Déjà Vu: A Technothriller (42 page)

Pliny, the chimpanzee, looked up from his cage as the buggy approached. He wore a black flight suit. Outside his cage was a screen that showed his heart rate, blood oxygenation and brain activity. The humans arrived. Pliny leaned on his knuckles to watch them.

“We don’t need to be concerned, Saskia,” Michaels was saying. Saskia agreed. He didn’t need to be concerned with very much; only one person would be going back in time: her. “Hartfield’s plan has not worked. If it had, then there would be no research centre, but here it is! It is solid.” He kicked the cage. Pliny moved towards the back. “However, that is not to say that we can afford to do nothing. It is possible that Hartfield has failed because you will go back in time and stop him. In one sense, we already know that our plan has worked. Of course, we do not yet know how it will work, or if the eventualities will be comfortable for any of us. I suspect, Saskia, that you are the most at risk.”

Saskia folded her arms. Below them was the larger of the two centrifuges. “But I am completely safe. I have been seen at the age of forty.”

Michaels paused over a computer terminal. He gave her a sympathetic smile. “I didn’t say that you were at risk of losing your life. Risk comes in many forms.”

“But if Hartfield does go back in time and change it, then he will have removed the reason for his future self to go back…”

“Exactly,” David said. “For some reason he thinks he can avoid a time paradox.”

“I know why,” Saskia said. “He hasn’t got all his cups in the cupboard.”

There was silence for a while as Jennifer and the professor busied themselves with the time machine. Saskia and David waited to one side. The control centre was a cluster of computers on a raised dais. A ramp led up from the road and another led away to the lip of the wall that surrounded the large centrifuge. At the end of the gantry was the open gondola. David reached over and squeezed Saskia’s hand. She smiled. Perhaps, when she returned to the West Lothian Centre, she would meet him as a twenty-three-year-old researcher.

“We have no time for explanations,” Michaels announced, though none had been demanded. “The huge centrifuge has little to do with the time travel process itself. It is merely a device designed to throw you, at some speed, through the worm hole we create over there.” He pointed vaguely towards the other centrifuge. Saskia could see a channel linking the two sections of the machine. “The second centrifuge also has little do with the process. It is merely designed as a convenient method of catching the object when it returns.”

“Why does that part need to rotate?” asked David.

Jennifer opened Pliny’s cage. She said, “It’s just a way of having a vat of water oriented at ninety degrees to catch the returning object.”

Pliny jumped into her arms. He looked sadly at Saskia, who rolled her eyes towards the distant sky. First Michaels, then David; now she was getting sympathetic looks from the chimp. “So an object can be returned?” she asked hopefully.

Michaels stopped his preparations and approached her. “Let’s be clear on this, Saskia. This multi-billion dollar machine is nothing more than a slingshot. It tends to fire things where we want them to go, but it is always a one-way trip. So far the destination has always been the same place, more or less, but a different time: the bucket of water on little brother.” He rubbed his chin. “Getting you back here would require a time machine at the other end.”

When Saskia said nothing, he clapped his hands briskly. “To business. You need to put on Pliny’s flight suit. Last time now: are you sure you want to go through with this?”

She closed her eyes. Jobanique: the man who had taken the life of Kate Falconer while giving life to Ute Schmidt. His golem, Saskia Brandt, was going to return and stop him. Could she kill him? Ute Schmidt could. She was not sure about Saskia Brandt.

Together we are two, the letter had said, but we make a third: a combination.

She could not explain to Michaels what it meant to be controlled. He would never know rape or domination. That was her first motivation to stop Hartfield. As for the second, perhaps he would appreciate Bruce’s parable. In truth, she did not know if she was real or not. She only knew that she felt real. She wanted to live. If Hartfield succeeded, thousands like her would die unborn.

So one reason was a principle. It represented her mind.

The other was emotional. It represented her body.

In combination they were irresistible.

“Yes.”

The chimpanzee was a good deal shorter than Saskia, but his flight suit was adjustable. The legs felt like orthopaedic stockings. The shoulders pulled her arms back and her chest out. There were rubber pads at the knees and elbows. The suit was black. Along her left forearm was a computer display. It showed a map of the West Lothian Complex. In her right arm was a satellite transceiver. There were no Galileo satellites in 2003, so it would patch into the American military’s Global Positioning System.

The suit had a hood that was stowed in the collar. It also had a waste recycling system. Not only was she about to travel in time, but she would get to drink her own urine too.

Jennifer finished tightening the straps around the ankles. “Owah,” Saskia said.

“Sorry.” She pulled the last one tight and patted the connection. It melted to leave 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 invisible. Well, not truly invisible. You’ll look like a clear plastic bag underwater. Treat it like instant camouflage. The suit was designed to protect and conceal pilots who’ve crashed behind enemy lines.”

“I see. Right.” Saskia nodded thoughtfully.

“Saskia, are you sure you want to do this?”

“No,” she replied. She smiled to show that she was joking. Half-joking.

“My…my mother is in that research centre. Was. She died in the bombing.”

Saskia caught her eye. “You want me to give her a message.”

“No. I just want you to make sure you don’t die too.”

Jennifer hugged her. Saskia stroked her hair. “Jennifer, I’m not going to die. I can’t die. You could shoot me right now and the bullet will miss.”

“We don’t know that, Saskia,” she said.

“We don’t know very much,” said David, walking over. The dark circles under his eyes had begun to recede. His balance had improved. “But we know we’re grateful.”

“David, I know I have been hard on you in the past week. I suppose that now is a good time to apologise.”

David put his arm around her shoulder. “Come back and see us, will you? When you’re older? I for one would appreciate a visitor in jail.”

Jennifer looked up. “Are we going to prison, Dad?”

“Actually, I don’t know. Ego has recorded everything, including my journey and Hartfield’s confession. Maybe we can talk our way out.”

Michaels called, “You have to go now, Saskia. The computer is configured. This place will fill up with personnel soon.”

Saskia stood and took their hands. “Here I go. I hope Hartfield didn’t leave a banana skin somewhere.”

“Don’t worry,” David said. “Hartfield isn’t the kind of man to plan for failure. As far as was concerned when he left, this whole research centre would disappear like the tributary of a river diverted at source.”

Saskia looked at the two of them. Jennifer had David’s nose, but it was less easy for her to smile. She lacked his energy. 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,” was all she could say. She did not cry, although these people were last friends.

“Wait,” David said. “I almost forgot.” He passed her a folder from a nearby table. It contained several pink sheets that were covered in diagrams, equations, arrows and blocks of hand-written text. “These are the instructions for the computer-controlled glider. Should work with any computer with the same programming language and hardware. Everything you need is mentioned. Of course, you could find this information anywhere. But I’d prefer it if you use mine. I know it’ll work.”

“Where did you find this?” she asked.

“I just wrote it. Only took ten minutes. They’re the same sheets from the church in Scotland. I saw them just before you busted me out. I recognised my handwriting.”

Saskia unzipped the map pocket on her thigh and pushed the papers inside. “You’re talking about something that is twenty years in my future. I hope I don’t forget.”

“You’ve got twenty years to remember.”

Michaels shouted, “Hurry up, Saskia.”

She smiled one more time and walked down the gantry to the gondola. It rocked as she clambered inside and closed the outer door. The seat was nothing more than a seat-shaped bag of water. She hoped it wouldn’t burst. The door closed with a flimsy click.

She heard Jennifer’s voice in her ear. “Saskia, personnel are starting to come back. There are guards too. We have to start immediately.”

“OK, go,” she replied. The gondola lurched forward and she fell awkwardly. The motor for the arm was as loud as a jet engine. The compartment began to accelerate. Through tiny windows, Saskia watched the world tilt. The gondola still felt upright.

She lay down on the water couch. The stresses left her body. She reached over and tapped her wrist computer. The hood flipped over her head. The arch-like sections melted together and formed a seamless, transparent bowl. The noise muted. She heard Jennifer say, “Are you reading me, Saskia?”

“Reading you, yes,” she said. The muscles in her jaw ached. The back of her head pressed painfully into the bowl.

“Fifty per cent speed,” Jennifer said. “Remember: feet together, roll.”

“Reading you.”

It was difficult to take a full breath.

“Seventy-five per cent speed.”

“Reading you.”

Her vision began to lose colour. The ceiling of the gondola blurred.

“Saskia,” said another voice. It was Professor Michaels. “We’re sending you back one half hour before Hartfield. That is,

2:34 p.m. on the afternoon of May 14th 2003.” “Rea’ing you.” Saskia begin to lose consciousness. David’s voice: “No, no, that’s –”

It was a disappointingly mechanical affair. A hatch opened in the bottom of the gondola and she fell not into the wall of the centrifuge but into cold, loud air. It was a bright day. She tumbled. The ground and sky swapped. She opened her arms and legs to form an ‘H’ as Jennifer had described. She noticed a bat-like webbing that stretched between her upper arms and her chest.

The tumbling stopped. She was still falling, but certainly slower, like a leaf, body-surfing her way to the ground. Operational Flying Squirrel was Go. To her left and right she could see the curve of the earth. There was a head-up display in the inner rim of her helmet. Some text read:

Attempting to contact GPS...stand by.

Without the Global Positioning System, she would not know where to land.

Saskia looked down. The earth was rising.

New text:

Contacted. Logging on...stand by.

It was difficult to judge her height and speed. The ground seemed to stretch out rather than get bigger. The edges of the horizon flattened.

Logon successful.

The display changed. Her landing point was marked by a green circle. Surrounding it were red arrows indicating predicted wind direction and strength. Also projected was a small diagrammatical figure that represented herself; a blue arrow indicated that she needed to tilt in a north-easterly direction. She did so and the arrow disappeared.

It was her first skydive. That had not perturbed Michaels, however. “The pragmatics of time travel, Saskia. We don’t want you appearing in solid rock.”

Seconds later, the parachute opened. Gravity pulled her blood into her boots. The air became calm. She aimed for the green circle but she was clumsy with the cords. They were poor for turning. As she pulled one, she dropped towards that side. She had barely enough height to curse the design before her boots connected with Scotland. Remembering Jennifer’s instructions, she held her feet together and rolled to one side. After the silence of the slow parachute descent, the sound of her impact was deafening.

She was sitting on a gentle hillside. There was no sign of anyone. The sky was clear above and some birds sang in the sparse trees. She disconnected her parachute and gathered it together. From her right thigh pocket she took a phial of enzyme. She broke the seal and dribbled it over the parachute. Soon it was gone.

Saskia switched off her hood and breathed the air of the glen. It was clear and cold. The computer on her arm indicated that she was in a valley on the south side of the research centre. It was likely that David Proctor and his colleagues were working directly beneath her.

She was alone. Help was twenty years away.

Five minutes later they came for her. A parachutist descending on the complex would not be ignored. She checked again that her suit contained no markings. She had no weapon, food or spare clothing. If Michaels was correct, Hartfield would arrive at the same place in twenty minutes’ time.

She fantasised that she would hide nearby and tackle him. She would destroy his notes on the nanotechnology, allow him to be captured, and make good her own escape. But she was destined to write a message for her future self, place it under a rock outside Proctor’s laboratory, and write another message on the nearby wall.

So the guards came. She smiled. They ignored her German ramblings.

They took her downhill towards the River Almond and up again, past the tennis courts she and Scottie had seen, to the front entrance of the hotel. Again she felt the gravel crunch under her feet; again she smelled the pine. The hotel loomed. The east and west wings were welcoming arms, but Saskia had not felt welcome on her first visit and she certainly didn’t now. An unarmed guard walked alongside while three others walked ten paces behind. There were no blind spots, no escape.

Again she walked past the statue of Prometheus. It was running. She thought of him chained to a rock, punished by Zeus, but now the thought was the key to a room that was already unlocked. It had no power.