by Gary Gibson
‘So, fine,’ said Selwyn, looking harried. ‘So Casey wants to screw the Authority for screwing with us. Why not just let him?’
‘You mean apart from the fact it’d be genocide?’ I said. ‘We depend on the Authority for everything. Medical supplies, food, drink . . . all of that, in case you hadn’t noticed, comes from that commissary around the corner. And that only gets restocked from the Authority’s own home alternate. So, unless you fancy trying to farm this damn island, or subsisting entirely on Yuichi’s home-brew, I’d suggest we’re pretty seriously fucking reliant on them for just about everything. Especially now we know there’s no such thing as retirement.’
‘Chloe,’ said Yuichi, ‘you said Casey wanted “revenge”. How’s he going to go about getting it, exactly?’
‘We think he’s searching for something he can carry over to the Authority that’ll wipe them out,’ I said. ‘Some super-weapon from one of the explored alternates, maybe.’
‘Wait a second,’ said Selwyn. ‘Why would the Authority lie to us in the first place? They built the transfer stages. If they can find the alternates where all of us come from, why not ones we can retire to? What’s stopping them, exactly?’
‘Because they didn’t build them,’ I explained. ‘They didn’t even invent them. They just found them.’
‘No,’ said Randall, shaking his head. ‘No, no, no.’
Wallace had told me all of it in his halting, careful words before the guard had interrupted us. ‘They just stumbled across an abandoned stage in a jungle on their own alternate. They don’t even really understand how the damn things work, which is why they can’t program them with their own destinations. As a matter of fact, every coordinate they have, including the ones they used to find and retrieve us, they found right here, on this island, when that first stage led them here.’
I looked around them all before continuing. ‘I took a trip with Nadia to an alternate Iceland with no sun, and she told me that the Authority wanted to find research connected to a prototype transfer stage someone there had tried to build. I asked her, at the time, what possible reason the Authority could have for wanting to find that research, when they already had transfer stages. Well, now we know. They wanted it because they were hoping it could tell them how their own stages worked.’
‘Then . . . where did the transfer stages come from, if not the Authority?’ asked Oskar. ‘And how did Wallace find all this out?’
‘Wallace and Casey set up that Howler so they could engineer the theft of a briefcase containing access keys to a bunch of encrypted files on the Authority’s hard drives. Wallace subsequently learned that when the Authority first came here, they found the main transfer stages just as they are, along with a bunch of computers and stuff apparently deliberately smashed to pieces. I can’t tell you why whoever built the stages smashed their own stuff – maybe they were afraid of something, or maybe it was something else, something we can’t even imagine. The evidence points to them at least being human. But the one thing I can tell you for definite is that every transfer coordinate the Authority possess came from a single computer that wasn’t smashed thoroughly enough.’
‘I helped pull Wallace out of that fire,’ said Selwyn. ‘Isn’t it at least possible all this is some wild confabulation on his part? I mean, doesn’t it seem likely he hallucinated at least some of this because he was in so much pain and—’
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Winifred snapped at him. ‘It’s all true, every last word. I can tell you that for a fact.’
It was my turn to stare open-mouthed as Winifred looked around at us with something approaching pity.
‘How . . . ?’ I asked.
‘Me and Wallace had a thing going,’ she said. ‘For a little while, anyway.’
I tried to picture Wallace and Winifred in some kind of a romantic relationship, but it was like trying to fit together two pieces from different puzzles. Wallace was smart, and a motormouth, while Winifred by contrast was buttoned-up, her face seemingly permanently set in a disapproving scowl. I could think of no more unlikely couple.
‘Well,’ Chloe muttered. ‘You sure as hell kept that under your hats.’
‘I ended it because of his drinking,’ Winifred explained, ‘although we remained on good terms. I always thought his alcoholism was because of his ordeal with the Patriots too, but then he told me something that made me think otherwise.’
I dropped into a seat and listened as she continued. ‘I knew he still liked me even after that,’ she said. ‘He’d drop little hints from time to time that he knew something I didn’t, but I never paid attention to any of it. Then I found him in here, drinking alone, as he was starting to do more and more. He started telling me this long, rambling story about how he’d discovered everything we’d been told about retirement wasn’t true.’
Randall stared at her, his eyes practically bugging out of his head. ‘Why didn’t you tell us!’
‘Why? Don’t you think the life we have here is infinitely better than what we had before our retrieval?’ She looked around, her arms folded like a teacher confronting an unruly classroom. ‘You’re all so focused on going home. Well, I’ve got news for you: even if you could, you probably wouldn’t like it as much as you think you would. You’ve all changed too much to ever go back.’
Her words made me think of another conversation I’d had, when I’d wondered if it was still possible to find some other version of Alice, somewhere out there in the multiverse. Randall, however, was having none of it. ‘Oh come on!’ he exclaimed. ‘That’s ridiculous!’
‘Is it?’ She turned to him. ‘Think of all those stories of traumatized soldiers coming back home after years away fighting in far-off lands, trying to fit into their old lives and surrounded by people with no idea of what they’ve been through. People like that always either wound up dead, in jail or re-enlisting.’ She arched an eyebrow, fixing Randall firmly with her gaze. ‘Every one of us lived through the end of a world, and that puts us in the same boat. Whoever you were before that is gone. Trying to slip back into your old lives would be like trying to wear a dead man’s shoes. Sooner or later, you’d go crazy or run away or worse. Whether you like it or not, Randall, we just don’t belong in such places any more.’
Altogether, this was by far the longest speech I had ever heard Winifred utter. ‘So where do we belong?’ I asked, curious for her answer.
‘Why, right here, of course.’ She looked around again, and seemed to relent a little. ‘Look, I knew how upset you’d all get if I’d told you any of this, plus I thought it unlikely you’d ever believe me anyway, so I chose not to. We’ve already got better lives than we could possibly hope for just by being here. Telling you what Wallace told me would have been . . . cruel, I think. And unnecessary, to boot.’
‘Would you go home, if you could?’ I asked her.
‘I thought you understood,’ she said, looking puzzled. ‘I already am.’
Just then, I heard a sound like a cough, coming from somewhere far off. The sound repeated at regular intervals for some seconds, then cut off as abruptly as it had begun.
Yuichi turned to stare towards the entrance. ‘Who the hell’s shooting out there?’
Oskar went the other way, through the sliding glass doors next to the pool. From its far side, he had a clear line of sight along the side of the building, past the low fence that shielded the pool from prying eyes.
I heard what sounded like another rattle of gunfire, and then the sound of a car, accelerating into the distance.
‘Maybe it’s Casey,’ said Chloe, alarmed. ‘Maybe the Patriots finally caught up with him.’
‘If they have,’ Yuichi muttered, ‘that’s one whole lot of shooting to catch just one man.’
‘Wait,’ said Randall. ‘I thought he was working for the Patriots.’
‘Weren’t you listening?’ Yuichi hissed. ‘He double-crossed them!’
‘One of us should go and take a closer look,’ Oskar called back in to us. ‘See
what’s going on.’
‘Maybe,’ Randall shouted back, ‘we should stay the hell right where we are until the shooting stops.’
‘Hear, hear,’ cried Selwyn. ‘We’re safe in here, whatever the hell’s going on out there.’
I had my doubts about that, but said nothing.
‘Rozalia’s out there somewhere,’ Chloe said to me. ‘She was supposed to be back by now.’
’And Haden,’ said Selwyn, overhearing her. ‘Where did Rozalia go, exactly?’
‘To look for the portable transfer stage the Patriots gave to Casey,’ I replied. ‘That’s why the Patriots are tearing the whole town apart. They’re desperate to find it. They interrogated Wallace before we got a chance to talk to him and, given the state he was in, I think he must have told them pretty much everything – including Casey’s plans for revenge against the Authority.’
‘But if the Patriots find that stage first,’ said Randall, ‘and catch Casey, we won’t have to do a damn thing!’
Yuichi regarded him with amusement. ‘Jesus, dude. Sometimes I seriously wonder about you, you know? You think those morons are going to be able to track a guy like Casey, when they’ve barely got any mission experience of their own?’ He pointed a thumb at me and Chloe. ‘It’s like they said. Our best hope for survival is finding him ourselves, because the Patriots sure as hell never will. We need to find Casey’s stage first.’
I felt full of nervous energy. ‘We need weapons,’ I said. ‘Not just for going after Casey; but in case whoever’s out there decides to start shooting at us next.’
Selwyn shook his head. ‘You’d need access to the base armoury, and it’s not like Major Howes is going to just hand us the keys.’
‘Hey!’ Oskar shouted from where he still stood by the pool. ‘Speak of the fucking devil!’
I went out to where Oskar was standing and saw Howes himself coming towards us, one arm flung around Rozalia’s shoulder. His uniform was dark with blood as he limped along beside her, a pistol hanging from one hand.
‘Christ in hell,’ yelled Randall, leaping up as we helped them inside. ‘What in God’s name is going on around here?’
Oskar had taken Howes’ other side, and together he and Rozalia lowered the Major into a chair.
‘It’s not as bad as it looks,’ Rozalia gasped, straightening up again. There were scratches and bruises on her face. ‘Although it could be that he’s lost some blood.’
Howes’ hands trembled as he tried to shift into a more comfortable position. ‘Any alcohol around here?’ he asked.
‘If you’re thinking about cleaning that wound,’ said Oskar, ‘I don’t think we’ve got anything pure enough for—’
‘To drink, goddammit.’
Yuichi came forward and handed him a bottle of his home-brew. Howes swallowed some of it, then grimaced. I heard him say something under his breath that sounded like a curse. ‘It’s a miracle you don’t all go blind from drinking this stuff,’ he wheezed, and Yuichi regarded him darkly.
Rozalia had slumped into another chair. ‘What the hell happened to you?’ I asked her.
‘It was right there, where Chloe thought it was,’ she said. She looked as if she’d been pushed to the edge of endurance. ‘Casey hid the stage behind some tarpaulins, inside the part of the hull of the trawler where you can walk right in. You’d never see it, not unless you stepped right up to it. He’s even got it up on a platform to keep it out of the water when the tide comes in.’
‘Was there any sign of him?’ asked Oskar. ‘Or do you think he’s transferred over to some other alternate?’
She shook her head and looked at me. ‘I thought about running whatever coordinates he’d last run, and maybe transferring across in case he’d done just that. Unfortunately, I ran into a little trouble before I had a chance.’
‘I told you it was a bad idea going there on your own,’ I said.
She gave me a dark look. ‘I heard noise from up on the coast road while I was poking around,’ she continued. ‘I stuck my head out and a jeep full of fucking Patriots had pulled up next to my own transport. I didn’t want them coming anywhere near the wreck, and they hadn’t seen me, so I sneaked back along the shore a ways, then climbed up onto another part of the road just a short distance from them. Then I stuck my head out of some bushes like I’d gone there to take a leak.’
‘And then?’ I asked.
‘Well, it worked, because they didn’t go near the wreck, but the cocksuckers went and arrested me instead.’ She touched her face. ‘They weren’t friendly about it either. They drove me back to the base and locked me in a room there, until they could figure out if I’d been up to anything, I guess.’
‘This was when?’
‘Couple of hours ago.’ She nodded towards Howes. ‘When everything started to kick off, I had a ringside seat in the window of the room they put me in. The Patriots all turned up en masse and said they were taking charge.’
I looked at Howes.
‘I guess it doesn’t hurt to tell you,’ said the Major, regarding me wearily. ‘I refused. They were asking for unrestricted access to the main stage, without authorization or orders, and actually seemed to expect me to keep Kip Mayer locked up when my primary job’s to protect him.’
‘So Greenbrooke backed down?’ asked Oskar.
Howes shook his head. ‘Greenbrooke wasn’t there. His agents drew their weapons and ordered my men through to the main stage, then locked me in my own office. I’m guessing they sent my men back home so they wouldn’t have to worry about dealing with them here.’
I realized all this must have occurred after Chloe and I had left the hospital, when jeeps full of Patriots had driven past us on their way to the compound.
‘So how did the two of you get out of there?’ asked Yuichi.
‘Stupid bastards didn’t think I might have a spare key for my office, so, as soon as I was out, I waited until the coast was clear and sprang Miss Ludke,’ he said, nodding at Rozalia. ‘I needed some backup, and had a feeling that, if they’d locked her up, it might mean she had a better idea what was going on than I did.’
‘You couldn’t get Mayer out?’ I asked.
‘No,’ he said heavily. ‘They took him somewhere else, but I need to go back and get him. I don’t even know if he’s still on the island. But whatever we do, we have to do it quickly. We just ran into a pair of agents, but we managed to kill them. The others will have heard the shooting.’
‘I told the Major everything I knew on the way here,’ said Rozalia.
Beside her, Howes made a face as if he wanted to spit. ‘Not that I’m having an easy time believing it.’
I gathered up my predecessor’s notes and handed them to the Major. ‘If you want proof,’ I said, ‘I’ve got a fat chunk of it right here.’
Howes regarded the bundle of pages wearily. ‘Maybe later. In the meantime, we have a job to do, and that’s stopping your friend carrying out this threat of his to commit genocide, assuming it’s real. Miss Ludke was very clear about the consequences if we fail.’
‘And then what?’ said Selwyn, coming to stand directly before the Major. ‘Everything goes back to the way it was, with us running around like rats in a cage until we drop dead? Because I just got told there’s no retirement plan for any of us, and never has been.’
‘And who told you that?’ asked Howes, with surprising equanimity.
‘What the hell are you talking about?’ asked Rozalia. Chloe pulled her to one side and quickly told her what we had learned from Wallace.
‘So you admit it’s true,’ said Randall, coming to stand by Selwyn’s side and glaring at the Major.
Howes looked around us all and sighed. ‘I guess I do.’
‘Then there’s one thing that doesn’t make sense to me,’ Randall continued, nodding over at me. ‘How could you retrieve Jerry more than once, if you only ever had the one set of coordinates for his alternate? How come you can find more than one alternate with a version of Jerry on it, b
ut you can’t find somewhere that’s safe for us to retire?’
Howes shook his head. ‘Alternates with minute variations in their histories are bundled together in “braids”. The first time you program a coordinate into a rig, it grabs one particular strand – an alternate – out of that braid of highly similar universes. The Mr Beche standing over there we found by picking a different strand from the same braid that the first Mr Beche came from.’ He looked around us. ‘Each one of you comes from a braid containing a multitude of alternates just like your own, with only very minor variations. To find one where your world didn’t end, so the theory goes, would require us to find an entirely separate braid, and that’s what the scientists can’t work out how to do. Now, we can’t waste any more—’
‘One moment,’ said Oskar. ‘I get the how. It doesn’t tell us why you’d lie about retirement.’
I could see Howes’ patience was wearing thin, but he clearly understood that we needed answers. ‘They were sure they were on the verge of figuring out how to program the stages right at the start,’ said Howes. ‘I guess they thought wrong, because they’re still trying. I’m sorry you were lied to, but I swear it had nothing to do with me.’
‘Enough of this,’ I said. ‘He’s right. We need to act now.’
‘We’ve got maybe one gun between all of us,’ said Yuichi, pointing at Howes’ pistol. ‘That’s hardly enough to do anything.’
‘There’s an armoury in the basement of Government House,’ said Howes. ‘It’s got an electronic lock. You’ll need the entry key, or you won’t get inside.’ He rattled off a short sequence of numbers. Yuichi went behind the bar and found a pen, quickly writing the key out on the back of his hand.
‘That’s it, then,’ said Yuichi. ‘We’ll grab some guns and go find Casey, wherever he’s headed.’
‘Wait a minute,’ said Howes, raising a hand. ‘Someone’s going to have to try and find Kip Mayer and spring him, if he’s still here.’
