Fracture - A Window Overlooking the Universe

  Chapter Fifteen - Reactions

  Fenton stared at the blank, dead screen in shocked disbelief. 'No….no…' he stammered.

  'I'm afraid that's all we have, Mr Fenton,' said Paize, 'the recording cuts out there. You understand now why we needed to have you here. Do you have any views on that?'

  'It's, it's impossible,' he burbled, 'I wasn't here. I've never been here.' Then the old fear crashed in. 'It's a fake, you're trying to frame me, you're trying to blame me for something, something that's not my fault, it's not….' He stopped abruptly. Like a snivelling child he was about to whine it's not fair. He was trembling, shaking. Was it shock kicking in? He swallowed air down deeply, hugging himself for comfort.

  It took a moment for him to regain control. Paize, Julia and Brozmam were scrutinising him intensely, gauging his reaction like a group of zoologists.

  'I quite agree, Mr Fenton,' Paize spoke calmly, 'it does seem impossible. There's no evidence of you leaving Karnos or arriving here before now. I would be delighted if that recording proved to have been doctored but I have no evidence of that. My colleague Dr Peerman's initial prognosis was that it was probably genuine but his untimely death has unfortunately prevented him from pursuing the matter. Darren, did Central have any comments on the recording?'

  'They couldn't work on it, Darvad, it was too badly corrupted by the communication's interference for any results to be meaningful.'

  'But Darren, you said Central had confirmed Mr Fenton's identity on both counts?' Julia queried.

  'Reception was perfect on the frame blow-up of his face you transmitted. They got an exact retinal match. It's him alright.'

  'So,' mused Paize, 'we have another inconsistency, transmissions are garbled with some highly significant exceptions.'

  'Wait a minute,' muttered Fenton, desperately trying to keep up, 'you're saying you matched my eye on that recording against my file in Central's database? That's your evidence for dragging me half way across The System and risking my life? Well, it's not right, that,' he stabbed an accusing finger at the screen, 'is a forgery. Whoever made it has got details of my eye prints and copied them. They must have hacked into my file at Central to get the information, either that or they've tampered with it, changed the record of my eyes there.'

  'You're clutching at straws, Mr Fenton, Central's systems are impregnable,' stated Brozmam, towing the party line. 'Besides,' he added, 'Mr Javer and I took the precaution of checking your eyes against Central's records while you were unconscious in Sprite. They matched.' So despite Brozmam's bluster they too had doubts.

  'You're right though, Mr Fenton,' added Julia, 'there is a degree of uncertainty in the veracity of that recording. But as you probably noticed we've got bullet hits on the window matching the trajectory,' she pointed to the door he had burst through then back to the shutters behind her, it was clearly a straight line. 'The gun you're firing is a Semaaser-Seven. There's one missing from the armoury.' He started to object but she cut across him. 'I know that's circumstantial but we have other, more tangible evidence of your involvement here.' There was an edge to her voice, as if the evidence was distasteful. Of course, he checked out on both counts. The first was the recording.

  'Well, what is it then, what's this other evidence?'

  'All in good time, Mr Fenton, don't you want to have a closer look at the recording?'

  'Darvad, we can't see it again.' Julia advised. 'Powercells are at zero, the energy has just bled away.'

  'What?' A rare flash of emotion, of anger, shot across Paize's face. 'I thought we had capacity in those circuits.'

  'We did, but it's gone.'

  'This is what we're up against, Mr Fenton, power drain. It's inexplicable. It affects some systems but not others. And as you can see we even lose power without any warning from systems that were previously unaffected.'

  'Darvad, we lost power just after we showed the recording to him,' Brozmam's tone was bitter, 'coincidence?'

  'It fits the pattern, doesn't it?' noted Paize, calmly. 'It's almost as if matters here have been arranged for Mr Fenton's benefit.'

  'Benefit! It's persecution!' He paused. 'Anyway, why speculate about the recording? Don't you have witnesses? Graeme Dezlin and I weren't the only people on that screen. Why don't you ask them? Are they all ''unaccounted for''?' A sick feeling seeped through him. He suddenly realised what must have happened.

  'They're all accounted for, Mr Fenton,' said Paize. 'They're all in the mortuary. With the possible exception of Dr Dezlin all of this installation's staff are dead.'

  Christ. Repeat incident. They're dead. He'd been right all along. It had been a massacre. And he was there, firing a gun.

  'Wait, you don't think it was me who killed them? Do you? You can't do. I didn't. It wasn't me, I wasn't there.' The past flashes of hostility and wariness towards him suddenly made sense.

  'We have to consider it, Mr Fenton,' confirmed Paize.

  'They were shot?'

  'No, Mr Fenton,' Julia answered, 'none of them were shot. Their deaths were…, curious,' she concluded.

  'We don't know what happened to Dr Dezlin though,' noted Brozmam, 'it looked like it was him you were shooting at. You knew him. You told Paul you'd been friends once but weren't anymore. You didn't say why. You could have a motive.'

  So Brozmam had been eavesdropping on him and Javer as he'd suited up in Sprite. Was Alizen a motive for murder? She'd pushed him to the edge of madness. He'd told her he'd do anything for her. But kill for her? Would he cross that line?

  'Then there's this,' added Brozmam. He raised the device.

  There was a whisper of echoing breathing then a tinny voice shouting: 'Graeme, you bastard! If you're not dead I'm going to kill you!'

  It was his voice. It was followed by a crazy maniacal laugh. For a second he was totally confused, then he realised where it had come from. So, Brozmam had even bugged his spacesuit.

  'I didn't mean that. I was scared out there. I was blaming him. It was a joke.' He looked at them pleadingly. They stared back at him in silence. 'I didn't kill him, I didn't kill them. There are other people loose in this place. You should be out looking for them, not terrorising me. You should be looking for Graeme.'

  'It's not a valuable use of our time, Mr Fenton,' Paize observed. 'This station is vast. It's a labyrinth. Without reliable information from the life-form sensors we wouldn't know where to start. Besides we'd have to split up to cover the smallest fraction of the area and that would expose my team members to unnecessary risk. Seven people died here in the original incident. Subsequent to that I've lost two of my colleagues. I will not risk the lives of my team.'

  'You sent her out for us,' argued Fenton.

  'We had sensors then,' stated Julia, 'they suddenly came online alerting us to the airlock breech and that there were three, then two life-forms in that area.' A moment of grief for Javer. 'They're off again now, something else that just happened to function when you needed it.' A glimpse of anger. 'While they were on they didn't pick up any other life-forms.'

  'They were there. We saw them. One of them shot at us. He's probably got your missing gun. Brozmam, tell them.'

  'I can confirm that,' agreed Brozmam, 'and he could be right, it might have been a Semaaser. It was too quick, too dark to be sure but it was certainly in that class. And our suit sensors detected them. Or rather they detected one of them. They picked up a single life-form but both Paul and I saw two people. The readings appeared later and disappeared faster than they should have done. We thought it was a suit glitch.'

  Paize glanced at Julia. 'One of your echoes?'

  'Echoes?' echoed Mark Fenton.

  'Yes, Mr Fenton, echoes. There's a very important point you're not aware of yet,' noted Paize, 'if Dr Skawry's right it's not necessarily what you have done that's the issue here. It's what you may do.'

  'May!?'

  Julia gestured to the closed shutters. 'I think it's a fracture, Mr Fenton, but not just in the fabric of space, but in the fabric of s
pacetime. There may be temporal anomalies. I think that's what those figures you saw were. Anomalies. Echoes. Ghosts.'

  'They shot at us. They hit us.'

  'There's no reason why a temporal echo wouldn't have a physical, corporeal existence.'

  'Hang on, you said ''may''. Do you mean these ghosts, these echoes aren't reflections of what's happened, but what's yet to come?'

  'Precisely,' Paize was suddenly the kindly professor again, 'you've hit the nail right on the head, Mr Fenton.'

  'So, that,' he pointed at the screen, 'could be me. But it hasn't happened yet.' He paused, his head spinning. 'But it has happened, it's there on the recording.'

  'Fascinating, isn't it?' said Julia, enthusiastically. 'Now, provided you've been telling us the truth and you weren't there then what we've just witnessed is an echo of your future self, recorded in past time.'

  'But it hasn't happened yet. Does that mean it has to happen? Or only that it might? Can I stop it?' A pause. 'Well, can I?'

  'That's as much a philosophical question as a scientific one,' observed Julia, clearly intrigued by it all. 'As a scientist I'm afraid I don't have an answer for you. As a philosopher, well, your guess is as good as mine. We're in unchartered waters here, through the looking glass.'

  'It may not have to happen,' his mind was reeling, 'but me being here makes it more likely it will. I'd never be here if you hadn't brought me. By bringing me here you're making it more likely. Do you realise that? By bringing me here you're making it more likely!' He rose from the chair, his aching body quivering with rage. He was almost screaming. How could they be so stupid?

  'Mr Fenton!' The calm authority of Paize's voice stopped him dead. 'You're getting hysterical. You're an intelligent man, control yourself. Of course we realise that.'

  Fenton wearily sank back down into his chair. Of course they realised. He looked sadly at each of them in turn: Paize, Skawry, Brozmam. He stared intensely into their eyes. They returned his gaze dispassionately, unflinching, without a trace of guilt. They were the SSD. They were not the stupid thugs he had expected. They were rational, polished, articulate. Julia was beautiful. They had almost charmed him. But he saw through that now. Beneath the polite, glossy surface were cold hearts.

  'You bastards, you brought me here because you want it to happen, don't you?'

  'Mark.' It was the first time that Julia, that any of them, had used his first name. Her expression changed, softening into a sympathetic smile. Was it the mask slipping, or more tricks, more seduction? 'We don't know what's going on here, we don't know what's going to happen but you're our only lead. We need you here. We need to keep you under observation. Yes, we hope you'll be a catalyst, yes we're using you for our own ends, but it's for your good as well. You're in danger. We'll protect you as well as we can. We promise you that.'

  Her voice was calm and soothing. He was strangely touched. Was he being manipulated? He struggled to think. He tried to be angry. 'I'm in danger? I wouldn't be in danger if I weren't here. It's your fault.' But there was no aggression in his voice, just fear. Besides, he couldn't be angry while she was looking at him like that.

  'I'm afraid you are in danger, Mr Fenton.' Paize's voice was gentle too. 'We don't know how you've been dragged into this mess but the simple fact is you have. While you're with us we can watch over you, for all of our sakes. Remember, knowledge is valuable and foresight is beyond price. Knowing what might happen may help you prevent it. Now, I hope you have a strong stomach. There are some other things you need to see. They are not pleasant. And you need to meet the rest of my team, Dr Bainz and Dr Retta.'

  Dr Retta. It was like a physical blow. It was stupid, pathetic. After all he'd just learned and after all this time he shouldn't react so badly just hearing someone's name that was the same. Yes, Alizen would be a doctor by now, he'd never doubted her dedication, she'd been a model, prize-winning student. Somewhere now she'd be a star.

  'Dr Retta,' there was a strange undertone in Julia's voice, almost of gentle compassion, 'wanted you to know she was here.'