Allergic To Time (7 page)

“Damn it!” I said, upon opening my door and hearing the sounds of the shower already running. Jennifer must have gotten up super early. I walked down the hall to the bathroom and banged on the door. “Can you hurry up in there!”
 
I heard the shower abruptly stop and a couple of seconds later she swung the door open, wrapped in a towel.
 

“Excuse me?” she asked, indignant.
 

“Look, I’m sorry, I just really need to use the shower. Well, I don’t — my friend does. We’re in a rush.”

“Your friend?” Jennifer looked towards my bedroom. “The same one as last week?” She asked disapprovingly.
 

“A different one,” I replied, ignoring her tone. “So can we please-“

“Did you steal my umbrella yesterday?”

“Well, I don’t think ‘steal’ is the right word. I borrowed it for a minute.”

“Yeah, so where is it now?” She crossed her arms, water still dripping from her body onto the floor.
 

“I may have lost it…”

“God Anna,” she said, pushing past me to head towards her room. “I told you not to take my things!”

I was bout to apologise, but she turned around and interrupted me before I could get the first word out. “By the way you still owe me for last week’s rent.”

Preferring not to be drawn into that discussion, I pulled open the bathroom door and stepped inside, checking that the shower was in a suitable state for visitors to use. It was a share house, after all. I’d been in there for less than a second when there was a scream of surprise came from the other side of the door.
 

I assumed Jennifer had run into Robert, then.
 

***
 

As we headed out into the empty early morning street I pulled my black beret down over my head, as the lack of any available umbrella meant I’d been reduced to relying on hats to preserve my hair. I craned my neck down the street, trying to spot a cab through the heavy rainfall.
 

I looked at Robert, still dressed in his ridiculous purple jumpsuit, which now had my fur-trimmed denim coat over the top of it. He had made a rough attempt at removing his makeup but his eyes still had a bruised look thanks to the leftover charcoal. “Thanks for coming with me,” I said, leaning into the street, attempting to hail a white cab which failed to slow down. “I may need back up.”

“Yeah, well I couldn’t really stay here without you,” he said, shooting his eyes back towards the two story brick townhouse we’d just come out of. “Do you have a smoke?” he asked.

I shook my head.
 

“God, I am freaking dying for one.”

“Well, we can stop at the shops later.” I finally got a taxi to stop and we climbed inside. “Can we go to Glebe please?” I asked the driver. It was only a five minuter trip: I would usually have walked but the weather and my escalating concern over
 
Martin’s safety meant that wasn’t an option. I checked my phone as I settled in the back seat: still no texts or email messages from him.
 

The driver nodded and pulled out onto City Rd, heading towards the intersection of Broadway and Glebe Point Rd. In all honestly, I shouldn’t have even known where Martin Anderson’s home address was. It wasn’t as though I’d ever been formally invited around. There were some teachers on campus who encouraged that kind of over-friendly relationship with students, inviting them around for formal diners and poetry readings and the like. But Martin never got too touchy-feely with his students, and he had certainly never rounded us up for a cosy get together in his home. But I knew where he lived because Connie had pointed it out to me once, when we’d been walking past. At the time I hadn’t questioned how she herself had that knowledge: I’d just simply stared at the strange blue and white cottage that he apparently called home.

It was a distinctive house, so when we reached it I recognised the exact building and asked the driver to pull over. He told me the fare was $17, which almost caused Robert to have a heart attack in the back seat. I personally thought that taxi-fare inflation should be the least of his concerns at that point, as I glanced at him to see how he was handling this strange new and
 
— to him — modern world.
 

Surprisingly well, I thought. Too well? I was briefly suspicious. Of course, we were in one of the oldest parts of the city. Glebe probably hadn’t changed all that much since the mid 70s.

“This is his house,” I said as we climbed out of the cab, nodding towards the blue and white monstrosity on St John’s Rd.
 

“Trippy,” Robert murmured, admiring the flower garden out front.
 

“I’ve never actually been here,” I admitted, feeling nervous. “Do you think it’s strange for me to just turn up here, at 7am on a Tuesday morning?”
 

Robert shrugged. “This whole thing is pretty freaking strange.”
 

I nodded, and continued to justify the situation out loud. “Yes, exactly. Plus, I’m very worried about his safety. You know, given what almost happened to us yesterday.”

Robert smiled at me slightly. “I’m sure you are.”

I cleared my throat and headed towards Martin’s front door. I wasn’t sure which situation I was more worried about confronting: finding him dead in a pool of blood, or him opening the door alive, but in shocked horror to see me standing there. But as I raised my hand to press the buzzer, and the fear hit my stomach, I realised I was much more afraid of the first option. I could deal with embarrassment. I couldn’t deal with a dead body.
 

The doorbell rang out throughout the house. There was no movement, no response. The worst scenario started to form in my mind. They’d probably blamed Martin for bringing me to the hospital the day before, for getting me involved, and for the fact that I’d kidnapped Robert before they had a chance to kill him. I suddenly understood why Martin had been warning me to keep out of it, for my apparent “own good.” Well, I hadn’t realised they were time traveller killers, had I. I thought they were just investigating time travel, so that they could cover it up. Quietly, without murder. And now they had gotten to Martin, and he was probably lying dead in his living room with a bullet in the middle of his chest. It would be up to me now to continue his good work; I would have to be brave and carry on his legacy…

There were footsteps behind the door and the lock on the other side turned. The door was yanked back, and Martin was standing there, angry, wearing a brown dressing gown.
 

“Oh, hello,” I said. “You’re not dead.”

“What the hell are you doing here!” He stopped yelling at me for a second to take in the sight of Robert standing behind me, in full regalia. “What. The. Hell. Is he doing here?” He seemed shocked at the very sight of Robert. Hadn’t he been informed about my heroic rescue mission?
 

I guess that the reason he hadn’t sent me a text or email was that he didn’t realise anything usual had taken place the day before. Well, apart from a time traveller turning up, but apparently that was all par for the course in the life of Martin Anderson.

Robert lifted his hand up in a half-hearted wave, but didn’t say anything in the way of a greeting. He seemed to resent being there.
 

I felt like I should explain the situation to Martin.
 
“I had to rescue him from the hospital, you see-”

“Why the hell did you have to do that?” Martin adjusted the tie on his dressing gown to make sure it was properly done up. It was still raining and Robert and I were barely sheltered on the balcony.
 

“Can we come inside?” I asked.
 

Martin’s eyes popped wide open. “I’m not sure that’s entirely appropriate…”

“Come on man, it’s freezing out here,” Robert pipped up.
 

Martin shook his head but reluctantly stepped back to let us through the door. We walked into his living room and I almost stopped dead at the decor. It was decorated head to toe in historical artefacts and memorabilia, most of it war-themed. There were antique guns displayed on all the walls, alongside helmets, medals, and numerous photos of tropes of soldiers.

And the
furniture.
Was Martin 39 or 79? It was all brown leather couches and ornate rugs. I walked over to one of the uncomfortable looking couches and took a seat. It felt as bad as it looked. Robert took an uneasy seat beside me, also eyeing the decor with suspicion. I looked at him and realised, from the look of him at least, that he was probably a hippy. But that was the strange thing you see: because I’d always thought Martin was the most left wing person I knew. So the guns, and the war memorabilia…I didn’t know what to make of it all. I supposed it could all be for purely aesthetic purposes. But Jesus: it was shockingly jarring.
 

He still seemed entirely unsure about my presence in his house, but Martin at least ventured to take a seat across from us. He repeated his earlier question. “Why the hell did you have to escape from the hospital?”

“Do you have any cigarettes?” Robert asked. “I am dying here man.”

“No,” he snapped. Then, taking a second thought, he looked at Robert and added, “And you shouldn’t be smoking anyway, given your asthma.”

Robert’s eyes shot up. “Asthma? I don’t have asthma. I
travelled through time,”
he said,
emphasising
Martin’s least favourite phrase. “I’m, like, allergic to this time or something. It’s not bloody asthma that’s causing my problem.”

Every time Robert spoke I kept thinking I detected a slight trace of a British accent. I’d thought maybe it was just a 70s accent, but his pronunciation of ‘asthma’ caused me to turn around and ask, “Are you originally from England?”

Robert nodded and sat back in the horrible brown couch. “Yeah, I grew up there. We immigrated to Australia when I was 15.”

“How old are you now?”

“31.”

I thought about this for a moment. “In what...year where you 31?”

“1974.”

I quickly did the maths. “So you’d be 69 now.”

“Oh lord,” Martin said, rolling his eyes. “He would not. If he’s 31 now, that means he was born in 1983.” He looked pointedly at Robert, who turned to me indignant.
 

“I told you he didn’t believe me!”

I turned to Martin confused, “What - are you saying you still don’t believe that Robert travelled through time?”

“Of course I don’t.” Martin furrowed his brow. “You were there yesterday. I’m not sure how much clearer I could have been.”

“But I thought...I thought you just didn’t want to help the man in black. So you were pretending to disagree with him?”

Martin stared at me as though I was stupid. But then he relented slightly and nodded, glancing up at the ceiling. “Well, you’re right about that part. I’ve never wanted to help him.” His scornful gaze returned to his face. “But that doesn’t mean that I believe this idiot travelled through time.”

“Oh.” I sat back in my seat.

Martin switched his gaze back to Robert. “What happened yesterday after I left the hospital? Why aren’t you still in the ward?”

I cut in. “He tried to kill us,” I said bluntly.

“Who?” Martin switched back to me.
 

“The man in black of course.” I leant forward and crossed my arms, daring Martin to let that little fact sink in, to comprehend just how much danger we had been in the day before, after he’d abandoned us to go teach a class. “For your information, that’s why we came here: I was worried that he’d come after you as well-”

Martin stood up abruptly, and started to remove his dressing gown. Luckily he was clothed underneath. But I looked up at him in surprise. “What’s the matter?”
 

“We have to get the university,” he replied, a grave look on his face. “Right now.”

Chapter Eight.
 

The first thing I saw was Connie Hung staring angrily at me from the physics department student lounge.
 

“Ah crap,”
I muttered, realising it was 8am and I had inadvertently turned up on time for our ‘study date’ (her term, not mine) without even meaning to. I felt the weight of my phone tucked in my pocket, containing a dozen texts from her that I hadn’t replied to.
 
Maybe I could pretend that my appearance in the lounge was on purpose, for her benefit. Whereas usually, on a Tuesday morning before class, I could be found sunning myself in a cafe, not in the prehistoric cave they called the physics building.
 
Not that there was much sun today.
 

“Connie!” I called out, in a fake cheery tone I barely recognised as my own voice. “So great to see you...”

“Why haven’t you replied to any of my messages?” Connie was dressed in a blue sports hoodie with “University of Sydney” emblazoned across the front. I found the design both obnoxious and hideous. Connie didn’t share my passion for on-campus style however: as she constantly reminded me ‘this is a lecture theatre, not a fashion show.’

“I had other things on my mind,” I said, glancing around behind my back to make sure Martin and Robert were still outside. Robert had made us stop for cigarettes on the way over and Martin was chaperoning him while he had a smoke. I had been supposed to come inside and make sure the coast was clear — which, at 8am on a Tuesday it usually would be. But of course Connie was ruining that.
 

“Like what?” she said suspiciously, looking up at me over the rim of her glasses. She was probably hoping I had some good gossip for her. As strained as our friendship could be, I was one of the only social outlets she had. “Did something exciting happen?”

“You could say that.” I looked back down at Connie and thought for a moment. Connie was a scientist, after all: she might be able to be of help to the situation. Not that she knew anything about time travel: her PhD thesis was on the physics of ice cream or something equally as stupid. I’d never really bothered to ask her. She might at least have an opinion though. I wasn’t sure how much I could trust her.