Déjà Vu

Chapter Thirty

A concussive wave clapped her ears and a confetti of sharp fragments sparkled across her back. With a kiss of negative pressure, Saskia removed the mask and let it rise to its ceiling dock. She turned, crunching the fragments of the cubicle door, to see a distinguished, suited gentlemen holding a gun. A hair of smoke strayed from its barrel. The man was frowning at Saskia.

She was unhurt. She slipped forward and watched her body perform. Her wrist struck the man’s gun hand. She moved to his right, beyond the angle of the weapon should it discharge, gripped the gun barrel securely, twisted, and stepped behind him. She pushed and he fell onto his belly, sliding over the tiles until he came to a rest at David’s feet.

‘Good, isn’t she?’ said David.

Saskia swung out the cylinder, counted five bullets, and snapped it shut. ‘You’re too old to be a guard,’ she said to the man. ‘Who are you?’

‘Saskia,’ David said, ‘allow me to introduce John Hartfield, owner of Met Four Base and the cure for cancer. Third richest man in the world.’

‘Second,’ Hartfield said. ‘Rottstein died on Mars last Tuesday. More money than air.’

Jennifer stepped from her cubicle and touched Saskia’s shoulder. ‘Are you OK?’

‘Yes. The bullet missed.’

Hartfield laughed but the sound was wrong. His eyes seemed dead. Saskia understood, right then, that he was insane. ‘I was wrong to send Klutikov. You’re too…lucky.’

‘Beckmann sent Klutikov, not you. What is your association with Beckmann?’

He laughed. Again, it sounded like a bad copy.

‘Answer me,’ she said, pointing the gun at his knee.

‘Why? You’ll shoot me anyway.’

‘Perhaps I won’t.’

‘Wait,’ David said. He fished his wallet from his jacket pocket. From that, he produced his personal computer. ‘Ego, switch to speaker mode. I want you to analyze our voice stress patterns for their veracity.’

‘Understood,’ replied a new, quiet voice.

Saskia said, ‘Hartfield will be unharmed if he answers truthfully. Correct?’

‘You are telling the truth,’ Ego replied.

Hartfield eased himself upright. At the flick of Saskia’s wrist, he moved more slowly. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I have no concealed weapons.’

‘Mr Hartfield, you are also telling the truth.’

‘Empty your pockets,’ Jennifer said, and Hartfield consented. He gave up a set of keys, a wallet, and a blue pass-card. Jennifer spread the pile. ‘No more weapons.’

‘Answer my question first,’ Saskia said. ‘What is your relationship to Beckmann?’

Hartfield paused. ‘In Norse mythology, Odin had two ravens, Munin and Hugin. They would fly out at the beginning of each day and return at dusk with news from the world of Man.’ He checked her expression. ‘Munin is the name of your section, Saskia, and Beckmann has been in my pocket for years. As for you, I had you recruited specifically to deal with the Proctor problem.’

Ego said, ‘He is telling the truth.’

‘Tell us only when he doesn’t,’ said David. ‘What, pray, is the Proctor problem?’

‘There were reports that the Onogoro computer was back online. Further reports implicated Bruce Shimoda. I suspected your hand in this, David, and I was glad when McWhirter requested your assistance. Within the research centre I had good, invasive surveillance. I had hoped that Colonel McWhirter could handle you. He could not. Perhaps I could have a glass of water?’

Saskia fired the gun. The cubicle door behind Hartfield shattered. David and Jennifer looked at one another. Hartfield straightened his tie. ‘I was unprepared, David, for your second terrorist attack. Onogoro was my Plan B.’

‘Bloody hell, how many times? There was no first attack. Not by me.’

‘You sent me,’ said Saskia, ‘after David to collect information.’

‘No. At that point, I merely wanted you to collect him. Then I began to understand how persuasive a man David could be, and how difficult it had been for Beckmann to fully control your behaviour. I decided to end the matter by sending Klutikov. If he found you here, then my suspicions would be confirmed because only David could lead you to his daughter. If he had not found you, then David would be in your custody and on the way back to England.’

He sighed, chin on chest.

Jennifer raised her hand. ‘I have a question. Why are you here, now?’

‘The most important question, Jennifer,’ said Hartfield, smiling. ‘You recall that, when I was a young man, I offered my fortune to any person who could cure me of my cancer. The one who came forward was Fernando Orza. His treatment involved nanobots—robots smaller than blood cells—that could seek out and destroy cancer cells. I was cured. That, in sum, is the official version of the story. Unofficially, the nanobots killed not only cancerous cells but healthy ones too, particularly the oligodendrocytes in my frontal lobes. I was left with a severe mental handicap. I received a number of treatments, but, finally, the doctors informed me that I had a permanent condition. I…no longer see meaning. Conversation is difficult and empathy impossible. I remember kindness and justice but I no longer feel them.

‘Orza’s nano-treatment became public after 2010. But that day in 2002, when I received the all-clear, I turned my energies towards investment in radical technologies. Onogoro, for example, was intended—although you did not understand until later, David—to unlock the secrets of our genes using the kind of rapid experimental approach only previously possible with lower animals. With those codes unravelled, my brain could be rebuilt. Another example is your project, Jennifer.’

Saskia sensed a change in David. His eyes became narrow and severe. In a clipped voice, he said, ‘Jennifer, what did you build for him?’

‘I -’

‘What, Jennifer?’ he spat, and Saskia felt the elemental rage of a father at his daughter’s mistake. When Jennifer shrugged fiercely, David turned to Saskia, though his words seemed for the benefit of Jennifer too. ‘Saskia, do you remember what I said when we first met?’

She frowned. ‘Yes, you claimed to have met me before.’

‘It took me until now to fully understand. Before, it didn’t make sense.’

‘What didn’t?’

‘You, Saskia, helped me escape from the West Lothian Centre four days ago.’

Saskia laughed coldly. Only the determination in David’s face stilled her retort. He leaned against his cubicle door. ‘It didn’t make sense because you were twenty years older than you are now. In the time we’ve spent together, I’ve thought through the alternatives in an attempt to talk myself out of that preposterous conclusion. Did you have an older sister? Could it be your mother? Was it some other kind of doppelganger, transformed by plastic surgery? Now, here, I realise that my gut feeling was correct. It was an older you. You are going to travel backwards in time.’ He continued to look at her with an expression that communicated grim fascination, even disgust. ‘Tell her, Jennifer.’

Jennifer shook her head. ‘Dad, we’re years away from sending a human, and when we do, he or she will be military.’

‘Ah,’ David said, turning to her, ‘but it isn’t your project, is it? Hartfield pays the piper and he calls the tune.’

Jennifer was silent. She looked young.

‘It would explain something,’ said Hartfield, almost to himself. ‘For several months, I have felt that a force is working against me. I’m not just referring to David’s miraculous escape from custody, or the bullet that missed you, Saskia, though it was fired point blank. It is a sensation of manipulation. Determination.’

Saskia felt their attention. She had the gun, but she was suddenly vulnerable—the most vulnerable person in the room. ‘This is nonsense. If I had aided David in his escape, I would also have aided myself in the past few days. But my future self has been absent.’

‘That’s not true,’ Jennifer said. ‘You contacted Bruce, who contacted me.’ She raised her hands at the room. ‘We’re here.’

‘It’s not possible.’

‘Not only is it possible,’ said Jennifer, ‘it always has been. There’s nothing impossible about time travel as a theoretical construct. Since Einstein, the Devil of time travel has only been in the detail.’

‘Wait,’ said Saskia. Her memories were all the clearer for their rarity. ‘I worked with a detective called Jago.’

‘I remember,’ said David. ‘Go on.’

‘He had a heart attack during the chase, and I called his mobile a few hours ago to find out how he was doing. A woman answered. She claimed to be his daughter.’ Saskia let her mind slip its anchor. ‘He doesn’t have a daughter. I think that woman was…me.’

All’s well that ends well.

‘Crikey, you spoke to yourself on the phone?’ asked David. His eyes were unfocused with wonder.

‘I don’t understand how this works,’ Saskia said. ‘I remember the conversation we had, word for word. When I reach the point in my life at which I must supply the other side of the conversation, how will I choose what words to say?’

‘You won’t have to choose,’ said Jennifer.

‘That’s my point. Who chose them? They are just words I must say. Like a script that’s already been written. And every moment you felt in my company, David, as I helped you escape from the West Lothian Centre, all those moments are…planned. They’re lost. I have no choice but to repeat them.’

‘You have a choice,’ said Hartfield.

‘No choice,’ she said. ‘The Fates aren’t human, or even human-like. They’re physical forces. They’re the universe itself. They have nothing to do with my…intention, or will, or hope. They play and I dance.’ She thought of Beckmann as he forced her hand to raise the gun to her temple. ‘They influence the chemicals that control my muscles. They conduct the information around my brain. They are the information. Inside, I’ve been chasing my identity the past two days, worried that I don’t have one.’ Saskia looked at David. She smiled and the movement disturbed her tears. ‘It’s funny. When Beckmann recruited me, he made me investigate the murder I committed. I’ve come to America after you, David, only to find I’m investigating myself a second time.’

The hawk that returned.

‘Revenge should have no bounds.’

There was a long moment of awkwardness, to which only Hartfield seemed indifferent. Saskia’s gun arm began to ache and she let it fall to her side. As she did so, Hartfield looked at his watch. ‘What?’ she asked.

‘Don’t you feel, Saskia?’

‘Feel what?’

‘A sense of your own power. Of your efficacy. Of your human will. I remember that feeling from memories I have of the person I was, many years ago. I will fight for it.’

‘No,’ said Jennifer. ‘Remember the watch. I sent it backwards in time but there never the question of a paradox. I had to wait two hours and send it. No effect without a cause, remember?’

Hartfield shook his head. ‘You’re wrong, Jennifer. And David and Saskia—you’re wrong too. I have with me the specifications of the correct nano-treatment. I have studied the operation of the time machine. I will return to the year 1999 and correct Orza’s mistakes. I will be cured and my future will change. The world of 2023 can go to hell.’

The lights went out.

Saskia saw an afterimage of the room flick left and right as she scanned the darkness. Something brushed her elbow.

‘Jennifer, David: did either of you touch me?’

‘No.’

Saskia fired over her shoulder, turning as she did. In the muzzle flash, she saw the black arch of the doorway and, almost out of sight, Hartfield’s heel as he escaped into the corridor.

‘He’s gone,’ Saskia shouted above her deadened ears. ‘What did he do to the lights?’

‘Can’t see any emergency diodes,’ said David. ‘He must have disabled the backup too.’

‘Excuse me,’ said Ego. ‘I have detected a transmission from another Ego-class personal computer.’

‘Whose?’ asked David. ‘Hartfield’s?’

‘The transmission comprised two coded radio bursts. The first instructed the central computer to deactivate both the primary and emergency lighting throughout the centre.’

‘And the second?’

‘The second instructed the chip in Saskia’s brain to deactivate, effective immediately.’

‘What?’ she said.

‘Saskia,’ said David. ‘We’ll think of something. Hold on.’

She slid down the frame of the door and stretched her legs as though she could brace herself against the coming loss, the tide of nothingness. Would it feel like a stroke, or falling asleep? She felt no shift in her mind, but when David next spoke, his words were unintelligible. Her English was gone. The implanted skills were fading.

She put the gun to her temple.

I will not become the Angel of Death.

‘Do you know the true purpose of Russian Roulette? It is the power of the question: Is there a bullet or is there not?’

The six-shooter held six rounds, less one fired by Hartfield. She had fired two more. There were three bullets left. But before she could squeeze the trigger, David gripped the barrel. They fought for control. David pushed the gun towards the floor and it glanced across his thigh, spinning the barrel. Saskia thumbed a nerve below his ear. He cried and fell back.

She put the gun against her head and pulled the trigger.

Snick.

The chamber was empty.

She pulled the trigger again.

Snick.

She had hit the second empty chamber.

She squeezed again.

Snick.

The third empty chamber. Anger expanded inside her.

For the last time, she pulled the trigger.

The spring creaked. The hammer yawned and the ratchet revolved. Spin. The chamber turned. Measure. At the same time, David’s hands closed on her shoulders and she heard his meaningless words, felt his breath on her face. The world slowed. David’s voice deepened and Saskia imagined the gap between the hammer and the round. In that gap, which might have been a thousand miles across, a flame sprang up, guttered, and died.

A nightmare poured from that darkness: She was in a coffin. She wanted to scream but her dead mouth would not move. Her chest itched from the coroner’s incision. She smelled formaldehyde, corrupt meat and wood. Smoke, too. With that, she felt a draught through the dark curtain that separated the present from the past. The light from another world found her, even as she lay inside her box, and she remembered everything.

The nightmare inside the nightmare.

Everything was revenge.

Snip.