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“That was because you had no choice,” said Gideon. “But now the whole world’s before you. You can study abroad, you can go on long journeys, while I can’t be away from that damn … from the chronograph for more than a day, and I spend my nights in the safety of the year 1953. Believe me, I’d happily change places with you!”
The door of the Dragon Hall opened again, and Lady Arista and Aunt Glenda came out into the corridor. I quickly withdrew my head again.
“They’ll regret this yet,” Aunt Glenda was saying.
“Glenda, please! We’re a family, after all,” said Lady Arista. “We must stick together.”
“You’d better tell that to Grace,” said Aunt Glenda. “She’s the one who got us all into this mess. Protect her! Ha! No one in possession of their senses would believe a word she says! Not after all that’s happened. Still, it’s not our problem anymore. Come along, Charlotte.”
“I’ll see you to the car,” said Gideon.
I waited until the sound of their footsteps had died away, and then I ventured to leave my listening post. Lady Arista was still standing there, rubbing her forehead wearily with one finger. She suddenly looked as old as the hills, not her usual self at all. The ramrod-straight, ballet-teacher look seemed to have deserted her, and even her features weren’t as composed as usual. I felt sorry for her.
“Hello,” I said quietly. “Are you all right?”
My grandmother straightened up at once. Everything about her seemed to slip back into place and stay there.
“Ah, there you are,” she said, inspecting me. Her critical gaze went to my blouse. “Is that a dirty mark? Child, you really must learn to take a little more pride in your appearance.”
The intervals between episodes of time travel differ from one gene carrier to another, unless they are controlled by the chronograph. While the observations of Count Saint-Germain led him to conclude that female gene carriers travel back considerably less often, and for shorter periods, than their male counterparts, our experience to date does not allow us to confirm his findings.
The duration of uncontrolled time travel episodes has been shown, since observations were first made, to vary from eight minutes, twelve seconds (the initiation journey of Timothy de Villiers, 5 May 1892), to two hours, four minutes (Margaret Tilney, second journey, 22 March 1894).
The window of time provided by the chronograph for travel is a minimum of thirty minutes, a maximum of four hours.
It is not known whether uncontrolled visits to periods within a gene carrier’s own lifetime have ever occurred. In his writings, Count Saint-Germain assumes that it is impossible because of the continuum (see Volume 3: Laws of the Continuum).
Moreover, the chronograph cannot be set to take gene carriers back to periods within their own lifetimes.
FROM THE CHRONICLES OF THE GUARDIANS,
VOLUME 2: GENERAL LAWS OF TIME TRAVEL
NINE
MY MUM HUGGED ME as if I’d been away for years. I had to assure her over and over again that I was perfectly all right before she finally stopped asking.
“Are you okay too, Mum?”
“Yes, darling, I’m fine.”
“So everyone’s fine,” said Mr. de Villiers ironically. “I’m glad we’ve cleared that up.” He came so close to Mum and me that I could smell his cologne. (Kind of spicy and fruity with a touch of cinnamon. I felt hungrier than ever.)
“Now, what are we going to do about you, Grace?” Those wolflike eyes were firmly fixed on Mum.
“I told you the truth.”
“Yes, at least so far as identifying Gwyneth’s gene is concerned,” said Mr. de Villiers. “But we have yet to find out why the midwife who so obligingly falsified her birth certificate sixteen years ago suddenly chose to go away in a hurry today, of all days.”
Mum shrugged. “I wouldn’t assume that every little coincidence is so important, Falk.”
“I also think it’s strange that if your baby looked like arriving two months early, you chose to have her at home. Any sensible woman would go to a hospital the moment the labor pains started.”
“It simply happened too fast,” said Mum, without batting an eyelash. “I was just glad the midwife could come right away.”
“Hm. Even so, surely you should have gone to hospital directly after the birth to have the baby examined.”
“We did.”
