Saskia Brandt: Deja Vu Part 4

'Can you still connect to the low-frequency transmitter?'

'Yes.'

'Call for help.'

Though the laboratory had never stored hazardous materials, it contained a decontamination suite. David entered its wet room, which was cluttered with broken tiles and s.h.i.+ning pipework, and knelt in the corner. He tugged at the zip of a sleeping bag and tossed away the fabric to reveal a body.

Bruce might have been dead. His face was sunken and his mouth lopsided. His hands were drawn against the chest. There was a blanket over his legs. When David moved it aside, a writhing ball of blackness fragmented into rats - their hands pink, their eyes winking - and he checked the urge to scoop them away. Gently, he examined Bruce's trousers. They were intact. The rats were in it for the warmth. If Bruce got some warmth in return, David was easy. He resettled the material.

There were two rolls of fabric beneath Bruce's head. They had been placed either side of a neck brace. David felt underneath. Sure enough, there was a neural bridging unit.

'How long have you been inside, Bruce? Two days now?'

His unconscious patient said nothing. David considered ripping the cable from his brain. He thought about the lab mice who had died when unplugged. Then he thought of Bruce moving around in the inkiness of this place, making his nest, his grave. The darkness of it. The same darkness that had fallen on Bruce at the age of ten. The blind man navigating by touch; coughing; hurting.

David thought, Cancel, and the ruminant evaporated. He went about his work efficiently and calmly. A saline drip in the left arm. An antibiotic drip in the right. But it was impossible not to think of former, better times. They had been inseparable. He found a note in Bruce's trouser pocket. It was wet with urine. In handwriting frozen at ten years old, it read: Well well well after all these years! Im looking forward to seeing an old friend. Come into my parlour said the spider to the etc David rocked back, hugged his knees and wept.

The visor's alarm whooped as David broke the seal. Perfect darkness slid up. When, finally, he took a breath, he gagged on the air. It stank like an old incinerator. He put the visor on the floor, imagining the spill of dust, and removed his clothes. The chamber was no larger than a shower stall. He slid the door across, juddering.

Inside, his bare feet stepped on silky sediment.

'Ego, has the computer finished the diagnostic program on the fines?'

'Yes. The diagnostic has been pa.s.sed. The machine is safe.'

David felt for the descending mask and knocked it against his hip to free the worst of the dirt. He put it on. By now the fines had dropped from their vents to form a solid, mimetic cloud. A bright scene appeared on the interior of the mask: an ocean miles below.

'My voice is my pa.s.sport,' David said. 'Verify me.' The computer heard the keyword and checked his voice against a database. Its signature had not changed in twenty years.

A virtual square appeared. On it was a user interface. One icon would summon The Word, the programming language that controlled the universe of Onogoro. He moved his virtual hand over this panel and a blue dot appeared beneath his index finger. He hesitated over 'shut down'. A gesture would stop the program. It would send him back into the real world forthwith. He could not guess where it would send Bruce.

He touched another icon. It was a picture of his younger self. His old account.

'Professor,' said Ego, 'the low frequency transmitter has received a response from McWhirter. He seems angry. I will paraphrase. He knows about the explosion that destroyed your home in Oxford this morning, and wants you to cease all activity while an emergency shaft is sunk to remove you from the laboratory.'

'How long do I have?'

'The estimate is one hour. McWhirter already has the equipment on site. Do you have a reply?'

'Tell him to go f.u.c.k himself. No need to paraphrase.'

Chapter Seven.

David flew over lakes and trees, through mountain pa.s.ses never seen, down waterfalls, into gra.s.slands and desert, over ice floes and volcanic islands. Night fell in seconds. He landed, legs bicycling, in a tropical glade. He felt the ground as a plane in the mimetic cloud. Experience told him not to imagine his real body. He made a mental effort to place himself here, now, walking in the woods: its strange blue fronds; its dampness; its predators. Onogoro had no moon, but he could adjust the brightness using the command console. Doing so, he walked on through this alien world. Its plants were blue, not green, and typically angular. Through breaks in the canopy, he saw a snow-smudged mountain. The peak was bright with dawnlight. Was he being watched?

If a race.

If a race of intelligent beings had evolved in this universe, and developed science, their physicists would discover that matter is continuous, not discrete. Their astronomers would find that their planet is the only planet, their star the only star. They would correctly place themselves at the centre of the universe. Should they build a computing machine, it would never outrun the computer that ran their universe: and what, indeed, would they hypothesise the limiting factor to be? G.o.d?

If a G.o.d.

The ground inclined. Ahead, David saw a cabin that had been modelled on an Alaskan hunting lodge from a hiking magazine and, by dint of Word, conjured. It overlooked the lower forest. David turned to the vista. The valley throat opened at the east and he could see the mist of a waterfall and a double rainbow in the opening eye of sunrise.

It began to rain.

'Quite a view,' called a man.

Bruce s.h.i.+moda, whose rat-smothered body was lying cold only metres from David, stepped from the cabin. He wore a haphazard patchwork of fronds and looked like a survivalist. The computer had used the instructions in his DNA to forge this body anew in zeroes and ones, so he was twenty years old once more and bearded. Yet there was a greater, unplaceable difference.

David said, 'I didn't know about the fancy dress code.'

Bruce smiled. 'That's rich, coming from a giant, sparkling bogey.'

The difference: His eyes were clear and steady. Bruce s.h.i.+moda, blind in the outside world, could now see.

Bruce stirred the fireplace. His feet rested on the rump of a grizzly bear rug, a photographer's idea of a lodge accessoire. The kitschery continued with ta.s.selled lamps, a mahogany bar, shotguns, and mounted animal heads.

David moved towards the fire. He felt the fines mimic its temperature. He was reminded of McWhirter. 'I've got about half an hour, Bruce. Can we talk?'

'I jinxed the room. It's encrypted.'

'For you, maybe. McWhirter could be listening at the door to my immersion chamber.'

'Jesus, is he still alive?'

'And kicking, you bet.'

Bruce sighed. 'How much do you know, David?'

'Not much. Our mutual friend, whoever she is, told me to accept the summons to Scotland, which I did. She told me my house would go up in smoke, and it has. Anything else is guesswork.'

Bruce leaned on his hand. He coughed with a sc.r.a.ping sound that David a.s.sociated with the pneumonia cases of his junior doctoring days. When the fit pa.s.sed, Bruce looked up. There were red flecks on his teeth.

'I'm infected, mate. On Onogoro, we've got all kinds of animal a a.n.a.logues of them, anyway a from birds and fish to viruses. I wasn't born in this world. I have no history of exposure. My immune system hasn't been toughed up. Vaccinated.'

'The program I wrote should have compensated, but it was never tested.'

'Until now.'

'Me. The test pilot. The dog in orbit.'

David's tired eyes dropped to the floor.

'Dave?'

'What?'

'I'm dying. But.'

'But what?'

'I haven't seen hills and trees for forty years.'

'Was it worth the wait?'

'Every second.'

The estranged friends watched each other.

'Bruce, talk to me.'

'I'm already dead. Unplug me, I die. Shut down the computer, I die. The computer has me by the b.a.l.l.s.'

David drifted to the edge of the room. Rain sizzled at the pane. He ran his hand along the sill. He withdrew it quickly and looked at the palm. A droplet of blood grew from the hair-line wound. He made a fist and looked again at the edges. They did not precisely align. The exposed planes were infinitely sharp.

'What does this have to do with our mutual friend?'

'I won't know until you've done the deed.'

'The deed?' David sighed. 'How did it get it to be twenty years, Bruce?'

'Time gets what it wants.'

'Meaning what?'

There was a distant boom.

'Did you hear that?' asked David. He looked into the rain.

'Nope.'

'If you didn't, it must be McWhirter's men. They've blasted through. Who is she, Bruce?'

'All will be well.'

David heard breaking gla.s.s, but the cabin window remained intact. It was the immersion chamber smas.h.i.+ng. Abruptly, the scene s.h.i.+fted. Somebody was trying to remove the mask from his face.

'Bruce,' he gasped. 'I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. For the time.'

Bruce pointed at his eyes and then at David.

'See you later, alligator.'

Chapter Eight.

David surfaced in the interst.i.tial moments, gasping, his vision blurred. The memories of childhood holidays near the beaches of Padstow - deep water - were hard against him. He tried to wipe his eyes but his wrists were bound to his chair. He slumped asleep. Woke again. Slept. Troughs of anxiety. Peaks of fear. David rolled through the minutes.

'David Proctor,' said McWhirter, as though distracted by a certain music in his name.

A nurse.

A nurse moved away from David's arm, where she had stopped to tend something.

To adjust.

A drip.

'Mc,' David said. 'Whirter.' His voice was crumbly, flawed.

'That will be all.'

'What will be?'

'I'm not talking to you.'

David felt the nurse leave the room. She closed the door with the care of a butler.

'I feel sick.'

'The old research centre is not a healthy place to linger.'

'No, sick of you.'

McWhirter laughed, and David focused on his moustache. Brush-like.

'Look around,' said McWhirter.