Dislocations

by Eric Brown

  She paced her prison. There was no benefit in succumbing to self-pity. She had to work out why she was being held, by whom, what they might want with her and how she might escape. She wasn’t demanding much of herself, then.

  Would the people who had kidnapped her demand a ransom? That kind of criminality was increasingly common as society tore itself apart, but she had no family or loved ones who might meet any demand: her parents were dead, and she was an only child. And something about her abductor’s method, the setup with the bike and this prearranged prison, told her that this was not the work of some drug-crazed ferals. Were her captors hoping to extort money from the project? But she was a relatively minor cog in the machinery of Project Kon-Tiki; there were far more important, essential, personnel at Lakenheath than her.

  Her pacing had taken her to the window when she heard the sound. She rushed to the door and yanked on the handle. To her surprise, it opened. Her initial relief was tempered by what she saw: a tiny brick-walled cubicle with a second door facing her. On the floor at her feet was a tray, laden with bread, cheese and salad and a hot drink. She stepped over it and tried the handle of the second door. What a surprise: it was locked.

  She sat cross-legged on the mattress, pulled the blankets around her, and ate.

  Now she was certain that her captors were not feral. The food was good: bio-salad and quality grain bread. Ferals would have fed her crap, if they’d thought to feed her at all.

  And the coffee…Christ, it was real ground coffee, rich and velvety—if a little weaker than she preferred, but who the hell was she to complain?

  So her captors had taste, and obviously the funds to buy the best…

  She finished the bread and salad and clutched the mug in both hands, warming herself. They wouldn’t feed me this well if they were planning to kill me, she thought at one point.

  She hadn’t meant to doze off, but a combination of the food and the warmth inside her cocoon of blankets made her drowsy. She awoke with a start, wondering how long had elapsed—the sky beyond the window was indigo with twilight, so perhaps she’d slept for an hour or more.

  She’d told Travis that she planned to spend the night at her dome, so no one would be expecting her until eight in the morning. When she failed to show, they’d attempt to call her. And when that failed, then hopefully the search would begin. They’d follow her trail north, perhaps find the motorcycle’s skid mark on the road.

  It came to her, then—the identity of the people who might be behind this: the quality food, the care with which she was being held hostage…Could the Allianz be responsible? She recalled Daniel’s scathing comment, on seeing an organic food-stall in the protest area, that the bastards knew how to feed themselves. So might the Allianz be holding Project Kon-Tiki to ransom: cease the launch, or…

  Or what? Kill her?

  That was not how Allianz worked here in England—and anyway, the high-ups in their organisation must know that the project couldn’t be blackmailed like that.

  She was still mulling over the various possibilities when she heard the sound.

  She jumped to her feet and dived towards the door, but too late.

  Two huge figures in black motorbike leathers, with helmets concealing their faces, strode into the room and grabbed her. She put up a struggle—she worked out regularly at the gym on the base—but these bastards were built like weightlifters and held her tight.

  “What the hell,” she managed between clenched teeth, still struggling, “do you want with me?”

  A third figure entered the room, this one obviously a woman. She was small, and garbed in worn camouflage trousers, a flak jacket and a reversed balaclava to hide her face. Holes had been inexpertly cut in the wool, and Kat saw a pair of bright blue eyes looking out at her.

  “I said,” Kat hissed, “what do you want with me?”

  “I want to assure you that we won’t harm you,” the woman said, her voice soft and educated.

  On impulse, Kat said, “You’re Allianz, aren’t you?”

  A muscular spasm in the arm of the man to her right suggested that she was right.

  “Whatever your demands,” Kat said, “they won’t meet them, you know? You can’t stop the launch.”

  The woman hesitated, then said, “We are taking you somewhere more comfortable.”

  And, before Kat could react, the woman raised the canister she’d been concealing behind her back, took a step forward, and sprayed her in the face.

  For the second time that day, she passed out.

  TRAVIS

  UNABLE TO SLEEP, TRAVIS HAD DRIVEN ACROSS THE frozen Fens to the base early the next morning. Although much of this landscape was tidal now, with the sea flooding the former farmland from the Wash to the north, the saltwater lagoons and bays were frozen solid, a carpet of mist hanging above them, picked out eerily by his car’s headlights as it navigated the treacherous roads. Even with the car’s intelligent systems, the wheels skidded occasionally, and the little VW took the corners with extreme caution.

  As the car drove, Travis’s mind kept returning to the day before, and the look on Kat’s face as she had made her excuses and left. How could he have been so naive as to think he had a chance with her? How could he have been so self-obsessed he hadn’t anticipated the damage such a clumsy move could do to their friendship?

  Crossing the last of the long pontoon bridges between levees in the approach to Lakenheath, he finally worked out that he’d given up caring. He’d reached the point where he could no longer live with the lack of resolution: even rejection was better than this protracted limbo.

  He sat at his desk in Unit 1, skimming through his messages—not that there was much, certainly nothing that needed a response: like many on the project, in these last days before launch Travis was largely treading water. He’d done his bit, there was no more training or support to provide. He was superfluous. He’d joked to Kat yesterday that if he ever started to experience that dislocation between project and post-project that was her pet subject, then he would be in touch; in reality, he was already experiencing it, his active role in the team’s work finished.

  Perhaps that explained the sense of anomie he felt, and that liberating now-or-never impulse that had prompted him to finally approach Kat.

  He pushed his chair back, stood, and went across to the vast windows. The shuttle looked magnificent in the early morning light, the mist clinging around its skirts. Even this early there was activity around the great behemoth, a service vehicle pulling up beside it, tiny figures moving about in its shadow.

  He found the sight uplifting, which he needed right now. He wasn’t the kind of foolish idealist who believed projects like this were humankind’s saving. The vast majority of humankind would remain on Earth, tied to their home planet’s faltering future. Only a tiny number of colonists were leaving—a few thousand was nothing—and people like Travis and the team would never know these colonists’ fate, would never know if humankind was establishing a tentative foothold on a distant planet.

  But they could dream.

  That was what this project was, to Travis: a chance to dream, to believe that whatever happened on Earth, humankind had at least thrown the dice.

  And that was what allowed him to hold two such opposing ideals side by side in his head: his belief in the project and his sympathy for those who gathered at the base’s gates every day to argue for more concerted efforts to solve their planet’s problems, or at least ameliorate them a little.

  The big open-plan office area behind him was starting to fill up now, the air alive with sounds of activity—voices and alert tones, and the droning monologue of what must be a newsfeed somewhere.

  He glanced back, saw Lauren Miekle discussing something with Reuben on the launch team, caught her eye and nodded a greeting. She looked stressed, the project approaching its most critical period for her.

  Travis turned away, watching the team at the shuttle. He used his carpal implant to activate a small area of the win
dow’s smartsurface before him, tapped the contacts icon with a finger and tapped again on the face of Daniel DeVries.

  “Hey, Daniel,” he said, as the thumbnail image flared up into a life-size head and shoulders of his burly friend.

  “Travis. What can I do for you?”

  “Just wondering if you’re available for a spot of lunch later? What do you say?”

  “Maybe, maybe,” Daniel said. “It’s kind of busy here, but when are you free, boy?”

  Five minutes? He didn’t say that out loud. “Twelveish, perhaps?” he said instead. “Meet you in the bistro?”

  “Sounds good. I’ll try to make it.”

  “Why so busy?”

  Daniel shook his head. “Oh, you know,” he said. “Peak time for some of us. The sleepers have been stirring overnight, and my team’s getting all the datafeeds from Ward’s people.”

  No one did self-importance like Daniel DeVries. ‘His’ team was in reality Kat’s team, but you wouldn’t know it to listen to him speak.

  “I thought Kat was overseeing all that,” Travis said, trying not to be too irritated by his friend’s arrogance.

  “Me too, boy. No sign of her today, though. Lost interest, I reckon. She always was like a butterfly, flitting from one thing to another. Just as well I’m always here to keep things together, eh?”

  “Yes, well, whatever,” Travis said, a little more sharply than he’d intended. Kat was right: everyone was on edge at the moment. “Lunch?”

  “Sure, boy. I’ll be there.”

  Travis cut the link with a wave of the hand, and Daniel’s face faded away to the view of the shuttle once again.

  ¤¤¤

  Daniels words nagged away at him. Why hadn’t Kat turned up today? Why hadn’t she said anything?

  He called the Isolation Unit. That’s where Kat had been much of yesterday, before he’d taken her for something to eat. Maybe they would know where she was.

  He didn’t recognise the tech who answered, a short-haired redhead with a soft French accent. “Yes?” she said, clearly puzzled as to why they were getting a call from the Training and Support Unit at this time.

  “Hi, yes, I’m Travis Denholme, a friend of Kat Manning. She was with you guys yesterday monitoring the resus of the imprintees. I just wondered if she’d been over there at all today, or if she’s been in touch?”

  The tech leaned out of view on Travis’s smartsurface and he heard indistinct voices, then the viewpoint changed and Ward Richards had replaced her. “Hey, Travis,” he said, as if they were old friends. “What gives?”

  “Oh, Ward. I’m just trying to track down Kat. She seemed a bit unsettled yesterday. I think she was bothered by sitting with her clone all that time, worried that things weren’t going well. I just thought I’d check on her.”

  “Really?” Ward said. “Everything’s fine here. Nothing to worry about—we’re on track.”

  “Yes, well, anyway…I’m just concerned, you know?”

  “Nothing to worry about here, as I say. And no, no sign of her today. Maybe it’s just the shock of seeing her clone like that: it’s not easy. Listen, Travis, I can’t chat. We’re spinning plates here.”

  Travis cut the call and sat back. He couldn’t let himself worry like this. Things would work themselves out.

  He couldn’t do it, though. Stop worrying. He called security, but they wouldn’t tell him if she’d entered the base at all today. He called HR and, likewise, they wouldn’t discuss whether she’d called in sick. He contacted Kat’s assistant on the Psych team, but she hadn’t heard anything. And the more he chased, the more concerned he became.

  ¤¤¤

  For all the South African’s talk of how busy he was, Daniel was already occupying a window table by the time Travis arrived at the administration’s penthouse-level bistro at midday. Daniel had chosen a table that gave them a view of the base’s main gates, and the protesters beyond, rather than the view from the other side, across to the shuttle. A reminder of the world they occupied, rather than the symbol of escape and dreams.

  Travis didn’t even bother with food, just went to sit opposite his friend.

  “’S up, boy?”

  “It’s Kat,” Travis said. “I’ve called her, I’ve left messages, but nothing. It’s not like her. I’ve been asking around, but again, nothing. Have you had any word from her?”

  Daniel shook his head, absently prodding his heaped plate with a fork.

  “I’m worried. I even called the police about an hour ago, to see if they’d had any reports of accidents on the road between here and the coast. Riding that bike of hers on the frozen roads worries me.”

  Daniel was smiling, gently shaking his head. “You worry too much,” he said. “Always have.”

  What Travis didn’t say was that a guilty part of his mind had almost hoped the police would say that, yes, there had been an accident and Kat was now sitting in A&E with some small injury like a broken wrist. How selfish that he would rather she’d had a minor accident—even, perhaps, one that might stop her risking her life on that confounded bike—than what really scared him?

  “It’s my fault,” he blurted out. “I upset her. Yesterday. I think that’s why she hasn’t turned up today. It’s all my fault.”

  Daniel said nothing, just continued smiling, waiting for Travis to continue.

  “I…I bumped into her yesterday, when she came out of the Isolation Unit. She seemed…upset. We went for lunch, we talked, I got carried away, I—”

  “You finally plucked up the courage, eh?”

  Travis nodded.

  “You should have seen the look on her face, Daniel. She tried to hide it, but…Just a flash of…not disgust, but disbelief. Surprise that someone like me would ever think he was in with a chance. She covered it up quickly, but then she was just, well, she was just pissed off with me. That I’d spoiled what had been a perfectly pleasant lunch. That I’d probably wrecked such an old friendship by trying to take it further. I don’t know, I just…”

  Daniel surprised Travis then, by laughing. “Oh, look at your face,” he said, when he’d gathered himself again. “You’re a good guy, Trav, but if you have one flaw it’s that you take the world so damned seriously and you always think it revolves around you. So you made a pass and you were rebuffed. Happens all the time. It’s no big deal.”

  He leaned forward, pointing his fork in Travis’s direction. “You know what?” he said. “You know why she was so flustered when you bumped into her? She’d just run away from me. I’d done the exact same thing as you, I’d seen an opening and I made a pass.”

  He put his fork down and raised his hands defensively, palms towards Travis. “I know, I know! I’m very aware you have a thing for the luscious Kat, but hell, boy, all’s fair in love and war, right?”

  Travis stared at Daniel, slowly absorbing what his friend had told him.

  “You asked her out?”

  Daniel shrugged dismissively. “So what?” he demanded. “The world isn’t going to wait around for you, Trav. Kat and I, we’ve got close. She relies on me. There’s a spark.”

  Travis said nothing. There was something different about Daniel today. His usual bullish arrogance now had a whiff of aggression to it. Daniel always seemed to feel the need to assert himself against the world, and today it was Travis he seemed to want to knock back down.

  He recalled how Kat had been asking about Daniel yesterday. Was that the sign of someone showing interest, as he’d feared at the time, or was it something else? Had she seen warning signs in Daniel’s behaviour?

  “She told you to back off, though?” he said.

  Daniel shrugged again. “They always do at first,” he said. “Courtship games. I’m a psychologist, I know when the words say one thing and the body language says something else.”

  Travis felt a chill settling through his body. He considered his own behaviour towards Kat, the crush he’d carried for years. Had he become obsessed with her? Had his feelings become unhealthy
? Perhaps. But Daniel…did he feel the same way about her, too? It wasn’t much of a stretch of the imagination to see how someone with Daniel’s temperament—and his much-rumoured history of abuse—might just…

  “Is that how Hannah was?” Travis asked.

  Hannah Langham, the systems analyst Daniel had dated for a few weeks the year before. The woman who, after their acrimonious breakup, had told her friends how domineering Daniel could be, and how, when emotions ran high, he had a tendency to abuse his obvious physical advantages.

  Travis had never believed the stories, had always accepted Daniel’s assertions that they were the bitter revenge of a woman out to ruin him.

  Until now…

  Daniel said nothing, just stared, the muscles in his jaw twitching visibly even under the coarse stubble of his beard.

  Finally, the South African said, “Say that again, boy.”

  Travis refused to look away. “Maybe it’s you she’s pissed off with,” he said softly. He didn’t go on to raise the question of just what a man like him—particularly if Hannah Langham’s claims were true—might have done when a woman he obsessed over had rejected his advances, particularly a woman who also showed him up for the second-rater he was professionally.

  Daniel stood. For a moment Travis thought he was simply going to walk away, but then he paused, leaning with both hands gripping the edge of the table so his bulky frame loomed menacingly over Travis. “Really, Travis? I’d expected better of you. You really think I’d have done anything to Kat?”

  Travis hadn’t voiced his real fears, but Daniel had clearly read them between the lines.

  “I’m not like that, Trav. I thought you, of all people, knew me well enough to understand that.”