by Boyd Brent
David climbed out of the ditch and sprinted towards the villa. He leapt four metres into the air, grabbed the wooden skirting that overhung the stilts, swung his right foot onto it and reached for the window ledge. He crouched on the skirting, slid the window up and climbed into the darkened room. It was a store room containing boxes of cigarettes piled up high, and crates of wine and spirit. “They are black market goods,” said Gull. “It was common for senior Nazis to dabble, particularly towards the end of the war when it became clear things were not going their way. They reasoned they would need funds to assist their flights.” David crossed the room to the door, beyond which he could hear raised voices. He opened the door and stepped into a smaller room that contained a wash basin and cleaning paraphernalia: mops, brooms and buckets. Across this room a second door was slightly ajar. David placed his eye to it and looked into a brightly lit corridor. Along the corridor to the right, a set of double doors opened onto a lounge. Senior SS officers were drinking and gambling inside, and amongst them was the camp's Commandant, Obersturmbannführer Hirsch. David heard footsteps approaching from the left. The young woman he'd come to find walked past carrying a tray. She entered the lounge and laughter erupted as though she'd triggered a trip-wire. Moments later she hurried back out, red-faced and tearful. David opened the door and reached for her arm. She looked into his eyes and let herself be pulled inside. David closed the door and they stared at one another. She wobbled on her feet, apparently drunk on the sight of this phantom from her dreams. He reached out a hand to steady her and said, “It's alright.” David's words, so far from the truth, had the effect of smelling salts. “Alright? “They will shoot us both.”
A man shouted, “Helen! Where are you? Hurry with that schnitzel.”
“You have your own room?” asked David.
“Yes. In the attic.” She pointed down the corridor. “The staircase is by the kitchen.”
David made a rope from curtains and lowered them out of the window to where Alix stood below, holding Anna's hand. She tied the makeshift rope about her waist and looked at Anna as if to say 'What now?”
“Crouch,” replied Anna. “So I can ride up to the window piggyback.”
Thirty eight
It was 3am. The last of the guests had left and the villa was silent. Helen climbed the stairs to her darkened attic room and flicked the light switch just inside the door. Alix was sitting on her bed with Anna, her arm around her. The little girl was asleep. Helen closed the door and became aware of David standing beside it. “Who are they?” she asked. “What are they doing here?”
“They're with me.”
Alix laid Anna down on the bed and climbed off it. She approached Helen and held out her hand. In a whisper she said, “I'm Alix, and her name is Anna.”
Helen took her hand. “Your daughter?”
“No. We just met.” Both women looked at David now – looked at him as though he should not exist and had more explaining to do than most.
They sat cross-legged in the centre of that small attic room, facing one another. David looked at Anna asleep on the bed. The women watched him. Without taking his eyes from the sleeping child he said, “I travelled here from the future.” Alix asked him if the future was an organisation.
Helen shook her head. “I don't think that's what he means.”
David looked at Alix. “The future future. Thousands of years from now.”
Another silence followed, during which Alix reached the conclusion that if Nazis were possible then anything was. “It's better there?” she asked.
“It’s worse.”
“The future is worse? Than this?”
“This horror will end. Where I come from, horror is the end. Which is why I'm here. To try and do something about that.”
“What can you do?”
“Make changes … changes that might impact the future and alter it for the better somehow. At least that's my intention, but you never know.”
“I have seen him before. Many times,” said Helen.
Alix shuffled nervously. “Where?”
“In my dreams.”
“And I you,” said David, “only once, you had a scar. On your cheek.”
Alix leaned closer to Helen. “She has no scars…”
“The pattern I have just deciphered indicates that the missing scar is relevant,” said Gull. “The rapist will leave it.”
David looked at Helen's pale and unmarked cheek. “I'm here to protect you from the man who's going to give you that scar.”
“Protect me how?”
“Presumably by killing him. Otherwise he will rape you and you'll conceive his child. The DNA of that child will influence someone in the future. Influence them for the worse.”
Helen placed her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands. “But you won't let him rape me?”
“No. I will not let that happen.”
“Tell us about the future … the place you come from,” said Alix.
“Are you sure? Seems to me you already have enough to be miserable about.”
“Let me be the judge of that.”
“Alright. Until recently I thought I was on Earth, shielded from a series of volcanic eruptions by a protective dome. It was a lie; I was not on Earth. It was a spacecraft, and humanity was being systematically destroyed right under my nose.”
“So … you're an alien?” said Alix.
David shook his head. “More of an idiot.”
“I have located information inside the Event Helix that will be of considerable interest,” interjected Gull. “To you and your companions. If you have no objections, I would like to join you to relay it.”
“Join us?”
“Yes. As a holographic projection.”
“You have been busy, Gull.” The two woman observed David, apparently having this conversation with himself, and glanced at one another. “I think you'd better join us, Gull. Right away.” David's eyes rolled up, and Gull projected a metre-tall image of himself into the space between them. He had the same transparent body wherein a black heart pumped a stream of data through a vast complex of twisted veins and arteries, and a flickering face that looked as though it were being projected from within. It was not Tyburn's face but David's, and David made a mental note to have a word with him about that.
Meanwhile, the expressions of the two women had shifted through a range of startled reactions and finally settled on awe. David's head turned to his left, and the hologram walked in that direction. Gull turned to face his audience, and when he spoke his impossibly relaxed voice came from David's lips. “My name is Gull. I am an artificial life form – one created by mankind to assist mankind. I am also David's friend, or at least I would like to think of myself as such.” The dwarf-sized hologram appealed to David with David's own eyes. Within himself David nodded, but his actual head did not move. “Thank you, David. David has taught me much about what it means to be human, and I am grateful. The similarity in our facial appearance that I have adopted is a mark of respect.” Gull clasped his hands behind his back, raised himself up on his toes and settled back down again. “In the year 2117, an asteroid will be located in Asia Minor – an asteroid on a collision course with Earth. Its tonnage will be sufficient to wipe out all sentient life.” A football-sized representation of the asteroid appeared over their heads. It hovered on the spot and debris flew past, giving it an impression of speed.
“Jesus Christ,” whispered Alix.”
Gull continued, “To survive, mankind will be forced to move off-world and make his home amongst the stars. An intergalactic craft will be conceived, called the Second Ark. In the year 2122, the design of the Second Ark will be agreed upon. The United States of America will take the lead in the project, and construction will commence on November 23rd of that same year. The Second Ark will be a circular structure, seventy kilometres in diameter. The craft will be constructed on a floating port a kilometre above the Atlantic ocean and two hundred kilometres off the coast of New York
City. As such, it will become a familiar sight from the skyscrapers of that city.” A holographic image of the Second Ark appeared, and below it the Empire State Building appeared to doff it like an enormous Stetson. “Earth's most advanced nations will contribute resources and expertise to the Second Ark's creation, and each of these countries will be allocated space for fifty thousand of their citizens. One million people will be saved in total. As the departure date moves within the lifespan of Earth's inhabitants, and realising anarchy will ensue, an army of super soldiers will be deployed. They are to be called proto vessels – soldiers augmented by cyber-technology. These soldiers will be given free licence to quell any civil unrest, which they will be forced to do without mercy as the departure date looms closer.”
“They sound like monsters,” said Alix.
Gull made no reply and David was grateful for that. Gull went on. “The Second Ark will depart Earth on January 12, 2287, six months before the asteroid's impact. Life on board will not be dissimilar to the class system adopted by cruise ships of this era. The wealthy and powerful will live inside a construction known as Central Dome. Inside Central Dome, a futuristic city will thrive under an imitation blue sky, from which an imitation sun will warm its inhabitants. At dusk the sky will peel away to reveal the universe beyond. The amenities for those outside Central Dome will be more … basic. Adequate for work and survival. As the Russian President Vladimir Cousin will put it a week before the Second Ark's departure: “A dream life compared to certain annihilation.” The people outside will be hand-picked for their skills – skills pertinent to the maintenance of Central Dome and the Ark in general.”
“So what went wrong?” asked Alix.
David's projected face looked puzzled for a moment. “You mean from a human perspective?”
Alix nodded.
“Man is to become increasingly reliant on artificial intelligence for survival – artificial intelligence that grows more complex as mankind seeks to adapt to life amongst the stars. Eventually, and through a process that is to become known as seepage, sentient life (man) and the artificial intelligence he created will infect one another. Just as man will seek to harness the logic, strength and computing power of machines, machines will seek to become more like sentient beings. This, as David knows only too well, culminates in the emergence of a being called Goliath. With full access to the Ark's main frame computer, and a unique human perspective derived from seepage, he will bring about the subjugation of those who created him. And, like many conquerors before him, he will seek to strip them of the things he does not possess.”
“What things?” asked Alix.
“Their humanity.”
“Why?”
“As he sees it, in the interests of fairness. As a leveller of the playing field.”
“But why?” pressed Alix.
“He hopes to stand before the Architects and present himself as a worthy successor to Man.”
“The Architects?”
Gull looked first at Helen and then at Alix. “Your closest reference would be Gods.” Alix looked at David. “So what does all this have to do with him?”
“David is the last surviving empath, and as such the only being who stands between Goliath and his goal of usurping humanity. Once David is eliminated, Goliath believes the Architects will reward him by making him fully sentient. A successor to Man.” Gull took a bow and vanished.
David looked at the two women with his own eyes. “Thank you, Gull.”
Alix stood up. She folded her arms and looked down at David. “David and Goliath?”
David leaned back on the palms of his hands, and looked up at her. “That's right.”
“And Goliath … he's trying to kill you.”
“And he'll never stop. Not until one of us is dead.” Alix's gaze moved slowly over his body, and she asked without the slightest hint of irony, “So where's your slingshot?”
“Lost?”
“How did you escape?”
“I fell off the side of a mountain. Landed in the Middle East in the time of Christ. But that's a whole other story.”
While they all slept, Gull monitored the life signs and whereabouts of the only other occupant of the villa, Commandant Hirsch. He woke David shortly before dawn with these words: “The Commandant is up and emptying his bowels into a commode.”
David yawned. “Appreciate that intel.” He lay on his side, rested his head in his palm, and looked down at Alix. Time passed.
“I have discovered a word that was used to describe your emotional response to this woman,” said Gull.
David spoke quietly. “You needn't have wasted your time. My response is nonsensical.”
“A purge on common sense is the by-product. The word used to describe this purge is love.”
“Love? What does that mean?”
“That your body is creating a powerful cocktail of stimulants, whose primary function is to make you want to procreate with the object of your affection.”
David gazed at Alix's cupid bow. “A function at which it excels. It's not real, then? This feeling?”
“It is as real as any biological response, and more additive than most. It is therefore able to inflict powerful symptoms of withdrawal should the connection be suddenly broken.”
“Withdrawal?”
“Yes. Suicide was not an unheard-of response in extreme cases.”
“Well ...”
“Yes, David.”
“You'd better make sure I don't end it all for love, and leave Goliath the last man standing.”
“I will do my best.”
“The feelings I have for this woman … they're not empathic? I want to protect her.”
“Your empathic motivation towards this woman is quite separate from the love you feel – although in your current state of intoxication, it is impossible for you to differentiate between the two.” Alix opened her eyes and smiled in a way that suggested she'd been listening. She reached up and ran her fingers past David's ear. She wrapped her hand around his head and pulled his mouth down to meet hers. David sighed as their tongues met. “She is aware of the effect she has on you. And she is using it to her advantage, David.”
Let her.
Anna cried out in her sleep, “Mummy!” She sat bolt upright on the bed, looked around, and then screamed like she'd woken from a nightmare only to find herself still in one. Helen woke and hugged her. David was standing beside the bed now and he reached down to Anna. The little girl threw her arms about his neck as though he was real after all. “It's okay. I'm here. You just had a bad dream. Did the scream alert anyone, Gull?”
“The Commandant has returned to his bed and has not left his room.”
At 9am, David was standing in the corner of the attic room, his eyes rolled up as Gull scanned the area for the life-signs of potential vessels. Alix was on the bed with Anna, telling her a story in muted tones. Every so often, Anna would look up at her and whisper a question. Within himself, David watched these two with a cloying in his gut – a cloying that told him he would happily sacrifice his life for these strangers. But at what cost? The cloying demanded that he protect them at any cost. The reality of his situation suggested this was not possible. That he had to think about the bigger picture, but the picture had shrunk. A gunshot shattered the tranquillity of the room. David's eyes returned to blue and his gaze met Alix's. “It's him,” said Alix. “He's out on his balcony.” She looked down at Anna and smiled.
“He's shooting people, isn't he?” asked Anna.
Another shot rang out. David told them to stay where they were and walked towards the door. “There is nothing you can do,” said Gull.
“There's plenty I can do.”
“If you kill Hirsch we will have no way of knowing if he is responsible for Helen's scar.”
“That might not happen for weeks. Maybe we don't have time to hang about and wait.”
“The patterns suggest the rendering of the scar is imminent.”
“How imminen
t?”
“Within seventy-two hours.” David opened the door, went out and closed it behind him. Another shot rang out. He went down the stairs and past the kitchen. Helen was inside mopping the floor but did not see him. David turned left into the room where on the previous night Hirsch had entertained his guests. It was a large room with a dining table at one end and a clutch of armchairs at the other, and double doors with net curtains led onto a balcony. The doors were open and a breeze ballooned the curtains back into the room. He heard a rifle bolt being drawn back and then shoved into place. Under his breath he said, “I cannot allow this … not when I can so easily stop it.” He took a step towards the open doors, but was stopped by a ringing telephone. Another shot rang out beyond the patio doors and Hirsch said, “You made me miss. Damn you.” He put down the rifle, entered the lounge and picked up the receiver. “Well, what is it?” A pause was followed by, “If he must. You'd better show him in.”
David was standing in the hall with his back pressed to the wall. He glanced to his right. Helen was standing outside the kitchen and staring at him as though waiting for a signal. To run? To hide? To arm herself with a carving knife? David raised a finger to his lips. There was a tap tap tap on a door and Hirsch said, “Why have interrupted my morning target practice, Ralph? If the Russians should descend upon us and I miss the very Russian who stands poised to split your head in two with a club, you will have only yourself to blame. I presume you are here on official business?” At first there was only the sound of a match being struck and the smell of cigarette smoke. Then Ralph mumbled with a cigarette between his lips, “You were very drunk last night. I thought it wise to remind you of the wager you lost.”
“Wager?”
“The pretty little Jew girl. Helen, I think her name is.”
“Oh, yes. I was not that drunk, but you can't take her now. Not before I have a replacement.”
“You could have picked one this morning. Instead you shot one.”
“I shot several, none of them suitable replacements. What's your hurry?”
“I like her. Such good skin for a Jew. And so child-like a body.”
