A Remedy In Time

by Jennifer Macaire

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

READERS LOVE JENNIFER MACAIRE! 'Fascinating . . . Jam-packed with adventure and colour' Jodi Taylor ***** ' Fantastic historical adventure ' - AMAZON REVIEWER ***** 'I highly recommend it' - GOODREADS REVIEWER ***** 'No one blends time travel and history as well as she does.' - AMAZON REVIEWER ***** 'Some of my best reading travels this year!' - GOODREADS REVIEWER ***** 'You just keep turning those pages to see what's coming next.' - AMAZON REVIEWER THE NEW TIMESLIP NOVEL FROM THE ACCLAIMED AUTHOR! To save the future, she must turn to the past . . . San Francisco, Year 3377. A deadly virus has taken the world by storm. Scientists are desperately working to develop a vaccine. And Robin Johnson - genius, high-functioning, and perhaps a little bit single-minded - is delighted. Because, to cure the disease, she's given the chance to travel back in time. But when Robin arrives at the last Ice Age hoping to stop the virus at its source, she finds more there than she bargained for. And just as her own chilly exterior is beginning to thaw, she realises it's not only sabre-toothed tigers that are in danger of extinction . . . Praise for Jennifer Macaire's Time For Alexander Series: 'A fascinating glimpse into the Ancient World jam-packed with adventure and colour.' Jodi Taylor, author of the best-selling Chronicles of St Mary's series 'A vividly written, characterful, informed and unusual take on Alexander and Ancient Times. I loved it.' Carol McGrath, author of The Silken Rose 'Fun, sexy and at times incredibly sad, the story held me to the end and the research was incredible' Karen King

Release date: January 7, 2021

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 256

Sample

‘Fleas cause typhus. More precisely, cat and opossum fleas. But it’s far easier to blame immigrants. After all, the main victims of typhus are the homeless, those living in squalor, and those who cannot escape the proximity of infected animals. So, point at the poor immigrant. After all, it would be economically impossible to control fleas, whereas if you stir up enough fear in the population towards immigrants, all you have to do is build a wall.’

~ Excerpt from ‘Environmental risk and typhus in the late twentieth century’, Robin Johnson, Center for Environmental Biology and Ecosystem Studies, Tempus University, Berkeley, Western State of California, in BMC Infectious Diseases Microbiology. 3370 March 6; 30(3):204-208.

‘The major clinical signs and symptoms of this new typhus (now referred to as Typhus-77) are disturbing: an acute and high fever, thrombocytopenia, leukopenia, elevated serum hepatic enzyme levels, gastrointestinal symptoms, and multiple organ failure, with a death rate of ~100%. It can infect animals as well as humans, and we suggest declaring this a national emergency in order to free funds to develop a vaccine as soon as possible. In the meantime, further clinical, epidemiologic, and laboratory research is needed to better understand the transmission dynamics of this pathogen, if possible, going back as far as possible in time to get samples.’

~ Excerpt from a letter from Professor Powell, Center for Environmental Biology and Ecosystem Studies, to the head of the Health Technology R&D Project of the Ministry of Health and Welfare, Anchorage, Western State of California. 22 December, 3377.

The following are notes from the dossier of Robin Johnson, presented to the Court of Time Travel and Technology. 1 May, 3378:

If I’m to tell everything about the trip back to time and its aftermath – the reason for the voyage, why I was chosen for the trip, and who got killed – I have to start at the beginning. As my boss, Dr Powell, would say: ‘You have to know the background of anything before you can put it into context.’ He was also fond of saying, ‘If you precipitate matters you will not be precise.’ That’s a good saying – and one that I always remember, mostly because Dr Powell said it nearly every day. I will therefore take my time and explain everything fully.

I was a researcher for the Center for Environmental Biology and Ecosystem Studies at the Tempus University time travel lab. Just for the record, and because I am precise, I will state that Dr Powell was against my going back in time. Dr Powell and I had been working together for ten years, since I started my Masters programme. Dr Powell’s wife told me, in the beginning, that no one had lasted more than six months working with him, but that I would surely learn a lot and should take the job anyhow. She had been doing the job interviews since his last (twelfth) assistant had quit and the department had decided that maybe Dr Powell shouldn’t be doing his own hiring. He tended to take brilliant but sensitive students and proceed to demolish them. Mrs Powell thought that I would probably last a little longer than the others, since I don’t take anything personally. She was astounded when I lasted a year, after two years she started referring to me as ‘a wonder’, and after ten years, I’d pretty much been adopted as their surrogate daughter. Dr Powell stopped ranting after about three years – seeing it didn’t affect me – and started to take me to conferences. After five years, he promoted me from assistant to collaborator (not that it made a wink of difference in my salary or status at the university). Dr Powell and I spent every working day together, and to tell the truth, I admired him immensely, so when he yelled at me I’d simply agree with everything he said. He was right, I was wrong, and since I never argued, we got along fine.

My job consisted mainly of identifying environmental threats, but Dr Powell often lent me out to different programmes, which was how I landed at the Page Museum helping with their studies of pathogens of sabre-toothed tigers. They went extinct very quickly, and the Center wanted me to identify, if possible, the reason. From there, my name came up for a time-travel program that centred around smilodons – it wasn’t precisely my speciality, but there weren’t any Tempus U scientists with much knowledge about smilodons at that time.

There was another, more pressing reason for the trip as well. A new disease resembling typhus, but not responding to any of the typhus treatments, had started to ravage the continent. As an environmental threat specialist, my thesis had been on typhus. I’d written so many papers on the subject that when the new sickness appeared I got flagged right away. What happened was I had a hypothesis that the disease came from the last ice age and was now making a comeback, aided by global warming. Several of the smilodon skulls had tested positive for this new disease, now called Typhus-77 because it was first identified in the year 3377. The symptoms and vectors were similar to typhus, but it was far more deadly and was viral, not bacterial.

When I was chosen for the program, Dr Powell begged me to reconsider. If he had put his foot down and told me I couldn’t go, I would have listened. But being told to reconsider isn’t the same thing as being forbidden. I reconsidered everything, and decided I’d still like to do it. I’d been watching historians and scientists go back in time for ten years now, and I admit, I was curious.

Tempus University has many lucrative time-travel programs, which is good – because time travel is incredibly expensive. Historians go back in time for 24 hours and take holograms and bring back recordings of famous people. Scientists go back for two weeks and bring back holograms, recordings, and samples. Mostly, the programs I work on are based on the medical and ecological, with a big part about studying the evolution of pathogens. We do a lot of viral and bacterial research and research on plants and animals, which is why, when we send scientists back, they go in pairs. They need a lot of equipment. It can be dangerous.

In January, I had just completed a study on the possible causes of extinction of the sabre-toothed tiger based on the many fossils found in the La Brea tar pits. Page Museum had donated most of the samples, and they had also put in a demand for a holo film to be shown at the museum as part of the exhibit. It was a fairly common demand – immersive holograms from the past was how Tempus University met most of its funding requirements. Tempus was picky about what jobs they would accept, but this passed the vetting process with no trouble. A holo film starring sabre-toothed tigers and perhaps some other extinct animals: dire wolves, giant sloths, and hopefully a mammoth. And I would go and gather samples.

Here’s where it gets tricky. As the long Pleistocene Age drew to a close, many of the highly successful large mammals began to go extinct. Huge herds of bison, mastodons, mammoths, horses, giant deer, and camels had grazed in North America, and sabre-toothed tigers and dire wolves preyed upon them. Then, somewhere around 10,000 BCE, they all vanished.

The animals we wanted to observe lived until about twelve to thirteen thousand years ago. We could only go back roughly twelve thousand years. No matter how hard the Time Sender tried, they could never get past the barrier of twelve thousand years. It wasn’t a clear-cut number, but every single time traveller sent back further than that disappeared without a trace. In the Americas, twelve thousand years ago, things were happening that would affect the entire continent. The Ice Age was finished, but a period of bitter cold had reappeared and, for some reason, large animals were going extinct at incredible rates.

Human beings appeared on the scene at this time too, but my speciality was flora and fauna – so I only had a vague idea of the different cultures that had migrated from Eurasia over the land bridges in the far north. Homo sapiens has not changed much anatomically over the last 120,000 years, but it has undergone a massive cultural evolution. To avoid culture shock and undue influence on the future, anyone sent back was absolutely forbidden to come into contact with Palaeolithic people, so our mission consisted of getting samples, filming the animals, and – most importantly – avoiding contact with other humans.

When Professor Daws, the head of Palaeolithic Time Travel Studies, suggested that I might like to take the trip back, I was astonished. But he and the Page Museum rep both felt I was just the person to collect the most samples in the least amount of time. Our trip, being one of the most risky because of the distance to the past, couldn’t last more than a week. They needed someone who wouldn’t get distracted by anything not related to the matter at hand. I’d be accompanied by another scientist whose job would be to work with me (of course) but also to film and direct the survival side of the mission because I hadn’t completed all the survival courses for such a trip, which was another reason Dr Powell was so set against me going.

A certain number of survival courses were recommended even though most time travellers didn’t qualify as survival experts. However, the further back in time you go, the more dangerous it can be. In our day, the animals around us have evolved alongside humans for such a long time that their actions are nearly always predictable. Humans have come to recognize what is a threat and what is not. But twelve thousand years ago, animals had just come into contact with humans and there were no set courses of action. When we see a wolf and it raises its hackles and snarls, we know it’s threatening us. We back off. But it’s taken thousands of years for wolves to be able to communicate with humans that way. We don’t know that dire wolves had the same indications for threat. We don’t even know how a sloth, or a camel, or a giant beaver would react upon coming face to face with a human.

Or how a sabre-toothed tiger would.

23 January, 3378

‘I’m not going back in time with her.’

The voice was low, but I heard, and I stopped to listen. Not very polite, but I recognized the speaker, and my skin prickled. Donnell Urbano was in the dean’s office – why?

‘Don’t be—’

The dean’s voice was cut off as Donnell interrupted.

‘I’ll be however the hell I want to be. In this case, I’m telling you right now, there is no way I’m going back in time with her. You can find someone else. That’s my—’

Now it was his turn to get cut off. ‘I will listen to your complaint in full, in two days’ time, after you complete the first exercise together. Then you can express your misgivings and I will be more inclined to listen. Right now, you are basing your refusal on – what are you basing it on, by the way?’

Donnell gave an incredulous laugh, and I leaned closer to hear. ‘You’re kidding, right? Powell’s protégé gets turned loose in the Palaeolithic and you’re wondering why I’m worried? The girl has never been on a time trip before. She’s untrained, untried, and frankly, I find her disconcerting. I’ve read her records. You can’t cure dissociative amnesia. I’ll give her one day. After that, find me a new partner.

I didn’t stick around to hear any more. That wang ba wanted to get rid of me, but I wouldn’t go without a fight. My past had nothing to do with who I was today. He was wrong, I was cured. I’d passed enough psychology tests to prove it. I turned around and headed towards the university’s underground station. I was never above asking for help, and I knew just the person to give it to me. At the station, I got in the pod and chose the destination ‘zoological park’. The doors slid shut and the pod shot through the tunnel while I slouched in my seat and fumed. Disconcerting? I’d show him disconcerting.

At the zoological park I jumped on the monorail and took it straight to the main office. My researcher pass gets me into places you wouldn’t believe. This was one perk. I get to go to museums, zoos, greenhouses, laboratories, and gymnasiums for free. The gymnasiums are to encourage us to stay in shape. Nothing worse than a flabby scientist, says Dr Powell sternly. He’s right. He’s always right.

At the main office I flashed my pass at the receptionist and asked for Jake Powell. He’s Dr Powell’s son, and we’ve known each other since I started working with his father. The girl calling him on the floating screen looked at me with interest. ‘Whom shall I say is calling?’ she asked.

Whom, shall? I almost rolled my eyes. The latest fad was speaking in old-fashioned lingo with Chinese and French swear words mixed in. Forsooth, bèn dàn. ‘Robin,’ I said, and waited as the screen hovered over to me and Jake’s image appeared. He saw me and waved.

‘Be right there, Robin,’ he said.

The girl’s interest sharpened like a laser beam. I understood why. Jake is considered amazingly handsome by most all females. I think he’s handsome too, of course, but I’m uninterested in him as a serious mate. For one thing, I know Jake too well. He’s incapable of commitment. He’s been engaged to the same on-and-off again fiancée for five years now. His on-and-off again fiancée, Helen, has more arguments for marriage than an encyclopedia of engagement quotes. She might be determined, but Jake’s a master at dodging. As soon as she starts planning the ceremony, he finds an excuse to break up. Usually it’s another woman.

When he walked in the room, he gave the receptionist a friendly wave that turned her cheeks scarlet, and gave me a big hug. Then he tousled my hair, which he knows I don’t like, and he asked me what I was doing there.

‘I need your help. I have a survival course in two days and I must pass it with flying colours.’

His eyebrows rose, which they always did when he was surprised. ‘Flying colours, eh? All right. Let’s get some gear, and we’ll hit the campsite.’ He turned to the girl sitting behind her desk, pretending not to listen to us. ‘Call me if I’m needed.’ He took my arm. ‘If you’re talking in clichés, it must be serious. So tell me, what’s going on?’

We headed to the glass walkway that led from the main offices to the centre of the park. ‘I’ve been chosen to go back in time in order to make a wildlife film. It’s a fairly straightforward mission. We set up camp near a site that is well known for attracting large animals. We stay out of sight and film as much of the flora and fauna that we can in a radius of ten kilometres. We avoid contact with people. We collect samples. We pack everything up, make sure we’ve left nothing behind, and take the tractor-beam back on the seventh day.’

‘Sounds easy,’ he agreed. ‘Climate? Season? Terrain?’

‘Cool and possibly rainy. Even snow is a possibility. We are aiming to be there in the early summer, hopefully we’ll be able to film immature as well as mature species.’

‘That’s not what I asked, but all right. Early summer. Cool, chances of snow. Must be high elevation then, right?’

‘No, we will be in California, but the climate was different back then. We think there was a small ice age resulting in either an impact from a meteorite or extreme volcanic activity in northern Europe.’

He frowned. ‘Just how far back are you going?’

‘Twelve thousand years.’

‘Robin!’ He sounded upset. ‘What did my dad say?’

‘He said he wanted me to reconsider. But I did, and I thought it would be a once-in-a-lifetime chance. So I told him. He said he’d hold my job for me. I think he was just making a joke, since I’m owed a year of vacation time, and he always said I could take it any time I wanted. I never had a vacation destination, but now I do. I want to see a sabre-toothed tiger, Jake. Wouldn’t you?’

‘Wocao, yes!’ But he shook his head. ‘I’d love to see one, but I’m not crazy. You are, Robin, if you think you can sneak up on a bunch of wild animals and just start filming. You have no idea what they are capable of, or what they can do.’

‘That’s why we have telephoto lenses on our vidcams. We won’t get anywhere near them. We’ll set up some motion sensors, put cameras around, send some vidcams into the air, and stay safe and sound in our treeblind or hide. When there are no animals around, we go out and gather samples. I’m not stupid. Look, are you going to help me or not?’

We stepped out of the walkway and found ourselves at the top of the stairs leading down to the savannah exhibit. Jake didn’t give me any warning. With a vicious shove, he pushed me down the stairs. I didn’t panic. I just had time to evaluate the angle of my descent so that I could land on my hands and break my fall, but I hit my shoulder on the wall harder than I would have liked. I ended up on my feet, about fifteen steps down from Jake. ‘You always did fight dirty,’ I told him.

His grin didn’t reach his eyes. ‘I haven’t even started yet.’

That’s another thing. Jake’s an expert in self-defence and he’s been training me since we met. I rubbed my shoulder. ‘I’m not here about the survival part of the course. I don’t know how to set up a campsite correctly.’

Jake led me into the park. ‘Your s. . .