Foresight

by Graham Storrs

  Jay had no idea if Sandra’s hunch about HiQua’s involvement in clandestine time travel was justified or not. All he knew was that she was in trouble, that Cara was probably heading into trouble, and that he had to go. “Thank you,” he said, and he meant it. The director had been incredibly generous.

  “I recruited you, Jay,” she said. “I put a whole section in your hands because I trusted your expertise and your judgment. If what you’re doing now is all for a love you lost eighteen years ago, I’m going to be seriously disappointed.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  ***

  “I just confirm the date and come right back?” Sandra clipped the harness around her. On the inside, the sphere was cramped but snug. She didn’t wear any jumpgear or even a protective helmet, yet she had the strong feeling she was about to be fired out of a cannon—inside the cannonball.

  Hong nodded. He was overseeing every step of the mission himself, checking and double-checking. The mistake that had killed his last pilot had left everyone on edge. Behind him were two of the muscle-bound giants, pointing their machine guns at her. Behind them stood Hamiye and Lee. The big man himself had come clattering in by helicopter just thirty minutes earlier and hung like a threat over everyone’s head.

  “You never told me why you didn’t have a backup pilot, Lee.” She’d been meaning to ask.

  Lee cast an angry glance at Hong. To Sandra, he said, “The whole project is designed from the ground up to use a human pilot because of the uncertainties involved with the possibility of overshoot and the unexpected conditions we might encounter at the other end. In theory, we could – and should, given how things have turned out – reprogram your trip to be automatic. However, I'm told we just don't have the time to change everything. Some might consider that a stupid blunder by our chief scientist.”

  Hong looked away but said nothing.

  “In fact, I had two backup pilots, Ms Malone. The first one was injured when a building fell on him the other night. The second one refused to step up. I had him shot. That’s why we’re so pleased you chose to volunteer.”

  Sandra noticed Hamiye glance quickly at his boss. So the head of security hadn’t known about the second standby pilot’s execution. “What’s your story, Lee? I mean, I’ve known some managers I’d classify as borderline psychotic. Some not so borderline, come to think of it. But I don’t think I’ve ever met one who has his employees shot.”

  Lee’s smirk fell away. “And for a software tester, you seem quite an enthusiastic killer yourself.”

  “That was Hamiye’s fault.” She could still feel the chauffeur’s windpipe collapse beneath her fist. Snarling, she said, “You know, for a business exec, you certainly have a casual attitude to murder.”

  The man’s smirk was back. “I find it’s very good for morale.”

  “A graduate of the Genghis Khan School of Management.” Which made her think of horsemen shooting arrows, and then of her own possible fate. She turned to Hong. “Just how far into the future did your last pilot go?”

  “About two hundred years.” He unplugged a piece of monitoring equipment and stepped away from the sphere. “We’re ready to launch,” he announced. Before he left the sphere and went to his control desk, he added, “It was just one possible future.”

  The tekniks shut the hatch and a dim light came on inside. She heard the seals engage with a hiss. Her mouth felt dry as she gripped the arm rests, tensing herself against God-knew-what. “I have got to stop all this time traveling,” she told herself. It had helped to taunt Lee. It helped to be flippant. Yet here in the silence of the sphere, she felt the fear gnawing at her.

  Fear and despair. She had expected Jay to rescue her. He’d let her down. Crazy as it was, she realized she had been waiting for him to come crashing in with a tank, or a squad of Marines, or something, tripping over his own feet probably, but being there, making it all right.

  Alone, on the verge of this impossible trip to a future world that would only exist because she was going there, a world where no-one could follow her and any horror might await her, she felt numbing fear building like an explosion inside her.

  “Pilot, please set the controls to external and indicate readiness,” a voice said through a speaker in the door. She reached forwards and hit a big, square yellow button with the word “EXTERNAL” on it. The button lit up; they would now be able to control the launch from outside. The “Ready” indicator was inside a little red plastic casing. She had to lift the casing to reveal the small, silver switch. The switch had two settings, “Locked” and “Ready”. It was in the locked position. If she threw the switch to “Ready”, they could proceed with the launch. If not, the sphere would not respond. It meant the pilot had the final say in whether the sphere launched or not. It meant Sandra did.

  She flipped up the cap, put a finger on the switch and closed her eyes. “What the hell?” she said, and flicked it.

  “Ten seconds to launch,” the teknik said. “Eight. Seven …”

  And her mind threw her back to the cage in Ommen, twenty years earlier, the crowd screaming and the splashmusik thundering and Klaatu’s robotic voice counting down to her first ever lob. She had never known fear like that in her life and, surprisingly, the memory of it calmed her somewhat.

  “Five. Four. Three …”

  She gripped the arm rests, pressed herself back into the padded seat, and screwed up her eyes, saying, “Shit, shit, shit …” Outside, the teknik finished the countdown.

  ***

  Jay was making calls, organising his trip to the UK, when the message arrived from Bob Forrester. It was a heavily encrypted package of documents with a brief note in clear.

  “Jay,” the note said. “Re that matter we discussed. Maybe this isn’t the time to be hiding behind procedure. Bob.”

  Despite his curiosity, Jay set the package aside unread. Right now, he had more important things to do. He called Harnois and explained the situation.

  “I’m taking one of Fourget’s teams. You can stand the other down. In fact, get everybody back to normal operations. Let people take some personal time if they need it. They’ve probably got to sort out all kinds of domestic problems and we’ve had them on double shifts since the event.” Jay himself had a crack in his apartment wall and a broken window that still needed fixing, but they would have to wait until he got back from London. “If Fourget calls in, tell him he can stop pretending. He’ll know what I mean.”

  He fought the urge to give the captain a long list of directives and advice. Harnois was a safe pair of hands in which to leave the section. All he added was, “If you have problems, take them to Crystal. She’s not as bad as she pretends to be.”

  He called Cara.

  “Dad! What is it?”

  Jay took a deep breath. “It’s all right. Just tell me where you and Fourget are and what you’re up to.”

  She looked flustered. “I don’t know what you mean. We’re at the hospital. Pierre is—”

  Fourget joined the call. “Bonjour, Jay. We’re in a car, headed for Clarke Engineering. We believe that is where your … er … Sandra is being held.”

  “You’re taking my little girl to an enemy stronghold, guarded by super-soldiers?”

  Fourget grinned. “Before you say any more, I am supposed to remind you of your own trip to Washington DC.”

  Damn the girl! Yes, it was true she had forced him to take her on a ridiculously dangerous mission, once, but that didn’t mean she could brag about it. Besides, blackmailing and browbeating every man she met to get her way was not the life-lesson she should have taken away from that. He bit down on the lecture that was forming in his mind and tried to focus.

  “Lieutenant, I’m coming to London on the next available military flight. I’m bringing Alpha Team with me. Your mission is now official and I’m taking personal charge of it. I want you to meet me at North Weald airfield at seventeen hundred and if you don’t have my daughter with you—in a sack if necessary—I will have you
cleaning lavatories for the rest of your military career. Do you understand your orders?”

  Fourget seemed more than happy with the new situation. “Yes, sir. Have a good trip.”

  His image disappeared, leaving Cara’s to goggle at him in outrage. “I’ve never heard such a load of macho bullshit in my whole life. If you think for one minute I’m trailing along after soldier boy here while Mum is in that place, alone, you must be out of your mind.”

  “Darling, relax. The cavalry is coming. Let me look after it.”

  But Cara wasn’t having any. “Do you know she killed one of them and stabbed another one? Do you suppose they’re going to be very gentle with her after that?”

  Jay’s heartbeat stuttered. What the hell was Sandra mixed up in? “Would you put Fourget back on, please?”

  The young lieutenant’s face reappeared. “Sir?”

  “Your assessment, please?”

  “They’re holding Sandra at the engineering works. They moved her briefly to Hamiye’s home. I don’t understand why. They have had plenty of chances to kill her; I don’t know why they haven’t. Perhaps they think she is protected somehow, or they want information from her and she’s holding out. Even when she stabbed Hamiye he didn’t kill her—just took her back to Clarke Engineering.”

  “So we have time?”

  “Impossible to say.”

  Jay brooded on that for a moment. Was this some kind of rerun of Washington? Had someone grabbed her to help them build a displacement rig? If so, Sandra would stall them, knowing Jay would come looking for her. There would be time. There had to be.

  “What about the dead man? Do you have an ID?”

  Fourget sent an image of a smartly dressed Asian man, lying on the ground. Jay flicked it across to the facial recognition software, which immediately came back with its best guess. Meanwhile, Fourget was saying, “We think it’s the chauffeur of a HiQua executive called Lee Shaozu. We found Lee’s car at Hamiye’s place. Chauffeur and bodyguard, I’d guess, from the evidence that he managed to put up a good fight against Cara’s mother.”

  Jay looked at the file for Lee Peizhi, occupation driver, employer HiQua Corporate Services, UK. “How old would you say he was, Pierre?”

  The Frenchman shrugged. “Early twenties?”

  “His employment record says he’s forty-two.”

  “Fake papers?”

  “Either that or he is blessed with excellent genes.”

  Wherever Lee Shaozu got his driver from didn’t matter. The man was hired muscle. His death was unlikely to lead to retribution against Sandra. “OK. Your orders stand. I’ll meet you—and Cara—at North Weald as arranged.”

  He cut the call before Cara could renew her objections. Fourget could deal with them for now. No doubt he’d need to deal with them too, in time. But first things first.

  “Jay?”

  He looked up to find Laura Thalman standing in the doorway.

  “You’re heading off to rescue your damsel in distress,” she said.

  “Laura, about last night …”

  Laura dismissed whatever he was about to say with a gesture. “Es macht nichts.”

  He got up and went to her, closing the door behind her. “Oh but it does matter. In another life, in another world, you and I …” He’d seen it, just a glimpse. But in that other world, Sandra had been dead. And he realized that she would have to be dead. Else, in this world, the only woman he would ever be happy with was Sandra.

  Laura gave him a sad smile. “Maybe, maybe not. I just wanted to say I should not have been so forward. It was inappropriate.”

  “No, no. I should never have —” He stopped himself. There was nothing he could say along those lines that would make anything any better. He smiled back at her. “If you can forgive me for being so fucking inept, maybe we could go back to being good friends again.”

  She laughed. “Of course. Only promise me this, that one day you will tell me all about Sandra Malone and what she means to you.”

  “If I ever understand it, I promise you, I will explain.”

  The door opened and a young soldier poked his head inside. “Sir, Alpha Team’s ready to depart when you are.”

  “I’ll be down in two minutes.” As the soldier hurried off, Jay went to pick up the bag he’d prepared for the trip. “Sorry about snapping your head off in the meeting,” he said, returning to Laura. “This situation has been bringing out the jerk in me. And I’m sorry your future-time-travel theory didn’t work out.”

  “It would have been sensational,” she said.

  He rolled his eyes. “God preserve me from the dreams of mad scientists.”

  ***

  Sandra’s teeth clacked together as the sphere crashed and rattled along what felt like the whitewater rapids of the timestream. Her knuckles were livid as she gripped the arm rests. Her body fought the rapid accelerations that battered the sphere from all directions. She couldn’t see out but the sensation of plunging headlong down a steep slope clutched at her chest as her every instinct told her there was a crash coming.

  A bad one.

  She yelled along with the wild, pounding forces that beset the sphere and shook it like a snow globe in the hands of a deranged toddler. Roaring against the madness was a small relief. She blessed Hong for installing a safety harness.

  The mayhem stopped as suddenly as it had begun, leaving her shouting into the silence. For several seconds, Sandra continued to hang on to the seat, legs braced and head back against the rest, breathing fast. Only when she was certain the violence would not start again did she dare unfasten her harness and pull the door release.

  The hatch swung up and out. The sphere should still have been in the engineering works, exactly where it had started, but what she saw outside bore little resemblance to the place she had just left. She climbed out and looked around.

  She was in a devastated ruin. Every surface was blackened and burned. There were walls still, but most of the roof had gone. Rain had come in and soaked everything. Of the six gantries around her, only one still stood; the others had collapsed like wilted flowers. Of the many focus fusion generators, only scattered debris remained. An explosion, she realized, and wondered at the profligacy of destroying millions of euros worth of equipment. A fire had raged through the building, the fire Lee had told Hamiye to set, perhaps. At the far end of the building, a burned-out helicopter was embedded in one ruined wall.

  She stepped away from the sphere, her feet crunching on cinders. She was in the future. Two weeks in the future, if Hong had got it right this time. She looked at her hands as if they might appear different. They didn’t. She looked at the sphere and, for all the insane battering it had taken, it too looked the same. She remembered to set a timer in her commplant. The sphere would return to the past in two hours, with or without her. She checked for a net connection but could not get one. Which made checking the date and time a bit of a problem.

  It was also strange. She had assumed the jamming of her commplant had been done by a transmitter in the factory, then by the one that Hamiye had attached to her and she had passed on to him. But the factory was a wreck. So the jammer was either in the sphere or …

  She took off her jacket and patted it down. She felt nothing. So she examined it carefully, turning it slowly, lifting pocket flaps and lapels until she found the device, a small disc of cloth, no doubt with the circuits woven into it, stuck to the back of her lapel, powered by, what? The biological decay of the fabric itself? And how had Hamiye managed to sneak a second jammer onto her? It didn’t really matter. She pulled it off and dropped it into a puddle. Instantly she had net access again.

  Her first thought was to call Cara, to check she was all right, but she hesitated. What if Cara wasn’t all right? This was only a potential future. The real future might be nothing like this. If Cara were safe here, it would mean nothing. If she were not, it would also mean nothing. But, if she knew Cara was hurt or in danger or dead in this future, how would she cope with t
he knowledge? It wasn’t just a possible future, Hong had told her, it was a probable one. If Sandra called Cara and she was OK, it would give her no peace when she went back to her own time. If she called and got no answer, it would be unbearable.

  She made the call.

  “Mum?” Cara was white with shock.

  The background looked like Dot's house. Bugger. If future Sandra was right there with her, seeing another Sandra on a commplant display at the same time was going to freak Cara out. Even so, she was suddenly so overcome with relief, she could barely speak. “Cara! Oh darling, I’m so glad you’re there. I—”

  “Mum?” Now Cara looked scared. Something was not right. Her daughter turned and called to someone else. “It’s Mum.” Pause. “No, it’s really her. I know my own mother.” Pause. Angrily, “Yes it is. I don’t care. Come and talk to her if you don’t believe me.” She spoke directly to Sandra again. “Oh God, Mum, where are you? We all thought you were dead. How did you—?”

  “Sandra?” It was Jay, breaking into the call. He stared at her open mouthed. He looked worn, ragged. His voice was hoarse. “You’ve come forward, haven’t you? From the past?”

  Something in his face sent a chill through her. “How did you know?”

  He didn’t speak for a long time.

  “From the past?” Cara asked in a small voice. “You mean from before …?”

  “Before what?” But Sandra had already guessed.

  “Don’t go back,” Jay said. His voice was urgent, desperate. “You can stay. Don’t go back. There are no consequences. No extra consequences.”

  The damp chill of the burned-out factory seemed to force its way into her bones. She’d be going back to die? What kind of death? Did knowing it was coming mean she might prevent it? Should she stay? No, no, because—“I’d disappear from my own time,” she said. “What about Cara? My Cara from back then?”

  “I’m your Cara!”

  Sandra stared at her daughter’s horrified expression, her mind blank.

  “If you go back you will die,” Jay said, his eyes imploring. “She’ll lose you. We’ll all lose you. But if you stay …”