by Hocking, Ian
The state of her brain a micro-second before.
She was a doll, a puppet with strings, and none was her own. Jobanique had not controlled her because he could not control himself. He was as predestined as every other man, other woman, any other object in the whole universe from the beginning of time.
She could see it so clearly now. History was fixed and unchangeable because everything was unchangeable. She had never worried about the fixedness of the past because its fixedness seemed self-evident. But she had not realised the implication of this: the future was fixed too.
She screamed.
“Are you OK?” someone asked.
Saskia blinked. She wiped the hair from her eyes. There was a woman stood before her. It was Helen Proctor. Helen smiled. Déjà vu. Jennifer smiled. “Listen to me, you’re going to be fine. You’re going to be fine.”
I know. But you will die.
“Listen to me,” Saskia said. “I am front...from the future. Your daughter, Jennifer –”
The woman frowned. “Who are you?”
The ground rumbled. Saskia felt and heard a small stone hit her head. “My name is Saskia. Your daughter will grow into a beautiful young woman, I’m from the future – she says that she loves you.”
Helen smiled. Saskia smiled too; she had got through to her. “You’re going to be alright,” Helen said. “We’re going to talk you out of here. You’ve have a knock on the head.”
Saskia’s smile switched off. “No, listen to me!”
There was a splintering sound from above them. They were three metres from the spot where, twenty years later, David Proctor and Harrison McWhirter would look up to see a crack appear. The gap grew wider. Saskia was spellbound. It was like a time-lapse film of a geological event.
The ceiling opened. Saskia saw the steel joist bending under its deadly cargo. Fist-sized pieces of concrete began to fall. She grabbed Helen and pulled her to the floor. She made sure that David’s wife was completely covered by her body.
She turned to look up into the abyss
Prove me wrong.
The ceiling caved. She felt the building hit the ground around her. Edges cut and scratched her. Twisted fingers of metal ended their journeys bare centimetres from her neck, her abdomen and her legs. Then it was over. The dust was thick. She remembered the hood on her suit and pressed the button. Nothing happened. The computer was broken.
She climbed to her feet and tried to waft the dust away. “Helen, get up.” But as the dust thinned, Saskia knew that Helen was dead. The ceiling had fallen to leave her own body untouched, but a finger of steel had passed through Helen’s head. She was conscious. Her breathing was shallow. Clear fluid ran from the wound.
“I am so sorry,” Saskia said.
Helen’s eyes were fixed and black.
If Saskia had not been there, this woman would not have died. And yet that thought seemed to give the illusion of choice. There was none. Saskia held the woman’s hand until she just stopped living, like a clock not wound.
She heard a man calling, “Helen! Helen!”
It was David. He had black hair that was long enough to tie in a pony tail. Saskia stepped back. He took Helen’s hand and held it to his cheek. He did nothing. Both of them were a tableau.
Saskia touched his face and left. She was not destined to know him. David gave a long, guttural wail. It reminded her of a wolf howling at the moon. An instinctive, unthinking behaviour. Saskia found a stairwell and pushed at a door. Then she remembered. She still had to write the message to herself.
The door immediately to her left was open. She wandered inside. It was a storage room. There were cans of spray paint on a shelf. She put her hand amongst the cans, closed her eyes, and pulled one at random. She checked the label. It was a security paint. It would only be visible in infra-red light. Saskia smiled. She remembered her confusion when she had read that cryptic message on the wall, seconds after Garrel left her alone in the darkened corridor. She remembered the envelope. She needed stationery.
There was a door in the cupboard that led to another. It was full of stationary. She felt dizzy with fatalism. Even the pen of the architect had not been his own.
She took a sheet of A4 paper, a pen, an envelope, a plastic folder, and scribbled the message that she would read in twenty years’ time. She wrote from memory, wondering who the author truly was. She tried to write something different – as an artistic flourish, a token gesture of her defiance against Time – but could think of nothing better to say. Finally she wrote, “To prove this is me, there will be a bullet hole just about here:” and drew an arrow towards the middle, where Hartfield’s bullet would pass through. She sealed the envelope, addressed it, and returned to the corridor.
David had gone. Helen remained. Saskia put the envelope inside the plastic folder. She put the folder underneath the rock that had killed Helen. On the wall, she wrote, in German: “By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.” Then another arrow.
She threw down the can and ran away from Helen. She made it to the stairwell and, from there, to the surface. The exit was at the rear of the hotel. Automatic charges had opened the final few metres. Saskia emerged into smoky daylight. A temporary field hospital had been erected on the lawn. Army ambulance crews stood by. Shocked personnel walked slowly and silently nowhere. Some cried. Saskia breathed the clean air and feigned breathing problems. An ambulance took her to a nearby hospital. An hour later, she escaped.
Night came to the woodland. The moon was large. She started a fire. One of her many foster parents, Hans, had been a keen hiker. He had taught her how to make fire using a wooden bow drill, but there was a flint-and-metal firestarter in the small survival kit in her flight suit. Nothing else in the suit worked anymore. It was smashed and torn. She collected moss, some dry kindling, and some dead wood logs.
She thought about Helen. She had known her for seconds. She felt responsible for her death but, at the same time, felt responsible for nothing from the moment of her birth onwards.
The firestarter was spring-loaded. The fire caught and she tended it.
The stars were bright. They were a little closer in 2003 than they would be in 2023. The sphere of humanity – the reach of its radio and television signals – was a little smaller. Just as she had looked from the car window soon after arriving in Edinburgh for the Proctor case, she looked now at the trees around her. Conifers, oak, sycamore, beech and horse chestnut. She had seen them all in Germany with Hans. The past, like another country, was always more striking in its similarities than its differences.
She noticed a pink sheet protruding from map pocket in her thigh. It was a part of David’s instructions. She glanced through them. Most were incomprehensible. The penultimate page was headed “Financial Times for the Betting Lady”. It contained a list of British prime ministers and American presidents since 2001, some British grand national winners, and all of the football world cup winners (prefixed with ‘bloody’).
On the final page were the words:
So good luck and bon voyage!
Love David
PS If you could stick a flask of soup in the glider for when it gets chilly, I’d be much obliged! And one of those ‘space blankets’ like they have in marathons.
PPS Oh, and make sure the bike is fast ;-)
PPPS Oxtail flavour, mind – none of that lentil crap!
Epilogue
November 6th 2023: Westminster, London
By November, David was very tired. A doctor had diagnosed an ulcer. He controlled it with medication. He had lost the relaxation of cigarettes. He saw a pigeon flutter to a stop nearby. A young couple wandered into the scene. They looked at David, who smiled. They looked at the remaining space on the bench and continued walking.
The Thames rolled by.
The special committee was due to reconvene at 2 p.m. Had fifteen minutes. He watched the pigeon fly away. Another day spent answering questions from MPs. He sighed. They had been unimpressed by
his story. They almost believed it, but the evidence was not quite sufficient. It would take more than Ego’s pictures and crackly audio to exonerate David from the crime of detonating a bomb in the West Lothian Centre. It didn’t matter that David had the best of reasons. Even administered the usual way, euthanasia was not legal in Britain.
“Hello,” she said.
David laughed. She was there, finally. “You give me an odd feeling.”
“Like you’ve seen me somewhere before.” She sat on the bench. She wore a black greatcoat with the collar turned up and a dark purple scarf. Her hair was tied in a ponytail.
“Something like that.” She smiled. There were lines at the corners of her eyes and dimples in her cheeks. “It’s been a while.”
“I thought it was best,” she said.
“Walk me back? I have a committee meeting.”
They made their way towards Westminster Bridge. “Are you some kind of advisor now?” she asked.
“No,” David said. Unconsciously, his hand patted his belly, massaged the ulcer. “I’m still trying to explain myself.”
“To a committee? What kind?”
“A closed parliamentary enquiry. Closed to the public, that is. Ostensibly, they’re charged to find out what happened at the West Lothian Centre. The Chairman is Lord Gilbert. Lib-dem guy. He’s fair.”
Saskia looked at the Houses of Parliament. “What are you telling them?”
“Me? I’m singing like a bird.”
She nodded. “That’s good. Don’t worry about me. I am no longer called Saskia Brandt.”
“So what do I call you?”
She linked her arm in his. “I suspect that you are under surveillance. I’ll say nothing. What would be the best outcome?”
David sucked air through his teeth. “They’d advise the CPS – the state prosecutors – not to proceed with a criminal trial. Unofficially, that is. And they might clear my name. Then I could get my job back at the university. I’ve got another ten years before I retire.”
Then walked in silence for a while. “Tell me about Jennifer,” she said.
“She’s back in America. I’ll see her again at Christmas, I hope. Do you have any plans for Christmas?”
“Some.”
They continued towards parliament. The Westminster Bridge was quiet. The sky was the colour of pigeons. The Thames was grey-green. A wind had blown in from the north sea. It was bitter and they turned against it. After ten minutes they came to a fenced, elderly building near the Ministry of Defence. “I’ll see you very soon, David.”
“Where?” he asked.
In reply she placed a finger to her lips. Then she touched his with the gloved tip.
“You know,” David said, “I could do with some help in there. Another witness.”
Saskia bowed. “I have to go, David. Take care.”
He waved. “I understand. You take care too. And thanks.”
He showed his pass to the duty officer and walked through into the main courtyard. He found the committee chamber. It was a small room with an oval set of chairs for the MPs. There was one in the middle for David.
“Ah,” said Lord Gilbert. He looked at David over the top of his glasses in the same way that David would look at a late student. “The star of the show.” Gilbert chuckled. The men on the panel chuckled back.
Tony Barclay, the MSP for West Lothian, took a nod from Gilbert. “Perhaps we could go back to the man who you met on the internet, Professor Proctor. The man called Mr Hypno.”
The stenographer watched his computer screen. David sighed, ready to begin again.
“Just ‘Hypno’. Mr or Mrs I don’t know.”
David’s hosts were confident that he would not try to leave the country. His hotel was a small one north of the river. It was dingy but, he guessed, not cheap.
He entered his room and locked the door. He was making progress with the committee. They were less enthusiastic with their accusations, anyway. He threw off his coat and walked into the bathroom. “Lights,” he said.
He took the measure of himself. A slightly saggier, more worn version of the man who had arrived at the West Lothian Centre two months before. But he felt no different. He looked good for his age. He washed up and walked back into the main room.
There was an envelope on the floor near the jacket. He remembered Saskia linking her arm in his. On the envelope were the words: “Open in private.” He opened it and withdrew a single sheet of paper.
D
Down in Marseilles there’s a nice bar run by a man called Dupont. It’s famous for its cat, which turned up one day and never left. See you there.
S
David watched the text fade until the paper was blank. He stuffed it in his mouth and chewed.
The End