by Hocking, Ian
Saskia nodded seriously. “Indeed.”
They found a hotel and slept until 9:00 a.m. David was more tired when he awoke. His back was tight; his muscles ached. If he were a young man, he would have recovered by now. They headed towards the centre of town and soon came to the central artery known as the Strip. The traffic was cattle stampede. David hugged his coat closer – it wasn’t warm – and nodded towards a diner on the corner of their block. Saskia followed him with her arms folded and her head bent against the wind.
The diner smelled of plastic and coffee. A single fan swung in the centre of the ceiling, too slow to stir the air. A large screen showed a baseball game. It was muted. Three or four customers sat silently in booths. An old man sat at the counter. A Latino waitress was wiping the counter around him. The man didn’t move. “Morning, folks,” said the waitress.
“Good morning,” David said. The other customers glanced at them briefly, blankly. He steered Saskia towards a booth near the window. They sat with David looking out and Saskia looking in. That suited him.
The waitress wandered over. She had a pencil behind her ear and another in her hand. She wore horn-rimmed glasses. Her make-up had been applied unevenly. She produced a pad from her apron and stood poised. “What’ll you have?”
“Just a coffee for me, please,” David said.
“Uh-huh.”
“Do you have croissant?” asked Saskia.
“We do, honey,” replied the waitress. She smiled brilliantly. “You bet. You want some jellies with that?”
“That’s jam,” David whispered.
“I know what ‘jelly’ means,” Saskia said. She looked up at the waitress. “You’ll have to forgive my husband. He used to be in the army. He is not the sharpest tool in the shed. All his friends say so. Don’t they, Claedus?”
David held her stare. He tried to think of an awful name for her but the pressure of the moment was too much. “Yes, dear,” he said slowly. “Not the sharpest tool in the box.”
“Shed.”
“Shed.”
Saskia looked at the waitress again, as if to say, See what I mean? Then she said, “Strawberry jelly, please.”
The waitress smiled politely and reversed away. They sat listening to soft rock and the swish-swish of the fan. Outside, a thousand people walked by. David became hypnotized by them. Where did they come from and where did they go? They looked like a forest seen from a train window: each the same, quite untouchable, more interesting because of it.
“I speak English, you know,” Saskia said.
David re-focused his attention. She was staring. He saw then, for the first time, how beautiful she was. Not a classically beautiful face. Not simple and clear-cut. But her emerald-green eyes. “David? Hello?”
“Hello, Saskia. I know you speak English. We’re both tired. Help me with the clue. The sooner we find my daughter…” His words trailed away as he yawned. He heard a bone click in his ear. He waggled his jaw experimentally.
Saskia looked away. She placed her hands on the table with her fingers spread. She stared at the nails. “OK, then. ‘Sounds like a car-parking attendant belongs to the finest.’ Where do you start with a clue like that?”
“Well, it could be phrased like a cryptic crossword clue. They often have part of the answer in the question. One of the words may be an anagram of the answer.”
“Wait,” Saskia said. She took a napkin from the dispenser. She found a pen in her shoulder bag and wrote down the clue. “‘Attend-ent’ or ‘attend-ant’?”
“‘Attend-ant.’ Make two copies, will you?”
A police car flashed by the window. They each took a strip of napkin and stared hard. David found that he couldn’t form a new word from any of the old ones. Not one. “How about you?” he asked.
“Nothing. What about the ‘sounds like’ part?”
“I can’t make any words from that.”
“No, I mean…perhaps that does not refer to the entire answer. Perhaps only part of it.”
David smoothed his strip. He had to blink to wipe the sleep from eyes. “Of course. ‘Sounds like a car-parking attendant’. What’s another word for a car-parking attendant?”
“You’re the English speaker, not me.”
“Ah, but you fake it so well,” David replied. Saskia smiled. “Another word…would be ‘traffic warden’, ‘attendant’…no, we have that. Come on, Saskia.”
“I’m thinking.”
“What’s the name of the bloke who sits in the booth at a carpark?”
“That never happens. There are ticket machines. In former times, maybe.”
David grunted. “Fine. It could be an American word. We’re in America. ‘Valet’.”
“What’s a valet?”
“Somebody who parks your car for you.”
Saskia reclined and tugged at her bottom lip. “It fits better than ‘traffic warden’.”
David re-read the clue. Sounds like a car-parking attendant belongs to the finest. The finest what? “Does it mean the best example of a valet, like a super-valet?”
“What’s a super-valet?”
“Like Superman, only cleaner.”
“What?”
“Never mind. I was thinking aloud.”
The waitress walked over. David laid his arm across the napkin. Saskia noticed and used her own to wipe her mouth. The waitress placed a cup on the table and poured him a coffee. The aroma was beautiful; the finest morning perfume. His eyes began to clear. His headache evaporated. He turned to the waitress. Her expression was neutral, as though she was setting an empty table. David took a chance. Ego, having read all those espionage novels, would have been aghast. He lifted his arm. “Excuse me, miss,” he said. He scratched his ear and feigned touristic helplessness. “We’re tourists.”
The waitress smiled. Some of her warmth returned. She slouched and rested the coffee pot on her hip. “Really.”
“Yeah. You see, we’re out here to visit my younger brother, Bruce. He’s a bit of tearaway. He works in computers. Now, we know for sure he’s in Las Vegas, but he’s fond of practical jokes.”
“And cryptic crossword clues,” Saskia said brightly.
“Yes, and those. He’s given us this clue.” David handed her the napkin strip. “Knowing Bruce, it’s a clue to where he lives. That’s all we have. It’s like a treasure hunt.”
The waitress stared at the napkin. Saskia stared at David. He stared right back. They waited while waitress sighed, nodded, frowned and shifted from one slouch to another. “You hang on there, I’ll be right back.” She walked through a beaded curtain that led to the kitchen.
“Have you done this type of thing before?” Saskia asked.
“Subterfuge? No.”
“I thought not.”
David sipped the coffee. It was weak and stale. He gulped it down.
The waitress returned. She smiled and refilled David’s cup. “It ain’t cheating to ask a stranger?” she asked.
Saskia and David shook their heads. “Certainly not,” Saskia said.
The waitress pondered for a moment longer. She knew how to heighten the suspense. David’s idiot smile began to sag. “OK,” she said finally. She put the napkin strip back on the table. She pointed to the first part. “A ‘parking attendant’. That’s a valet. And ‘finest’. That means the police or the fire service. Probably, it means fire service.”
“Yes, we got the first bit,” David said. “But why the fire service?”
“Because ‘valet’ sounds like ‘valley’, and there ain’t a ‘police valley’ around here. There is a ‘fire valley’, though: the Valley of Fire national park. It’ll take you about half an hour to get there on the interstate.”
They collected a new Ford from a nearby Rent-A-Car. David drove. The sun was high in the sky and dust blew in from the north-east. It collected under the wipers. Saskia looked at the map and announced that they would need to drive along the Strip. David said a prayer as they did so. His fingernails dug into t
he wheel. The traffic was so thick it felt like they were in a car park.
David said, “Are you sure this the right road?”
Saskia consulted the map. “Yes. Turn right here towards the I-15.”
They drove on. Saskia reached into her jacket and David shouted, “Hey!”
“My sunglasses, not my gun,” she said wearily. “Anyway, it is not loaded.”
He relaxed. The sunglasses were tinted and reminded him of John Lennon. He didn’t dare to mention it. She would ask, “Who is John Lennon?” and he would despair.
On the interstate, the world opened before them. Las Vegas was a large city by America standards, but withered in comparison to the surrounding spectacle. Within its limits were green trees and water. Beyond them the trees died and the water evaporated. David opened his window. Loud, cool air invaded the car. It dried his throat. The road ahead was empty, so he turned to his right and admired the view. He was struck by its emptiness. On the map, it was called the Mojave Desert. In the middle of that desert you could die just for walking. Incredible.
Saskia said, “I hear the view is also good with the window shut.”
David pressed a button. The window closed and his mind fell back into the car. They drove for another two miles or so. David said, “What do you think of the view?”
“I don’t like it. No trees.”
She tugged at her jacket and smoothed the material of her trousers. David had seen her do that once or twice in the time he had known her. She was formulating a difficult question. “When we met on the aeroplane, do you remember what you said?”
“No.”
“You asked me if we’d met somewhere before. That made me think that you were an FIB agent.”
David laughed. “Don’t you need to be a certain height to get in?”
“I’m serious, David.”
She’s calling me David, not Proctor, he thought. Politicians call it detente.
“Go on.”
“That is a code-phrase. Surely you remember what I told you yesterday.”
“Yes, you have a boss called Jobanique who wiped your memory and gave you a new personality. If I didn’t remember that, then I wouldn’t be able to threaten you with switching it off.”
Saskia pushed her sunglasses a little further up the bridge of her nose. David wondered why she was wearing them. The day was quite cloudy. “I wonder if you are another of Jobanique’s agents,” she said.
“Excuse me?”
“I have been tricked before to test my detective powers.”
“Wow. You must have got some bonus paranoia software on that chip.”
“Be serious.”
David let one hand drop from the wheel. There was no gear stick so he drummed his fingers on his knee-cap. “What do you want me to say, Saskia? I told you my story. You know why I’m doing this.”
Saskia said, “That is precisely my point. Your story did not seem very plausible.”
David’s voice rose in pitch. “What do you mean, not plausible?”
“Just that, not plausible. Incredible. Unlikely.”
“I know what ‘implausible’ means,” he snapped.
“David, keep your voice down.”
He shifted uncomfortably. The clothes he wore – the businessman’s disguise – were not ideal for travelling. He would buy new at the next opportunity. “Do you know why I asked you if we’d met before?”
“No, that is my point –”
“It’s because we have. We have met before. You might be chasing me now, Saskia, but precisely three days ago you helped me escape. You gave a funeral service in a church in Scotland. You overpowered the real minister. You arranged to have me towed away by a glider. And, into the bargain, you were about forty years old.”
The Valley of Fire
Saskia watched the rocks. She tried to find a flaw in his story. David claimed that she – the fake minister – had been about forty years old. It would be a difficult make-up to make someone look forty years old, but not impossible. Film actors could radically change their appearance. Plus, the fact that this impostor had been elderly meant that only an approximation of her appearance would have been necessary.
But it wasn’t plausible. Why copy a future Saskia?
That was the flaw. She told David.
He had prepared his reply. “Time travel,” he said.
She gave him a hard look. “Explain.”
“Time travel is implied by several theories. Not, perhaps, time travel as you or I conceive of it, but time travel nonetheless. The general theory of relativity predicts that objects travelling at a relatively faster speed will experience time at a rate slower than objects travelling at a relatively slow speed.”
“You are beginning to sound like you did yesterday, when you were telling me your story. Does this argument conclude that neither of us have free will?”
David rubbed his chin. “I don’t think so.”
“I was joking.”
“Gotchya.” He cleared his throat and kept his eyes on the horizon. “There’s a famous example of this kind of time travel called the Twin Dilemma. It goes like this: there are a pair of twins. One of them becomes interested in space flight and gets a job as an astronaut. One day – on, say, their thirtieth birthdays – the astronaut twin takes off on a spaceship that travels near the speed of light. On board that ship, clocks work just as they always have; the astronauts live their lives and notice absolutely nothing. Back on Earth, things proceed normally too. There is nothing abnormal about either the ship or the Earth. The spaceship returns to Earth. On board ship, only six months have passed. On Earth, twenty years have passed. The twins are reunited, but the Earth-bound twin is fifty years old, whereas the spacefaring one is still thirty. This is entirely consistent with Einstein’s theories. In fact, it has been proven by comparing atomic clocks on aeroplanes to those on the ground. On aeroplanes, clocks slow down.”
Saskia’s eyes were wide. “Interesting. I have been on a spaceship while my twin sister stayed on Earth. At some point she entered a Scottish convent. Later, she became entangled in a conspiracy to help you escape. Meanwhile I crash-landed on the FIB roof.”
“Saskia, do you get formal sarcasm training in the FIB? Vulcan neck-pinch in the morning, sceptical-eyebrow work before lunch, sarcasm in the afternoon?”
“I cannot believe that you are seriously suggesting time travel as an explanation for your experience. Hallucinations or memory problems are more likely.”
David shook his head grimly. “There’s more. It gets too complicated for my own understanding, unfortunately. It seems to be that particles that are accelerated – just as the spacefayring twin was accelerated – experience a slow-down of time. The faster those particles travel, the greater the slow-down. If you were a particle like a photon – a light particle, which travels at the speed of light – time would be so slow for you that the lifetime of the universe might pass in an instant. If you went even faster than that, you would travel backwards in time.”
“How is that?”
“I don’t know. Professor Michaels would, though.”
Saskia sighed. “And who is Professor Michaels?”
“He is the supervisor of the research project that Jennifer is involved with.”
“A research project requires a research centre.”
“Yes, I know that. Jennifer works at one. I would guess it’s somewhere near the Valley of Fire. John Hartfield partly funds it. He’s a driven man. He threw a great deal of money at me when I was a young researcher.”
Saskia was silent for a while. She did not like the way the conversation was developing. Time travel was easy to dismiss in the normal course of things. It was less easy when they were heading towards a research institute designed to further knowledge of cutting-edge and experimental technologies. “If this time travel theory is true…”
“Then you have no choice. You must go back.”
Her heart lurched. “But I don’t want to.”
D
avid looked at her. “Saskia, I saw you in Scotland. That means that the choice has already been made. Whether you want to or not, you’re going. It could be that the universe itself will ensure that you do. It would be an interesting experiment to try to avoid it. It would be a law like gravity, but one that operates in almost intelligent way. I saw you there. You were in good health. That means, I think, that from now until then, you are, more or less, invulnerable. You did go back, therefore you will go back. Trust me Saskia, it’s less easy to dismiss time travel when you consider the ingredients: huge financial backing, a driven and clear-thinking physicist, and a theoretical foundation that has already been proven. It’s no longer science fiction. It’s a cutting edge technology.”
Saskia was saddened by the strength of his delusion. Undoubtedly, the time travel story would be disproved by events. As with a haunting, an improbable physical cause would no doubt be at the root of the ostensibly straightforward supernatural one. David interrupted her thoughts. He said, “One more thing, Saskia.”
“What?”
“When I saw you, you were aged about forty, I’d say. How old are you now?”
“Actually, I have no idea.” She reached into her jacket pocket and retrieved her FIB identification. She flipped the golden badge and read the laminated details underneath. It stated her height, hair colour, weight and age. “I’m twenty-seven. Strange. I feel older.”
“OK. Twenty-seven. Now, remember that if you travelled back in time more than a few months, you wouldn’t be able to get back. There –”
“Why not? Wouldn’t it work both ways?”
“Could be, but you’d need a time machine at the other end. If Michaels’s machine does work, it is bound to be a recent invention. So it would be a one-way trip. If I saw you aged forty, then it would take about fifteen years to reach that age. So you travelled back in time fifteen years. That would be 2008.”
“Why would I do that?”
David took a deep breath and held it. Then he expelled the air and scratched his head. “I really can’t remember anything that happened in 2008. You know, I might have misjudged your age. You might have a been a well-preserved fifty-year-old. Or a thirty-year-old who really needed to get some sleep.”