The Dark Arrow of Time

by Massimo Villata

  “Ah! However, what I want to say is: why didn’t Kathia, and you too, all of you, tell me the truth right away? Why did Kathia always pretend she was an ordinary Thaymite woman when she was with me? Maybe she never said so in so many words, but that’s what she always led me to believe….”

  The professor was silent for a while, fingering his greasy nose.

  “Because she was ashamed…. Because it was her dream…. Because she loved you. And she was ashamed, my boy, to tell you that she was only a fake woman…. Maybe she would have liked to be able to introduce her parents to you…. And she didn’t want to pull a test tube out of her pocket, so to speak…. It was fun, when she started…. Because it was her dream…. But then she no longer had the courage to tell you the truth…. Which, among other things, is that she can never have children, because she’s prohibited from doing so…. But perhaps that was exactly what, for the first time, she felt she wanted from a man, ever since she ‘spied’ on you in the college dorm…. And maybe, for the first time, she felt all the weight and sadness of her unusual fate.”

  Once again, Helias Kadler pictured Kathia’s face, looking at him as she disappeared beyond the airlock door.

  And that evening he sobbed aloud as he stood clutching the sides of the sink in the professor’s bathroom.

  © Springer International Publishing AG 2017

  Massimo VillataThe Dark Arrow of TimeScience and Fictionhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67486-5_13

  13. Are They High Enough Yet?

  Massimo Villata1

  (1)Osservatorio Astrofisico di Torino, INAF, Pino Torinese (TO), Italy

  Massimo Villata

  Email: villata@oato.inaf.it

  “Are they high enough yet?” asked the professor.

  “High as a kite.” replied one of the two men, as he sorted the vials.

  All three were laid out motionless, each on a gurney, in a minimally furnished room.

  A woman came in, followed by the counselor and another, rather self-important, man who was introduced as the counselor’s secretary.

  The counselor walked up to Helias.

  “Hello, Helias. How are you doing?”

  “Not bad, except….”

  “Yes, I know how you must feel. Cheer up, we’ll come out on the other end of this….” and he patted his arm.

  Helias nodded, without speaking.

  “Who shall we start with?” asked the woman, young and quite good-looking, as she regarded Helias with an intrigued smile.

  “We’ll start with her.” answered the professor.

  “She’s ‘forty’ too?” whispered Helias in the professor’s ear.

  The professor nodded. “The ‘brunette version’, I call her. But it’s no use whispering, she can ‘read’ us anyway.”

  And the ‘girl’ turned, and smiled.

  “Better put the other two to sleep, so they don’t hear.” she said to one of the two attendants, who started shaking a vial.

  “Let’s record everything, please.” directed the counselor. And the secretary produced a small camera.

  “Can she lie?” asked Helias.

  “Lie, no, that’s almost impossible. However, she may have been conditioned not to answer certain questions. We’ll know in a minute.” answered the girl. “My name is Athika, since you’re wondering. And you’re Helias. Pleased to meet you.” And she smiled again.

  “Everything ready? Please, feel free to begin.”

  Helias and the professor looked at each other, and Helias signaled to the professor with his chin, indicating that he should start. The counselor began to pace back and forth.

  “What is your name?” asked the professor.

  “Kathia.” answered Athika, who relayed the answers as they appeared in Kathia’s mind.

  “Kathia, and then?”

  “Kathia Four. But I’m registered as Kathia Cousins.”

  “Why did you betray your sister, Kathia Two, known as Bodieur?”

  “I didn’t betray anybody, I just do my job. Who can say which one’s the traitor?”

  Athika, seeing the professor’s inquiring glance, added “She’s sincere.”

  Helias, impatient, tapped the professor’s arm.

  “Where’s Kathia Two now?”

  “I don’t know.” And Athika nodded, confirming that the answer was sincere.

  “When did you substitute her?”

  “As soon as she left prison. Or rather, I left instead of her.”

  “What’s become of her? Has she been harmed?” cut in Helias.

  “One question at a time.” chided Athika. “Anyway, she doesn’t know.”

  “Who do you work for?” the professor resumed.

  “I receive orders and I’m paid, but I don’t know by whom.”

  “How do the contacts take place, by email?”

  “No, physical mail and cell.”

  “What code do you call?”

  “No code, it’s a direct line.”

  “The postal address?”

  “I only receive.”

  “What?”

  “The credits.”

  “Where is your cell now?”

  “Where it belongs. But I ‘burnt’ it when you captured me.”

  “So there’s no way of tracing your ‘employer’?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “How were you contacted the first time?”

  “I received the cell in the mail.”

  “Why did you accept this assignment?”

  “Because I had just lost my job. And because they told me it was a question of planetary security, like my previous assignments.”

  The professor was about to formulate another question, but the counselor stopped him.

  “Excuse me, professor.”

  “Please.”

  “Where is Mattheus?”

  “Which one?”

  “‘Our’ Mattheus.”

  “In the capital, I think.”

  “Of Alkenia?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have a base there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where, exactly?”

  No answer.

  “She knows, but she’s been conditioned not to reveal it.”

  “Is there any way to get around the conditioning?”

  “I don’t think so. On the contrary, if we insist she’s likely to lose all memory of it.”

  “Is Mattheus okay?”

  “He’s not been harmed, as far as I know.”

  “How many people, in addition to you three, are involved in this business?”

  “Another four.”

  “Where are they?”

  “In the capital.”

  “Where?”

  “Don’t insist. You’ll just make her suffer, and it won’t do any good.”

  “When was Mattheus taken away?”

  “A bit before you arrested us.”

  “With the red diskette?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he give it to you?”

  “We questioned him. For a long time. He was excellent. For a while he made us believe that he hadn’t found it, in the place Helias told him about. Eh, Helias…. But at the end, with a massive dose, he blabbed. Right when that fox, over the cell, was sending me to the wrong place. They called me right away. By then, Mattheus had spilled everything, even where he had found the diskette. And so I discovered that he was taking me for a ride, and we went to him.”

  While Athika was telling them all this, they looked at each other in surprise.

  “Why is she giving us all these details, without our even asking?”

  It was Athika who answered.

  “She’s beginning to relax. Wait. Now she’s thinking of Helias. Oh-ho! Wow! But what were you up to in the infirmary? Oh, no!”

  And Athika looked Helias up and down, archly.

  Helias blushed bright red.

  “I…. I didn’t know that…. In fact, that was exactly when I started to have doubts…. I mean to say�
�. Kathia usually…. But she, on the other hand…, she, how to put this, she got me…, the other way round. Well, you know, it was different. And anyway it’s none of your business….”

  Uproarious laughter. Laughter almost to the point of tears, in Athika’s case.

  “Wait, there’s more….” And Athika went back to relaying the girl’s thoughts.

  “Having a good time? Me, not so much…. Why don’t you wake me up and let’s put an end to this? By now you’ve convinced me, anyway….”

  “What’s she saying? What’s going on?” Helias, still red, asked Athika.

  “She’s, so to speak, coming over to our side. Don’t forget she’s also reading your thoughts. And, in particular, she read Helias quite a bit, starting much earlier….”

  And here a wink at Helias, now redder than ever, was something Athika simply couldn’t forego.

  “Basically, it seems she’s coming around to the conviction that she was on the wrong side. That ‘the others’ had misled her about you. Wait a sec…. Yes…. Yes…. Got it…. Sure, I’ll tell them. As I suspected…. Major revelation…. It appears that the…, uhm, ‘gifts’ of our champion here had a decisive role in this.”

  This time Helias too, after burying his face in his hands, joined the general laughter. Only the secretary refrained from laughing as, all business, he continued to record, keeping his distance.

  But the laughter died out almost immediately, as Kathia’s first moans were heard.

  “And now this, even….”, tone-deaf, one of the ‘nurses’ lamely joked.

  “She’s not well.” said Athika with concern.

  “How’s that? What’s going on?” asked the professor.

  “It’s as if her higher brain functions are being blocked. She’s losing consciousness, slowly.”

  The professor hurried to the gurney.

  “Where’s the cell? Where did she say she had it?”

  “She was searched. It wasn’t on her….” answered Athika.

  The professor felt Kathia’s neck.

  “Damn! It’s here. An adhesive strip, perfectly camouflaged.”

  And he tore it off.

  “Check the other two for them as well. Remove them and take them away. Have them examined.”

  And two more strips were found and taken to the laboratory.

  “Silence! I can still hear something….” said Athika.

  “I knew it…, that there was a catch…. They’ve heard everything…. And now they’re having their revenge….”

  Then Athika added “She’s fading.”

  “Kathia, listen! Give us a lead….” said the professor.

  “Airships…. No, airport…. Roads….”

  “Go on!”

  “Nothing. I can’t make out anything anymore. I think it was ‘Airport Road’.”

  Athika stood listening for a while longer, then, complying with a request from the professor, she approached the other two gurneys. And shook her head.

  “Nothing. Nothing here either.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Helias.

  “Unconsciousness. Practically a vegetative state.”

  “But is it reversible?”

  “Who can say? We’ll get them to the infirmary right away. We’ll let you know.”

  “But what happened?”

  The professor answered.

  “As far as I’ve understood, in the event of danger they were supposed to sabotage their cell. Or that’s what they thought they had done. In actual fact, they had activated it in such a way that the people at the other end could hear everything and, if they saw fit, could also send certain signals, with the devastating effect we’ve just seen.”

  “Beasts!” exploded Helias.

  “Let’s go back.” said the counselor. “To find out about this Airport Road. I’ve also got trusted men in the capital who can start investigating on site.”

  While others investigated, Helias and the professor returned to the office to take stock of the situation.

  “So, in practice, while we know almost nothing about them, they know everything. Now we’ve let ourselves be spied on like fools. And before that, they must have interrogated Kathia in prison, to the point where they knew the smallest details and could trick us by replacing Kathia and Mattheus…. Professor, are you listening to me?”

  “Yes, yes…. I was thinking…. Go on….”

  “The weird thing is that it all began with a sort of favor you did for your pal Nudeliev. Then you got me involved in it…. And now we have a kind of war on our hands. With three people in a coma back there. And Kathia and Mattheus lost, locked up who knows where—and that’s if we want to be optimistic, otherwise…. Not to mention my parents, since I haven’t a clue where they might be. Pretty cheerful, the whole business. And we don’t even know who we’re fighting against, or what exactly they want. Now they’ve got the diskette. And so what do they do? They just about kill three people…. For what reason? Out of fear that we would get them back? We, who? A handful of odds and sods, working off our own bat and trying to prevent nebulous and unspecified future catastrophes which may or may not come to pass…. You know what they’re going to call us? ‘The daring defenders of the past of a future that’s not yet present’. I’d say we’re all crazy, stark barking mad.”

  “Have you finished?” asked the professor in irked tones, looking at him askance.

  “You want me to tell you the truth, professor? If it weren’t for all the people who are dear to me that are caught up in this mess, and probably in danger, I couldn’t care less about your diskette, red or blue or whatever the hell it is. Who says it’s got to be me to fix all this? What’s it to me? What’s my role in this business, and who got me into it?”

  “Have you finished? Blown off enough steam?”

  “Yes! Or rather, no! I’ll see this through to the end. But only to try and save the people who are dearest to me. Don’t ask me again to find or keep any damn diskettes. I’d rather swallow them whole. And anybody who wants anything else from me can go take a flying….”

  “In fact. Nobody is asking you to.”

  “Ah! Good!… What? Why’s that?…”

  The professor grew pensive.

  “Because they’ve won. They’ve got the diskette. And they’ll keep it. We can’t do anything about it.”

  “And so we’re going to let them get away with it, just like that?”

  “It’s not a question of letting. That’s just the way it is.”

  “I don’t get it. What do you mean?”

  “I mean we’ll do everything we can to free our friends. But as regards the diskette and the time trips, there’s nothing we can do…. Because they’ve already taken place.”

  Helias was unable to speak for a few moments.

  “So we’ve lost. How did you find out?”

  “It was one of the things I looked into, investigated, in these three years. I’ve told you only a very few of these things so far. What I told you earlier, about the mutants and the scientist, is little more than an outline of the events, things that I was only vaguely aware of before. I only tried to fill in whatever details I could, from the documentation I was able to find. But my real investigations were in another area. Which I’ll tell you about after supper, if you like. If you’re not too tired and you’ve calmed down by then. And if you’re interested, obviously.”

  “I’m dead tired, and I need to eat, too. Maybe I’ll feel a bit better afterwards. And I’ll be happy to listen to you. Shall we have supper together?”

  “Why not? Let’s go. Hoping that there’s still something left to eat in the dining hall at this hour. You see, that’s the upside of having been found out, finally….”

  “What is?”

  “That we can trot happily off to the dining hall together, without worrying about prying eyes and eavesdroppers.”

  “Yes?” said the professor, answering his cell.

  They had almost finished eating, in silence, each deep in his own though
ts, in the nearly empty dining hall.

  “Ah, finally some good news….”

  Helias was all ears.

  “Yes…. I see…. But unharmed?… How did they find him?…”

  ‘…find him…’. So it wasn’t Kathia, then. Must be Mattheus.

  Looking over at him, the professor mouthed, “Mattheus.”

  Helias’s pleasure was tinged with disappointment. For a moment he had hoped….

  “They’re bringing him here?… Good…. Thanks for letting me know…. Yes, of course….”

  Helias waited to hear the rest.

  “They’ve found Mattheus, in a pub of some sort in the capital, near the road to the airport. Apparently he’s fine, but in a confused state. Over-drugged, probably. They’re bringing him here. Given his condition, they must have let up their guard, and he managed to escape and call….”

  The cell again. The professor excused himself.

  “Yes?… Please, tell me…. We’d better come…. What’s she say?… Yes, we’re coming immediately.”

  The professor explained, “It seems that Kathia Four is showing some signs of brain activity. It could be transient, so it’s better to be there. A quick cup of coffee? I have the feeling it’s going to be a long night.”

  “Yes, and with lots of sugar, please.”

  “What’s she thinking of?” the professor asked Athika.

  “Earlier, images were circulating, like single photos, with no apparent connection between them. Then some moving images, like interrupted film clips, but all very confused, like the beginning of a dream. Hard to describe, too, particularly since it all seems meaningless. They appear to be random images, welling up again in her mind. A cup with a teaspoon. A swing, swaying back and forth on its own. Other objects, places and landscapes, fairly ordinary ones. Few people, almost none. There’s nobody even on the swing, though it’s moving, but it’s not the wind that’s moving it.”

  “Can we try to ask her some questions?”

  “I don’t think she’ll respond. I tried to call her by name earlier: no reaction.”

  “What’s that screen? Some kind of electroencephalogram?” asked Helias.

  “Something of the sort, but very advanced and sensitive. It separates the various layers of brain activity, distinguishing between the individual cortical areas. That’s how we noticed the first images.”