by Gary Gibson
‘Some people only see what they want to,’ said Josef, his voice grim, ‘even when their world is falling apart around them. Especially if their necks are on the chopping block and they think they can save themselves.’
‘But you believe me,’ I said. ‘If anyone understands just how much danger we’re in, it’s you! We can’t allow the Tsar to lay his hands on the Hypersphere, or it could be the end of us.’
He stared out at the great machines far off towards the horizon, his tongue pushed into one corner of his mouth in a way that I knew meant he was thinking hard.
He turned to me at last and shook his head. ‘Katya . . . there’s nothing we can do to stop any of this.’
At first, I thought perhaps I had misheard him. ‘You can’t seriously be suggesting we do nothing?’
‘Do you remember why we were put to work on this project all those years ago? Because the one Hypersphere we had didn’t work – and, to be frank, I always suspected it never would. A working Hypersphere, however, is quite a different matter.’
‘So that’s it?’ I exclaimed, scandalized. ‘We should do nothing? And all those people back in the Republics – don’t you even care about what might happen to them?’
He gave me a look of exasperation. ‘And just what do you think will happen if we refuse to work on it? We’d delay progress by a few weeks, no more. The Syllogikos’ own records make it abundantly clear that an undamaged Hypersphere is child’s play to use, once calibrated.’ He nodded up at the fortress looming above us. ‘Not to mention that non-cooperation would put the families of many of the exiles at terrible risk. I’m truly sorry about what happened to Tomas, but he had no family for Herr Frank to kidnap and murder in retaliation for running away. And Pierre’s wife died in prison long ago, so even if they’d worked out his involvement, they couldn’t have used her to get to him. And they’ll never really hurt you as long as they think they need me.’
I decided not to tell him about Borodin’s carefully worded threat to the contrary. ‘But if they use the Hypersphere,’ I insisted, ‘their families are dead anyway!’
‘Herr Frank has guns and trained soldiers and all of the Crag’s resources.’ He spread his hands. ‘What do we have? Nothing.’ He came closer, clasping me by the shoulders. ‘The fact is, Katya . . . we tried, and they won.’ He leaned towards me, putting heavy emphasis on the words. ‘They won. And there’s nothing we can do to stop the inevitable, however much we might wish otherwise.’
I shook his hands from me, my whole body trembling. ‘All those years of planning,’ I said, ‘all so we could warn people what was going on here. And now you’re telling me we were just . . . wasting our time?’
‘I suppose in a sense we were,’ he said, as mildly as if he were commenting on the weather. ‘As unfortunate as that is.’
I tasted something acrid at the back of my throat. I could not stand to stay there and listen to one more word. I turned and walked away quickly.
‘Katya!’ he called after me. ‘Wait! Where are you going?’
I came to a halt, but did not turn to face him. ‘Borodin sent a prisoner back here. I need to find out what he wants with him.’
‘My advice is to forget about this man, whoever he is. There’s nothing you can do for him or anyone else, not anymore.’
It was too much. I broke into a run, past the green plants in their hydroponics and into the stone passageway leading back into the laboratory.
‘Katya,’ he shouted after me. ‘Katya!’
I ran across the laboratory and boarded the elevator, ignoring the perplexed stares of Sevigny and Agerstrand and the rest of the exiles. None made a move to stop me, not even the guards, who watched idly as I dashed past.
I found my way back to the tiny cell-like room that had been my home for all the years of my exile and collapsed, weeping, beneath its single narrow window. And there I remained, undisturbed, until the morning.
I was awoken by a light tingle in my right leg. I reached down and grasped the security anklet and tried to rip it free, but of course it was firmly locked in place.
I curled up into a ball and tried to ignore it. After another few minutes, the tingling grew to a persistent ache that I knew from bitter experience would only grow far worse if I delayed too long.
I got up and pulled my wardrobe open and found all my old clothes still there. The view out of the window was as bleak and depressing as I remembered. It was like nothing had changed . . . except, of course, that Tomas was no longer alive.
Perhaps my father had been right. Perhaps he was more of a realist than I gave him credit for. The idea that a bunch of old men and women, some barely able to walk more than a few feet without assistance, could take on armed guards and security cameras was ridiculous.
By the time I was dressed, the tingling was close to agony. Only once I had made my way out into the grey dawn light did it abate. I crossed a courtyard towards the main refectory, where I quickly became the centre of attention; the exiles gathered around me, demanding news about the outside world, although I still had little to tell them. My father wasn’t there; most mornings, he was the first into the laboratory.
I drank my thin coffee and ate my pancakes and listened and talked and found out what had happened after I had escaped. Several of them had spent weeks in the interrogation block, half-starved and frozen, before being released. They had known nothing, of course. My father and Pierre had been very careful to keep the escape attempt to themselves. And besides, Herr Frank needed them too badly to risk damaging them too much.
I told them about the Authority and the people I had met there, and most especially about the Pathfinders. I wanted more than anything to tell them about the memory beads – but as my father had reminded me, Herr Frank’s cameras were everywhere, and I dared not risk Borodin’s wrath.
When I arrived at the laboratory with the rest of the exiles, I found my father and Pierre fawning over the new Hypersphere as if it was a newborn baby.
Over the next several days, the laboratory became a frenzy of activity as the new Hypersphere underwent a series of precalibration tests.
I determined to avoid my father at all costs and kept my distance. And there was work to be done, whether I liked it or not. I soon realized that I had forgotten the sheer ubiquity of Herr Frank’s security: even getting near the Hypersphere was going to be extraordinarily difficult, should I make the attempt. Not only was it locked in a steel cage with bars too narrowly spaced for so much as a finger to squeeze past, it had a minimum of two guards standing by it at all times. Cameras watched the laboratory constantly, as did the guards permanently stationed on the walkway high above the floor.
Herr Frank’s men made no secret of the fact they were paying particular attention to me. Worse, reinforcements soon arrived to bolster their numbers, along with several of the Tsar’s own imperial guards, wearing black and gold uniforms and sporting beards thick and long enough to cover their chests.
Whenever I closed my eyes to sleep, I found myself reliving the same nightmare over and over again, of standing in the centre of First Republic Moscow, watching as death fell from the skies.
A week later, I had my first glimmer of hope.
‘What about the sensor array?’
‘It needs to be physically realigned,’ Sevigny explained to me, as people bustled past us in the laboratory. Despite his shrunken frame and hairless scalp, Sevigny was easily the most energetic octogenarian I could ever hope to meet. ‘It’s too difficult to remap the sensors otherwise,’ he continued. ‘I’m telling you this because you’ll have to do most of the calculations.’
‘But they’ll have to open the Hypersphere’s cage first, won’t they? The sensor arrays pass through the gaps in the cage, so . . .’
‘Well, of course.’ He gave me a weary look. ‘And of course, security will be even tighter than it already is for that reason. Worse, we’ve been given only two minutes to carry out the realignment. Can you imagine? Your father protested, ob
viously, but Herr Frank was quite adamant. Two minutes: that’s it. They won’t trust us with any more time than that. You’d think, given the delicacy of such an intricate operation, they’d want to give us as much time as we need, but oh no . . .’
I nodded, no longer listening and letting my hair fan across my face as I leaned over a laboratory workstation. My throat felt dry, and my heart fluttered and shook in my chest like a trapped bird. For two whole minutes, the Hypersphere would be as vulnerable as it was ever going to be – if one disregarded the guards and cameras.
I asked Sevigny to repeat some of what he had said, and then began to work on the calculations, while my mind was somewhere far away. That same evening, and working with the utmost caution, I stole some materials from a supply cupboard and sneaked them, undetected, back to my room.
It had become rapidly clear, soon after my return, why Borodin was so keen to have me involved in the project once again, despite my betrayals. My father’s work had apparently begun to slip badly during my absence. Even though I had largely avoided him since his refusal to help me, I could see nonetheless that he had occasional forgetful moments, and that his fellow exiles were doing their best to cover for him.
Two days after my conversation with Sevigny, and nearly a fortnight after my return, I found myself having my evening meal in the refectory, not far from where Josef sat chatting with some of our colleagues. My hands trembled from nervous exhaustion: apart from working all day, I had spent much of the previous night attempting to construct from stolen materials a crude device I hoped would help me sabotage the Hypersphere during those precious two minutes. I had worked in near-total darkness through the night, with only occasional moonlight to see by.
I chewed and swallowed my food mechanically, and found myself unconsciously tuning into what my father was saying.
‘. . . see the resonance readings from that last test?’ he said. ‘I swear I’ve never seen anything of the kind.’
I took a quick glance over at him, pretending my attention was elsewhere. Leon Gulley, an English exile, sat across from him, looking tired and worn out; Borodin was pushing us hard to finish within the next few days.
‘Why do you ask?’ said Gulley.
‘It’s usually barely detectable,’ Joanna Bertillon explained from beside him. ‘But now we’re seeing higher readings than ever before.’
‘Phenomenal readings, actually,’ said my father. ‘Most times, trying to pick out a resonance signal from background noise is like trying to hear a feather falling from a mile away. But this . . .’ He waved his spoon around.
‘How high are these readings, exactly?’ asked Gulley.
‘Put it this way,’ said Joanna, ‘when the Tsar lays his hands on that thing, the readings are going to be less like a feather falling and more like God stamping on a mountain.’
I froze with a spoonful of borscht halfway to my mouth, my mind spurred into sudden action. Every time a transfer stage connected with another universe, it generated a ripple in the infinite void that contained all possible universes. The more energy used, the stronger the resonance – and the stronger the ripple.
I stood abruptly, sensing I was on the cusp of some revelation. In my haste, my hand brushed my bowl, and sent it clattering to the floor. Several people, including my father, glanced towards me at the sudden commotion.
‘Excuse me,’ I said, hurrying past them and out of the refectory in search of a spare whiteboard. I found one in an unoccupied office across from the main laboratory and quickly covered it in numbers and symbols.
N-spatial resonance: an energy burst, generated by the transfer process and spreading outwards at infinite speed through the medium containing all possible universes: something that could, theoretically, be traced back to its source – except that in most cases the burst was barely detectable.
In most cases.
I checked the figures again and again, but they came out the same: the first time the Hypersphere was used, it would generate a resonance signal powerful enough to be detectable to any alternate with the means to do so. It would be akin to a thunderclap in the void.
And what strange beasts might that bring up from out of the Deeps?
Even Lars Ulven had not been able to find the means by which the invaders detected the whereabouts of the Hyperspheres. He had known only that to use one was to invite destruction. And, unlike him, it was not yet too late for me to act.
Back in my room, I worked feverishly at completing my sabotage device. It was simple, really: a junction box, made from heat-resistant plastic, normally used for splicing together cables as and when required. I had gutted it, replacing its insides with a pair of spring-loaded blades.
I got down on the floor and pulled up a brick beneath my bed, lifting out a packet of cigarettes Joanne had left, forgotten, in the refectory. I took one of the cigarettes out and carefully twisted the filter off.
Next, I opened the plastic case, and carefully – so carefully – inserted the cigarette between the two thin blades. The springs were not so strong, I hoped, that they would crush the cigarette held between them.
The cigarette held. I left the top off the device and placed it on the ledge of my window. Next, I took out a lighter, also stolen from the refectory, and lit the cigarette.
I watched as the crude timer burned down, and the two wires drew closer and closer to each other. I used my hands to waft the smoke out of my part-open window. I didn’t want anyone wondering why my room smelled of cigarettes, when I didn’t smoke.
As the cigarette burned down, the two spring-loaded blades came together . . .
. . . and touched.
I giggled with nervous exhaustion and pushed my balled hand into my mouth to stifle myself. If I spliced together the right cables, when the cigarette burned down, the wires would cause a short-circuit. That, in turn, would trigger a breaker switch, plunging the laboratory into temporary darkness.
A few years ago I might also have had to worry about smoke alarms, but they had gone off with such frequency that Herr Frank had finally ordered their removal: safety had never been one of his priorities.
I tested it again with another cigarette, but it failed to burn down all the way. I drilled more holes in the plastic casing, fighting a growing sense of panic as I worked at the ridiculous little box with its spring-loaded wires. How could so much ride on so little?
When I tested it a third time, it worked. Just.
By then the room stank of cigarettes. If anyone noticed, I’d just have to lie and say I’d taken up the habit.
I carefully disassembled it all and hid it back beneath the loose brick, and slept an uneasy sleep.
NINETEEN
I woke, just an hour later, my heart palpitating. The nightmare was a familiar one: running under an endless grey sky from which vast black shapes tumbled.
Then I saw a figure standing over me in the dim pre-dawn light, and opened my mouth to scream.
A gloved hand clamped down over my mouth, pushing me back down against the mattress. I looked up into the face of one of Herr Frank’s guards. A second guard stood by the open door of my quarters, and next to him stood Herr Frank himself, peering anxiously either way down the corridor outside my room.
‘Don’t waste time,’ he hissed at the guard. ‘And gag her, for God’s sake, before she wakes anyone.’
The guard took away his hand just long enough to shove a thick, greasy rag smelling of oil and sweat between my jaws. Then both guards dragged me kicking and struggling out into the chill night.
Herr Frank led the way, casting furtive glances all around. I didn’t want to imagine where we might be going, or why. They dragged me up steps and down echoing corridors, then aboard a clattering elevator that carried us upwards.
Their grip never loosened once. I was chilled to the bones by the time we reached the second-highest terrace, where the main transfer stage was housed.
I tried to scream around my gag, and kicked and struggled even harder when th
ey took me into the interrogation block. Inside, one of the guards rapped on a door, then pushed me inside.
I found myself standing at one end of a long, darkened booth. One of the guards pulled the door shut, then ripped the gag from my mouth. I gasped for air, desperate to clear the awful taste of the rag from my mouth.
I saw that most of the booth was taken up by two rows of chairs facing a long window that took up one wall. Borodin sat alone in the front row, staring through the glass into a second room.
The ceiling, floor and walls of this other room were entirely covered in white tiles. It reminded me of a hospital operating room. A wheeled metal trolley stood in one corner next to a sink, while a cantilevered steel chair equipped with leather straps sat at the room’s dead centre, its base bolted to the floor.
A man was strapped into this chair, his face so bruised and bloody it took me a moment to recognize him.
Jerry.
A thick rubber band had been looped around the chair’s headrest and forced between his jaws: he could move his eyes, but not his head. The chair was turned sideways to the booth, meaning he couldn’t see me or anyone else inside.
A door opened behind the chair, and a small, neat-looking man in a dark suit entered, turning to face the booth with a nod.
I lurched towards the window, banging my hands on the glass and shouting Jerry’s name. He didn’t react, or show any sign that he had heard me.
‘He can’t hear you,’ said Borodin, shaking a cigarette loose from a packet.
I twisted around to stare at him. ‘What is he doing here?’
He paused to light his cigarette before continuing. Herr Frank hovered near the door of the booth, looking as if he found the whole matter distasteful in the extreme.
‘Answering questions,’ said Borodin. ‘What else?’
‘About what?’ I demanded.
‘How much exactly,’ asked Borodin, ‘did you tell him about us? About the Novo-Rossiyskaya Imperiya?’
I shook my head. ‘Nothing.’
‘Really? Because I’ve had several long conversations with Mr Beche, and he appears to be surprisingly well-informed in that regard.’ Borodin leaned forward in his seat, elbows on knees, and looked at me where I stood next to the glass. ‘Under the tenets of imperial legislation, you’ve committed an act of treason. Do you realize that? People get thrown against a wall and shot for a lot less than that nowadays, Katya.’