Ripples of the Past

by Damian Knight

  He threw back the covers and jumped out. Lynette rolled over, blinked at him with bloodshot eyes, mumbled something he couldn’t make out and then rolled back the other way with the sheet over her head.

  Without bothering to attach his prosthetic arm, Michael strode from the suite, naked as the day he was born. ‘Donna?’ he called, stepping into the hall. ‘Donna, you up yet?’

  The door to the next suite opened and Donna stepped out in a pair of men’s pyjamas, her hair up in rollers. She rubbed her eyes, gasped and covered her mouth. ‘Sir, you’ve got no clothes on!’

  Michael glanced down and then looked back up. ‘Yeah, never mind that,’ he said, making no attempt to cover himself. ‘Get dressed, then get Bruno out of bed and tell the driver to ready my car.’

  ‘Is everything all right? You told me never to wake you before nine.’

  ‘Everything’s just peachy, Donna. We’re taking a road trip.’

  4

  Isaac hurried through the hospital gates, a deep foreboding in the pit of his stomach; he had been recognised, just as he’d believed he was home dry. This was bad news – there was no getting round that – but he had long ago decided the potential rewards of returning to San Francisco far outweighed the risks. The main thing was he had what he’d come for, and in a few hours the city would be far behind him, by which time Betty Mclean would, with any luck, be left wondering if she had imagined their encounter.

  Patting the lump at the back of his coat that concealed Michael’s medical records, Isaac turned right onto the sidewalk. After only a single step, a heavy hand clamped down on his shoulder. He spun around to find a large man with a sloping forehead standing directly behind him.

  ‘Dr Barclay?’

  Isaac sank his teeth into the man’s index finger, causing him to yelp and release his grip, then took off at full sprint. Six years on the run had stripped away the excess fat his body had accumulated during his late-twenties, leaving a sinewy network of muscles in its place, and not many people could match him over distance.

  To the sound of blaring horns he charged through a DONT WALK light and across both lanes of traffic, narrowly missing the fender of a braking sedan. He reached the opposite sidewalk without slowing. There was an alleyway between two squalid apartment blocks a short way up ahead. A quick glance over his shoulder revealed his assailant struggling to pick his way through the messy knot of cars now blocking the road.

  Isaac turned sharply into the alley and found himself running down a gloomy, urine-reeking passage. His feet crunched over broken beer bottles and discarded needles: the all-too-familiar hallmarks of vagrancy. The alley turned to the right about fifty yards down, where it presumably met the road on the perpendicular side of the block. He put his head down and kept going, ignoring the burn of lactic acid in his calves. Suddenly a wino reared up as if from nowhere and lurched into his path, a bottle in a crumpled paper bag gripped in one hand. As the dishevelled man staggered forward, Isaac shoved him in the chest, sending him flailing into a cluster of trashcans, and rounded the bend.

  A strip of daylight beckoned up ahead. Pushing himself ever harder, Isaac closed the gap to freedom one long stride at a time.

  The sidewalk was less than ten yards away when a stretch limousine pulled up, blocking his exit.

  He skidded to a stop. Looking back, he saw his pursuer emerge round the bend, a handkerchief wrapped around his bloody hand.

  Isaac was cornered, but hanging directly above him was the fire ladder of the apartment block to his left. He dropped his bag, bent his knees and sprang to one side, vaulting off a dumpster and then clawing for the bottom rung. The fingers of his left hand closed around it. He heaved himself up one-armed and grabbed the rung above with his right hand. But before he could reach the third rung, someone tackled him around the legs and dragged him back down.

  As Isaac fell, his chin connected with the bottom rung, and the next thing he knew he was on his back, the big man towering over him. He had, however, landed next to his bag, and through the loose drawstring could make out the handle of his hunting knife. He pulled it out, but before he could unsheathe the blade the man withdrew a gun from a holster beneath his suit jacket.

  Isaac stared back for a second, then dropped the knife. The man reached down, picked him up, slung him over his shoulder and carried him over to the waiting limo, where he deposited him on his feet.

  As the blacked-out rear window lowered, Isaac found himself face-to-face with Michael Humboldt.

  5

  Michael’s seizure slowly fizzled out. He blinked three times and opened his eyes. Instead of returning to the office behind the resort’s main desk, he found himself in the leather-lined back seat of his limo. While these transitions as reality bent to fit around his alterations were occasionally disorientating, he had by now grown accustomed to them as an unavoidable side effect of meddling with the past.

  Donna was seated beside him, staring absently out of the window. Sitting across from them were his bodyguard, Bruno, who was nursing a bandaged hand, and Isaac Barclay, the man Michael had spent the last six years searching for.

  It had worked: Mclean’s tip-off had been accurate and the manhunt was finally at an end.

  A smile began to spread across Michael’s face until he registered the atrocious odour radiating from Barclay’s body. ‘Yikes! That you, Isaac?’ he asked as he whipped out a silk handkerchief with his initials – M.H. – embroidered in one corner and pressed it over his nose. ‘Donna, open the window, would you? It smells like the elephant enclosure at the zoo back here. When did you last take a bath, Isaac?’

  Barclay remained staring down at his hands, which lay loosely curled in his lap. The pampered young man Michael remembered was almost completely unrecognisable, with tatty clothes, a greying beard and long, filthy hair that hung past his shoulders. It was a most gratifying transformation; although Barclay couldn’t have been more than ten years older than Michael, he looked at least twice that.

  ‘Boss, he had this on him,’ Bruno said, and passed Michael a faded green folder with the name HUMBOLDT, M in the top corner.

  ‘What’s this then? Doing some homework?’

  Panic flashed across Barclay’s eyes, but the look faded as quickly as it had arrived and he returned to the study of his hands.

  With a sigh, Michael opened the folder and looked inside. On top was a grimy, hand-written document that appeared to be the write-up by the field doctor who had performed surgery on him after his injury in Vietnam. Beneath was a thick wodge of sheets, all typed on the same thin paper, all with either Barclay’s or Dr MacHayden’s signature at the bottom and all dated between March and July of 1969.

  ‘So, it really is homework,’ he said, looking back up. ‘Care to explain what you’re up to?’

  Barclay straightened in his seat, his hands balling into fists. He opened his mouth as if to speak, then decided against it and, with a slight shake of his head, lowered his gaze again.

  ‘Didn’t think so.’ Michael closed the folder. ‘Allow me to hazard a guess, if I may. You’ve spent the last six years plotting my downfall, and you think the answer’s somewhere in here. What’s the plan then? Recreate my injury in yourself? Or maybe find a way of blocking it?’

  Barclay maintained his defensive silence, motionless apart from a slight narrowing of his lips.

  ‘Donna, give this to Sebastian when we get in, would you? Never know, might be something useful in there.’ Michael handed her the folder and turned back to Barclay. ‘The silent treatment is wearing a little thin, Isaac. We’ve got a long drive ahead of us, and you’re going to have to talk at some point. How about a game of twenty questions to pass the time? I’ll go first. Right, I’m thinking of an object. I’ll give you a clue, it’s something in this car. First question, if you please.’

  Barclay looked up, his features distorted by hatred of the purest kind. ‘What, are you out of your freaking mind?’

  ‘Ho, it speaks!’

  Barclay te
nsed like he was about to swing for Michael, but a snarl from Bruno settled him back in his seat. ‘You ruined my life,’ he muttered through gritted teeth.

  ‘No, Isaac, I offered you fame and fortune, the chance to help me change the world. As for ruining your life, you did that when you took the decision to leave me for dead in a burning building.’

  ‘If it’s revenge you want then why don’t you get it over with and kill me?’

  ‘Oh, I’ve got no intention of that!’

  ‘Then what do you want?’ Barclay asked, looking genuinely confused.

  ‘Why, the same thing as ever,’ Michael said. ‘Tetradyamide.’

  * * * * *

  Michael passed the remaining hours of the journey shivering against the cold air circulating through the open windows of the limo, his handkerchief pressed over his mouth and nose in an attempt to lessen the impact of Dr Barclay’s odour. Dawn was almost upon them by the time they finally began up the resort’s long, crushed-stone driveway. The party – which he guessed he must have missed in this timeline – should have ended at midnight, but there were still a few guests milling about, including a couple necking on the edge of the marble fountain near the hotel’s grand front entrance.

  Instead of stopping, Michael instructed the driver to follow the maintenance road that looped around the entire site. They pulled up beside a low concrete hut on the far side of the golf course, close to where the artificially maintained fairways gave way to a rocky outcrop that climbed high into the steadily lightening desert sky.

  The driver opened the rear door and Michael climbed out, followed by Donna. Barclay, however, made no attempt to move until Bruno elbowed him in the ribs hard enough to nearly knock him out of his seat.

  ‘Okay, okay,’ he said, rubbing his side. He paused after stepping out as he failed to hide his amazement at their surroundings. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘The Sandstone Springs Resort, Nevada,’ Michael said, beaming with pride. ‘About an hour west of Vegas, to be exact. So far the project’s cost over a million dollars and two years of my life to complete, but I think you’ll agree it was worth the effort. We’ve got a golf course, spa and casino, all on site. Work will begin on a sister resort in Florida when the land purchase goes through next week, and I’m already looking at sites in Texas and Hawaii too. You play golf, Isaac?’

  ‘In a former life,’ Barclay muttered with a shake of his head. ‘So this is what you’ve been up to all these years, building golf resorts in the desert? Hardly changing the world, is it?’

  ‘Sideshows and distractions,’ Michael said, dismissing the jibe with a wave of his hand. ‘Let me show you the annex. I know it doesn’t look like much from out here, but just wait till you get inside!’ He pulled a set of keys from his pocket and unlocked the reinforced steel door of the hut, which opened onto the dark, humid room that housed the resort’s elaborate sprinkler control system. ‘Come on,’ he said and hit the lights. ‘No need to be shy.’

  Barclay remained by the door, again unmoving until Bruno shoved him in the back and sent him stumbling in. He regained his footing on the other side and blinked at the array of clicking and whirring equipment before him.

  ‘What is this place?’

  ‘The annex serves two functions,’ Michael explained. ‘The first is to control the resort’s sprinkler network. Believe me, when you’re maintaining two hundred acres of grassland in the middle of a desert, irrigation is a serious issue. The second function is a little more…confidential, let’s say.’

  He crossed the room to what looked like a patch of damp staining the concrete of the far wall a slightly darker shade of grey. There was a faint click as he pressed his hand to it, and a concealed panel swung open to reveal a recessed keypad hidden behind. After punching the code in, he turned back. A couple of seconds passed and then a deep rumbling noise started up, building as multiple counterweights and gears shifted and moved in the foundations. The floor began to shake as if the aftershock of a distant earthquake were rocking the place.

  Barclay took a step back, his eyes wide, but Bruno was on hand to clasp him around shoulder.

  ‘Relax, we’re perfectly safe,’ Michael said. ‘Look!’

  With a grinding of stone against stone, the wall began to inch back, gradually revealing an inky chasm below. It took a full minute to move the yard and a half necessary to uncover the top of a flight of rough concrete stairs that descended into blackness, at which point it stopped with a bone-shuddering thud. A series of lights flickered on beneath them, illuminating the entrance to a tunnel.

  Michael trotted down, a light-hearted spring in his step. He paused halfway to wave the others along behind him. ‘This way, Isaac! The best is yet to come.’

  ‘Want to tell your pet gorilla to unhand me then?’ Barclay asked, unsuccessfully attempting to shrug Bruno’s hand from his shoulder.

  Michael gave his bodyguard a nod, at which Bruno grunted and released the doctor.

  The four of them descended in single file, Donna bringing up the rear. The tunnel was just under a hundred yards long. A third of the way down the concrete gave way to roughly hewn stone, the notches and grooves of drillbits still visible.

  At the far end they reached a curved, polished-chrome door. Moving to block Barclay’s view, Michael tapped the code into the keypad by its side. The door slid into its jamb, and they filed through into a corridor lined with brown shag pile carpet. The walls here were papered with a fashionable geometric design that Michael had seen in a magazine, repeating swirls of yellow, orange and a shade of brown that matched the carpet.

  At the opposite end of the corridor were two more curved doors, both polished chrome like the first. He strode to the door on the left and punched the code into the keypad beside it, revealing a room with the same brown carpet covering the floor and walls clad in faux brickwork. Against the right wall was a king-sized bed with a gilded headrest, and, against the left, a home cinema system with a screen, projector, tape deck and a range of speakers. The far wall was given over to a long rectangular window overlooking the desert on the other side of the outcrop, five hundred feet below.

  ‘These are your quarters,’ Michael said, stepping to one side. ‘Go ahead, Isaac. After you.’

  Barclay looked like he was about to object, but Bruno gave a low growl and cracked the knuckles of his good hand, which proved incentive enough for him to step through.

  ‘I hope you find everything to your liking,’ Michael said. ‘I had the room modelled on my very own in the hotel complex – the presidential suite. Minus the balcony, they’re practically identical, although I think your view is a little more dramatic.’

  ‘Lucky me.’ Barclay approached the window and peered out, his fingertips pressed to the pane.

  ‘It’s reinforced glass. Over eight inches thick, in case you were wondering. I’m informed even a bullet wouldn’t make a scratch, although I must admit, I’ve yet to test the theory. Anyway, the bathroom’s through here, and you’ll find clean clothes in the wardrobe over there. I had to guess at your size, so I do hope everything fits. If not, just ask and I’ll have Donna order some more. What else?’ Michael paused and tapped his lips with a fingertip. ‘Oh yes! Your meals will be brought down three times a day, but just pick up the phone if you’re hungry in between. It’s a direct line to Donna, so no external calls, which means no take-out pizza, unfortunately. Otherwise I’m pretty sure the hotel kitchen can cater for anything you want.’

  ‘It’s a jail cell,’ Barclay stated. ‘A high-end one, I’ll give you that, but a jail cell all the same.’

  ‘If that’s the way you wish to see things then so be it,’ Michael said. ‘Now, onto the lab.’

  He stepped back into the corridor and punched the code into the keypad beside the door on the other side, which opened onto a short flight of steps leading down to a large space filled with metal surfaces. There were four movable workbenches on coasters positioned in a square in the middle, directly below a huge extractor fan se
t in the ceiling. Against the far wall were an industrial oven and a refrigeration unit, next to a row of glass-panelled cabinets displaying a collection of beakers, flasks, clamps and stands of every size and shape imaginable. Everything gleamed with pristine newness.

  Barclay followed Michael in, this time without Bruno’s intervention. ‘Very impressive,’ he said, his reluctance apparently forgotten. ‘Where did you find all this stuff? It puts my old lab to shame.’

  ‘The annex was a substantial additional cost in the construction of the resort, but one I insisted on. To avoid drawing any unwelcome attention to our activities, the apparatus was ordered through Bereck & Hertz Pharmaceuticals, then transported to the site with a delivery of kitchen equipment. Sebastian, who you’ll be working with closely, placed the order. He’s very thorough, but if there’s anything he overlooked, just say.’

  ‘Sebastian?’

  ‘Your assistant. Last year I set up the Harrison Foundation, an internship sponsored by Bereck & Hertz cherry-picking the brightest and best young chemists from colleges across the land. I think you’ll be impressed when you meet him.’

  Barclay shook his head. ‘You honestly expect me to give you Tetradyamide after everything that’s happened?’

  ‘Despite what you might think, Isaac, I’m a reasonable man, willing to let bygones be bygones. My offer of partnership still stands, you see. Think about it, I’ve built an empire even though I'm only able to travel a day or two into the past or future. With Tetradyamide there would be no limits on what I could achieve. Together we could rule the world.’

  ‘World domination? That’s the plan, is it?’

  ‘It would be a start. You always looked down on me, didn’t you, Isaac? Well, the shoe’s on the other foot now.’