The clothes feel very heavy. There are so many items but I have to wear them all to look, and feel, like a believable person. A cotton vest and cotton underpants. Thick black woollen socks. A white cotton shirt with a separate, stiff, white collar attached by a stud. Starched white cuffs held together with gold cuff links. A tie in blue silk with a white stripe, held in place with a gold tiepin. A grey linen waistcoat. Narrow black trousers and a black frock coat in a heavy worsted material. Heavy black leather shoes. A large, heavy umbrella from the Victoria and Albert Museum collection because the weather of that summer was cool and wet. On the floor stands a black leather bag made popular by a Prime Minister called Gladstone. It contains a selection of surgical instruments from the Museum at St Thomas’ Hospital.

The regulations allow some cooling for the dressing room that I have been allocated, which means that Ethan, who has been helping me dress and checking that every detail is correct, is shivering in his ThinSoCool shorts. These shorts are all that most men wear since even the night-time temperature rarely sinks below 30 degrees Celsius and the days often go well over 40. My own ThinSoCool shorts are discarded in the corner.

I have worn the same heavy costume, or similar, on other occasions so I know what to expect. I have been given inoculations against the likely diseases that I might encounter. The DNA samples from a trace of marrow in the bones of a man called John Henry Mannering are a close enough match. I have been John Mannering before when attending some other worthy (I forget his name for now) so we know that the transition in the IDTRANS machine will go smoothly.

Today was the culmination of a committee decision made three months ago. A male doctor, they felt, would be appropriate. Since the deathbed was in Mayfair (London, England) John Mannering will be a locum for Dr. Jeremiah Archer, who was The Subject’s regular physician with consulting rooms in nearby Harley Street. I have been given a week’s tuition in The Subject (although her name was already known to me), including: Three days revision covering speech patterns and accents; The titles and jobs of the various house servants; The money that I will be carrying, and the use of the various forms of transport.

In the dressing room next to mine is Jane. She will be working with me on this mission. Her part, as a woman called Elizabeth Wakeley, involves faking an illness that will delay Jeremiah Archer in Harley Street. This will give me time to get to Mayfair, attend The Subject for at least an hour, and then get back to the transit point. There is no data in HuStor, the colony’s store of human knowledge, as to whether Dr. Archer did or did not visit The Subject on the day of her death, but the committee prefer not to take the chance.

Ever since the upgrade, IDTRANS has been able to accommodate two people at the same time. The committee prefer to allow the extra energy to be used and guarantee a good result. In addition, the historians of human behaviour pounce on every extra glimpse into what was an important time in the history of the western hemisphere and Great Britain in particular.

I am a Comforter. Unlike Ethan and his colleague Emma (who is dressing Jane) my hair has been styled in what was called ‘a short back and sides’. The sideburns have been trimmed to just below the ear and they join a moustache across my upper lip. My chin is clean-shaven. Ethan and Emma have no hair on their heads or faces, colony-style, to keep cool. Because we have to retain our hair, Comforters are allowed cooler sleeping quarters and, when not on a mission, are allowed to work at night when it is cooler.

Jane is ready. I am ready.
We make our way along the corridor to the IDTRANS chamber. It is about a mile long with two parallel paths, one for each of us. As we are only going back 171 years, we do not have to walk very far.
Once, only once, has a Comforter gone ‘the full mile’. He went back to Egypt in the time of the pharaohs and returned with knife wounds because he was too obviously different (wrong skin colour, wrong clothing) from the people around him. HuStor had too many gaps in its knowledge of that period and its ‘guesses’ were nearly fatal. Luckily the committee had picked a trained sprinter and he was able to outrun his pursuers.

Five years ago, when I started my training as a Comforter, the IDTRANS machine was explained like this:
Suppose there is a two dimensional creature that can walk all over a two dimensional world, a large flat sheet of paper. It makes a mark on one edge of the paper then starts to walk to the edge opposite. It takes an hour. It makes a mark when it gets there and walks back.

The sheet of paper is then rolled into a cylinder (in three dimensions) with our friend on the outside. Now when the creature looks around, the two marks are next to each other. It can travel a distance that should need an hour’s walk in no time at all.

The IDTRANS will do the same to Jane and I, two three-dimensional people in a three-dimensional world. As we walk, the volume that each of us occupies is rolled in the fourth dimension and we travel back in time. Our walking distance determines the date to which we travel. It doesn’t hurt. As we walk, the IDTRANS chamber will fade and gradually the walls of whatever large space has been selected will appear. For the 13th of August 1910, it is a deserted dance hall in Little Fardell Street, just to the east of Royston Square in Central London.

The scientists and engineers that built the prototype IDTRANS (Identity Transfer) machine experimented to begin with using centipedes, because they could be persuaded to walk along a pathway. With small time jumps of a few minutes, the centipedes were brought back with no ill effects.
Then they tried to jump a year and the centipedes came back dead. It took a geneticist to suggest that a year earlier, the centipedes did not exist, they had not yet been hatched.
That is why I carry within me a tiny part of John Henry Mannering’s DNA. In 1910, Mannering, and Elizabeth Wakeley, were locked in an asylum near Harrogate in Yorkshire. As long as they are alive, Jane and I can do our work in London.

What IDTRANS cannot do is go forward in time because of the impossibility of going to somewhere that has not already existed. IDTRANS uses enormous amounts of power, so we can only stay in the past for short periods of time. Two people need double the power so Jane and I will be limited to two hours in 1910. At the end of that time we must be back in Little Fardell Street.
After each mission, all Comforters are thoroughly checked, both mentally and physically. The only side effect of a mission seems to be a slight loss of memory. The cause is yet to be discovered.

The IDTRANS operator today is Micky. Dark-skinned, and with a thin moustache, he gives us a cheerful wave through the glass of the control box. His thump on the start button is audible through the double glazing. Jane and I wait as the lights dim due to the surge of power needed for start-up.
Above our paths are red and green beacons, the red glaring at us as links with a deserted dance hall in 1910 are made across the space time continuum. As we look down the chamber the path and the area above it to a height of about six feet six begin to blur. It is not a mist. The volume of that space is gradually becoming 1910, just as the edges of the roll of paper in my example are brought together.

Green lights. I grin at Jane and she grins back. Neither of us are ‘first-timers’ so the process holds no fear. We begin to walk and gradually our bodies begin to blur. It takes an effort of will, to continue walking when invisible, but it is only for a few seconds.
After another few steps I look down and already the tie-pin and cuff-links are visible, along with the eyelets of my shoes and the metal parts of the umbrella and bag. For some reason inorganic materials make the transition ahead of organic materials.

The walls of the dance hall are painted cream, with the doors and window frames in olive green. When travelling back in time our outer clothing has hundreds of tiny VidRec beads woven invisibly into the fabric to record everything and everywhere that we go.
Smells are the only aspect that we have to describe in words for the debriefing. This hall smells of tobacco smoke and sweat. From past experience I know that in summer the streets of London of that period reek partly of horse manure and partly of the waste from the many stray, and not-so-stray dogs that pollute the pavements.

As we leave the hall, I look back. On the floor are the two strips of pathway on which we arrived, and which IDTRANS will maintain in a temporal state until we use them for the return.
From the hall we go down a corridor illuminated by the fanlight of a door at the far end. I take two keys from my bag, give one to Jane and use the other to unlock the door. We step out and emerge into Little Fardell Street. I secure the door again. The keys were duplicated a short time earlier by Abel, a technician, who made a brief ‘research’ visit in preparation for our mission. Both of us will require a cab. It is essential to arrive cool and calm at our destinations.

We walk the short distance to Tottenham Court Road. I hail a cab for Jane, who is wearing a full-length dress in a soft green satin material. Her many petticoats make it difficult to walk even that distance.
I cross the road and hail a second cab for myself. The driver chooses to go the full length of Tottenham Court Road and turn right along Oxford Street. With busy traffic it takes twenty minutes before I arrive at South Street in Mayfair.
In that time I prepare what I will say to The Subject. I will be the last person to speak to her before she dies, and I will comfort her with the knowledge of the ways that her name will live on. Only those on the point of death can be Comforted, because only they can have no effect on the future that is to be.

I pay the cabman and add a tip. A maid opens the door. I adopt a stern, almost aggressive tone to avoid any reluctance on her part.
‘Good morning. Dr. Archer cannot attend today. I am Dr. Mannering, his locum. Would you show me to her room, please.’
‘Yes, Sir. Will you come this way please, Sir?’
We ascend a staircase and reach a landing.
The Subject’s bedroom is the second door on the left. The maid taps on the door and opens it.
‘Who is there?’ The voice is low and rasping, but there is still strength in it.
‘Please, ma’am, it’s Dr. Mannering who’s a locum because Dr. Archer couldn’t come.’
I step into the room. She is lying in bed, but her head and shoulders are propped up by pillows. Her eyes move in my direction.
‘A locum? Let me look at you.’
The window curtains are partly open and I step into a shaft of sunlight.
A change comes over her face. Her eyes widen, she is startled. Her mouth drops open. Then it closes and her face takes on a look of serenity.
‘Miss N . . .’ I begin, but she cuts me off.
‘Now I understand.’ Then, addressing the maid she croaks, ‘Elsie, bring a chair for the doctor and place it by my bed. Then leave the room and close the door.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’

I begin again. ‘Good morning. I am . . .’ She stops me again.
‘I know who you are. You are the Angel of Death.’
‘I am Dr. Mannering and I have come to give you comfort.’
‘You may call yourself whatever you like. I have seen you before.’
Now it is my turn to be startled.
‘I beg your pardon. I don’t think so.’
Her sentences come out between gasps for breath.
‘Hawarden Castle.’
‘In May, eighteen ninety-eight.’
‘I was in the small drawing-room that leads off the hall.’
‘The door was open.’
‘You came down the stairs and walked out of the front door.’
‘I saw you but you did not see me.’
‘You thought you were the last person to see Mr Gladstone before he died, but I slipped up the stairs as the front door closed.’
‘With his last breath he said, “The Angel of Death has just come for me. My name will live on”.’
‘Then his eyes closed.’

This is startling. It has never happened to any Comforter before. There is nothing in HuStor about it. My memory of the occasion is hazy.
‘Have you told anyone else about this?’
‘No. But I have been waiting for you, or someone of your kind, for several days.’
‘Since you have, it seems, been forewarned, I will give you the truth unadorned. I am not an angel. I am an ordinary man who has come from the future to give you comfort. You have lived a remarkable life. Your pioneering work in wartime allowed many men to live into old age. Your improvements to hygiene in hospitals have been to the benefit of mankind. Statues to you will be raised. Hospitals will be named after you. In one hundred and ten years time, and in one hundred and thirty years time, and in one hundred and fifty years time, there will be great sicknesses around the world. Each time, emergency hospitals will be created from other public buildings and they will be given the name Nightingale Hospital.’

She gazes into my eyes.
‘My name will be remembered in a hundred and fifty years time?’
‘It will. Your picture will even be on banknotes. Only with the passing of time can a true judgement of a person’s worth be made, and you have been judged truly worthy. For people like you, we of the future make these journeys into the past to give you the comfort that comes with the knowledge that your name will live on.’ ‘I am content.’ (a gasp) ‘Let me lay my head down.’
I gently pull away the pillows. Her eyes close.
Reaching under the bedclothes, I touch her foot. It is cold. I touch her hand. It is cold. Her body is shutting down.

Getting up, I walk to the door and call the maid. ‘Elsie!’
She comes running up the stairs.
‘Your mistress is near death.’
Elsie follows me into the room.
I sit next to Miss Nightingale and hold her wrist. There is no pulse.
From my bag I produce a mirror and hold it over her nose and mouth. There is no clouding.
‘Elsie, she has died in her sleep. Please inform the household. I will inform Dr. Archer.’
‘Yes, Sir.’
I pick up my bag, walk down the stairs, cross the hall, open the front door and start walking along South Street as fast as I can. Only the maid has seen me during my visit, which is all to the good.
I reach a telegraph office just off New Bond Street and send an unsigned telegram to Dr. Archer. He will assume it was sent in haste by one of the household.

In Oxford Street I hail a cab.
As I am entering it, I feel a tingle on the back of my wrist. That can only mean one thing. Jane is in trouble.
Those of us who become Comforters have to have a way to signal emergencies. An alarm the size of a grain of rice is placed under the skin of the wrist. When activated by heavy finger pressure, it sends a signal.
This is what I have received.
‘Where to, guv?’
‘Harley Street. As fast as you can.’
He whips up his horse, pulls left into Vere Street, a right and a left into Wimpole Street, right into Wigmore Street, then left into Harley Street. We are there in five minutes.

Jane is lying on the steps of 101. A man in military uniform with a red tunic, brass buttons and highly polished boots has his arm round her shoulders and is giving her a sip of water from a flask.
I tell my cabby to wait and hurry over to her. She looks startled and then puzzled. Conversation is inhibited by the presence of the military man.
He speaks first. ‘This lady was approaching the steps of the house when a man, he must have been a passing thief, tried to grab her bag. She stumbled and struck her head on a step. The thief ran off when he saw me and I have been looking after her until help arrived.’
Hastily I say, ‘I am a doctor. My consulting rooms are nearby. I will take her in my cab.’
Jane rises unsteadily. The man and I help her into the cab. As I follow inside I feel something pushed into my coat pocket.
While I settle Jane in her seat, the man is having a word with my cabman. I put my head out and start to thank him when the cab begins to move.

Jane has a cut on the back of her head but already the blood is drying. Hopefully, she will be well enough to make the return.
‘How did you know I was in trouble? When I fell, I lost consciousness and the next thing I remember, the man in the red tunic had his arm around my shoulders. I did not press the alarm.’
‘Maybe he pressed it by accident when he lifted you?’
‘Yes, perhaps that was it. I was late getting to Harley Street. My cab chose the Euston Road and a broken down omnibus was holding up the traffic. I never did get to delay Dr. Archer. Did all go well for you?’
‘Yes and no. She said she had seen me before and called me “The Angel of Death”. The previous occasion was when I comforted a man called Gladstone, a Prime Minister, in 1898. I did not see her at the time, though she saw me. As I walked out of the front door, she got to Gladstone in the last moments before his death and he told her about me. However, she said she had kept silent in the intervening years. I was able to comfort her and I stayed until the end so her knowledge will go no further.’

Our cab must have taken short cuts through the back streets because it pulls up in Little Fardell Street as I finish speaking. It takes me a moment to realise that I had not given our destination to the cabman.
‘That soldier told me where to take you, guv. Is there a problem?’
‘No, this is the right place,’ I turn to Jane, ‘Did you tell the soldier where you had to go?’
‘No. I was still very dazed when you came and I hardly said a word to him.’
‘The sooner we get back the better,’ I turn to the cabman, ‘How much?’
I pay him and we wait until he has gone and the road is empty, before unlocking the street door, stepping inside and relocking it. When we reach the hall, it seems to be exactly as we had left it.

Most of the chairs are stacked to make it easier for the cleaners who will come at six o’clock, but I find one on its own.
Jane sits while I check that we will leave no trace of our presence in the hall.
In my mind I mull over the events in Harley Street.
Out loud I say, ‘There has never been a mission like this before.’
Jane, still groggy, just makes a grunt.
‘You’ll be allowed an extended break after what you’ve been through.’
Jane grunts again.
The checks only take a few minutes.
‘Do you feel well enough to walk the pathway?’
‘I’ll have to be, won’t I?’

Our feet on the pathway are the signal for the return journey to begin. There can be no beacons, so we stand and wait for a length of time that will ensure that the transfer can take place.
Three minutes… Four… Five… Six…
Ahead of us, the far wall of the hall becomes blurred, then disappears. At seven minutes it is safe to walk and we begin. I match my paces to Jane, who is having difficulty, but we pass the point of invisibility and the hall of the IDTRANS slowly becomes visible.

Jane is dragging her feet as we reach the end of the pathway and I am shouting to the debrief team in the control room (scientists, technicians, and committee members, as well as Mickey) to get Medical Support. The medics arrive in three minutes, all clad head-to-toe in protective clothing in case Jane and I have brought back any contagion, and Jane is whisked off to the medical centre.
Meanwhile, a similarly clad DeCon team escort me across the corridor to a DeContamination Suite for the standard procedure.
I remember to say to them, ‘There is something in the pocket of the jacket.’ This avoids the ‘something’ being damaged when the clothes are decontaminated.

Off comes my 1910 outfit, which is taken away by the DeCon team. They will extract the VidRec beads and prepare a replay for the debrief. Then there is a shower with water, then disinfectant, then water again. I place my hands and feet in scrubber units which remove any traces of 1910 from under my fingernails and toenails. After the hot air dryer, I put on ThinSoCool shorts, eat a brief meal, and prepare to meet the debrief team.
They are waiting for me in B209, a large conference room in the basement.
I open the door. Fifteen people are grouped in a semicircle around the 3D display. In the time that I have been decontaminating, they have already watched the forward-facing recording from my clothing. I sit.
Oliver, the head of the Committee, speaks to me.
‘First, let me reassure you that Jane is expected to be fully recovered in a week. We have seen what happened to you. You did all that could be expected in the circumstances. We have already discussed the mystery of the red tunic soldier and have a possible answer. Now we will all watch Jane’s recordings.’

We watch the front-facing VidRec beads first.
The plan was for Jane to swoon on Dr. Archer’s steps having rung the bell, be carried indoors, and keep the doctor busy for an hour.
She approaches the steps, the thief runs in from the right, makes a grab for her bag, and she turns before falling. In turning, the replay for the first time reveals the soldier who seems to have been waiting on the other side of the road. We see him run forward, scare off the thief, then he is out of sight as he sits beside and slightly behind her.
We see his left arm come into view and without hesitation his thumb presses firmly on the alarm. He knows exactly where to press. Only then does the right arm appear with a flask of water. We now watch the replay from the rear-facing VidRec.
There is no doubt. The soldier was waiting for her in Harley Street. We see flashes of his red tunic behind her as the dress swings while she walks.
When the replay finishes, Oliver speaks directly to me. ‘Can there be any doubt now? The soldier was a man from our future using their version of IDTRANS. He came back to help Jane and allow her to return by bringing you to Harley Street. Where we only comfort, he performed a rescue.’
I ask, ‘What did he put in my pocket?’
Oliver makes a call to the DeCon team. The item is brought, sheathed in transparent plastic, and handed to Oliver. He looks at it and laughs.
‘It is a visiting card. The wording is Captain John H. Mannering, Grenadier Guards.’