Shift

by Chris Dolley

  "Write something on it. Print as large as you can. I can't see too well up there."

  Louise took the paper and looked around for a pen.

  "Put the paper wherever you want. Somewhere I can't see from the bed but could from the ceiling. And make sure the writing's facing upward. This is mind projection, not magic."

  He switched on the imagers, checked the connections, showed Louise how to use the remote. Then jumped on the bed, shuffled into position, took a deep breath and tried to relax.

  Doubt. Would it work? Would he have to think himself into a near death experience again?

  He slowed his breathing, prepared a vent to drain all doubt. Things were different now. He'd snapped the membrane. Separating would be easy. A piece of cake.

  He closed his eyes, imagined success, conjured up images of his mind as a separate entity, held that image, strengthened it, imagined it lifting, rising, floating free and . . .

  The bed appeared . . . and the ceiling, the boxes, Louise. His 360-degree up down, all around vision was back. He'd done it!

  Where was the note? He froze in mid-air and tried to stabilise his rippling vision. There was something white on a box in the far corner. He sucked it towards him. The room shifted in an instant. He was hovering over it—words, letters dancing at the edge of his perception. There were five words, one much longer than the others. He tried to blink; he tried focussing his vision to the side of the note. Nothing appeared to work. The words washed up and down, patches clearing—was the first word Pete?—then hazing over again. The third word was 'is' the second had 'dennis' in the middle. Peter Pendennis? More patches cleared, two or three letters at a time. The message unravelling. Peter Pendennis is in prison.

  He flew back to the bed, lined his mind up with that imaginary hole in the top of his head and let himself be sucked inside.

  "Very funny," he said, opening his eyes. "And you mispelt 'isn't' because Peter Pendennis very definitely is not in prison."

  Louise stared at him open-mouthed. Which pleased him. A round of applause would have been better but open-mouthed astonishment was always appreciated.

  "You really did it," she said, glancing back to point at the holo-image of his brain. "You disappeared for about a minute. You just lifted straight out. No stretching membrane. Nothing. Just whoosh and you were gone."

  Whoosh . . . he liked that. Whoosh and soar. And in a few minutes time he'd be whooshing and soaring again. This time all the way to Upper Heywood.

  * * *

  But first he had to prepare. He'd need to memorise the roads around Upper Heywood. And maybe take a look at that ley line. Didn't someone compile a ley line map of Great Britain a few years back?

  He searched the web, skimming through the twilight zone of crank pages that anything to do with the paranormal attracted until he found the site he'd been looking for: Ley Line Atlas of the United Kingdom.

  "What are ley lines?" asked Louise, leaning over his left shoulder.

  "No one knows," said Nick, aligning the map. "At one time they were thought to be old roads—straight tracks linking important prehistoric sites. But they're far more than that. And more widespread. Everywhere you look—Europe, America, Polynesia, China—you'll find references to lines of power and dragons."

  "Dragons?"

  "Large animal, serpent-like, breathes flame . . . "

  She punched him on the shoulder.

  "I know what a dragon is!"

  "Ah, but this is the old type of dragon, before renaissance painters and Disney got hold of them. These are the wyrms, far more serpent-like. Imagine you're a prehistoric shaman on an out-of-body flight and you see a ley line for the first time. What's it going to look like to you? A fiery snake stretching from horizon to horizon? Cue dragon legend."

  "It really looks like a fiery snake?"

  "Depends what you've been smoking. But Norse legend has stories about fiery serpents—wyrms—that encircle the world. The druids called them Nwyvre—serpent lines—and the Chinese called them lung mei—dragon lines of Earth energy. And this line," he paused to magnify a section of the holo-image. "Used to be called the dragon line because it linked so many sites with dragon legends."

  He froze the image and stared at it. There it was. The ley line he'd followed to Avebury.

  "They call it the Michael and Mary line now—after all the churches called St. Michael along its route. Early church 101—if you have a local dragon legend to contend with, name your church after a dragon-slaying saint."

  "And Mary?"

  "A later addition when the line was found to be twinned. Two lines coiling around each other—one's got to be male, the other female, right? The classic yin and yang. So along came Mary."

  He traced the path of the line. It rose from Land's End in Cornwall and bisected the country until sinking into the sea off Norfolk. If he'd kept going from Avebury the next stop would have been Glastonbury. Would he have seen a spectral Camelot glowing in the higher dimensional haze?

  "But what are they?" pressed Louise. "Hasn't anyone analysed what they're made of?"

  "What with? We've only just developed cameras that can see the higher dimensions. Analysis is years away. And up until last year no one had even thought to point an imager at a ley line. That is until a certain boy genius stunned the scientific world and proved their existence."

  He turned to face her. "I might win an award, you know?"

  Louise groaned. "For what? Lying about your age, boy genius? And, anyway, what are you doing looking at ley lines? I thought you were planning your route to Oxford."

  "I am. Ley lines are the shining interstates of the higher dimensions. You can see them for miles. All you have to do is focus on the horizon and pull them towards you whereas on the road you're limited by bends and having to slow down to look for turn offs and read road signs."

  And they were sexy. Why travel by road when you could fly by ley?

  He zoomed in on a section of the line where it transected Devon and superimposed a road map. The apartment was only a few miles north of the line. If he headed south-east from the bedroom window he couldn't miss it. He ran his finger along the line, scrolling the image past Avebury towards Oxford and Upper Heywood. It passed within a dozen or so miles. All he'd have to do was count the number of ley intersections and then slow down until he hit a road.

  And hope the map was accurate. But even if it wasn't it couldn't be that far out, could it? He traced the route he'd travelled earlier. The map showed three lines intersecting at Avebury. Accurate so far.

  "How are you going to recognise Pendennis if you can't see that well?" asked Louise.

  "It's not that bad. You just have to concentrate and be patient. Anyway, Pendennis stands out. He's the only one who looks like an evil twelve year-old."

  "But what if you miss him? You've got to stop off at every room and wait for your vision to clear. What if Pendennis moves from one room you hadn't seen to one you'd already checked? You'd come back here claiming he wasn't there when in fact he was."

  "Upper Heywood's not that big. Anyway, I'll be thorough. If . . . when I find that Peter's missing, I'll check out Ziegler and the governor. Someone'll be panicking."

  But would they be talking? And would he be able to hear them if they were? He wasn't going to say anything to Louise but the lack of sound in the higher dimensions worried him. There was nothing in the NDE reports that suggested hearing was impaired. Maybe he was upper dimensionally deaf? Or maybe sound didn't penetrate that far into the upper dimensions and he had to position himself closer?

  He pushed the negative thoughts aside. First he had to find Pendennis's empty cell, the rest he could worry about later.

  He flew straight out the window, aiming south-east this time, using a large oak tree by the road as a guide. He accelerated, blurring the ground beneath him as he raced towards the skyline, slowing momentarily as he caught sight of the ley then swinging to the left and aligning his trajectory with the golden line.

 
Speed. Infinite and exhilarating. The ley line so close he could feel every turn and dip, leaning into bends like a downhill racer, the landscape and the sky a blur. Intersections flashed by. He counted them: two, three, four. Not even slowing for Glastonbury or Avebury, noting their brilliance as passing dots—knots on a golden thread that traversed the country, the entire globe for all he knew.

  More intersections, more speed, he could probably circle the world in a matter of minutes if he really cut loose.

  Or disappear into a featureless void.

  The last intersection flashed by. He slowed. The world slowing with him, streaks becoming blurs, blurs becoming houses. He accelerated again, keeping his speed in line with his ability to see. The map showed three major roads crossing the line somewhere in this vicinity. Any of them would do. All would take him north towards Oxford. He slowed at the first road junction—too small—the second—only a spur road—the third—a dual carriageway.

  He took it, rising to above tree height to extend his field of vision, selecting a distant lorry and pulling it towards him, latching onto the next, clawing his way to Oxford and beyond.

  Upper Heywood lay beneath him. Low, flat-roofed buildings laid out in bays and blocks. You could still make out the runway and the line of the old perimeter fence from when it had been an air base. He circled the site, spiralling lower, wondering which wall to penetrate first. Should he start at the main entrance and proceed clockwise? Or should he be more selective? Wouldn't there be some sort of security control room—a place where all the feeds from the surveillance cameras were routed to?

  He drifted through the glass reception doors, past the guards, through the security doors into a long corridor. Slowly, he stretched to his left, into the fabric of the corridor wall and beyond . . . into a room. He stopped. He was straddling two worlds: the room and the corridor. Looking at both at the same time. The effect was . . . astounding. He drifted further to the left. The corridor disappeared. He drifted back to the right. It returned. How thick was the wall? Nine inches, more? If he could span that then . . . what kind of eye did he have? Not a singularity. And it didn't feel as though he had more than one eye. Could his entire surface be a receptor? One giant imperfect eyeball that could span a wall?

  A little voice coughed from somewhere deep within his mind. Research could wait, now there was a job to do.

  He quartered the first bay, straddling the walls to cover both corridor and rooms at the same time, stopping whenever he saw someone, taking time to let their faces clear then racing off again. He proceeded bay by bay. Some bays were cell blocks; others were offices, store rooms, wards, canteens, recreational blocks. All joined together by a labyrinth of near-identical white corridors.

  He turned into the next bay: a long central corridor with an avenue of paired doors—cells, no doubt. He stretched into the first room and froze. Someone was sitting cross-legged on the floor. Someone in a red track suit.

  Nick strained to see the man's face. Pendennis had been dressed in red when he'd attacked Louise. It wasn't the normal prison uniform—everyone else he'd seen so far had been in green or orange. Was it peculiar to this bay? Was red reserved for high risk prisoners?

  Or just Pendennis?

  He stifled the thought. It couldn't be Pendennis. Pendennis had escaped.

  Hadn't he?

  The figure on the floor didn't move. Nick floated closer, swinging to the left to get a better view of the man's face. Was it Pendennis? He looked the right size. Small, slightly built. But that could apply to any kid, maybe Upper Heywood were taking in juveniles now?

  The face rippled before him, the forehead clearing then the chin, a shifting heat haze obscuring then revealing then . . .

  . . .shattering every presumption that Nick had constructed over the past twenty-four hours.

  Peter Pendennis was sitting cross-legged on the floor. And even worse. He was smiling. His eyes looking straight at Nick.

  Nick shot to his left. Only a few feet but he had to make sure. Would Pendennis's eyes follow? Was he really looking at him?

  The room flowed and rippled. Teasing glimpses, then slowly Pendennis's face cleared. His eyes hadn't moved. Neither had the smile.

  Chapter Twelve

  Louise wasn't surprised at Nick's news.

  "I've been thinking while you've been away," she said. One of the by-products of an hour spent cleaning the kitchen. Plenty of time to allow the mind to wander. "Remember you asked me who else could have a motive to frame you?"

  Nick grunted a reply which Louise took for a yes. He hadn't moved from his bed since he returned. Now he was sat on its edge, head in hands and looking like a sad bloodhound whose owner had just died.

  "You forgot about the Americans," she said, waiting for a reaction.

  "What Americans?" said Nick, his face still buried, his voice distracted.

  "Think about it. You send a message to SHIFT asking for John Bruce's brain scan and the next day someone frames you for murder."

  Nick looked up. "I hardly think NASA . . ."

  "Why not?" Louise jumped in. "If something happened to John Bruce during the SHIFT flight and they covered it up . . ."

  "No." Nick tried to wave Louise's argument away. "NASA may be obsessed with image but they're not going to kill to protect it."

  "You don't know what they're capable of."

  "But why kill? All they'd need do is doctor the scans and the problem goes away. No need to kill anyone."

  He looked tired and frustrated but Louise pressed. She'd been thinking of nothing else for the past hour and knew she was on to something. If only because nothing else made sense.

  "Couldn't you tell if the scans had been doctored?"

  "I'm an astropsychologist not a computer scientist."

  "But they wouldn't know that. You could be talking to anyone. At the college, friends . . ."

  He shook his head then reverted to staring at the floor.

  "Okay, so what about this." Louise switched the HV back on. "I was checking this when you rematerialised."

  A picture of John Bruce arriving outside a restaurant appeared.

  "That's from two nights ago. He's attending a SHIFT reunion."

  Louise waited for a response. Her turn to play the stage magician.

  "So?" said Nick.

  "So that was the day you sent the query to SHIFT. What would be more natural than an old colleague passing on a warning?"

  Nick looked baffled. "What warning?"

  Louise rolled her eyes. Was he being deliberately obtuse?

  "Think about it. He's in the middle of an election campaign. How's a request for his old brain scans going to be viewed? Someone's going to think dirty tricks. If not John then one of his handlers or backers. And I've seen some of the organisations that are supposedly backing him. Right wing extremists."

  She had his attention. "John Bruce is linked to right-wing extremists?"

  "Some of his supporters are. I'm not saying John's an extremist but he's attracted money from unsavoury characters. And that's all it takes. One madman who hears about your enquiry and sees it as an attempt to discredit John Bruce by saying his brain was damaged in the SHIFT flight."

  "But why frame me for murder? Why not frighten me off? Two large men on the doorstep would have sufficed. A bribe would have been nice."

  "You're assuming these people were thinking straight . . ."

  "No," he jumped to his feet. "I don't buy that. If someone wanted me out of the way why not kill me? And why not do it quietly? Scattering body parts all over Oxford is a sure-fire way of attracting publicity. And If I'm still alive I can shout dirty tricks and point my finger at John Bruce. That would be the last thing they'd want."

  She'd thought of that too. "What if the point wasn't to kill you but to warn you off? Think about it. They don't know if you're working on your own or with a group. So they send everyone a message. Back off or it'll get a hell of a lot worse."

  He paced between the boxes before swinging r
ound and shaking his head.

  "But I didn't get the message, did I? I thought it was Pendennis."

  "But they wouldn't have known about Pendennis. You said it yourself, remember? How many Mafia bosses have I pissed off this week? Replace Mafia with 'dubious right wing organisations' and you'd have your answer. And think about the victim's tongue being cut out. An obvious warning for someone to keep quiet."

  "And the nose?"

  That was a problem . . . but she had an answer.

  "Maybe that was a message too. Don't speak, don't look, don't touch, don't listen and don't poke your nose where it doesn't belong."

  Nick shrugged. "What's the point of a message you need a PhD in lateral thinking to understand?"

  "But they wouldn't see it like that, Nick. These people are obsessives. They eat, drink and sleep politics. To them everything would be about the campaign and they'd assume you were the same."

  Nick sighed. "Maybe you're right."

  He didn't look convinced.

  Nick commandeered the HV remote while Louise prepared lunch. Maybe there was a news item on Pendennis's recapture. Something to resurrect his failing theory.

  He voiced in 'Pendennis' and selected recent news. An apologetic news anchor appeared. "Sorry," she said. "We have nothing on that item."

  He slumped forward, feeling the weight of the world once more pressing down upon his shoulders. Had Upper Heywood managed to keep Pendennis's escape and recapture a secret? Or was Louise right—he hadn't escaped in the first place?

  Doubt. Despite what Louise said he was reluctant to let go of Pendennis as a suspect. He'd seen Pendennis in action. He'd seen the body. He'd seen the newsreels.

  But . . .

  He grabbed the remote again. Who were these dubious backers that Louise had talked about? He voiced in 'John Bruce' and 'organised crime' and selected news and documentaries. Back came the apologetic news anchor.