on the other side of the Milky Way to Earth, but connected by the Star Road. You travelled along the Star Road, through Time, and landed here. Everyone always does.’

‘Everyone?’

‘Even the Pope.’

Silver knew all about Popes because her own family had been Catholics for hundreds of years, though her father never went to church. She wondered why the Popes wanted to go Time travelling.

‘When they die they come here,’ said the policeman. ‘Nobody knows why. Millions of people die every year and we never see them again, but for some reason the Popes somersault down the Star Road and end up here. Eventually we built this for them.’

He pulled back a curtain and showed Silver and Gabriel a full-size replica of the Vatican in Rome. The Popes were busy going up and down blessing people.

‘It’s a bit of a tourist attraction,’ said the policeman, ‘and when we get crowded out with people here – and if you think this is busy, you should see it in the summer – well, when we get really busy, the Popes help out. They do Mass and blessings and things.’

‘How many Popes have you got?’ asked Silver.

‘All of them. The last Pope died in 2333, but we’ve got a full set. Three of them are women.’

‘Are the Popes dead or alive?’

‘Ah, well,’ said the policeman, ‘that’s what you don’t understand because you live in the past. Dead and alive are to do with Time, aren’t they? The Popes die, yes they do, and they think they’ve gone to Heaven, because they always expected Heaven to be like one big Vatican City, and they always expected it to be full of other Popes, even the wicked ones. So here they all are, and because they have travelled the Star Road they are outside of Time now. There is no Time here.’

‘None?’

‘None at all. We have clocks so that we can divide the day, and we even have day and night, but this is the Einstein Line. Time is steady here, not future, not past, just the present. Stay here and you won’t get any older, ever. That’s why people come – it’s not just for the Time travel, it’s a bit of a health spa.’

‘It doesn’t look much like a nice place for a holiday.’

‘Not right here, stupid! This is a military zone, but a bit further on, behind St Peter’s, it’s very nice indeed.’

‘Well, I wouldn’t come here,’ said Silver. ‘I like the seaside for a holiday.’

‘Plenty of seaside here. We’ve got the Sands of Time here.’

‘Where?’ said Silver, pricking up her ears.

‘Just a star’s throw away. Now stop asking questions.’

‘I’m only asking questions because you are answering them,’ said Silver.

‘Well, now I’m going to ask you some questions. What year have you come from?’

‘2009,’ said Silver, making up a date.

‘District?’

‘London.’

‘And what about him, your pal, the funny-looking one?’

‘Do you laugh at me?’ said Gabriel, and there was something in his voice that made even an eight-foot-tall policeman pause.

‘Gabriel is a Throwback,’ said Silver, ‘and I am a Pirate.’

‘A Throwback and a Pirate, eh? You’d better go straight to Quarantine, without passing Go or collecting a thousand Astros.’

‘Do you still play Monopoly?’ asked Silver.

‘Course we do!’ said the policeman. ‘Everyone plays Monopoly, even the Popes. Now come on.’

Silver and Gabriel got up to follow the policeman when a beautiful woman swept into the room wearing a white fox fur. The officers stood to attention.

Regalia Mason whispered in the ear of the senior officer with the double-headed dog, and he laughed, and nodded and gestured towards a back room. Suddenly Silver and Gabriel were picked up bodily, and taken into the back room like a pair of parcels.

‘You don’t know me,’ said Regalia Mason.

(Oh yes, we do, thought Silver, but she didn’t say anything and she tried practising her Mind Messages to tell Gabriel to keep quiet.)

Regalia Mason was smiling. ‘I am here to help you. I am going to accompany you back to your own time. You see, you were caught in the Time Tornado, and it must be upsetting for you. Never mind. Although Time travel is strictly forbidden, some of us are less bound by the rules than others.’

She laughed like icicles breaking.

‘Where are we?’ said Silver.

‘You are on the Einstein Line.’

‘That’s what the policeman said, but I didn’t believe him.’

‘The police sometimes tell the truth,’ said Regalia Mason.

Then Regalia Mason explained that the Einstein Line was a Time boundary; no matter what part of the future you lived in, this line was as far back in Time as anyone could travel.

‘There are people here who want to go back to the 1960s, or the 1560s, and that is not allowed. You may have noticed that in your world there are no visitors from the future. Some scientists take that to mean that Time travel hasn’t happened – but of course it has happened, it’s just that we don’t let it happen before it was invented.’

‘What?’ said Silver, completely confused.

Regalia Mason sighed. ‘Time travel has been a scientific possibility since Einstein discovered some interesting things about curved space and the speed of light, at the beginning of the twentieth century, but not until the twenty-fourth century did Time travel become a reality. So if you live in the twenty-seventh century, for example, you are allowed to go back as far as Time travel allows – to the twenty-fourth century – but no further back. It is strictly forbidden.’

‘Who forbids it? Is it God?’ asked Silver.

‘God does not exist any more. The Quantum controls Time.’

‘Well, what is the Quantum?’ asked Silver stubbornly.

‘That will be too hard for you to understand; you are only young, and you live in the past. In your world there are Governments, Parliaments, the Central Bank, the Law, the Military, Presidents, even Kings and Queens, even God. In the future, all those things, all those institutions, are taken over by the Quantum. It’s much simpler for everyone.’

Silver was thinking hard. At Greenwich, hidden behind the fireplace, she had heard Regalia Mason talk about her company in America called Quanta – so what did Quanta have to do with the Quantum?

‘It’s very kind of you to take us home,’ said Silver, ‘but can’t we stay for a few days and look around, as we’ve come so far? The policemen said there were some sands just down the road. Can we go there?’

Regalia Mason’s eyes flashed cold fire. ‘I am sorry to disappoint you, but you see you cannot go anywhere from here. You have not been through Quarantine.’

‘Quarantine? What, like a dog when you come back from abroad?’

‘More or less,’ said Regalia Mason. ‘In the future all diseases from the past have been wiped out. Think how awful it would be if some of those diseases were to return.’

‘I haven’t got any diseases! I haven’t even sneezed since last September.’

‘We mustn’t take any chances, must we? Now wait here while I organise things. I’ll send in some lemonade and chocolate cake.’

Regalia Mason smiled her white-and-snow smile and left the room.

Silver wondered if all not-to-be-trusted grown-ups handed out lemonade and chocolate cake? It was what Abel Darkwater had given her. Well, she wasn’t going to make the same mistake as Tinkerbell.

‘Don’t eat whatever she gives us!’ she said to Gabriel, as a guard came in with a tray.

Gabriel sniffed the food. He had a nose as keen as a mole’s.

‘It be drug food,’ he said. ‘I smell it on the cake.’

‘We’ve got to escape before she comes back,’ said Silver. ‘Do something, Gabriel!’

‘Me?’

‘Can’t you dig a hole or something?’

As Regalia Mason walked tall above the milling crowds at Checkpoint Zero, only one thing preoccupied her; the future is not fixed. Time forks. Every possibility is always present, though only one outcome is chosen. But Regalia Mason was a Time traveller. She had visited the future, and she knew that the Quantum controlled the Universe. All she was doing now was making sure that the future happened as it should.

Abel Darkwater she did not consider a threat, although she knew full well what he wanted. He was not a danger, but he was capable of slowing things down. It was unlikely that he could alter the course of events, but his meddling might cause a hesitation in Time, and that might be enough to upset Regalia Mason’s plans in the twenty-first century. It was essential that the Time Tornadoes be frightening enough to persuade all Western governments to cooperate with her company, Quanta. Once Quanta began to take control of Time – at the world’s request, of course – the future was history.

Foolish to let a little child get in the way …

Preoccupied as she was with these thoughts, she failed to notice the arrival of Abel Darkwater at Checkpoint Zero. She was not the only one who failed to notice; he walked straight through the police and their dogs, invisible in his woollen cloak, and went towards St Peter’s, where he knew one of the Popes personally.

He was just in time for Mass.

Preoccupied as she was, she did not realise that Gabriel had noticed a trapdoor in the floor of the backroom where they were waiting for Regalia Mason to return.

‘It be a drop and a tunnel, but narrow as hope.’ He lowered his small strong body down. ‘Will you come after me, and follow me, and I will make it open?’

Silver peered down. It was worm-size. Weren’t there things in space called worm-holes? Holes that connected one part of Time to another? Where would they end up?

‘I’m scared, Gabriel,’ she said. ‘Maybe we should just let her send us home. You’re not meant to be here, anyway. We’re only kids – everyone here is eight feet tall. And now she’s here as well, I bet Abel Darkwater is on his way. We should go home.’

Silver went to the window; it was barred. She went to the door and opened it slightly; a guard stood on the outside, gun over his shoulder. Oh, why had she ever got herself into this? She wished she was back at Tanglewreck. She even wished she was back at Tanglewreck with Mrs Rokabye.

As she stood, hesitating and miserable, Gabriel said quietly, ‘Remember what you have come to do.’

Suddenly, in her mind, like she was watching a video, she saw an image of Abel Darkwater, and how he had clubbed Micah with his truncheon, and how Gabriel had leapt off the bridge to save her, when he could have left her on her own for ever.

They could all have left her alone for ever. They didn’t even know her but they had cared about her. Her eyes filled with tears.

She didn’t understand a thing about the Timekeeper, but she couldn’t give up now – for Gabriel and for Micah, and for Eden, and the Throwbacks, she had to try her best. And for her father too … they had all tried their best for her.

She stood up straight, took a deep breath, and turned round to Gabriel …

Who
had
gone
down
a hole.

The bright lights and fresh air were making him feel ill, though he had not said anything to Silver. He was determined to take his chance underground, and to Silver’s astonishment he began to do something she had never seen him do before.

He was standing in the hole, his shoulders and head at floor level. He clasped his hands across his chest, so that his elbows stuck out on either side, and he started to turn, slowly at first, then faster and faster. He was making himself into a human corkscrew.

Earth came flying out of the hole round Silver’s feet as Gabriel drilled himself deeper and deeper. She heard him calling her, and then she heard Regalia Mason’s voice, flirting with the guards.

She jumped after Gabriel, holding her nose.

No way out but through …