by Robin Triggs
There was a moment of silence.
“What about the destruction of the computer system? And the black box?” Keegan asked.
I sighed. “Think about it. Think what would have happened if all had gone to plan – what still might happen. The base is dead. We’re all dead. You see, that’s the other thing – why has the saboteur not made any provision to escape, to save his own skin? None of you seem suicidal to me, not Greigor, not Max – you’ve all got a life to live, a life you want to live. I was programmed to be disposable. I was meant to die here too, I’m sure of it.
“And then in four months’ time, or however long we have now, someone at Tierra would send out a team. They’d find us all dead and much of the base destroyed. But they’d never know what happened. It’d be a mystery. No survivors to interview, no computer records. There’d be an inquiry, questions would be asked, but there’d be no one to blame. The Company would either have to start again from scratch or abandon the Australis project. And then what’s to stop the UN from doing the same thing again? We already know they’ve infiltrated the Company’s European division. They could create sleeper agents all around the world.”
There was quiet, then. Apart from the crackling of the fire, the soft whirring of the fan and the steady breathing of the crew, there was silence. I turned to Maggie. “You know hypnosis. I need you to hypnotize me.”
“Ah,” Abidene breathed.
“You want me to put you under, so we can get an account from the part of your memory that you can’t access?” Maggie said. But she was shaking her head. “I’m sorry. I can’t do that.”
“What? Why not?”
She shrugged. “I told you. I can do a few party tricks. That’s all. I…I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
I closed my eyes. Tears welled up. “So – so how will we—”
Coal crackled on the brazier. I couldn’t meet their faces, couldn’t feel anything but the eyes upon me.
“This is all horseshit,” Greigor said into the silence. “No proof, you can jus’ about smell the desperation.”
“Sounds weak as synthetic whiskey to me,” Fergie said. “No proof – nothin’s changed.”
Silence again.
“Brain scan,” Weng said.
“What?”
“We do a brain scan.”
“What are you talking about, Weng?” Maggie asked.
“Psychogenic amnesia can be detected in scans of the brain.”
I looked up at her, a sudden stab of hope in my chest.
“Psychogenic amnesia? What the hell does that mean?” Fergie asked impatiently.
“You ask me,” Greigor said, “Weng and Nordvelt, they got somethin’ going on together.”
“It’s the type of…it’s what causes you to not realize when you’ve been hypnotized,” Maggie said to Fergie. “Or with some types of injury. Neurones don’t link up properly between different parts of the brain.”
“And you can scan me, show that?” I said, my heart beating again.
“I…I’m not sure.” She looked over at Weng. “We have the MRI scanner. But I’m not sure… We’ve lost the computer, we can’t research, can’t check your medical records. Can’t really be sure what we’re looking for, or looking at.”
“But there is a chance,” Weng said. “We can compare your scans with mine—”
“My books!” Maggie interrupted. “I have – ha, and de Villiers said I was an idiot, bringing actual paper books to Australis! I can check—”
“Wait, wait,” Fergie cut in. “You two are actually taking this lunatic story seriously? You think it might actually be possible, what he’s sayin’?”
She shrugged. “It’s not like we’ve anything better to be doing, is it? I think it’s worth checking out. That’s all.”
Chapter Nineteen
Collaboration. I couldn’t tell you how good it felt. After such a long time with no purpose but to survive – now, finally, we had an aim, something to live for.
Weng and Maggie were energized. They sat together, huddled under blankets and duvets, reading the professor’s odd assortment of textbooks and guides – using precious torch battery and scribbling on old scraps of paper. The rest of us got on with living, circulating around them, bemused, uncertain. No one other than the two women would even discuss what they were doing; no one understood either what they were saying or what it might mean – for us, for the group.
Finally, without ceremony, our footsteps echoed upwards to the infirmary. The whole crew went. No one wanted to be left, waiting – not enough trust in anyone but themselves. Shivering, draped with what warm clothing we could find – there was no point using warmsuits for this short trek – we fought the freezing air. It was crisp, sharp and dry.
The warmth and the light of the infirmary bathed us like the afterlife. Immediately I knew I was dirty, impure, and I started to tremble with fear.
What if they found nothing?
The crew parted. Without taking a step, I found myself alone in the center of the room.
“Wh-where do you want me?” I asked, struggling, failing to smile.
“Sit,” Weng said, gesturing to a bare metal chair.
The MRI machine was brought from a corner. Dmitri, at Weng’s instructions, placed it over my head. I shut my eyes. It rested heavy on my shoulders. I was top-heavy, and my breathing quickened. I fought down a sharp stab of claustrophobia. A hand rested on my back – Dmitri’s? I drew strength from it and from the voices, muffled and distorted, that now circled around my head.
A sudden light: even through closed eyes I was aware of it, blue-green beneath my lids. And at the same time a low drone, a taste in the air – static, acrid and metallic. The hum rose in pitch until I was bathed in it, until it was no longer a sound but something I felt in my teeth.
And then there was nothing.
The light went out. The hum died, cut off, sudden enough to make me feel like I was falling – and I was sweating, and my sweat was pooling around my neck and chest—
And then the device was lifted off me and I almost floated up with it.
* * *
There was a shadow.
There was a shadow in my brain.
I didn’t – I couldn’t take it in, not properly. Not much was said, not there in the infirmary, as each of the crew – Weng and Maggie, of course, then Fergie with his deep scowl and skeptical Greigor and Keegan and Abi and Max and Dmitri and Fergie and Greigor again – as each in turn stared at the readout. Not many words.
A shadow.
Weng was next to be scanned. A baseline, a contrast – and then, because no one wanted to be left out of this mutual paranoia, the rest of the crew. It was as if we were waiting for the sacrament, a silent ceremony: the sacred donning of the helmet.
No one else had a shadow. That was my blessing alone.
We turned off the lights, left Fischer and Mikhail in peace. Reluctantly we trooped back down to the basement. And if the infirmary was heaven, then the basement was surely hell: even the flicker of warmth there carried the taint of sulfur.
* * *
“So what does it mean, then?” Fergie asked. The rancor, the anger had gone from his voice. Without it he sounded oddly neutral.
“The occipital and temporal lobes are isolated,” Weng said.
“Not isolated,” Maggie corrected. “Most functions are normal. But…well, we’re not experts, but it matches the patterns in my books. And contrasts distinctly with a normal, healthy pattern.”
“So…so what does it mean?” he asked again.
Maggie shrugged, casting vulture-like shadows on the wall behind her. “All I can say… It’s consistent with Anders having memories he can’t access—”
“For fuck’s sake! Can you not just give me a straight answer? Is he telling the truth or not?”
Ma
ggie gave him an icy look as the echoes of his outburst rolled away. “I can’t answer that. All I can say is—”
“Yeah, yeah – all you can say is that it’s fuckin’ consistent with your textbooks blah blah bloody blah.” He fell into silence, chin propped on his hand, scowling into darkness.
No one spoke. I felt like I wasn’t really there. I’d been in heaven and hell and now I was somewhere in limbo, waiting for judgment.
“So what’s the trigger?” Keegan asked.
“Oh, what the feck now?”
“The what?” Dmitri said.
“Well – right, okay, so you’re saying that Anders is right, right? He’s been acting under posthypnotic suggestion, yeah? So isn’t there a trigger? I mean, I don’t know, but isn’t there always a trigger? Something that instructs – I dunno, not instructs, but… You know what I’m getting at, right?”
“If he is right – if he’s telling the truth…” Max’s voice was cold, dispassionate. I looked at her, saw nothing but logic in her eyes. Like a machine.
I shivered.
“If Anders is telling the truth…if this shadow really is a sign of posthypnotic suggestion, you’re saying that there should be something to set it off. Something to cause him to kill—”
I winced at the baldness, the naked cruelty of the word.
“He only carried out the attacks whilst he was asleep,” Dmitri said. “Isn’t that the trigger? Unconsciousness?”
“Maybe,” Maggie said slowly. “Maybe. But – what did you bring with you, Anders? What items?”
I shrugged, spilling the blankets from round my shoulders. I fought to hitch them back up again, my fingers unable to grip properly. “I – I don’t know – I mean, just a few personal items… My book. My puzzle box. Clothes. Not much more than that.”
“What about your music?” Max asked.
“What music?” Keegan asked.
“He’s got a memcard – an album his mother made.” She shrugged.
“Mother’s boy, is he?” Greigor asked.
“Audio triggers – they can be pretty effective,” said Keegan.
Everybody stared at the Englishman.
“And what the hell do you know about it?” Fergie asked.
The meteorologist’s eyes were wide. “Hey, I like stories. No need to look at me like that.”
“Did McCarthy have anything like that?” Max asked the room. “Anyone know? Because if he was supposed to attack us – if there was a device that caused them to—”
She paused. I couldn’t help insert the words to go nuts into the silence.
“If there was something, McCarthy must have had one too.”
No one had an answer. Maggie turned to me. “Tell us more about how you got these things. The memcard?”
I shook my head. “It’s just a standard memcard – I’ve had it for years—”
“How many years?”
I struggled to think back. “Since I was a teenager. Just something I can keep a few personal items on – music, photographs, my CV…”
“And the puzzle box? What actually is it?”
“Just – it’s a puzzle box. A cube around three inches each face, mahogany and rosewood inlay…”
“How long have you had it, Anders?”
I frowned. “I – I’ve had it forever. It can’t be that – as long as I remember…”
“Where did you get it?”
“My…my mother gave it to me…” I couldn’t – couldn’t grasp it. I could see the thing itself…I could see hands holding it, giving it to me…my mother’s fine, thin fingers… The memory wouldn’t come into focus, but my heart gripped tight, an almost overwhelming love.
“And the book?” Fergie asked. “I’ve seen that. Seemed weird for someone like you to have a thing like that, I thought that at the time. I mean, must be worth a half-year’s wages for a first edition like that, right?”
“It’s not a first edition. I found it – they were clearing out some old lady’s house after she died. The workmen were going to throw it away, recycle it. Didn’t know what they had. I just thought it was beautiful.”
There was silence save for the sounds of the fire burning low and steady and the faint wheeze of Max’s jerry-rigged ventilation system.
“Seems like a pretty long story to me,” Fergie said. “Everyone knows there’s money in old books. No one in their right mind would just recycle such a thing.”
“I think we should have a look at these items,” Dmitri said.
I felt terribly afraid.
* * *
Three items. Next to each other on the table, the crew crowded around. All the crew save for myself.
I sat huddled on my bed, unclean, unsteady, barely feeling the cold anymore. I stared at the blankets.
No, no, you’re wrong, I wanted to shout. This is my life, this is all I have. My mother’s music. The puzzle box. The only memories I had of her. And my book – I thought of its smell, the comfort it had brought me when I’d had nothing else.
“So how do we do this?” Maggie asked. “We’ve no computers. No analytical tools—”
“And no idea what we’re looking for,” Fergie finished. He took up the book and leafed through the pages, screwing up his eyes in the half-light.
“Here’s what we do,” Greigor said. He snatched the item from the Scotsman, and before I could even think he’d tossed it onto the burner.
I sat frozen for a microsecond, the horror colder than the Antarctic wastes. Then I shouted something inarticulate and tried to scramble up, to save it from the flames – but I was so twisted in blankets, they caught beneath my feet and I sprawled onto the hard concrete floor. I barely noticed the pain in my knee; I was up again and at the brazier. Heedless of the flames, I reached for the book, its blackening cover smoking and bright yellow flame stroking its edges—
Someone slammed into me, knocked me back to the floor – Greigor, of course. I should have felt the impact but I didn’t, was only conscious of sour-milk smell of his rancid body, and the snarl on his lips – hatred, it was hatred, and even with tears filling my eyes and my fingers scorched, it was a hatred I could reflect and give in to. With our shrunken bodies we were like children, all bones and awkward angles, and we fought with a playground fury – rolling, arms swinging, and desperate to hurt, to gouge, to bite—
Hands grabbed at my shoulders, at his too, and the rest of the crew pried us apart.
I half lay, half sat on the floor, and I cried. Proper tears now.
“And this is what I say to this too!” Greigor yelled at the room. He snatched the memcard and cast that too into the flames before he was grabbed again and bundled away.
Max grabbed a set of tongs and pulled the smoking, twisted card from the brazier. The book was gone. Ash.
I cried. My mother’s voice. Lost forever.
The room was silent save for the mocking crackle of the flames. I couldn’t focus but still clambered to my feet, wavering on unsteady legs. I didn’t look at anyone. I didn’t even feel any anger. All my emotions seemed to have been leached out of me and I was nobody, nothing. Numb.
Someone cleared their throat.
“The memory chip within the card might have survived,” Abi said. “We might be able to recover the contents.”
No one said anything. He was wrong. I knew that. It was gone forever.
“And then there was one,” Keegan said. I didn’t understand what he meant until, through my tears, I saw him looking down at the puzzle box.
No one said anything to Greigor. He stood beyond the circle of the remaining crew members and glowered at nothing.
Max returned to the table and sat. She took up the box and turned it in her hands. “Tell us again, Anders – how did you get this?”
It was a present, a gift, and now it’s the last connection with
my past… But no words would come. I shook my head. I couldn’t focus. When I probed my memories, I kept sliding off. Like a blind spot. A hole in my head.
“Anders?” Max prompted.
“I – I was young…I just remember being given it…”
“By your mother? How old were you?”
I shook my head. “I – I’m sorry – it’s the cold, the hunger – I can’t…” Why couldn’t I remember? Just the hands giving it into mine, those long fingers – but then they changed, switched – man’s hands, then. Not my father’s – they were too delicate…I frowned, couldn’t focus, couldn’t get it clear. I was shivering, trembling.
“So how does it work?” Keegan said.
“Puzzle boxes are designed to open after a series of switches are pressed – either pressures in specific areas in a specific sequence,” Maggie explained, “or a series of panels are slid out.”
“Can’t see any panels on here.”
“No. Pressure points, then?”
“Just because it looks like a puzzle box, don’t mean it actually is.” Greigor. “Here—”
“Stay where you are, Greig,” Fergie snapped. “You’ve done enough. Just stay back there.”
The box was passed among the other crew.
“I can’t work this out.” Keegan. “Anyone got any ideas?”
“Just burn the damn thing,” Greigor said. “We could use the warmth—”
“Greigor, if you don’t shut the fuck up, then I’ll damn well shut you up,” Fergie said.
“It looks to have been made in sections – here, give it to me.” That was Max. “If I can find the right tool—”
“No!” I was hyperventilating, my eyes not working properly. Didn’t even realize I’d shouted until I felt a big hand gently pushing me back to the bed.
I was dimly aware of Max getting to her feet, and then Dmitri was blocking my view, and then she was back at the table and my nostrils were clogged with dust and the stink of dirty, dirty humans. I saw her probing with something long and thin, like a needle.
“No,” I moaned again.
“Got it,” she said. There was a crunch like a bone breaking, and a section of the exterior lifted partially off the core—