‘I want to get this over and done with,’ I said. ‘Something doesn’t feel right.’
‘What do you mean?’
I shifted the bag onto my other shoulder. ‘It just seems like this whole deal’s a bit easy. I mean everyone’s at the reception so we’ve got a clear run. And Refmol got the override code overnight. Too easy.’
‘You just don’t recognise luck when you see it,’ Lisa said. The light from the door’s scan tube highlighted her frown. ‘It wasn’t easy getting those robes. And it sure as hell wasn’t easy checking all of the equipment out of the stores.’
To my left a flash of metallic cloth flared against the shadows. Refmol. I ran my finger over the scabbed scrapes on my knuckles where I had hit the Chanter. It seemed aeons ago. I hoped Refmol had forgiven me.
Its ears were doing some kind of aural scan as it walked up to us. It bowed to Mav and Lisa. I tensed. Had I lost Refmol’s support? But then it turned to me.
‘You bring much honour to your bloodlines, Joss Aaronson, whatever they may be,’ it sang.
Mav made an exultant sound and I felt his hard-skinned hand briefly touch my ear.
‘Come, let us move smoothly,’ Refmol said.
It stepped onto the door scanner pad. The tube closed around it, abruptly extinquishing the light. Two beats later it opened again.
‘Entrance not authorised,’ the security computer said.
Refmol braced itself. Keeping its secondary mouth closed, it carefully said, ‘Security override G Alpha Zed 213809.’ Its voice was a tight monotone. Imitation human.
‘Security override recognised.’
The inner door of the tube slid open. Next to me Lisa exhaled dramatically.
‘Refmol must have practiced that a lot,’ she whispered as we walked into the building.
The long central corridor was dim, the only light coming from the security scan pads outside the four time lab doors. At the T3 door, Refmol repeated the override code.
‘Security override recognised. Security levels A, B and C are now non-operational.’
We were in. Lights flickered on.
The room was a carbon copy of the T2 lab. Lisa pushed forward, heading for the large console. I walked over to the Jumper.
The fruz-field over T3 had been deactivated with the rest of the security. I reached over and skimmed my hand across T3’s surface. Soft metal to allow for the time stretch. It was so beautiful. Like the skin of a dolphin.
‘Refmol, you’ve got to override this lock so I can set up the jump.’
Lisa’s voice cracked my trance.
I turned back to T3 as Refmol hurried over to the console.
‘Mav, come and feel this,’ I said. I placed his hand on the machine’s body. ‘Soft metal,’ I said. ‘And this plasglass is the toughest stuff in the world, but it’s still flexible. Even better than Rokwain. Nothing will get through it.’
Mav tapped the cabin with a thumb claw.
Something moved in my peripheral vision. I jerked my head around, staring at the four deactivated wall crawlers above the console. Not a twitch between them. I could have sworn one of them had moved. Talk about jumpy.
‘Joss, Mav. Come here.’ Lisa beckoned us over to the main console. ‘Give me the date and time you’re going back to. I’ve got to punch it into the T3 matrix.’ Her tone was professional, but her movements were nervy quick.
I felt inside the front pocket of the carrybag and found the copy of Blackwidow’s clinic information. ‘That date,’ I said pointing to the day I’d been fertilised.
‘You’ll put down at 9 pm. It will be dark by then.’ She punched a final key then ran her fingers through her hair.
‘Okay. The matrix is set.’ She looked up from the console. ‘You’ve got to remember that although we’ll be using the S.H. field to go back and anchor you in the past, time itself is going to snap T3 back to where it belongs. So by my calculations you’ve only got six hours, eight minutes and eleven seconds in the past. If you’re not in T3 when the snap happens, you’re stuck. Got it?’
‘Six hours, eight minutes and eleven seconds.’ I counted forward. ‘That means we’ll have till 3.08 am.’
‘Don’t cut it as fine as that. We usually give ourselves at least a five minute leeway. There’s a clock in the Jumper here but I’ll set your wrist countdown watch to give you an alarm.’ She pushed my jacket sleeve off the watch and locked in the alarm time.
She checked the console again, her fingers held against her mouth. Then she nodded.
‘Be back by 3.00 am. That’ll be plenty of time.’ She shook her fringe off her face and smiled tightly. ‘Let’s get you two strapped in and jumping.’
The cabin of T3 was as roomy as a pair of slink-jeans. I wondered how Derry managed to fold himself up into a Jumper. Maybe that’s why Lisa was so small. Counterbalance. As it was, Mav and I were pretty squashed, our legs jammed under a bank of displays. I only recognised the flashing jump date/time readout, the oxygen levels and the return countdown clock. Everything else was the stuff of technical nightmares.
‘Do you understand all these readouts?’ I asked Lisa.
‘Yep, but it’s taken four years of study,’ she said as she snapped my harness closed. ‘Don’t worry about them. Just follow my instructions, don’t touch anything and keep your eye on your wrist countdown.’
‘And everything will be all right. Right?’
‘Right.’ We looked at each other, acknowledging how unright this whole thing could be. Lisa squeezed my shoulder and smiled.
‘Are you ready?’ she asked.
I gave her the thumbs up then brushed my hand over the harp in my top pocket for luck.
‘Mav?’
‘Ready,’ he trilled and held up his four thumbs.
‘Then return in good time.’ She slammed the cabin hatch shut. Immediately the faint techno noises of the console room were cut off.
Mav looked over at me, his eyes unshielded and huge. ‘I feel fright,’ he said. I grabbed his hand tightly.
Lisa walked back to the main console where Refmol was waiting. Refmol asked her something and she nodded. Then the Chanter bowed to us. Very low and very elaborate. It looked like the Chorian equivalent of ‘those about to die, we salute’! My gut suddenly cramped and my mouth went dry. What was I doing here? I must be mad.
Lisa had warned us about the jump. She’d explained about The Nothing; the void that you slide through when you go back in time. She’d said a jump was never longer than ten seconds and to remember that when you want to scream and crack open the cabin door. Just keep your eyes closed and count out loud, she’d said. And hold onto each other.
Mav hooked his arm through mine. Lisa was counting down the seconds on her upheld fingers, mouthing the numbers. There was no whine of machinery or shuddering of power. Only heavy breathing. Mav’s and mine. Lisa held five fingers up. Mav closed both sets of lids. Four fingers up. I tightened my grip on the safety strap. Three fingers up. Two fingers. Something wasn’t right. There was the shadow of a person at the lab door. I yelled, pointed at it, but my hand was tangled in the strap. Who was it? Had security sprung us? Lisa held her forefinger up. Her mouth formed the word ‘One’. Then the lab was gone. We were in The Nothing.
The soft-metal body of T3 rippled and spread out like a face hit by G-forces. The plasglass cabin elongated around us, washing outwards in waves. Mav’s arm convulsed against mine. I looked across. Layers and layers of Mav spread across time. Genes, eggs, young Mavs, my Mav with closed eyes bulging, ageing Mavs, dead Mavs curled and shrunken. Then I saw my own arm, embryo to skeleton, and I screamed. Kept on screaming until there was no more air. Blood surging in my ears, ready to explode. Heartbeat shaking my body.
Then I heard Mav sneeze.
The Nothing slid away. The layers of Mavs concertinaed into one Mav. I gulped for air, but it was too late. I passed out.
‘Joss?’
My head was bumping against something hard.
‘Joss, open yo
ur lids.’
Mav’s two noses came into focus. He was shaking me.
‘Stop it. My head hurts.’
He pulled back, stroking my forehead.
‘You have been asleep a long time. We must move now, Joss. We are here. We have moved in time.’
I tried to sit forward, but bounced back in the seat. Harness. I squinted, fumbling with the buckle. Mav was already free. Through the plasglass window behind him, the sky was night-blue. A half-finished wall blocked any other view.
‘Are you well now, Joss?’ Mav asked, zooming in for a closer look.
I looked at the T3 countdown clock. I’d been out cold for over three hours. Screte, we only had about three hours left. What if it wasn’t long enough?
‘I’m fine. Let’s get going.’
The buckle released. I sat forward, dragging at the carrybag under my legs. It wouldn’t budge, so I cracked the cabin seal and pushed open the door. Air rushed in. My ears popped: a sharp pain that got rid of any grogginess. We pulled ourselves out of the cramped space, stepping onto gravel and sand. I reached back into the cabin and pulled out the bag. Mav was standing very still. Listening.
‘The move was very strange,’ he sang.
‘You’re not kidding. I saw some mega weird stuff.’
‘I did not see mega weird stuff as you say. My lids were closed. But the sounds were not good.’ His ears flicked down.
‘That’s even weirder. I didn’t hear a thing. I just saw …’ then I remembered the shadow. ‘Hey, did you see someone at the lab door before we jumped?’
‘No, my lids were closed. Who did you see?’
I put the bag on the ground. Mav squatted down, hands busy with the cling clasps.
‘I dunno. It was just a shadow.’ I rubbed my arms. My whole body was suddenly cold. ‘Maybe it was the guards. I hope Lisa and Refmol are okay. They could be in real trouble. Maybe we should go back and help them?’
Mav looked up at me, one of the holo units in his hand.
‘You forget what Lisa told us. When we return we will arrive at exactly the moment we left. No time will have gone so nothing will have happened.’
I knelt beside him. He was right, but I was still worried. Who was it at the door? The worst possible scenario was Camden-Stone. Please, don’t let it be Camden-Stone.
The holo units and stun stakes didn’t take long to set up. I checked my countdown watch against the clock in T3. They were still synchronised. I closed the cabin hatch and stepped back. Mav flicked the switch on the stun stakes then activated the holo units with the remote. A few seconds later, T3 was covered by a black splodge in the middle of the half-built room. About nineteen years on, Lisa and Refmol were standing in the same room, maybe even in the same place. I had a feeling they were in even more danger than we were.
Bless You
Mav and I had to cut across the campus to reach the Newman Clinic. We kept to the shadows avoiding the occasional night student by ducking into alleys or behind buildings. Mav was having a hard time breathing under the mask. Every now and again he sniffed noisily, as if he was holding back a sneeze. He was getting slower and slower. Finally, as we passed a tiny park, he grabbed my arm.
‘Stop here. I must get proper air,’ he panted.
He sat heavily on a bench, pulling the mask away from his face. I paced the edge of the park. It was just a few trees, the bench and a fountain, one of those grey stone cupids peeing water. I couldn’t work out what it was in our time. Then it finally clicked. This park was where P3 would be built in about eighteen years time. It made my brain kink trying to keep the times in order. In this time Donaldson-Hono was still bullying other kids at high school, Camden-Stone still had his own face and Vaughn wasn’t even out of nappies. To top it all off I was sitting in a petri dish half a klick away, meiosising all over the place.
I squatted down in front of Mav. He was looking a bit better — a healthy dead white.
‘You okay now?’ I asked.
He nodded, trying to summon up a tiny double smile. I patted his knee.
‘Come on then, let’s get going.’ I pulled him to his feet. We had to keep moving. I had to keep moving or else the doubts would catch up.
The Newman Clinic was a small building hidden behind the university bio-genetic labs. A little card on the ground outside its double plasglass doors told me that the SafeAs Security Company was proud to protect these premises. They may have been proud, but they weren’t very good. The door lock was only a basic code scanner. My tiny lock overrider opened it in less than five seconds. Mav snorted his approval beside me. I slipped on the colour frequency goggles. SafeAs were definitely amateurs. Only three light beams crossing the foyer at thigh level. All we had to do was crawl across the floor to the fancy transparent reception desk.
‘I take this face thing off now,’ Mav said, pulling the fastening band free. ‘No one will see me.’
He opened and shut his mouths in a series of jawcrunching stretches.
‘Are my noses flat?’ he asked. He felt along his four nose ridges.
‘You’re beautiful. Come on, get inside.’
I shut the door behind us and placed the overrider on the internal lock pad. The lock clicked back into place. That would take care of any delay alarms SafeAs might have installed in a fit of efficiency. I pushed Mav down onto the ground, kneeling beside him.
‘There’re three trip beams across the foyer,’ I said.
‘I know,’ he interrupted. ‘I can see them.’
‘You can see infra red without goggles?’
‘Of course. Can’t you?’
‘No.’ I snapped the goggles back over my eyes and dropped onto the floor, my head cranked back to keep an eye on the beams. I beat Mav to the desk by a short half head. I may be infra-blind, but I’m fast.
According to the polished brass sign on the desk, reception was the domain of Nurse Gregory Salway. He was a very tidy person. By the looks of it he used a ruler to line up his notebooks. The good side to all this screaming neatness was the carefully labelled codekeys hanging from a line of hooks. Toilets. Kitchen. Storeroom. Laboratory.
File room.
My gut clenched, right down to the exit sign in my undies.
Mav was watching the front door. His ears were stretched out to their fullest under the hood.
‘Someone comes,’ he whispered.
Screte, SafeAs were more conscientious than I’d thought.
I crouched down behind the desk. Mav bobbed down beside me. The theory was good, but the desk was see-through. I stood up again. There was nowhere to hide in the reception area, not even a friendly pot plant. Mav pulled himself back onto his feet.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked.
‘We’ve got to hide.’
He reached over and quickly snagged a key off its hook.
‘Good idea,’ I said, scooping up all the other keys. ‘Get going.’
Mav dropped to the ground and wriggled into the foyer. I was so close behind I had to dodge his rear claws. A hover door slammed shut outside. We had a choice of two corridors. Mav chose right. I followed.
He stood up as soon as we were out of the foyer.
‘No light lines here,’ he whispered.
I ran to the first door on my left, waving my hand frantically in front of the sensor. Locked. I pressed all the codekeys against the scan pad. Nothing.
Mav ran up ahead to the door at the end of the corridor. I tried my keys on the next door. Nilch.
‘Joss,’ Mav hissed. ‘I’ve opened a lab.’
I was beside him in a nano-sec. We both jumped as a loud click echoed from the foyer. The guard was inside. I could see a circle of torchlight scanned the reception desk, flaring on Greg’s brass sign.
A woman’s voice said, ‘I’m in now, Jeff. Turn the infra reds off at your end, will ya.’
Mav grabbed my sleeve and pulled me into the lab. The door shut behind us. We were in complete darkness.
‘Which one of these buttons is
the lock?’ Mav’s voice was so low it was a vibration.
By the time I’d turned around to face the door, I could see clearly. I pressed down the lock then turned back to find a hiding place.
The laboratory was a standard set up. Four benches in a row with stools, VR hoods and screens. At the end of each bench, a long limbed machine hung from the ceiling like a limp orang-utang. Three of the walls were lined with storage units. The fourth wall had a transparent security door embedded in it with a sign across the top that read:
INCUBATOR A
AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY
ENVIRONMENTAL CODE 6
A muffled slam sounded down the corridor. Mav hissed under his breath. The damn security guard was checking every room. Just when you needed a bit of negligence, along comes Ms Conscientious.
‘We gotta get out of sight,’ I whispered.
Mav opened a storage unit. Trays of petri dishes were stacked a few centimetres apart. I touched him on the shoulder. Pointed to the incubator room. He nodded, holding up a warning finger.
‘There is a light-line across the doorframe.’
The door was reinforced Rokwain with a punch-code lock. I smiled. It was the same as buying a Rottweiler then pulling out all its teeth. I fitted the overrider onto the pad. I could hear the security guard cough. She must have been in the next room. Mav gripped my shoulder.
We both sighed when the lock finally clicked open. Mav went in first, tracing the line of the infra red with his fingers.
We were in a tiny booth made up of the clear Rokwain door and the inner door. If the guard came in, we were still snorked. We had to get into the next room. I pushed the overrider against the inner swipe pad. It beeped: too hard. I eased off. As the door jumped open, a large hologrammatic sign flashed at eye level:
WARNING
INCUBATOR ROOM MUST BE MAINTAINED AT:
37 CELCIUS
03 LIGHT
3:1 OXYGEN
We stepped through the sign, its reds and yellows sparking off Mav’s skin. The door closed behind us.
Dim light came from two swing-arm lights positioned above a long machine against the back wall. It looked like a foodie except the display window showed petri dishes instead of Chicken Kievs. The air was so warm it felt fluffy going through my nose and into my lungs. Mav sighed with pleasure.