Dislocations

by Eric Brown

  Then he straightened, smoothed his shirt and jacket down and turned to leave. Travis watched the South African threading his way through the tables towards the exit, and felt like the worst human being ever. The break in his friend’s voice, the look in his eye…How had he ever thought Daniel DeVries might somehow have done something that had kept Kat away from the base today?

  What had he thought? That Daniel had pursued her and they’d rowed, and that was why she’d stayed away? That he had gone after her and assaulted her? What could he have been thinking?

  And now…his two closest friendships compromised within the space of twenty-four hours.

  He could try to blame it on what Kat had said: the tensions running so high throughout the project. Or he could simply accept full responsibility for his own inability not to wreck everything.

  He looked down at the table. He really had ruined it all.

  It was only then that he noticed a change in the atmosphere around the bistro, and that Daniel had paused at the stairwell, was looking up at an area of window that had opaqued to show a newsfeed, a reporter talking to camera, the backdrop uncannily familiar.

  The reporter was at Lakenheath, standing somewhere out by the main gates. Travis glanced out of the window by his table, and saw a cluster of vans pulled up and what must be the reporter standing slightly apart from a group of people, his back to the base.

  He looked back at the smartsurface, and tapped on the table’s controls to bring the localised volume up.

  “…statement from Allianz England contains little detail, but the main claim is clear, specifically that a key member of the Kon-Tiki project has been abducted, with the simple demand that the launch must be aborted or the abducted individual will be killed. All Kon-Tiki resources, including the specialist staff, must be redirected towards humanitarian goals here on Earth, the statement says. Sources within the Kon-Tiki project refuse to confirm or deny that all staff have been accounted for and, after the bombing of the Mendig Base in Germany, security here at Lakenheath Base remains high.”

  “It’s Kat. It has to be.”

  Travis hadn’t noticed Daniel moving back to join him.

  He felt sick. He didn’t know what to do, what to think. He put his hands to his face, as if that might somehow shield him from the world, from reality.

  “It’s my fault,” he said again. “She stormed off. She was distracted, upset. Not paying attention.”

  They’d all been briefed on the importance of personal security after the Mendig Base attack. Vigilance at all times. Awareness of risk and vulnerability. But yesterday Kat had just wanted to get away—from him, from Daniel, from the base. Paying attention to her own safety wouldn’t have been foremost in her mind.

  It was his fault.

  “You really can be a dick sometimes, you know?” Daniel said, easing himself back into his seat. “You need to stop being so self-absorbed, boy. It’s not all about you. It’s not your fault, and even if it is, that doesn’t make any difference. You have so many blind spots. You need to stop leaping to conclusions and blaming people you should trust and see the obvious: it’s the Allianz. They’re the bad guys. It’s the fault of that German bitch you still have a soft spot for, her and her friends—it’s not my fault, or Kat’s, or yours.”

  Daniel was trying to be kind, but still Travis felt guilty. “If I hadn’t pushed her yesterday, though,” he said. Daniel had muted the volume, and now Travis stared at the silent mouthings of the reporter on the smartsurface. “She might have hung around. She wouldn’t have left the base when she did. She might not have walked into whatever trap they laid for her.”

  Daniel was shaking her head. “We don’t know anything about it,” he said. “If they took her from her dome, then they could just as easily have grabbed her a couple of hours later. And if they hadn’t taken her, perhaps they’d have just taken the next person to come along. They could just as easily have grabbed me or you.”

  He said that as if it would have been a bad thing, but Travis would gladly swap places with Kat right now.

  “They’re even more stupid than I thought, if they think this will work,” Daniel said. “Do they really think they can stop Kon-Tiki by kidnapping someone? They must know this thing has too much momentum to be stopped so easily.”

  “You’re right,” Travis said. “We don’t know the details of what happened, or why. We don’t even know for certain it’s Kat they’ve taken—it could just be coincidence. I can’t believe there hasn’t been any kind of official statement.”

  “I’ll message her,” Daniel said. “Maybe she’ll answer me if she’s just off sulking somewhere.”

  A short time later, they were heading down the stairwell when an all staff alert flashed onto a display panel on the wall. There was to be an official briefing in ten minutes.

  ¤¤¤

  Most of the core team assembled in the open-plan area where only a couple of nights ago they had gathered for the party to mark the key stage of imprinting the clones. Travis recalled the cheap whisky, and the honeyed smoothness of Lauren Miekle’s precious single malt.

  Lauren emerged from one of the side offices, a couple of members of her support team following in her wake.

  Grimfaced, she raised her hands for silence. “As I’m sure you’ve all heard by now, our project has entered a crisis phase, at perhaps its most critical time. Director Patel is going to say a few words, then I’ll take any questions.”

  She waved a hand at the big surfacescreen on the wall behind her and a giant head and shoulders of Sunita Patel appeared, against a backdrop of the Thames and the Houses of Parliament. “Team,” Patel said, “I will be brief. Yesterday afternoon, Kat Manning was taken at some point after she left the base and is now being held captive by a fundamentalist faction that has allied itself to the Allianz movement. They have released a statement to the effect that no harm will come to Kat as long as we abandon the colonisation effort and instead repurpose our specialist teams and resources to a list of priority tasks they have identified, from reforestation and flood management to assisted migration for populations dispersed by climate and environment change. Needless to say, their list is long and unrealistic.”

  That phrase—‘no harm will come’—only served to emphasise the starkness of the alternative, the harm that would most certainly come to Kat if their demands were not met.

  “Our official response is to open negotiations,” said the director. “But my advice to you all is twofold. First, personal security is paramount. We are not restricting any but key personnel to base, but you should seriously consider remaining on site until further notice. And second, work continues as normal. The clock is counting down to launch, and we must work on the assumption that we go ahead as normal. I thank you for your time and wish you all peace and security. Namaste.”

  As Patel’s image faded, Lauren Miekle stepped up again. “Needless to say,” she told them, “everything—and I mean everything—is covered by the confidentiality clauses in your contracts of employment. We say nothing of this to anyone beyond the team, be it family, friends, anyone. Any leak not only risks the life of our friend and colleague, but also the security of the project itself. We cannot tolerate any kind of risk at this stage.”

  A babble of voices rose up.

  Travis didn’t join in. He was still too stunned to fully comprehend what had happened, and he knew little more now than when he and Daniel had first seen the breaking news up in the bistro.

  Instead, he slipped away from the crowd and waited by the lifts on the third floor. Sure enough, Lauren and her two flunkies emerged a few minutes later.

  The tall Dane saw him straight away, her expression unreadable.

  “I can help,” Travis said. “I know Kat better than just about anybody. I know at least one person senior in Allianz England, too. If anyone can join the dots, it’s me. Tell me what’s happening, Lauren. Involve me in the effort to recover Kat. Please.”

  “The police are handling th
at,” Lauren said. “Our only focus is the Kon-Tiki project, and right now that is all I can allow myself to consider.”

  Travis was staggered. Kat had been on this project from the start. “I thought we were all family,” he said, a phrase used often over the years.

  “The project is paramount,” Lauren said.

  “I thought you were Kat’s friend.” He knew Lauren socialised with Kat and Director Patel.

  “At times like this I have no friends,” Lauren said, and before Travis had a chance to say anything more the mission administrator stepped past him, heading for her office suite.

  ¤¤¤

  It was madness to come out here. Less than an hour after Director Patel had stressed the importance of personal safety and suggested that team members should seriously consider remaining on base until after the launch, Travis had pulled on his winter gear and walked out through one of the secondary gates.

  Now he pulled his big parka around himself, the hood covering all but eyes and nose, and peered around those gathered at the main gates. He recognised a few faces, minor celebrities he knew little about but who featured regularly on the newsfeeds voicing support for the Allianz.

  He was grateful for his layers of padded clothing and heavy gloves, but still it was cold. He felt a grudging respect for these people, standing out here all day and some even camping out among the gorse and pines.

  Madness.

  Coming out here, putting himself at risk, somehow imagining he could do anything.

  He saw Ute, tiny even in her big puffa jacket, her woollen hat pulled down over ears and neck. Despite the layers of clothing, she was still instantly identifiable from the high-energy way she always moved and the deferential attitude of those around her.

  He went to stand with the small group. He shouldn’t feel so awkward around her after so many years. Why did he get like this around women he cared for? He remembered Daniel’s criticism of him, that he always thought everything was about him. That wasn’t quite accurate: Travis was realistic enough to see himself as more often the supporting act, but still he threw himself in wholeheartedly. Relationships were all or nothing for him; they always had been.

  She saw him and her eyes widened. Saying nothing, she reached for his arm, tucked a hand into his elbow and led him away from the gathering.

  “I do not believe you…” she said, when they were out of earshot. “You want to get the crap beaten out of you?” Then: “Travis Denholme. How long has it been?”

  “About four hours. I see you here every morning.”

  She clicked disapprovingly at the back of her throat. “Since we have spoken? Five years? Six?”

  “Close to ten.”

  “That long?” Her expression was hard to read, her features obscured by the pulled-up collar, and a scarf wound round the lower part of her face. Travis had the distinct impression she was toying with him, though. She always had been able to run rings round him.

  He glanced back at the gathered protesters. “Are you serious?” he asked. “You think they’d get violent?”

  That click of disapproval again. He’d forgotten how annoying it was.

  “What kind of company are you moving in now, Ute, if your friends are likely to assault someone just for having different views?”

  “I tread a fine line,” she said. They’d come to a fringe of pine trees now, the forest darkening beyond where they stood.

  As they paused, Travis said, “It’s about Kat Manning.”

  “Of course it is, Travis,” Ute said. “For you it was never about principles, was it? Always, there is a woman.”

  She knew how to cut deep, the implication that he’d only ever been sympathetic to Ute’s campaigning because he was pursuing her, and now the implication he was only part of the Kon-Tiki project to get close to Kat.

  “It’s not that,” he said, perhaps too brusquely. “She’s been abducted—by the Allianz. By your people.”

  Even through all the layers, he saw her tensing, and he knew the pause meant she was biting back on a retort. Finally, she said, “I know. I am sorry. But they are not ‘my people’. The Allianz…it is not a thing. There is no membership or monthly newsletter. It is merely what the name implies, an alliance of various groups. ‘My people’ did not bomb Mendig Base, or abduct your friend.”

  “No,” interrupted Travis. “But your people know people, who maybe know the people who did.” He knew how it worked—all those years ago he had been close enough to the movement; perhaps too close.

  “There are groups,” said Ute, carefully, “more extreme than those of us who stand in the cold and protest peacefully. You should talk to them, not me.”

  “But where do I find these groups?”

  “They are criminals,” said Ute matter-of-factly. “When it comes down to it, there is only a fine line between one form of criminal and another: they are all motivated by self-interest, whether it’s money or mere survival as a species. Where is it that the gangs feel safest?”

  She dipped her head, and started to walk back towards the base’s entrance where the protesters gathered, as if signalling she had already said enough.

  “What will they do with her?” Travis said, trailing after her. “Will they carry out their threats?”

  She said nothing, and that scared him more than anything: the simple fact that she didn’t feel able to reassure him.

  They had come close to the protesters now, and paused.

  “Ute!” he insisted. “You have to tell me what you know.”

  Her eyes narrowed then, that flaring of anger he knew well. “I have to do nothing,” she hissed. “We are long past a time when I might have owed you anything, Travis.” Then she raised her voice: “I don’t know why you came here anyway—you belong back on the other side of the fence with your escapist collaborators.”

  He sensed a stirring in the crowd immediately, eyes fixing on him, a murmur of voices.

  “Go!” Ute snapped. “I have nothing to say to you and your type until you abandon this expensive and damaging folly.”

  A giant of a man in a long woollen coat stepped towards them and said something to Ute in German.

  “Go,” she said to Travis, more softly this time.

  The big man stepped forward and jabbed a hand out, slapping Travis in the chest so hard he staggered back, off balance.

  In his peripheral vision Travis sensed a fist swinging in—another man standing nearby who had lunged towards them—and he ducked, the punch deflecting harmlessly across his padded shoulder.

  Voices rose, now, as Travis turned, half-walking and half-running to get away.

  The main gates were only a few yards distant, the guards on the other side.

  “Hey, open up!” yelled Travis, waving his arm in the vague direction of the scanner. Just as the gates clicked and began to roll back, a heavy impact in the middle of Travis’s back sent him sprawling on the frozen tarmac.

  A heavy boot swung into his side as he lay there, and he was thankful for his thick layers of winter padding.

  He twisted, scrambling to his feet, and another blow struck him on the arm, then hands were on him, dragging him forwards, through the opening gates to safety.

  Seconds later, he found himself standing in the area between outer and inner gates, two security guards at his side, their stunners aimed on the protesters. His heart thumped, his breath coming in spasms.

  Had that all really happened?

  He searched the crowd of faces for Ute, but she was now nowhere to be seen.

  “Thank you so much,” he said to the two guards, both familiar faces from the daily routine of checking in and out of the base. They gripped his upper arms protectively and marched him through the inner gate; once inside, he expected to be released, but they gripped him all the tighter and marched him across to the main dome.

  “Hey, what the…?”

  “Orders,” said the guard to his right, waving his hand at the sliding door. They passed inside and turned down a corrido
r into the dome’s warren-like interior.

  “Whose orders?”

  They came to a door which slid open onto a small, cubicle-like room. He was eased over the threshold and released. The door sighed shut behind him.

  Lauren Miekle and a tall, thin man in his forties Travis recognised as Major Danvers, head of security, turned from a surfacescreen on the wall: the image showed a shot of the crowd outside the main gate, ugly after its confrontation with the guards.

  His stomach turned.

  Lauren said, “Please, Travis, take a seat.” She smiled, without warmth, and indicated a chair before a small desk. She remained standing beside the surfacescreen, but Major Danvers seated himself behind the desk and snapped, “Sit down, Denholme.”

  “What’s going on?” he said, appealing to Lauren’s better reason. “Those goons frog-marched me—”

  “With good reason,” Danvers interrupted.

  Travers sat down suddenly, his pulse racing. “What do you mean?”

  Lauren said, gently, “This is about Kat, Travis. We’re concerned for her safety.”

  He nodded. “So am I! Why do you think—?”

  Danvers said, “You knew she was missing at eleven this morning.”

  Travis squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. He hoped the pantomime gesture would convey his incredulity. “I knew Kat wasn’t answering my calls. I was concerned.”

  “Why were you concerned, Denholme?” Danvers asked. “What did you know?”

  “Know? I didn’t know anything.”

  Lauren said, “You contacted security, and then HR, a full hour before those people out there released the statement threatening Dr Manning’s life.”

  “Of course I did. I’d been trying to reach Kat all morning. She wasn’t answering my calls. That wasn’t like her.”

  “But you were sufficiently alarmed to enquire at security?”

  He stared at the man. “What exactly are you accusing me of here?”

  “We’re not accusing you of anything, Travis,” Lauren said. “We’re just investigating certain lines of…possibility. We wonder if you, through your contacts, had prior warning—or even intimation—that something like this was being planned.”