‘Liz.’
‘Liz. And the two of you came in on the carrier, right? Only then you tried wandering off from the drop shelter. It was pretty silly — we don’t go for mystery hikes much about here. Funny we didn’t get the usual notification you were coming, though.’
‘Doctor Joynton,’ said Simon, more or less himself again, ‘what is this place, exactly? I mean, where is it?’
Edith Joynton looked faintly annoyed. ‘Sonny, if you're a volunteer, you must have had a destination briefing,’ she replied.
‘I know! ’ amended Simon. ‘But they didn’t tell us ...’ He looked about him, depressed and still a bit light-headed. It was impossible not to ask the direct question. ‘Why is it so cold outside?’
‘Well, with the South Pole just down the road, what else do you expect?’ asked Edith, rising.
Liz gasped, and a choked gurgle beside her informed her that Simon, too, was smothering his reaction as best he could. Edith beamed at them suddenly, unaware that she might have said anything to dismay.
‘You’ve had a fantastic escape, you know,’ she said. ‘You really might have had the sense to put on the protective clothing provided when the carrier dropped you. The Antarctic in winter isn’t Bondi Beach, my children.’
21
The wind sighed around the old buildings of the Naval Station; through broken windows and gaps in the crumbling stone; and across the empty field to where Commander Traynor stood by the broken wall with Frank and Jean Skinner. The sky was an even grey.
‘Well,’ announced Traynor bleakly, ‘no sign of them. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they haven’t come back through the barrier.’
‘Commander, if they had we’d have seen them at the inn by now,’ replied Skinner, deeply worried.
Traynor took no notice of him, but turned to Jean. ‘You’ve really lost all touch with them, have you, Mrs Skinner?’
‘I think so...’ Jean for her part was trying to tell herself everything was all right. ‘It was very peculiar. Just that awful feeling of cold after they’d reached the fence ... then nothing.’
‘Cold. Yes.’ Traynor nodded.
Skinner said with a sudden asperity: ‘Look here, what on earth’s happened? You’re the one who was so anxious for the children to go back into the time bubble, Traynor, and you’re always making out you understand the theory. So what’s gone wrong? Are they in difficulty?’
‘More things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy,’ murmured Traynor, moving away a few paces.
‘What kind of answer is that?’ Skinner was after him in an instant, seizing his arm and twisting him back. ‘I want the truth! You needn’t play your games with me. We’ve already seen what that can lead to.’
‘For goodness sake, man, what do you take me for — the oracle of Delphi?’ Traynor snatched his arm away from the other, at once angered. 'We’re dealing with indefinables here. From the sound of it. I'd say Liz and Simon had come through the barrier expecting to return to their own time — but finished up somewhere else instead.’
Skinner stared at him. ‘Well, that’s straight enough,’ he said in a flat voice. But he had plainly failed to find the mot juste. His eyes went to Jean, as did Traynor’s. Her silence was louder than tongues now, an inaudible cry.
'We’d better go back to the inn and wait there, Mrs Skinner,’ said Traynor with unusual gentleness. ‘Nothing more to be done here.’
‘No — no, I expect that’s right,’ Jean responded. But the voice within called out: ‘Where, then? Where do I go to understand?’ And the sighing wind replied only that it was a grey summer’s day in an open field, and the children had been snatched from her vision: that her only daughter and the boy who was her companion were lost in time.
* * *
‘Very well,’ said Devereaux grimly. ‘Now we’ll get to the bottom of it.’
He jabbed various controls on the shining panel in front of him, and the lights of the room faded gently down, highlighting a pale-blue screen on the video bank opposite. 'Director to computer,’ announced Devereaux. ‘Director to computer. Depth information concerning this afternoon’s arrivals. Priority operation. Commence.’
It was always an experience for Beth to be in the director’s office. As a general rule, entry was forbidden except on business of extreme urgency, and as the Director kept very much to himself on other occasions, social calls seldom occurred. But today Devereaux had asked her to assist him in clearing up an anomaly. Here, she felt, here in this office was the very heart of the ice-box. The whole establishment was Devereaux’s creation more than anyone else’s, and here he fulfilled its purpose; together with the computer directing the experimentation in biology, laying down the pattern of research. And here too, she knew, were secrets. Beth had perhaps better reason than any of her colleagues to be aware of the room beyond this office, the room
entered by a door without a handle. As to what happened there, she could not, of course, be any way certain: but just to know of its existence, and to understand how important it was to the Director, seemed a privilege in itself. In Beth’s mind, all this was a part of the embracing sense of awe and wonder. If the computer in its monolithic efficiency appealed to her as a technological Stonehenge, then the private room was the Temple of the Unknown God.
There was a sharp chattering sound, and yellow captions ran brightly across the surface of the blue screen:
* * *
COMPUTER TO DIRECTOR . . . DETAIL FROM MEMORY BANK JUNE 10TH 15.22 HOURS .. . NECESSARY PROCEED WITH EXPERIMENT AB/494/Z . . . CENTRAL CONTROL CONTACTED RE VOLUNTEERS . . . CHARACTERISTICS SPECIFIED . . . EXPECT ARRIVAL SOONLIEST . . . ENDS . . .
* * *
The screen blacked out and Devereaux thumped a fist down on the panel before him. ‘There, do you see?’ he snapped. ‘A complete briefing from the computer, plain as day and earmarked for action. “Expect arrival soonliest,” it says. Must I attend to everything myself in this place?’ Angry now, he jabbed at another set of controls, and a larger screen lit up, revealing Larry in the computer room at work on a piece of equipment. Larry looked up and moved into shot almost the moment his picture came clear. 'Yes, Director?’
‘Reference computer memory bank, Larry, June 10th 15.22 hours,’ Devereaux defined curtly. ‘Scan immediately, and let me have your comments as soon as possible, please,’
‘Oh,’ rejoined Larry, oddly embarrassed. ‘If that’s about the new arrivals. Director—’
‘Well?’
Larry tried the ghost of a grin. ‘I did a bit of checking myself. We had no confirmation from Central Control that they'd actually got round to sending any volunteers. So I didn’t think the June 10th instruction was to be considered operational.’
‘If confirmation had been necessary, the computer would have requested it — don’t you understand that, Larry?’ Devereaux’s eyes shone strangely all at once, and his voice rang metallic. ‘I’m tired of explaining to people that I programme the computer to attend to things like this by itself.’
‘Yes, Director.’
‘Then get with it! Don’t pit your wits against the computer’s, man. You’ll discover one day you haven’t a chance.’
Again his fist thumped down on the control panel, and Larry’s image wavered and vanished from the screen. Devereaux turned away with a gasp, trembling in his annoyance.
‘The human element, Beth,’ he said. ‘Sometimes I think the human element will frustrate everything I’m trying to do here.’
Beth was a little troubled. In her experience the Director was an unemotional man, accustomed for the most part to meet his successes without self-approbation and his difficulties with calm. But today he was plainly upset. He moved about his office with observable signs of irritation, then paused abruptly before the door to his private room; the door without a handle.
‘The computer, Beth,’ Dereveaux murmured. ‘Day after day I link to it, perfecting it, refining its operations. If I’m not prevent
ed by fools. I’ll bring it to such a peak of efficiency that there’ll be nothing I can’t do.’
Beth said: ‘But you’ve achieved so much already. Director. You’ve no reason to feel depressed.’
‘Oh, the ice-box has long since justified its existence if that’s what you mean. Yes.’ Devereaux sighed now, something as it were weary about him. ‘But scientific experimentation is a road without an ending. We must push on. Our job is to remake the imperfect world. To advance the human species ... beyond its understanding...’
In as much as these remarks seemed not to be addressed to her but to the door and whatever lay beyond it, Beth was not sure what reply to make or even if she should speak at all. But as she opened her mouth to say something anyway.
Devereaux turned to regard her. His eyes were soft; again there had been a change of mood.
‘Beth.’
‘Yes, Director.’
What came next both startled and pleased her. It was not the kind of thing she had ever heard the Director say before. ‘Why is it I can talk to you, I wonder, Beth? Why is it only you seem to cause me no trouble ... to understand?’
* * *
The clothes seemed odd. Or not odd, no that wasn’t the word; just — well, different. Liz tried to whisper as much to Simon when she got the chance, but he didn’t seem to understand. Edith Joynton was hardly allowing a word in edgeways, anyhow. Having officially ‘discharged’ them from the infirmary, she led Liz and Simon along the broad central corridor, all smiles and solicitude.
‘What would you like first?’ she asked. ‘Just say, don’t be afraid. A shower — something to eat—’
‘Oh, I’m so hungry I could eat a horse,’ replied Liz.
‘Palamino or just plain old Cart?’ snorted Edith, laughing at her own joke. Liz tittered obligingly, but Simon could only summon up a puzzled frown. Edith had directed them towards a brightly-coloured door which seemed to him to bear in embossed letters the legend: fantasy room.
‘Ah yes,’ said Edith wisely. ‘You’ll soon learn why it’s called that, young feller-me-lad.’
‘So,’ smiled Bukov warmly as they entered, ‘our orphans of the snows.’ The Russian beamed up at them from a queer-looking chair that seemed effortlessly to take the shape of his body as he shifted, but at first they hardly noticed him for the room itself. Strange, apparently source-less, patterns of light played constantly on the walls, at once stimulating and entirely soothing; the fittings were all so much a part of the general shape and geography of the room that in being there, in being features, they seemed not to be evident at all; it was a defined space, it was nowhere, it was everywhere.
‘We take it easy here after a hard day,’ Edith explained.
She indicated. ‘There, you can get any television programme on earth. Here, whatever you want of the world’s Press. In those cubby-holes, you can listen to music; it’s just like being at a concert, and doesn’t disturb other people either. And over this way — well, this is the device that gives the room its name ...’
Leading them over a floor their feet seemed hardly to touch, she had brought them to a little alcove beyond which were two straight-backed rococo chairs. On the high arm of each rested an ornate pair of clamps, which in other circumstances Liz and Simon might have taken for old-style radio headphones. Edith grinned, picked up a pair of these. ‘The fantasy apparatus,’ she said.
Liz and Simon looked suitably blank, so she went on, her grin broadening. ‘Well, you put these on — one terminal against each temple — and you get a straight brain link to the computer. Then the computer takes over your dream and makes it real.’
‘Goodness,’ said Liz, blinking.
‘Want to try it?’
‘Oh! I’m not sure—’
Edith laughed now. ‘Oh, it’s a pleasant experience. Like being in a film instead of just looking at it. I always go home in fantasy.’
‘Where’s home. Doctor Joynton?’ asked Simon.
‘Well ... I come from New Zealand. We’re quite an international community here, but I seem to miss the old places more than others ... yes ...’
Her eyes seemed suddenly very sad. On an impulse, she slipped the clamps on her head, moved from them and sat squarely on one of the chairs. She closed her eyes; then, without warning, went quite rigid. Her body was stiff for a moment, then just as abruptly went limp again and was entirely relaxed. So much and no more Liz and Simon observed. But as for Edith, she was in an instant back on that huge and much-loved sweep of sand at Waimarama, where the coast turns north for Cape Kidnappers ... hearing the crash of the eternal surf on the shore, the cry of the gannets as they circled...
A deep voice behind Simon said, 'You find it unusual?’ Simon swung round. Bukov had come silently up and was watching his and Liz’s reactions. ‘I’ve never come across anything like it before,’ Simon ventured.
‘It’s quite new.’ His sheer size and the depth of his black eyes made him a formidable figure, but Bukov obviously only meant to be friendly. 'I’m Bukov, in case nobody told you. I found you out there on the ice. You’re here for the AB experiment, are you?’
Simon paused. ‘Yes,’ he decided. ‘Yes, that’s right.’
It seemed the right answer. Bukov nodded. ‘There’ll be no action for a while. We come at things gently here. First of all they’ll have to put you on HA57, and that takes a week or two in itself.’
‘What’s HA57?’ asked Simon, curious now.
‘You don’t know about that yet?’ Bukov grinned toothily. ‘But of course — it’s a secret outside the ice-box. Well, my boy—’
But the door to the room clicked open, and Beth came in. ‘Ah,’ she said, ‘the new arivals. 1 was wondering where they’d got to. The Director asked me to introduce them to the ice-box, and—’
But suddenly she stopped dead. Her eyes had fallen on Liz. and now she stared at her in a kind of unbelief. Turning to respond to a new presence, Liz met her gaze and was at once startled. There seemed to be in Beth’s eyes an instant antipathy, almost a hatred.
‘How dare you,’ breathed Beth, for her alone. ‘How dare you...’
Later, Liz was to ask Simon what on earth she could have meant by a remark like that, only to get from him an equally puzzled reaction. It was baffling, to say the least. Just that moment of — yes, the more Liz considered it, it could only have been hatred — and then no further mention of the matter. With a cold efficiency, Beth had shown Liz and Simon the general layout of the ice-box, their sleeping quarters, and had finally taken them to the computer room, turning them over to Larry for a briefing session here. Then she had left them, glad to be finished with them, glad to be away.
‘... now this is where the daily dosage of HA57 is delivered,’ Larry was saying, indicating a particular trap in a computer bastion. ‘You feed in your vital statistics at the panel as I showed you, because it has to be freshly prescribed for each individual every morning according to changes in body temperature, pulse rate and so on.’
‘Look, what is this HA57,’ asked Simon, tired of playing along at length.
‘The longevity drug,’ said Larry simply.
Liz stared at him, her other little problem temporarily forgotten. ‘What did you say?’ she demanded.
‘Well, you know — longevity, long life. The drug stops the process of decay, so people who take it simply don’t grow any older.’
‘You mean—’ Simon was astonished. ‘They can live for ever?’
Larry gave a professional smirk. ‘Oh, I’ll have to have notice of that question,’ he replied. ‘But it’s certainly the biggest discovery the Director has made since the ice-box was founded. Take Doctor Joynton, now — how old would you say she was?’
‘Fifty,’ suggested Liz.
‘Actually, she’s more like a hundred.’
Liz and Simon were goggling now. Larry laughed aloud at their reaction, moved away. ‘You see, what we do in the ice-box is to test out new biological techniques until we’re sure they’re safe
for release to the world at large,’ he explained. ‘There can be side-effects often enough. We have to find out about that.’
Simon discovered his voice again. ‘But the things you’re doing...’ he began. ‘Well — they’re way ahead, aren’t they? I mean, the world at large doesn’t even know a thing like a longevity drug is possible.’
‘Just as well it doesn’t,’ Larry assented soberly. ‘Look at that business of brain-computer links. People were going about it the wrong way and doing themselves a lot of harm until we perfected a system in 1986.’
Liz’s mouth dropped open a good inch and a half. ‘Perfected ... when?’
‘1986,’ repeated Larry, unaware of their alarm. ‘Just four years ago this month, as it happens. July, 1986.’
* * *
It was easy enough getting to the entrance area without being detected, rather more difficult finding the thermal suits. But they turned out to be hung up in a cupboard, just like overcoats. ‘We’ve got to get out of here, Liz,’ muttered Simon, clambering into the awkward garment. ‘Somehow or other we’ve slipped into a future time, and we’re certainly not sticking around to be part of some experiment or other. They think we’re a couple of guinea pigs! ’
‘I don’t understand it,’ moaned Liz, upset about a number of things and having more trouble with her suit than Simon. ‘Will the time barrier still be there?’
‘At least we won’t freeze over again.’
Simon got the pressurized door open, and started out into the tunnel. ‘Hurry up,’ he called softly back, fitting on his headpiece as he went. ‘We don’t want to be seen.’
The catches were stiff, and Liz’s fingers couldn’t quite do up the final clasps. She gave a little sob. And then two things happened: in which order precisely she could never afterwards be completely sure. A lift door farther over slid across and Bukov emerged, stopping in his tracks to stare at her in astonishment. And the door to a kind of side room opened, and a woman came out. A woman who was at once familiar to Liz: a woman who looked for all the world like her mother, Jean.
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