The Ministry of Time

It’s September. The narrator helps Maggie practice to retake her acclimatization test. A conversation between Maggie and Arthur indicates that he’s now openly gay or bisexual and is adjusting to society’s acceptance of this. Graham introduces Cardingham to the narrator. Like Maggie and Arthur, she’s taken aback by his sexism. She senses that he hates her for being a woman with modern notions of equality. Maggie catches a cold and nearly dies because her body has no immunity to modern viral strains. She’s treated at the Ministry for nearly a week before being discharged. Arthur gets sick too, though not as severely. When the narrator catches it, Graham makes her soup and brings it to her in bed. Eventually, Graham catches it too. He insists that she not tell the Ministry, so Arthur and Maggie help the narrator care for him.

The narrator recalls her complete terror of spiders at age eight. Her father helped her overcome it by describing the giant spider in their front yard in ways that humanized it. He named her Missus Legs and said she spent four years at architecture school to learn how to build webs. Now the narrator compares herself to a spider. She’s not sure what’s going on with the Ministry, but like the spider, she’ll quietly watch and wait. Quentin contacts her and arranges a secret meeting. He tells her that Graham’s sketch depicts a weapon from the future. Their project isn’t about scientific advancement, he says, but about a weapon. The narrator fears the consequences of her contact with Quentin. She asks him to bring her proof about the weapon, but she plans to turn him in afterward to keep herself safe. Then she returns to the story of the spider, saying she killed a butterfly and fed it to the spider, though not out of childish brutality. She still feared the spider and felt that the safest option was to placate it, to join its side.

Adela appoints herself as the narrator’s new handler and calls Quentin’s absence a defection. Adela says the Brigadier doesn’t work for the British government; he’s a spy. The Ministry knew this and has been monitoring him, but now he’s gone off their grid. The expats are expected to get jobs after their bridge year. The narrator sees Graham secretly taking a Ministry field agent exam. She feels protective of him but also wants him, romantically, more than ever. Amid a huge storm, she finds him leading the neighborhood response using equipment he pilfered from the Ministry, including high-visibility jackets and a powerful storm light. She realizes how adept he is at using his charm to his advantage.

Shortly before Christmas, Graham and the narrator have Maggie and Arthur over for dinner. Arthur brings a handcrafted adaptation of a theremin, an instrument that responds to hand movements within its electromagnetic fields. The expats demonstrate that they have some control over whether the instrument can detect them by manipulating their hereness and thereness. The narrator is with her parents and sister on Christmas. Graham calls her, and they have a warm, perhaps even flirtatious, conversation.

Ten native Inuit board the Erebus. A member of Gore’s crew with some knowledge of their language attempts to explain the death of the man Gore shot and offer an apology. The crew gives them gifts. The man’s wife asks which one is Gore, saying she wants to look at him. Gore considers offering himself as a replacement husband of sorts but in the end, just repeats that he’s sorry. The group of natives accepts the crew’s explanation and leaves, but Gore can’t forget the look on the woman’s face.

The narrator attends a ceremony for Graham and Cardingham’s admittance into the field agent training program. Quentin appears beside her in the crowd of spectators. He slips her a document folder, which she shoves into her purse. He’s about to explain something about the time-door when he’s shot in the head. Hearing the gunshots, the crowd nearly stampedes the narrator trying to flee. When the police respond, she tells them it must have been a sniper. Graham offers to take her purse home just before she’s taken to the Ministry for questioning. Back at home, she sobs from the trauma of witnessing Quentin’s violent death. The document from Quentin is a report from 18 months before the expat project began, when police responding to a noise complaint found the bodies of five teenagers and a blue door with a machine on the other side. An MI5 agent reached through the door and grabbed the machine, which explains how the British government obtained the ability to time travel. Quentin was a field agent on that case.

In the wake of Quentin’s death, security on the expat/bridge teams increases. The expats’ travel privileges are revoked. Adela instructs the narrator to train to retake the field agent aptitude exams, which she failed twice in the past. However, the narrator develops acute depression, which she attributes to trauma. She’s barely able to get out of bed, eat, or shower. Graham tries to help. He encourages her to take vitamin D and join him for runs, and he makes her come downstairs for meals. In addition, he has Arthur and Maggie visit regularly. The narrator learns that when Maggie was extracted, she was locked in an attic because she had the bubonic plague. Simellia also visits, seemingly desperate for someone to talk to. The narrator barely engages with Simellia, so she leaves feeling defeated.

Talking with Graham about karma and faith, the narrator accidentally mentions Auschwitz, which Graham hasn’t yet learned about. He educates himself about the Holocaust and is horrified. Soon after, the narrator learns that Seventeen-ninety-three, Anne Spencer, was shot and killed as she tried to escape from the Ministry. They hold a funeral for her, but the Ministry tells the other expats she died by suicide. The narrator tries to find out more about Quentin’s death and finds her own fingerprint in the access history of the sabotaged surveillance system. Someone is framing her, and she suspects it’s the Brigadier. She and Graham run into him and Salese as they leave a bar one night. They attempt to kill Graham and the narrator using a weapon that shoots a blue light. Graham and the narrator fight back and escape on Graham’s motorcycle. When they return home, still drunk, the narrator kisses Graham. He’s initially shocked but then kisses her back, passionately. When she tries to go further, he stops it in a panic and locks himself in his room.