The Last Beginning Read online

  Contents

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Part Two

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Part Three

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  For my parents, who are always

  exactly where I left them.

  Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

  – Mark Twain

  To lose one parent, Mr Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

  – Oscar Wilde,

  The Importance of Being Earnest

  PROLOGUE

  UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS CAMPUS, SCOTLAND, 2051

  “Dad, I’m bored,” Clove whispered into her father’s ear. It was nearly dinnertime and Clove was starving, but the evening talk − a very long and technically complicated speech that her mum, Jen, was giving to a group of fellow scientists at her university − wouldn’t finish for another half an hour. Her parents had insisted she come, even though she had been in the middle of a Sim with her best friend, Meg. Apparently, aged eleven, she wasn’t allowed to stay at home on her own, even if she promised not to move from the sofa the whole time they were gone.

  “Shh,” her dad, Tom, said. He patted Clove’s arm consolingly. “The exciting bit is coming up.”

  Clove didn’t see what could happen to make this evening interesting.

  She looked around the lab, which was a lot tidier than usual. Whenever she’d come down to the basement to visit her parents at work in the past, it had been a mess of wires, discarded circuit boards and empty cardboard boxes. Once she could have sworn she saw a mouse nest inside an old computer case, but her dad had resolutely denied it.

  Clove tried very hard to tune back into the speech, which was about some kind of grant the university had just received to further fund her parents’ research.

  “… there are, of course, still issues to be overcome,” her mum said, “especially with regard to radiation leakage. However, a huge amount of progress has been made. In fact, the rest of the group and I are delighted to be able to give you a demonstration of the technology here this evening.”

  The crowd gasped.

  “If you would all like to gather round.” Her mum sat down at a large computer in the centre of the laboratory. It was connected to an enormous piece of equipment that took up half of the lab. People moved in closer to watch, wine glasses in hand, as Jen started running a program on the computer screen.

  Clove snuck a glance at the buffet table, which was set up near the entrance. There were chocolate eclairs. Surely no one would notice if she started eating now. She had to listen to her parents talking about work every day – there was nothing remotely exciting about it. They worked on something called Einstein-Rosen bridges, whatever those were. At a push, she was more interested in her father’s work, which was about computer programming. Clove really liked computer programming.

  A blonde teenage girl wearing a long green scarf saw Clove eyeing up the buffet table. She winked at her. Clove twisted back around, trying not to blush at being caught out.

  Her dad nudged her arm. “Look, Clove.”

  Clove reluctantly turned to see her mum type a final command into the computer. Noise filled the lab − a whirring groan that seemed to shake the walls and vibrate the air. The scientists shifted, expectantly, and then Clove saw what they were all staring at.

  A light had gone on in part of the equipment attached to her mum’s computer – a sort of glass box. Sitting in the centre of the box was a single red rose. The noise coming from the rest of the equipment grew louder until Clove could feel the vibrations in her eardrums and chest. The wine glasses trembled, adding a faint high-pitched screech to the sound.

  Everyone seemed to be holding their breath. As Clove watched, the noise cut off all at once, and the rose—

  The rose disappeared.

  Everyone exclaimed in unison. There was a moment of complete silence. Another moment. Then the air inside the glass box shuddered and blurred. When it cleared, the flower had reappeared.

  Clove couldn’t believe what she’d just seen. Around her, the audience burst into enthusiastic applause.

  Her mum stood up from the computer, a proud smile on her face. “What you just witnessed was the world’s first ever public demonstration of time travel.”

  Clove drew in a sharp breath. Time travel? She hadn’t realized that was what her parents were working on. She hadn’t even known time travel was possible.

  Her mum was talking again. “It has taken many, many years of research by a dedicated team of physicists and computer scientists to get to this point, and our work has only just begun. The current technology only operates on a small scale, in terms of both object size and time travelled. With our new research grant, we hope to improve the equipment to allow for travel of living objects, and through time periods of more than a few seconds. We will also target the biggest issue with the current technology: survival.” She gestured back to the glass box.

  Clove’s mouth gaped open. The rose’s once vivid red petals had curled up and faded to a putrid brown, the stem was shrivelled and black. The rose was dead.

  “Radiation levels experienced during the transfer are too high for anything to survive,” her mum explained. “We will need to eliminate this issue in order to achieve our ultimate goal: human time travel. But I have high hopes that we will all be back here in several years to celebrate just that success.”

  The crowd burst into applause once more. Clove, completely overwhelmed with amazement, clapped as hard as she could. Once everyone had quietened down, her mum began answering scientific questions about the equipment, but Clove wasn’t listening. She couldn’t take her eyes off the time machine and the withered rose inside it. Her mum and dad had built an actual time machine.

  As Clove watched a dead petal slowly fall from the flower, she made herself a promise. When she was older, she was going to work here with the machine – even if it meant spending all her free time between now and then studying. Then one day, when she’d helped to get the machine working, she was going to be the first person to travel through time.

  PART

  ONE

  CHAPTER 1

  An Unauthorized Biography of Clove Sutcliffe

  When we talk about Clove Sutcliffe from an academic perspective, it is clear she had a huge part to play in the history of the twenty-first and twenty-second centuries. Scholars often forget, however, that she was a complex character in her own right, regardless of her historical impact. Her upbringing, parentage and childhood were far from typical, and this is worthy of study in itself.

  File note: Extract from An Unauthorized Biography of Clove Sutcliffe, first published in 2344

  ST ANDREWS, SCOTLAND,
2056

  Clove was sulking. She was supposed to be working on a programming problem that her dad had set her, but she’d just had a realization and she needed to dwell on it. Her realization was this: her best friend liked a boy. Clove had thought she would have a few more years before she lost her best friend to a boy. It wasn’t just any boy, either. Judging by the message that Meg had just sent her, the boy she’d chosen to set her sights on was none other than Clove’s cousin.

  Nuts_Meg 18:02:45 DARLINGGGGG I HAVE A COMPLAINT.

  LuckyClover 18:03:14 File it with the appropriate authorities.

  Nuts_Meg 18:03:57 I am worryingly close to it, loser.

  Nuts_Meg 18:04:02 Anyway why have you been holding out on me?? You have family members who are powerful babes! How could you not tell me about Alec?

  As Clove reread Meg’s last message, her heart clenched. She should have guessed this would happen. At Clove’s sixteenth birthday party, Clove had watched Meg and Alec talking together in the garden. Meg’s face had been turned towards Alec’s, her mouth curved into a flirtatious grin. Meg’s soft blonde hair had fluttered in the wind in that picture-perfect way it always did, like, if you touched it, it would be softer than air. Meg had pushed it away absently as she let out a laugh. Clove hadn’t been able to hear her, but she didn’t need to − she knew Meg’s laugh better than her own.

  She should have known then that Alec would destroy everything.

  For some reason, just the idea of Meg and Alec together was stopping Clove from being able to get back to her programming. That was unusual, as most of the time programming helped her to feel grounded. She had started it as a way to deal with her hyperactivity. It gave her something to focus her attention on when her parents were frustrated with her endless energy.

  When she was twelve she had been diagnosed as a “gifted child with hyperactivity issues”, which seemed to Clove a rather extreme way of saying that she was a bit jumpy, intensely focused, and made easily impatient with inactivity or slow teaching. She could get excessively dedicated to things she was interested in, though, which was one thing her teachers did appreciate. She could program for hours and hours with scant thought to the outside world, until her parents came to her room to force her to eat some dinner (or breakfast, if she’d been working all night).

  Clove closed her code, so she could devote her attention to the imminent disaster of Meg’s love life. She replied to Meg in a way she hoped didn’t express her annoyance.

  LuckyClover 18:04:26 being attracted to neither boys nor close blood relatives, it never occurred to me that he was a babe

  LuckyClover 18:04:28 Sorry

  Nuts_Meg 18:04:55 u r fired

  LuckyClover 18:05:12 from being your personal dating website?

  Nuts_Meg 18:05:33 Yes

  LuckyClover 18:05:49 aw, mannn! The benefits were so great

  LuckyClover 18:05:54 oh wait …

  LuckyClover 18:05:59 … there weren’t any

  Nuts_Meg 18:06:17 girl’s got jokes today I see

  LuckyClover 18:06:43 yeah whatever. So did I tell you my dad’s well cute, want me to set you up?

  Nuts_Meg 18:07:03 sure, he’s a silver fox.

  LuckyClover 18:07:09 Ew

  LuckyClover 18:07:11 EW

  LuckyClover 18:07:21 well, that backfired

  LuckyClover 18:07:33 heterosexuality is gross

  Nuts_Meg 18:07:51 don’t be heterophobic

  LuckyClover 18:08:17 that isn’t a thing

  Nuts_Meg 18:08:37 it will be if you keep this up

  LuckyClover 18:09:15 you must feel so discriminated against

  Clove tried not to feel bitter, but if Meg couldn’t fall for her, did she really have to fall for her cousin?

  A message from Spart, their household Artificial Intelligence system, popped up on Clove’s watch screen and interrupted her thoughts.

  > Your mother is about to enter your room. Hide any and all illicit substances now.

  Clove rolled her eyes at the message. Their AI lived in all their home computers and watches and picked up vocal instructions from anyone near by. Spart organized their lives, and tended to make a general nuisance of himself as he did so. Clove thought this was because her dad had programmed him with a few extra features, including a personality, which meant Spart tended to think he was human.

  “Come in,” she called to her mum.

  “Can you come and sit with us for a moment, Clove?” her mum said after opening the door. Her voice sounded oddly nervous. “Your dad and I want to talk to you about something.”

  Clove said a quick goodbye to Meg. She was slightly relieved to leave the conversation before it got too serious. Then she followed her mum downstairs to the living room and settled on the sofa. Her curiosity increased as she watched her parents communicate with each other silently. They were so in sync that they sometimes seemed able to talk to each other without speaking at all.

  A notification popped up on Clove’s watch. Meg had replied to her goodbye with a snap of herself smiling dreamily into the camera. She’d written ALEC <3 across it in red. Annoyed, Clove swiped left to delete the message.

  “Clove,” her dad said, after clearing his throat, “we’ve got something to tell you.” He let out an exhale. Clove saw her mum squeeze his hand. “It’s time to tell you the truth. We think you’re old enough now to understand it.”

  All Clove could hear was the blood pounding in her ears.

  “Now, Clove, we love you. You are a wonderful, beautiful daughter—” He paused.

  She stared at him. “What? What is it?” Her words came out croaky.

  For an agonizing heartbeat, nobody spoke.

  Then her dad continued. “This is hard to say…”

  “What?” she said hoarsely. “Just tell me.”

  Her dad sucked in a long breath. “When you were born, something happened to my brother … who was your natural father. Something happened to him and your natural mother.”

  Clove felt her face go stiff. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t process anything he was saying. Adopted. Adopted? She didn’t feel adopted. Wouldn’t she have guessed?

  “We raised you because they couldn’t,” her dad went on. “Genetically, I’m actually your uncle.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me before?” Clove asked. She felt betrayed, displaced, horrified, and a hundred other emotions she didn’t know how to put into words.

  Her parents exchanged glances. “Your birth mother made us promise to wait until you were old enough to understand,” her mum said. “She was worried you might not be able to handle it. It’s sensitive. But now you’re sixteen, we thought—”

  “What?” Clove said, in a choked-off half-laugh. “That now I can handle it?”

  “It’s more than just you being adopted. It’s also … because of what happened to your natural parents … because of who they were.” Her mum stared down at her hands.

  Her dad shifted in his seat.

  Clove was itching to move, her knee jumping with the hyperactive twitchiness that always came when she was upset. She leant forward to stop it. “Why? Who are they? What happened to them? Is it because they didn’t want me? Is that what you’re saying?” Clove was finding it hard to process her thoughts.

  “Oh, Clove,” her mum said. “No, no. It wasn’t like that at all. They loved you very much.”

  “Clove,” her dad said, trying to speak calmly. “Darlin’, it’s … it’s hard to explain. They were—”

  “They were what?” she demanded. “Tell me.”

  Clove stared at her parents – her adoptive parents, not her real parents at all – and felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise. She didn’t understand. Nothing made any sense.

  “I’m getting this all wrong. Clove, I’m sorry,” her dad – Tom – said. “Let me explain properly.” He faltered. Her mum − Jen − took his hand again. “Maybe it’s best if I just come right out with it. What do you know about Matt Galloway and Kate Finchley?”

  Clo
ve knew quite a bit about them. Everybody did − they were famous. There was even a film about them. They were two students who, in 2039, had found evidence that the English government was developing a biological weapon, with plans to release it on the rest of the world if there was another world war. The students had fled across the border into Scotland with an accomplice. Matt Galloway had been arrested, then later he had escaped from prison and disappeared without a trace, along with Kate. The English government had been dissolved as a result of what the students had found out. As such, they were credited with saving the world from biological attack. No one knew where they were now, though. They’d been missing for over sixteen years − the whole time Clove had been alive.

  “The political activists?” Clove felt a little dizzy.

  “Matt Galloway was my brother. He’s your natural father. Kate Finchley was … is … your mother. It was us – the three of us – that uncovered the conspiracy by the English government.”

  Clove let out a noise: a kind of brittle bark. “You?” Surely her dad, who was going grey and spent all of his time hunched over a computer, hadn’t… “You shut down the English government?”

  “Yeah, that was us.” Tom scratched the back of his neck. “Before I met Jen, I wasn’t a professor of computer science. I was a hacker. It’s not something I do any more. Everything that happened with Matt and Kate sort of scared me out of it.”

  Clove’s throat was as dry as if she’d swallowed a spoonful of flour. She couldn’t keep track of everything she was being told. Her dad was a hacker? Her dad wasn’t her dad at all? Her real parents were famous?

  “What happened? Where did they go? How did you end up with me?” she asked.

  “After Matt was arrested,” Tom said, “Kate and I came to my parents’ house, in Scotland. Your mother was pregnant, and gave birth to you here. Afterwards, Kate decided to go back to England, to try and free Matt. He had evidence of the weapon with him when he was arrested, you see, so nobody believed us.” Tom stopped, giving her a chance to ask questions. She blinked mutely at him, and he continued. “Kate thought that if she could break Matt out of prison, they could use the evidence to tell the world about the weapon and make sure it was destroyed before the English military used it in war. We didn’t want Kate to go. It was a crazy plan. How could she break Matt out of prison? She wouldn’t listen, and even though she hated to leave you, she thought it was something she had to do. I agreed to look after you until she returned.” Tom stopped, swallowed.