Ian Hocking - Déjà Vu

Jennifer shook her head. ‘Dad, we’re years away from sending a human, and when we do, he or she will be military.’

‘Ah,’ David said, turning to her, ‘but it isn’t your project, is it? Hartfield pays the piper and he calls the tune.’

Jennifer was silent. She looked young.

‘It would explain something,’ said Hartfield, almost to himself. ‘For several months, I have felt that a force is working against me. I’m not just referring to David’s miraculous escape from custody, or the bullet that missed you, Saskia, though it was fired point blank. It is a sensation of manipulation. Determination.’

Saskia felt their attention. She had the gun, but she was suddenly vulnerable—the most vulnerable person in the room. ‘This is nonsense. If I had aided David in his escape, I would also have aided myself in the past few days. But my future self has been absent.’

‘That’s not true,’ Jennifer said. ‘You contacted Bruce, who contacted me.’ She raised her hands at the room. ‘We’re here.’

‘It’s not possible.’

‘Not only is it possible,’ said Jennifer, ‘it always has been. There’s nothing impossible about time travel as a theoretical construct. Since Einstein, the Devil of time travel has only been in the detail.’

‘Wait,’ said Saskia. Her memories were all the clearer for their rarity. ‘I worked with a detective called Jago.’

‘I remember,’ said David. ‘Go on.’

‘He had a heart attack during the chase, and I called his mobile a few hours ago to find out how he was doing. A woman answered. She claimed to be his daughter.’ Saskia let her mind slip its anchor. ‘He doesn’t have a daughter. I think that woman was…me.’

All’s well that ends well.

‘Crikey, you spoke to yourself on the phone?’ asked David. His eyes were unfocused with wonder.

‘I don’t understand how this works,’ Saskia said. ‘I remember the conversation we had, word for word. When I reach the point in my life at which I must supply the other side of the conversation, how will I choose what words to say?’

‘You won’t have to choose,’ said Jennifer.

‘That’s my point. Who chose them? They are just words I must say. Like a script that’s already been written. And every moment you felt in my company, David, as I helped you escape from the West Lothian Centre, all those moments are…planned. They’re lost. I have no choice but to repeat them.’

‘You have a choice,’ said Hartfield.

‘No choice,’ she said. ‘The Fates aren’t human, or even human-like. They’re physical forces. They’re the universe itself. They have nothing to do with my…intention, or will, or hope. They play and I dance.’ She thought of Beckmann as he forced her hand to raise the gun to her temple. ‘They influence the chemicals that control my muscles. They conduct the information around my brain. They are the information. Inside, I’ve been chasing my identity the past two days, worried that I don’t have one.’ Saskia looked at David. She smiled and the movement disturbed her tears. ‘It’s funny. When Beckmann recruited me, he made me investigate the murder I committed. I’ve come to America after you, David, only to find I’m investigating myself a second time.’

The hawk that returned.

‘Revenge should have no bounds.’

There was a long moment of awkwardness, to which only Hartfield seemed indifferent. Saskia’s gun arm began to ache and she let it fall to her side. As she did so, Hartfield looked at his watch. ‘What?’ she asked.

‘Don’t you feel , Saskia?’

‘Feel what?’

‘A sense of your own power. Of your efficacy. Of your human will. I remember that feeling from memories I have of the person I was, many years ago. I will fight for it.’

‘No,’ said Jennifer. ‘Remember the watch. I sent it backwards in time but there never the question of a paradox. I had to wait two hours and send it. No effect without a cause, remember?’

Hartfield shook his head. ‘You’re wrong, Jennifer. And David and Saskia—you’re wrong too. I have with me the specifications of the correct nano-treatment. I have studied the operation of the time machine. I will return to the year 1999 and correct Orza’s mistakes. I will be cured and my future will change. The world of 2023 can go to hell.’

The lights went out.

Saskia saw an afterimage of the room flick left and right as she scanned the darkness. Something brushed her elbow.

‘Jennifer, David: did either of you touch me?’

‘No.’

Saskia fired over her shoulder, turning as she did. In the muzzle flash, she saw the black arch of the doorway and, almost out of sight, Hartfield’s heel as he escaped into the corridor.

‘He’s gone,’ Saskia shouted above her deadened ears. ‘What did he do to the lights?’

‘Can’t see any emergency diodes,’ said David. ‘He must have disabled the backup too.’

‘Excuse me,’ said Ego. ‘I have detected a transmission from another Ego-class personal computer.’

‘Whose?’ asked David. ‘Hartfield’s?’

‘The transmission comprised two coded radio bursts. The first instructed the central computer to deactivate both the primary and emergency lighting throughout the centre.’

‘And the second?’

‘The second instructed the chip in Saskia’s brain to deactivate, effective immediately.’

‘What?’ she said.

‘Saskia,’ said David. ‘We’ll think of something. Hold on.’

She slid down the frame of the door and stretched her legs as though she could brace herself against the coming loss, the tide of nothingness. Would it feel like a stroke, or falling asleep? She felt no shift in her mind, but when David next spoke, his words were unintelligible. Her English was gone. The implanted skills were fading.

She put the gun to her temple.

I will not become the Angel of Death.

‘Do you know the true purpose of Russian Roulette? It is the power of the question: Is there a bullet or is there not?’

The six-shooter held six rounds, less one fired by Hartfield. She had fired two more. There were three bullets left. But before she could squeeze the trigger, David gripped the barrel. They fought for control. David pushed the gun towards the floor and it glanced across his thigh, spinning the barrel. Saskia thumbed a nerve below his ear. He cried and fell back.

She put the gun against her head and pulled the trigger.

Snick.

The chamber was empty.

She pulled the trigger again.

Snick.

She had hit the second empty chamber.

She squeezed again.

Snick.

The third empty chamber. Anger expanded inside her.

For the last time, she pulled the trigger.

The spring creaked. The hammer yawned and the ratchet revolved. Spin . The chamber turned. Measure . At the same time, David’s hands closed on her shoulders and she heard his meaningless words, felt his breath on her face. The world slowed. David’s voice deepened and Saskia imagined the gap between the hammer and the round. In that gap, which might have been a thousand miles across, a flame sprang up, guttered, and died.

A nightmare poured from that darkness: She was in a coffin. She wanted to scream but her dead mouth would not move. Her chest itched from the coroner’s incision. She smelled formaldehyde, corrupt meat and wood. Smoke, too. With that, she felt a draught through the dark curtain that separated the present from the past. The light from another world found her, even as she lay inside her box, and she remembered everything.

The nightmare inside the nightmare.

Everything was revenge.