Diamond Eyes (43 page)

‘Okay. Now cast your mind back to the morning of the day we first met and ask yourself: was this what frightened you that morning? Or was it the soldiers you mentioned during our last session?’

‘What?’ She shook her head. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘I heard you scream as we came in the gate,’ Zhou said. ‘But it wasn’t until this morning that I realised it might have been you. I wanted to ask what upset you.’

‘Everything,’ she replied honestly. ‘Before I spent a whole morning with Ben, everything scared me. But just now in the car, it was an Aboriginal man and two younger boys who were stalking kangaroos. One of them threw a spear at me. But there’s nothing here now. No buildings or furniture. Just this dry field and the biggest mosquitoes I’ve ever seen.’

She fought the urge to clap a big tangerine one that fluttered silently past her ear. She could almost hear the buzz.

‘My eyes are starting to burn too much. Can I rub them, please?’

‘Of course,’ Zhou said. ‘There’s no need to ask. We’ll always wait for you.’ He tapped a musical rhythm onto his keyboard. ‘Okay, that was the mirrored glasses with the orange tint. So try that pair next, Ben.’

Mira turned away from the scope, making it easier for Ben to place the glasses on her face.

‘Red!’ she exclaimed as soon as she opened her eyes. ‘The room’s gone and everything’s red! Swampy, horrible! I’m up to my waist in it!’

‘Interesting,’ Van Danik said. ‘That’s orange from orange-tinted glasses and red from red. That trend’s promising.’

‘Oh, I don’t like this!’ Mira wriggled her hips to reassure herself that she wasn’t really stuck in the swamp.

‘Nothing is different here,’ Van Danik promised. ‘Just tell us what you see.’

‘Sky, trees. I told you, everything’s swampy. It’s foggier and hazier than usual too, but I think that’s because there really is fog here.’

‘Any wildlife or hunters?’

‘No, I can’t see … Wait! The water just rippled.’ She saw the broad menacing head of a crocodile break the surface only a short distance away from her. It opened its mouth and …

Mira screamed, tore off the sunglasses and cast them across the desk towards Ben’s voice.

‘That was huge! I didn’t know crocs could grow that big! Its head was like a bathtub and its teeth were as long as rulers!’

‘All true,’ Van Danik reported.

‘Crocodiles haven’t been that big for millions of years,’ Zhou argued. ‘She couldn’t have seen one.’

‘That’s not what our totally infallible equipment just told us.’

Mira noticed that Van Danik said the word ‘infallible’ as if his doubts were returning.

‘That was factual experience — up close, live and personal,’ he went on. ‘Not imagination, not memory. Not any degree of combination. Her bioresponses couldn’t possibly have made it more clear.’

‘That’s …’ Zhou didn’t say impossible, but his tone had lost all confidence. ‘She can’t possibly be seeing what this says she’s seeing. There has to be another explanation. We must be missing something.’

‘Possibly,’ Van Danik replied. ‘However, string theory does predict that all things become possible as time stretches towards infinity, while quantum mechanics guarantees mathematically that the least likely outcome is as possible as the most likely. The task, I think, is to further qualify and quantify these results.’

‘Was that English?’ Mira asked.

‘Ancient Chinese,’ Ben replied.

Zhou chuckled. ‘Sorry. In English, it means we need more tests before we take a huge leap across science fiction and faith to propose a radically new hypothesis regarding theories of relativity. Or it’s too big a leap.’

‘A quantum leap,’ Van Danik agreed.

‘To what?’ Ben persisted. ‘What hypothesis?’

‘Well,’ Zhou began, then stammered to a halt, as if he wasn’t physically able to produce the words.

Van Danik helped him out. ‘We may have stumbled onto a biological mechanism for focusing retrospectively.’

‘Again in English?’

‘We suspect Mira can see history.’

‘That’s ridiculous!’ interrupted Karin Sei.

Mira only heard that first part of her outburst. Her mind flooded with questions, all answered in the same instant by her subconscious, working like a twin sister to help solve a jumbled jigsaw, every piece now sliding easily into place.

‘I can see where things were? … I’m not crazy?’

‘Flux me!’ Van Danik snapped. ‘That’s true and true. If I didn’t doubt my own sanity now, I’d say that proves it conclusively.’

‘I really
can
see the past!’

‘Calm down,’ Van Danik chuckled. ‘You’re spiking me off the scale.’

‘You’re serious?’ Sei cut in again. ‘You’re sure your equipment isn’t faulty, or your premise flawed, or … or
something?’

‘My thoughts exactly,’ Zhou replied. ‘However, we’ve been dancing around the evidence from every conceivable direction, eliminating all the impossibilities until all that’s left are the possibilities and facts, however impossible they may appear.’

‘Theoretically,’ Van Danik said, still sounding as if he was trying to convince himself, ‘nothing is impossible forever. Impossible is just a temporary concept, made possible in our present reality because many things are still outside the field of human understanding or capability. However, human capability and knowledge have both been expanding exponentially faster than our physical evolution in recent decades, and Mira …‘ He paused, and she detected genuine respect in his tone. ‘Mira seems to have experienced a significant leap in physical evolution. If so, she isn’t disabled so much as superiorly capable. Super-able, if you want to call it that. Her mind is still struggling to keep up, obviously, and she hasn’t learned to interpret what she’s seeing by herself yet, but we …’ He paused again, and Mira knew he was finding the confession difficult to make. ‘We’ve made it even harder for her by closing our minds to what she was trying to tell us. We were the ones who were blinded.’

‘Blinded by the light of our own brilliance,’ Ben whispered. ‘Mira, I’m so sorry. I have to confess there were times I didn’t believe you either.’

‘No, Ben.’ Mira fumbled to find and clasp his hand. ‘You must
never
apologise. Without you, I’d still be a sedated lump in a cell.’

‘Okay,’ Sei interrupted again. ‘So let’s assume — for one freakishly brief instant — that this
is
possible; how do you account for her remark about seeing Sergeant Hawthorn out there before?’

‘Was he a sergeant?’ Mira whispered to Ben.

‘Yes,’ Zhou said. ‘This project is funded by the military, Mira, so our assistants are also our security guards.’

‘I knew it!’ She clapped twice, excitedly. ‘I knew there was something funny about them!’

‘What you don’t know,’ Sei added, ‘what none of you know, is the reason why your last team had to be replaced unexpectedly. I’m calling this session to a halt. John!’ she shouted. ‘You’d better get in here!’

A cacophony of voices erupted around Mira, with Ben and both doctors loudly demanding an explanation. Mira cringed, hearing the piston-hinge on the door decompress as Duet rushed in.

‘Quiet!’ he ordered. ‘What’s the situation, Corporal?’

‘We need to get Colonel Kitching down here,’ Sei reported. ‘Listen up, people. Sergeant Hawthorn was murdered yesterday. The details are classified, but —’

‘Karin!’ Duet demanded. ‘What’s going on?’

‘You’re not going to believe this, John, but Miss Chambers, it seems, may soon be a murder witness.’

Evil seeks to maintain power
by suppressing the truth

Galileo Galilei

M
ira fidgeted in her seat, trying to practise patience, but it made her skin itch, like a rash that she wasn’t allowed to scratch. It wouldn’t have been so bad, she thought, if Colonel Kitching hadn’t required a full briefing instead of simple introductions to Ben and herself. Instead, the doctors had launched into ten painful minutes of technical jargon and argument that amplified her headache until her skull throbbed, fit to explode.

‘I don’t trust him,’ she whispered to Ben.

‘You don’t trust anyone,’ he replied, sounding equally frustrated.

A platter of lollies, chocolates, nuts and fruit arrived with a waiter, but the pain robbed Mira of her appetite. She clamped both hands over her head and hid her face against the desk, tuning out their voices and transfixing on the rhythm of her own pulse, which she could now feel as well as hear inside the arteries of her inner ear. A small part of her saw the irony in longing for a sedative.

A hand touched her shoulder, small but strong, with long fingers. ‘Need a painkiller?’ asked Sei, leaning close to Mira’s ear.

Mira shook her head, then instantly wished she hadn’t. ‘Don’t drug me!’

‘It’s only aspirin, and a mild one at that.’

‘Aspirin doesn’t count as drugs,’ Ben said, siding with the corporal. ‘Not the kind you’re used to.’

‘But she came prepared to drug me!’

‘I did not. What’s she talking about?’

‘Many women carry painkillers, Mira. Just slip it under your tongue and let it dissolve. It won’t hurt you. In fact it should reduce any headache within a few minutes, like the painkillers I gave you in the car.’

‘I spat those out,’ Mia confessed. ‘If you’re normal and healthy, why do you carry painkillers?’ she asked Sei.

‘Migraines, sweetie. I recognise your symptoms. I get them so bad I could bite the head off my sergeant, and she’s one mean mother, I can assure you.’

‘Oh, I get those every time I open my eyes.’

‘Poor kid,’ Sei replied. ‘Here, keep the whole sheet.’

‘It won’t put me to sleep?’

‘Not unless you swallow the lot with alcohol, and I don’t recommend you do that. Give me your hand.’

‘Ben?’ Mira asked.

‘Go ahead,’ he said. ‘They’re harmless.’

Cautiously, Mira obeyed, intrigued that she was being given the freedom to choose if and when she needed medication. Sei showed her how to pop out a small hard tablet from its metallic sheath, and slip it under her tongue.

‘Ew!’ She screwed up her nose.

Sei chuckled. ‘Sorry, I probably should have warned you about the taste, but like he said, it acts quickly and it’s harmless if you don’t overdo it. Give it a few minutes after it dissolves, and if you feel like you need another one, do it. You can self-medicate, so long as you don’t take more than four in a day, and see your doctor if you need them more than four days in a row, okay?’

Mira nodded, still bewildered as to why a normal woman would carry drugs and take them willingly, especially when they tasted like beach sand.

‘I’ll keep them in my pocket for you,’ Ben offered.

‘No, you won’t,’ Sei said. The packet was snatched from Mira’s hand and slipped just as swiftly into her cleavage. ‘We girls have our own means and devices.’

Mira touched her chest, surprised to realise the sheet of tablets could sit so comfortably in the natural pocket between her breasts, dress and bra, then blushed to realise she even had breasts — and that she was touching them, in front of Ben and the other men. She shoved her hands swiftly into her lap, where she clenched and fidgeted them.

‘I don’t buy it,’ Kitching said, drawing her attention. Something in his voice sounded hesitant, untrustworthy. ‘There must be another conclusion. You weren’t funded to chase theories into the realms of fantasy.’

‘Science fiction,’ Zhou corrected. ‘We’re not talking about magic. We’re speculating on theories about Mira’s eyes and how they’re processing the input she’s receiving.’

‘That’s from light,’ Van Danik explained, ‘which can travel in two ways. Firstly, with the predictability of particle theory — like bullets from a firing squad. That means that light particles travel in straight lines until they ricochet off something into other directions, or penetrate objects and fracture into rainbows of light with various wavelengths. However, light also travels less predictably, like waves, and when you have light waves from many directions interacting — as we always do in our universe — you get ripple effects, much like those achieved by throwing a handful ofpebbles into a pond. And each and every instant of interaction between these light particles and waves occurs in a single plane of time, called a fraction of a second, which stack, plane upon plane and second upon second, like sheets of paper, until we have a timeline that represents everything that has ever happened so far, whether we’ve witnessed each instant around us or not.’

‘Like waves on a beach?’ Mira asked.

‘Wave theory applies to all waves no matter what they’re made of: water, sound, light …’ Van Danik said.

‘And our research so far,’ Zhou added, ‘leads us to suspect that Mira’s eyes may be reflecting light from the present whilst processing fractions of light waves from previous time layers.’

‘That’s impossible,’ Kitching said. ‘You don’t have to be a scientist to know the only reason we see anything is because light travels to us and either stops or keeps going. It’s only logical that it doesn’t exist here with us anymore. At light speed, it might be off the planet by now, or dissipated, but the one thing it doesn’t do is hang around for us to keep witnessing it over and over. Just imagine how confusing that would be, if we could see every instant of what’s happened in this one place around us, since the dawn of history, all at once.’