Gary Gibson - Final Days

Albright glanced down and scratched a note into the reflective surface of his desk with a plastic stylus.

Books lined a plywood bookcase set against one wall, next to which stood a hospital gurney equipped with leather restraints and a small medical-supplies cabinet. A window beyond the desk offered a better view of what was undoubtedly one of Array Security and Immigration’s regional admin centres, and Mitchell gazed past Albright’s shoulder and out at the sunlit landscape with longing.

‘Why were you trying to reach the colonies?’ asked Albright.

Mitchell sighed. ‘I didn’t want to die, any more than anyone else did.’

Albright frowned. ‘Are you sure that’s the only reason?’

Mitchell shrugged. ‘I can’t think of any other.’

Albright touched the desk once more, and Mitchell saw icons blink and shift across its surface. Contacts would have made his life much easier, but clearly they weren’t going to trust him with anything like that.

A small TriView screen came to life on the wall behind Albright’s desk. It showed a still image of a man lying in a hospital bed, surrounded by a tangle of machinery and tubes. A figure dressed in a protective suit, face hidden behind a visor, stood by his bedside, taking notes.

This, thought Mitchell, was something new.

‘Do you recognize the man in the bed?’ asked Albright.

Mitchell found he couldn’t drag his eyes away from the image. Intellectually, he’d realized that his younger self was, at that very moment, still recovering from his recent experiences at Site 17, but actually seeing the evidence here was another matter.

‘It’s me,’ he replied. ‘Where are you keeping him?’

Albright smiled. ‘Don’t you remember?’

He did, of course, although the memory only returned to him at that very moment. Mitchell found he couldn’t tear his gaze from his younger self, his features soft and relaxed under the influence of powerful sedatives.

‘Do you actually understand why there are two of you?’ asked Albright.

‘Because when you brought me back here from that cryo lab ten years in the future, you brought me into my own past,’ Mitchell replied, finally looking away from the screen.

He could barely remember the ward they’d put him after Site 17; they’d kept him unconscious almost around the clock. Someone had rescued him – no, would rescue him – by breaking into the ward and half carrying him to safety, but for the moment that rescuer’s face remained an unidentifiable blur. After that Mitchell had woken up in a motel, alongside everything he needed to get himself to Copernicus.

‘You were delirious when they recovered you from the chamber of pits, but Eliza Schlegel made sure everything you said was properly recorded and transcribed.’ Albright glanced again at his desk. ‘Now, apparently you made reference several times to being ‘sent back’ to carry out some task.’ Albright leaned forward. ‘What kind of task?’

Mitchell licked suddenly dry lips. ‘I don’t remember ever saying that.’

‘Really? I can play it back for you right now.’

The picture on the screen changed to show the interior of a medvac unit. He now lay on a palette with an oxygen mask over his mouth, while Lou Winston passed a diagnostics wand over his body. Mitchell watched his younger self suddenly jerk awake on the pallet, ripping the mask from his face in a panic. A rush of words came spilling out, ones he even now couldn’t remember uttering, and his voice was filled with a terrible urgency. He had a sudden vivid recollection of grabbing Dan Rush’s arm, as they lifted him into the unit, but that was all.

Mitchell gripped the arms of his chair tightly, and waited for Albright to switch the recording off. ‘I don’t remember any of that.’

Albright shook his head. ‘We know you’re lying, Mitchell. The effects of long-term cryogenic storage are well known, and full rcovery of memory takes a week at best. You’ve been here longer than that, and perhaps you don’t remember everything, but you’ll still remember enough to answer most of our questions.’

‘Why does it matter to you?’

Albright laughed, shaking his head. ‘Now you’re just being obstructive. We have recordings of you claiming this task was given to you by the Founders. How is that possible?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Why don’t you tell me the truth?’

Mitchell leaned back, staring once more up at the small constellation of lenses overhead. ‘How about I answer a question, but only if you answer one of mine. Is that a deal?’

‘We don’t do “deals”, Mitchell.’

Mitchell stared at him and waited.

‘Fine,’ Albright sighed, after more than half a minute had passed. ‘But I’m not making any promises.’

‘I know you sent unmanned probes into the ruins of the near-future Copernicus City, right?’

‘The same probes that recovered you from the lab, yes.’

Mitchell licked his lips, suddenly full of a nervous anxiety. ‘Did you send them into the Lunar Array itself ? Did they tell you if the CTC gates to the colonies were still open?’

Albright regarded him steadily. ‘There hasn’t been the time to make a detailed enough investigation. Certainly the Array looks half ruined but, as to the integrity of the gates, I don’t have enough clearance to know one way or the other. Now it’s my turn,’ he said, pointing a finger towards the screen. ‘How the hell did you get out of that secure ward and find your way to the Moon, in the first place?’

The corner of Mitchell’s mouth twitched. ‘You mean, how am I going to get out of there? That’s what you want to know, isn’t it?’

Albright stood up from behind his desk and walked forward to stand in front of Mitchell, his face red with anger. ‘Stop fucking around. There’s too much at stake, and the people who put me in charge of getting answers from you are starting to get very impatient.’

‘Whatever I tell you doesn’t matter a damn,’ Mitchell rasped. ‘You know why? Because, from my perspective, everything you’re trying to stop has already happened more than ten years in my past. The only reason you’re here, asking me these questions, is because the people you work for are too mentally limited to understand that one simple fact.’

Albright was breathing hard through his nose and, for a moment, Mitchell thoughhe might strike him. But, after a second or two, his interrogator took a step back, wiping his hand across his mouth.

‘You were in charge of interrogations at the Lunar Array, a few years back, weren’t you?’ asked Albright.

‘Sure. Right after the Galileo gate was sabotaged.’

Albright nodded. ‘And how did you know if detainees were telling the truth or not?’

‘We used infra-red cameras to pick up increases in subcutaneous blood flow, and voltage scanners that could remotely map brain wave functions in three dimensions and tell us whether or not they were lying. That the kind of thing you mean?’

‘You’ve already noticed we have the same devices here?’ Albright nodded towards the lenses suspended above Mitchell’s head. ‘You’ve also worked in the ASI long enough to know just what’s going to happen to you if you don’t start telling us the truth.’

Mitchell closed his eyes for a moment, remembering how, after waking in the motel, he’d managed to make his way through the Florida–Copernicus gate, only to be spotted by ASI agents on the lookout for him inside the Lunar Array. He’d found an airlock equipped with pressure suits, and made his escape across the silent lunar landscape, the great crescent shape of the Array rising to one side as he headed for the cryo labs situated further along the crater wall.