The Time Gene, page 1
BOOK ONE OF
THE IMMORTAL COSMOS SERIES
The Time Gene
L.E. Lacaille
Copyright © 2023 L.E. Lacaille
eBook Edition
ISBN: 978-1-916696-32-7
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored, in any form or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical without the express written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God
Matthew 5:9
I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
Attributed to Einstein
For Mum and Dad
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter Forty-three
Chapter Forty-four
Chapter Forty-five
Chapter Forty-six
Chapter Forty-seven
Chapter Forty-eight
Chapter Forty-nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-one
Chapter Fifty-two
Chapter Fifty-three
Chapter Fifty-four
Chapter Fifty-five
Chapter Fifty-six
Chapter Fifty-seven
Chapter Fifty-eight
Chapter Fifty-nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One
Chapter Sixty-Two
Chapter Sixty-Three
Chapter Sixty-Four
Chapter One
Icarus Lodge
Broughty Ferry, Dundee, June 1994
Roxanne could never figure out why no-one else could time-travel. It seemed so bizarre that one should be able to go back, but never forward…and yet it was so easy – far simpler than hula-hooping or doing a cartwheel.
Then when she was six, it started to hurt. And since she’d turned eight, it had been blinding agony.
But when your little brother had just fallen from a forty-foot tree, you couldn’t let that stop you.
The minutes between 1:58 and 2pm were like boulders. It was like pulling back a lightning bolt.
Fionnula was stroking her golden hair as Dexter climbed higher and higher. She was admiring her beauty in a doll’s mirror and bleating about how much silkier, smoother, and sleeker her own tresses were than Roxanne’s bird’s nest. Dexter slithered on some sap. He shrieked, but steadied himself. Roxanne yelled at him to get down, but he wedged his leg round the highest branch. Roxanne screamed.
“Chill, Bugsy,” said Fionnula. “See if you let me French-pleat your hair, I’ll be your bestest, bestest, bestest friend.” She deliberated. “But you’ll need to start watching Heartbreak High.”
“Heartbreak High’s shite, an’ don’t call me Bugsy!” Roxanne’s heart jolted as the top branch cracked. She ran circles round the tree like a witch in a trance.
“Bugsy, get here now or you’re not even in the top ten!”
Dexter slithered, stumbled, and clutched at a clump of scrawny twigs. The branch buckled. A ripping sound rent the air. Dexter screamed. A mechanical click, a faint whirring sound...and a flash of blinding light.
She saw him. The Watchman.
A bat-like figure, hanging from the tree. Dark, gangly, demonic...yet smaller than a shoe. Tiny eyes of pitch and fire. Roxy knew him of old. He followed her like a shadow, his lights flashing, his cameras clicking. Why? Because of her power, probably. Or because he was mean. But what if it was because Roxanne was his own – natural born evil, cut from the stem of the devil himself?
Dexter skidded like a sprout in butter, and nose-dived forty feet onto the hard, cold soil. He smashed to the ground, a human high-speed train, shattering his skull. He landed in a heap on a wad of withered scarlet petals from her dad’s rhododendrons.
Fionnula stared at the motionless Dexter, her eyes blue as frost. Blood gushed out from beneath his head. Roxanne turned away. She wanted to bawl. But she had to focus her energies. Converge them into a single beam. The familiar fires blazed in the pit of her stomach. Searing tongues leapt through her body.
The house door sprang open. Scab bounded outside, panting. Roxy’s dad followed, cheerful and unshaven, clad in a stained old dinner jacket and with an ill-buttoned shirt hanging out of his trousers. Brandishing a cigarette in one hand and a sherry glass in the other, he was muttering the old tongue-twister “What a to-do tae die today at a minute or two to two”, between whistling Flower of Scotland. “Bye, folks, I’ll be aff the n...” He stopped in his tracks. Scab was circling Dexter’s body, howling.
“Oh my GODFAITHERS!”
Roxanne pulled back the fatal seconds, like a giant magnet. Her father’s voice sounded strangled, like the cry of a fox as his belly is ripped apart in a snare. His arms flailed in torment. Roxanne paid no heed...a moment’s weakness would break the connection. Pain wracked her insides as though they’d been flushed with boiling oil. She had to wrest back those dogged hands. Scab circled Dexter’s body, bellowing and growling. 13:58. Her muscles relaxed; the pain dulled – was it done?
“You know, Bugsy, you’d get to play with the in girls if you supported Dundee United,” a smug voice said. Roxanne gazed upwards. Dexter was charging up the tree. “Roxy cannae catch me, ‘cos Roxy’s a scaredy-cat.”
“Dexter, FOR GOD’S SAKE stay on the fat branch!”
Dexter winced, garbled a torrent of swear words, but edged a little way down. Roxanne breathed deeply. A stay of execution. “You’re banned for life from usin’ my computer if you don’t come down.”
“Bugsy, what’s wrong with you? You look like you’ve seen a ghost! Mind you, you’re into witchy stuff, eh? You like Meatloaf.”
“What a to-do tae die today…” Roxy’s father strode past, cheerful as ever. Scab barked madly and leapt up at his side, but her dad was oblivious to the Rottweiler’s sixth sense. “I’ll be aff the noo. Got a kiss for your auld dad, Roxy, my wee roguey-poguey?”
“Dad, Dexter’s...” she faltered as he span her in the air.
“Mum’ll be hame about faive. If you need anythin’, your big sis’ll look after you! Listen...I’ve got a surprise for yous all soon. Cannae tell you about it yet, but it’s beyon’ your wildest dreams!”
“Dad... Dexter’s up the oak tree!”
“BEYON’ YOUR WILDEST DREAMS!”
He sauntered whistling into his dented Mercedes and drove off. Roxy ran after it till she keeled over. “Dexter, get down or I’ll make Mum clout you!”
“Mum won’t clout me, ‘cos I’m her favourite!”
“Dexter Malone, get your butt down here or I’m tellin’ Mr. Cannon you flooded the boys’ bogs!”
Dexter reddened and capitulated. “Lighten up! I wasn’t gonna go all the way up anyway.”
Unabashed, he skidded down like a fireman sliding down a pole. An irate screech pierced the cool stillness. Not a banshee, just Roxy’s half-sister, Chantelle, who was partying upstairs with her death metal-crazed friends Chloë and Siobhan.
“What the blazes is goin’ on here? God, I lead a dog’s life! One, Fergie’s off to sign a dodgy deal wi’ some IRA bloke, two, Mum’s havin’ her hair blue-rinsed, three, I’ve got to babysit two brats...an’ now that numpty of a kid’s hangin’ off a tree when I’m tryin’ to put on my mascara!”
Chantelle’s face was pinker than the bubblegum she was chewing. It almost competed with her pillar-box red hair. A pungent perfume immersed her like a cloud. Her lipstick was purple and her eyelids a glittery turquoise. She looked like a shopping mall Christmas tree.
“Oh for God’s sake, Roxy, give it a rest. You’re too old for this time-travel bilge. Not only has someone nicked my curlin’ tongs an’ my boyfrien’s comin’ in five hours, but...” (her tone demonstrating this was the pinnacle of her woes) “...my sister thinks she’s Doctor Who. It does my heid in!” She gave a pugnacious eye-roll and flounced inside, leaving the younger kids choking on the fumes from her hairspray.
“Bugsy, you can’t seriously want to make that doll Miss World. Sindys are cheap and tacky; and...”
Roxanne had reasons to cut Fionnula a bit of slack, but this was the last straw. She flung her “lower middle-class” Sindy straight into her yuppie classmate’s pert face, and stormed into the house, up to her room and slammed the door. The house shook with her sister’s stereo pounding at full throttle, while Chloë and Siobhan embarked on such an excruciating attempt at karaoke that Roxanne thought someone was being strangled. She was too angry to care. She had tried a hundred times to tell her family what she could do, but no-one ever believed her. No-one ever acknowledged the supreme effort it cost her again and again, almost always to help others. If they only knew the violent cramps...the crushing pain...the unbreakable concentration required of her. Roxanne knew she needed to atone for that fateful day, four years ago. But the odd thank you wouldn’t have hurt.
Yet who should thank her? No-one remembered the unfortunate before, only the serene hereafter. No-one supposed she had just averted an unthinkable alternative. She threw her face down on her bed and cried. Her sister’s stereo thumped on. Chloë and Siobhan squealed, and she heard Ben-across-the-road shout across to ask Dexter if he wanted to play football.
Did he realise he might have been facing Dexter’s bloodied corpse?
Roxanne lay face down on the bed for several hours. She remembered hearing her mother coming home, and heard the sounds of cooking from downstairs. She was shaken from her sulks when the door flew open, hitting the dressing table with a crash. A miniature bandit stood in the doorway, brandishing what she supposed to be their dad’s painting rollers: “HANDS UP! SURRENDER OR DIE! THIS GUN IS LOADED!”
Roxanne rubbed her still smarting eyes. “Dexter, have you ever heard of knocking?”
His sheer ingratitude irked her, but then he knew nothing of the events prior to a minute or two to two. The injustice stung. The teachers fawned over that Fionnula Aitcheson, especially since she’d won that national art competition. What was a poxy drawing compared to saving someone’s life? Niall McAree had been lauded for becoming a Judo black belt. By what yardstick was learning to kick and punch others better than sparing them a violent death? She was still sour about that punishment exercise the other week for running out of the classroom when she had in fact been stopping a dinner lady from setting a chip pan on fire.
Still, Roxanne treasured her gift; it was her joy. Every day she dreamed of using it to make the world a better place; of saving sinking ships and stricken aeroplanes. Yet it was also a terrible burden. She turned on the television, and there was little on save for a few cartoons even Dexter would have rejected on grounds of juvenility, some black-and-white films, a quiz show and the news. She often avoided the news as she loathed hearing about bombs or plane crashes. Might she have prevented that helicopter from crashing on the Mull of Kintyre? Should she have gone to Rwanda, and averted the massacre? Today, thank heaven, there wasn’t much – the Labour leadership contest...trade unions wrangling over a railway strike...two ex-IRA prisoners who had been released early from a Glasgow jail; and a government minister spending more time with his family. Yet every time someone got wounded, bombed or hurt in the news, she could not stop the pervasive sense of guilt that she ought to have stopped it. It haunted her morning, noon and night. For what purpose had she been given this gift? And did anyone else share it?
What if it wasn’t a gift, but a curse? One that marked her as his?
“O wisnae ‘e a roguey, a ro-o-guey, a ro-o-guey, o wisnae ‘e a roguey, the piper o’ Dundee,” sang a gruff bass voice from the hallway.
She flew down the stairs, her heart overflowing with happiness, and leapt from the ninth stair, into her father’s arms. He smelt of beer, fags and chip-shop chips. Roxy’s favourite smells. He staggered backwards as she landed, wheezing like a steam engine. But he always caught her, and he always would.
“Roxy, you cannae do tha’ no more. You’re a big lass now an’ your dad is no’ as young as he used to be!” She grinned. He stroked her hair. “Roxy, my wee roguey-poguey!”
“How’d the meetin’ go, love,” her mother yelled from the doorway, clutching a steaming casserole.
“Aw, Mamie, it was brill!” Grabbing her shoulders, he plonked a hard, stubbly kiss on her lips. “La crème de la crème, lee fang du fang,” he added, with an excruciating attempt at the nasal sound. “Cesar Ritz, eat your heart oot – you are lookin’ at Scotland’s latest hotelier!”
Mamie staggered backwards, almost dropping the hot casserole onto her toes.
“Aye...hotelier!” he reiterated. “An’ guess what! We’re off next month tae the Bahamas for twa weeks, tae celebrate. See this time next year? We’ll have oor own tropical villa, an’ you’ll be sippin’ tequilas all summer lang!”
Her chin drooped like a bloodhound’s ears. “Fergie, you glaikit twathead, we cannae afford a tent, let alone a hotel.”
Fergie gulped down his casserole. He complimented Roxanne’s mother on its tenderness as he disgorged titbits of his latest scheme. “Tha’ auld Stakis place...I’ve signed a deal and I cannae lose...I know the nightclubs are mortgaged up tae my eyeballs, but, Mamie, think o’ it; a hotel bang in the city centre; when the punters start rollin’ in, it’ll be better than the blinkin’ football pools!”
“Fergie, we’re livin’ on loans as it is.”
“Aye, an’ they’ll be paid off three months after opening day,” Dad enthused. “I’m gonnae sell the clubs in the next faive years or so. Any road...he bought this place, my pal, six months ago, now he’s made me a partner; I get half o’ the business; I bank half the profits. Course, I bought my half on a loan, but he reckons (my pal that is) I’ll be able tae pay it back in a year.”
A panic-stricken Chantelle burst into the kitchen. “Has nobody seen my hair tongs?” She stormed out, muttering death incantations against whoever had misplaced them.
“Who’s this pal?” Mamie stuttered, dangling her beef on her fork.
“Salvatore,” Dad said, a tad quietly.
“Salvatore!” Mamie almost knocked over the table. “Salvatore McGrath?” Fergie, are you mental? He’s the Godfaither!”
“Whose Godfaither?” Dexter asked.
“His Godfaither days are long gone, Mamie. He’s been workin’ on the quiet wi’ the police for o’er twenty year’ since he went straight. Only came oot o’ witness protection faive year’ ago – nearly a’ the crooks he grassed on were deid or banged up. Think o’ his experience! Owns fifteen pubs an’ three newsagents; done jolly well for himself. I’d trust Salvatore wi’ my life!” Fergie rammed the vinegar bottle against the table to seal his allegiance. “Why are you standin’ there wi’ your face trippin’ you, woman? Show some faith in me!”
She sobbed onto the kitchen table. “He’ll bleed us dry.”
“I’ve told you! I cannae lose.”
She banged furiously on the table.
“No, Mamie, this is nothin’ like that gee-gee I said the same aboot last year. See, Salvo made it so that...if he dies...I get all his share.”
She thrust the serving fork into his face. “An’ if you die first, he gets all your share?”
“Aye, somethin’ like tha’...but come on, I’m twelve year’ younger than him! Come on, Mamie, this is our dream.”
“Fergie, you’re stark ravin’ bonkers!” Mamie hissed.
Fergie Malone was well known in the city. He had until two years ago been a Labour Councillor, tipped to be Lord Provost until he’d had to resign due to alleged financial irregularities, thanks to “tha’ bastard o’ a Stew McLally an’ the snoopin’ middens in the SNP”. Fergie owned four local nightclubs, and had a share in two additional discotheques slightly further afield. Shortly after his marriage, he had been given a suspended sentence and Community Service for assisting in smuggling contraband goods. He narrowly avoided jail after stealing eight crates of Pedigree Chum for donation to a local dogs’ home. While delivering the loot, he had seen a vet leading out an almost furless, scarred Rottweiler puppy. The dog had a progressive skin disease and he was taking him to be put to sleep. Fergie, seeing the puppy’s despondent eyes, paid four thousand pounds on credit for an operation for him, which he had to resort to smuggling again to recoup.
