Amanda laughed and shook her head. ‘Nick? I think he’s watched too many bad TriView shows. No, it’s probably something much more prosaic than that.’
‘Like what?’
‘A construction tool,’ she suggested. ‘An earth-digging machine that a bunch of ants accidentally figured out how to switch on, and now it’s rolling over their own anthill. That would be about the size of it.’
‘He was right about one thing: there are easier ways to wipe us out.’
‘What you said about the earthquakes. Do we know if that’s the case?’
‘Think about the amount of energy the growths must need to reach such an enormous size in so little time.’ A big wave smashed into the ferry, and they staggered slightly as the deck tilted first one way, then the other. ‘The leaves are for gathering solar energy, but I reckon that wouldn’t give them a fraction of the total power they’d need. Geothermal power is a fast way to get the rest of that energy, so they drill deep into the crust, or maybe even further.’
‘And the atmospheric phenomena we’re seeing? What about that?’
‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘But I don’t think Tesla’s got much to do with it.’
‘I’m still glad we came here, you know,’ she said. ‘Somehow seeing it like this – actually
being
here – makes all the difference.’
‘You think we’re getting what we deserve by being here?’
She looked at him. ‘Don’t you?’
He shook his head. ‘I think we were just unlucky. Curiosity defines us. It’s what makes us human. There’s no way you could explore something like the Founder Network and not expect to get your fingers burned.’ He pulled her closer and nodded up at the sky. ‘Out there, seeing? uo;ll survive . . . or other people will, at any rate.’
A message was broadcast over the ferry’s tannoy system before Amanda could form a reply. The captain proposed taking a vote on whether to sail the ferry to within a kilometre of the growth’s base, and the result of the vote would be announced the following morning.
Fowler felt overcome by a mixture of excitement and terror as he listened. That single glimpse, in a fragmentary video, of Amanda standing on the deck of this very same ferry, had given him the sense of fulfilling some kind of personal destiny just by being here. The end was close, but at least it was an end they had chosen together, and of their own free will. From this point on, there could be no surprises.
Quite soon they retired once more for the night, waking frequently to the sounds of shattering glass or loud music emanating from the deck, then later to screams and moans coming from the cabins adjacent to their own. They both woke early, to find the sun still boiling its way up over the horizon, and stepping over snoring bodies and the remains of smashed wine bottles as they made their way to the restaurant deck. It proved to be deserted, except for the man called Nick, who stood by the railing, looking out to sea. He turned and nodded to them as they approached, almost as if he’d been waiting for them.
‘Mr Fowler,’ he said. ‘I’ve been up all night thinking about you.’
Fowler managed to hide his shock. They’d used false identities this far, after all. He glanced sideways at Amanda and saw the look of silent fury on her face. But, instead of feeling angry or afraid, he himself felt only a sense of calm inevitability.
‘I wondered if you recognized me,’ he said, stepping outside again to join him.
The man called Nick leaned once more against the railing, this time with his back to the sea. He shrugged. ‘At first I wasn’t sure, but then I did a little research in the feed archives, to be certain. So . . . are you here with us to save the day? Or is that just too much to hope for?’
‘Would that I were. Do the rest of your friends know who I am?’
‘Why?’ The scientist laughed. ‘Are you afraid of what they might think of you?’
‘I wasn’t aware I had committed any crime,’ Fowler replied levelly.
‘Merely a crime of hubris, perhaps,’ said Nick. ‘I know about the Founder Network, Mr Fowler. I even have a good idea how all of this came about.’
Amanda caught Thomas’s eye as she stepped up beside him, glancing pointedly first at the rail against which the scientist leaned, and then at the empty restaurant behind them. He guessed what she was thinking: there would be no witnesses if they could manage to tip the man over the railing.
He squeezed her hand and shook his head fractionally. What was the point of killing this , when their own lives were now numbered merely in days, if not hours?
‘We don’t know who
you
are,’ she then said to the scientist, her voice low and almost menacing. ‘Did you follow us here? Is that why you’re on this ferry?’
He shook his head. ‘Not at all; serendipity, nothing more. This trip was my one chance to see direct evidence of the things that took my brother away from me. After I recognized you at the airfield in Guam, I managed to persuade my colleagues that we should board this same ferry. I needed to be sure, you see.’
Fowler frowned. ‘Your brother?’
‘My name is Nicolas Rodriguez,’ he said. ‘My brother’s name was David.’
Fowler saw Amanda’s eyes widen, her complexion turning even paler than usual.
‘You know that name, David Rodriguez?’ Fowler asked her. There was something familiar about it.
She nodded. ‘One of the early casualties from Site 17. He got caught in a . . . in a temporal anomaly, I guess you’d call it.’
Fowler nodded, something cold and indigestible settling into the pit of his stomach as he finally remembered the unpleasant details of the incident.
‘I’m sorry about your brother,’ he told Nick. ‘I wish there was something we could have done for him.’
Nicolas Rodriguez shook his head like he was disappointed. ‘It took a long time, and a fortune in bribes, to learn the truth. I envy him for the things he must have seen. But you told us lies about him, and our mother died believing he was killed in some routine laboratory accident. Imagine how I felt when I discovered he was caught up in some miserable form of limbo between life and death. I clung to the hope that my informants were wrong, and I had been fed just some ridiculous fantasy.’
He glanced over his shoulder towards the growth, which was now towering overhead. ‘Then I began to understand that I had not, after all, wasted my family’s fortune on bribes. I kept digging for more information. I learned that you were one of those responsible for the research programme of which my brother was part. Now, it seems, we are all to be exterminated like cockroaches scuttling in a drain.’
‘So now you know who we are,’ said Fowler, ‘but there’s no reason to blame us for what happened to your brother.’
‘On the contrary,’ Rodriguez replied, staring directly at Amanda. ‘What happened to him was no accident, was it? And I recognized you in particular, Miss Boruzov.’
Fowler glanced between them in puzzlement. ‘What are you talking about?’ he demanded.
‘I suppose it doesn’t matter now,’ said Amanda, her eyes fixed firmly on Rodriguez. ‘His brother was smuggling high-security data back home. We . . . decided to arrange an accident to neutralize him.’
‘And is that how you choose to deal with your brightest and best?’ demanded Rodriguez. ‘Better that you’d simply put a bullet in his brain than allow him to suffer this . . . this living death.’
‘He has no idea that he’s caught in a temporal field,’ Amanda insisted. ‘His subjective experience of time ensures he isn’t even aware that anything’s wrong. You could hardly call it a “living death”.’
‘Perhaps,’ Rodriguez replied grimly, ‘that is something we should leave for others to decide.’
‘Others?’ echoed Amanda.
‘My colleagues,’ Rodriguez explained. ‘I eventually told them of my suspicions last night. Then we went to the captain, who will give you more of a chance than you allowed my brother. We will select a jury, and let them decide what should be done with you.’
Amanda burst out laughing. ‘That’s absolutely ridiculous! We’re all going to be dead in a few days anyway. What difference can it possibly make?’
‘So it’s true?’ Rodriguez countered. ‘Those things sprouting everywhere from our planet
will
destroy us?’
Amanda opened and closed her mouth, then turned away to stare fixedly out to sea.
Rodriguez eyed her for a moment, then turned back to Fowler with a look of satisfaction. ‘We seek closure, you see. I, for one, desire closure. I want to see you made an example of – in front of God, if no one else.’
Amanda swung back round, her face twisted in fury. ‘This is insane,’ she spat. ‘We’re not responsible for that . . . thing out there. We did everything we could to stop it.’
‘No,’ intervened Fowler, putting a restraining hand on her shoulder. ‘Listen to me, Nick. We came here ourselves because we know we share at least some responsibility for what’s happening. We’re not running away, like so many others, and you
must
take that into account.’
‘Then let us find out the truth.’
Fowler now became aware they were no longer alone. He looked to one side and saw three of Rodriguez’s colleagues had joined them on the restaurant deck, in the company of two crew members who were conspicuously armed. He noted, with an unpleasant churning in his stomach, that one of the latter had a length of rope slung over one arm.
‘Wait,’ said Amanda. ‘Please, before anything else, there’s something we have to do.’
‘What?’ asked Rodriuez impatiently.
Fowler saw Amanda swallow hard. ‘We need to make a recording. I swear it won’t take long.’
Rodriguez’s eyes narrowed with suspicion.
‘Please,’ Fowler beseeched him. ‘Think of it as a last request, if you prefer.’
Rodriguez’s nostrils flared briefly, then nodded assent with a brief jerk of his head.
Fowler stepped away from the rail, and set his contacts to record and upload the proceedings to a secure server he’d long since prepared. The video would then be stored, along with a cache of other files, in half a dozen separate orbital satellites that would remain untouched by the growths.
He panned up the entire height of the original growth, looming nearby, to where it disappeared into the clouds. The memory of previously watching these same images now collided with the experience of creating them for the first time, every action and thought so thoroughly locked in place that even the desire to break free of the cycle of predetermination was, he saw now, predetermined.
He panned back down, until he had Amanda encompassed in his gaze, her pale and beautiful features marred by worry and fear of what the next few hours held. But before he could do anything more than grab a fleeting recording of her, rough hands grabbed him from behind, dragging him towards the bridge and a fate that seemed as certain as anything else that had come tumbling down from the future into the present.
Dorican Hotel, near the Florida Array, 8 February 2235
By the time Saul reached the Dorican, it was clear that the hotel had been caught at the centre of a riot. A fire truck had been rammed through the polished glass and plate steel of the hotel’s entrance, and what at first appeared to be bundles of rags turned out to be huddled corpses afloat on a sea of debris and torn-up carpeting.
He headed across the lobby, his stomach reduced to a tight knot of hunger and his feet a spider-web of painful blisters. He wondered if he was foolhardy to hope that Hanover might still be there, but just then he spotted the man himself sitting on a sofa at the far side of the lobby. He was facing away from Saul, towards a pair of sliding glass doors through which the Array was clearly visible in the distance.
Hanover looked up with a start as Saul approached him, glass crunching under his feet, then nodded almost as if he’d been expecting him. There was a raincoat draped across his lap, as if in readiness to go somewhere.
‘I suppose you’ve come to finish the job,’ he said, as Saul halted before him.
‘You mean kill you? Why would I do that?’
‘Good question,’ Hanover replied. ‘Because it would be pretty pointless under present circumstances, don’t you think?’
‘Why are you still here?’ Saul nodded towards the Array. ‘I’d have thought you’d have fled with all the rest of them by now.’
‘Hardly.’ Hanover laughed. ‘Who sent you? Donohue? Or did Fowler decide to get his hands dirty for once?’
Saul shook his head. ‘Neither. I think it’s fair to say I don’t work for the ASI any more.’
‘Really?’ Hanover regarded him with mild surprise. ‘So what did
you
do to piss them off?’
Saul thought about it for a moment. ‘I asked too many questions.’
Hanover nodded. ‘Never a good career move. So if you’re not here to kill me, what in God’s name are you doing here?’
‘I’ve learned quite a few things since Taiwan. I’ve seen video footage of Copernicus City recorded from a few years into the future, and it offers pretty conclusive evidence that whatever’s going to wipe out life here on Earth is going to do the same up there. And the only way it could have got there that I know of is through the Florida Array.’
Hanover nodded. ‘That’s the general consensus. So what’s your point?’