Clove Sutcliffe has given frequent interviews about her time in Carlisle since that first experimental History Control mission, and one constant appears in them all: she would not have been able to achieve half so much during her time in 1745 if it were not for a fellow time traveller referred to only as Ella.
Elenore Walker Comment: Homework due next Fri: 1k words on C.S in 1745
Ella had more experience of surviving unnoticed in historical periods, and her guidance to Clove, an amateur trying to find her feet in the as-yet-unexplored field of History Control, would have been invaluable. Not only that, but Ella saved Clove’s life upon her arrival in 1745, when she landed in a river and nearly drowned.
Elenore Walker Comment: Is it creepy that I can’t stop imagining this Ella being me?
The identity of Ella, whom Clove has more than once described as “the love of her life”, has never been revealed. Both travellers value their privacy, so little further information is known. However, it has been hypothesized that Ella must originate from some point in the six centuries after Clove Sutcliffe’s birth, as after the year 2678 time travel became much more highly regulated and no unlogged journey to pre-internet eras would have been possible.
Elenore Walker Comment: The dates fit and everything. Huh.
File note: Extract from An Unauthorized Biography of Clove Sutcliffe, annotated by ELENORE WALKER on her Skim during a history lesson
CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND, 2056
“The maid?” Matthew said later that day, as he stared with wide eyes between Ella and Clove. “She’s not my daughter too, is she?”
“No, I’m Clove’s girlfriend,” Ella said, before Clove could reply.
Clove whipped round to stare at Ella, who straightened her shoulders and stared right back. Clove grimaced but said nothing. There were more important things to deal with than Ella right now. Also Clove didn’t want to start trying to explain the word girlfriend to Matthew or give him an abridged political history of homosexuality. Not when they were about to perform a highly illegal patient break-out. She had to hurry this process along, before a nurse came.
“She’s going to get you out of here,” Clove said, finally.
“Are we going to find Katherine?” Matthew asked, immediately starting to get out of bed.
“Wait! Let me take out your IV first,” Ella said, wincing. “It’s very admirable how much pain you are willing to go through for love, but some of it isn’t necessary.”
Matthew suffered the indignity of Ella helping him remove the medical equipment, which started beeping until Ella pressed the screen and shut it down.
Clove found Matthew’s old clothes under the bed, neatly laundered, and he got dressed. Apart from a scar across his chest and a lack of colour in his cheeks, he was almost better. She could send him on his way with a dose of penicillin, and he should be fine. Hopefully.
Ella was fiddling with her Skim. Clove had never seen someone control a computer with mind control. It made Ella look a little cross-eyed.
“We’re going to Katherine?” Matthew asked, with impressive single-mindedness.
Ella took Matthew’s hand, and Clove’s in the other. “Kind of,” Ella replied.
Before Clove could question what that meant, a familiar sucking sensation spread through Clove’s hand, and she was tugged into a vacuum.
File note: Diagram of the “Skim”, as enclosed in the original patent application
* * *
When the spinning stopped, Clove was so dizzy she couldn’t work out which way was up. “Didn’t we need a suit?” she asked, gasping for breath. She spat out one of Ella’s curls and blinked away the phosphenes. “For the radiation?”
Ella shook her head, apparently unaffected by the wormhole. “Built into the Skim.”
They were standing in the rain on the side of a road. The white van driving past definitely wasn’t an eighteenth-century carriage.
“This isn’t 1745! Where are we?” Clove asked, confused. “I thought we were taking Matthew home?” Perhaps Ella had used a wormhole to break them out of the hospital and would create another one to take them to 1745. It seemed an awful waste, though. Wormholes gave Clove a really bad headache.
“I had a better idea,” Ella replied, as Clove realized she was still holding her hand and let go abruptly. “We’ll take Matthew home later. Right now we’re in 2040, on the Scottish border. In about thirty seconds, there should be…”
Ella broke off as a bus swerved out of the traffic and pulled to a stop in front of them. The door slid open with a squeak. Ella climbed on board, gesturing for Clove and Matthew to follow her. She paid the driver and then headed straight for the back row of seats.
Clove stared after her in furious shock. She couldn’t believe that Ella was taking them somewhere without even explaining what was happening or asking Clove how she felt about it. It was beginning to seem like Ella enjoyed making Clove feel lost and off-balance.
“Ella, what’s going on? What are you doing?” she hissed, dropping into an empty seat opposite her. Matthew sat beside Clove. The bus was almost empty, but Ella had chosen to sit down next to the only other passenger − an old lady with a shawl wrapped around her head. She had her head down, and her arms were wrapped around a large rucksack. She didn’t look up at her new companions.
Ella stared meaningfully at the old woman.
“What?” Clove hissed, and then she realized.
That wasn’t an old lady at all.
It was Katherine Finchley.
Clove gaped. If they were in 2040, and that was Katherine Finchley … then this must be her actual mother: the Kate who had given birth to Clove in Scotland, before leaving her with Tom so that she could break Matt out of an English prison. If they were on a bus, on the Scottish border, then Kate must be going to the prison right now.
Kate had given birth to Clove only days before. This was her mother.
“Excuse me,” Clove said, leaning forwards, buzzing with excitement.
Kate’s whole posture stiffened. She must be terrified of anyone discovering her identity. She was considered a terrorist in England: the number-one most-wanted criminal.
“Excuse me,” Clove repeated, and this time Kate looked up. Her gaze flickered warily from Clove to Ella, and then to Matthew, where it stopped.
“Matt?!” Kate asked, her voice hoarse.
Matthew, who had been staring with fascination out of the window at the countryside speeding by, spun around to stare at Kate. “Katherine?!” he spluttered. He stood up and then abruptly sat back down to grab Kate’s hands. “How did you get here? What happened to you?”
“Me?” she said. “What happened to you? How did you get out of prison?”
“Hi,” Clove said, interrupting them both. They turned identical, amazed expressions on her. “Sorry to interrupt, but I can explain. This isn’t your Matt, Kate. Matthew, this isn’t Katherine. Not the version you know, anyway.”
Kate seemed to understand instantly. “When are you from?”
“1745,” Clove replied for him.
As Kate threw herself at Matthew and pulled him into a hug, her rucksack fell to the floor. “Matthew,” she said. “The coachman. I remember you.”
“You remember him?” Clove and Ella both asked together.
Kate nodded. “I remember all of my lives. I remembered months ago.”
Ella’s eyebrows raised. “I didn’t know that,” she said, confused.
“What’s happening?” Matthew asked.
Clove didn’t answer. She realized that she should have asked Ella sooner what she knew about Kate and Matt. Ella could probably have explained everything, but Clove had been too overwhelmed to consider it before now.
“I don’t understand,” Matthew said, still holding Kate tightly.
“You’re reincarnated,” Clove said quickly. “For some reason that I never worked out, you and Katherine keep being brought back to life, throughout history. Kate is one of the newest versions.”
“I know why,” Kate said. “It’s because we needed to have a child. My daughter, Clove. That’s why we keep coming back.”
Clove broke into a nervous smile. Kate thought the reincarnation was because of her? “Er, that would be me. Hi.” Clove waved at Kate.
“My daughter is a baby,” Kate said. “She’s only three days old.”
Clove shrugged. “Time machine.”
Kate’s expression turned serious. “Clove?”
“Hi, Mum.”
Kate stared hard at Clove. There was a long silence, and then she abruptly burst into tears. “I left you,” she said. “I had to leave you, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s OK,” Clove said, touching her arm and trying to sound reassuring, even in such a strange situation. “Tom was a great dad.”
“Tom raised you? Matt and I never come back?” Kate gasped.
Clove nodded, unwillingly. She didn’t want to upset Kate, but she couldn’t lie to her. For Kate, this was all new and raw – especially as she’d given birth only days before. Clove had had a lifetime to get used to the idea of Tom being her father. She couldn’t imagine it any other way.
“That’s why we’re here,” Ella interrupted. “To make sure you get Matt home.”
“You’re going to help me rescue Matt?” Kate said, sniffing, just as Clove said, “We are?”
“We’re going to get him out of prison,” Ella confirmed. “And take you both home to your family.”
Clove was gobsmacked. They were going to take Kate and Matt home? After all these years? How could Ella bring her here and suggest something so life-changing as if it was no big deal, without even asking Clove if she wanted her parents to come home? What would it mean if Kate and Matt came home? Would Clove have to leave Tom and Jen and move out?
She couldn’t believe Ella was doing this to her.
Kate’s emotions clearly weren’t so mixed. She’d grabbed Clove’s hand like she never wanted to let go, tears of joy running down her cheeks.
“I have absolutely no idea what is happening,” Matthew said. “What do you mean when you say I’m … reincarnated?”
Clove took a deep breath and pushed her feelings aside. She had brought Matthew to the future, and she had a duty to make sure he didn’t go crazy because of it − which, judging by his frenzied eyes, and the way he was holding tightly to Kate’s arm, was very close to happening.
“OK. Matthew, you and Kate are born over and over again, throughout history. Every time you are born, you get together and do something important, like what you did at Carlisle to help stop the Jacobite Uprising. In the early twenty-first century you were born again, and when you were trying to do your big thing − which in this case was stopping a biological weapon being used in warfare − the version of you here was arrested and taken to prison. Kate escaped to Scotland, where she gave birth to me. So I guess I’m technically not actually your daughter? I’m the daughter of another version of you. Are you with me so far?”
Matthew shook his head. Clove persevered. Even if he didn’t understand, at least he looked a little calmer.
“After Kate gave birth to me, a few days ago, she decided to try and break Matt out of prison, so they could finish their task of stopping this biological weapon from killing millions of people. She left Me-as-a-Baby with your – Matt’s – brother. He raised me, because Kate and Matt disappeared for ever after that. We had no idea where they went, for sixteen years. So Ella here decided that Kate probably needed our help, and brought us here − to a time before they disappeared.”
“That sounds about right,” Kate said, in a tiny, overwhelmed voice.
“Forgetting all of that,” Ella said to Kate, “you just said you thought you were reincarnated because of Clove? How did you know?”
“Sorry, who are you again?” Kate asked.
“This is my friend Ella,” Clove said quickly, before Ella could make another unsubstantiated claim about their relationship status. “She’s the one with the time machine. She’s from the future.”
“Oh!” Kate said, and let go of Clove’s hand to take Ella’s. “It’s great to meet you.”
“It’s lovely to meet you too,” Ella said. “So, you were saying about Clove…?”
“Right,” Kate said. “Clove is the reason we were reincarnated, I think. I worked out that in every other life we never had any children, so I figured we kept being reborn until we did. Clove must grow up to do something really important.” Kate took Clove’s hand again, smiling at her proudly and affectionately.
Ella snorted. “That’s a good theory. You’ve got it a bit backwards, though.”
“What do you mean?” Clove asked. “I thought you said I do end up being important! You said I saved millions of lives.”
“You do. But your parents aren’t somehow magically reborn to make sure that you are alive to do that. They are reborn because of you doing that.”
“What?” Kate and Clove asked together.
“You change history using your parents,” Ella explained. “That’s how it works, your History Control. You make sure that there is a version of your parents alive in every time period where they could be useful. You put them there and make sure they meet. Together they act like white blood cells for the universe. They isolate issues and fix them, and make sure things happen the way they should. In the last beginning, back in 2040, Kate gave birth to you.”
Clove’s brain switched itself off, then turned on again. She couldn’t process what Ella was saying.
“Dropping people into pivotal moments of history is a crude prototype for the current system of History Control in my time,” Ella continued. “But it worked for you. You thought it would be less intrusive to history to use existing people, rather than to send in loads of agents from the future, who might mess things up beyond repair. I think you’d been burned by your first mission and by all of the changes you made in your visit to 1745.”
“You put us here?” Kate asked Clove, trying to catch up. “But why? How?”
“I have no idea,” Clove said. The idea was unbelievable… But Ella wouldn’t have any reason to lie, surely. That meant Clove was going to use her parents to change history. She had been the one planting them in the past. This whole thing was Clove’s fault. “Why would I do that, Ella? It doesn’t make any sense.”
Ella pulled a face, clearly trying to work out how to explain it. “You thought that Kate and Matt had the … instinct, you called it, in your book. They could sense what needed doing better than any computer.”
Clove shook her head. “That’s ridiculous. There’s no way I’m going to do that.”
Ella shrugged. “You will.”
Clove glared at her and folded her arms. “I think I know my own mind.” She was annoyed at how cockily certain Ella was of everything. It made her feel like she had no control over her own future.
“I know the future, Clove. I literally know exactly what is going to happen. I promise that you will do this.”
“Oh, you can’t just use the fact that you ‘know the future’ to win every argument, Ella!” Clove retorted. “How is that fair?”
“If you’d just listen to me—”
“Stop telling me what to do!” Clove burst out.
Before Ella could reply, Kate cleared her throat. She looked between the two of them. “Uh, how did you two meet?”
“Ella stalked me,” Clove replied at the same time as Ella said, “I saved her life.”
Kate sighed. “I think we’ve all got a lot of catching up to do.”
“Yes, please,” Matthew said. He pressed his forehead to Kate’s, sighing loudly.