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‘And so I’d be whipped into the medical centre, and transferred into a new body. Everyone has a backup grown and ready to go, in case of complications on the other side?’ she asked, even though she knew the answer.

  It was just reassuring to know that there was a safety net under her. No years of intensive, painful rehabilitation and operations, if she were injured. Just a few minutes, and she was brand new again. At least for nine transitions. After that, no new body would be grown as back up, because she wouldn’t be able to integrate with it.

  Just like Jac had no back-up body now. How scary that thought was. And yet, how absurd to be afraid. A few weeks ago, the idea of having a backup body was unknown. She’d lived her forty five years with the knowledge that when that body was done, so was she. How tentative that sounded now. She wondered why she hadn’t lived in fear every day of her life, expecting the end to come. Especially when Billy was killed. That had brought the fragility of life home to her in a big way.

  Now Jac was the one worrying about his mortality. It was bizarre.

  ‘Yeah. You already have one in storage. It can remain in preservation fluid for a hundred years.’

  ‘So, the clone is grown in one kind of chemical environment. Then, once it’s matured, it’s transferred to a different chemical soup that keeps it frozen in time, as it were?’

  ‘Yeah, but not frozen for real. Cryogenics was an interesting dead end, scientifically.’

  ‘Does it scare you not to have a back-up body?’ she asked, kicking herself for probing.

  Jac shut his eyes and sighed deeply. When he spoke again, his voice contained a melancholy she’d never heard before.

  ‘I have been so happy, so alive, these past weeks, Cara. And for the first time in nearly three hundred years, I am terrified that there is no back-up body for me. I’m terrified that I will someday have to leave you. The rest… just wallpaper. You are what makes this world so precious to me now. If I lost you…’

  ‘Don’t,’ she interrupted, clinging to him as if her life depended on it. She couldn’t think of anything to say to ease his pain, so she said nothing. All she could do was just hold him, and pray that she would be with him for the next hundred years.

  Jac’s hands were shaking. They’d been shaking for two days, and he couldn’t make them stop. His heart was palpitating too, as if he was on one long race for his life. In a way he was. His life was about to take her first Jump, and he couldn’t be with her, couldn’t be there to protect her. He was terrified.

  The last few months had been the best and worst of his life. Cara gave his life the meaning and colour it had lacked for longer than he could remember. But the threat to her was a real one. And that was what had made it the worst. Unlike all the other worries he’d experienced since knowing her, this one was on-going and unfathomable. If she’d drowned on the lake, at least he would have known what happened to her. But if she disappeared in a different time-line, he might never know.

  Of course, they did recon, if someone didn’t return. They’d retrace the missing Jumper’s steps from Set Down until they found out what went wrong. If they could, they’d pull them out before they went off grid. But, often as not, they didn’t find them in time. The cities they Set Down in were usually large and anonymous. It was like finding a needle in a haystack, once a Jumper left the Set Down point. Especially as the work of a Jumper was to blend in.

  Initially, they had tried to install tracking devices, sub-dermally and in PAs. But the only ones that would work, once they’d crossed through the Portal, were those that were activated when the PA was turned on. And as the PA was activated only seconds before a Jump, it didn’t help another Jumper, who was sent to locate them. They were literally and figuratively cut off from their old world and each other, for the time they were in-situ.

  Blending in was much harder to do in townships and villages. So, if a Jumper went missing during such a mission, they were easier to track. But small town Retrievals had their own dangers. The chances of a Jumper being memorable, making some infinitesimal change in the fabric of Time-Space Continuum was higher. People weren’t anonymous strangers in close communities. They had an impact on each other’s lives.

  Cara’s had been one of the small town Jumps. And there had been numerous small interactions that had been risky, during that Retrieval. Being the catalyst for Cara’s verbal attack on the gym bully-boy had been a risk. Who knew if her threat altered that man’s behaviour from that point on? Whose life might have been changed because they weren’t bullied, in that instance? And meeting and interacting with Cara’s friend, Laura, had been a risky choice that first day, too. Who knew what he might have said to her that might have changed her time line.

  But then, maybe he was always part of Cara’s time-line, just as the gift and card, or her sick days, were always part of her time line. It screwed with your head, thinking about it all.

  If only the Government took his proposal on board. It was such a long shot, but if he could pull it off, Cara would want to stay with him, would want to focus her attentions here, rather than in-situ. If the Government considered his revolutionary plan, she wouldn’t feel suffocated by his world, or him, anymore.

  But any plans he made were simply that – plans for the future. In this moment, everything could change. He could lose her forever. And, all he really knew for sure, was that Cara would be out there alone with no back-up. If she lost her PA, she was as good as dead to them. And that was what made his hands shake.

  ‘You okay?’ Cara asked, for the third time that morning.

  The look of concern on her pretty, young face kicked him while he was down. If he had been attracted to the mature Cara, he was galvanised by the young one. Once he could see her inside that clone, it was as if she had always been young and beautiful to him. He’d stopped thinking about her body as a clone the moment she turned in his arms, in the bathroom that first day. She’d looked at him in that special, sexy way that was totally her own and he was hers.

  No stranger. It had been his Cara. And he’d loved her with a desperation he’d never known before. A desperation, he now realised, that threatened his sanity in this moment.

  ‘Jac, are you okay?’ Cara asked again, taking his shaking hands in both of hers. She rubbed them as if they were cold.

  In a way he was cold. As cold as the grave.

  ‘Just say the word, Jac, and I won’t Jump. Seriously, it’s not worth it to me, if you’re like this.’

  He turned his hands into hers, so they gripped each other’s tightly. For a moment the trembling stopped.

  ‘It’ll get easier, Cara. Once I get used to you Jumping, it’ll get easier. I’ve never taken the easy way out, and I‘m not going to take it now. I won’t tell you not to go. You want this, and you’ll be great at it. And I’ll relax in a few minutes, when you’re back.’

  She leaned in to kiss his cold lips. ‘I love you so much…’

  ‘Yeah.’ He smiled painfully. ‘And I love you. So go do your thing. I’ll be right here waiting.’

  She let his hands go and moved away, walking up the dais stairs, so that she was right in front of the stone lintels of the Home Portal when it was activated.

  It was the first time he’d seen the young Cara in anything but the women’s white tunic of New Atlantis. The hipster jeans and blue, tie-died hippie T shirt looked outrageous on her. But she’d fit right in to the Californian Flower Power era of the 1970s. Even the beads around her neck and the macramé shoulder bag, looked authentic.

  She gave him the peace sign, and blew him a kiss. The Portal opened, and she was gone.

  He counted in his head, keeping his mind focused on the numbers.

  One, one hundred, two one hundred, three one hundred, four one hundred, five one hundred…

  The Portal reopened with a fizz. And, by the time he got to seven, she stood right where she’d been only seconds ago. But now she was smiling broadly, her arm linked with that of an old lady, who was looking around her in a dazed but excited fa
shion.

  ‘Welcome home, Cara Westchester,’ he said the formal greeting. His face hurt, he was grinning so hard.

  ‘Well met Jac, my darling! I have missed you soooo much!’

  But she didn’t rush to him. Instead, she began to lead the old woman down the stairs, with all the concern and care she would have lavished on her own mother.

  ‘Welcome, Millicent Solano, we are glad you have made the decision to join us,’ Jac made the formal greeting to the old lady, who was wobbling precariously.

  Millicent tried to speak, but Cara put her finger to her own lips. ‘Give it a minute, Millie dear, your body has to catch up a bit. This is my man, Jac. I told you about him. He was my Retriever, only a few months ago. Isn’t he handsome?’

  The old lady’s eyes twinkled, and she nodded.

  ‘Your liaison, Jenna Napa, will be here in a moment. Jenna will take you to your room and show you around. She’s from your time, so you’ll feel very comfortable with her, I’m sure.’ Jac spoke in the less formal manner of the late twentieth century. Being around Cara, kept him speaking in that informal way. It was becoming increasingly difficult to readjust to New Atlantean Speak, when he wasn’t with her.

  Oh, the relief. He felt it right down to his toes. She had made her first successful Jump, and she seemed over-the- moon about it.

  And she was home safe with him again.

  As they ushered the old lady toward the elevator, from which Jenna Napa now stepped, Jac couldn’t take his eyes off Cara. Even though she had been gone from him for only a few moments, he felt as if it was a lifetime. He kept checking to see if there were any changes to her appearance.

  Had she aged? No, of course not. She’d been gone only a month. She looked a little browner, maybe. The California sunshine had suited her. He wondered if she had a bikini tan. The idea that she’d bared her body in front of a beach full of lecherous males roused his jealousy.

  ‘Debrief?’ she said, as they stood together, after the elevator had taken her Target and liaison up to the surface.

  ‘Later. I want you in bed,’ he said, as he swept her into his arms, reminding himself of the magic of her touch, yet again.

  ‘You got it, cool guy. That would be a gas!’ She giggled at the seventies jargon, and reached up to kiss him, deeply.

  Jac didn’t care who was watching, or what they thought of their demonstrative affection. She was safe and in his arms, and for the next month he wasn’t going to let her out of his sight. Well, except for his training sessions. But he’d probably bring her in on them, particularly if they were talking about her era. He was going to keep her glued to him, no matter how many feathers he ruffled to do it.

  It felt so good to be home! Cara walked around the small villa, reacquainting herself with every detail. The apple trees were green leafed, just as they had been when she left, the small nubs that would become apples already forming. Everything was just as it had been when she walked out of the villa a month ago. Literally.

  It was a real brain scramble. Knowing that Jac had only taken a breath or two, between the moment she disappeared and the moment she reappeared, was an overwhelming thought. For her, it had been four long weeks without him. She had missed him like she would have missed her right arm.

  But that didn’t take away from the pleasure of the last month. It had been the most amazing experience of her life. Even more amazing than it had been to explore New Atlantis for the first time, because, in a way, the future wasn’t quite real to her yet. But the Seventies were everything she had imagined they’d be.

  Knowing that she was alive – just a little girl, living happily with her parents and her dog on the other side of the country, had been so enticing. She’d been so tempted to hop on a plane and fly back to New York. To see her parents again, after all this time, would have been wonderful.

  But the risks were too great. If she’d crossed over her own temporal time-line, and accidently met her child self, there could have been massive ramifications. They’d been very emphatic about that during her training.

  So she had fought the temptation, and just enjoyed living the life of a hippie chick in San Francisco. It was such a nostalgia trip. And meeting Millie, a retired history teacher living in the San Francisco Bay area, had been very easy.

  That she was a woman with a keen mind and a determination to live her life to the full, even in her seventies, had been one of the factors that had convinced Cara that Millie would make a perfect candidate for New Atlantis.

  She’d worked in soup kitchens, during the Great Depression, and volunteered to serve as a nurse, during the Second World War. Her beloved husband, George, had died only a few years before her D Day, but there had been no sense that she was ready to join him in the Hereafter, just yet.

  When Cara had broached the subject of Time Travel, using H. G. Wells’ Time Machine, Millie had been very open to the concept. When she’d suggested that it might be possible for Millie to go to the future, she’d jumped at the idea. There’d been very little caution in her pre-Jump period.

  It amazed Cara that Millie had been so accepting. The idea that her new friend might be a delusional young woman, or that she herself might be suffering delusions, never entered her head. Time Travel just came to her as a wonderful possibility that she embraced immediately.

  Even the idea that she had a D Day coming didn’t faze her. After all, at seventy three, she was well prepared for that possibility, anyway, she’d said. That Cara was offering her a whole new chapter in her life, and a chance to live it in a young body, thrilled her.

  Cara didn’t expect every Jump to be as easy as this one had been. And she was glad that her first was so uncomplicated, because it would ease Jac’s worries. Or maybe increase them. She knew he secretly hoped that she would hate Jumping, after her first experience, and choose another career path.

  Well, pigs might fly. Jumping was amazing! And the idea of following any other career path was out. This was her life calling. And one day, maybe not soon, but one day, she would be Jumping to Retrieve the missing children. She was sure of that now.

  ‘Does it feel strange to be back?’ Jac asked, coming up behind her, fresh from the shower after their lengthy love making. He nuzzled her neck, and she purred at the contact.

  ‘Really strange. And yet, the longer I’m back, the more unreal the Seventies seem to me. It’s almost like I dreamed Millie and San Francisco. A lovely dream, I have to say.

  ‘Such an amazing woman! Do you know that she flew over to Britain the moment war was declared in Europe, and trained there as a nurse? The US was never expected to enter the war at that time, but she was determined to do her bit. Her husband was with the government, and couldn’t go with her. And her son, Freddy, was at college. So she went alone to England.

  ‘Later Freddy enlisted, when the US joined the war. He was killed in France on D Day. The first D Day. So sad. And yet, she moved on. Made a good life for George and herself.

  ‘What a life she’s lived. And knowing she has a whole new one here is just icing on the cake, for me.’ She couldn’t hide her pleasure or pride.

  ‘You obviously like her a lot.’ Jac’s arms came around her, stroking the white tunic against her body. She knew he preferred to see her in it, rather than the jeans and T shirt that had been her uniform for the last month. It certainly was more comfortable and accessible than old fashioned jeans. The invention of stretch denim had been a godsend to the later part of the twentieth century.

  ‘Yeah, I do. She’ll really stir this place up a bit. ‘

  ‘Are you trying to start a revolution here, Cara?’ his voice was teasing, but she knew he also wondered whether that was exactly what she was doing.

  ‘It’s good to have a few open-minded people in this world, Jac. She doesn’t like the idea of a child-free world…’

  ‘Cara, this is a very bad idea. You can’t start spreading dissent. If the Government finds out, you will be punished.’ He was frowning now, his temper rising.
<
br />   ‘How? They don’t have prisons. And they aren’t going to kill me, and call it euthanasia. I didn’t Crash and Burn, Jac. ‘

  ‘They could rescind your Jumping rights. If you want to continue as a Retriever, be careful what seeds you are seen to be sowing.’ His expression was closed, but his green eyes sparked a challenge. Sometimes she pushed him too far.

  Cara thought about that threat for a moment. Yes, that would be a punitive action they could and would take, if they saw her as challenging their world order. She would need to be more discrete. More patient. Rome, or New Atlantis, was not built in a day.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Summer 2330, New Atlantis GAIAN CONFEDERACY

  ‘Hakon’s dead.’ Jac’s voice was deadpan, as he stood in the doorway of their villa looking at her as if she were a stranger.

  Cara knew that lack of expression meant he was grieving. He always closed down emotionally when something challenged his more vulnerable emotions. It was a learned behaviour, cultivated for survival over three hundred years. How well she knew it now.

  ‘Oh, God! Jac, I’m so sorry. What happened?’ she asked, coming to his side to wrap her arms around him. He was dazed, and didn’t seem to register her hug at all.

  ‘In-situ. He Jumped yesterday afternoon, and didn’t come back. The rescuer wasn’t able to locate him in time. He was hit by a car, of all things. He was an experienced Jumper, Cara. He’d been in it as long as me, although he didn’t Jump as often. It only goes to show how dangerous it is out there. If someone like Hakon can die… anyone can.’

  Now the real reason for his terrible calm was apparent. It wasn’t the loss of a friend, although that was bad enough, it was the reinforcement of his fears for her.

  She was Jumping again that morning. This time it was to 2009 Sydney, Australia. Not the world’s most dangerous city, but nonetheless, a place that could prove risky for a woman on her own.

  She braced herself for the request. It had been hovering for the last day. Don’t go, please don’t go… was just a breath away. That he hadn’t voiced it yet, was a sign of his strength of character. But he bled for her. And this new blow was such bad timing.