Distractedly, Sandra said, “Yeah, they were probably a bit short staffed, had to take what they could get.”
“Oh, you. You’re as bad as his father. I’m sure Jay earned every promotion he got.”
Sandra smiled. “You’re right. He’s not as daft as he looks. And what about you, Annie Oakley? Charging the terrorist stronghold with a shotgun? I can see where Jay gets it from.”
“It was either that or let Cara go on her own.”
“Yeah, thanks.”
“She’d have given her life to save you, you know?”
“What’s she doing up there, anyway?” She checked her commplant again. “I’ve only got a couple more hours before I have to catch my plane.”
“Jay says you’re not one of his mob.”
“No. Not really secret squirrel material. I’m more the keep my head down, mind my own business type.”
“And if you’ll believe that, you’ll believe anything.”
Sandra looked up to find Cara standing in the doorway. “So that’s why you took so long.” Her daughter was looking unusually lovely and stylish in a very smart outfit that contrived to emphasise her natural attractiveness. She looked oddly mature. Not unlike the virtual Cara she might one day become.
“This is for Fourget’s benefit, I suppose?” Sandra said. The plan was to visit Fourget in hospital on their way to the airport and now Sandra understood why Cara was so solicitous of the young lieutenant.
Cara blushed. “No, I just wanted to look nice to see you off.”
It was a tiny white lie, born of embarrassment, but it sent a cold chill through Sandra. Is this how it began? she asked herself, remembering how a future, disembodied version of her daughter had deceived her with no apparent compunction, lied to trick her parents into helping with the post-humans’ war against humankind. She wished she could see it the way Jay did, see those futures she’d experienced as almost infinitely improbable.
“If you look back from the present,” he’d said last night, “the chances of us ending up precisely here are infinitely small. It will be the same for any future you look back from. We can’t assume any one of them is the particular future we’re heading towards. It’s chaotic—in the mathematical sense—the tiniest variations in starting conditions lead to vastly different outcomes.”
She’d teased him, said, “For someone who doesn’t know a Mandelbrot set from a tea set, you sure know how to bullshit about probabilities.” Yet she believed he was right, and it was comforting, but it was an intellectual kind of comfort, not the visceral kind she needed.
Much better was the story she told herself, that, if Cara was alive in that post-human future, Raines had made some kind of puppet based on her, a heartless thing with Cara’s memories and personality that could be directed by him to do his bidding. It wasn’t Cara, not her Cara.
***
In the taxi on the way to the hospital with Cara, Sandra said, “Jay has asked me to marry him.”
Cara screeched, “What? Oh my God! You’re getting married! That’s amazing!” She leapt on Sandra and hugged her. She burbled excitedly about being the maid of honor, she asked about plans, the ceremony, the honeymoon, where they’d live. It was some time before Sandra managed to get a word in.
“I didn’t say yes.”
Cara pulled back and looked at her mother as if to check whether she was joking.
“I didn’t say no, either. He picked such a stupid time to ask.”
“But you’re going to say yes, right? I mean, it’s what you want?”
“Is it? I thought it was but …” But when she thought about the reality of it, it seemed like such a complicated decision. When she thought about how her life would be affected, and Cara’s, the changes, the rearrangements …
Cara was frowning, trying to puzzle it out. “So you talked? You sorted out all that stuff about him resenting you for hiding me away and all that?”
It sounded so banal when she put it like that. “No, we didn’t really talk. He just … changed his attitude. Didn’t you notice how cheerful he was last night? I’ve never seen him like that.”
“I thought he was just happy to be home again.”
“How would you feel about it if we did get married?” It seemed a stupid question in the light of the exclamations and hugs, but she had to ask it anyway.
“I’d feel happy for you, of course. For both of you. No-one can understand why you didn’t get together years ago.”
“By no-one, you mean Olivia, I suppose.”
“And Gran.” She gave Sandra a stern frown. “You’ll end up an old spinster at this rate.”
Sandra was not really in the mood for playing but she said, “You just want me out of the way while you go chasing after your soldier boy.” Her own words suddenly hit her. “Of all the types I was dreading you’d bring home, a soldier was not one of them.”
“He’s not just a soldier, he’s special forces, and he works for Dad. Anyway, you’ve got it all wrong. He saved my life. And Dad says he saved his life too. And he says he’s one of the bravest men he knows. I should at least go and see how he’s doing, shouldn’t I? I mean, he got shot going in to help Dad rescue you.”
“I didn’t need rescuing! What am I, some kind of storybook princess? And, don’t forget, after their half-arsed rescue attempt, I was the one who had to go back into the place I’d just escaped from to save their stupid necks.”
Cara was grinning. “I always thought these special-forces operations ran like well-oiled machines. That’s how it looks in the vids, anyway. I didn’t realize they were just a bunch of blokes with big guns making it up as they went along.”
“Says the girl who was about to charge in there with nothing but her tooled-up granny to protect her.”
Cara should have looked abashed but she just kept on grinning. “Who’d have thought Gran was such a fierce warrior-woman?”
Sandra couldn’t help smiling too at the thought of Dot in a breastplate and horned helmet. After a moment the smile fell away. “It could all have ended so much worse than it did.”
Cara reached out and took her mother’s hand. “I knew you’d both come back. That police liaison woman they sent told us we shouldn’t get our hopes up. But I knew there was no way you’d let some time machine beat you.”
Sandra laughed. The idea that survival was a mere matter of willpower was the most ridiculous thing she’d heard all day. She saw the oddly cantilevered bulk of the New Europa Hospital appear above the roofs of the older shops and office buildings, its bizarre architecture an ugly combination of post-Adjustment whimsy and solid functionalism.
“We’re there,” she said and smiled again as Cara started tidying her hair in a virtual mirror. Her phone rang and she checked it as the taxi turned into the main entrance. It was an encrypted call from a Dr Crystal in Berlin. Reluctantly, she took the call.
***
Jay ran the gauntlet of his staff, each one, it seemed, hell-bent on congratulating him personally and at length on the success of his mission in London. The fact was that the mission had been an equivocal success at best. The only truly good thing was that Sandra had come through it alive. But Jock was dead and three of Alpha Team were injured, as well as Fourget, who was having a lung and a spleen grown and some serious reconstruction of his legs. Two MI5 agents were also dead and four more injured. Even the Metropolitan Police line had been strafed by Lee’s helicopter gunship and they had another half-dozen injured officers to add to the cost of Jay’s operation.
And for what? They’d caught a trio of Chinese spies—who were already being offered for trade—and a lot of burned-out equipment now sitting in a shed at Aldermaston while project FORESIGHT scientists shook their heads sadly over it and blamed Jay’s team for not being careful enough.
Eventually, he made it to Crystal’s office, two minutes late.
“How are you, Jay?” She poured him a coffee from a jug on the sideboard and waved him into one of the comfy chairs. Not a good sig
n, he thought.
“Look, I’m sorry I—”
She held up a hand to stop him. “Bit of a mess, wasn’t it?” she said. “In fact, a bit of a bloody balls-up.” Her tone was sweetness itself. She sipped her own coffee while he waited.
“I’d like your resignation, Jay.”
He’d half expected it. It wasn’t such a shock. Even so, a heavy weight seemed to settle on him. It was finally over.
“Of course,” he said. He moved to stand up. “Is that it?”
“Don’t be such a martyr, Jay. Come back at me. Defend your actions.”
He didn’t feel like playing games. “I really don’t see the point.”
Crystal smiled at him over the rim of her cup. “All right then. Let me defend you.” Jay could not begin to understand what strange fancy motivated the woman, but he nodded for her to proceed and sat back in his chair.
“While the rest of the world struggled to understand what on earth had hit us that night—including myself and every other agency boss in the civilized world—you had your team digging into the evidence and playing some remarkable hunches. While everyone around you thought your friend Ms Malone was just some crazy person who saw temporal terrorists everywhere she turned, you had unwavering confidence in her judgment. And it was you, Jay, who finally put the pieces together and led an attack on the true culprits—Chinese agents operating right under our noses, no less!”
“I still don’t get that, actually. Why were they doing this from a factory in London instead of a bunker out in the Gobi desert or somewhere, safely under Chinese control?”
Crystal shrugged. “International espionage isn’t what it used to be. The operation was only semi-official and completely unfunded. The general Lee reported to saw it as a bit of an earner too. Lee had to raise the money himself—not just for the experiments, but to stake the general’s ambitious speculations—and keep it all out of Chinese territory. You know what they’ve been like since the Beijing timesplash. He found the delightful Mr Waxtead, and the rest is history.”
“So,” said Jay. “You think I was insightful and decisive and saved the world from destruction?”
Crystal pursed her lips. “Well, that last one is yet to be seen. We’ll see what happens in 2242, won’t we?” There had been no destructive event corresponding to the two-week time shot Sandra had been forced to take, it seemed. The natural repulsion between branes, as Laura had told him, meant it wasn’t a hundred percent certain that a collision would occur even for branes that were very close. No-one yet knew the actual probability but the European Union would be funding plenty of PhDs in that area over the next few years.
“But you did bring to light a secret UK government project to do what the Chinese had been doing. That was a good thing. Heads are already rolling in the corridors of power.”
“Great. So I’m a bit of a hero, really. Why do you want my resignation?”
She rolled her eyes mightily. “Jay, be serious! You went off half-cocked and almost got everybody killed when, really, you should have just handed it over to the police and let them have their siege.”
And there it was. When it came to the crunch, he had chosen saving Sandra over doing his job. And so he had to resign. It was fair and he had no regrets. He put down his cup and stood up.
“I’ll get that letter to you within the hour.”
She smiled up at him. “Thank you. Now sit down again and listen.”
***
Laura Thalman was standing by the lifts with luggage at her feet when Jay caught up with her.
“Off to Aldermaston?” he asked.
“Crystal wants me to do an audit of the project.” She hesitated before she said, “She told me you’d be leaving us.” The lift arrived and the doors opened. “I’ll get the next,” she said but Jay stepped forwards and moved one of her bags across the door.
“I’ll go down with you.”
They ordered Laura’s luggage into the empty lift and joined it there.
“We’ll all miss you,” she said.
“And I’ll miss this place too.”
There was a silence. On an impulse, Jay said, “I’ve asked Sandra to marry me.”
The lift arrived at the lobby and they busied themselves herding Laura’s luggage out of the lift. There was a taxi already waiting for her outside.
“I met her, you know. Did she tell you?” Jay shook his head. Laura smiled. “I liked her. She was …” She struggled to find the word and gave up. “Anyway, congratulations. Have you fixed a date?”
“She hasn’t said yes, yet.”
Laura raised an eyebrow but didn’t comment. There was another silence.
“I should be going,” she said. They came together for an air kiss and Laura, looking troubled, asked, “What will you do now, Jay?”
He gave her a reassuring smile. “I’ll think of something. Early retirement, maybe.”
Laura laughed. “You’d go crazy without some bad guys to hunt.”
She ushered her luggage out through the main entrance and into the taxi. Jay watched until she was gone.
***
Sandra’s debrief was held in a small meeting room several floors above Jay’s office. She didn’t see him before or after it. She was interviewed by two women in their forties, smartly dressed, pleasant and polite. They asked her to give “her version” of events and then asked a few questions to fill in some more detail of who was where at what time. It was relaxed but formal and the interviewers gave very little information back to her.
“All right,” she said, when they reached the point where they were going over the same ground again. “We’ve done this. Maybe I could ask a couple of questions now?”
“What would you like to know?” one asked.
“The Chinese driver I killed. What’s going to happen about that?”
The two interviewers exchanged glances and one of them shrugged. “He was a spy for a foreign government. How he met his death is not something the UK authorities wish to pursue. The Chinese government has made no representations on the matter.”
“So it’s all being swept under the carpet?”
The interviewer smiled. “If you like.”
“And what about the eight-hundred-pound gorilla I shot, and Dr Hong?”
“The Chinese agent in charge of the operation—”
“Lee.”
“—set off a number of incendiary devices, destroying the factory and all evidence that could possibly implicate anyone in any of the various deaths.”
“So I’m off the hook?”
“You were never on it. In fact, it seems your actions uncovered serious illegal activity on European soil by agents of a foreign government. You also appear to have directly saved the lives of at least two of our own operatives.” She smiled, sadly. “However, don’t expect to receive any medals. I’m sure you understand.”
“OK. We’re finished here, Ms Malone. The agent outside will escort you out of the building.”
She found Jay standing in the foyer, staring out through the main door.
His face lit up when he saw her. “Come on,” he said. “Lunch is on me.”
They walked out into the street and turned right. It was cold and gray but there was no sign of rain. The air had the ozone smell of electric vehicles. Although many parts of Berlin’s business district were pedestrian only, this was not one of them. The rattle and whine of Europe’s busiest city made talking difficult. As they walked, Jay hooked his arm for Sandra to take. It was a gesture that would have been quaintly old-fashioned even fifty years earlier, but somehow it didn’t seem odd. She took his arm and pulled herself in close.
He’d made a booking at a smart little place just a couple of blocks from the office and, although they were half-an-hour early for the reservation, a bot showed them to a table set aside in a quiet corner.
“Hungry?” he asked.
“Very.”
She scanned the menu, which had been asking for her attention in her periph
eral vision. “You should try the Hecht,” he said. Her commplant automatically translated it as “pike”. “It’s amazing.”
“OK then.”
He ordered and sat back to look at her, smiling. “I can’t remember the last time we had a meal together. Just the two of us.”
Sandra could. It had been nearly nineteen years ago, in London, just before she’d gone to voluntarily commit herself for psychiatric help at the Porringer Institute. She supposed Jay could remember too. He was always so clumsy at bringing conversations round to whatever he wanted to say.
“Jay,” she said. “I’m scared.”
“Scared?” He looked alarmed. He actually glanced around the restaurant.
“I mean, I’m worried, I suppose. Have you noticed anything about yourself since we got back from the future?”
“Like what?”
“Like your body isn’t quite the way it used to be?”
“Ah, that.”
“Well?”
“Well, yes. Scars are missing. That bullet I took in the leg in 1902? No trace of it. But, look, they rebuilt us. For all I know, they regrew us from scratch. You’d expect the scars to be gone if that’s what happened.”
“And your hair.”
“My hair?”
“You were starting to thin out at the front.”
“No I wasn’t.”
“Yes, you were, but it’s all back again. You look ten years younger.”
“Actually, I feel it too. Not younger, just fitter, better somehow.”
She nodded. “Me too. I’ve barely had a chance to train or even work out since all this started. I’ve been tied up, stunned, sleep-deprived, exhausted, kicked and punched, blown up even, yet I feel fantastic, as if I was at match fitness for a club fight. I haven’t felt this good in years.”
His eyes widened at a sudden thought. “You don’t think …? I mean, these are real bodies, aren’t they, not androids like Cara and Raines?” She looked at him as if to say, come on, now, you know better than that. “Ah, right. We both had to go through terahertz scanners to get into the office. If our bodies were artificial, it would have shown up.”
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