Timeslip

by Bruce Stewart

I was asking Mummy! ’

  'Oh. Liz,’ sighed Jean, quite at a loss. ‘She just wanted to be different. In so many ways.’

  ‘Anyway, I don’t know anything about being a volunteer for an experiment,’ maintained Liz stoutly. ‘It’s wrong.’

  The computer doesn’t make mistakes! ’ Beth insisted. ‘But you must know why I’m here.’ Liz was staring at her other self now, this strange projection of her own personality into the future; and found it all profoundly disturbing. ‘Well, I mean — if you’re me, and I’m here ... then you must remember this. Simon and me coming back from the Naval Station and getting into the ice-box—’

  ‘Don't waste my time,’ snapped Beth, heading for the door once more.

  ‘—then going home to tell Mummy and the others...’ She hastened to Jean. ‘Mummy! You remember. After Simon and I had been in 1940 — we found out about the radar and why Daddy was sick—’

  'Yes, Liz,’ said Jean slowly. ‘Yes, 1 remember that.’

  ‘Well, for goodness sake — we came on here.’

  ‘No.’ Jean was obviously in doubt at some level, but at the same time quite certain of this. ‘No, I don’t think so. I didn't know a place like this was ever going to exist in those days...’

  Liz could only stare at her, dismayed and more troubled than ever. Behind them, Beth snorted contemptuously.

  ‘All nonsense, you see.’ she said shortly. ‘Childish nonsense. I want the two of you to understand this matter is not to be discussed till I’ve found out everything I can. I’m certainly not having it noised abroad that I’m one and the same person ... as this stupid child,’

  There was no compromise in the tone, and again in the eyes Liz could read the deep antipathy that had so shocked her when first she had been confronted by it in the Fantasy Room; the enduring hatred. It seemed to lie on the air, a physical presence, even after Beth had left Jean’s quarters. ‘Golly...’ Liz found herself temporarily without vocal chords. ‘Mummy, it’s all crazy. How could I — anyone — turn out to be like that! ’

  But suddenly she became aware Jean was holding back tears. Liz was filled with remorse and hurried to her mother, putting consoling arms around her.

  ‘Oh, Mummy — Mummy, I’m sorry. It’s all awful — dreadful! — but I didn’t mean to upset you.’

  Jean quickly mastered herself. ‘It’s all right, Liz,’ she replied. ‘You couldn’t know about it, but it’s the kind of upset I live with all the time nowadays.’

  'You mean — you don’t like it here?’ A new apprehension claimed Liz for a second, but then her mind went back to a persistent worry. ‘And Daddy,’ she said, ‘you still haven't told me about Daddy.’

  It wasn’t precisely that Jean avoided some issue within herself at this moment, wretchedly troubling; in fact, for a second or two her lips trembled as though she would say much. It was rather that a great tiredness overtook her. Her face seemed suddenly grey in the warm light of the room, and Liz noticed lines about her mother’s eyes that she had never seen before.

  ‘This... this has been an awful shock for me, Liz. Would you mind if we didn’t talk any more about it just now? ...’

  * * *

  Simon came out of Devereaux's office and whistled through his teeth, after the manner of mountaineers who have risked all on a bold leap, and just managed not to plummet into the chasm below. A chuckle reached his ears from across the corridor. Bukov stood there, pausing on his way to the computer room.

  ’So,’ grinned the big Russian. ‘You’ll have to get used to it, Simon. Here, we’re all expected to behave as scientists should. The work is what counts. Our personal lives run a bad second.’

  ‘Yes,’ answered Simon, ruefully, ‘I’m beginning to get the idea.’

  ‘Any news of your friend Liz?’

  Simon thought it better to say nothing on this, so Bukov merely nodded gravely and moved on. Simon abruptly wentafter him. ‘Doctor Bukov,’ he said, falling in with the other, ‘I’m still getting to know things here. So I wondered — what do you do exactly?’

  ‘Oh, I’m a physicist, Simon,’ replied Bukov, apparently pleased to be asked. Again, he gave the clear impression of only wishing to be friendly. ‘Everything depends on nuclear energy here, so I have charge of all that; and then I’m continuing experimentation into the uses of controlled radiation. You know?—’

  ‘Yes,’ said Simon, not wishing to appear ignorant of anything he should have been informed about. ‘Intelligence-enhancement, eh?’

  ‘Which?’ blinked Simon, exhibiting ignorance.

  ‘The enhancement of intelligence.’ Bukov had stopped just outside the computer-room door. ‘Well, it was a great step forward when we discovered the link between that and controlled exposure to radiation in the late ’seventies. But you still have to have the right subject. Have you had a course?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Simon. Then, just as quickly, ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t you know?’

  ‘No! ’ Simon knew.

  Bukov looked at him very oddly. ‘It’s strange,’ he murmured. ‘From the beginning I wondered why else you and Liz would have been chosen for the AB experiment... But then, the computer never makes mistakes.’

  He shrugged and went on into the computer room. For lack of anything better to do, Simon followed.

  ‘Bukov! ’ said Larry, looking up from the control panel. ‘There you are — at last.’ He was rushing between the bank of switches and screens and some tapes set up exteriorly on a computer bastion.

  ‘At last?’ Bukov was bewildered.

  ‘Well, my video flash said pronto, didn’t it?’ Without waiting for a reply, Larry ‘cleared’ a central monitoring screen on the bank, depressed a series of switches so that back on the bastion, the top tape clicked into motion. ‘Now this is the power graph for Section 4, isolated from the general operational record,’ announced Larry. ‘Okay?’

  They all watched the cleared screen, and in a moment a graph record began to travel across it — progressive, a jagged line, not unlike seismograph charts Simon had seen, though hardly as dramatic in content. Then, without warning, the screen suddenly cut dead. Bukov looked sharply to Larry, but the other placed a quick hand on his arm. The screen took up again, and Larry ‘killed’ it.

  ‘There you are,’ he said heavily. 'A blank in the record. 05.16 hours this morning precisely. A fifteen-second power shut-off in Section 4.’

  ‘But that can’t happen,’ protested Bukov.

  ‘It has. Just like that three-minute close down in the water supply yesterday that shouldn’t have happened, but did too. Bukov, what’s going on around here? The only difference is that the water supply was my baby, this one is yours. Your turn to have “Human Error” blown down your ear.’

  Yes,’ nodded Bukov, worried now. ‘Yes, I’ll have to notify the Director, certainly.’

  He depressed various controls. Simon, who had come up, looked to him as the cleared screen ran with lines.

  ‘What’s wrong, Doctor Bukov?’ he asked.

  The power supply cut out for a brief period early this morning, Simon,’ Bukov came back curtly. ‘It’s nothing to worry about. It’s just that recently we’ve had—’ He stopped as the screen before him ceased running, and showed Devereaux in his office, moving towards a door in the back wall; the door without a handle. ‘Bukov to Director,’ announced Bukov. ‘Bukov to Director...’

  ‘Hold on,’ Larry cut in, fiddling with a fader. ‘He must have phased out his audio.’ And indeed the Director on the screen gave no appearance of having heard any summons. He stopped before the door, oblivious even of being watched, and slipped back a little panel in the jamb. Here he pressed a button, and the door slid back noiselessly. There was only a thick darkness beyond. The Director moved in, and the door slid to.

  ‘He’s going into depth-research,’ said Bukov.

  ‘What’s that?’ Simon was intrigued now.

  ‘Depth-research?’ Bukov stared into the screen on the panel abstractedly. ‘Oh, a ve
ry complex process, Simon. Only the Director has the talent...’ But then abruptly his eyes snapped away from the screen and fell crossly on Simon; as though, inadvertently, he had said something that he should not have said; as though Simon had asked questions forbidden to the ordinary run of mortals. He cut away from the panel.

  ‘The Director must be a very clever man, Larry,’ Simon said thoughtfully, transferring his attention to the other. ‘Is he related to that other Devereaux?’

  ‘What other Devereaux?’

  Simon was trying so hard to be casual that he sounded downright earnest. ‘Oh — the one I remember reading about in my History of Science book back at home. American, just like the Director. Died — ah — a couple of decades ago now.’

  Busy winding off the operation record tapes now, Larry mumbled something about only knowing the Director himself, and that being enough to have to cope with. But farther across the room — and Simon did not observe this — Bukov was regarding Simon with what was abruptly a hard curiosity. His attitude seemed no longer that of a man whose only wish was to be friendly.

  * * *

  Liz entered the Fantasy Room in moody preoccupation. The roving colours and the peaceful contours of the place in general did a little to relieve the pressures on her; they were designed to, but they could not take them away altogether. She felt strangely trapped. She had come back to the ice-box with her eyes open, and now did not care for what her eyes had seen. It seemed unfair.

  A shape stirred over through the alcove in the fantasy section proper. It was Edith Joynton, eyes closed and wearing the head clamps; again away on her golden beaches, feeling the cool wind from her ice-capped mountains. Liz wondered dismally if that was really the answer. It all depended what you felt the need to escape from, she supposed.

  The door clicked open behind her, and suddenly Simon stood there. He stared, his jaw dropping.

  ‘Liz! What... where? ...’

  ‘Well, where do you think?’ Liz rejoined tautly. ‘The time barrier.’

  ‘You came back! ’

  ‘You’re quick, aren’t you?’

  ‘But your father—’

  ‘Oh,’ said Liz, as though that had never been a problem. ‘He changed his mind.’

  ‘He let you come. And you did.’ Liz made no answer to this. ‘That means — you wanted to.’ Again Liz chose not to respond. Simon moved closer. ‘Why, Liz ... that’s great.’

  He was grinning broadly. Liz cursed herself interiorly for not being able to rise to his mood, but then thought, too, that he might have been sensitive enough to see she was in no state to be grinned at. ‘Oh, Simon,’ she said, deciding on a tragic expression, ‘I’ve just found out something awful.’

  ‘I’ve been discovering things too. The Director—’

  ‘No, no. I mean something awful. For one thing, Mummy is here — I’ve just talked to her.’

  ‘What’s awful about that?’ asked Simon.

  ‘Nothing! Except she doesn’t seem to like it very much — she’s doing experiments in telepathy. And that girl — Beth...’

  She stopped, frowning deeply, and Simon was puzzled. ‘What about her?’ he prompted.

  ‘Well, Simon, you see ... Beth and me...’

  ‘Yes?’

  Liz steeled herself. ‘Beth and I ... are the same person.’ Now Simon was gazing at her blankly. He couldn’t understand what she was talking about, and wondered if perhaps their joint experiences had not begun to take a toll of her. Liz rattled on: ‘I mean it. It’s dead crazy, but it’s true. We’ve come into a future time, and what I’ve found out is that Beth is me — as I’m going to be in 1990.’

  Suddenly Simon got it. He almost cried out, but instead said, ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘I wish I was,’ answered Liz in distress. ‘But I suppose it's all possible with the time barrier and so on. Even Mummy says it’s so.’

  ‘You mean you’re going to grow up to be like that?’

  ‘Well, it isn’t my fault, is it?’

  ‘Isn’t it? I don’t know. Blimey,’ croaked Simon. He cleared his throat. ‘Listen, Liz ... I’ve — ah — got one or two things to do just now—’

  ‘Wait. Where are you going?’

  ‘Nowhere. It’s nothing. Just something I said I’d — I mean ... two minutes—’

  ‘Simon! ’ But he was gone, a blur in the doorway. ‘Oh,’ sobbed Liz, falling into one of the chairs that obligingly took the shape of her body. ‘Oh,’ she exclaimed again.

  She supposed there was nothing to do but cry now. And under the circumstances it didn’t seem in the least weak-minded.

  25

  Beth moved gently about the Director’s office, touching things, tidying where she felt the need. The gleaming room was having its customary effect on her; once more in her heart she was re-affirming her dedication to the ice-box, the person of Morgan Devereaux, and the cause of scientific research. She was entirely at one with her avocation when the door to the back room slid silently across, and Devereaux came out of the darkness beyond.

  But he seemed taken aback to see her. Beth said apologetically, ‘I’m sorry to intrude. Director, but it’s an urgent matter. I wanted to report to you at the earliest moment that the girl volunteer has been found — Liz.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Devereaux, his face brightening. ‘Splendid. Excellent. In good physical condition? Never mind, we can check that. Start her and the boy on HA57 at once.’

  He moved to his desk to make a note of some kind on a pad, and it was really Beth’s cue to go. But she seemed reluctant to leave just at once. Her voice became a little strained as she added, ‘I was wondering. Director ... is that strictly necessary?’

  ‘Is what strictly necessary? To start the two of them on HA57?’

  ‘Yes.’ Beth gained confidence. ‘They’re hardly the right kind of people for a prolonged stay in the ice-box, you know. Perhaps we should simply use them for the AB experiment and then get rid of them as soon as possible.’

  Devereaux seemed perplexed. ‘But my dear Beth, you know as well as I do that there must be a lengthy period of observation afterwards.’

  ‘Then I’d like to suggest they should be replaced,’ said Beth bravely.

  ‘What?—’

  ‘They’re not the right people for our community here. Director, I’m certain of it! How do we even know they’re really the volunteers we were supposed to receive?’

  Her tone was earnest now, and it was impossible to tell if surprise or simply annoyance predominated in Devereaux’s response. He moved round the desk to her.

  ‘Beth ... you’re not suggesting, I hope, that the computer has made a mistake?’

  ‘No, Director.’ Though on dangerous ground, Beth was determined to stick to her guns. ‘The computer instruction read “expect arrivals soonliest”. But it didn’t necessarily say these arrivals.’

  ‘Yet if these aren’t the expected arrivals, who on earth are they?’ asked Devereaux logically.

  ‘That’s hard to say.’

  ‘It’s the middle of the Antarctic. Do people arrive here accidentally?’

  ‘No.’ She was faltering at length. ‘Unless — unless by some means we don’t completely understand, perhaps ...’ Devereaux regarded her a long moment, and she was forced to avoid his calculating gaze. Then the Director permitted himself a short laugh. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘an interesting development. Most interesting.’ He moved back behind his desk again, sitting rather heavily. ‘I thought you were one of the few people I could rely on, Beth.’

  ‘You can. Director.’

  ‘I thought you understood.’ Devereaux’s voice was abruptly louder. ‘I’ve appreciated your work on the administrative side here, you know. I’ve even been thinking for a while that I should have a personal assistant to relieve me of the heavier responsibilities. It had occurred to me the right person for that job might be you.’

  Beth gasped. She had been expecting nothing like this. ‘But not any more, it seems.’

  ‘Why
not?’ Beth was perhaps surprised at the alarm in her own tone. ‘I haven’t said anything to make any difference.’

  ‘You’re questioning things, Beth,’ declared Devereaux. ‘The computer requires blind obedience. I require it! No matter how unlikely, how perverse a particular directive may seem, it is beyond all argument the right one. Liz and Simon couldn’t have come here at all unless the computer had summoned them, don’t you see that? That’s the fact — everything else is irrelevant.’

  Meeting his forceful gaze, Beth knew now why she served this man, why his ideals, his ambitions had become identical with hers. There was in him a power that was almost hypnotic in its effect; that seemed in fact to proceed from outside as well as from within- him, as though he were a man somehow singled out from the human race, given an authority from beyond to command and rule. So she understood that she would accept the presence of Liz and Simon in the ice-box, however mystifying it might seem. Liz was only a troubling incident; Liz was no longer her; though she could never understand it, it was blessedly none of her concern.

  ‘I see. Director,’ said Beth humbly. 'I’ve been very silly. I beg your pardon.’

  * * *

  ‘No,’ said Liz, reasonably enough. ‘It might hurt.’

  ‘Don’t be a dill,’ replied Edith Joynton cheerfully. ‘This injects straight through the skin and doesn’t leave a mark. It isn’t one of your old-fashioned needles.’

  There was the little whoosh of the jet-injector, and Liz had to agree it was entirely painless. It had been a morning of preparation for their first dose of HA57, and Liz understood that there was hardly a disease known to man that she and Simon could any longer catch. ‘All set, Beth,’ announced Edith Joynton.

  Beth turned to Larry at the computer panel. If her state of mind was now entirely definable, her general attitudes were no cosier. 'Come along,’ she said impatiently. ‘You fed in all the vital data over ten minutes ago. How long must we wait for the dosage of HA57?’

  Larry merely punched a panel control in reply, and suggested, ‘How about some music tonight, Beth?’