“Do I have a choice?” Trumbull asked sullenly.
“Not really, Alec,” Thorne answered, genuinely apologetic. “Sorry, mate: I promise you’ll get the whole story when you’re back on land.”
Trumbull was standing and shivering on a deserted beach ten minutes later as the Lightning lifted vertically into the sky, quickly disappearing until only its blinking navigation lights were visible. It was just seconds later that he heard the sound of footsteps behind him in the sand, and he whirled to find himself instantly and completely bewildered.
“Glad I could make it on time,” Thorne grinned, standing before him holding a large, black torch in one hand. In his other he held Trumbull’s woollen flying jacket, and he tossed it to the stunned pilot. “I figured you might need this — it’s bloody cold out tonight.” The Australian wasn’t even dressed in his flight suit, instead wearing fatigues and his thick, blue parka.
“But you…!” Trumbull began as he slowly slipped the jacket over his shoulders, totally confused. “I just…!” He kept turning his head back to where he could still hear the F-35E somewhere above them, off to the south-west above the Pentland Firth.
“Calm down and I’ll explain,” Thorne said, raising a hand as a signal for silence as an intensely bright flash lit up the night sky somewhere out of sight beyond the line of the beach and the sound of the Lightning’s engine ceased abruptly. “You’re still going to be a bit disoriented by the jump anyway, so take it slowly and I’ll tell you what happened.” He jerked his head toward the top of the beach and the hills beyond. “Come on — let’s go for a walk.”
“That jump you experienced took you twenty-five hours into the future,” Thorne explained as they walked back toward a narrow, dirt track where an Austin Lichfield 10HP sedan sat waiting, its headlights off and its engine idling. “Twenty-five hours is the minimum time you can safely jump either way due to the one-day timeframe it takes for changes in history to take effect. That was why I had to move fast once we’d made the jump — I had to have enough time to get back within that twenty-four hour window and be here to meet you when you landed.”
“You mean…” Trumbull began, faltering, “…That…that I’ve travelled one day into the future?”
“Just over a day, but that’d be splitting hairs. I couldn’t turn up while you were actually being dropped off… I’m not exactly sure what happens when you ‘meet yourself’ in one timeline, but Professor Markowicz informs me it could be very nasty indeed. Cross-temporal paradoxes can produce some pretty volatile side effects, apparently.”
“‘Meet yourself?’”
“Yeah — it’s not on, apparently. There’s a more than a uncomfortable chance of an explosion that’d make Hiroshima look like cracker night!” In using the analogy, Thorne completely missed the fact that his companion would have no idea what significance the Japanese city of Hiroshima might have. “Anyway, the jump will help, seeing as you want to stay on with the unit and muck in.”
“May I ask why?” Trumbull inquired as the pair climbed into the sedan and Thorne slotted it into gear.
“You may. The reason is fairly simple, if major in its ramifications. When we overran the New Eagles’ Siberian hideout, we discovered a shitload of data they’d left behind concerning field research with one of their early TDUs, and some of those early tests with a prototype temporal field generator showed some interesting results. They sent single-celled organisms with a lifespan of just a few days into the future as little as twenty-five hours, as I just did with you, and discovered these organisms didn’t die at the end of their expected, normal period of life. They then tried the same thing with a couple of species of butterflies with a similarly short lifespan and found the same thing. The data they collected suggests that living organisms removed from their correct temporal setting don’t age the way they normally should.”
“You’re saying that you and the others — myself also, now — won’t age in the same way we might in our own times, even if I’ve been ‘displaced’ — as you call it — by only twenty-five hours?”
“I see you’re beginning to catch on.”
“How long…?”
“‘How long’ what…?”
“How long did those test specimens survive beyond their expected lifespan?” This question caused the Australian to pause for a moment before continuing.
“Indefinitely,” Thorne finally answered. “At the time of our departure from Realtime those initial test specimens we discovered in their laboratories were still in existence and showing no side effects. To all intents and purposes, we may all be immortal.”
“Live forever?” Trumbull was aghast. “There’s a terrible thought. Can the process be reversed?”
“Certainly… any specimens returned to their own time died normally. We’re also all still susceptible to accident, injury and/or foul play, although displaced specimens also appear to be impervious to introduced infections.” The sedan trundled slowly along a track that led back to the base via a kilometre or so of low, scrubby grassland and low hills, its headlights masked into narrow slots in deference to the dangers of air raid.
“So once our job is finished, you just return me and yourselves to our rightful times and we’ll continue to live as before — like normal?”
“Yes…” Thorne said slowly, but his words seemed almost evasive. “Yes, something like that.” Trumbull could see there was something Thorne wasn’t saying, but he could also see in Thorne’s eyes a look he’d seen before: one that indicated situations where there was no way the Australian was interested in elaborating. He’d broach the subject at some later stage perhaps, but Trumbull let the matter drop for the moment. As they continued on, the Australian took a folded mass of white cotton from where it had been tucked inside his own jacket and handed it to the squadron leader.
“What’s this for?” Trumbull inquired slowly, unfolding the object to discover it was a large cotton T-shirt. There was a strange design on the front that was barely discernible in the minimal illumination inside the vehicle. He was also still a little dazed by the jump and the information Thorne had given him, and couldn’t for the life of him make out what the design was.
“It’s kind of a memento — a token of recognition if you like.”
“A memento…? Recognition of what…?”
“Of your jump…” Thorne explained slowly. “All the guys who travelled here with Hindsight have one. We have a few spares left over due to a couple of last-minute withdrawals, and I figured you probably deserved one now as much as any of us. Call it an initiation into a very exclusive, potentially immortal club!”
“What on earth is the design on the front?” Trumbull asked, intrigued, and Thorne offered over the torch with his left hand. Trumbull laid the shirt out on his lap and turned the beam of the torch upon it, completely taken aback by the fantastic style of the illustration he found. The title above it read in a rather unusual style of printing: