Timeslip

by Bruce Stewart

  The lights came up as she entered, revealing Devereaux standing centrally, his eyes on a clear perspex slab that formed as it were the centrepiece of the little computer complex. Beth had never known what it was for. Director, there’s an important message,’ she announced. ‘I think you’d better come and—’

  But Devereaux whirled round, like a man disturbed in the deepest of contemplation. 'Why are you here?’ he asked blankly.

  ‘I’ve isolated an important message from the memory bank—’

  ‘How dare you!’ Suddenly the Director’s eyes were blazing at her. ‘Don’t you know I allow no one in this room when I’m here? I give you privileges, and you abuse them! I'm alone here — quite alone. You’re like all the others...'

  His voice stopped, choking off in mid-sentence. To her alarm, Beth saw he seemed frozen halfway through a movement. His eyes had dropped closed. He seemed unconscious.

  Beth didn’t know what to do. A quick sensation of fright numbed her brain. There was something eerie about it all: something that did not bear rational analysis. She turned and hurried for the office again.

  Beth was still clinging to the control panel here, collecting herself, when Devereaux came out of the back room and closed the door over. ‘Ah, Beth,’ he said, as though nothing had occurred within. ‘It's all right — you can call off the search. I’ve been assured through personal depth-contact that Liz and Simon are the parties responsible for Edith Joynton’s death.’

  Beth was shocked now. ‘But they can’t be. They shouldn’t even have been in the ice-box.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  'The computer says here there was a change of plan,’ Beth stumbled. ‘It even says—’

  ‘Are you mad?’ Devereaux’s eyes were alight again, his voice a tone higher. ‘So easily deceived? That message is a forgery.’

  Beth could only stare at him. nameless fright rising in her throat. Devereaux moved for the door, loosening the clothing about his neck as though all at once too warm. ‘It’s only a matter of establishing clearly what has gone before ... No such message was ever given to me on brain link to the computer, so therefore it can never have existed! Liz and Simon again, I fear; trying to upset the unity between me and the computer ... destroy my work...’

  He went out. At a loss, deeply confused, Beth looked back to the blue screen with its locked-on message. One word seemed to stand out from the yellow print, filling her eye: Error ... Regret ERROR ... ERROR ...

  * * *

  Out in the corridor, Devereaux said to Larry, who was passing, ‘Isn’t it a bit warm in here tonight? You’d better check the temperature control.’

  ‘Of course. Director. At once.’

  But as the other went on his way, Larry began to say to himself ‘silly old foo—’ until he too noticed that it was curiously stuffy. Puzzled, he turned for the computer room. As he passed Devereaux’s office, the door opened, and an agitated Beth came out.

  ‘Larry,’ she said rapidly. ‘I’ve got to talk to you.’

  Larry was thrown off balance, to say the least. ‘Since when would you want to talk to me?’

  ‘There was a computer instruction some little time ago telling us the AB experiment wasn’t to be proceeded with and not to expect volunteers. Is that right?’

  ‘Yes.’ Larry was mystified. ‘Yes, I remember that.’

  ‘Then it wasn’t a forgery?’

  ‘What are you talking about? Look, I just thought it had been countermanded, the way these things often are. The Director had it all on brain link anyway, so he’s the one to ask.’

  ‘On brain link,’ echoed Beth; and could not prevent a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.

  ‘Larry! ’ It was Bukov, calling from the computer room, the door of which had just sprung open. ‘Come quickly. There’s something wrong with the heating. It’s reached eighty, and still climbing.’

  ‘What?’ cried Beth.

  Together, they raced into the computer room. Bukov was standing before the control panel, indicating a dial. Sure enough, the needle was rising ominously.

  ‘It may just be a circuit fuse going,’ diagnosed Larry. ‘Hold on.’ He ran to a wall cupboard which he wrenched open. Within was a complex pattern of terminals and slot-in fuses. Larry speedily released a bank of these, which fell back at the touch of a lever.

  * * *

  In the Fantasy Room, abruptly the overhead lights that beamed down to imprison Liz and Simon cut dead. Simon’s head jerked upwards. He was never afterwards to understand completely what had happened; but it took only a split-second for him to realize that it had happened, and that was all that signified.

  ‘Quick — we’re free,’ he yelled, grabbing Liz’s hand and dragging her for the door.

  ‘But Simon — what in the world ...’ By that time they were out in the corridor. ‘The entrance area, Liz,’ snapped Simon. ‘Get a suit on and go back through the barrier.’

  ‘But you—’

  ‘No, I’m staying for a bit. Devereaux’s testament.’

  ‘You’re crazy,’ Liz began in horror, but again he cut her short, a strength she hadn’t thought him capable of in his voice.

  ‘I want to know about HA57,’ he insisted. ‘For me, not anyone else! But you’ve got to get back and warn your mother. Now don’t dawdle about! Move! ’

  ‘I won’t go without you! It’s not right! I’ll—’

  ‘Oh, gawd,’ exclaimed Simon, quite losing his savoir- faire. ‘Get lost, Liz. Scatter.’

  And grabbing her by the arm, he propelled her physically towards the entrance area, thrusting her roughly out and forcing closed the intervening door.

  * * *

  ‘Gauge still climbing, Larry,’ said Beth, with Bukov before the computer-room control panel. Larry banged the slot-in fuses back into place, hurriedly returned to them. Now he was worried.

  ‘I don’t understand it,’ he said. ‘Fuses all okay. Seems to be — just a power surge.’

  ‘Just another interruption in the standard process, then,’ nodded Bukov. ‘Like the water supply cut-off, the reactor failure.’

  ‘We’ve certainly had a lot of it lately.’

  ‘Too much,’ said Beth suddenly, and with a curious edge to her voice. ‘Because look, the gauge is going down again. Dropping.’ There was no doubt but that it was. Beth looked to her companions. ‘I find this all too odd,’ she ended. ‘I want to know why.’

  Bukov and Larry glanced at her sharply. There was a new interest in her eyes, a genuine curiosity.

  * * *

  Liz was dismal as she clambered into the thermal suit and hurried up the tunnel to the ice field above. Nobody appeared to prevent her, so she had time to reflect that she was sick of being pushed around; probably sick of being a girl if all it meant in the end was that people like Simon managed to do what they wanted while you just got sent home like a wilful child.

  Liz had crossed the ice now, and was about to slip off her suit again so that she could jump through the time barrier. But a strange thing gave her pause; the slabs, the queer oblong blocks of ice that up till then had seemed to her only a kind of landmark, were changing in character. The clinging hoar frost that usually clouded and obscured them was for some reason melting away, rendering them glassy and transparent. Thus it was that Liz observed with a little shock that the slab nearest her contained a prone form — that of a human being.

  Liz moved closer. Then something rose up from deep within her; something that would have been a scream of terror if it had ever passed her lips. She had recognized the figure frozen into the ice before her. Through the clear crust, as though a window, she could see his face. And it was her father. Frank Skinner.

  30

  Slowly, ever so slowly, the world began to revolve for Liz. Her eyes remained fixed on her father’s face, ashen and silent there beyond the ice; so that he became as it were the centre point in a universe that had, quite unreasonably, started to swing round in a circle. It was Frank, Liz knew utterly ob
jectively, no mistake about that. His eyes were closed and he could have been dead. But then, the great whiteness was wheeling all about her, and bright stars stood out in the velvet under her feet. And there was a curious ringing somewhere; clanging, insistent, like the alarm that had summoned them all to look on the grim remains of Edith Joynton.

  So Liz slumped in a faint to the icy ground. She could not see, and would not have understood if she had seen, that the gauge at the foot of the slab where Frank Skinner lay was reading ‘danger’, and had as a consequence set off an urgent signal within the ice-box.

  * * *

  ‘Well?’ inquired Devereaux with a kind of belligerence. ‘Whose fault is it this time, Bukov? Whose?’

  Frank Skinner lay under an oxygen tent in the infirmary, and Jean sat anxiously by his side. Liz was on the opposite side of the bed, still shattered herself perhaps, but determinedly vigilant; elsewhere Beth hovered nervously. Bukov turned from adjusting a tap on a cylinder to eye the irate Director.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said evenly. ‘There was that strange rise in temperature. It obviously had the effect of thawing the hibernation slabs outside.’

  ‘What on earth caused the rise in temperature?’ demanded Devereaux. ‘And how did the volunteers escape?’ He strode over to Liz. ‘You were imprisoned behind an electronic shield in the Fantasy Room. How did you get free?’

  ‘Oh, Director — can’t you see she’s upset?’ Liz had been able merely to turn abstracted eyes on Devereaux, and Jean was rising to her defence. ‘All this has been a terrible shock to her. She wanted to get away from this place because she was unhappy. But she came across those slabs outside and — and didn’t understand.’

  ‘Like Beth and I do, she means. Director,’ Bukov chimed in, and the other’s gaze went quickly back to him. ‘Beth and I are among the privileged, because whenever there is a problem here we understand that we are required to start with the answers and then look for the questions. It’s a good system, don’t you think, Beth? It means, for instance, that one only has to breathe the phrase “human error” to account for every possible discrepancy even before it’s happened.’

  ‘Please, Doctor Bukov.’ Beth turned away, upset and as yet in no state to cope with this kind of thing. But there was uncertainty in the very line of her stance.

  Bukov had spoken in an unusually pointed manner, and the effect was not lost on Devereaux. He frowned at the other, for the first time something almost apprehensive about him. He snapped, ‘What’s the matter with you, Bukov?’ and, not waiting for an answer, added, ‘Where is Simon?’

  * * *

  At precisely that moment Simon was in fact in an airless cupboard, and beginning to wake up to it that he must move soon or perish. He had heard all the alarms and excursions, had understood enough to tell him that Skinner had been in the slab of ice, a long-term hibernation subject. He inched open the door and moved cautiously out into the corridor, hopeful now that the brouhaha was over. There didn’t seem to be anyone about, so, his mind back on the testament that he still meant to secure, he moved swiftly and silently to Devereaux’s office. This was deserted too; Simon went determinedly on into the back room.

  The light ‘came with him’, and he found himself in the centre of the little computer complex. He was just looking round, wondering how best to proceed, when an odd clicking sound took his ear. At first he could not place it; but then it became obvious it was emerging from the clear perspex block before him. Simon moved to regard this, feeling it, peering into it. It was smooth to the touch and seemed purposeless. Then his eye fell on what looked like a solitary control set into a squat pillar which supported the block. Simon turned this gently.

  For a second nothing happened, then the lights of the room faded slowly down. And, as Simon watched, a kind of turbulence began in the heart of the block; spreading out in quick little wisps, becoming ever more dense, like an encroaching and thickening fog...

  * * *

  ‘I'm going up to my quarters to rest,’ said Devereaux, a sudden tiredness in voice and limb. ‘You’ve no right to speak to me like that, Bukov.’ There was no doubt now but that the Director was badly troubled.

  Devereaux vanished from the room, and Bukov gazed a long moment at Beth, who avoided his eyes. Then Bukov went out too.

  ‘Oh, Mummy.’ Liz lifted her eyes wearily from Skinner behind the oxygen tent to Jean. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘How could I?’ Jean was in tears. ‘You would never have understood. You know you wouldn’t.’

  ‘Will he be all right?’

  ‘Of course he will,’ asserted Beth, still standing apart. ‘It’s a regulated experiment, all the factors controlled by the computer.’

  ‘It was your idea though, wasn’t it?’

  ‘The hibernation experiment is different from anything else we’re doing here,’ Beth went on bluntly. ‘We’ve still to show that long-term freezing produces no ill-effects. This Particular experiment must now be accounted a failure. Frank should have remained in the ice for ten years at least.’

  ‘Ten years! ’ Horror started from Liz’s eyes.

  ‘It was the specified period. He knew that when he volunteered.’

  Liz swung on Jean again. ‘Did he volunteer, Mummy?’

  ‘Of course, dear,’ replied Jean.

  ‘You don’t sound so sure.’

  ‘It’s confidential information,’ cut in Beth loudly. ‘You’ve no right to it.’

  ‘But I want to know! ’

  ‘Very well, Liz.’ Jean was suddenly affirmative. ‘Frank’s volunteering for the hibernation experiment — was a condition of our coming to the ice-box.’

  ‘Jean!’ cried Beth.

  Jean sighed, tired and hopeless. ‘Oh, what’s the good of evading the truth any more, Beth? In the beginning, Liz, the authorities simply had no use for your father here. Then they said that if he would do this ... I could come with Beth, as I wanted to.’

  ‘And that’s why he did it?’ demanded Liz, her voice shaking. ‘Just so you could be with Beth?’

  In answer, Jean only looked back to her husband, pale and unconscious beneath the oxygen tent. But a sudden, almost animal anger claimed Liz.

  ‘This is ... a wicked place,’ she cried. Then she leapt up and ran to Beth. ‘You know that too at last, don’t you? Just like Mummy.’

  ‘Go away.’ Beth could not bear those eyes, so recognizably her own now, accusing her. ‘You’re nothing to do with me.’

  ‘But I am. I am you. Only you’re not me, that’s the trouble. You’ve changed too much. Better intelligence. Scientific progress. And your little tin god of a Director.’ Beth started for the door.

  ‘Wait! ’ Suddenly Liz had dashed after her, catching her arm and pulling her round. And, to her surprise, Liz found she was not angry any more. She was sad, overwhelmingly sad, and in some part of her desperate. ‘Please, Beth,’ she said, near tears herself. ‘Don’t go. Don’t you see? We can’t escape from each other, you and I. We mustn’t...’

  And it seemed to her clear, at least for a moment, that Beth understood. Like gazed out upon like; in the heart, after all, no enduring separation.

  Jean shifted uneasily in her chair by Skinner’s bed. It could have been her imagination, but it seemed to her that now it was getting very cold.

  31

  ‘It’s nothing,’ insisted Devereaux, staring at the gauge on the control panel in the computer room. ‘Three degrees below normal. That’s not an unusual variation.’

  They had called him from rest to report that the temperature was now going down instead of up; to refer to his authority yet another arbitrary deviation from the norm. Why was it all happening? He looked round to Bukov and Larry, covering as best he could what was an instinctive surge of panic. But Bukov observed it well enough, and was satisfied. The time had come for him to act.

  ‘Director,’ he said, ‘I have to tell you that I have information concerning the things that have been going wrong here. I was inten
ding to make it part of a report to the International Commission, but now I see I must show it to you.’ Devereaux stared at him. ‘What authority have you to ‘"make a report to the International Commission?’ he demanded.

  ‘From the beginning Edith Joynton and I had a special brief. To report on you.’

  He swung for the wall cupboard, unlocking it with the key strung round his neck and taking out the case of computer tapes. Devereaux’s jaw had dropped. ‘You were to report on ME?’

  “This case contains computer instruction tapes,’ announced Bukov, opening it.

  ‘I don't believe that you and Doctor Joynton were detailed to spy on me! I’m in charge here.’

  ‘Each of these tapes contains a blank at a certain point — perhaps a critical point. There’s an interruption. Director ... a break in programming.’

  ‘That’s impossible,’ snapped Devereaux.

  ‘Aren’t we starting with answers again — and working our way back to questions?’ Bukov was plainly not to be rattled, and Devereaux’s eyes said clearly enough that he had been frightened. ‘With your permission, Director,’ Bukov added politely, moving for a bastion to put the tape on.

  At the panel, still watching the gauge, Larry looked up with a worried frown. "This is bad,’ he said. ‘Progressive deterioration. Five below normal now.’

  * * *

  Simon came out of the Director’s office a bit stunned. He knew what he had seen in there, in the back room, in the perspex block, but still couldn’t quite believe it. It came under the heading of unreal experiences, things you remember for a long time after they only seem to have happened. A door opened farther down the corridor, and he turned his head. Liz was coming out of the infirmary with Beth.