Shutdown, I commanded. At 19,000 feet I heard one of my passengers gasp as they regained consciousness. The slight movement that followed meant that they both fell off. Without any of their own means of flight they both accelerated past me, so I let myself drop at my full terminal velocity. I was no physicist but I knew enough to realise that the air resistance of a sphere was atrocious. Cannonballs came to mind as I fell past them and I attempted to gather how alive they were. One was tumbling around and they were either already dead, or still unconscious, the other had spread their arms and legs out, evidence of some skydiving training. I started firing my pulse weapon at three-second intervals directly into the centre of the Siberian crater from 7,000 feet up. The frozen crust was over fourteen feet, but only the first few feet were water—the rest was methane. The intent was to break up the water and methane ice into fine shards. The top of the lake would still act like a solid, although it had been weakened. Solids were denser, so it would slow us down far faster than a liquid. I was turning it into soft snow. The ice below it would shatter and then the liquid below would make the lake act like a giant airbag. I hit it at 170 knots, and it turned instantly into foam-like sponge. It should have been perfect, but whilst two life forms bounced, as predicted, I ended up embedded about six feet into the ice.
‘Confirm shutdown?’ asked the computer.
I started using my pulse weapon again to clear away the slush, which was rapidly re-freezing around me, but it ended up dislodging more below, so I sank even deeper into it. Everything was freezing. The sensors indicated that it was minus 27 degrees, and just as I fell, so did the temperature. It made little difference to me; the outside air temperature had dropped to minus 55 degrees at the tropopause and I hadn’t sensed a thing, but this was not ideal for the people I was trying to save.
Activating my infrared sensors, I peered through the ice. One body lay motionless and had partially sunk into the lake. I could see the heat literally bleeding out of them. The other person was crawling along. My coms device activated, a blip and then the influx of electro-magnetic chatter.
‘Mayday, mayday, mayday strike command, this is Foxtrot 2121. Have performed forced landing within the Tunguska Exclusion Zone, request auto triangulate for exact position. Have prisoner.’
Shutdown, I ordered.
‘Negative.’
I have control.
‘Order invalid.’
It was of no use. Despite being buried several feet in a frozen, deserted wilderness thousands of miles away from my launch site, the interference signal was clearer than ever. Again all I could do was observe as the ‘prisoner’ kept crawling. I hoped that they would escape, but that hope was dashed as I watched via infrared as more humans ran on the ice and dragged them away, followed by repetitive thud-thud-thud vibrations as drilling equipment was deployed to extract my sphere partner and me.
How could I have done things differently? If I’d aimed south-easterly we could have plunged into a lake. I would have had to slow down to below 30 knots for it to be survivable, so my passengers would have had a slightly longer journey time, but I might have sunk and they could have drowned. I consoled myself that I might have saved one life, as I felt the familiar tranquilised feeling. I was being switched off and hoped to never be turned on again, not in this life.
‘Reset!’
THREE WEEKS
LATER:
The Bunker, 1996
Apparently that creepy old Konrad had become ill and hadn’t been able to leave Deerden. He kept glancing over at me now as I tried to eat my eggy bread. I couldn’t help but feel queasy near him. He sat sideways beside the kitchen table, watching a portable television set.
‘I’ve never seen such a small colour TV set, when did we get that?’ I asked, having never seen even seen one at the Bond Street Beriozka outlet.
My father didn’t look up from his precious newspaper, and Konrad’s head tilted to the side, with one eye on me and another on the screen. His antique brain struggling to think of a suitable answer, without missing what was said or shown. The BBC news service broadcasting the familiar images of war from one far off land to another. Peculiar, how I took these images for granted, and hardly watched; yet how disturbing death was when I was close to it. Deerden was my castle, a place to keep me safe; so the last thing I ever wanted to do here was watch the news.
‘Its military tech—you know how they’re always light-years ahead of anything in the shops,’ said Vera at last.’ Konrad needs it to stay abreast of what’s going on in the middle east.’
She must have heard the term “light-year” somewhere, as I was convinced that it was a concept beyond her understanding.
‘They’re always fighting over there!’ I said looking away from the screen.
I had received a call on my mobile from my dad three days ago saying that Frankie had been found dead in the woods. Tom had picked me up from school last night, and it felt very odd returning in such circumstances. The excitement of going home when I should be at school jarred uncomfortably with my guilt over not being more upset. There was this awful morbidity around everyone, yet they seemed to actively avoid talking about what happened, which was really frustrating. Dad just read the newspaper, like he did every morning. I yearned for him to look up, but he seemed so engrossed.
‘Now, you will be sure to dress appropriately tomorrow, Vicky—all black,’ said Vera.
‘Of course, it’s hardly my first funeral, you know,’ I snapped back.
She looked sheepish for a moment, and I caught Dad giving her a brief glare. Good, you bitch; you imagine what it’s like to be at your mother’s funeral at six years old.
‘It says here that the rebels used a new kind of shell,’ my father said, leaning over towards Konrad and pointing at some article, before Konrad snatched the paper off him.
‘What, how did they get hold of that information?’ Konrad asked, but both my father and Vera said nothing.
I knew his question was more senile muttering than genuine enquiry, but I did enjoy seeing him irate. So I just couldn’t help myself.
‘They’re a newspaper—aren’t they meant to report the news?’ I asked, before filling my mouth with a large, warm piece of croissant.
My father occupied himself turning the page of his paper, and I may have imagined it, but Vera looked like she smiled very briefly. Konrad stared right back; looking at me as if I was an alien and I instantly regretted what I said. I preferred his face when only one eye was on me. In fact, none would be the preferable state. So why could I not help but provoke him?
‘You’re so naive. Military information like that needs to be kept secret.’
‘I understand that,’ I swallowed the rest of my croissant before carrying on, ‘our stuff should be secret, but people should know what the enemy possess—surely?’
My father finally looked up, his mouth even opened, before Konrad raised his hand, palm facing my father’s face. The implied gesture to ‘shut up’ altogether was embarrassingly clear.
‘So if I told you that they used a shell with Plutonium in it, what would you think?’
‘I would think that they may have used a radioactive substance that is very dangerous and best kept behind layers of concrete and lead. I thought that even experimenting with that was banned, since the Sellafield and Agadir incidents?’
‘Precisely. It is banned. I bet you don’t even know what a nuclear blast is?’
‘No, should I?’
‘No. Because if you did, you would be very afraid. So the information they have just released, is the tip of the iceberg.’
‘To a secret that could lead to mass panic?’ I asked, intrigued more than scared.
‘Naive, but smart nevertheless,’ he said in a disconcertingly, approving manner. I preferred him despising me. ‘I’ve seen what deep fear can do: whole civilisations collapse into anarchy, or become paralysed by it.’
He turned his face back to the military-grey TV set. I watched him intently for a fe
w seconds, hoping to spot a tear, some evidence of a regretful life. There would be no tear, but there was a sadness that filled the room, something ominous and shared. Was the collapse of a civilisation such a bad thing? Didn’t new ones rise? This old man looked like he had been twisted by all the pain that he kept locked inside him. I concluded that he was scared that if the population of our great and glorious Soviet Union, that crossed all around the globe, linking Europe, to Asia and to North America knew about this weapon, they would do whatever it took to encourage us to surrender. Surrender was the logical course to take, if the odds had become that dire. I said none of this.
My father then passed the paper to Konrad and whispered to him as he pointed at it again. I hadn’t seen Dad for four weeks; the first phone call I got from him on my mobile was to tell me about a fatality, and he was still more interested in talking to a senile old pervert than his own daughter. I’d eaten my breakfast and my cup of tea was cold. Time to leave.
‘So Dad, does Jane still work here?’ I asked pointedly.
‘Who?’ he asked.
I was surprised that he couldn’t remember her, considering the fuss he’d made before about the staff not being ‘our’ staff. My father seemed more aloof than usual, not even looking up from his paper.
‘Think I’m going to go and talk to her, am I excused?’ I asked, intentionally directing my question at Vera. Why ask someone something, when they couldn’t even care to look at you? Although it was Dad who answered.
‘Very well, dear, but before you go, I think Konrad has a question for you.’
Konrad hesitated, as if my father had put him on the spot. I tapped my foot impatiently and wondered just how much time this old creep had left. He reached over the table and, leaning forward, passed me the paper. I noticed a small black square on top of his head that was protruding out. I could not resist the chance to ask him something first.
‘What’s that on the top of your head?’
‘Vicky, you do not—’ started Vera indignantly, but Dad interrupted her.
‘Vera, it is a valid question!’
She blushed visibly as I sang and danced inside, but my attention was drawn to Konrad, who slumped back in his chair, tapping the side of his coffee mug.
‘You tell me, child,’ he said.
‘I have no idea. It looks like metal, or black plastic maybe?’
‘Plastic! There was no actual plastic in 1916. Still no idea what caused it?’
‘No,’ I said simply, looking away from his lingering stare.
Dad interrupted. ‘Read the article, chick, it’s on smallpox; we’d like to know what you think.’
I looked down and began to read, all the time feeling three pairs of eyes burning into me. I read it as fast as I could, but I knew my father liked detail, so not knowing if I was about to be tested, I was careful to not skip any.
‘Well, it’s about extremists using smallpox as a biological attack at Crossroads in Cape Town.’ I read on. ‘Apparently it spread rapidly due to poor sanitation before it was picked up.’
‘Yes, yes, and what do you think about that?’ asked Konrad impatiently.
‘It’s so sad! Twenty have died already, and they reckon hundreds more will die yet,’ I said, knowing that he wanted me to pick up the discussion we’d had on this before.
‘Is that all?’
‘I’m not going to say you were right before; just because some stupid nutters think they can use a disease as a weapon doesn’t mean we should. Does it, Dad?’
‘I think I brought you up to know right from wrong, and I love how the world looks though the eyes of a child.’ Dad was smiling.
‘Oh come on, Milo, she’s hardly a child!’ interjected the old creep.
‘No?’ Dad said sharply, momentarily holding a frightful stare with Konrad. ‘Child or not, I was going to say that I do have to disagree with you, Vicky. We must do whatever it takes to defend our state, I’m afraid!’
Konrad looked smug. I could sense the tension between them. Andreas had told me Dad had left Austria because of him, yet they still agreed over this. Wasn’t Dad meant to be a doctor who saves lives? But before I could answer, Konrad rubbed the top of his head.
‘It’s gun metal—gun metal from a British gun. Your father says that it goes in so deep that to remove it could cause more damage, so I’ve lived with it all this time.’
‘I assume his was a second opinion, you didn’t just wait fifty years or so?’ Now he looked confused. ‘I mean, my father wasn’t even born in 1916,’ I pointed out.
‘Um, well no.’
Vera was smiling, which was a shame. I didn’t want to be on the same side as her in any discussion. I wondered where he’d got this wound, and it occurred to me that he might have been in Afghanistan, like the Mad Hatter. They must have been a similar age.
‘Did you ever serve in Afghanistan?’ I asked.
‘Austria had no conflict with Afghanistan then. I got this before the First Revolution; our war over there is recent,’ he replied, shaking his head.
‘And you’ll be glad to know that Andreas isn’t there now either,’ my father added. ‘He managed to get himself a promotion and a posting in Akrotiri, Cyprus. A little closer to home, at least, and much safer.’
This breakfast was becoming so bizarre, such strange questions. And I was totally confused about Afghanistan and who was fighting them and when, although the mention of Andreas’ name made me feel a little warm. The information on his posting was not news to me, though. He had called my mobile from the base several times. Apparently he could not call from the front lines, which made sense. I wondered how much he knew about the history of Afghanistan? I would have to make some more late night trips into the school library and read up on it.
‘So my shrapnel wound is news to you?’ Konrad persisted in interrupting my thoughts.
Oh get over yourself; I’m not interested in your wound, your pain, and your creepy, damaged brain. ‘Well, yes.’
‘And the article makes you sad?’ verified my father.
‘It is sad, yes!’ I said, exasperated as I closed it and noted it was The Daily Herald. ‘Sad that the paper thinks that we are stupid enough to believe stuff that is clearly made up so that they can justify keeping smallpox!’
‘That’s an insightful point of view. So you can’t ever remember having smallpox then?’ asked Konrad. ‘And I suppose it would be stupid to presume that you have any idea what your father whispered to me when he passed me the article?’
I pushed back in my own chair, leaning way back so it balanced on its rear legs. I knew Vera hated that, so I did it to stop her smiling. I stared at these three people, who all looked at me expectantly.
‘Is this a test? The article said that until last week, there had not been a case for nearly twenty years! And how could I possibly know whatever it is that you whisper about? Can I go and see Jane now please?’
Dad nodded and I leapt up. As I stomped out I heard Konrad mutter to himself, ‘How can she not know?’
I turned the corner out of the dining room and walked quite literally into Tom.
‘Miss Vicky, glad I found you. I wondered if we could go for a drive?’
I was a little shocked to find him so close to the door and could not help but wonder if he had been eavesdropping.
‘Yes,’ I replied, gathering my thoughts, ‘but I need to go and see Jane first.’
‘Of course. I’ll be in the courtyard when you’re ready.’
I had felt some sort of empathy with Jane before. She’d probably not given me another thought, but her demeanour reminded me of how I was at school. Awkward, scared, and longing to be somewhere else. Maybe that was how I actually felt all the time and in every life. Either way, the feeling was so familiar to me and resonated so deeply that I had been wondering how she was. I also wanted to ask her whom she had called from my mobile on the day I’d returned to school, but needed to get to know her better first. I entered the servants’ quarters.
Without looking up from her casserole pot, the housekeeper replied, ‘She will be picking white roses for tomorrow or collecting ice, I suppose.’
‘Thanks!’ I called as I ran off.
Moments later, I was heading out of the French windows behind the billiard room and into the statuette patio, weaving around the statues and past the emptied swimming pool. The Victorian rose garden lay below me. The sky was grey, and I spotted a tall cloud in the distance that looked distinctly anvil shaped. Whilst on my journey across the Briton Sea, traversing the sea that kept England from the rest of Europe, Adwoliu had taught me that such top-heavy clouds would eventually collapse into a storm. There was no one in the rose garden, so I ran straight back through the billiard room, the hallway, and into the courtyard. Tom was waiting by one of the BMWs, and I called to him that I was still searching for Jane. At last I reached the icehouse. The metal door was ajar.
Peering in, I spied Jane leaning across the ice and using the scoop to fill an old wooden bucket. The scene disconcerted me a little, as it would have fit perfectly in both my Charlie and Richard lives. For a second I had to think who and where I was, until my purpose for being here came back to me.
Paralysis Paradox (Time Travel Through Past Lives Adventure Series Book 1) Page 13