Timeslip

by Bruce Stewart

  ‘Simon,’ cried Liz, glad to see him now: but then stopped, taken aback by his pale cheeks and bright eyes. ‘What — what’s the matter?’

  ‘You’d better come and see,’ replied Simon shortly. ‘Yes. You too, Beth.’

  Old habits of mind die hard. Beth saw the open door behind Simon, and at once flared. ‘You haven’t been in the Director’s office again?’ she cried. ‘You’ve interfered too often—’

  ‘I understand about the testament now,’ said Simon loudly to Liz. And then to Beth: ‘And you. You just don’t know, do you? All you ever did was service that computer in the back room for Devereaux. You never knew what it was for...’

  His very tension was enough to stop her. ‘Come on,’ he muttered. ‘You’ve got to see.’ He turned and went back into the office. Liz followed; as did Beth, willing it now.

  The lights were very dim in the back room and the perspex slab glowed, swirling with thick mist, as Liz and Beth entered with Simon. Simon adjusted the control on the pillar. ‘Just watch,’ he whispered.

  Imperceptibly, the mist began to clear within the slab.

  What followed was hard to describe: at one stage Liz thought clearly ‘Yes, it’s a film’, but an instant later knew that was a false judgement, related to her own inadequate understanding. It was an experience, more like, something outside time and space as they knew it, that might have taken seconds to apprehend or could have occupied years. It was obviously some sort of variation on the fantasy technique, and unfolded to them as it were the life of a man. Babyhood, school, advanced learning, the whole process of growth was made present and actual to them; they were there as the babe became a boy, the boy a young man. And it was just occurring to Liz that the face of the subject was somehow familiar when the strange mists clouded everything again and there was nothing more to be known. Then it hit her. The face was the face of Devereaux.

  Liz whirled startled eyes towards Beth. ‘What ... what does it mean?’ she gasped.

  ‘Do you know what the Director is, Beth?’ put in Simon. ‘What he truly is? Doctor Bukov told me once the Director was — a clone.’

  ‘What’s a clone?’ cried Liz.

  Beth was plainly shaken. ‘No, Simon ... no, that can’t be true.’

  ‘Will somebody tell me what a clone is?’ Liz was getting agitated.

  ‘Why, Liz,’ said Beth softly, ‘a clone is a person constructed from the genetic cells of someone else.’

  ‘From the other Devereaux who died years ago. That’s right.’ Simon nodded. ‘Nobody knew. And the Director is making sure it keeps on being that way...’ His eyes drifted back to the perspex slab, dense with glowing fog. ‘That’s what all this is for, you see. This computer is simply to build another clone of Devereaux. And what we’ve just seen ... is how far he’s got. That’s the testament, too.’ He was rueful all at once. ‘I’ll never find the secret of the longevity drug now. Because it’s part of the new clone. When that becomes mature — it’ll be Devereaux all over again. And the secret will still be safe in his head...’

  There was a long silence in the little room. Then Beth hugged herself, shivering. ‘It’s cold,’ she whispered. So cold.’

  * * *

  ‘Seven below,’ reported Larry anxiously. ‘For God’s sake, can’t we find out what’s wrong? We’ll ice over at this rate.’

  ‘The fault is in the programming,’ specified Bukov, still deliberately calm. ‘The Director checks every operation of the computer, daily, on brain link. The computer can’t make mistakes, we know. But if it should happen that the Director, while programming — perhaps unknown to himself—’

  ‘Lies,’ shouted Devereaux suddenly, unwilling to face a truth of this order, if truth it was. ‘You’re trying to make out I’ve made mistakes. But I know the reason for that. You’re jealous of me here, Bukov. You’d like me out of the way.’

  ‘You won’t hear what I’ve got to say then?’ Bukov indicated the tape he had secured on the bastion. ‘I want us to analyse this instruction tape together. Director. You’ll be able to observe the blanks for yourself. You’ll be forced to realize—’

  Abruptly Devereaux had started for the door. Bukov temporized no longer. Springing after him with ready agility, the big Russian seized the Director bodily and hurled him back into the centre of the room. ‘Throw an electronic shield around him, Larry,’ he barked. ‘I’ll take the responsibility. I’m assuming command before that heat level falls below tolerance.’

  Larry lunged at the panel, needing no second bidding. Bright shafts of light stung down from the ceiling, enclosing Devereaux in a narrow circle as he picked himself up off the floor, panting. The door from the corridor opened and Beth hurried in, Liz and Simon behind her.

  ‘Beth,’ sobbed Devereaux. ‘Help me! An emergency signal to Central Control...’

  But Beth could only stare, utterly astounded. Bukov raced to the tape on the bastion, setting it in motion. ‘I have no choice, Beth,’ he called back. ‘Wait and see for yourself. The Director’s mistakes will kill us if I don’t take over.’

  A screen on the control panel had rapidly activated; curious symbols, indecipherable to Liz and only remotely comprehensible to Simon, chased each other across the gleaming area. ‘It’s the tape from yesterday morning. Director — your programming of the HA57 dosage. It was because her dosage was incorrect that Edith Joynton died.’

  ‘More lies,’ shouted Devereaux. ‘Beth, can’t you see what they’re doing to me? You understand. You know. Help me...’

  But still Beth could only stand and stare. The symbols chattered across the screen; then abruptly stopped dead. There was a good five seconds blank before they took up again. Seeing this, Devereaux froze in a kind of horror. A little sound, no more than an escape of breath, broke from him. A general silence descended over the room and its occupants.

  ‘It’s because you suffer from blackouts. Director,’ said Bukov at length, gentle now. ‘Did you know this?’ The stunned Devereaux could not reply. ‘They are beyond your control. Really — must we analyse the other tapes? The ones relating to the water supply — the summoning of volunteers? You know the truth now. The temperature is falling. It’s your doing. You must go on brain link at once to save us. You must correct the error.’

  ‘Error,’ muttered Devereaux, barely audible. ‘All this time ... error...’

  Bukov looked to Larry, nodded silently. Larry touched a switch and the electronic shield disintegrated, dying away in a long glow. He ran to bring forward the steel table with its terminals. Bukov indicated to the Director.

  ‘No...’ Devereaux seemed to understand that he was free of his cage, but at another level remained confused and dazed. ‘It can’t be so. My brain — and the computer ... the most reliable combination in the world.’

  ‘Not much time left. Director,’ insisted Bukov. ‘You must re-programme.’

  ‘No!’ Devereaux abruptly cringed away from them, a man in pain. ‘I don’t believe you. You’re deceiving me — all of you! Working against me...’ They could only regard him, dismayed now rather than shocked. All his arrogance seemed to have returned in a flood. ‘As you have been from the beginning! You, Beth — Bukov — everyone. You’re not worthy of me. I leave you... leave you to your fate...’

  It took everyone by surprise. In a second he had overturned the gleaming steel table before him, and leapt for the door even as the sensitive terminals clattered to the floor and smashed. ‘Wait, Director!’ shouted Bukov, plunging after him. ‘You’ve got to re-programme.’

  In his fury, in his madness if it was that, Devereaux had a wild strength. Bukov caught him in a fierce grip out in the corridor; but even before Larry could arrive to help, he had smashed a blinding blow into the Russian’s face, driving him helplessly back against the wall. Then he had sped away, avoiding Larry’s violent tackle, down towards the entrance area, the tunnel, the deadly ice field outside. There had been a slight improvement in the external temperature, as it happened — it was now only se
venty below rather than eighty — but long before anyone could effectively follow and save him from his own turbulence of mind, such cold as lay over and above the desolate terrain had pierced into Devereaux like a knife, bringing him gasping to his knees and then choking to his belly. In such circumstances, a man only takes a few minutes to die. There is no telling what Devereaux last thought before the end. Perhaps in spite of all, that he remained the finest mind in the world. For such men, be they men born of mothers or men created of science, seldom ever change. Their tragedy is that they cannot face what it is to be wrong. They are thus not fully human, and so they perish.

  * * *

  Within the ice-box, conditions kept on deteriorating, so now there was nothing for it but the anti-freeze. The cupboard was rapidly broken open, the final SOS dispatched to Central Control, the phials handed out to the personnel. Beth sat on the floor of the computer room, against the desk, consuming the saving fluid. It brought on a quick drowsiness, and then insensibility. Liz was happy to see that, as she slipped into unconsciousness, Beth leaned against Larry, who was next to her, glad of his friendship and support at last. The future to Liz didn’t in all respects look as grim as it might have done. But Simon, who also observed this, merely noted the phenomenon and wondered.

  There remained Jean and Frank in the infirmary.

  ‘Take it. Mummy,’ said Liz, shivering as she handed her the phials. ‘You and Frank. It’ll keep you alive till help arrives.’

  In the grip of the cold, afraid both for herself and her husband, Jean could only ask, ‘Why, Liz? What’s happened?’

  ‘You must take it, that’s all! Simon and I are going back through the barrier now. All this...’ Her eyes travelled round about her, to come inevitably back to the woman who in any time and place would always be her mother. ‘... all this — won’t happen. I promise you. Mummy. It won’t...’

  * * *

  So Liz and Simon again put on thermal suits and made their way back to the barrier and their own time. There would be much to tell Jean and Frank; but not so much to share with Traynor, whose greed for information Simon now knew well and, in some part of himself, feared.

  One last thing happened within the ice-box that Liz and Simon for obvious reasons could not then observe, but afterwards supposed must have taken place. In the back room off the Director’s office, the perspex slab in the centre of the little computer complex cracked jaggedly as it contracted; then splintered into myriad pieces; so that whatever lay beyond it, whatever strange life it sheltered, was by the intense cold cut off from its vital source, and scientifically terminated.