Her mobile bleeped again. She answered it and a short pudgy man was staring at her.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing ordering one of my technicians around?”

“Brian, the guy was too shocked to think of doing anything at all.”

“Bravo and Charlie teams were already running diagnostics at the time.”

“I’m sorry. I guess I let my personal feelings get the better of me.” She blushed but didn’t let her sadness out.

“It’s OK. When this is all over, I’m sure we’ll drink and laugh about it.” Brian’s face turned to one of concern. Brian and his number two, Marielle, were the only two people who knew how she felt about Raymond. The fact that he’d blown up at her showed just how tense everyone in the organisation was.

Helen smiled a little and asked, “I take it you reassigned the report to those teams?”

“I did and, whilst the report isn’t officially ready, yet, I do have some good news.” His face frowned, “It’s not much, but it’s something. The navigation circuits appear to have been incorrectly calibrated. We should be able to narrow the search area by COP but we do know he’s between 00 and 40.”

Helen forced herself to look positive, “That’s still something. I look forward to reading that report.”

Helen mused at the terminology they used but force of habit meant that she was more comfortable thinking in those terms than what it actually meant. It was something that Raymond had drilled into all of them — if something were to go wrong, and they missed the target, speaking in terms that were reasonable for the areas they nay visit would be less likely to draw suspicion. He insisted that everyone use the correct terms so that if a 2nd person needed to be sent, they would not inadvertantly give themselves away.

Raymond had argued, “If you get used to using the terms every day then it would be easier to maintain your cover if you need to follow me.”

The rest of the report was not so comforting. The reason that the machine did not perform as expected as that the machine was not calibrated to work with Raymond’s current watch. A month ago the watch Raymond was using broke down so he replaced it with one of the spares. Whilst he was a brilliant inventor, he had not appreciated just how much the machine depended on the individual configuration of the navigation watches. He had matched the sensors on the watch to the machine but he had not matched the transmission circuits.

Helen sipped her drink. She could not help but feel that the report was about to get worse. She carried on reading.

Recalibrating the machine to the watch would take months without the watch. Recalibrating the watch to the machine would be easier in this location but, in the area he was in, it was virtually impossible. The report went on to suggest that someone from the organisation travel to an area in front of Raymond so that they could meet him when he got there and advise him to wait to be picked up.

Helen smiled at the proposal — Raymond, the workaholic that had spent the past ten years of his life building the machine, wait?

She read more and received a shock.

Helen thought it was odd that Marielle and Brian did the research as they had dedicated teams of researchers for that sort of thing but further reading explained it a little more:

Marielle had attached pictures to the file of Lady Harrington at various ages. Helen got goosebumps looking at the pictures — they could have been of her! Furthermore, a quick check of records showed that Lord Harrington had met his wife whilst travelling through Africa. After a whirlwind romance (3 months) they got married and a month later he died whilst hunting game. There were no records of the woman until two weeks before she met Lord Harrington. All of the above were generated by simple searches through the publicly records system.

There was a note, added by Brian, stating that he had requested that Research cross check blood samples to see if there was a familial match with the proposed traveller.

Helen felt dizzy. She tried to process it all.

“Get a grip.” She told her herself, “What would I do if I was arranging this?”

That was the thing about time travel: you sometimes got the answer before you knew what the question was and sometimes you had to limit your plans to the observed facts.

The bit of her that was in love with Raymond cried out in glee. She would get to spend several months with him and he would not have work to take him away from her. It was like going on an extended holiday together. Of course, the holiday would have to end when the adjustments were done and, by the look of the research material, she would be taking a one way trip herself.

The business side of her personality took over. She made a mental “To Do” list. She would have to:

“Establish two-way comms with Brian Redgrave.”

The call went straight to voicemail. She chided herself for forgetting that Brian did not take work calls out of work hours (unless it was an emergency).

“Brian, if it’s going to take months to recalibrate the machine to individual watches, how long before I launch?”

After she hung up she had another thought: How come Technical seemed to be in charge of Research? She made a mental note to ask Marielle tonight.

* * *

She had contacted Marielle when she got home. Marielle’s voice was light and conspiratorial. Helen didn’t have the heart to tell her the shocking insights she had that evening — that day would come and it was lovely to have something else to think about. Marielle would not be drawn on what was in the encrypted data but she did give Helen the key.

Marielle was postitively impish when she was asked why Research were reporting to Technical, “Oh, that’s your fault.” She waited for Helen’s shocked protestations to subside, “When you ordered that tech to write the report, you implied that everybody was to report to Technical on the matter. After all, you were the first director-level person to take charge of the situation so your orders stand.”

Helen did not know whether to laugh or cry — she felt proud and accomplished for taking charge of the situation but also realised that, in the coming weeks, her more ambitious colleagues would probably try to undermine her out of spite. She decided that, of all the things she had to worry about, this one was not worth it. She acted because she cared about the project so it did not matter what the others thought of her. If they wanted the responsibility, they should have acted. However, they had not been there, and they were probably caught between wanting to act and wanting to avoid the blame.

The conversation had put Helen into better spirits. Not only that but all the hints Marielle had dropped fed Helen’s curiousity. Marielle had warned that the information would be deleted once she had cleared the screen. The information that Marielle had put together was dramatic in itself: Marielle had persuaded one of the DNA testers to test the samples from the hiers against samples that Marille called “RS” and “JH”.

It took Helen over an hour to absorb the information.

Her mobile was beside her bed and it was reminding her to get up.

“Messages?”

“You have one data message from Brian Redgrave.”

Her mind went back to yesterday and she was hit by an avalanche of emotion. She felt like burying her head in her hands and never leaving her bed again. She mentally corrected herself, she could cope with what had happened, she couldn’t cope with what she was about to do.

She started to have the argument again about the rights and wrongs of letting someone die. Someone, who she would have to marry and get intimate with, would die and she would do nothing to stop it. Another thought struck her, could she be intimate with someone she didn’t like? Could she be that cold and calculating?

“Oh God, I’m a b***h and a w***e!” She announced to her bedroom.

The sensible part of her spoke and reminded her that she did not know that. The records showed that she had married but there was no document that stated when, or if, the marriage was consumated. She imagined an official sitting next to the bed of a couple with a clipboard and smiled for a second or so.

“Project message.”

The mobile complied and the message was projected into the space in front of Helen’s face. The message read, “We only need to re-calibrate the sensor circuits as the original watch should be fixed by the time we transmit. Expect to launch in 5 weeks.”

The way Helen felt she did not want to go into the office. She thought of working from home but she knew she would feel worse if she was alone. If it got too bad she could seek out Marielle or Brian. She wondered what she would do if they weren’t available and she realised even the colleagues who she didn’t get on well with would take her mind off how she felt.

She accepted that she was covering up her emotions with activity but, until she found a solution to her problems, it was going to have to do.

In the meeting she found it hard to focus on details and was constantly asking questions. She could see Brian getting impaitient with her and she knew that, had it been anybody else, he would have already taken her to task. She could see Brian getting ready to lecture her but Marielle held up a hand.

“Helen, are you OK?”

The concerned look on Marielle’s face made her realise just how bad she must look. The floodgates burst! Before she knew it she was hugging Marielle, crying on her shoulder and telling her everything. She felt stupid: for breaking down at work, for wanting to keep it all bottled up inside, for thinking that ignoring the problem was going to solve it. She couldn’t believe that Marielle and Brian put up with her.

Marielle listened to her and, when she had finished, she countered each of Helen’s self-critical arguments. Marielle’s calm and friendly voice reminded her of the fights that she had won. Marielle also reminded Helen that stress was likely to make one very self-critical.

“So any thoughts of what I should do about Lord Harrington?”

“You could just level with him.” The cheekiness returned to Marielle’s voice, “You could tell him that you’re from the future, show him some cool tech and, maybe, a copy of that marriage certificate. You don’t have to ‘be intimate’ with him if it’s too much for you.” Marielle found it amusing that Helen still used euphemisms when talking about love and sex.

Helen was both enthralled and shocked by the suggestion, “But we have strict rules on that sort of thing…. And we have those rules for a reason!”

“If they were that strict, this machine wouldn’t even exist! In any case, I have some ideas to help you underline the fact that he shouldn’t talk about it. It’s only a problem if the secret gets out and, the records show you went anyway, so we’ve already altered time.”

“What are those ideas?”

“No, no, Helen. I’m not telling you until *you* agree to consider going.”

Helen found herself grinning at that.

“I guess it’s time to face the media.” She half-heartedly announced to her office.

She activated her mobile and made a call, “Andrea, I need to know what’s happening out there.”

“Where and when?”

“My office. ASAP.”

Helen found the media’s take on the incident depressingly predictable:

IPM[1] stated that the Raymond Smith had been lost but the organisation was working on a solution, a profile on Helen, how the media and parliament was reacting, blah blah blah

News International was “trying to breach” the “possible cover up”. They had tracked down and interviewed Helen’s ex’s…Helen asked for the next report.

WorldNet were saying that Helen had taken charge of the situation (much to the other directors’ surprise)…

The report droned on. Andrea was in her element and Helen felt that the media was so predictable that she could almost write the stories herself. Then again, as Head of Administration, Helen couldn’t say that she had a job that one would expect daily excitement in.

Helen did try to pay attention but there wasn’t very much that she could do to change those reports. She almost felt as though she was wasting both her time and Andrea’s. She was about to dismiss Andrea when she had an idea. It would help the organisation on the PR front and, if managed correctly, shouldn’t cause too much disruption to their efforts. However, it did mean upsetting a friend. She bit her lip.

Andrea stopped talking and looked at Helen expectantly. Helen came to a decision and suggested they invite a reporter to shadow someone to see that there was no cover up. Andrea suggested News International and Helen dismissed that on the grounds that “the only way to get good press in a NI publication is to worship at the temple of Murdoch”.

“It’ll have to be someone high enough for the reporter to see that he does have access,” Andrea reminded Helen.

“I don’t want them under my feet! Make it Brian.”

“I’ll get it set up.”

“Before you go, I’ll be stepping down from my current duties in a week. Make sure the reporter is away by that time.”

“As you wish.”

* * *

Andrea didn’t allow herself to smile until she was in her office. Her number two, Clive, sent her a questioning glance.

“She’s agreed.”

“How do you manage that?”

“Helen’s easy to manipulate when she bored out of her wits.” She, mentally, noted that it had been a good idea of them to write a report, months ago, of possible media scenarios in the event of a disaster. It’ll take Helen a few hours (if not days) to realise that the solution she proposed was in that report. The report also listed the likely stances of the different media organisations. Out loud she added, “I just let her think it was her idea.”

“Who did she want?”

“We didn’t discuss that. Call Simon and tell him that he shadows Brian from tomorrow.”

[1] International Public Media: the merged entities of what were most of the world’s public broadcasters.

She called Brian to tell him the news. Brian wasn’t too happy but he could see the advantage for the organisation. After all it had been seen time and time again that an organisation that is perceived as “covering up” was always perceived as not trying their best to deal with a situation (whether or not either were the case). Brian did make one observation, as they were closing the call, “If you can make this decision, Helen, I’m sure you’ll do fine when you make the jump.” Helen wasn’t sure whether she wanted him to be right or not.

She did, however, have to meet the rest of the board. She went through the various mechanisms available to her and settled on meeting each director indiviually and in person. The advantages were:

Dr Kohl was speaking, “A prudent course would be to assume that it could take up to 5 minutes for interception so disinfection would need to operate over a wider area. This also means that we would have more chance of discovery so we are going to have to adjust the priorities: 1st priority: protect the native population, 2nd priority: make sure the landing isn’t discovered and 3rd priority: ensure that Traveller 1 does not fall ill (if possible).”

Helen was shocked. It was not that she did not know the compromises that one has to make when time-travelling, Dr Kohl’s ordering of priorities was necessary with the assumption that it could take up to 5 minutes to make the interception. Helen was shocked because, with the data from Technical and Historical, she could make the intercept within 45 seconds (allowing her to re-arrange the standard priorities because there was less chance of being discovered) and because David had given his word that she could arrange the pick up the way she saw fit. Helen smiled at that as she knew it was David’s way of saying that it was her fault if it went wrong.

A 5 minute interception time meant that a new device would need to be designed and built in less than 4 weeks as it was beyond the limitations of the current disinfection devices.

Dr Kohl saw the mix of emotions play out on Helen’s face and simply stated, “David doesn’t have the final word on everything.”

Brian and Marielle had had a meeting with Medical. The design specifications for the new device would be challenging to achieve. As senior managers they both spotted another problem: the would be able to build the device if they could find the resources from somewhere.

“Every second spent in planning a project can save you two in the building of it,” played in Marielle’s head. It was one of the phrases her engineering tutor was fond of. In an ideal world they would allocate more than the time available just to plan. However, the timetable was fixed so they had to work with what they had.

The first thing they did when they got back was to assemble the heads of the groups in the Department and asked them the likely needs for the poject. Marielle got the computer to record the requirements then, after the meeting, she asked the computer to multiply the expected resources by 5. After all, another favourite of her old tutor was, “Lack of planning leads to cost and/or time overruns.” They didn’t have the luxury of time overruns so any hit had to be made financially.

Brian and Marielle examined their department’s budget to see if there were any areas that could be put on hold for a month without causing too much damage. Marielle pointed out that Finance could tolerate a catastrophic failure of its systems because outside bodies could provide the information Finance needed (even if they were not that convenient to use) and that programs PR ran could quite easily run on the systems of the other departments without too much trouble, so the money set aside for maintaining those systems over the next few weeks could be transferred to this design project. If they diverted money from existing design projects, etc. Similarly the looked at where they could get manpower and materials.

It took them a couple of hours but they were able to come up with approximately twice the resources estimated by their group heads. They both knew that it was prudent to have more assigned to the project but they had enough to start it. Brian called Dr Kohl to arrange a meeting between Design in Technical and Transmission in Medical.