by Gary Gibson
‘You’re talking about the Russians,’ I said.
‘We’ve got an ice age coming,’ said Bramnik. ‘The global temperature’s dipped too low, for too long. We have maybe ten years to figure something out, and we’re not ruling out some kind of a mass evacuation, if we can ever get enough transfer stages running – and find somewhere safe enough to point them at. We thought the alternate you’ve all been living on might be such a place, but when we investigated the mainland . . . well, let’s just say there’s a reason we stick to that island. But wherever we end up going, assuming we can find such a place, and assuming evacuating the entire population of an alternate is even remotely feasible, we won’t be able to do it without the help of the Soviets.’
‘You need somewhere with an intact infrastructure,’ I suggested. ‘Somewhere that’s lost its population, but is safe to repopulate.’
‘That’s just one possible option among a thousand,’ said Bramnik, ‘I’m not even joking when I say I’d be hanged if they knew how much I’ve told you. As far as you or anyone else is concerned, you were never here.’
‘I want to thank you,’ I said, ‘for telling us the truth.’
‘No,’ said Bramnik, ‘thank you. I saw the video you handed over, of Casey’s confession. We know now exactly what he was planning. Without your help, things would clearly have been infinitely worse for all of us.’
‘So what next?’ demanded Randall. ‘We just keep doing what we’ve always done?’
‘Why not?’ asked Bramnik. ‘The deal you’ve got is a hell of a lot better than any of the people you saw on the drive over here have. And, compared to most other places on this alternate, they’re the lucky ones. Look – things will be different, Mr Pimms, I guarantee you. Better equipment, better backup, much more transparency and no more weapons retrieval. But we still need data, or anything, really, that can help us figure out how to program safe destinations into the transfer stages. Maybe then you’ll be able to retire, and we’ll be able to find some place safe for our people – but in the meantime, I’d count your blessings.’
The door opened and the guard named Louie entered. It was time for us to leave.
I was glad, to be honest. I’d been delaying telling the others about Haden for much too long.
TWENTY-SIX
We were driven back across town to the underground garage, from where Louie ushered us back upstairs to the transfer stage. I had the feeling it wasn’t the main stage, though. It was hidden away in a building that was clearly decrepit and, so far as I could tell, deserted. I felt sure there would be others, perhaps tucked away in military bases.
We watched the ballroom fade from view and found ourselves back in the main hangar by the base.
For the first time, there was no rig technician on duty to greet us. Instead, there were unfamiliar men in military uniforms, all of them armed, although from the way they acted, it was clear they had been expecting us.
We looked around at each other, then made our way unchallenged out into the morning of a new day. We didn’t have to look too hard to find evidence of fighting: there were bloodstains on the concrete just outside the hangar entrance and bullet holes in the doors.
I motioned to the others to gather around me once we were far away enough from the hangar we wouldn’t be overheard, and pulled the envelope out of my pocket.
‘What is that?’ asked Chloe.
‘Haden gave this to me,’ I said, and for the first time told them about my encounter with him outside Retièn.
‘That’s impossible,’ said Randall, some minutes later. He looked shaken; they all did.
‘Explain this, then,’ I said, taking the scrap of paper back from Yuichi, who had been staring obsessively at his name and the transfer coordinates beneath it for some minutes.
‘I don’t know,’ he muttered, his eyes darting away from mine. ‘You invented it, maybe.’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ said Selwyn, regarding him with disgust. ‘What is it with you?’
‘But if it’s real,’ said Randall, ‘then . . .’ He shook his head and lapsed into silence.
‘I’ve got a theory,’ I said. ‘Or at least, something that makes some kind of sense.’ I paused before continuing. ‘Maybe Haden’s a stage-builder.’
They all looked at each other. ‘You’re serious?’ asked Winifred.
‘Well, either he’s that,’ said Yuichi, ‘or he really is an alien with those damn eyes of his . . .’
‘Or it’s a cruel joke,’ said Chloe. ‘We’ll never know until we actually try and use some of those coordinates, will we?’
‘Question is,’ I asked, ‘who goes first?’
‘I will,’ said Randall, his jaw set. ‘If those coordinates can really take me home . . . then I want to go home.’
‘Randall,’ said Winifred, ‘remember what I said back at the Mauna Loa, about how you can never really go home . . .’
‘Oh, shut the hell up,’ Randall snapped. Winifred glared at him, and he reddened.
‘Look, I’m sorry,’ Randall continued, ‘but all I’ve ever wanted to do is to find my way to some place like the world I was living in before everything fell to shit. I don’t care if I’ve changed, or it’s changed, or it’s completely different or their tacos taste funny, or whatever.’ He bared his teeth. ‘I want to find myself some little town, with ordinary people walking around the streets, with hardware stores and farms and ice-cream parlours and beer on tap, with absolutely zero fucking prospect of asteroids falling on it or military germ-warfare turning everyone into monsters. I want some place with cable sports and pretty girls serving you whisky and country and western dances every Friday night. I want, more than anything,’ he continued, clenching his fists, ‘to live somewhere where every day is exactly the same as every other and I am gloriously, joyously bored out of my fucking skull.’
‘Amen,’ said Selwyn, quietly.
No one really seemed to have anything to say to that.
‘Well, if we’re going to try out those coordinates,’ I said eventually, ‘we probably shouldn’t wait around.’
Chloe glanced back at the hangar. ‘I don’t think they’re going to let us just walk in there and use the stage,’ she said. ‘But you’re not talking about that, are you?’
‘You think maybe they haven’t done anything yet about the stage hidden in the trawler?’ suggested Yuichi.
I shook my head. ‘I think they’ve got too much on their hands to worry about it just yet. But it won’t stay there forever, not now Mayer and the rest know about it.’
‘Then that’s it,’ said Randall. ‘We drive back out there again and use Haden’s coordinates.’
I glanced to one side, seeing Winifred’s tight-lipped expression. ‘I know you don’t want to hear this,’ she said, ‘but we still don’t know where those coordinates really lead, or what Haden’s motives really are.’
‘I don’t care,’ said Randall. ‘I’m prepared to take that chance.’
‘What do you think, Jerry?’ Yuichi asked me. ‘It was you he gave them to, after all.’
I thought for a moment. ‘I’m convinced he was trying to help us.’ I looked around the rest of them. ‘Anyone else apart from Randall and Selwyn want to test these out?’
‘Consider me undecided,’ said Yuichi, ‘for the same reasons as Winifred. That’s not to say I wouldn’t want to take a look, at least, if I thought the coordinates would really work.’
‘Randall,’ I said, ‘are you really willing to be a guinea pig on this one?’
He nodded tightly. ‘I am.’
They all looked at me as if it was my decision. I looked at Chloe, who hadn’t replied, and thought about how badly I’d wanted to find somewhere like home not so very long ago. But now I had the chance, I found myself far from sure I wanted to take it.
‘I guess we go, then.’
Government House had a few bullet holes studded around its entrance that hadn’t been there before. Soldiers stood guard outside the building
for the first time since my retrieval. They eyed us watchfully as we commandeered a couple of jeeps from the pool, but made no move to stop us, and soon we were driving back up along the coast road.
The beached trawler was just as we’d left it. We went inside and started the power-up sequence while I pulled out the envelope and read the appropriate coordinates out to Randall. I watched as he programmed them into the laptop himself.
Randall looked around us all, and I could see how terrified he was, and how determined. ‘Well, here goes nothing,’ he said, stepping inside the ring on its rickety wood and canvas support. I saw the perspiration on his skin, his fear written in the lines on his face. ‘I’ll take a look around, see what I can see and report back. I won’t be long.’
We had set the stage to automatically bring him back after five minutes, since there was no way of knowing if there was a transfer stage on the other side. As long as he made sure to stand exactly where he’d been when he arrived, he’d be able to return. If we tried to maintain the connection any longer than that, the power drain would quickly become exponential.
The air shimmered, and when it faded, Randall was gone. I wondered what he was seeing, or if we had just sent him to an unimaginable death. Yuichi hobbled back outside on his crutches to smoke; Winifred went with him. I sat down on the sand with my back against the rusting hull and was still staring towards the stage when Randall reappeared right on time five minutes later. Despite my certainty that everything would be all right, I still felt a powerful rush of relief.
It hit me that all through the hunt for Casey, I had not thought about Alice once.
Winifred crowded in through the rent in the hull with Yuichi. ‘What did you see?’ she asked Randall excitedly.
‘I was in an old abandoned hotel,’ he said, grinning more broadly and looking more happy than I had ever seen him. ‘I had just enough time to stick my head outside and take a look, and . . .’ he trailed off, shaking his head.
‘C’mon,’ urged Yuichi. His cigarette, forgotten, burned its way down towards his knuckles.
Randall spread his hands and grinned. ‘Just . . . people. I don’t know where I was, exactly. There was a coffee shop on the other side of the road. It looked like Albuquerque, where I’m from. Everything just looked . . . normal.’
Selwyn stepped over to the laptop and picked up the scrap of paper Randall had left lying there. ‘Me next,’ he said, tears trembling in the corners of his eyes.
We all agreed to take turns, even Winifred. But first we argued, and made arrangements, even in some cases made farewells. Randall wasn’t coming back. Neither was Selwyn, once he realized his destination was his hometown of Cardiff. After confirming where the coordinates would take him, he came back just long enough to say goodbye, and then he was gone forever. Winifred went and looked and came back, and so did Yuichi. So far, all the coordinates functioned perfectly.
By now, there were just four of us left. Me and Chloe and Winifred and Yuichi.
‘I guess it’s good to know I could go there if I really wanted to,’ said Winifred. ‘That’s enough for me.’
‘You’re staying,’ I said.
‘I already told you.’ For the first time, I saw her smile, really smile, and it made her look like an entirely different person. ‘Does that seem crazy?’
‘I think you explained yourself well enough before,’ I said. I looked over at Yuichi. ‘Well?’
He gave me a scornful look. ‘C’mon, Jerry. Give up my chance to be a wasteland warrior?’
I grinned, glad not to lose him.
‘That still leaves you two,’ said Winifred, studying Chloe and me.
‘I’ll go with Jerry,’ she said. ‘Nothing could induce me to go to any place like where I came from, pre-or post-extinction.’ She looked at me uncertainly. ‘If . . . that’s okay with you?’
I could sense the fear in her voice. She was thinking about Alice, of course, and whether some other version of her might be found at the coordinates Haden had given me.
‘I’m going,’ I said. ‘But not just for five minutes.’
Chloe swallowed. ‘You’re . . . you’re not coming back?’
I turned and put both hands on her shoulders. ‘You don’t understand. I am. But I just want a little more than five minutes to look around. Are you okay with that?’
She gazed into my eyes, and I thought she had never looked so beautiful as in that moment. ‘Sure.’ She nodded, then smiled uncertainly. ‘Okay.’
I looked up at the other two. ‘An hour,’ I said. ‘That’s all.’
Yuichi regarded me sceptically. ‘You’re sure? We’ll need to shut the link down, then reopen it again after an hour. I wouldn’t advise wandering too far in the meantime.’
I knew he was worried that the soldiers might come and take the stage away before we had time to get back. ‘I’ll be careful,’ I reassured him. ‘In the meantime, we’re probably going to have to think up some kind of story to explain Randall and Selwyn’s disappearance.’
Yuichi laughed. ‘Hell, yeah. Good point. Now that’s going to take some explaining.’
Chloe took my hand. ‘I’m ready,’ she said. ‘Are you?’
‘I’m ready.’
TWENTY-SEVEN
We materialized in the attic of an empty house, surrounded by furniture hidden beneath dust sheets. I found a screwdriver lying in a corner of the attic and used it to quickly scratch a cross where we had appeared, then checked the time on my watch. We’d have to be back at this exact spot in precisely one hour.
I led Chloe downstairs and out onto a quiet street lined with trees. I could hear the honking of traffic a block away. I felt as if I was in a dream, afraid I might wake up. The only thing anchoring me back to reality was the sensation of Chloe’s hand in mine.
We were in London, in the suburbs, not far from where I had once lived with Alice. We started to walk. I saw vans and buses and people leading ordinary lives, shopping and chattering and doing ordinary things I had forgotten how to do. I drank it all in until I felt numb from sensory overload.
‘This way,’ I said, my voice shaking. I kept having to wipe the tears from my eyes.
‘Where are we going?’ Chloe asked me.
I looked at her, suddenly unable to speak.
‘You think I don’t get it,’ she said, her voice tight with emotion. ‘But I do.’ She reached up to touch my face. ‘So hurry up and get your goddam closure, already.’
I nodded and we walked on. I led her to a sandstone building on a quiet street. I stared at the buzzers next to the front entrance, but I kept my distance rather than read the names there.
‘This was where we lived,’ I said. I didn’t need to tell her I meant myself and Alice. Was there another Alice here, another Jerry? Could this reality be that close to the one I had come from? Or was it just different enough that it lacked a doppelgänger, an alternative version of me?
I turned and looked up and down the busy streets, Chloe watching me intently the whole time. I had seen these same avenues filled with nothing but corpses, the air choked with clouds of buzzing flies. Since then I had literally seen worlds colliding, entire cities of people transformed into mindless, insect-like armies.
I had learned, above all, the enormous fragility of life. I had learned that everything I once believed to be permanent and solid and immutable could change in an instant and be wiped out forever without warning.
I looked at the people passing us on the street, imagined them dying, or partying their last days away as the moon slid out of the sky before crashing down on their heads.
‘Come on,’ I said to Chloe, taking a tighter grasp on her hand and turning back the way we had come. ‘Let’s go home.’
All you can do is find some place to call home, and hope for the best.
A few days later, I found myself facing Bramnik from across his desk. Outside, rain thumped against the window of his office in Government House. A tropical storm had hit the island, it being that time of yea
r. He looked older, more tired, despite his full reinstatement as head of the Pathfinder project.
‘And that’s all you can tell me?’ he said. ‘That they’re gone?’
‘We searched for them,’ I said. ‘Haden, Selwyn and Randall. They’re nowhere on the island.’
‘But where could they . . . ?’
I stared towards the window, trying my damnedest to look grief stricken. I’d practised that morning, in my mirror, and thought I’d been pretty good at it. Maybe in another life I’d have been an actor.
‘We searched for them everywhere,’ I said. ‘But then I remembered something I heard Selwyn and Randall saying, when it looked as if the Patriots were going to take over.’ I sighed heavily. ‘They said they’d rather take their chances with a null sequence.’
Bramnik regarded me with horror. I began to think he might really believe me.
‘I’ll admit,’ I said, ‘we used the transfer stage Casey had mounted in the trawler to travel to a bunch of known alternates, but there was no sign any of them had travelled to those places.’ I raised my hands in my lap and let them fall again. ‘Out of all of us, they were the ones most dissatisfied with the way things were. Randall talked more than anyone, I think, about how desperate he was to retire.’
‘You think they killed themselves? Because they found out they couldn’t retire?’
I gave a heavy shrug. ‘It crossed my mind. Who knows? But I’m not so sure it was suicide. I think they decided it was worth the risk, to see where each of them might end up. After all, nobody really knows where you go when you program a null sequence. All we know is that nobody ever comes back – and with nobody to report back, there’s no way of knowing what’s on the other side.’
Bramnik shook his head. ‘It just seems incredible that they would do such a thing.’
I shrugged helplessly. ‘I can’t ever be certain what they did, or why. All I’m saying is I can’t think of anything else that makes any kind of sense. Either way, they’re gone – all three of them.’