‘What do you think, Hope? Did I pass that one?’
‘I would say most definitely yes. In fact, I’d go so far as to say you smashed it!’
‘You’re a great motivator, that’s for sure.’
Deira smiled at the AI’s use of colloquialisms. She seemed to be more advanced than the AIs in the young agents’ PWCs, coming up with the occasional joke, and even laughing at the appropriate time. It was very like carrying a female friend around with you, someone you could trust always to take your part and have your back. It was all Deira had ever expected – and more.
‘I’m only telling the truth.’
‘Yeah, yeah. So, what shall we do next? I need to get some food, but then I should be ready for the next challenge.’
‘You’re pushing yourself rather hard, aren’t you? Perhaps you should have a short rest before you try anything else?’
Deira shook her head automatically. ‘Nope. No rest for now. Sol’s breathing down my neck and I want to get on as fast as I can. Hell, Hope, forget Sol, I want to be of some use. I can’t even get out of here, yet, unless somebody gives me a lift.’
‘Then some food would definitely be a good plan as a first step.’
Deira made her way to the small food preparation area the Eich had provided for them. She hadn’t seen any of the young agents since she’d arrived, and assumed they were being pushed as hard, if not harder, than she was with their own development programme. Time was the enemy now, and the sooner more of them could accomplish the time-fold and help with the evacuation, the better. The Eich were doing their best, she knew, but in the end, it was down to each individual agent as to how fast they progressed. The process could only be stimulated, not forced, something she was learning to appreciate now she was involved with it herself.
She’d just finished her small meal, when there was a yellow flash and Josh appeared.
‘Hi Mum. How’s it going?’
‘Hi Josh.’ Deira had become accustomed to Josh’s new-found folding technique faster than anyone, and found it no longer startled her when he suddenly did this appearing and disappearing trick. ‘I’m good. Making steady progress, I think. Any news?’
‘I’ve just come from seeing Chayka. I dropped off a Founder for him to get to grips with.’
‘How did he take that?’
‘Surprisingly well. He’s enthused, no doubt about it. I just hope he comes up with something soon, because this whole evacuation process is exhausting. It’s like hauling a truck-full of rocks up a mountain each time you bring a Founder out.
‘We’ll keep our fingers crossed. I’m just keen to get that time-fold sorted.’
Josh frowned and gave her a hug. ‘I think you might have to wait some time for that. ‘It’s not easy and tends to happen when you’re least expecting it.’
‘It might happen faster than you can imagine, Josh,’ Hope put in. ‘I’ve been monitoring Deira closely and it wouldn’t surprise me if a breakthrough wasn’t imminent.’
‘What? You didn’t tell me that!’ Deira said accusingly.
The sound of Hope’s laughter tinkled around the room. ‘You didn’t ask me.’
‘Oh, come on …’
Josh laughed too. ‘Sounds like you two are getting on pretty well, anyway. But Hope, exactly what do you mean by that? I wouldn’t have thought Mum would be able to do the time-fold for a couple of years yet.’
‘When I say imminent, I mean imminent. It could happen at any time.’
‘But it’ll need a stressful situation to achieve it, surely?’ Josh was looking doubtful.
‘Not necessarily. It’s different for every individual. I grant you that an adrenaline reaction appears to be the most common initiator, but it’s not the only one.’
Then, what else is there?’ Deira was beginning to get interested now. ‘Are you saying I could do it for myself?’
‘How badly do you want to get out of here?’ Hope asked.
‘You know the answer to that.’
‘Then, why don’t you simply do it? Fold yourself out.’
‘Because I can’t … can I?’
‘Who knows until you try.’
Josh was beginning to look more interested, and for a very good reason. If they could somehow find a way to fast-forward an agent’s development to the time-fold stage, it could result in a doubling of the number of agents involved in the evacuation. He added his encouragement to Hope’s.
‘Try it, Mum. You’ve always developed mentalically in a non-traditional way, you might do it again.’
Though she remained doubtful, Deira recognised the truth of this. She thought back to the caverns on Titan, when she was trying to fold Sol and Cabello to the infirmary on EuroBase, and the struggle she’d had to overcome her negativity. Though she’d never told him, it was the yet un-born Josh who’d helped her then, and it had been mostly about relaxation. Once she’d achieved what she now knew to be a delta-normal meditative state, her desire to get the men to safety had accomplished the rest. Perhaps it would work again.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I’ll try. You with me on this, Hope?’
‘Need you ask?’
‘No, of course not. Sorry. Alright – immersing now.’
She went straight down to delta-normal and spent a little time finding the best way of activating what she called the “nirvana state”. There was a danger in this, of course, because once achieved, it was so pleasant that the desire to come back to normality was almost completely stripped away. That was why she’d asked Hope to keep her covered. If she didn’t emerge within a few minutes, the AI would need to stimulate her out of it.
She wallowed for a short time in nirvana but remained focused on her objective and was able to rouse herself sufficiently to try to fold. It was a challenging, near impossible, task, and she now realised why it was so difficult to achieve the time-fold. To accomplish it, you needed to maintain two, almost mutually exclusive, frames of mind simultaneously. You had to maintain the innate sense of peace and tranquillity of delta-normal, the feeling that you had found the place you wanted to be and didn’t want to move, while at the same time wishing with all your heart to be somewhere else.
It was just too demanding, and with a sense of great disappointment, she gave up and emerged – to find herself sitting on the sofa in her living room. Josh appeared in a flash of yellow and threw his arms round her.
‘You did it! Holy crap, Mum! How’d you do that?’
‘Way to go!’ came Hope’s voice, sounding equally excited.
‘I did it?’ Deira gazed about her, not quite believing where she was. Then it dawned on her and she let out a whoop. ‘I did it!’
‘That’s absolutely unbelievable.’ Josh was still looking at her as if she was some sort of miracle-worker. ‘I’ve never seen anything like that before.’
Deira could almost feel herself bursting with pride and excitement. ‘That’s coming from the most highly-developed mentalic agent on earth. Come on, Josh, Tao must have done something similar.’
‘Perhaps. But not from an effective standing start. Whatever you say, that was incredible.’
‘Well, thanks for the enthusiasm. Join me in a drink? I feel like several tequilas right now.’
‘Sorry, perhaps later this evening. I need to get back to the evacuation project now. We’ll have a celebration later, though, no doubt about it.’
‘Couldn’t I help with the evacuation now?’ Deira thought she might as well ask the question, though she knew quite well what the answer would be. ‘You need all the help you can get, after all.’
‘Yeah, of course you can, but you’re going to need to be shown the ropes first. We’ll talk about that later too.’
‘I understand. And I also understand you need to get on. See you later.’
‘See you, Mum – and congratulations again!’ He immersed.
Deira wondered aimlessly around, her wave of excitement ebbing in the silence of the house. Hell, she’d just achieved something that ev
en Josh admitted was faintly miraculous and she’d nobody to share it with. Hope was with her, of course, and kept up a string of almost non-stop chatter as she tried to compensate for Deira’s lack of human company. It was better than nothing, but what Deira really needed was someone to share in her success over a drink or two. Like Sol.
She knew he’d be delighted for her and she might even be able to give him some tips to speed up his own efforts. Up to now, no matter how much she’d tried to chivvy him on, he still grumbled about being old and not being able to teach an old dog new tricks. Perhaps her success could provide him with the stimulus he needed.
She immersed and discovered that the second time of performing the time-space-fold was very much easier than the first. In fact, she was certain it would become second nature very quickly. With a certain swagger, she folded into the Eich compound and set off in search of Sol.
She found him sitting glumly in the food preparation area – no surprise there – and hugged him tightly. He looked surprised but made it a rule never to turn down the opportunity of a close encounter with Deira, so hugged her back, wondering whether he’d missed their anniversary or something.
‘You look pleased with yourself,’ he said.
‘Damned right I am!’ Deira grinned from ear to ear. Sol, I did it!’
‘Did what?’
‘I achieved the time-fold. I don’t really know how I did it – it wasn’t part of an exercise or anything. Hope suggested I try it and it just sort of happened.’
‘That’s great!’ It was an attempt at enthusiasm, but Deira could tell Sol was struggling to come to terms with this. ‘That means you can help out with the evacuation. Me, on the other hand, I’m just not getting it.’
‘Perhaps I can show you,’ Deira so wanted him to share her success.
‘You know it can’t be done that way.’
‘Yeah, right. But the way I did it was just to want to be back home again. If you go to delta normal and try that, it might work for you too.’
Sol looked vague. ‘I’ll give it a try. Immersing now.’
Deira waited, hoping against hope that he’d suddenly fold. Alas, it wasn’t to be, and a few minutes later he emerged again, looking desolate.
‘No good. Couldn’t get anywhere near. I don’t think I ever will.’ He gazed bleakly at Deira. ‘Dee, I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but this development programme stuff just isn’t working for me. I want out. Maybe I should get an allotment and take up gardening.’
Deira hugged him again, feeling so sorry that it had come to this, and not knowing what to do for him.
‘If that’s how you feel, I’ll take you home,’ she said, aware that his chance of making any progress was severely impaired by his current negativity. ‘Have a break, watch some tri-vid. Now’s not the time to push yourself. When you feel better you can start again.’
‘No. I’m not going to start again. I’m done, Dee. I’ll make do with what I’ve got.’ He pulled her close and kissed her. ‘That doesn’t mean I’m not hugely proud of you, though. Fancy a celebration drink?’
‘Actually, I do.’ Despite the likelihood of a small celebration later, Deira wanted to celebrate now – and with Sol. She’d have preferred it if he’d managed the time-fold too, but in the current circumstances, a drink or two might do him some good and take his mind off his own failures. Taking his hand, she performed her new trick and they folded back into the sitting room at home.
‘Mighty impressive,’ Sol said. ‘I’ll get the booze.’
He came back a few minutes later with the tequila bottle for Deira and a single Bourbon for himself.
‘You’ll want more than one, surely?’ This was yet more evidence of Sol’s abnormal behaviour. In all the years they’d been together, she’d never known him have a single anything. ‘Sol, you’re starting to worry me.’
‘I’m fine.’ He poured a tequila shot for her and raised his own glass. ‘Here’s to your success Dee. You’re one of a kind.’
They tossed back the drinks and then decided that food was next on the agenda. It was a relatively leisurely lunch, since neither of them had anything to do of any importance, but the atmosphere was strained and unnatural. Sol was clearly working hard at being upbeat and enthusiastic about Deira’s success, and Deira was doing her damnedest to try to cheer him up a bit. Neither was having much luck, and eventually, they gave up the pretence. Sol took himself off to watch a game on the tri-vid leaving Deira to practice her time-folding.
It was sometime later that Tao, Josh and the other agents emerged permanently for the day. They’d pushed themselves to the limit and were exhausted, having liberated a total of sixteen Founders. Deira swiftly did the maths. That would amount to a couple of thousand over twenty weeks – and that was probably their absolute time limit. Two thousand out of almost sixteen thousand! Even if Deira and the other young agents were suddenly able to help they’d still only manage a quarter of the total. They would need to up their game considerably to pull this off, and that meant changing the parameters.
To give them their due, the youngsters were over the moon about Deira’s accomplishment, and insisted on having a drink with her before they hauled themselves off to bed. Josh stayed behind as promised and told her about the procedures she needed to help with the evacuation.
‘I’m afraid I’m too done-in to show them to you now,’ he said, stifling a yawn, ‘but I promise I’ll take you to sub-quantal space tomorrow and show you round.’
‘That’s great. Thanks. Look, I know you’ve got a lot of work to do, but I’d quite like to visit the El ship again sometime and have a chat with Micha. Could you give me the procedures for doing that too?’
Josh nodded. ‘Sure, no problem. Once I get you sorted, you’ll be able to do pretty much what you want.’ He yawned again. ‘Right now, though, I’m off to bed.’
Deira glowed with excitement. This was going to be so much fun. Then she thought about the problem with the extraction process and her excitement faded. Either Barth or Chayka would need to come up with something damned quick or they weren’t going to have a universe in a few months.
It was bizarre. This was such a huge deal – the destruction of the entire universe – yet all that kept going through her mind was that, if that happened, she’d never get to see her first grandchild. That thought brought it down to the human scale that was necessary to take it on board – and she was determined that Joe MacMahon was going to have a future. She wondered off to find Sol. He might be in a maudlin frame of mind, but she felt sure he’d be up for a little hanky-panky.
Chapter 44
The following day, Deira was up early and ready to start her familiarisation process but, since Josh was having some trouble getting out of bed, Tao volunteered to take his place. She was as keen as Deira to get her sorted out and ready to go as soon as possible, and she took charge of things effortlessly.
‘Right.’ she said. ‘The first two things you need to know are how to form a hard photon body and how to extract yourself from sub-quantal space and get back into your infra-low.’
Like most things mentalic, the techniques were simple enough when she’d been shown how, and Deira soon felt properly equipped to handle a visit to sub-quantal space. It was the language Tao used that was giving her the most problems. She hadn’t appreciated how, over the years, she and Sol had developed words for the processes they used – words that non-mentalic individuals would simply not understand. Now she was forced to confront a raft of new words and phrases that the young agents took for granted, and which Tao was having to laboriously explain. Finally, it all appeared to have sunk in and she looked at Tao expectantly.
‘So, are you comfortable for me to take a short trip?’
‘Go for it,’ Tao grinned. ‘If you get stuck, one of us can always help.’
‘Good to know. Right. Immersing now.’
Deira passed swiftly down the levels and didn’t hesitate to enter the infra-low, knowing that her new-found abilit
y to time-fold also allowed her free passage up out of this level. And this was only the way-station to sub-quantal space. She drifted down towards the hole at the bottom of her infra-low. This was the moment of greatest psychological stress, because tentacles, like demons, were undoubtedly negative racial archetypes. Her sub-conscious aversion to being caught by such a tentacle was considerable, even though she knew its true nature, and she hesitated just out of reach of the thing.
In the end, it took a real effort to move within the tentacle’s reach and allow it to pull her through the hole, but once through, she became entranced. It was the most bizarre environment she’d ever encountered – beautiful, outlandish, and strangely disconcerting. She wondered how Adam, without mentalic abilities of any kind, had coped down here for so long without going mad. It spoke volumes about his psychological resilience. She was still pondering on this when Barth arrived and introduced himself. That was a shock too. Tao had explained about photon bodies, but it was still almost unreal to see one suddenly appear in the photon flow.
‘Great to see you … Deira.’ He seemed pleasant enough but appeared to be experiencing some sort of anxiety attack if that was possible, his hard photon body looking distinctly flaky round the edges. It took him a minute or two to get control of things but then acted as if nothing unusual had taken place. ‘Has anyone shown you how to make a hard photon body? It’s really much easier to handle this environment if you take control of it.’
‘Sure, just a moment.’ Deira activated the procedure Tao had shown her and almost immediately had her body. ‘I’m all for taking control,’ she grinned. ‘My kids call me a control freak.’
Barth visibly flinched and stared at her new body. It was very disconcerting and made her wonder whether she’d included clothes in her construct, though a quick look down didn’t suggest there were any obvious issues. With a huge effort, Barth finally managed to tear his gaze away from her. He looked down at the floor in obvious embarrassment.
‘My apologies,’ he mumbled. ‘My manners appear to have completely deserted me.’ He looked back at her and smiled. ‘So, what would you like to do now that you’re here?’
Gods of Titan- The Cosmic Constants Page 37
