by Cowley, Joy
‘Thank you,’ Jancie said, and a feeling of relief washed over her. She moved her head back from Mr Matisse’s hand. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘That’s not the only misunderstanding,’ Matisse said. ‘Tut, tut, naughty girl. You didn’t tell us that you were allergic to shrimp.’
‘No. I didn’t think—’
‘That, and your anxiety about your grandmother, apparently set you off on a sleepwalking nightmare. Now, I’m no shrink, heaven forbid, but even I know that if such a horrendous nightmare isn’t dealt with, it can occur.’
‘Horrendous?’ She tried to remember but all that would come back was the word bald.
‘You told your brother you went upstairs,’ said Mr Matisse.
Jancie froze. His words were like a wind, blowing away shreds of mist from cold dark stairs, steel doors and a horror that gripped her throat and stomach.
‘So, my lovely,’ said Mr Matisse, ‘we are going to break another unbreakable rule. We are going upstairs. You will retrace your steps of the early morning hours and discover what was reality and what was fantasy.’ He stood up. ‘I suppose you realise that I am being hideously lenient with you. Anyone else would have been chucked out for such a transgression. I am doing this, my sweet cherubim, because I believe you have super-model potential. But I should warn you. Break the rules one more time, and you are definitely out.’
Matisse led them up the two flights of stairs to the student floor and then along the hall to the double doors with their NO ENTRY sign.
Then he stopped, his hand on the door. ‘You must give me your word that you will tell nobody, absolutely and utterly no one, what you are going to see upstairs. You don’t even mention that you have been there.’
‘We don’t need to go, sir,’ said Shog, stepping back in a passion of anxiety.
‘Yes, you do, Mr Ashoga,’ said Matisse. ‘Your sister has to deal with her nightmare and she needs your support. Come.’
The stairs were now lit but Jancie remembered the feel of them in the dark and the cold touch of the rail. Yes, yes. This part of the house was cold, no central heating, and there was a door around the next turn.
The pictures came to her indistinct, like a film she had almost forgotten, but the feeling of dread in her was real and immediate. She stayed close to Shog.
At the top of the stairs, Mr Matisse took out a bunch of keys and unlocked the double doors. Jancie felt a break in the film in her head. This was different. She had simply pushed the door to open it.
They were in a small square foyer which had in it a desk and a chair and a tree in a large clay pot. She frowned. This was different, too. The foyer had been bare, last night. But the door on the other side was familiar, steel, with a small window in it. Last night she had thought that it was locked but it wasn’t. It had opened when she turned the handle.
It was locked now. Mr Matisse needed two keys to undo it.
She knew the hallway beyond. It was exactly the same, although now light was pouring in from outside. Windows on the right, four doors on the left. The fear increased inside her. She grabbed Shog’s arm.
With a light and sure step, Mr Matisse approached the first door and pulled the handle. Holding it open, he said, ‘Is this what you saw last night, Jancie?’
Two young men in white lab coats looked at them, their faces blank with surprise. They were at a well-lit bench in front of an elaborate gadget made of glass which sat over a gas burner. Around them were the shelves and bottles that Jancie had seen in half-light.
‘They are setting up a perfume still,’ said Mr Matisse. He nodded at the men. ‘Excuse me, gentlemen. We are on an unscheduled tour.’ Then he shut the door.
He unlocked the second door and opened it. They looked into a large dark shaft. ‘This is the elevator,’ he said. ‘The lab technicians only use the stairs when the elevator is out of order. We also bring our supplies in this way.’ He looked at Jancie. ‘Any sleepwalker who opened this door would plunge down the shaft to an untimely end.’
‘It was locked,’ Jancie said.
‘But door number three was not locked,’ said Mr Matisse, ‘and this is where your nightmare assumed psychotic proportions.’
‘No,’ said Jancie, shaking her head. ‘The third door was locked, too.’
Mr Matisse was rattling through his bunch of keys. ‘We have always had the fashion design centre on the top floor on the other wing. But two years ago, there was no cosmetic laboratory. This side of the top wing was public, a part of the student recreation facilities. Which, of course, explains why there are still stairs to it from your dormitory. There. Got it!’ The lock turned and he threw open the door.
Jancie blinked. It was a large bright room, white as a hospital operating theatre. In it were four empty glass and steel beds, curved like cocoons, with wires and computer screens set by each.
She looked round, confused. ‘This isn’t it.’
‘It used to be our sunbed room, where the students could get a safe, monitored tan to suit their skin type, but it hasn’t been operational in two years. Now we are about to turn it into another lab—for hair care products.’ Matisse put a hand on her shoulder. ‘You said something to your brother about a dead body.’
His words brought in another memory. ‘McCready!’ she cried.
‘Look,’ said Matisse, turning her towards the other side of the room.
Jancie sucked in her breath. Against the wall was a steel trolley and on it, shining like a steel mirror, was the tubular cocoon with the lid.
Mr Matisse seized the handles and pushed the lid back. Inside there was a figure, dressed in a white shift.
She cried out and grabbed Shog by the shirt. Then she relaxed and looked again at the bald plastic dummy. It was a mannequin.
‘McCready is in Paris,’ said Mr Matisse.
Jancie pressed her fingers against her eyes as though the gesture would help her to understand. When she took her hands away, the figure on the trolley was still a hollow resin model with a blank face and a bald head with glue patches and a few strands of nylon hair.
‘This is what you saw,’ said Matisse, ‘a not-so-funny prank that one of the lab technicians played on our poor dear Anna. The rest, I fear, was a combination of your anxiety, overtiredness and shrimp.’
Jancie stepped backwards. ‘This is not the room,’ she said to him. ‘It was the fourth door. I counted. One, two, three, four. There were all these bald kids—’ The memory came back, full and terrifying, but it was still like a movie. ‘I know it was the fourth door!’
She ran out into the hallway and grabbed the handle of the last door. It was locked. She shook the handle and cried, ‘This is it!’
Matisse came out holding up his keys. Shog followed with his anxious look.
‘Open it!’ Jancie said.
Without a word, Matisse put his keys in the locks and turned them. Then he held his hand out palm upwards, indicating that Jancie herself might like to open the door.
She pulled on the handle.
Inside the door was a cupboard filled with folders.
‘Nothing but a filing cabinet,’ said Matisse.
‘No! I counted the doors!’ She pulled out some of the files and saw the solid timber wall behind them. Reaching in, she hit it with her fist. ‘It’s in here!’
‘Calm down or you will hurt yourself,’ snapped Matisse.
It was Shog who put his arms round her waist and dragged her out of the cupboard. ‘Jancie, stop it!’
‘It was here!’ she yelled.
‘No, it wasn’t!’ said Shog. ‘You’re sick, Jancie! You’re imagining things!’
‘Oh Shog!’ She put her head against his neck and began to cry. ‘It was, it was!’
Matisse said gently, ‘You’ll be fine, Miss Jancine, I promise you. But do have a quiet day, and your brother with you. No stressful sessions, this afternoon.’ He closed the door and locked it. ‘Since you knew Mr James McCready, you might be interested in seeing his Paris video. He
’s doing very well over there. I’ll also get you those magazines from my office. I think you’ll have a better understanding of Class Act when you have read the articles.’
With Shog’s arm round her shoulders, Jancie walked down the stairs, following Mr Matisse. Past the student rooms, there were curious glances and Jancie was now remembering the rest of it, screaming at Shog in the night, the students tumbling out into the hallway, the staff running. Her fear retreated into confusion and she felt miserable. ‘It must have been a dream,’ she whispered.
Mr Matisse led them down to the basement and his office. He opened the top drawer of his desk, threw in his keys and then, from the same drawer, brought out a small packet of tissues for Jancie. Gratefully, she wiped her eyes and nose.
Matisse gave the magazines and a hologram video to Shog and said, ‘Take care of your sister this afternoon. See that she eats well.’
Then he smiled and cracked his knuckles. ‘Your friend Savannah Daluma is flying to London later this afternoon. Leroy is taking her out to meet her mother, at the airport. Would you like to go out for the ride?’
Jancie blew her nose. ‘I thought we couldn’t leave the grounds.’
Matisse waved his hands in the air. ‘Oh, I am into breaking rules today, my sweet pea.’ Then his smile dropped and his eyes, for a moment, went cold. ‘But only today,’ he said, in a warning voice.
Chapter Eleven
Dr Elizabeth Frey did not reside at Class Act House but a few miles from it, in a small beach house which jutted out from the cliff and hung, on steel bearers, above the wild, windswept ocean. The front of the house was almost all glass which would be perpetually salt-encrusted but for the automatic window-washing system. Dr Frey could sit in a reclining chair, a Shostakovich symphony on the player, with a perfect view of the sea which rose, tumbled and crashed at her feet.
The interior of her house was simple to the point of barrenness, for she liked uncluttered space as much as she enjoyed solitude. It was here, in this room, that she decoded and collated the astral print-outs and did much of her computer-based research. The house was like an extension of herself and she fiercely guarded its privacy.
It did not please her, therefore, to learn that she was to have a visit from Matisse this fine Monday afternoon. She heard the deep rumble of his sports car as he pulled off the road, but did not go out to welcome him. It was only after the third note from the doorbell that she put down her papers, got out of her chair and went, sighing with irritation, to the door.
He at once read her thoughts. ‘Oh Elizabeth, you can be really all too tiresome when you are in a mood. May I please come in? Or would that be too much to ask? Thank you. Your precious twins have given the staff very little sleep.’
She walked ahead of him to the lounge and dropped back into her long, soft chair. She waved at him to sit down on the couch. ‘Who messed up?’
He shrugged and took off his sunglasses. ‘You know our Zeke. He gets careless, forgets to lock up. He did the midnight check and then went down to watch a soccer game, left four doors unlocked. Not one. Four! The wretched child walked right in.’
‘But I hear you did a nice patching job. Is there still a problem?’
‘There will be. Count on it, Elizabeth, my dear. I’ve got a feeling about these two.’ He laced his fingers together and pulled on them until his knuckles cracked.
‘Please, don’t do that,’ she said.
‘They’re with Leroy at the moment,’ he said. ‘A nice little drive to the airport to get them out of the way. I suggest that, when they come back, we move them straight upstairs.’
‘Matisse, I told you, I am not ready for them yet.’ She leaned back and closed her eyes as the music swelled and filled the room. ‘This is an advanced project. It takes time to set up the co-ordinates.’
‘They are trouble,’ he shouted, ‘especially the girl. Can we turn that thing down?’
She thumbed the remote control and the Shostakovich symphony faded to a background hum. ‘It’s your job to deal with trouble.’
Matisse twitched and his nostrils flared. ‘Might I remind you that I manage a successful branch of a highly respected professional fashion house and modelling school—’
‘Don’t be so pompous!’
‘I cannot be responsible for the riff-raff you bring off the streets, Elizabeth!’
She smiled. ‘Ah, but it’s the street riff-raff which are so lucrative, are they not? Where would you be without them, Matisse? Where would you be without me? I need your highly respectable fashion house but you also need my riff-raff. They fill your pockets. They indulge your taste in Porsches and Ferraris. Come now, don’t sulk. It’s not the end of the world simply because a girl walked into the despatch room. I understand Anna gave her a hefty dose of TP3.’
‘Anna panicked,’ said Matisse.
‘Indeed! Our Anna was trained to clean thermometers and bedpans. She should not be let loose with a needle. The child would have gone out cold with a mere 5ccs of ZR14. The TP3 causes mental confusion which can last for two days, and she was given a full adult dose. That, Matisse, is another reason why I can’t use her immediately. She must be mentally alert. What about the boy?’
‘He’s concerned for his sister. Scared too, of being expelled.’
‘Did you show them the sunbed room?’
He cracked his knuckles again. ‘I certainly did. A happy sunshine tour of the entire playground, complete with a doll in the meat wagon and the file cupboard pushed into the doorway of the despatch room. The wretched child was banging on the back wall of the cupboard. I thought she was going to push the whole thing through into the room. That would have been just absolutely lovely.’
‘But she was convinced?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘She wasn’t. As you say, there was confusion, but when the drug clears so will her memory. She’s no fool, Elizabeth. Forget about the special project. Use them now for something else.’
Dr Elizabeth Frey stared out the window at the white foam that curled away from the top of the waves and at the seagulls that hovered above it, shifting in the wind without flapping their wings. She turned to Matisse. ‘You know how hard it is to get perfect subjects. On one hand there is the complication of kin, on the other, the complication of health. Children from the streets are often malnourished, disease-ridden, and almost invariably given to some kind of substance abuse. This is the first time I have found physical perfection and intellectual superiority in the same parcel. And not just one of them. Two. Twins who would pass any kind of alpha rating and who have no relatives to ask questions. I need them Matisse. This will be no jaunt into the usual industrial espionage. I need them for my own special sky dance.’
‘Where are you sending them?’ he asked.
‘Ah!’ She smiled. ‘Have you heard of RUSAC?’
‘The Russia, United States of America and China Research station,’ he said. ‘They’re supposed to be leading the world in quantum physics research.’
‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘RUSAC has extended a branch of its research into outer space, in a top secret laboratory in orbit around Mars. The laboratory is equipped for space and time experiments.’
‘Mars?’ He stared. ‘You can’t be serious, Elizabeth!’
‘Oh yes, I am. This is not a matter of faxing a little astral body to a munitions plant in Iraq or a synthetic diamond factory in the Australian desert. This is not about the gathering of information for greedy politicians and industrialists. This is about the remaking of history.’
‘You would never get a sky dancer all the way to Mars,’ he said. ‘It’s not humanly possible.’
‘Not humanly, Matisse. Human substance is the negative factor. But spiritual substance, yes. Astral travel.’ She smiled. ‘Let me tell you a little about the RUSAC Mars station. In zero gravity conditions, a team of nine physicists have been conducting research in time travel.’
‘Time travel!’ Matisse laughed. ‘That’s the stuff of the old science fiction comic
s!’
‘Not so much fiction,’ she said. ‘The quantum hypothesis has been around for more than fifty years. If an object can travel faster than the speed of light, it will go back in time. The practical flaw in the hypothesis is that, with our present technology, it is impossible for physical matter to travel faster than the speed of light without disintegration into non-being. In other words, it can’t be done with the human body. However, the astral body, or soul, if you like to call it that, belongs naturally in another time-space continuum. It is not of the physical world. I believe that it can be projected at speeds greater than light and can travel back in time.’
Matisse threw his hands up in the air. ‘Hell’s teeth, Elizabeth, what are you planning? One kid goes to Mars and the other goes back to the stone age?’
She brushed aside her irritation at his ignorance. ‘No, no, they both go to Mars. I am years away from any serious attempts at time travel. The RUSAC research is well-advanced but I think they are moving into a blind alley, trying to use physical matter. Their focus is on the kind of teleportation we saw in old space movies, and that must fail. I will succeed because I will not be using physical beings.’
‘Why don’t they use astral bodies, too?’
‘Ethics, Matisse. Nice physicists do not hi-jack the souls of others, no matter how worthless that soul may be. That is why I am so far ahead in this field. But I don’t have all the answers, simply because I don’t have billions to invest in RUSAC’s kind of equipment. You could say that the RUSAC station and my research are two halves of the time-travel puzzle. If I am able to fax the twins onto that Mars station, they can get me all the information I want, even if they last only four or five days.’ She swung her legs over the chair and stood up. ‘Now do you understand why I need a little more time?’
‘Spooky stuff, Dr Frankenstein.’
She laughed. ‘Would you like some coffee?’
‘Got anything stronger?’
‘No.’
‘Okay. Coffee.’ He stood, too. ‘What you’re telling me is there will be no payment for this Mars job. You are doing it for your own research.’