Boundary (Field Book 3)

by Simon Winstanley

  “Bam,” William completed, “Looked like a full-on blowout to me.”

  “I’d no idea that’s what they were like. It was terrifying!”

  “Yep, I reckon you busted up that axle pretty good,” he nodded, throwing a thumb over his shoulder towards the back of the car.

  “Are you a mechanic then?” she asked.

  He was used to most people recognising him, so it caught him a little off guard that she obviously didn’t know who he was.

  “I sorta know a bit about cars,” he volunteered.

  He actually owned several cars. Although his family continued to make their billions through mining, his father had an interest in classic cars and racing. The Pittman family’s popular racing-themed ‘Pitstop’ clubs were also springing up in several towns, so William was surprised that she’d never seen him playing host locally.

  “The name’s Bill,” he extended out a hand, “this ain’t the best of circumstance, but I’m mighty pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  She laughed and pointed at his hand, “You’re steaming!”

  He began to laugh too when he looked at his hand and saw that thin wisps of steam were indeed evaporating off his wet shirt cuff. It appeared that the effects were not limited to his own clothing; already the windows around them were beginning to mist up.

  “I’m Dorothy, and I’m lucky to be alive,” she laughed, pulling the wet hair out of her eyes and looping it behind her ear, “and… thanks for catching me. Saved by my very own mysterious stranger.”

  “I was just in the right place,” he laughed along with her, “I guess it was just…”

  “Kismet,” she stared at him, gently biting her lip.

  He wasn’t exactly sure what the word meant, but he thought he’d heard the word ‘kiss’. From the way her eyes were now darting between each of his, he felt sure that he didn’t really need a dictionary. He looked into her eyes but found he couldn’t resist a fleeting glance at her lips, still damp with rain.

  “We came so close to bumpin’ each other,” William angled his head slightly towards the road outside, but didn’t look away from her.

  “On the other hand,” she smiled, “We came so close to missing each other.”

  “It’s like,” William looked at her, “It’s meant to be, or somethin’.”

  “I couldn’t have put it better myself,” Dorothy leaned towards him.

  For several long seconds they tenderly touched lips, neither of them appearing to notice the continuing downpour outside.

  STORYKILLER

  11th July 1991

  General Broxbourne stood at the front of the cramped, warm briefing room of the Whitehall Bunker.

  “OK, what the hell’s going on?”

  Perry Baker gathered his notes and prepared to become the bearer of bad news.

  “At the end of March ‘89, Dr. Walker ran the first Chronomagnetic Field test on a pot of flowers. The equipment was small scale and achieved a three-to-one temporal ratio. Inside the Field, the, er,” Perry studied his notes, “Cosmos bipinnatus grew at three times the normal rate. The test last night was the first attempt at a vastly bigger Field, using one of Bradley Pittman’s improved power supplies and a scaled-up -”

  General Broxbourne gave a grumbling cough that told Perry he was fully aware of Dr. Walker’s previous research.

  “The larger Field initiated just fine but then went,” Perry awkwardly searched for the right word, “awry.”

  “Define ‘awry’,” Broxbourne balled his fists slightly.

  “Sorry. According to the report, the Field was perfectly placed in longitude and latitude, but the Field emitter in control of anchoring the depth coordinate, failed. Before the internal timers shut down the generator, the Field had already started to intersect the roof of the Salisbury Plain Army Base and the landscape above it.”

  “Casualties?” Broxbourne asked immediately.

  “None, but the base suffered damage. Dr. Walker says that anchoring the depth wasn’t even an issue with the much smaller ‘89 Field, but until he can work out what went wrong, he’s shut it down.”

  Broxbourne gave a heavy sigh before replying.

  “OK. That’s bad,” Broxbourne exhaled, “How long’s it going to take to get the Salisbury facility running again?”

  “I’m afraid that’s not the bad news. Apparently, when the Field disengaged, they didn’t realise there’d been any impact on the landscape above them until this morning. By which time it was too late - it made the national press.”

  Perry dropped a bundle of the evening newspapers onto the table. He pushed the top of the pile causing the papers to collapse across the width of the table to the other side.

  “Damn it!” Broxbourne swore as he saw the front-page photos, then shot a furious look at Robert Wild, “How are you going to ‘spin’ us out of this one, Wild?”

  Without a word, Robert picked up the first of the papers. After a few moments, he swiftly positioned another one alongside it and continued to scan between the similar looking news stories.

  “Excellent,” he suddenly grinned.

  “Excellent?” Broxbourne shot back.

  “It’s a slow news story,” Robert returned, “Slow news is no news.”

  In response, Broxbourne snatched a paper at random from the table and held it out forcibly in Robert’s direction.

  “This is news. It’s across every damned paper,” he picked up more papers and flashed the front pages at Robert, one after another, “I don’t know what sort of world you’re living in, Wild -”

  “The same one as everyone else,” Robert countered, “A world needing a little harmless mystery to spice up their dull lives. So that’s what we’ll give them.”

  “So, let me get this straight,” Perry stared, “You’re proposing that we do absolutely nothing? Brilliant plan. Are you out of your mind?”

  “No more than usual,” Robert came back instantly.

  Robert turned the nearest paper around and pointed at the photo occupying the front page.

  “This ‘Mystery Crop Circle’ is perfect,” he smiled, “What I’m proposing is that we build the story up, get more publicity, fan the flames a little -”

  “Exactly what part of this plan is making the problem go away?” Perry laughed falsely, “Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do, Storykiller? Cover up, conceal? The Field has just put a very public and circular dent in the landscape directly above the Salisbury facility - people are gonna start asking questions -”

  “Let them,” Robert was busily scrawling on a newspaper with a marker pen, “Then in a few weeks, we release this.”

  He held up the newspaper he’d been defacing.

  The black marker pen headline, emblazoned across the photo of the crop circle read, ‘Hoax!’

  “Crop circles have been around for years,” Robert dropped the paper onto the pile, “they get attributed to all sort of stuff. Lightning strikes, dust devils, UFO gravity drive imprints -”

  Seeing the expressions of those in the room change, he moved swiftly to pull them back onto topic.

  “My background reading net is cast pretty wide. Don’t worry about it. The fact that the circle above the Salisbury facility looks remarkably like a crop circle is perfect. It puts it in the same bag of crazy as all the others. Once people see the sort of publicity it’s getting, it’ll entice the copycats and they’ll start making their own circles too -”

  “Making their own, Wild?” Perry interrupted again, “And how exactly are they gonna -”

  “Hand-held piece of rope attached to a plank of wood. Walk in a circle. Repeat for larger circles. I even know of a couple of guys that could do it for us if it’s an issue. Actually, that might work better,” he said, almost as a mental note to himself, “instead of ‘Hoax’ we could run with ‘The men that conned the world’, it has a kind of parallel with what we’re doing here…”

  He quickly emerged from his mental aside and his enthusiasm was again directed to the oth
ers in the room.

  “Anyway, just ignore the mechanics for a minute and listen. We can hide this test, literally, in the haystack of background circle noise. Mixed metaphor I know, but you get my drift? Once we’ve duplicated the effect several times and shown the public it was a hoax, the mystery and intrigue will be crushed. Story killed.”

  After the briefing, Robert received word that a secure phone call was awaiting him, so he made his way down the narrow corridor that ran alongside the arrivals room. As he passed its door he peered through the window to the darkened room beyond; its multicoloured walls now lay in monochrome shadow. He remembered all too well when the room had been full of frantic kids, shouting, screaming and playing party games during the Heavy Rain false alarm of ‘89. Suppressing a shudder, he walked on and entered the external communications room, where he was directed to a phone booth.

  Although the telephone exchange had been updated, the actual handset and booth itself still seemed to be embedded within World War Two; the handset felt as though it were cast in lead and the booth’s door shrieked at the apparent discomfort of being closed.

  “This is Robert Wild,” he spoke into the handset.

  “Oh Robert, excellent,” came the crackly sounding voice, “It’s Dorothy Pittman, I wondered if I might talk with you?”

  Robert looked at his watch, “If it’s about the British tabloids this evening then I’m already working on -”

  “Oh no, it’s about something completely different.”

  If it were anyone else he would have declined, but he knew better than to refuse Mrs. Pittman, “Of course, how can I help?”

  “Well I wanted to talk to you about an interesting development that arose a while ago at the Pittman Academy here in Houston. I believe you’ll want to know about it.”

  He’d long held the opinion that she was merely a wealthy relic who belonged to a bygone era; her Archive place only secured by her marriage to William Pittman, the long-dead billionaire benefactor. He knew the clock was already ticking on his handling of the crop circles issue and he really didn’t have time to listen to her ramblings. But before he could deflect his way out of the conversation, she had already continued speaking.

  “It’s concerning Morphology of the Ego, and metastable-cortothene.”

  He listened passively while she went into more detail, but as she continued he found himself genuinely intrigued.

  During the entire time he’d known her, she had never spoken in specific terms on any Archive endeavour. But as the conversation deepened he became aware that she was speaking in very specific, intricate and knowledgeable detail. Somehow it didn’t seem feasible that her kindly demeanour was merely a facade, but by the time he’d hung up the heavy handset, his assumptions about her had radically altered. With the information and resources now placed at his disposal, he could literally kill stories before they had chance to become public knowledge.

  In his distracted state, he found himself staring at the newspaper that was still in his hand. He noticed that the ‘o’ of his marker-penned ‘Hoax’ had intersected with the circumference of the crop circle image. He made a mental note to ask his hoaxers about the possibility of making the circles more elaborate.

  He tucked the defaced newspaper under his arm and, with a shriek of complaint from the door, he strode from the booth.

  51VA

  13th February 1952

  Below a black sky, flecked with pinpricks of starlight, the Bradley Observatory dome was open. Being a clear night in Georgia, the thirty-inch reflector telescope was again in use. Inside the dome, on a raised circular walkway, Howard Walker was writing up his notes on the evening’s session. He was whistling a jaunty tune from the hit parade, the lyrics of which were questioning the altitude of the moon, when he heard the ground floor door open and footsteps climbing the cast-iron steps. He stopped whistling, and above its dying echo, Sam Bishop’s voice came from below:

  “Somewhere there’s music.”

  “How near?” said Howard with a smile.

  “How far, you mean!” said Sam reaching the upper walkway, “How far do I have to go to avoid that guitar-torturing record? Honestly, since my daughter bought that infernal record last week, she’s been playing it non-stop. How can anyone think with all that racket?”

  “Ha ha! You know he actually built his own guitar?”

  “It’s still a racket, and it’ll never catch on,” said Sam handing him an envelope, “Post for you.”

  “Oh, thanks. You know, I was thinking of running another - hey!” said Howard opening the letter, “Designation results!”

  “Yes, I figured you’d probably want to see it.”

  Howard unfolded the letter, laid it flat on the worktop, and skip-read through it.

  “Reference November 5th 1951... photometric astrometry plate result... blah - Ah!” he exclaimed, “Here it is...We have entered its provisional designation as...”

  “Well?” smiled Sam.

  “1951 VA,” he beamed, “It got the ‘A’ !”

  “Congratulations Kid!” he laughed, finding the enthusiasm infectious.

  “I mean, we were bound to get the ‘V’, it was a November sighting,” Howard grinned, collecting his notes together and stuffing them into his battered, leather satchel, “but to be the first one to find it... it got the ‘A’! Told you didn’t I?”

  “Ha ha, you certainly did!” Sam stood to one side to allow him past, “Now clear out of here, you’re whistling through my telescope time!”

  “Betty’s going to be thrilled!” said Howard, throwing the satchel over his shoulder and clattering down the iron steps, “Goodnight Dr. Bishop!”

  The door clanged shut, leaving Sam in the peace and quiet of his own thoughts. But it wasn’t long before the door opened again and the same jaunty lunar tune, this time sung, flooded back into the Observatory’s reverberating dome.

  “Do you have to sing it here too?” he called out, recognising the voice.

  Footsteps started to climb the cast-iron steps.

  “Sorry, Dad,” the singing stopped with a laugh, “I haven’t sung it all day, and then I heard the young man whistling it as he cycled past the car, and it sort of…”

  “Got you started again…” he smiled as she reached the upper walkway, “Dorothy Bishop, that tune will take my sanity…”

  “So, was that him?” Dorothy asked, waving a hand in the general direction of the door, “Is he the one who found ‘51 VA?”

  He beckoned her closer then whispered.

  “OK, officially Howard Walker is the one we’re attributing the discovery to. But you’ll have to be careful, you never know who could be listening.”

  “OK, I’m sorry,” she smiled but then whispered, “but officially I’m not the one who’s just implied he didn’t discover a completely uninteresting distant piece of rock.”

  He realised that it was he who’d made the slip; in terms of anyone listening in, she had merely enquired about a distant asteroid.

  He conceded the point with his own sheepish smile.

  He knew that, long before 1951VA, world events had stifled her childhood. She’d been only eleven years old when the attack on Pearl Harbour had altered her world. The concept that careless talk costs lives had resonated with her; by the time World War Two had ended, she had grown to become a woman who listened far more than she spoke. The result was that she often knew far more than people gave her credit for. Sam knew it was a trait they’d have to exploit in the years ahead, but right now he was hesitant about the first step along that path.

  “Dorothy,” he took hold of her hands, “About tomorrow, we -”

  “I know that look, Dad,” she squeezed his hands to interrupt him, “we’ve been over this. I have to do this. We know what’s at stake, it’s a small sacrifice -”

  “A sacrifice that I’m forcing on you -”

  “No,” she resolutely shook her head, “This is my choice. So, is the flight booked?”

  They went over th
e Atlanta to Houston flight details and also the operation of the adjusted vehicle she would use the following night. He talked her through the timings of the proposed route, including where he would be.

  “My uniform is sorted, and I’ll be waiting here,” he pointed to a small map, “I’ve arranged for the power to be out on Maple. It’ll be dark but the forecast is for clear skies. All you’ll have to do is push the button and then…”

  “Then we start the ball rolling,” she simplified.

  “Now, when the explosive charge blows out the tyre wall, you’re gonna get a sharp pull -”

  “It’s OK, Dad,” she took hold of his hands again, “We’ve been through it all, I trust your planning. But if my ‘kismet’ meeting with Pittman starts to drift off plan then… I’ll improvise, you know? Use my feminine charms.”

  The very thought sent an uncomfortable shiver down his spine and again he had the strong urge to cancel it all. But his daughter, adept at reading languages beyond the spoken, reacted before he could put his feelings into words.

  “William Pittman is a means to an end. No… he’s a means to a beginning. Logically, we’ll be getting far more from his family’s billions than he’ll be getting from one woman.”

  “But you will be that woman, my darling -”

  “With that sort of money comes a lot of influence,” she continued, “You said it yourself, Dad - our hopes to accelerate the endeavours and the very minds of mankind can only happen if we can influence those minds. Dad, when I weigh it all up, my personal sacrifice is not only insignificant, it’s a requirement!”

  Sam Bishop looked proudly at his brave daughter, already wise beyond her years; clearly, her mind was set. He looked up through the gap in the Observatory dome and pointed to the stars beyond.

  “One day, when mankind looks back at this planet, they’ll thank you for taking these difficult first steps.”

  He pulled her close and hugged her. The tragedy was that if they were successful, no-one would ever know of their efforts.

  “Well then,” she said, determinedly, “For the good of Mankind, let’s catch that flight.”