Resonance (38 page)

Howard pulled together all the formulae on resonance he could find, hoping that one of them might provide an insight—a stepping stone—to the thinking behind the Etxamendi formulae.

And paused.

There was something familiar about one of the Etxamendi equations. He couldn't put his finger on it. It might even be an error introduced by the translation program. But . . .

He looked harder at the screen, turning his head to the left and right. There was something about the pattern of letters in the right-hand expression. A familiarity of form, something he'd seen quite recently, different symbols but . . .

Maria Totorikaguena!

He searched for her files, dragged them onto the screen, flipped through them—articles, theses, dissertations—there it was! He split the screen in two. The Etxamendi file above, Maria's model for a twelve-dimensional universe below. There
was
a similarity. Not an exact match, the Etxamendi equation had extra components, but once you substituted the Etxamendi symbols for Maria's . . .

It couldn't be coincidence.

He must have called out. Annalise appeared at his shoulder asking him what was the matter.

He told her.

And then he phoned Gary.

Graham stood in the background, trying to feel as excited as everyone else but lacking the conviction. He barely understood half of what Howard had said even after Annalise had asked him to slow down and explain.

And now even she was busy, tapping away at a keyboard, running searches and programs.

"Graham," said Annalise, swivelling round in her chair, "you'd better take a look at this."

Graham pushed away from the wall. He could tell by her tone that it wasn't going to be good news.

"I've just run the Resonance project closure program," she said, glancing up at him.

The number had grown to 172.

Graham shrugged and wished he could feel more. But he couldn't. It was as if everything was happening to someone else. Ever since he'd heard his life explained and dissected, he'd felt numb. He wasn't sure if he was even human.

He noticed Annalise watching him out of the corner of his eye. Even that didn't affect him. He'd become immune to all feeling.

She turned away. "Howard?" she called. "How can you tell if Adam Sylvestrus is linked to all these worlds?"

"What?" said Howard distractedly from the other side of the room.

"I've run the closure program. There's 172 now. How can I see if Sylvestrus is linked to ParaDim on all these worlds?"

"I'll come over."

He leaned over Annalise's shoulder and flipped through a series of submenus. "Run that," he said, highlighting a file.

She did. Adam Sylvestrus's name flashed onto the screen. He worked for ParaDim on all 172 worlds where the Resonance projects had been closed.

"I'll tell Gary," said Howard. "Even he can't argue with the math this time."

The afternoon passed by in a blur. Everyone was busy except Graham who alternated between sitting and watching and standing and watching. He had nothing to contribute. Except his peculiarity. And even that couldn't be measured—at least not by any instrument that Shikha had at hand. He was unique and, at the same time, the commonest man in the universe.

Something that frightened and bewildered him. What was he? One man fragmented over two hundred billion worlds or two hundred billion men trapped inside a single life—a life bound together by fields of resonance. A life so constricted it was barely worth living.

He dwelt on that question for a long time. Picking at it until it hurt. Why him? Why not someone else? Why did all the worlds have to come together in the first place? Was he the victim of a resonance wave or the key to its destruction? Was he solution or distraction?

He raged at his plight and he raged at himself. And then he raged at his rage. What was the matter with him? One minute he was numb, the next he was raving. Where had all this anger and self-pity come from? It was so unlike him. Was he caught up in a surge of resonance from billions of slowly awakening Grahams? Or was it something else? Was he overdosing on thirty-three years of repressed emotions, learning for the first time what it was like to be a real person, a person who could be hurt and angry and feel things?

Like guilt.

That was the other thing. He was consumed with guilt. Guilt that he was alive and safe while 172 other Grahams were lying unconscious in hospital beds. Guilt that he was a fraud. That all the attention was unwarranted. He wasn't a key. He was an anomaly. A distraction that had cost countless lives and hours. Guilt that he was so useless. That all he could do was stand and watch while others worked so hard. Guilt about the way he'd treated his mother—his other mother. The poor woman who was as much a parent as the one of his memories, but whom he'd treated as a stranger. Worse, he'd treated her with contempt.

He even felt guilty about Ray. Guilty that a part of him had enjoyed his humiliation. A darker side of himself that he'd never seen and didn't like. The old Graham wasn't like that. The old Graham didn't have strong feelings about anything. He ignored, endured, looked the other way.

Was he losing the old Graham? Was he losing the tolerance and the patience and the stability? He wasn't sure. He wasn't sure about anything.

As afternoon turned into evening, Annalise found Graham and took him up to the lounge area on the sixth floor—a room devoid of terminals, black spheres and anything work-related.

Howard was already there, holding his glasses in one hand while he rubbed his eyes with the other. He looked tired.

"What happens after the resonance wave collapses?" Annalise asked him as she poured herself a drink.

A question that had haunted her ever since Annalise Fifteen had first raised it.

"How do you mean?" asked Howard, pushing his glasses back over his nose.

"I mean . . . does everything go back to normal? We stop the resonance wave and everyone lives happily ever after."

"I wouldn't go that far," said Howard, smiling. "There's always work to do."

"I know that but," she paused, "I can see how it works for the pre-ParaDim worlds. They're left to develop normally. But what about the ParaDim worlds? Haven't the seeds of chaos already been sown."

Howard shook his head. "Remove the impetus of resonance and all worlds will have the chance of developing normally. Humans are a highly adaptive species. We can adapt to change."

Annalise sank down in the sofa opposite Howard. "But what about the pace of change and weapons proliferation and the greed?"

"There'll always be problems. On some worlds they might be insurmountable. But what else can we do?"

"Disband ParaDim?" suggested Annalise. "Break up all those black spheres and let worlds evolve at their own pace."

Howard looked horrified. He sat up. "Destroy knowledge? Would you burn books? Would you deny hope to the sick and suffering? We're on the verge of eliminating disease; of finding cheap, clean, renewable energy; of finding solutions to our deepest problems. Would you throw away all that?"

Annalise looked away, uncertain. "What if the price was too high? What if you couldn't have the cures without the weapons? What if you cured the sick only to have them wiped out in a war or a genetically engineered plague?"

Howard waved a large weathered hand in a dismissive gesture. "We could talk about this for days. It all depends on whether you're an optimist or a pessimist, whether you think people are inherently good or evil."

Was she a pessimist? Two days ago, she'd have classified herself as an optimist. ParaDim was good. They were curing cancer. Now she wasn't so sure. She'd spent most of the afternoon reading the Chaos files, scrolling through the historical accounts of thousands of worlds. All of them following the same slow path to hell. Knowledge proliferation, trickle-down technology, weapons for all. The ability to construct weapons of mass destruction made available to the zealots, the bigots, the maniacs, the vindictive and the power-hungry—people with little idea of responsibility and an overriding belief in their own destiny. It was like showering sparks over a tinder-dry forest.

"Don't forget," continued Howard, "stopping the resonance wave will allow other voices to be heard and other paths to be taken. We can't save everyone. No one can. All we can hope for is to save those we can and pray for those we can't."

Graham listened from the back of the room, his little voice telling him to stay out of the conversation, that nothing good ever came from arguing, while all the time he felt like railing against ParaDim, injustice and the human race. Why was it that every good idea had to be corrupted? Why couldn't everyone be saved? Why couldn't all weapons be decommissioned? Why couldn't people live together?

He gripped his wrist. Left over right. Took a deep breath.

And spoke. As calm as he could manage. "What about Lucius Xiang and the original ParaDim project?"

Howard looked surprised. "You know about Lucius Xiang?"

"Graham knows a lot more than people think," said Annalise, smiling in Graham's direction.

"Did they ever find what they were looking for?" said Graham, swallowing hard. He was talking too fast, his heart racing, he felt every word so strongly. "Did they find a world where they'd solved the problem of how everyone could live together?"

"LifeSim," Howard said, his face broadening into a grin.

"What's LifeSim?" asked Annalise.

"They found it on one of the very advanced worlds. Part of every child's education—spending a simulated year in the body of another person. From another race, religion, country, sex, social background, age—the list was endless. One year of someone's life compressed into a day, so that each child would know what it was like to be black, white, male, female, straight, gay, Christian, Muslim, poor, old, blind, sick. Brilliant, don't you think?"

"Did it work?" asked Annalise.

"For the majority it did. A few didn't take to it. But most learned to appreciate from an early age that everyone is an individual with their own history, beliefs and needs. To see strangers as living people and not stereotypes or threats."

"Why didn't anyone at ParaDim develop LifeSim?" asked Annalise.

"They do," said Howard. "Eventually. Usually in Phase Three or Four. And after the marketing men have 'improved' the product." Howard's fingers provided the quotes. "They repackage LifeSim as entertainment. Take out all the ordinary people and replace them with the extraordinary." He stressed the "extra" part of the word. "The sports heroes, the killers, the porn stars, the psychos—people with interesting lives."

"Is that going to happen here?" asked Annalise.

He shook his head. "LifeSim is one of our priorities. We're moving the development up. Kenny's assured us. After resonance and disease, LifeSim's the top priority.

"And there'll be no psychos or porn stars," he added. "We're going to do it right."

Graham went home shortly after that. He didn't trust himself to be around people. Howard meant well, he knew that. And he had enough to worry about with the resonance wave but . . .

Didn't he realize that this world was the same as all the others? The same people, the same high ideals, the same grubby compromises. ParaDim would sell out. Kenny Zamorra would sell out. LifeSim would be shelved or repackaged and everyone would throw up their hands and say, "What else could we have done? We're curing cancer. We're the good guys. We only produce weapons for our friends."

He slipped out while Annalise was busy elsewhere.

It was an unsettling journey home.

He was on an emotional roller coaster. He was starting to feel things—intensely—all the time. He felt attracted to girls on the tube, frightened by groups of youths, enraged by newspaper headlines, frustrated by trains that sat for minutes outside empty stations with no word as to why or when they'd ever move. Things that never used to bother him, things that used to belong to the outside world—that world, the world that barely touched him. It was like he'd been moved from audience to stage. Life was no longer something he watched from afar but something he experienced in the round.

It was not a pleasant experience.

Walking home from the station, he had to fight to keep himself in check, force himself to count, subordinate himself to the abstract world of numbers and checkerboard pavements—let the imperfect world slide by overhead.

It wasn't easy.

A group of children made faces at him from the back of a bus. He wanted to make faces back. He wanted to taunt them like they were taunting him. He wanted to run onto the bus and drag them outside. He wanted . . .

He grabbed his right wrist, clasped it with his left hand—tight. Calm. He'd stay calm. He wouldn't look, he wouldn't feel, he wouldn't get involved.

Annalise Fifteen surveyed her new flat—a three-bedroom apartment in Kensington, courtesy of the newspaper. Jenny had shown it to her that morning and she'd moved in after lunch.

Things were looking up. She had new clothes, a credit card, a thousand pounds in cash and a laptop. And Graham had three five-thousand-piece jigsaws. He'd cleared a six-foot-square area in his bedroom and she'd barely seen him since. Give him a coffee machine and an en suite bathroom and he'd never come out.

Annalise deleted another paragraph of her email and started again. She'd been trying all evening to get it just right, to give it the feel that it came from a ParaDim insider—a whistle-blower—without sounding like a deranged conspiracy theorist. As much as she liked the guys at the paper, she didn't trust them to run with the ParaDim story if the going got tough. She needed other avenues of pressure. If needs be, she'd email every government, every news organization, every ParaDim competitor. She'd tell them ParaDim's plans, their strengths and their weaknesses. Even if most of the recipients deleted the file unread, someone would notice.

And if they didn't, she'd keep on until someone did.

Jenny arrived just before ten with a bottle of champagne. She was bubbling with news. The Tracey Minton gang had been arrested, Stephen Landcroft had confessed to three murders and the evidence implicating Victoria Pitt's husband had been found just where Annalise had told them it would be.