by Ian Hocking
‘Wait a minute,’ said Jennifer. She had stopped at a terminal. ‘In which year did Hartfield receive his nano-treatment?’
‘1999,’ said David.
‘The readout says he went back to 2003, four years later. Why would he return to a time after the damage was done?’
‘Perhaps the new treatment can reverse the old,’ said Saskia.
‘I don’t think so,’ Jennifer said. ‘If that were the case, he would have taken the treatment now.’
‘When in 2003, Jenny?’ asked David.
‘May 14th.’
‘That’s the day the West Lothian Centre was bombed.’
‘Fine,’ said Saskia. ‘He wants to stop the bomb.’
David shook his head. ‘No. Hartfield is interested in one thing: himself. He can be cured with the correct nano-treatment. It no longer matters to him that the centre will be destroyed.’
Jennifer tapped the readout pensively. ‘There’s more. This date was entered into the computer only two minutes before Hartfield went through the wormhole.’
‘Meaning?’ asked David.
‘Hartfield must have been in the gondola when the insertion data were changed by a third party. He didn’t intend to return to this date.’
‘Do you remember when we came down here from the lab?’ said David. ‘Ego stopped working briefly.’ He paused, listening to the voice in his ear. ‘Yes, Ego says he hacked the time machine’s computer and changed the date. He won’t tell us why.’
‘This is part of my future self’s plan, is it not?’ said Saskia. ‘She sent you that Ego unit.’
‘Very probably. I hope you’ll know what you’re doing.’
‘We need to keep moving,’ Jennifer said. She pulled a two-piece flight suit from a locker at the rear of the control room and brought it to Saskia, who accepted it apprehensively. ‘Dad, explain how the suit works. I’ll start the ignition sequence.’
David got up from his chair, where he had been making notes on a pink sheet of paper. He pinched the rubbery flight suit between his finger and thumb. ‘Oh, I wish I had one of these.’
~
Saskia flexed her shoulders. The suit was tight. It pushed her arms back and her chest out. The legs felt like orthopaedic stockings. There were reinforced pads at the knees and elbows. Something called a hard hood was stowed in the collar. Along her left forearm was a computer display. It showed a schematic of the West Lothian Centre. On her shoulder was a satellite transceiver. There were no Galileo satellites in 2003, so it would piggyback the American military’s Global Positioning System.
David tightened the strap around her waist. ‘Owah,’ Saskia said.
‘Sorry.’ He patted the clasp and it melted to a flush finish. ‘One more thing. The red button on your sleeve will lower the refractive index of the suit to zero.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘The suit will become almost invisible. You’ll look like a clear plastic bag filled with water. Treat it like instant camouflage. The suit was designed to protect and conceal pilots behind enemy lines.’
‘I see.’
‘One small step for a woman, eh?’
‘I don’t understand.’
David lost his smile. ‘My wife is in that research centre. Was. She died in the bombing.’
‘You want me to give her a message.’
‘No. I just want you to make sure you don’t die too.’
Saskia put a gloved hand to his cheek. ‘David, you could shoot me right now and the bullet will miss. There is an effect whose cause I must supply, remember?’
‘Hurry,’ said Jennifer. She indicated a monitor. ‘Personnel are returning.’
Saskia looked from one to the other. Jennifer had David’s mouth, but it was harder for her to smile. Saskia considered asking them, as a favour to her, to stay together, but it was a decision they had to make for themselves. ‘Auf Wiedersehen, meine Freunden,’ was all she could say.
‘Wait,’ David said. ‘I almost forgot.’ He passed her a pink sheet. It held a child’s crayon drawing of a house. Inside were a stick mother and father. Between them, a girl. ‘When my house in Oxford burned, I risked my life to take this off the fridge. I guess it’s a key to…memories. What we used to be.’ David looked at his daughter. ‘I was going to return it to Jennifer, but you’ll need it, Saskia.’
‘For what?’
‘The number on the back, TS4415, is a hijack trip-code used by the Lothian and Borders Police Service. It’s difficult to explain, but you’ll need to give it to me during my rescue from the West Lothian Centre.’
‘I hope I don’t forget.’ Saskia unzipped the map pocket on her thigh and pushed the paper inside. ‘You’re talking about something that is twenty years ahead of me.’
‘So you’ve got twenty years to remember. Easy.’
Jennifer shouted, ‘Hurry, Saskia.’
She waved and left the control room. As she jogged down the runway, she heard the raised voices of personnel. She began to sprint. She slipped through a gap between the baffles and skipped up the steps to the gondola. It rocked as she clambered inside. The door closed automatically.
She heard Jennifer’s voice in her ear. ‘Saskia?’
‘Go,’ she replied. The motor of the centrifuge wailed like a jet. The gondola lurched forward and she fell onto the watery acceleration couch. Through tiny windows, she watched the world tilt. She tapped her wrist computer and the hard hood closed over her head. Its arch-like sections blended to form a seamless, transparent bowl. The motor noise muted.
‘Whatever you do,’ said Jennifer, ‘don’t turn your head to either side or you’ll be sick. You’re at two gees. Still reading me?’
‘Reading you, yes.’ Her jaw ached and her cheeks felt baggy. Her head pressed against the hood.
‘Three gees,’ David said. ‘Remember, when you land, put your feet together and roll.’
‘Reading you.’
She struggled to take a full breath.
‘Four gees.’
‘Still reading you.’
Her vision began to lose colour. The ceiling of the gondola blurred.
‘Saskia,’ said Jennifer. ‘I’m sending you back one half hour before Hartfield. That will give you the best chance of intercepting him.’
‘Rea’ing you.’
David’s voice: ‘My God, Jenny. Look at the time. That’s…’
Chapter Thirty-Six
It was a disappointingly mechanical affair. A hatch opened in the bottom of the gondola and she tumbled into a bright, cold sky. She opened her arms and legs to form an ‘H’ as David had described. Webbing stretched between her elbows and her chest.
The tumbling stopped. She was still falling, but more slowly. There was a Heads-Up Display on the inner rim of the helmet. The text read:
Attempting to contact GPS… stand by.
Without the Global Positioning System, she could miss her landing by hundreds of metres.
Saskia looked down. The Earth was rising.
New text:
Contacted. Acquiring locks… stand by.
The ground seemed to expand. The horizon flattened.
Locks acquired.
The display marked her drop-zone with a green circle. A ghostly figure representing her body overlapped with a solid figure. She tilted until the two aligned.
The parachute opened and she was jerked skyward. Sudden calm. She aimed for the green circle but the drop-down cords were difficult to use. As she pulled right, she banked steeply and swung towards the ground. She had barely enough height to curse the design of the parachute before her boots hit Scotland. Remembering David’s instructions, she held her feet together and rolled to one side. After the silence of the slow parachute descent, her impact was as startling as a gunshot.
She detached her parachute, gathered it, and switched off her hood. She had landed in the valley on the south side of the research centre. The young David Proctor and his colleagues were working directly beneath her.
> Help was twenty years away.
~
If Jennifer had been correct in her calculations, Hartfield would arrive at the centre in twenty minutes. Saskia fantasised that she would hide nearby, tackle him, and destroy his notes on the nanotechnology, thus creating the future she knew. But she also knew that she was destined to write a message for her future self, place it under a rock outside Proctor’s laboratory, and paint a prophecy on the wall.
So the guards came. She smiled. They ignored her German apologies.
They led her downhill towards the river and up again, past the tennis courts, until they arrived at the hotel entrance. An unarmed guard walked alongside her while three others walked ten paces behind. There were no blind spots. Again, she felt the gravel crunch under her feet. Again, she smelled the pine. The hotel loomed.
She passed the fountain with its stone Prometheus. She imagined him chained to a rock and tormented by the hawk sent from Zeus, but the thought was the key to a room that was long unlocked.
They entered the lobby. It still had twinned staircases that rose like the edges of a cobra’s hood, and brown and black tiles. Her boots were silent as she approached the desk. The man behind it was had grey-black hair, bleached eyes and a heavy moustache.
‘Can I help you, miss?’
McWhirter.
She faltered. Why hadn’t he recognised her in 2023? Then she remembered. She had worn glasses. Now she beamed at him. ‘Ja, ja. Ich weiss nicht, wo ich bin. I am…lost. Understand?’
He twitched. ‘You’re German.’
‘Ja. Genau.’
‘My name is Harrison McWhirter. I’m in charge of the hotel.’ To the guards, he said, ‘Back to your duties.’ They fell away. The foyer was soon empty but for herself and McWhirter. She shook his hand.
‘My name is Adler. Sabine Adler.’
‘Perhaps you could tell me how you came to be parachuting into our grounds.’
‘I am with a—how do you call it—“parachute school”? I have lost my friends.’
‘I’ll get you a phone,’ he said, turning.
‘Thank you.’
As she moved away, Saskia walked silently in his shadow. When he was behind the desk, she put a hand on his neck and drove his forehead onto the edge of the counter. He sighed and fell slowly, pulling the telephone to the floor. Saskia pushed him into the chair cavity.
She adjusted her watch to match McWhirter’s. There were ten minutes until Hartfield arrived.
‘Good afternoon,’ said a cheerful voice.
Saskia struck her wrist computer and became transparent.
The suit’s camouflage worked by diverting light, but her eyes needed those rays. Without them she was blind. She heard the man stop. ‘I must say that you’re looking particularly handsome today, Colonel McWhirter.’
Who would compliment an empty desk?
His footsteps moved on.
Saskia lost her transparency and followed the man across the foyer, moving from column to column, checking for the sweep of surveillance cameras. A guard walked by. She curled into a ball behind a plant and became transparent once more. She held her breath as the guard passed.
At last corner before the cloak room, the man turned. His eyes roamed. He had high cheekbones and a restless, smiling mouth. Saskia was not surprised at his youthful appearance. Inside the computer, realised as a twenty-one-year-old, he would be no different.
‘Hello,’ he said. ‘I believe we’re walking the same way.’
‘I’m…new here,’ she said, shaking his offered hand.
‘I know. One, your footsteps. Two, we don’t have any German scientists. Aren’t you warm in gloves?’
Saskia looked for cameras. ‘Can we be overheard?’
‘Not here. Why?’
She pulled him towards the wall. ‘Your name is Bruce Shimoda. During the past few weeks, you’ve been having nightmares about children with no eyes. You have told nobody about them. I know about this and your plan to destroy Onogoro. I am from the future. You need to trust me.’
Bruce’s composure shattered. He released a shuddering breath. ‘What do you want?’
‘I need to get into the research centre.’
‘Security will never let you in.’
‘They will. We have only minutes before a bomb goes off near your laboratory. I have to stop it.’
A lie, but she needed Bruce’s help. They had five minutes until Hartfield arrived. The bomb might detonate at any time.
‘It can’t be ours, can it?’
‘No. This is a second, larger bomb. Let’s go. And remember, security can’t help us. Only I can defuse it.’
~
The open lift travelled to the lowest level of the centre. Saskia, invisible, heard the bustle and conversation of each floor, but saw nothing. As the lift stopped, Bruce said to the guard, ‘Hello, my friend. Jeremy, right? Is that a new aftershave?’
Saskia dashed to one side. She felt for a wall and crouched. Working by Bruce’s description, she was underneath the sill of the guard’s booth. It was a sheer surface with holes for the guard’s machine gun. To one side was a bombproof door.
She heard Bruce collide with the wall. ‘This wasn’t here yesterday.’
The guard said, ‘Dr Shimoda, please. You’ll hurt yourself.’
She became opaque. She saw a guard enter the reception area and take Bruce by the arm. She grimaced. The guard was less than a metre away. If he turned in her direction, she would be seen.
The guard led Bruce through the doorway. Saskia followed silently. Once through, she kept to the guard’s back and skipped down the corridor to a rack of lab coats. She took one. She deactivated her hood and tousled her hair. The lab coat buttoned easily and she studied a mounted floor plan, which she was too excited to memorise. Bruce touched her arm.
‘Now what?’ he asked.
‘I told you we would get in. I have powerful friends.’
‘Keep your voice down. Where? The lab?’
She looked at her watch. Two minutes until Hartfield arrived.
~
The corridor stretched ahead in ten-metre sections marked by blue fire doors. Dozens of people passed: friendly, academic, scruffy. Saskia wondered how many would die in the explosion. ‘Where is everybody going?’ she asked.
‘There’s a concert, one of David’s guitar things.’
‘How far to the laboratory?’
‘A couple of minutes. Do you think you’ll have time to disable the device?’
Saskia checked her watch again. She had never intended to reach the laboratory in time. It was 3:04 p.m. Game over. She slowed her pace.
They strolled through the next set of doors. Ahead of them, chatting to a colleague, was Jennifer Proctor. Saskia stopped. Jennifer?
‘What’s wrong?’ Bruce whispered.
‘Nothing. Just a feeling of…’
The woman turned. Her hair was darker, she was older, and she had a grace that had escaped her daughter. This was Helen Proctor. The connections formed. Jennifer’s mother. David’s wife.
‘Never mind that. What about the bomb?’
Saskia was about to answer when the floor shuddered. The lights flickered and extinguished. Then emergency lighting washed the corridor red. Saskia heard the infrastructure groan. Dust fell from new cracks.
‘We’re too late,’ said Bruce.
And then the explosions began. They started as distant firecrackers. Then the corridor was shaken by louder detonations. The smell of burning plastic. Heat. Shouts; some stifled, some ringing out.
The floor dropped an inch and they were thrown from their feet. The air pressure increased. Saskia screamed. She was caught in a giant machine never meant for humans; gaps would appear, only to close. The very walls might chew them. Saskia told herself that she would survive. Her God was Time, and It would protect her.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
‘Saskia,’ Jennifer said, leaning into the microphone. ‘We’re sending you back one half hour
before Hartfield. That will give you the best chance of intercepting him.’
David did not hear Saskia’s reply. He was looking at the target details on the main screen. There was something significant about the time. It was so extraordinarily significant that it took him a few moments to handle the thought. ‘My God, Jenny. Look at the time. That’s half an hour before the explosion. The bomb went off at 3:04 p.m.’
The computer beeped. Jennifer looked at him fearfully.
‘We can’t change anything now, Dad. She’s gone.’
‘Damn.’
He heard the footfalls of the approaching personnel. ‘I think the twenty-year mystery of the bombing is solved. Would his arrival be sufficient, you think?’
Jennifer put her hands on her hips. ‘Let’s do the math.’
‘Maths, love,’ David corrected.
‘An object leaves this centrifuge at one hundred and forty-four kilometres per hour. It enters the wormhole at the same speed. For a mass of, say, seventy-five kilograms, that’s a kinetic energy of almost one hundred kilo-Joules, which is more than enough to trigger an explosive chain reaction if the target is selected carefully. Hartfield must have materialised near a power plant.’
‘How very accommodating of him,’ David said. The circular nature of this business was bewildering. After all this, throughout the trial, the accusations, the damage—even the death of his wife—Hartfield had been the true cause. Ah. That was not an accurate statement. The cause could be traced back to the agent who had forced Hartfield to veer so fatally off course. It was Ego who changed the coordinates.
Jennifer said, ‘Saskia got him, alright.’
A group of technicians entered the control room. Ignoring Jennifer and David, they inspected the consoles and called abbreviated instructions. Syncomp is green. Y-vib is off-the-scale low. David watched without comment as Jennifer tried to explain herself to a stern, suited gentleman.
‘I think,’ interrupted the man, ‘you should talk to Ms Castle.’
~
David and Jennifer sat at the narrow end of a conference table. Rembrandt’s The Philosopher in Meditation hung behind them. David was tired. He lacked the energy for lies. Half-thinking, he took his daughter’s hand, and waited for the third occupant of the room to speak.
