Arcadia (5 page)

I was not thinking quite as clearly as I should have been; I’d been working long and hard in the previous few days and my brain was still befuddled with the effects of the stimulants. As they cleared out of my system, though, I began to see a way through the problem. I had no confidence that I could persuade anyone to take my doubts seriously unless I could complete the work and prove my case. For that I needed more time. So I decided the best thing would be to get hold of some. In the meantime, I had to make sure no one else fiddled around with the machine in my absence.

Going into hiding was not an option, of course. I could, perhaps, have evaded detection for a day or so, but not for much longer than that. In fact, there was only one possibility, which was to use the machine myself. I knew it worked, but it was hard to get everything ready on my own and with no one noticing.

I managed, though; I rerouted the power supply from a few generators to ensure that all trace of my destination would be erased and the data hopelessly jumbled when I left. I had built that possibility in years ago, as I had seen enough of scientific integrity by then not to trust my colleagues further than I could throw them. If Hanslip and Oldmanter wanted to experiment, then let them. They’d have to do all the work themselves from scratch. I doubted they’d get very far.

It took a long time to prepare, but at one in the morning I was ready to go. As I heard the hum in the final moments before the
power engaged, I felt very pleased with myself. I was prepared to bet Hanslip hadn’t anticipated my move. He worked purely in the realm of calculated rationality; I did not. In a world of chemically induced sanity, a little lunacy confers immense advantages.

Perhaps I should explain what this is about? There is a risk, I am sure, that I am giving the impression that I was petulant and egotistical, that my only concern was to bathe in the light of glory that was my due.

Very well; I admit that was a reason. But only one. There were other issues at stake, and my desire that the whole of humanity should not be wiped out played a small part in my decision also.

It began with my unofficial experiments, which demonstrated that the fundamental assumptions underlying the entire project were wrong. Not to put too fine a point on it, I stuffed one of the cleaning staff into the machine to see what happened. He was a somewhat nervous fellow called Gunter, who needed a lot of tranquillisers to make him cooperate. Admittedly, I should not have done this, especially as I did not ask official permission first, but – there we are. I couldn’t use an animal, or an inanimate object, as the chances of finding it again were non-existent. Only a human being could possibly be tracked.

He was. Alex Chang, one of the most junior people in the department and thus too insecure to snitch on me, was given the job and spotted the unfortunate cleaner in 1895. Three hundred and twenty-seven years back. It was a good piece of work on Chang’s part, as he had to learn a lot of new techniques to analyse the evidence. Gunter had gone mad when he arrived and, not surprisingly, had eventually entered the priesthood. Without going into the details – what I had done was not really ethical and I knew it would be used against me – I tried to tell Hanslip that we had a problem, but he couldn’t see what I was on about.

‘Don’t you understand?’ I told him one evening. ‘This whole project is based on the assumption that what we are doing is not time travel. Laws of physics. Accepted and proven for two
centuries or more. All we can possibly do is transit to a parallel universe. Right?’

He nodded, looking around him to see if there was anyone he could summon for protection in case I got too vehement.

‘Wrong,’ I went on. ‘Wrong, wrong. It’s all wrong. I know it is. Think. In theory, we should be able to access any number of universes. So why can we only seem to access one, eh? No one has thought about the implications of that. I think the whole alternative universe theory is complete nonsense. We would be moving in this universe. The only one there is. Time travel, to put it bluntly. If that is the case, we have to stop now. We need to start again. From the beginning. Immediately.’

‘We can’t possibly start again,’ he protested. ‘Think of the cost. Why are you telling me this?’

‘Because I’m right. I feel it.’

At this point, you see, I could not explain properly. Still, I didn’t understand why he was so keen on dismissing my concerns. He knew how I worked, and knew that my instincts were fundamental. Besides, I thought he would be happy about overturning two centuries’ worth of physics. What better way of making a name for yourself?

Instead, he took refuge in pomposity, muttering about budget projections. It didn’t make sense until I realised that he was negotiating to sell everything to Oldmanter. A functioning, usable device that gave the possibility of infinite space and resources at no risk was his central selling point. Quite a good one, if only what he was telling them had any truth to it.

Something too dangerous to use except for small experiments would have opened no wallets. Besides, he was terribly conservative in approach. Faced with a choice between my hunch and generations of scientific labour, his only response was to demand proof. It was part of his character I never understood or appreciated. Why wouldn’t he just take my word for it?

*

The summons to the emergency meeting arrived at four o’clock in the morning, an event rare enough to cause all concerned to wake, dress and move with remarkable speed. Even rarer was the way it was done; no dream to jerk the sleeper awake with images of what was needed; not even a message coming through the communications system. No; a person, an individual, actually hammered on the door, and kept hammering until the occupant on the other side was sleepily, confusedly awake.

There was no explanation for such bizarre behaviour, so the six people who arrived at the anonymous underground office were suitably worried in advance. What could possibly have happened? Some speculated about a reactor melting down; the more bureaucratically minded gloomily decided it was a test of emergency procedures launched by some over-enthusiastic zealot.

Jack More thought none of these things. He didn’t think at all, and not simply because he was tired; he was the only person who had no obvious reason to be there. He was merely a security officer. He was curious, certainly, but he did not jump to conclusions. If there was any need to panic he was quite happy to let others worry themselves silly. Whatever had gone wrong couldn’t possibly be his fault. It was one of the virtues of insignificance.

His presence was enough to make the others worry all the more. They looked at him, half wanting to ask why he was there. A meeting, in person, in the middle of the night, was a good reason to think there might be something to worry about.

‘Sit down, please.’ Robert Hanslip had walked in. The boss who controlled the money, the individual on whose approval depended the lives and careers of every person in the room, everyone on the island. No one liked him, although whether they did or not was irrelevant. All admitted that he was very efficient. Some believed he was highly intelligent, although few would say so, lest they get a lengthy – and, recently, obsessive – diatribe from Angela Meerson on the precise size of the large hole where his intelligence should have been located. No one in the room really knew him anyway. He never mixed with people of a lower grade,
and they had noted already that no senior figures were at this strange meeting.

Hanslip’s weakness was a somewhat ostentatious self-presentation. He affected an old-fashioned style, and had had his metabolism tweaked so that he stabilised at about ten per cent overweight: enough to give him a more solid look without requiring frequent adjustments to the heart. Not for him either the dandyish ways of the modern or the austerity of scientific garb; he preferred the carefully crumpled look, harking back six decades to his youth when such things were briefly fashionable.

He never talked loudly, but suffered no opposition. Anyone who annoyed him would soon enough find their assistants taken away, their budget cut. All done with a smile designed to make his victim feel somehow grateful the punishment hadn’t been worse.

Part of his authority lay in ensuring that everything ran smoothly, so any sort of crisis damaged him; certainly, his appearance now caused a shiver of alarm to pass through the little meeting. He looked shaken; whatever had happened, they knew the moment he walked in that it was going to be bad.

‘Forgive me for disturbing your beauty sleep,’ he said. ‘Three hours ago a serious power surge caused electricity supplies in northern Germany, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Scotland to fail for 0.6 of a second.’

Jack looked around him, wondering what it meant. Everyone else went suddenly still.

‘How much of a surge?’ one asked.

‘We’re still trying to get the precise figures.’

‘You are going to tell us it originated with us.’

Hanslip nodded. ‘I am going to tell you exactly that. The official analysis is not yet in, but I am sure it came from here. Needless to say, I have already sent out a report denying it was anything to do with us, and demanding an apology from whoever was responsible.’

‘That’s one hell of a lot of power,’ a young man remarked, after
he had goggled at the figures on the paper Hanslip handed round. He must have been fairly new, or he would have known Hanslip did not approve of any sort of swearing. ‘Are you sure it was us? How could it have happened?’

‘I am sure it was us. Otherwise I would not have disturbed your rest. As for what caused it, that will be your job. There is no need to find out
who
caused it. That, I fear, is obvious already.’

Hanslip’s concern communicated itself to the rest of the meeting. ‘Time,’ he said. ‘We don’t have much time.’ But bureaucracies move in their own stately way, however urgent the situation. The main result of the meeting was to form a committee. Several committees, in fact; one to analyse the data to find out what the power was used for, another to investigate how someone had managed to bypass some of the most sophisticated security systems on the planet. A third took charge of destroying all evidence implicating their institute. The checks necessary to establish that their troublesome star mathematician had indeed vanished were quickly enough performed.

‘A moment, Mr More,’ Hanslip said as the meeting broke up. Jack had not said a word throughout the discussion, nor had anyone else even looked at him. ‘I imagine you are wondering what you are doing here?’

‘Yes, but I decided that you would tell me soon enough, and would ignore anything I asked until you were ready.’

‘Well judged. I may need your assistance. The closure of this facility and all of us landing in jail is one of the better options open to us at the moment. A rapid and unorthodox response may be called for. That is your department.’

‘What exactly is so bad about a power surge?’

Hanslip peered at him scornfully. ‘It blacked out a billion people, many of whom will have had panic attacks. There will undoubtedly have been many suicides and murders as a result of the chaos. We know of two airliners which crashed because all controls and backups shut down simultaneously. The death toll already is more than two thousand and rising. More to the point,
our authority rests on the efficient management of society. It is a very serious disaster, and someone is going to be blamed for it.’

‘Ah.’

‘There will be a search for those responsible. A public punishment for the people who have disgraced the reputation of Scientific Government. To show we care; that sort of nonsense. Now do you see?’

‘I do.’

‘Good. We need the culprit, together with a report saying that she suffered a mental breakdown that pushed her into an act of destructive terrorism. Something along those lines. I’m sure you know the sort of thing. Come for a walk. You will need to know a little more if you are going to help us.’

4

When the strange girl returned and left the bright, shiny coin by the food she had put on the grass beside him, Alex Chang rolled over and watched in fascination as she disappeared. Fortunately, the terrifying animal he had thought was about to savage him went as well. Had he heard of such things? Tame animals? Yes, dimly. He had hardly thought the tales could actually be true, though. Did that mean it had worked?

He was confused and dizzy. He couldn’t remember who he was, let alone where. There’d been a hum; that was the first thing that came back to him. He remembered a blurring in his eyes. Then nothing. All the chatter in his head suddenly stopped, leaving him in a terrifying silence. He kept his eyes closed, trying to calm himself, then carefully started to breathe. That was all right. The air was warm, but full of strange smells, things he had never smelt before. Not unpleasant, certainly.

Then he began to sneeze; he searched around in his head for an explanation but there was nothing. Panic swept over him; it took some time to discipline himself and analyse the situation. Pollen, dust, particles of organic matter, came the answer eventually. The unfiltered air was thick with it. Some part of his mind took over, and gradually the spasms were isolated and confined, then controlled, leaving only one thought hammering away at his consciousness.

Eat. You have to eat. An odd idea, as he didn’t feel hungry. Far from it. One part of his mind was urging him to eat, another part rebelled at the very notion and knew it would make him sick. Reluctantly and carefully, he reached over and picked up the thing the girl had given him. It looked disgusting. Oval, a light
brown colour, squashy with a slight feel of grease oozing out as he squeezed it. He sniffed it cautiously, then recoiled, revolted. It came from an animal.

But the urging returned. Eat. Eat. Very carefully, he put it to his lips, tried not to smell it, and bit. Then again, and again, stuffing the little cake into his mouth, almost choking, and swallowing.

Immediately thoughts, memories, sensations flooded back into his mind, jumbled, confused, meaningless, but a whole range of images and recollections, so many he could not absorb or listen, or interpret anything. He concentrated, trying to pick out one as a start. History. It meant nothing. A renegade. Finally, an image of two men formed, one standing. A tall man, curly hair, powerfully built. He felt slightly afraid of this man, but also pleased. Why? More. That was the name. His name was Jack More. What about the other? A slight, cowed, timid-looking fellow. Sitting down, an air of cautious resentment. He realised he must be looking at himself. He lay back on the grass, closed his eyes and tried to relax. The scene pieced itself together, and he remembered the conversation with Jack More. Two days ago? A countless age? Or a mirage? He had no idea.