by Hocking, Ian
Michaels stopped his preparations and approached her. “Let’s be clear on this, Saskia. This multi-billion dollar machine is nothing more than a slingshot. It tends to fire things where we want them to go, but it is always a one-way trip. So far the destination has always been the same place, more or less, but a different time: the bucket of water on little brother.” He rubbed his chin. “Getting you back here would require a time machine at the other end.”
When Saskia said nothing, he clapped his hands briskly. “To business. You need to put on Pliny’s flight suit. Last time now: are you sure you want to go through with this?”
She closed her eyes. Jobanique: the man who had taken the life of Kate Falconer while giving life to Ute Schmidt. His golem, Saskia Brandt, was going to return and stop him. Could she kill him? Ute Schmidt could. She was not sure about Saskia Brandt.
Together we are two, the letter had said, but we make a third: a combination.
She could not explain to Michaels what it meant to be controlled. He would never know rape or domination. That was her first motivation to stop Hartfield. As for the second, perhaps he would appreciate Bruce’s parable. In truth, she did not know if she was real or not. She only knew that she felt real. She wanted to live. If Hartfield succeeded, thousands like her would die unborn.
So one reason was a principle. It represented her mind.
The other was emotional. It represented her body.
In combination they were irresistible.
“Yes.”
The chimpanzee was a good deal shorter than Saskia, but his flight suit was adjustable. The legs felt like orthopaedic stockings. The shoulders pulled her arms back and her chest out. There were rubber pads at the knees and elbows. The suit was black. Along her left forearm was a computer display. It showed a map of the West Lothian Complex. In her right arm was a satellite transceiver. There were no Galileo satellites in 2003, so it would patch into the American military’s Global Positioning System.
The suit had a hood that was stowed in the collar. It also had a waste recycling system. Not only was she about to travel in time, but she would get to drink her own urine too.
Jennifer finished tightening the straps around the ankles. “Owah,” Saskia said.
“Sorry.” She pulled the last one tight and patted the connection. It melted to leave a flush finish. “One more thing. The red button on your sleeve will lower the refractive index of the suit to zero.”
“What does that mean?”
“The suit will become invisible. Well, not truly invisible. You’ll look like a clear plastic bag underwater. Treat it like instant camouflage. The suit was designed to protect and conceal pilots who’ve crashed behind enemy lines.”
“I see. Right.” Saskia nodded thoughtfully.
“Saskia, are you sure you want to do this?”
“No,” she replied. She smiled to show that she was joking. Half-joking.
“My…my mother is in that research centre. Was. She died in the bombing.”
Saskia caught her eye. “You want me to give her a message.”
“No. I just want you to make sure you don’t die too.”
Jennifer hugged her. Saskia stroked her hair. “Jennifer, I’m not going to die. I can’t die. You could shoot me right now and the bullet will miss.”
“We don’t know that, Saskia,” she said.
“We don’t know very much,” said David, walking over. The dark circles under his eyes had begun to recede. His balance had improved. “But we know we’re grateful.”
“David, I know I have been hard on you in the past week. I suppose that now is a good time to apologise.”
David put his arm around her shoulder. “Come back and see us, will you? When you’re older? I for one would appreciate a visitor in jail.”
Jennifer looked up. “Are we going to prison, Dad?”
“Actually, I don’t know. Ego has recorded everything, including my journey and Hartfield’s confession. Maybe we can talk our way out.”
Michaels called, “You have to go now, Saskia. The computer is configured. This place will fill up with personnel soon.”
Saskia stood and took their hands. “Here I go. I hope Hartfield didn’t leave a banana skin somewhere.”
“Don’t worry,” David said. “Hartfield isn’t the kind of man to plan for failure. As far as was concerned when he left, this whole research centre would disappear like the tributary of a river diverted at source.”
Saskia looked at the two of them. Jennifer had David’s nose, but it was less easy for her to smile. She lacked his energy. Saskia considered asking them, as a favour to her, to stay together, but it was a decision they had to make for themselves. “Auf Wiedersehen,” was all she could say. She did not cry, although these people were last friends.
“Wait,” David said. “I almost forgot.” He passed her a folder from a nearby table. It contained several pink sheets that were covered in diagrams, equations, arrows and blocks of hand-written text. “These are the instructions for the computer-controlled glider. Should work with any computer with the same programming language and hardware. Everything you need is mentioned. Of course, you could find this information anywhere. But I’d prefer it if you use mine. I know it’ll work.”
“Where did you find this?” she asked.
“I just wrote it. Only took ten minutes. They’re the same sheets from the church in Scotland. I saw them just before you busted me out. I recognised my handwriting.”
Saskia unzipped the map pocket on her thigh and pushed the papers inside. “You’re talking about something that is twenty years in my future. I hope I don’t forget.”
“You’ve got twenty years to remember.”
Michaels shouted, “Hurry up, Saskia.”
She smiled one more time and walked down the gantry to the gondola. It rocked as she clambered inside and closed the outer door. The seat was nothing more than a seat-shaped bag of water. She hoped it wouldn’t burst. The door closed with a flimsy click.
She heard Jennifer’s voice in her ear. “Saskia, personnel are starting to come back. There are guards too. We have to start immediately.”
“OK, go,” she replied. The gondola lurched forward and she fell awkwardly. The motor for the arm was as loud as a jet engine. The compartment began to accelerate. Through tiny windows, Saskia watched the world tilt. The gondola still felt upright.
She lay down on the water couch. The stresses left her body. She reached over and tapped her wrist computer. The hood flipped over her head. The arch-like sections melted together and formed a seamless, transparent bowl. The noise muted. She heard Jennifer say, “Are you reading me, Saskia?”
“Reading you, yes,” she said. The muscles in her jaw ached. The back of her head pressed painfully into the bowl.
“Fifty per cent speed,” Jennifer said. “Remember: feet together, roll.”
“Reading you.”
It was difficult to take a full breath.
“Seventy-five per cent speed.”
“Reading you.”
Her vision began to lose colour. The ceiling of the gondola blurred.
“Saskia,” said another voice. It was Professor Michaels. “We’re sending you back one half hour before Hartfield. That is,
2:34 p.m. on the afternoon of May 14th 2003.” “Rea’ing you.” Saskia begin to lose consciousness. David’s voice: “No, no, that’s –”
The Scene of the Crime (II)
It was a disappointingly mechanical affair. A hatch opened in the bottom of the gondola and she fell not into the wall of the centrifuge but into cold, loud air. It was a bright day. She tumbled. The ground and sky swapped. She opened her arms and legs to form an ‘H’ as Jennifer had described. She noticed a bat-like webbing that stretched between her upper arms and her chest.
The tumbling stopped. She was still falling, but certainly slower, like a leaf, body-surfing her way to the ground. Operational Flying Squirrel was Go. To her left and right she could see the curve of t
he earth. There was a head-up display in the inner rim of her helmet. Some text read:
Attempting to contact GPS...stand by.
Without the Global Positioning System, she would not know where to land.
Saskia looked down. The earth was rising.
New text:
Contacted. Logging on...stand by.
It was difficult to judge her height and speed. The ground seemed to stretch out rather than get bigger. The edges of the horizon flattened.
Logon successful.
The display changed. Her landing point was marked by a green circle. Surrounding it were red arrows indicating predicted wind direction and strength. Also projected was a small diagrammatical figure that represented herself; a blue arrow indicated that she needed to tilt in a north-easterly direction. She did so and the arrow disappeared.
It was her first skydive. That had not perturbed Michaels, however. “The pragmatics of time travel, Saskia. We don’t want you appearing in solid rock.”
Seconds later, the parachute opened. Gravity pulled her blood into her boots. The air became calm. She aimed for the green circle but she was clumsy with the cords. They were poor for turning. As she pulled one, she dropped towards that side. She had barely enough height to curse the design before her boots connected with Scotland. Remembering Jennifer’s instructions, she held her feet together and rolled to one side. After the silence of the slow parachute descent, the sound of her impact was deafening.
She was sitting on a gentle hillside. There was no sign of anyone. The sky was clear above and some birds sang in the sparse trees. She disconnected her parachute and gathered it together. From her right thigh pocket she took a phial of enzyme. She broke the seal and dribbled it over the parachute. Soon it was gone.
Saskia switched off her hood and breathed the air of the glen. It was clear and cold. The computer on her arm indicated that she was in a valley on the south side of the research centre. It was likely that David Proctor and his colleagues were working directly beneath her.
She was alone. Help was twenty years away.
Five minutes later they came for her. A parachutist descending on the complex would not be ignored. She checked again that her suit contained no markings. She had no weapon, food or spare clothing. If Michaels was correct, Hartfield would arrive at the same place in twenty minutes’ time.
She fantasised that she would hide nearby and tackle him. She would destroy his notes on the nanotechnology, allow him to be captured, and make good her own escape. But she was destined to write a message for her future self, place it under a rock outside Proctor’s laboratory, and write another message on the nearby wall.
So the guards came. She smiled. They ignored her German ramblings.
They took her downhill towards the River Almond and up again, past the tennis courts she and Scottie had seen, to the front entrance of the hotel. Again she felt the gravel crunch under her feet; again she smelled the pine. The hotel loomed. The east and west wings were welcoming arms, but Saskia had not felt welcome on her first visit and she certainly didn’t now. An unarmed guard walked alongside while three others walked ten paces behind. There were no blind spots, no escape.
Again she walked past the statue of Prometheus. It was running. She thought of him chained to a rock, punished by Zeus, but now the thought was the key to a room that was already unlocked. It had no power.
They entered the foyer. Her boots were silent. The same chandelier; the same green felt; fewer paintings but each, when viewed as an individual, was still the odd one out.
A man emerged from the left. She disliked him after two steps. He was similar to Garrel. He had grey hair, bleached blue eyes and a pencil-thin moustache. He was handsome and intimidating.
“Can I help you, miss?”
Saskia’s smile was blinding. She pushed some hair behind her ear. “Ja, ja. Ich habe mich verlaufen. So. I am lost. Understand, ja?”
His mouth twitched. “You’re German.”
“Ja. Genau.”
He stepped forward and offered his hand. “My name is Harrison McWhirter. I’m in charge of the hotel.” He turned to the guards. “Back to your duties.” They fell away. The foyer was suddenly empty but for herself and McWhirter, whose body was undergoing a autopsy at the time of her last visit.
She shook his hand. Her right heel raised slightly from the floor. She was thinking fast. There were two certainties: first, she was destined to get into the research centre; second, she was destined to stop Hartfield. She realised that they might have made a wrong assumption about the man’s objective. Yes, he had a new nanotechnology treatment, but it was not necessarily the case that it needed to be administered before the first dose. The treatment may repair. Perhaps nanotechnology was being developed in the West Lothian Centre.
No; that didn’t work. Why should Hartfield choose to arrive on the day of the bombing? He would have little time to achieve anything. Was Hartfield here to plant the bomb? Absolutely not. He would have nothing gain and much to lose.
She released McWhirter’s hand.
Hartfield wanted to foil the bombers. The man was insane. The bomb would explode because it had already exploded. There was no way to stop something that had already happened.
“My name is Adler. Sabine Adler.”
McWhirter nodded. “Perhaps you could tell me how you came to be parachuting into my hotel.”
“I am with a – how do you call it – ‘parachute school’? I have lost my friends.”
“I’ll get you a phone so that you can call them,” he said.
“Thank you.”
She held her left wrist as though it were injured.
He walked around the reception desk and lifted the receiver on the courtesy phone. When he offered it to his visitor, she was gone. He snorted. He reached for the red security button beneath the desk. There was movement on the edge of his vision. He paused and a figure in glass swept towards him. Something struck his throat and groin simultaneously. He lost his breath. His head found the edge of the desk. He heard the sound quite objectivity – a mallet on a tent peg – and faded to his knees.
Saskia became visible again. She switched off the hood. The space beneath the desk was large enough to hide McWhirter’s body if she folded it, so she did. She wondered if this was the correct action. McWhirter was sure to remember her when he awoke. But nothing could be changed; she could do nothing wrong.
There were ten minutes until Hartfield arrived.
“Good afternoon,” said a cheerful voice.
The hood flicked up. Saskia became transparent and motionless. The camouflage worked by capturing light on one side and sending it out the other. But her eyes needed those light rays, needed to stop them dead at the retina. She was blind.
She heard the man’s footsteps stop. “I must say that you’re looking well today, Colonel McWhirter.” Saskia could hear the smile. Only a blind man would compliment an empty desk.
His footsteps moved away.
Saskia switched off her transparency and followed. He headed for the cloakroom that Garrel would show her twenty years later. She checked for cameras. None. A guard walked by. She became transparent and curled into a ball behind a plant. She held her breath. The guard walked past.
One corner before the cloak room, the man stopped. He turned. His eyes roamed. He had high cheekbones and a restless, smiling mouth. Saskia was not surprised at his youthful appearance. Inside the computer, realised as a twenty-one-yearold, he would be no different.
“Hello,” he said. “I believe we’re walking the same way.” He held out a hand. “My name’s Bruce.”
“I’m Saskia,” she said. It was a mistake to offer her true name. She was not just visiting the year 2003. She was permanent resident. She needed to enter the research centre, but she needed to escape it too.
Bruce frowned. “Gloves? Aren’t you too warm?”
“I have a skin condition.”
“You’re new here.” His expression did not change.
“Yes. How can you tell?”
“Your footsteps. I listen to feet. Plus, you’re German. We don’t have any German scientists here.”
Saskia opened her mouth. It remained open for a few seconds as she selected the words to fill it. She decided to change her approach. “Can we be overheard?”
Bruce’s smile widened. “No. Not here. Why?”
She pulled him towards the wall. “Your name is Bruce Shimoda, but your parents christened you Gichin. They called you Bruce because you jumped around like Bruce Lee when you were a child. That was before you were blinded by diabetes. Your father told me this at your funeral. I’m from the future.”
Bruce let out a shuddering breath. “What song did I ask to have played?”
“‘In My Life’ by the Beatles.”
“Don’t tell me the date.”
“I won’t. I need to get into the research centre.”
“You can’t.”
“I must. We have five minutes before a bomb goes off in the centre. I have to stop it.”
A lie, but she needed Bruce’s help. It was five minutes until Hartfield arrived. The bomb might go off at any time. She had no idea.
“Will I die in the blast?” he asked quietly.
Saskia considered her answer. “No.”
Samuel Howell tapped his monitor. This had to happen. He slumped and took a sip of coffee. He was required to check the computer on a random schedule. The computer, for its part, checked the security camera in the lift. If there was any kind of problem, it would cut power to the lift and send out a security alert. Samuel Howell, or a person like him, would come running.
He tapped the screen again. It showed Dr Bruce Shimoda. He knew Bruce well. He was a real character. But the screen displayed the ghostly image of another person standing immediately behind Bruce. Monitor burn.
He dialled the section head. “Houston, we have a problem. There’s a glitch on monitor one. Yes, main entry, the lift cam. Yes.” He glanced back at the screen. Bruce had walked away as expected, but the monitor burn had vanished too. “Bollocks. I’m seeing ghosts. Nothing.”