Fish and Chips and Flying Saucers
There was darkness. And it was kind of funky how the surface of the water sparkled in the moonlight as the waves lapped against the shore. On the whole the sea was calm, there was barely a whisper of a breeze in the air. Unsurprisingly for a late November evening the beach was all but deserted. Out to sea there was a blackness broken only by a few scant pinpricks of light coming from ships far off in the distance. On shore there were lights everywhere, a street along the sea front glowing with streetlights, a row of bars, restaurants, fish and chip shops and art galleries spilling a myriad of colors out onto the pavement.
Noise and life on one side of them, a vast and silent emptiness on the other. And in the middle Kristen, desperately hoping the moment wouldn't end. Happy, happier than she had ever been in her life, and yet it was a happiness mixed with fear and insecurity. She was afraid the moment was a dream and she would blink to find herself dragged mercilessly back into a wakeful state devoid of all the passion and laughter and life that surrounded her right now. Awake or asleep, she knew in her heart the moment couldn't last. She wanted it to last, desperately wanted a way to capture and imprison time forever in a moment that seemed almost perfect, but Kristen knew that sooner or later reality was going to have to kick in. Like every rainbow, like every sunset, the moment would be there and gone, and all she could hope to hold onto was a fleeting memory of what was.
The guys were still fixated on trying to be polite to her right now, she could sense a definite element of that, they just didn't really know her all that well, How could they? It had only been two weeks since she'd collided with them at the inquest. Polite was all she expected. She didn't consider herself the easiest of people to get to know, friends she'd had for years didn't even really know her that well. What she couldn't work out was how quickly these guys would run out of patience with her, how quickly they'd give up on just being polite.
Kristen tried to push the doubts, the insecurities out of her mind, they were in danger of spoiling the moment. Sure, maybe tomorrow everything would all go horribly wrong, but right here, right now, life was as about good as it could get, and she intended to make the most of that.
She grinned, a crazy grin of wild abandon, or at least as close to wild abandon as she'd ever managed. "I can't believe I'm doing this."
Damon smiled, him smile however was more one of bemusement. "You have to admit, though, Jake, She does have a point. Walking along the beach at eleven at night, in the dark and the freezing bloody cold, while eating fish and chips, not normal."
"Since exactly when the hell did you know anything about normality?" Jake challenged sarcastically.
That was exactly why she liked them so much, in the two weeks she'd known them, they hadn't done anything resembling normality at all. Kristen didn't want to hear about normality. Her life had been totally mind numbingly boring for sixteen years straight, and now, finally, this felt like her one chance to turn her back on that, to taste an existence that was something different, something more than the mundane expectations she'd let herself become trapped by. The last thing in the world that she wanted right now was for Jake and Damon to go all normal on her. "I want crazy, I love doing crazy. You trying to say you'd rather be home, sat in front of the TV, bored out of your tiny little minds?" Was it tempting fate to ask that?
"My mind isn't that tiny." Damon objected.
"No parts of him are that tiny," Jake chipped in.
Damon scowled back at Jake. At least it looked like that, but Kristen could see that the scowl was just for show, the real emotion behind it was more like an evil grin, grinning because he was thinking... Kristen wasn't sure she was supposed to have caught those thoughts. She started to blush.
"I think you need to think rude things like that much more quietly when Kristen's listening." Jake smirked, and it was Damon's turn to blush.
"I didn't mean to..." Kristen managed to stutter out. It was weird having to apologize, she'd always been able to pick up on embarrassing things like that but she'd never had to deal with people who knew she could. It also didn't help that Jake and Damon had an intensity in their interaction that left them unconcerned by sharing thoughts like that. That spooked her a little, she was vaguely aware of some the horrors they'd been through together, how that had forged their friendship, but it was an intensity between them she didn't figure she would ever fully be able to connect with, which was a lot of what was fueling her insecurity right now. It had been so much easier to deal with them when Misako was around, though. Somehow Misako seemed to balance the two of them out. But Misako was away for the weekend in Prague with her grandparents, that made for a different dynamic, one Kristen was struggling to adjust to.
Jake rescued her from her indiscretion with a thought that came from a reassuringly twisted perspective. "Alright, you want crazy. Hang around with us and you'll et crazy. I just think you need to be careful what you wish for. Crazy isn't all it's cracked up to be. And for reference, this, this isn't crazy. It's a beautiful night, the sky is clear, the moon is full, drifting on the air there's the peaceful sound of waves crashing gently against the rocks. It's buggeringly cold, but we're all suitably wrapped up and none of us have hypothermia just yet. And these are good fish and chips. Where's the crazy part? I mean, you two just don't seem to get it. What could possibly be a more normal thing to do than this?"
"Sorry, mate, I'm with Kristen, I call this crazy."
Jake stared blankly across at Damon then jovially addressed Kristen. "Damon's problem is that his life before I rescued him wasn't just normally boring, it was abnormally boring. His mother used to keep him locked up in his bedroom in a straightjacket and only allowed him out when he had to go to school or when the child protection officers came round. He's only just starting to learn about how he needs to get out more, enjoy the world, take some chances, live a little. Like right now."
"Jake's problem," Damon countered, "is that for him normal is defined so widely that it includes pretty much anything he wants it to include. Take your pick."
Kristen had no clue which way to turn. "I don't get how you two ever ended up as friends," she laughed.
"I don't remember the circumstances giving us much of a choice at the time," Damon conceded.
Jake grinned an evil grin. "The problem is, now I can't get rid of him."
"Piss off," Damon retorted, his face sullen and accusative.
And that was the part that cut Kristen up with amusement. The two of them were equally capable of putting on a face like that, a face that to the casual observer would be indistinguishable from real antagonism. But it was all play acting, there was no malice intended or perceived, the two of them were so comfortable with reading each others' underlying emotions that there was no chance of misunderstanding.
It was a familiarity that went way beyond what any normal people would have been capable of achieving in an entire lifetime, and it had taken them no more than a matter of months, but that was what it was like being telepathic. The problem was that she could see it went both ways, it wasn't going to take them any time at all to see the reality of how boring and shallow her life was and she couldn't see them sticking around much longer than that.
She was surprised it had lasted two weeks. Just two weeks since Misako, Damon and Jake had accosted her at the Stellman inquest with a laughably unbelievable story about her being telepathic, and tales of other even more insane weird shit. Tales so insane that she would have laughed at them if it weren't for the fact she really could read minds, and could see the truth in their words however crazy they sounded.
More than that it was a truth she wanted to believe in. These people were the answer to everything she knew was wrong with the world. They weren't bounded by convention, weren't even all that bounded by the laws of physics as far as she could see. If they walked away now, that would tear Kristen apart because they were the life she desperately wanted, but couldn't quite see how to catch hold of. She longed for crazy, she longed for different, she longed to see dragons
In days gone by, people had thought the world was flat. Sail too far out and you would fall off the edge of the world, stray beyond the boundaries of the everyday and the maps of the ancient mariners told you that dragons lay in wait. People lived lives constrained by the boundaries imposed on them by their own fear and ignorance. And nothing had changed since then, it didn't matter that people knew dragons were only myth and legend, they were still afraid of them. Kristen still opened up the newspaper every day to see stories of people so tied up by their misconceptions of their own limitations that they were never able to reach out and grasp the opportunities that were there for the taking. The world didn't seem to celebrate adventurers any more, the people who were different. Different like Kristen, different because the idea that there just might be dragons out there was what made her day in, day out, boring life tolerable.
Misako, Damon and Jake knew all about dragons, they lived life in a crazy, uncharted place, way off anyone's map. And Kristen wanted so badly to live right there with them. But what if they got bored of her? What if she upset them? What if she offended them? What if they just didn't like her? What if they just, just... just nothing... her fear was irrational, she knew it was, she was telepathic, she could sense what they were thinking, they didn't think any of those things. They thought she was okay, that was enough.
Enough for her to hold onto her moment of perfect contentment. She smiled to herself, munched on a chip and stared at the moon.
"You want to go there?" Jake asked, reading her thoughts.
Kristen glanced at him questioningly. He actually sounded like he was half serious, and that was exactly why she loved hanging out with them. As a kid she'd always wanted to be an astronaut, always been told it wasn't possible for ordinary people like her. Well, bullshit to them, she might be a lot of things, but ordinary was not one of them. "I'd love to visit the moon," she mused, wondering just how serious Jake was.
"It is line of sight, it might be possible." Jake considered.
"It's also quarter of a million miles." Damon tried to push back with a little more practicality.
Jake didn't sound convinced by the argument. "I don't think the distance is a problem. If anything what we can't handle is the navigation."
"Surviving once we got there could be a little difficult as well," Damon added.
"You always have to piss on my parade, don't you little boy," Jake stared contemptuously at Damon.
Kristen laughed out loud. "Misako was right, it's just constant bitching with you two isn't it.
"We try," Damon reassured her.
No, Kristen contemplated, there was no better way to spend a Friday night. And even if she couldn't make the Friday night last forever, there was at least the consolation that Jake and Damon were around the whole November bank holiday weekend. Three full days to have fun doing, well, more weird stuff like they were doing right now if she was lucky. Actually she had no real clue what their plans were, she'd avoided aksing. Misako had warned her about Jake's views on making plans, and she hadn't wanted to piss him off. She wondered if there was a diplomatic way to phrase the question. "So what did you guys have in mind for tomorrow?"
She could sense Jake fighting to keep his response courteous. "Other than going waterskiing, I hadn't really planned anything. We can see what happens tomorrow."
"You intent on doing the waterskiing thing then?" Kristen was surprised, somehow she'd thought he was just joking about that.
"Yeah, why?" Jake questioned.
"On account of you only just got the plaster off from the last time you broke your leg," she suggested.
"That was not my fault."
Kristen was frustrated with herself, she didn't meant to sound so negative. It irritated the hell out of her when people told her she was over-reaching herself, now she was doing the same thing to Jake and it wasn't fair. Even if the guy's leg was still twisted at a funny angle and he was dependent on a walking stick to manage more than a few steps, it still wasn't fair to put him down. She changed her tone and tried to sound like she was being a realist rather than just sound dismissive. "I thought your knee was still at risk of giving way, the way the bones didn't heal straight."
Jake was pragmatic, he didn't seem bothered by her doubts. "They did as good a job as they could under the circumstances, yeah, it might give way again. The limp is permanent, the knee will never work properly again, but the leg brace I'm going to have to wear the rest of my life is enough to hold me together to do a bit of waterskiing. Well, probably. What the hell, I can't make it any worse, can I? I'll be okay."
"And you're okay with taking risks again so soon?"
"Risks are the price you pay for living life. I learned that the hard way."
Kristen smiled. That was the attitude, that was why these guys were so much fun to hang out with.
"Plus you got a car out of it." Damon reminded him. "Still need to work on your driving a bit, but you haven't killed me yet."
Jake raised his eyebrows cheekily. "Definitely not complaining about the car..." he fell silent, interrupted, listening intently to the looked sharply across at him, she'd sensed something too, a sensation of pain, not prolonged, not intense, just uncomfortable. There and gone. Had that been Jake?
~No, not me,~ he answered her unspoken question telepathically.
~You get it too?~ Damon seemed concerned.
Jake was more curious than concerned. ~Not someone breaking out, it was way too vague for that.~ He shook his head as it happened again. ~More than anything I would describe that as irritating.~
It came a third time. Damon hesitated, as if counting the seconds, ~It's periodic, about every four seconds. And it's too consistent. Mechanical. Telepathic mechanical. Is that even possible? Okay, stupid question.~
"I'm sensing, it's like, like a direction. Like I could reach out to it with my mind," Kristen observed.
"You want to look?" Jake challenged her.
Kristen stared back at them, they weren't joking about any more, this was serious. This was also her chance, her chance to make some kind of gesture, to prove to herself that she really was part of their world now. She could do this. She opened her mind, reached out into the silence, counting down the seconds...
~Emergency, need immediate assistance. Primary engines have failed, we're off course and flying blind. We've sustained casualties,...~ The thoughts became more fractured, more broken up. ~...shit, I don't know how to make these reports. Look, the pilot's dead, I don't know how to fly this thing, we're seriously screwed here, just, please, for God's sake, whatever you can do, we need help.~
"You hear that?" Kristen asked.
Damon sounded shaken. "I heard it. That guy was feeling scared shitless. Whatever this is, it's for real."
"So what do we do?" Kristen asked, trying not to sound as clueless as she felt.
"Buggered if I know," Jake replied flatly.
"Damaged engines, no pilot, pissed off and in trouble. Sounds to me like without help he's dead." Damon confronted them with a truth they would rather have avoided.
Jake was frustrated, he felt helpless. "But we don't know where he is is, or what we can do to help. Can you fly an airplane? Could you talk someone down in an emergency landing, even if we can talk to the guy. What the hell help are we going to be?"
"I know how to fly, light aircraft anyway." Kristen stared at them, challenging them to come up with something better.
"That's pretty impressive," Damon stated, half with admiration, half still trying to work out what the hell use that was going to be.
Jake saw no other options. "Try then."
"Right, I will." Kristen swallowed back, she was frustrated, she hadn't meant to sound so pissy, she could see the guys were right, there was probably bugger all she could do, but she had to try.
So much for wanting the evening to last forever.
She emptied her mind and shouted out into the darkness.
~Hello, my name is Kristen Walker, I'm responding to the emergency distress call. How can we assist you? What assistance do you need? I know how to fly, maybe I can help you take the controls.~
Even as she said it, she couldn't convince herself she meant it. The futility of what she was proposing was staggering, beyond desperation. Unless the guy just happened to be in a Piper Warrior airplane then her assistance wasn't going to be much use at all, not that he would know that. Was that all she could do, give the guy some false hope to keep him getting too freaked out in the moments before he died?
~Ku-esten,~ the guy was sobbing now, Kristen started to feel intensely guilty, she could sense him desperately latching onto a hope she knew was false. ~Hold on, there's just about enough power left to engage the inertial damping subsystem for a couple of time units. Can you see where I am? Can you really fly this thing?~
"Inertial what-the-bollocks?" Damon glanced at the others, puzzled.
"I don't know." She was out of her depth. "I can't help him. He thinks I can help and I can't." Kristen was getting herself distressed.
Jake tried to stay clear of the I-told-you-so, there was no point making things worse. "See where he is, if all you can do is be there with him in spirit, maybe that's all, you know, do what you can. No one expects the impossible of you, even us."
Kristen looked at Jake, forcing out a weak smile. He certainly knew what to say to make her feel better. She closed her eyes and tried to reach out again. ~Show me where you are. If I can be there for you, whatever I can do, I will,~ she sent, managing to sound more confident than she felt.
The images came to her slowly. She could see, see through the eyes of the guy who was up there somewhere in trouble. There was smoke everywhere, it was kind of tough to see much at all through the smoke. It seemed wrong somehow, bigger inside than she expected for a light airplane. Room to stand up? That was more than a little wrong.
~There, you see? You can jaunt there, there's space, I'll help you. We don't have much time, I don't know how long the dampers will hold out. You have to jump, now or never.~
Kristen felt a mind connecting with hers, she was being pulled away, the whole thing took her by surprise.
Jake and Damon had exchanged a fleeting, worried glance, then had tried to reach out to her, but it was too late. Kristen had fumbled the bag of chips she was carrying and had dropped it. They looked down to see the chips falling onto the wet sand beside the empty footprints where Kristen's feet had been standing moments before.
Kristen was in a state of shock. She'd jaunted a bunch of times, she'd been practicing every day for two weeks, but it hadn't ever felt anything like this before. Until now she'd only ever been able to jaunt to places she could see. Although, technically she had been able to see this place, she'd seen it through the eyes of the guy who was in trouble. She hadn't got to that lesson yet. Actually, she had the feeling Jake and Damon hadn't exactly been aware that it was possible either. She'd wanted to go off the edge of the map, well, she'd gone totally off the edge of the map even for them.
She had no frame of reference, no clue to know how far she'd jaunted. She was surrounded by smoke, she couldn't see much. She coughed, quickly realizing it was probably toxic. Not that she expected to have time to die from that, she'd just jaunted onto a airplane that was about to crash. And it was the weirdest shit airplane she had ever seen. What the hell had she gone and done? She started to freak out, desperately trying to come up with some kind of rational response.
Could she do it again? If she'd managed to jaunt on to this airplane, could she get off again the same way? If she could connect with Jake and Damon and she could see where they were through their eyes, could she jaunt right back there? And if this guy was telepathic, then maybe he was capable of jaunting as well, maybe they could rescue him that way. It had to be possible. They'd certainly speculated there might be others like them, any number of others that hadn't made Stellman's death list. And if jaunting didn't work like that, then she was dead.
Kristen found herself wondering inappropriately whether the guy was cute. If he was, then there was at least one last thing she could maybe experience in the final few minutes of life. She choked back her anger, her frustration, her tears, there wasn't time for any of that. First thing she had to do was to find the guy.
"You there?" she shouted.
"Ku-esten?" he called back. It sounded strange, it was an odd way that he pronounced her name.
She peered through the smoke to see a young man approaching her. He was maybe a little older than her, but late teens at most. He was olive skinned, maybe Middle Eastern. He had long, jet black hair and was clean shaven. Cute. Very cute. Cute but injured. Badly burned, his tunic was torn and his face betrayed barely controlled panic.
Kristen composed herself and launched into her plan. ~We still have time, I have friends back on the ground, if I can get up here then there has to be a way we can both jaunt back down there.~
The guy looked blankly back at her as if she was mad. ~The speed this thing is traveling relative to the planet surface? I guess it would be a quick death. I thought you said you could fly this thing?~
So they couldn't jaunt back. She wasn't sure she understood the reason, but the guy was certain it wasn't a viable option, and he seemed to know what he was talking about, even if half of what he said made no sense to her.
She tried to fight back her rising desperation. Kristen could sense the guy reading her mind, there was no point trying to pretend anything. She couldn't fly the thing, she had no clue what kind of aircraft this was at all. In fact, the more she looked at it the less it even looked like an aircraft. The smoke caught her breath, she started coughing. It was also starting to get pretty hot.
The guy was still staring at her, she could sense disbelief, she could sense him getting increasingly convinced that she was a total, absolute nut case. ~You came here, you don't know how to fly this thing, you don't have an environment suit, what kind of stupid are you?~
~Maybe I can try to fly it,~ she coughed, she couldn't give up, not yet. ~You want to show me the controls?~ She looked around, she couldn't even see anything that resembled a cockpit. This was stupid, hopeless. She felt an intense surge of futility. Was there any point in even trying to work out how to fly the, whatever the hell it was she was in? Maybe she would be better off skipping to her ideas about what she wanted to spend the final moments of her life doing and see if the guy was up for it.
He seemed to be paying attention. ~Get all those clothes off, hurry, we don't have long.~
His words took her off guard. ~Right. I thought I'd at least try flying it first. You that sure I'll fail, or is there just no time left?~ she asked, feeling like he hadn't spent enough time working through all the options before giving up. At the same time he came across like he knew what he was talking about, so she started to nervously unbutton her blouse.
~Ra-dalhamun, was larger than you, but her environment suit will fit you closely enough. You need the environment suit to breathe, you need to be able to breathe to have any chance of flying this thing.~
Kristen realized she had totally misinterpreted the guy's intentions there. She could see he'd realized what she'd been thinking about, but at least he had the decency not to comment. She continued to undress. She still wasn't sure she had the faintest idea what was happening, everything was happening too quickly.
She was aware that the level of smoke was building up, it was getting difficult to breathe. The guy seemed to think the environment suit would help, she was going to have to trust his confidence. He reappeared a few moments later with another suit looking pretty much the same as the one he was wearing, which in turn looked oddly like a reject from some low budget TV show.
She didn't feel as self conscious about her lack of clothing as she felt she ought to. The lack of air was obviously getting to her. She tried to pull the environment suit on but she was too weak to manage it herself, the guy had to help her. The fact that it seemed to be partially covered in blood barely registered. She needed it to survive. Almost as soon as the suit was on she could pull in deep breaths of fresh air, Kristen quickly pulled herself together. She couldn't see where the air was coming from, how the environment suit worked, but it worked, that was all that mattered.
~Flight controls,~ she reminded him, trying to focus back on the problem at hand. ~How long do you think we have?~ She wasn't sure she wanted to know the answer to that one, but it seemed sensible to ask.
~Hull temperature is already past critical, twenty or thirty time units, not much longer than that.~
~How long is a time unit?~ She was puzzled. It it weren't for the sense of impending doom that was driving her then she'd be starting to get really worried just about now.
~Did you escape from somewhere? I mean, I'm going to die, and I'm trying to get help from some escaped Habiruan mental case.~
Kristen had no clue how long a time unit was, or what a Habiruan was, but she wasn't sure it was polite thing to call someone. But however long a time unit was, the guy's sense of urgency implied they didn't have long left. ~Flight controls. We can discuss mental states when we're dead.~ She wasn't sure if it was gallows humor, or complete denial.
~Right, through here,~ he gestured towards an archway.
Kristen wondered if there was something in the smoke that was getting her high. She had to be hallucinating, that was the only explanation for what she saw as she stepped through the archway. This was no airplane. The area she'd first jaunted to was weird, the section she had just stepped into was weirder. Weirder than weird. Out-weirded even some of the crap Damon came out with at times. There were tubes hanging from the ceiling filled with various different colored fluids, they seemed to be arranged around three hemispherical balls mounted in the ceiling directly above a small circular table that stood in the center of the room. The surface of the table was made of white plastic, it seemed to be illuminated from below, multi-colored light played across the surface. There was a black, padded, circular bench around the table, other than that the room was empty. The walls were black, the ceiling black, the floor was black. It if wasn't for the open door she would have very quickly found herself disoriented. It took minimalism to a ridiculous extreme, there were no controls, no instruments, no nothing of any kind. Just the table, the bench and the weird dangly things. Kristen stared at it blankly. What the hell was going on? What the hell kind of joke was this place?
She was snapped out of her momentary daze by the sound of metal tearing. Metal tearing, but no rumble, no vibration, no sensation of motion at all. Other than for the noise of stresses taking their toll on the structure around her it would have been silent. This wasn't an airplane, it was a submarine. Only, it wasn't a submarine, it was... she had no clue what it was. And there was someone shouting at her.
~Focus, what's wrong with you? I needed help, I got a bloody nut case. Can you fly this thing or not?~ The guy was starting to sound hysterical.
Kristen was totally failing to understand what was going on, she was getting overwhelmed by events that had no grounding in any logic she could see. ~This flies?~ she managed to stutter out telepathically.
The guy was staring at her between disgust, disbelief and helpless panic. And still she couldn't grasp what was going on.
~You want to sit here and die, fine, I'm going to try and fire off the escape capsules. At this angle of descent even I know there's zero chance of surviving planet fall, but at least I'll be bloody doing something.~ The guy was shaking his head and heading back out through the door muttering nonsensically as he departed. ~You... I don't know, you jaunt onto a spaceship that's careering out of control towards some uncharted planet, you can't fly the sodding thing, you can't help at all, you jaunted to certain death, I mean, what kind of messed up stupid in the head is that?~
Kristen sat down on the bench to try and stop her head spinning. Spaceship? There was nothing in the guy's words that came across as either untruthful or unhinged. She was on a space ship. Deep, deep down in her stomach she started to realize she'd crossed a line into a world that was as different again as the one she'd woken up in two weeks earlier when she'd found out she was telepathic.
No, she had no bloody clue how to fly a flying saucer. She hadn't exactly intended to jaunt there either, and she wasn't much sure how that had happened. What was happening around her was so messed up she wasn't even sure it was really happening, and yet every instinct was yelling at her that this was real and that she had better snap to her senses and do something about it before she ended up dead.
Kristen had to head after the guy, she didn't have much time. She tried to stand up and found herself feeling light headed, she put her hand out against the table to steady herself, the surface of the table tingled as she touched it. She blinked, and her mind didn't seem to be in the room with the table any more. It was like she was outside, she could see the darkness of space, the moon, the sun, she could see the Earth in the distance. She pulled her hand away from the table and the vision cleared. She looked out through the open door, the guy was trying to manhandle an unconscious body through into another room beyond, he had to be heading for the escape capsules he'd talked about. She swung round and sat facing the table, and cautiously placed both her hands flat against the table top.
She could sense damage reports, hull temperature rising, the stress on the hull was slowly tearing the ship apart. Sensors on the hull were feeding back alarms, she could almost feel the pain of the ship dying. Primary engines had stalled, secondary engines were trying to come online but they weren't firing up for some reason. The ship was already doing everything it could to save them, it just wasn't enough. There wasn't anything she could do. The strangest sensation of all though was how she could see through the ships cameras, as if she was floating in space. The moon was incredible, she'd never seen the moon this close up before, and the Earth, it was the most fantastic thing she had ever seen. Hey, she'd finally achieved her life's ambition to be an astronaut. It was just a pity she was heading towards the Earth seemingly intent on crashing into it.
Kristen sensed a mind joining her inside the system. She snapped back to some semblance of being able to function.
~I got Nieb-gisgal and Gulal-ursan into the escape capsules for what it's worth. What do you see?~
~Flying this thing isn't your problem. Your problem is the engines won't come online and we're heading straight for the planet.~
~Ra-dalhamun was trying to swing us around the planet, the ship's dead but she thought as we pulled away from the other side we could get the escape capsules launched safely. She had to make it close, the capsules have very little range and minimal maneuvering capability, they weren't meant for this kind of emergency. But we're drifting too close, we fire the capsules off on this trajectory, they'll almost certainly just burn up in the atmosphere. A degree or two adjustment and we'd stand a chance, but without the secondary engines that isn't going to happen.~ The guy was sounding calmer, almost resigned to his fate.
~We burn up?.~
~No, this ship will survive, just. We'll bounce off the atmosphere, get flung out into space, die a slow and uncertain death as the systems finally shut down on us.~
~Sorry I asked.~
~System override, launch capsule one.~
Kristen sensed the ship lurch momentarily. Physically she didn't feel a thing, there was no sensation of motion at all, but she could sense it through the ships sensors. She watched the fiery glow of the capsule as it was fired out into space, burning brighter and brighter. ~Who's in capsule one?~
~No one. There's a few spare. I wanted to see what happened to it, see if I want to die like that. Make it fast.~
The capsule seemed to flare, then went dark. Kristen stared at it morbidly. She wanted to run and hide, she wanted to run into her mother's bedroom, her mother always made everything all better. She wanted to be anywhere other than where she was, but there was nothing she could do about it.
There was a beeping, or, something that felt like a beeping. She had little clue what a lot of the systems she could sense in her mind really were.
~Course correction. Shit, that's it!~
~What's it?~
The guy sounded almost excited. ~Firing off the capsule, there's an equal and opposite effect on the ship. System override, launch capsule two.~
~Enough?~
~I don't know. Maybe. Just maybe. System override, launch capsules three and four. I still need to program a descent trajectory, you have any idea where a safe place to aim for is on that planet?~
Kristen watched the capsules burning up one by one. She tore her attention away to try and focus on the question she'd been asked. She looked at the image of the Earth in the distance, trying to look closer. It was like zooming in only, it was hard to describe the sensation. She could see the South of England, but somehow she didn't seem able to zoom in there any further. ~I can't, what's?~
~Capsules don't have that range, it has to be somewhere on the approach path.~
Kristen could see, something, like a light illuminating a stripe of ground that started somewhere in Russia and headed out almost to Greenland. That had to be what the guy was talking about. She tried to focus in on where it crossed over England, this time it worked, this time she could focus all the way down, down somewhere over the North West of England. The Lake District. Not where she would have chosen to land, but good enough.
~That's all we need, the systems have the target location now. Come on. Time to go.~ She felt a hand on her shoulder pulling her away from the table, pulling her gently back to the reality of the chaos inside the ship.
The place was full of smoke now, it was getting almost impossible to see. The guy led her running, back out into the corridor, he fell. She grabbed him and helped him up. He smiled weakly and hurried on, into the forward section.
Kristen saw a series of what she could only assume were the life capsules. Two were sealed, two open. The guy gestured to one of the open ones. It was pretty obvious he meant for her to climb into it, which wasn't exactly easy, there wasn't much space in there. ~Assuming we survive, how do we get out again?~ she asked.
~The green button to seal the capsule once you're in, then press the red button to get out once you land.~
~How will I know I've landed?~
~When it stops, you've landed. Don't press the red button before that. Not good if you do that.~ He smiled at her.
She stared back. He was still bloody cute despite the burns. She'd ceased making any effort to understand the situation, all she could do now was hold on for the ride. She watched him head across to the other open capsule. She didn't stop to watch, she knew what she had to do. She pressed the green button.
Jake and Damon had been right, life was never going to be normal again. Plunging towards earth in an out of control flying saucer. She counted the seconds wondering how long it would be. She only made it as far as about thirty and was totally unprepared for the sudden acceleration. Probably something so obvious the guy hadn't though it worth warning her about. Then again, the guy had been distracted, so distracted that he hadn't even bothered mentioning his name.
She'd only known him, she glanced at her watch, four minutes. Was that all it had been, four minutes? She couldn't exactly feel insulted, he had been pretty busy that four minutes. and it was such a short time when you were convinced you were about to die.
Four minutes on the other hand, Kristen noted, was a long time to have left Jake and Damon waiting back on Earth without any clue as to what had happened to her.
~Damon, Jake, you still there?~
Jake responded immediately. ~Shit, Kristen, what happened to you, where did you go? We were starting to freak out here.~
~Not sure I'm going to get back in time to finish my chips.~
~You dropped those in the water when you jaunted, not sure they're in much of a state to eat any more.~ Damon observed.
~Right, I remember, kind of.~
Jake was more interested in getting some answers. ~Where are you?~
~We got off the flying saucer. I'm in a life capsule heading out of control, who knows where. I am alive though. I think the others got away, so it was worth it, how I get home remains to be seen. How they get home is a bigger question. They kind of have slightly further to go.~
~Flying saucer?~
~Er, yeah, flying saucer.~
~And you accused us of being challenged in the normality department.~
~I promise I won't ever do that again. It's a karma thing, I doubted the weirdness of the universe, and I think the universe thought it had something to prove.~
"Shit look." Damon pointed upwards, in the sky near the moon a burning streak of light appeared to be heading rapidly closer.
~Your flying saucer?~
~Could be. It's... Oh crap, I feel...~
They lost touch with her. They continued watching as the point of light in exploded. It lit up the sky, incredible, beautiful celestial fireworks in the clear night sky. It was several moments before they remembered that was what Kristen had been trying to escape from, and it wasn't exactly clear whether she had made it out alive or not.
"Was she serious?" Damon questioned.
Jake stared blankly ahead. "I didn't sense any wind up."
"No, I didn't either."
"Glad we agree on that."
"So. Aliens." Damon observed.
They remained silent in contemplation.
Jake hesitated the way he always did before conceding an apology. "You know what you said about my screwed up definition of normality. Well, you were right."
"You worked that out did you?"
"But aliens, that's weird shit even by my definition."
Damon managed a half smile. "So what the hell do we do now then?"
Jake tried to be pragmatic. "We don't know what happened. She said something about life capsules. She might have got out. We've lost contact with each other before, happens all the time, she probably just have lost consciousness, we don't know she's in trouble."
"So we do what? Wait?" Damon as always had to push Jake into being a little more realistic. "What the hell do we tell her parents in the mean time. And don't forget, we're only here visiting for the weekend."
"If we haven't heard anything from her by the end of the weekend we can assume the worst. We have to give her some time though. That means cooking up some story to sell to her parents in the meantime, and we probably want to get that done as soon as possible. We absolutely don't want a police search or anything, the press attention at the inquest was irritating enough, we've got too many problems keeping a low profile as it is."
"I think they'll have enough on their hands worrying about the aliens, the authorities must have spotted that explosion."
"That'll keep them busy, that is definitely good for us."
"So we wait. Wait until she contacts us, and if she's suffering from concussion that could be a while."
"Right." Jake agreed, then fell silent.
Damon never liked it when Jake went silent like that. "What you thinking?"
"Aliens." Jake mused.
Damon stared blankly ahead. "You ever wonder if maybe one day we'll reach a point where life actually, physically, can't get more messed up?"
"Yeah."
"Yeah? Seriously?"
"Seriously, yeah. Just not today apparently."
Kristen began to regain a vague sentience. She felt badly battered, heavily bruised. She remembered the sensation of sudden deceleration, then nothing much more after that. Now she was lying at a funny angle, still sealed inside the capsule. There was no movement. She had been terrified for a moment that she might have overshot and landed in the Atlantic Ocean somewhere, but she figured that would have felt more floaty. If the systems had worked she was somewhere in the Lake District. Kristen glanced hesitantly at the red button, she felt pretty much in one piece but didn't feel quite up to the risk of releasing the hatch and trying to climb out just yet. Her head felt sore, she 'd tried unsuccessfully calling Jake and Damon a couple of times, she guessed she would be a little time before she be recovered enough to manage anything telepathic.
She wondered what the fate of the other three capsules had been. They were all on the same approach trajectory, the others should all be somewhere in the nearby vicinity. If these people were sensible then they ought to have equipped these things with some kind of transponder on board for locating the other pods, there ought to be an easy way for them to find each other.
Kristen tried to feel around the cramped space inside the capsule; just as well she didn't suffer from claustrophobia. The control panel detached easily, seemed to have some internal power source. It seemed the only accessible instrument on the inside of the capsule. So that was her first problem solved.
The reality of the situation slowly started to hit her. Here she was calmly thinking about aliens and flying saucers like they were real. But then from believing in telepathy and teleportation to believing in aliens didn't seem all that much of a conceptual leap. She'd just been into space in an alien flying saucer, beat that for a Friday night. It was just that she felt that she wasn't worthy. Yes she bloody was worthy. Why did she always have to put herself down? Hey, go figure, believing in aliens was easy. Believing in herself? That was the tough one. Despite everything that had happened, that was still the tough one.
She looked at her watch, it was a little after five in the morning, she'd been unconscious most of the night. Her parents were going to totally freak out on her when they found out she'd been out all night without calling them. She checked her phone, no signal, no way of leaving a message, not that she had any clue what to say to them. Maybe she'd be able to get some advice on that from Jake, Misako had told her the guy was a genius when it came to making up excuses for shit like that, and It was going to take a genius to help her talk her way out of this one.
Kristen tried to stop thinking, she was just avoiding the inevitable, she was good at that. But the air inside the capsule was getting stale and she couldn't stay in there forever. She uncertainly fingered the red hatch release button, and then pressed it firmly.
She cautiously pushed the hatch open, it was remarkably easy to shift. She couldn't see much through the opening, just darkness. The air outside had a strange musty smell to it, not much better than the stale air inside the capsule had been. Kristen pulled herself out gently through the hatch, trying not to touch the outer surface of the capsule, it was still burning hot, the thing was badly scorched from the descent. The ground outside was uneven and extremely hard, she was was in a crater of harshly dried mud, all the moisture baked out of it an instant after the impact. Kristen tried to stand up but she was feeling really shaky on her feet. That was largely because desperately hungry. But, she contemplated, this was the Lake District. With a little luck she was no more than an hour or two's hike away from somewhere with a nice little rural cafe, where she could find a decent cooked breakfast and from where she could start working out how to get home.
She stumbled to the edge of the crater from where in the moonlight she could just about see the extent of the damage. The capsule had plowed a long trench though three or four fields before coming to a final stop. No one was exactly going to miss that.
And that, she conceded, was a bigger problem. Everyone must have seen the flying saucer exploding, and if she was seen wandering about there in a silver space suit, well, there had to be a strong chance they would put two and two together and not even come close to the right answer. She wondered what the news was reporting right now, wondered what story the government had come up with to try and cover everything up. They couldn't possibly admit a flying saucer had crashed, could they? Kristen had never been much of a conspiracy theorist, the government couldn't even keep their own extra-marital affairs and tax fiddles secret, the idea they could cover up the existence of aliens was just totally implausible.
Her eyes slowly started to adjust to the darkness. In the distance she could see a second trench, or at least she could see where it had torn through a narrow road that had been winding around the fields. She had no idea which of the other three capsules it was. The sensible thing to do, if she could, was to sneak away and not have anything to do with the panic that the arrival of visitors from another planet was going to cause, but that wasn't something Kristen was capable of. Two of the crew of the flying saucer had been unconscious and in a critical condition, she had to check around, make sure the they were all safe, she wasn't sure what hope they had without help. There was no way in hell she could just walk away, and it wasn't just because the one alien guy was cute.
She'd met an alien. It was another one of those things that she'd been aware of at some level of consciousness, and yet somehow the magnitude of the revelation had managed to escape her until now. A lot of that was because it was difficult to think of the guy as alien on account of the fact that he had looked so totally human. But then appearances could be deceptive, as Kristen was acutely aware, after all, she looked pretty human herself.
Kristen climbed over the rim and headed down towards a hedgerow that provided some cover. From there she cautiously tried to peer into the darkness.
"Nu ug-aya," a voice whispered. Kristen felt a hand on her shoulder, pulling her down. As unsteady as she was she fell roughly backwards, the hand moved to cover her mouth. She struggled momentarily before getting a good look at her assailant, it was the guy from the flying saucer. He nodded reassuringly at her, gestured at his own mouth and took his hand away from hers. She remained silent, then turned to look in the direction he was pointing in. They both crouched down low.
In the distance she could see a circle of flashlights converging on the what had to be one of the other capsules. She could hear excited shouting, they'd found something. She couldn't make out much in the darkness, but she could see enough to recognize soldiers. Soldiers with guns. This was not, she concluded, a sensible place to be caught right now.
She grabbed the arm of the alien cute guy and, keeping low, they stumbled erratically off in the opposite direction.
Not Here On A Shopping Expedition
A light formed in the darkness. Three lights, growing stronger. Three figures materialized, solidified, and used the flashlights they were carrying to scan around the room that they now found themselves in.
It was a storeroom, low ceiling, bare concrete floor. Crates and torn cardboard boxes were stacked, randomly interspersed with empty clothes rails. It was dusty and the dust had been disturbed by the sudden arrival of the three visitors, the air appeared to sparkle as the beam of the flashlights cut through it.
"Where are we?" Carol asked, trying not to cough as the dust caught her throat. She was momentarily concerned they'd landed off target.
John reassured her. "The basement of Debenhams. Westfield, London."
"And TIM used to be about where that crate of old clothes hangers is." Elizabeth pointed with her flashlight.
"Just as well we had time to strip the lab out before the evacuation. Imagine the builders finding alien technology buried down here when they were excavating the foundations of the new shopping mall." John observed coolly.
Carol wandered around behind an empty clothes hanging rail. Forty years ago this had been her home. She reached out and touched it as if to try and convince herself it was real. As the years had passed she'd all but given up hope of ever seeing the place again, and yet in all that hopelessness she'd never stopped trying to imagine what the moment would be like, that was the eternal optimist in her. And yet now she was able to reach out and touch it, the moment was more than a little bittersweet. This wasn't how she'd imagined it. "I had fond memories of the lab," she tried to explain her feelings, "it's so sad that it's all gone. We finally get to come home, and home isn't here any more."
"Our whole world is long gone," Elizabeth concurred.
Carol could sense Elizabeth was having just as much trouble dealing with the moment as she was. "You nervous?"
Elizabeth nodded. "The world up there has changed a lot in fifteen years. We've all read the briefings, you'd think with all our experience dealing with alien cultures this ought to be easy..."
"We're going to fall into the trap of thinking we're familiar with this culture, which we are to a degree, but that will make the differences all the more disorientating." John pointed out, practical as ever.
"None of us had any illusions coming back would be easy," Carol reminded him.
Elizabeth took the cue. "But we have a job to do."
A job to do... That sentiment resonated with Carol. It was the same sentiment she'd felt fifteen years earlier when she'd volunteered to help with the evacuation. Back when the dusty basement had still been part of the old abandoned Wood Lane tube station, long before the new Wood Lane station had been built a few hundred yards further down the line. Getting over a thousand people off the planet and destroying all signs they had ever been there, all that in less than forty-eight hours, it had been a logistical nightmare. That had been her first trip home in a long time, but at least back then the place had still been recognizable as the home she remembered. Now there was nothing left at all.
But she couldn't dwell on the past. Once again she had volunteered for a mission, and once again she had a job to do. They had to get down to business.
"The shopping mall above us should make this easy," John instructed them, "I'll get us sorted out with the Earth equipment we'll need, you two need to go look for newsagents and television shops running the news."
"Looking for anything odd or out of the normal," Carol continued.
"We know the drill." Elizabeth concluded.
John nodded, they'd been through the plan a dozen times, but he obviously felt it never hurt to be over prepared. "We need to move fast. We meet back for coffee in half an hour."
"Explosions in the sky, strange meteorites," Carol managed to keep any hint of sarcasm out of her voice, "they couldn't hush that up, it should be all over the front pages of the newspapers by now. It shouldn't take us that long."
"Talking of which," John continued, "Set your timers. Thirty-four hours, then we leave, whether we've achieved our objectives or not."
Carol knew the rest. "If it gets to thirty-four hours, then we've failed anyway."
The possibility of failure was something Carol didn't much want to contemplate, she preferred to maintain a sense of optimism. The mission was the easy part of why she was there, that part had to go right.
Fifteen years earlier things hadn't worked out so well. They'd come so close, they'd managed to evacuate almost everyone safely, but there were two people that they'd been forced to leave behind. Carol had no clue what had happened to them, she didn't even know whether they were alive or dead. It was an uncertainty that frustrated her, but in her eternal optimism she had never lost sight of the hope that she would one day get the opportunity to return to Earth and try to find some answers. In all that time she had refused to believe the worst, refused to believe that they might have failed.
Now she had her chance. She was grateful her husband, Narcissa, hadn't tried to talk her out of volunteering like he had the time before. It was true that he saw it more as a mid-life crisis on her part, but he at least understood why she hadn't see the evacuation of Earth as the success that everyone else had considered it. He wasn't completely happy with her decision to volunteer, there was a certain level of risk attached to this mission and even after forty years of marriage he could still be a bit overly protective towards her at times. Mostly she liked that about him, but just this once she needed to take the risk. Not that she felt all that much at risk, she knew she was in safe company.
Carol cleared her mind of concerns and listened as John continued with the instructions. "If you feel any symptoms, anything at all, you don't even wait that long, you get out while you still can. They won't risk sending anyone more down here to save us. We're on our own."
"I still can't believe we were even allowed to come," Carol decided it was time to voice her surprise. The decision had puzzled her, she really hadn't expected the council to agree so readily but she'd avoided saying anything earlier out of fear that she said might have jeopardized their chances of getting the mission authorized.
John's response was circumspect. "We weren't exactly authorized to come. Not officially anyway."
Carol stopped her investigation of the basement and looked abruptly back at John. It was just as well that Narcissa hadn't known about that, he absolutely wouldn't have approved. Carol herself was more pragmatic, the revelation really wasn't all that much of a surprise. Although she couldn't work out how it was they had made it all the way to Earth if the mission hadn't been officially authorized.
"You know Tikno," John anticipated the unasked question.
That answer made complete sense to Carol.
"Just like the good old days then." Elizabeth smiled.
Elaine Sierpinski was feeling irritable. She'd been up most of the night and she had little or no clue when she might finally have a chance to catch some sleep. She allowed herself to be ushered into the garage workshop area not knowing exactly what to expect, and the revelation that confronted her was kind of on the disappointing side. After being woken up by soldiers banging on her door and a midnight helicopter ride North she had been expecting something a little more sexy than this at the end of her journey.
It was a place that handled vehicle repairs for a number of local farms. The tractors that had been in there had been unceremoniously towed and abandoned outside in the mud. The floor of the garage had been cleared, the area was brightly lit from above and a small number of people were setting up an array of scientific instruments at least one of which looked like it might make a particularly satisfying beeping noise if they could work out how to turn it on. Sierpinski tried not to be cynical, but it didn't look to her as if these people really had much of a clue what they were doing. It wasn't that they weren't intelligent, it was just that the situation was a little too outside the ordinary for conventional analysis. That, she figured, was why she was there.
In the center of the floor were four lozenge shapes capsules, each a little bigger than a coffin. They were black, they were rounded, they were smooth, they were boring. She'd let herself be dragged out of bed on a bank holiday weekend for this?
"So you think it's the Yanks or the Chinese behind this?" she asked, trying not to sound as dismissive as she felt.
"Neither," the scrawny Lieutenant she was being escorted by informed her.
"Right. Not even that exciting then. Where did these come from, why am I even here?"
"We've been unable to determine origin."
"Come on, you guys aren't that useless," she tried unsuccessfully not to sound too sarcastic. She was tired and letting the frustration get the better of her. "What are they?"
"They appear to be escape capsules. Each containing one occupant. Two of the occupants were recovered with the capsules, two are unaccounted for." He handed Sierpinski a set of pictures of the four crash sites.
She looked at capsules in the hanger in front of her, then down at the pictures. There was nothing obviously interesting about either. What the hell was she doing here?
Her Saturday morning was turning out to be as boring as her Friday night had been. She'd gone out on a date with a guy who had turned out to be a complete loser, she had a real skill for picking guys like that. She'd been sat in a bar wondering what the hell she was doing there, and had taken the opportunity to ditch out on him when he'd gotten up to go get another drink. Sierpinski stared dismissively at the Lieutenant, unfortunately it was going to be a lot harder to ditch out on where she was now.
Photographs, she had to get her mind back on the job in hand. There had to be a point to all this. She glanced between the two images, puzzled, it did appear to be the same capsules, but in the pictures they were in craters that suggested an impact at incredible speed. It was odd that the capsules hadn't been torn apart by the force of impact.
"The things don't even look scratched," she contemplated out loud.
"It gets stranger. The two occupants we have under observation are in pretty bad shape, but we have established the injuries occurred long before impact. There were tracks leading away from the other two capsules. All four occupants appear to have survived the landing."
"How is that possible?"
"We don't know. It's a puzzle. I assume that's why they wanted you here."
Sierpinski stared at the capsules laid out on the hanger floor. She silently accepted the coffee that was handed to her by some young soldier, but her growing confusion was already waking her up far faster than caffeine ever could. "What exactly have you been able to determine about the construction of the capsules?"
"Not much. Trajectory is consistent with visual tracking from the light show last night."
"Radar?"
"Saw nothing. The capsules seem to be manufactured from some kind of stealth material. Half the population of the country heard or saw the incident, and yet we didn't pick up a single thing on any tracking or early warning system."
"I bet that has a few suits in Whitehall scared," she contemplated. That would explain the abrupt way her morning had been interrupted.
"Has a lot of people scared," the Lieutenant confessed.
"But right now you're only guessing that the two events are even connected."
"Right now the evidence linking the events is tenuous. But the alternatives look even more tenuous."
The discussion was interrupted by the arrival of an older man with glasses carrying a report. The Lieutenant introduced him. "This is Doctor Vidal, in charge of the two patients. Doctor Vidal, this is Elaine Sierpinski who is now in overall charge of this operation."
In her mind she flinched at the introduction, but she gave nothing away. She hated being in control, that just meant she had to be responsible for all the awkward decisions that had to be made. She could do without that. If they knew how incompetent she was at picking guys to date then they would never give her responsibility for these kind of emergencies.
"I thought this was a military operation?" the Doctor challenged her.
"Civilian operation. The army are assisting with logistics, communications and technical support. The Lieutenant is with the Corps of Engineers."
She stared blankly at the Doctor, who nodded curtly back at her, he was frowning. Sierpinski wondered if he was frustrated with her or if she had walked in on an already established conflict between the Doctor and the Lieutenant. That was the last thing she needed, politics was not her forte. She had a habit of railroading people. Then again, that might be exactly what these two idiots needed right now.
"Prognosis?" She asked simply.
"I don't know. My medical opinion is that they should be dead already. Signs of major internal hemorrhaging that appears to have been cauterized in a slap hazard way without much concern for keeping the patient alive. You need to stop the bleeding, but it's no bloody good if you stop the bleeding by stopping the blood flowing. I don't understand the methodology. I think whoever was treating them was in a panic, not acting rationally. No bones broken that I could see, but with internal bleeding like that you wouldn't really expect the patient to survive. I suppose if you could stop the bleeding, hyperoxygenate the blood and slow the metabolism enough, say by inducing coma, then there's an outside chance that you could keep them alive long enough for the body to heal itself, but that is making a lot of assumptions, and it isn't obvious to me that person treating them had that foresight. Not clear how the bleeding was stopped either, no external marks on the body to indicate. I've seen some ultrasonic devices that can achieve an effect like this, but those are highly experimental right now."
She interrupted the Doctor's seemingly endless report. "So how come they're still alive?"
"Luck. Both of them seem to be in a natural coma, probably a result of the initial accident, just deep enough to slow the metabolism to a point that the reduced blood flow isn't killing them, at least not now I have them on oxygen."
"Internal hemorrhaging but no broken bones. Is that a little unusual.?"
"Bloody unusual. Of course I only know that nothing major is broken."
"X-rays, MRI scans?" she prompted impatiently.
"Neither working very well, interference from those suits they're wearing."
"Suits?" She queried. What suits. There hadn't been anything in the completely useless notes they'd given her to read on the helicopter ride over there. She hated coming into these situations and being stuck without all the information.
"They were wearing some kind of single piece jump suits when we found them," the Lieutenant started to explain.
Sierpinski cut him short, she didn't need this. "Why haven't we taken those for analysis? Cut them off and send them to the lab, then the Doctor here could do his scans and give those two a more thorough medical examination."
The Doctor interrupted the Lieutenant before he could reply. "They tried cutting the fabric and failed. Given the condition of the patients I refused to countenance manhandling them to get them out of the suits. I'll review that decision when I've had more time to assess the stability of their condition."
"What do you mean, failed to cut the fabric?"
The Lieutenant jumped in defensively. "It might look thin and flimsy, but it's fabricated from carbon nanotubes, a bit like buckypaper, but the molecular configuration is stronger. Same material that the capsule is constructed from. It would take a power saw to cut through it, and that wasn't an option the Doctor liked much. It's odd stuff. Like nothing on Earth."
"That's speculation," the Doctor dismissed him bluntly.
"And the rest of this discussion isn't?" The Lieutenant wasn't going to back down so easily.
Sierpinski held back and allowed the discussion to continue, she wanted to hear this. Letting them argue was the fastest way to find out what their problem with each other was.
The Doctor replied slowly and calmly. "What physiology I can see is completely normal. They have blood vessels where I would expect to find them, we've taken blood and hair samples, we're having those analyzed now. We should have an idea of what we're dealing with within the hour. But for the record, I expect those results to confirm we are dealing with one adult male aged around forty, and one adult female also aged around forty. Symptoms of concussion consistent with having been too close to an explosive shock-wave that knocked them off their feet, but they've already been treated for the damage that caused, internal bleeding has been stopped and they're in a coma."
"And you see that kind of medical intervention around here every day then?"
"It's a combination of a desperate act to save them on the part of the physician who preceded me, and some incredible good luck, but there is nothing supernatural or impossible about it."
Sierpinski listened in growing disbelief. She'd wanted to hear, now she didn't want to hear any more. "Whoa, reality check people. I don't believe you two are seriously having this argument."
The Lieutenant remained unabashed. "Unparalleled stealth technology. Capsules that shouldn't have survived the crash, but did. Fabric that defies explanation. Medical intervention that has kept these two patients alive completely against the odds. We are not dealing with any conventional crash landing here."
"Fine. Aliens then? Or time travelers from the future? Get a grip, Lieutenant." the Doctor dismissed the argument.
"I'm just saying we need to keep an open mind about the possibilities," the Lieutenant struck back.
Sierpinski's patience snapped. She'd had too little sleep to entertain the conversation any longer. Her so-called experts had apparently lost the plot. "Look people, this is descending into science fiction. No more speculation from anyone until we have more to go on. And let's try and be professional about this. Aliens? Lieutenant you've been watching too much Doctor Who."
She stared them down, almost daring them to challenge her further. Both remained silent.
"Recommendations?" She asked, trying to encourage sanity to retake the upper hand.
"There's a lot more we could do to investigate those suits they're wearing, if you're willing to take a few risks," the Lieutenant offered.
Sierpinski considered for a moment then shook her head, it was too early in the crisis to be taking that kind of gamble. "I don't take risks with people's lives, none whatsoever. Our best hope of finding out what this is all about is if we can talk to them. Keeping them alive is our first priority."
The Doctor simply nodded.
"Right." She concluded. "Lieutenant, how many people have access to this..." she glanced around, unimpressed at whoever had made the choice to bring the capsules here, "whatever this place is?"
"Eighteen," he answered, then tried to justify his orders against the slight her question had implied; "and I agree it's not ideal, we requisitioned the place because it was the closest useable facility to where the capsules landed. The owners have been evacuated, it's out of the way. I'd like to relocate us..."
His explanations were irrelevant, she stopped him. "It stays eighteen until we know more about what's going on. No one else is authorized to enter any of these buildings, post soldiers at the doors to keep it that way. I don't see a need for relocation at this time, right now the objective is to contain this incident. By the way, who do you report to Lieutenant?"
"Captain..."
She didn't wait for his answer. "Is your Major one of the eighteen?"
"No."
"Of the eighteen, who has the ranking seniority?"
"I do."
"Then, Lieutenant, contact your Major-general if you wish, but as of now I am placing you in charge of the military side of this investigation.""With all due respect..."
"Skip it. That will be my recommendation and the Major-general will be ordered to agree with me, he won't have a choice. In all discussions taking place outside of explicit team briefings here in this room, you will both refer to the two individuals we have in isolation as hikers in the area who were exposed to a level of radiation that exceeds recommended limits, their current prognosis being unknown."
"And with regards to the two empty capsules?" The Lieutenant queried, trying to make the best of his uncertainty over the unusual circumstances he found himself in.
Sierpinski thought for a moment. "Hikers who strayed into the area and may have been exposed. We may be able to enlist public help in tracking them down, rely on a fear of radiation to stop anyone getting too close. We can blame any oddness in their behavior as symptoms of radiation sickness. But I want them found, and I want to talk to them. And I want them unharmed." She stopped, then tried to suppress a smile as she continued none too seriously, "frankly I think you're talking bollocks, but my position here has its limits. I'm not authorized to start an interplanetary war."
"Understood," the Lieutenant replied uncomfortably.
"No one has owned up to this yet, but I'm expecting a call any time from some foreign embassy admitting they hadn't been kept informed of what their own government was secretly up to. Alien or not, they're not from around here. I know we aren't seeing evidence of radiation but I want you to assume there is a possibility of contamination. Lets not take any risks, not until I know what we're dealing with. ."
"Understood."
Elaine Sierpinski stared uncomfortably at the two of them. At least she understood the conflict between them now, and it wasn't quite as simple as she had figured it was either. Neither of them seemed the hysterical type, although the Lieutenant did seem a little too ready to jump to less than rational conclusions. She was going to have to pull files on these two people, find out exactly what their level of competence was. Something odd was going on here, that much at least was certain, but the explanation she was sure was going to turn out to be a lot more boring. In all likelihood this was going to turn out to be as meaningless an exercise as she had been afraid it would be when they'd woken her from her dreams.
Elizabeth watched as John carefully juggled his decaffeinated, skimmed milk latte and his new cellphone as he sat down at the table in the food court. She and Carol had beaten him there by several minutes and were already poring over a pile of newspapers they had picked up.
Shopping malls hadn't changed much. This one might be bigger, brighter, grander, and a lot more brash than any Elizabeth remembered, but it was still recognizably a shopping mall.
"Cellphones are definitely getting smaller." Carol observed, reaching for John's purchase.
"And cheaper, thankfully. They don't take cheques any more."
"What did you pay with?"
"The bank let me exchange the old withdrawn banknotes I had in my wallet for new ones. Not much, but it's enough to keep us going until we get to the vault. How well did you fare?"
Elizabeth held out a handful of coins, "these are the ones that nowhere will take any more. Thankfully the £1 coin is still the same. No, I didn't expect we'd be running into problems like this so quickly."
Less than an hour they'd been there and Elizabeth was struggling with the situation. It was nuts, this world had been her home for such a large part of her life, and it was tearing her apart that it should feel so totally alien to her now. It had only been fifteen years, how could so much have changed?
It didn't help Elizabeth that she could sense the others were dealing with the culture shock a lot better than she was. Of course Carol hadn't lived on Earth for over forty years, so she didn't really have much of a connection left with the place any more, and John had always been the practical one, he was way too rational to let any disconnect bother him.
The council had argued strongly against sending anyone on the mission whose emotional detachment might be in question. John had obviously conspired with Tikno to have the three of them assigned regardless. Elizabeth, however, was starting to see some wisdom in the council's reasoning. Not that she would have let go of the opportunity to come along, not under any circumstances, there was still too much unfinished business she needed to face up to.
She watched Carol inspecting the phone. Elizabeth could sense Carol was bemused by it more than anything, Carol had left Earth long before there even were mobile telephones.
"Did we really need this, or is this your old penchant for gadgets showing through?" Carol asked John. "It's not like we need telephones to stay in touch when we've got telepathy."
"We need to contact Chris, telepathy won't help there."
Carol was unconvinced."You could have used a pay phone."
"There are no pay phones any more, everyone uses these. Plus this is the primary means people use today to access the internet, which has grown a little since the one we knew. I admit this thing lacks the friendly user interface TIM has, but it does give us access to a lot of the same information."
Carol smiled. "But how well does it make strawberry milkshakes?"
"So you tried calling Chris yet?" Elizabeth interrupted. The banter was fine, but she was impatient, and John seemed to be hesitant to volunteer any information without prompting. That implied there was something he didn't want to have to tell them.
"All the dialing codes changed, I finally got through to what I think the number should be now, but it's number unavailable."
Carol shrugged, unsurprised. "There'll be current contact information in the vault, assuming he hasn't given up on us ever coming back."
"Not in his character to give up," John reassured her.
Elizabeth was still staring hesitantly at the cellphone. "Have you done a search for Stephen?" She found the question difficult to ask. It was her fault, it was all totally her fault.
"First thing I tried. No record." John replied softly.
"That's good, isn't it? If they'd found a body, it would have been reported." Carol suggested positively.
"If they'd identified him." John pointed out.
Carol wasn't going to be tempted into pessimism. "No, I'm happier knowing there's still a chance he's alive."
Elizabeth wanted desperately to believe Carol was right, but her hope was tempered by a heavy dose of realism. "As long as Chris managed to get the warning to him in time, assuming he made it back here at all. Either way, he's stuck in the Wastelands."
"But he'll still be alive." Carol pointed out.
John tried to keep things on track. "We'll know for sure soon enough, once we get to the vault, once we can contact Chris."
Elizabeth contemplated that if half the stories people told about the Wastelands were true, then Stephen would be better off dead, but that was a thought that she considered best kept to herself.
Not that there was anything they could have done differently. Everything had been so confused in the final days before the evacuation, there had been so little time to make plans. There hadn't been any way to contact Stephen and the other kid. The best they'd been able to do was to leave a message with Chris in the hope that there would be some way he could get to them in time to warn them to turn right around and head back to the Wastelands. Yes, the Wastelands were dangerous, everyone knew that, but at least there they stood a chance. If they'd stayed on Earth, that would have meant certain death. The odds favored the Wastelands, in a scary kind of way.
But Elizabeth couldn't get the feeling out of her head that it was entirely her fault he'd gone off to the Wastelands in the first place. She'd known Stephen since he was a twelve year old brat at the school she'd taught at all those years ago. She'd watched him grow up and then watched him leave home to start a new life on a distant alien world. It had all seemed to work out for a time, but Elizabeth had been the one to see that he'd never really been happy out there. He was drifting. He'd never fitted in, never settled down, and at some point he'd gone off the rails. They'd all been there for him, tried to help, but Elizabeth was the one who'd convinced him to come back to Earth, convinced him that there really was something he had to offer. And it had worked, it had worked brilliantly. He came back, he got himself involved with helping out new Tomorrow People, especially the awkward ones. He was starting to find his calling, he made friends with a bunch of the newer generation of Tomorrow People, people like Megabyte and Jade, people that the likes of John had always struggled to connect with. Finally Stephen had a purpose in life.
The problem was that Elizabeth's advice had worked too well. Stephen had been willing to do anything to help out. So one day when they'd been looking for someone to go on a journey to the mysterious Wastelands, well, Stephen had been first in line to volunteer. Then while he was gone they had evacuated the Earth, it hadn't been planned that way, but they'd effectively abandoned him.
So that was why she was back, looking for a way to assuage her guilt. She wasn't sure it was the most noble of reasons to have volunteered to help rescue the survivors from the space ship that had crashed on Earth the night before, but it was what she needed to do. She needed closure.
Elizabeth felt in danger of getting depressed. She needed herself brought back to reality, she needed to pay attention to what John was saying.
"Judging by the newspapers, looks like it's easy enough to know where we have to head though. Skelwith."
"No doubt at all." Carol concurred.
Elizabeth struggled to shake off her self doubt and made a real effort to keep the discussion practical."How do we get there without TIM to help navigate?"
"There are a couple of stone circles we can maybe use as a reference point, the place we need to end up at is right next to a lake, we should be able to focus in on that. And this iPhone has access to satellite maps, I think we can get to within a few yards of where we want to end up even without TIM."
"That sounds like hard work."
"Each time we jaunt somewhere new, we can manually program the belts to remember the location. It's not ideal, but we'll have to make do. Once we make contact with either the relay beacon or any survivors then things should become a whole lot simpler."
"We have to get to the belts first."
"Right, and things will go a whole lot more smoothly if we can get help. So, I propose we drink up, head for the vault, catch up with Chris, and then try and make it to Skelwith in time for lunch."
Carol still looked distracted, "I do hope Stephen is alright."
Elaine Sierpinski surveyed the makeshift office they'd found for her. Looked like it had formerly belonged to some kind of office administrator who treated the place like home. This was a family run business, it probably was just an extension of home for her. Assorted trinkets littered the desk, decorative mugs, several fluffy stuffed toy animals, countless photographs of young kids. It was space overwhelmed by someone else's personality.
That suited Sierpinski perfectly, it was good to feel like an intruder. This wasn't her office, she had no reason to want to feel comfortable there.
She stared at the kids in the photographs. Whoever sat at this desk normally had a real problem with the separation of home life and work life. Sierpinski very much preferred not to confuse those two aspects of her life. Okay, who was she trying to fool? She had no home life to confuse with work. Two cats and a string of failed relationships was the extent of her home life. Work was everything.
Which brought her mind back to the matter at hand. She'd been there one hour precisely, most of that spent organizing chains of communication. She was much more interested in the technical aspects of the situation, but she understood the need to back off and let her experts do the work.
Experts who were due to report about now. She poured another coffee, the office had been equipped with a very useful coffee maker. She had a feeling she was going to need something more effective than caffeine to keep her awake. Unfortunately there was no Peruvian marching powder around.
There was a knock on the open door and her two experts marched nervously into the room. Personnel reports had confirmed these were two of the best individuals in their respective fields, and yet they stood there looking uncomfortable, hesitant, like the two of them were completely out of their depth. Sierpinski had no time for their discomfort. "Get on with it. Start with the part you would rather avoid."
Doctor Vidal shrugged. "How weird shit do you want?"
"How weird shit does it get?" She dared him.
The Doctor smiled curtly. "Some odd immunoresponse anomalies that I can't explain. Not an immunodeficiency, more an overreaction to some fairly common antigens. Other than that, adult male, aged about forty, adult female, also aged about forty. Exactly as I expected."
"Immunoresponse anomalies. What's the danger of contamination?"
"I'd say the real danger is cytokine storm, I'm having a supply of Angiotensin II Receptor Blockers flown in just in case. It's not the most pressing of their problems right now."
"Lieutenant?"
"Analysis of the materials used in the construction of the capsules show an unusual isotopic signature, and there are radiation anomalies we didn't spot before."
"Okay, incompetence like that bothers me, are you saying there is a radiation danger now?"
"No, not at all. In fact quite the opposite, this isn't something we would ever have looked for, it was the isotopic signature that got us interested. Potassium traces, contained no measurable level of the Potassium-40 radioisotope, which is pretty impressive. So we did a check, the radiation levels we're seeing overall are significantly below what we'd expect."
"How do you explain that?" Sierpinski challenged.
"I don't, it violates the laws of physics as we understand them, and I'm not claiming that's impossible, just unlikely."
She stared at him, he wasn't joking. She had no particular doubts about the Lieutenant's professional ability, his personnel file had reassured her there, her only remaining doubts about him related to his tendency to let his enthusiasm get in the way of his reason when it came to reaching conclusions.
"Then in the complete absence of any reasonable explanations, how about you try wild speculation?"
The Lieutenant glanced across at the Doctor and hesitated. Clearly the two of them had already discussed this. "The capsules are of extra-terrestrial origin." the Lieutenant suggested.
"I said wild speculation, not geek fap fantasy," she retorted angrily. She'd asked for that, encouraged him to go off the deep end. She needed her experts needed to get back to doing their jobs, which was pulling the evidence together. Sierpinski could handle the wild speculation part herself, and she could do it without resorting to anything quite as looney tunes as suggestions of aliens.
She finished the last mouthful of her coffee and threw the paper cup in the trash. She had two of the top experts in their fields here and neither of them seemed to have much to offer her. Sierpinski tried to focus on a practical way forward that didn't make too many assumptions about what were clearly not straightforward circumstances.
"Any evidence they have a purpose in being here?"
The Doctor shrugged. "I don't think getting injured like that in their escape from some kind of explosion was intentional. No, I think their presence here is entirely accidental."
Sierpinski took a deep breath. "Wherever they came from, someone will be missing them. We need to know who they are. We need to talk to them."
"The two I am looking at aren't going to be talking any time soon."
"Just keep them alive, Doctor," she told him.
His silence in response reflected his distaste at being talked down to in such a patronizing way.
The briefing was over. Sierpinski concluded her instructions. "Regular reports, hourly from both of you. Rest is not authorized at this time. You're dismissed."
She held the Lieutenant back as the Doctor departed. She addressed him bluntly. "Lieutenant, I'm not happy with the pace of the analysis of those capsules. Whatever equipment you need, and I mean whatever, requisition it, I'll make it happen. As for the rest of your crap, seriously, I don't need a frustrated Doctor Who fan working for me. Stick to what you know about. Now get out of here."
She watched him march stiffly away. She hated berating anyone like that, but the guy had lost his objectivity and that wasn't going to help with getting the situation resolved. Sierpinski was no good at all at tolerating idiots like that, it left her in a foul mood. She wondered for a moment if it would be better off for everyone who had to deal with her if she just had the Lieutenant replaced, but she dismissed the idea almost as quickly, getting rid of him would make for too much paperwork. Soft hearted, bloody, forever giving losers a second chance. That was the story of her life.
Aliens... That would have made getting out of bed in the middle of the night worth it. There had been a time, once, back when her career had just been starting out, that she'd had dreams of the job throwing that kind of opportunity at her. That was a lot of the reason she'd given up on having much of a life outside of work, she hadn't wanted anything or anyone to be able to get in the way of her being able to seize opportunities like that. But as the years had passed she had come to accept that those dreams were nothing more than a crazy childhood fantasy, wanting it to be true didn't make it true, she'd learned that the hard way. It was, she considered, a lesson the Lieutenant could do with learning as well. Funny though, how she still avoided having a life outside of work, just in case.
Sierpinski looked at her watch. She had an hour to wait before she'd get another report from her experts. That was time she needed to spend focussed on two survivors from the crash. Survivors who had been in good enough shape to walk away from it. They were on foot, they couldn't have wandered very far and the area was completely sealed off, it wasn't going to take an hour for the search effort to pick them up. Then Sierpinski would be able to get a few answers.
Bloody aliens, she laughed to herself.
"Excuse me, sir, room three is available."
"Thanks," John acknowledged the clerk behind the counter who had called across, then nodded at Carol and Elizabeth to follow him.
The place was more than a little seedy, it was not situated in a part of London they wanted to hang around in any longer than they had to. The management obviously tried to keep it somewhat decent in there, but they couldn't clean away the decay. The paint was peeling, the metal work in there was scuffed, it was still evident in places where graffiti had been painted over. It felt like only the grime was still holding the place together.
John, Carol and Elizabeth shuffled themselves in to the viewing room and locked the door behind them. The room was small and bare, empty except for the bench table built into the wall. John place the deposit box on the chipped fiber board table, it was one of the larger box sizes the place offered, but only as large as was practical for one person to carry. That had been intentional, it had only really been intended for one person to collect.
John hesitated. ~What do you see?~ he asked telepathically.
~No surveillance cameras, no listening devices that I can detect, no one within earshot,~ Elizabeth confirmed.
~Right, but let's avoid talking out loud unless we have to.~ John answered back.
He watched Carol take a key from her pocket and proceed to open the deposit box. With a smile she reached in and pulled out an old, slightly worn, black belt. John shared her sense of nostalgia, it was a long time since he'd seen or needed a belt like that. It was large, the strap too wide to be of any practical value, it looked more like a fashion accessory. The buckle consisted of a strange arrangement of black and white tessera, fastened with a clasp.
Carol quickly slipped the belt around her waist. ~Now I'm starting to feel less vulnerable,~ she joked. She handed identical belts to Elizabeth and John, and sat the remaining ones on the table beside the box.
John in the meantime had reached in and pulled out a folder. He flipped it open to reveal a small stack of handwritten notes. This was the part he hadn't been looking forward to, the moment of truth.
He'd had his argument with the council, then followed up with a private discussion with Tikno afterwards. The council had willingly authorized the rescue mission, but they hadn't wanted John, Carol or Elizabeth to be on the team that was sent. Tikno had been able to call in a few favors allowing the three of them to secretly switch places with the people who had ultimately been selected for the mission, right under the noses of the council. There would be hell to pay when they got back, but John intended to take full personal responsibility, Carol, Elizabeth and Tikno had nothing to worry about.
All so that he could take a side trip to this dodgy secure storage facility to try and get the answer to a question that he hadn't been able to get out of his mind for fifteen years. It was exactly the reason the council hadn't wanted to send a team of people who could end up emotionally distracted, but John was a lot more confident than the council was of his ability to take the opportunity to try and find out what had happened to Stephen without risking his objectivity, without losing sight of the fact that their primary mission was to rescue the survivors of the crash.
He took the letter from the top of the pile and opened it. For a moment he was reluctant to even look at it, knowing the answer could easily be one that didn't want to hear.
~This one's from 1999,~ he started to read.
He tried to keep his emotions in check. He knew Carol and Elizabeth could sense his reactions, he didn't want to hurt them, but the pervading frustration, disappointment and sadness he felt as he read were things that were hard to conceal. He could sense that they were desperate to know what the letter said, but hesitant to ask. He skimmed through to the end then paused. He'd had to push so hard for the mission to even go ahead, he'd known the chances had been slim, he knew the risks they were taking in even being there were disproportionate, but they'd had to try. Now it looked like he would have to break it to the others that their efforts had been in vain. He wasn't sure how the others were going to take that Carol in particular would take it hard. She'd always looked on Stephen as the little brother she'd never had. John desperately leafed through the other letters looking for something to give him better news, but there was nothing. The news about the other kid was worse. He wasn't used to being diplomatic, he prided himself on speaking his mind, but this once he knew he was going to have to speak gently.
~Stephen never made it back from the Wastelands.~
Carol had swallowed back a gasp and had turned to face away from the others. She was staring silently at the wall.
Elizabeth walked over and put a hand on Carol's shoulder to console her. She looked back at John. ~That's just the first letter, isn't it possible?...~
~If Stephen had made it back, the first thing he would have done was head back here, there would be a note from him, something. I'm sorry. He's still in the Wastelands. Alive or dead, we don't know.~ John tried not to sound snippy, but he was angry. Angry with himself mainly. Angry for allowing the three of them to get their hopes up as much as they had. Was it then cruel to try and leave them with some hope left? ~Last report says he was staying behind to look into something they'd found there, so there's still a chance, let's not lose our perspective here. We knew coming back here to look for him was a long shot. Stephen was a tough kid, as tough as they come. If anyone can survive the Wastelands, he can. I'm not about to give up on him just yet.~
Carol smiled weakly. She was clearly still upset, but John's confident reassurance had helped some. ~Yes, of course, you're right. We won't ever give up hope.~
~What about Megabyte?~ Elizabeth asked, she could sense there was something John still wasn't telling them.
~Megabyte got out of the Wastelands safely, there's a note here from Chris about him. He was taken ill within twenty-four hours of getting back, Chris never managed to catch up with him., so he didn't get the warning. There's no news of what happened to him after that, he vanished.~
~There doesn't need to be any further news.~ Elizabeth spoke the words John had been avoiding. ~None of us can survive the infection. If he didn't get the warning, then....~ she couldn't finish the sentence.
Carol shook her head, realizing her own grief was perhaps not entirely in proportion. ~That news will upset more than a few people when we get back,~ she managed to stammer out.
John flicked through to the final letter. He desperately wanted to find something positive, something to take the edge off the disappointment. There was nothing.
There was worse than nothing.
John gave up trying to be defensively optimistic. ~I'm also worried about Chris. He hasn't been here in three years, and the last number he left, it's the same one I couldn't get through to when we arrived. The number is disconnected, he hasn't lived there in years.~
~This isn't a homecoming, it's a nightmare.~ Carol stated, trying not to sound quite as lost as she felt.
~This whole world was a nightmare in the final days. That's why we had to leave.~ John reminded her. He was aware that they'd all spent the best part of the last fifteen years trying to block out memories of just how bad it had been back then, but right now there was simply no hiding from all that.
Elizabeth had grabbed another folder from the box and had tipped out an assortment of cards and documents onto the table. All that they could do now was to throw all their efforts into completing their mission and getting out of there. ~Everything appears to be valid still. No cheque books, though.~
John stared for a moment, wasn't accustomed to Elizabeth being the one to remind him of the mission. But she was right, they had to keep going, four lives still depended on them. Just like the old days, never time to stop and wonder where their lives were going, always one more alien invasion to fight off, or another mad scientist hell bent on taking over the world to foil.
He'd never once complained about that life though, never once contemplated giving up and walking away, that just wasn't in his nature. He'd always had to be the responsible one, at the age of fifteen he'd taken on the job of guiding humanity towards its future, and he'd fully accepted that in doing so he was giving up any chance of having much of a life of his own. He'd made his choice, he couldn't be bitter about that, but at the same time he couldn't help but wonder whether it had really been necessary to give his life up so completely. At the time he'd been afraid that if he had delegated too much of that responsibility then the world would have fallen apart. Well, in the end the world fell apart anyway.
After that he'd dedicated himself to serving the council, all he had now was his work. He'd never settled down, it had never felt like a priority. But the truth was that he'd never been able to let go of world he'd left behind. He was clinging on to an empty hope, the hope that he could somehow still fix everything that had gone wrong. Coming back had forced him to confront the uncomfortable reality that that wasn't ever going to happen. He knew now that when this mission was over it would be an ending in more ways than one. Everything had changed, the world had moved on, and it was time he moved on as well.
~People don't use cheque books any more. Chris mentioned that in a letter dated about seven or eight years ago, they use these debit cards almost exclusively now.~ John explained, flipping back through the folder to remind himself.
~Makes me feel so, twentieth century.~ Carol observed, her mind still clearly elsewhere.
John tried to follow Elizabeth's lead, the survivors from the crash were all that mattered now. ~We have what we need. Debit cards, identity cards...~
~Identity cards? What is this, some kind of police state now?~ Elizabeth asked.
~They aren't calling it that, but it does very much look that way from what Chris describes,~ John conceded.
Carol finally allowed herself to be drawn back to focus on the mission. ~The debris, which means the capsules, fell near to Skelwith in the Lake District. So what do we do, head up there and pretend we're going camping?~
~Camping?~ Elizabeth challenged. ~Forty years ago we might have gotten away with that.~
John had to agree. ~Now we'd just look like creepy old hippies who never managed to grow up.~
~Pensioners on a bus outing from the old folks home then,~ Carol tried.
~Might work,~ John considered.
Carol looked at him dischuffed. ~I wasn't serious.~
~We can worry about the cover story on the way. We have thirty-two hours remaining.~ Elizabeth reminded them.
John nodded in agreement They were already wasting time. ~Elizabeth, make a report back to the rescue ship, let them know what's going on. In the light of the news you're giving them I know you'll get arguments, but no one else is to come down here. No one at all. We're already risking enough lives as it is.~
Elizabeth was doubtful. ~I'll try.~
They distributed what they needed of the credit cards and identity cards and stacked what was left back in the box.
~You think we should leave a note?~ Carol asked.
John contemplated for a moment. ~We need to head back here to put everything back as it was before we leave. I think we can hold off adding any message ourselves until then.~
~We won't really know what to say until then. We need to update the contact details at the very least, no point in him trying to contact Chris on that telephone number.~ Elizabeth agreed.
~And what are we supposed to do if he can't contact Chris on any telephone number?~ Carol questioned.
~We do what we should have done in the first place, the warning should have been written down, not just left with Chris.~
~We did think about doing that, but it seemed so impersonal at the time,~ Elizabeth pointed out.
~And if we'd done it the impersonal way, Megabyte might have survived.~ John stated bluntly.
Carol sighed. ~I know, you're right, I just don't like the idea of sending Stephen back to the Wastelands like that, with only words on a piece of paper to say goodbye...~
~If something's happened to Chris then we have no other choice.~
~If something's happened to Chris then we have an even bigger problem. Chris is our only remaining link to this place,~ Elizabeth reminded them both. ~Without Chris we can't keep bank accounts and addresses active, we can't keep identity cards up to date, and in this world without those things, it doesn't look like anyone can function. These expire in four years. What do we do then?~
John wasn't in the mood to speak softly as he locked the deposit box and got ready to return it to the vault. He had one last idea he would pursue, but beyond that it was time they all faced up to the truth. They'd had a dream of guiding the Earth to a better future and none of them had never lost sight of that hope, even as fate had conspired to lead them to a life lived far, far away from their home world. But humanity wasn't going anywhere. Their sacrifice had been for nothing.
~I don't think we had any expectation we were ever coming back again after this. If we can't make contact with Chris, that just makes it certain. Life is too short to be dwelling on the past. We held out our hope about coming back here all this time for one reason and one reason alone, to find out what happened to Stephen. For better or for worse, now we know. Once we've completed this mission, we're finished here. Forever.~
Carol looked close to tears.
Elizabeth frowned at John, for Carol's sake he could have been a little less blunt.
John compounded his lack of tact. ~There's nothing tying us to this place, no reason for us to care what happens here any more. There are no Tomorrow People left on this planet, our dreams of changing the world are dead.~
Spin Me Another Cover Story
Damon loaded up the tray with more tomato ketchup and headed back the table. Plastic table, plastic ketchup, plastic service station. Anonymous and soulless. That worked with his mood right now, it was too early in the morning to want to deal with anything more challenging. He was already frustrated enough for the day and he hadn't even had breakfast yet.
On top of that, somehow Jake always found a way to get him doing all the dirty work. He was the one who had to go up to the counter, order breakfast, get the bloody knives and forks, carry the bloody tray to the table, while all bloody Jake had to do was sit there talking away on his cellphone. Just because the guy had a knee that was held together with bloody superglue and elastic bands.
Alright, it wasn't Jake's fault. The guy couldn't walk properly, needed a walking stick, there was no way he could handle that and carry a tray at the same time. And as obstinate as the guy was, Damon could see the frustration really did get to him at times. Even if he was equally quite capable of milking his misfortunes for the sympathy.
Damon sat down and grabbed for his Egg McMuffin as he listened to Jake try to convince his long suffering best friend at school to collude in a cover up.
"Mike, yeah, look, you know all those favors you owe me, on account of that t-shirt thing... No, I'm not ever going to forget that... Well you know how sometimes the favors get pretty odd and it's kind of like, don't ask any questions... No, I'm planning on getting myself shot again... I need you to cover for me. If anyone like my parents, or Kristen's parents, or Damon's parents come asking, I'm at Hawley Lake, waterskiing, and you did speak to me today about it. Anyone else asks, particularly anyone military looking, or just anyone behaving oddly that you don't know, just deny you even know me... Yeah, exactly like with the reporter who crashed the party... And spread the word, works better if you guys get your story consistent... No, I'm not in trouble. Not yet anyway... Yeah, I'll call you back when I get the all clear... No, Kristen isn't interested in shagging you... You never give up do you... Later, mate."
Jake was in his element, he was enjoying himself. The extent to which he was enjoying himself was not impressing Damon.
It was 7:00 AM and they'd stopped at the service station on the M40 just past Oxford. They'd been driving North since a little after 5:00 AM and had stopped for coffee, breakfast, and a chance for some damage control. Damon was trying to read a newspaper they had just bought, Jake was making a few telephone calls to try and establish the illusion they were still safely in Eastleigh with Kristen.
"No, mom, we're in the South. No where near where the news said that nuclear powered satellite fell out of orbit and crashed... No, I'm not letting Damon lead me astray... Yes, I know you're disappointed that I'm not being led astray... No, the only dangerous thing I have planned this weekend is waterskiing. No, I know you don't like that but... yes, I will be really careful. No, I know. I'll see you Monday evening. Yes, I will. Bye." Jake ended the call.
"You sure that was a good idea?"
"I didn't have to tell a single lie. We are in the South still, technically, and we aren't planning to go do anything dangerous. Stupid and irresponsible maybe, but I don't think it's all that dangerous. Anyway I'd rather tell her that now while it's still true, otherwise she'll call later when it isn't true any more, and I just don't want to have to deal with that."
Damon could never work out how the guy managed to keep all the different cover stories consistent in his head. No doubt about it, Jake had a talent for bullshit.
"So how does the rest of this deception work?"
"Fake note, which you did a pretty good job of faking I have to say, left with Kristen's mom, on the hall table, where no one but Kristen could have left it, saying she was leaving really early this morning and didn't want to disturb them. She'll believe it because that isn't the first time Kristen has done that, and because it's easy for her to call Kristen to confirm, which she will because the note is kind of vague as to what her plans for the day are."
"You work this out or make it up?"
"A bit of both. Point is, if we can get in touch with Kristen first then everything will work out. If we can't but if Kristen catches on quickly enough when her mom does call, again everything works out. The chances favor everything working out, and if it doesn't, we're in no worse crap than we already are."
Damon hesitated to point out that it was that same twisted concept of confidence that had got the guy shot in the knee. But for once Damon wasn't going to argue, he was too worried about Kristen, they were doing the right thing.
"Worry about what it costs you if you do get caught, never underestimate the consequences, and consider whether what you were doing was worth it, never overestimate the benefits," he contemplated out loud.
Jake smirked. "Wow. Did you just actually say something intelligent for a change?"
"Something Nick said to me, more than once," Damon admitted. Nick who was now a peace worker in a war zone. Damon wasn't sure if that made the advice seem all that sensible after all.
"Yeah, figures. I nearly overestimated you for a moment."
"Piss off."
"Here's the flourish though." Jake grinned and made another call. "Hello, Mrs Walker... This is Jake Laris. Kristen is supposed to be on her way to meet us, and I tried calling, but I can't seem to get through. I don't know if her phone is turned off or what, but, I know it sounds silly, but I just wanted to check I was calling the right number. What exactly is it?... Yes?... Right, no, that's the number I was trying... Okay, no, I'll keep calling her. You got the note?... Right, yes, I'll tell her, make sure she calls you back, absolutely... No, I don't think she is... Yes, I'm certainly planning on going waterskiing... I know, that was just last week... No, I didn't get the impression she had any plans to go waterskiing at all... That's alright, that's fine. We'll be back pretty late I think, but don't worry, she'll call you long before then... Okay. Thanks, bye."
"You never can leave it to chance can you?"
"Not if I can avoid it. The shit will still hit the fan if we can't get her back in time, but I just bought us twenty four hours."
"Which is not all that long, so, we need to get out of here, keep going."
"They've got the news on, I just want to see what the latest update on the breaking story is."
"What exactly are they going to say about this crashed satellite that you think might actually help?"
"I don't know, but we know it's a bullshit story, so whatever they say, we know that isn't what's happening. Might help."
"I hate your logic. I ever tell you that?"
"You seem to have a fixation about telling me that, little boy."
"Good." Damon knew there wasn't any point trying to argue with Jake, it rarely achieved anything.
Kristen opted to remain silent.
The guy hadn't spoken much, hadn't spoken anything she'd understood. It sounded like he was talking a completely alien language, which was very likely what it was. There was no way he could have known any Earth languages, the guy hadn't even known which planet he was crashing into. She studied the speech patterns, they had something of the rhythm of Japanese, but it meant nothing in Japanese that Kristen knew, the words themselves had more of an Arabic sound to them, she was pretty sure it wasn't all that Arabic either. It did sound pleasantly poetic and mysterious though, she liked it.
"Gae sir rah ud an-gigir ki tud." he said, with an expression on his face like he'd made some confession and was anxiously looking for either her approval or forgiveness. The expression faded as he either worked out she had no clue what he was saying, or at the realization this was no time for being confessional. For all his attempts at being polite there was something distant about him, he seemed almost afraid of her.
He really was acting a bit, well, alien.
He was a bloody alien. It was easy to forget that at times, incredibly easy on account of how he wasn't green and tentacled even though common sense screamed at her that he should be. As far as Kristen was concerned, all aliens ought to look more, well, alien. In a way she was kind of disappointed.
She smiled back at him blankly. For all she knew he was feeling awkward about asking her where the nearest toilets were.
They'd been able to talk fine the night before. Kristen had pretty quickly concluded that it was somehow tied up with the telepathy. The guy was definitely telepathic, for a start he'd sent out that telepathic distress call, and now she thought about it, she was pretty sure they hadn't spoken a word on the flying saucer at all, at least not out loud. Right now, though, she was pretty shaken up from the crash landing and she was finding it tough to do anything telepathic. Right now she couldn't understand a word the alien guy was saying. Kristen spoke seven languages, but none of them was alien.
She wondered if her aptitude with languages was linked with her ability to read minds. She'd been able to read minds as long as she could remember. Telepathy had to be able to bypass the language barrier somehow, which was actually pretty cool if she thought about it. It would be even cooler when her head was working and she was able to talk to the guy again.
It was a little over seven hours since they'd landed. Right after the guy had found her they'd headed away from where the search was going on. They'd avoided the helicopters, hiked for about half an hour in the dark, not really able to see where they were going, before having to give up because the both of them were just too exhausted to go on. Hadn't needed language to work that out.
The guy had been on edge since they'd arrived. More so than he had been up on the flying saucer. She'd have thought he was going to be more calm having survived the crash, but the encounter with the people hunting them seemed to have sent the guy into a downward spiral.
Finally they'd found an old stone hut, it smelled a bit in there, but it kept them sheltered. They'd managed a few hours sleep, lying on the straw, hoping they didn't get molested by sheep, but they couldn't stay there any longer. Not that Kristen exactly had any clue why they were moving or what their objectives were. That wasn't exactly something they were capable of discussing just yet. All she knew for sure was that getting caught by the military wasn't going to be a good idea. Kristen had seen all the movies, aliens always ended up dissected or experimented on.
And that could easily be Kristen's fate as well, she wasn't exactly human either. Damon had been caught and experimented on once, Kristen had read all about that in the newspapers at the time. The guy still had trouble dealing with it, she'd caught an image in Damon's mind once when Jake had reminded him about it. Whatever the guy had been through had been far worse than the newspapers had ever reported.
She didn't much like the idea of any of that being the fate for the cute alien guy she'd met. Leastways, not unless she was the one who could keep him locked up to experiment on, she contemplated completely inappropriately.
The alien guy. It was so impersonal calling him that. Sure, she wanted to be able to talk to him, but right now she would settle for just finding out his name.
It was starting to get light out, looked like it was going to be another sunny day. They needed to get moving, Kristen had to get them somewhere they could melt into the background. If she could get them both some less conspicuous clothes then it ought to be easy to pass themselves off as just another couple of foreign tourists. She still had her wallet, her cellphone, her credit cards, money wasn't going to be a problem. The phone she had checked a couple of times but it was still failing to get a signal, not that she had any clue of numbers to call either Jake, Damon or even Misako, she hadn't ever needed them. An omission she planned to fix as soon as she caught up with them again.
Kristen stood up and brushed herself down. She didn't want to know what she was brushing off. The place smelled of sheep shit, she really must have been exhausted when they'd got there not to notice that. She probably now smelled of sheep shit herself, that would make melting into the background an interesting challenge. That was something to worry about later, right now it was time to go. She pointed at the doorway but had no clue what to say.
"Gae sugu-Ges-sur." The guy gestured at her to stay where she was, that much was understandable. Wet, water, one of the words was something about being wet.
Whatever he'd said, Kristen stayed put. She figured it was chivalrous of him to go outside to check the way was safe, but given that he was the alien and she was the local, it would likely have been much safer for her to have done the reconnaissance.
She stared after him. His face looked red and raw, like he'd caught the sun, which wasn't all that likely considering it had been dark the whole time he had been there. What was really weird was that he'd looked a lot worse than that the night before. Up on the flying saucer he'd looked badly burned, his face all scarred. Now there was no sign of the burns at all, and no sign of scarring either, just an overdone suntan. The speed with which he'd healed didn't exactly seem normal. Well, not normal for humans anyway. She had no clue what was normal for aliens.
He was gone three or four minutes, his absence hadn't worried her. She didn't figure he was going to abandon her there, he didn't seem like that kind of guy, and she was a pretty good judge of character when it came to stuff like that. There was also the fact he'd left his sports bag there. Alright, it wasn't a sports bag, she wasn't really sure what the hell it was, but he carried it over his shoulder like a sports bag, so that was the closest thing she could compare it to. Anyway, this was the first time he'd let it out of his sight. He'd actually slept clinging on to it, so whatever it was, it was important to him. He'd be back for it.
She could sense him out there, vaguely, he hadn't actually gone that far. He seemed to be stopped somewhere, she couldn't get any sense of what he was up to. And it was very cool that she could sense him, because that was a good sign she was starting to get her strength back.
"Gae barsal ni-RI, Gae nu-igi-sig", he noted as he stuck his head back through the doorway.
Kristen had the disturbing impression he had said something about worrying sheep, which had to be wrong, but it was better than not sensing any meaning at all to what he was saying.
"We need to get going. I don't know about you, but, I desperately need to get something to eat," she observed, more out of hope than expectation that he would understand.
"Gu sukur?" he asked.
Kristen stared intently at him. That was something about food. Not only did she have half a clue, it sounded like he had picked up on some of what she was saying as well.
"Gu sukur ana? Mea?" he pointed out.
Kristen had to concede the guy had a point. She had no answer, she had no clue what or where they could find anything to eat. She was hoping in the light of day they could find their way to a road or something. Sooner or later they would run into someone and she could ask directions. The Lake District wasn't exactly the middle of nowhere, her experience was that you couldn't walk half an hour there without running into other tourists.
"Look, seriously, I'm so hungry I could eat a horse. Believe me, I'll find us something."
"Zae sag-eme-sig-gu Gae sud-sa," the guy said with a tone of incredulity.
He was making out like he hadn't understood the expression, but the guy had known exactly what she'd meant. He was just demonstrating an ability to be infuriatingly sarcastic.
~You don't actually eat the horses,~ she pointed out. There were a dozen questions in her head she wanted answers to, she had no clue how to approach starting to ask them. She figured on just blasting them out when the conversation gave her any opportunity. Like now. ~So you know what horses are? Even though you've never seen one.~ Kristen enquired.
The guy was hesitant. ~I see the picture in your mind when you talk about one. Four legs, generally not eaten. Odd looking things.~
Kristen smiled. Now that the telepathy seemed to be working again she figured things would very quickly get a lot easier. She peered out through the doorway where the hillside was rapidly getting lighter and cautiously headed out. It was still a touch on the misty side, the sun still low enough that the mountains in the distance were all in silhouette. The dew on the grass looked almost icy, she figured she ought to be freezing cold as flimsy as the suit she was wearing was, but she actually felt pleasantly warm. She could see much from where she was, the view across the valley was obscured. She hiked quickly up the ridge looking for a vantage point from which to try and get her bearings. Down towards the valley she could see a road, more importantly she could see a bus stop in the distance. This was going to be a lot easier than she had thought.
She started to lead the way down the hillside. The alien guy was following her, not talking much. This was her chance to start throwing more questions at him, starting with the one that was winding her up the most. ~So how about you start by telling me your name?~
~He of rare wisdom.~
"Kal-umun," she tried to say it out loud. She did a better job than he'd managed with her name. It was funny the way the telepathy translated the meaning of the name like that. Was that a conscious thing? The 'rare wisdom' thing sounded pretty cool. Kristen found herself wondering what her name sounded like in translation. ~I think my name means 'anointed one'.~
~Ahhhh. Okay. Good.~
~What?~ The guy's attitude to her had shifted quite abruptly there. He seemed a little more relaxed now.
~It helps to know that. See, in my language it means 'she who is a mighty temple to pissing guys off'. I think I'd definitely stick with your language on that one,~ he grinned nervously for the first time since they had met.
Well, she'd learned one thing. She liked his sense of humor.
Jake and Damon had finished breakfast and were once again heading North. The initial news reports that had come in overnight about the crashed satellite had been vague, but there hadn't been any doubt it had to be connected with Kristen's flying saucer. The suggestion of fragments hitting the ground somewhere in the Lake District seemed had also seemed consistent with the idea of there having been escape pods. If Kristen was still alive then that was the most logical place to find her. So on that principle they had jumped in the car to head North, even if they hadn't known exactly where North they were headed. Jake had no plan of course, but he didn't figure this was going to be outside of his ability to handle however little of a plan he had.
The stop for breakfast had been a productive one. The story was all over the front pages of the morning papers, and the news on the TV had helped fill them in on a lot of useful detail. They were reporting some military satellite, a relic from the cold war of the last century, had malfunctioned and crashed out of orbit. Mostly it had burned up, but a few radioactive fragments had hit the ground near Ambleside in the Lake District. There were no reports of anyone injured, no reports of any contamination, they were pretty sure it was all safe, but they were keeping the area cordoned off until they had done a thorough search of the area and were completely certain there was no further risk. Anyone in the area who had seen any fragments hit the ground was encouraged to report the location of what they'd seen to the police, but advised to stay away. If they had come into contact with any fragments they were advised that while the danger was not great, they should get themselves checked out by a doctor.
Jake had been pretty impressed by the cover story, almost up to his own high standards. It wasn't extreme enough to get people suspicious. It didn't blatantly overstate the dangers in a way that got people curious, it downplayed risks in a way that was more likely to play to the hysteria of people wanting to believe the danger was greater than they were admitting. It was a great story to tell if you really did want to keep people away. So now Jake had a specific destination in mind; Ambleside.
Maybe there would be some way to go waterskiing in the Lake District. He was still determined to fit that in somehow, he still had a point to prove to the Doctors who'd advised against him doing that quite so soon. Same Doctors that only a few weeks earlier had been trying to tell him he'd never be able to walk without crutches. What the hell did they know? Their problem was that they were constrained by what was humanly possible, and to Jake that simply made it a challenge.
The doctors had been good for one thing though, the level of compensation he'd been able to claim for his injuries had been based on their overly pessimistic evaluation of his condition, which had meant he'd picked up an excessively generous wodge of cash. They'd finally paid up just after the inquest, so two weeks ago Jake had bought himself a car.
It wasn't the coolest of cars, his mother had stopped him from spending as much of the money as he had wanted on it. She had insisted he keep the bulk of the cash for his college fund, and he would have argued, but he could see the value of having more money at college for drink and drugs. So the car was small, unassuming, second hand of course, but in pretty decent shape. And, as had been pointed out, it wasn't like his penis was so small he needed a flash car to compensate.
The remaining driving lessons he'd got as a birthday present that summer had finally been rescheduled, and four days ago he'd passed his test. He'd been pretty confident he would, the lessons had gone pretty well, and he'd had lots of additional practice driving stolen ambulances and illegally driving Mike's car over the summer. Driving Mike's car on the way to getting himself shot. He reluctantly conceded there was a certain amount of poetic justice there.
The best part of having the car, though, was going to be the convenience. The convenience of not having to of not having to blackmail his friend Mike every time he wanted a lift anywhere. It was almost as great as being able to teleport, and given the limitations of teleportation, most of the time the car was going to be a hell of a lot more practical. Like now, there was no way they could simply jaunt their way to Ambleside. By car, judging by the map, and assuming they didn't run into roadworks, which was a pretty big assumption, he figured they should make it there by mid morning.
Jake drove on and listened as Damon tried calling Kristen.
"No answer," Damon gave up. "No surprise really. Not the best cellphone reception in that part of the country."
Jake was amused. "Even the idea of calling her on the cellphone seems pretty strange, I got so used to telepathy, it's easy to forget the old fashioned alternatives."
"If she's that far North, she might just be out of range for telepathy as well. We never really established what the limits were there," Damon considered.
"True. Although she was able to get in touch from that escape pod in orbit, a lot further than the North of England."
"More interesting than that is how the hell she managed to jaunt into orbit. That's just so far beyond what we've been thinking we were capable of."
"Don't know, clearly we're capable of a lot more than we realize, it'll be interesting to ask about Kristen that when we find her." One of many questions they now had, Jake contemplated. There would be quite a few questions about aliens as well.
"You think she's okay?" Damon sounded unsure about asking the question.
Jake was more confident. "After driving over three hundred miles to find her? She bloody well better be."
~So, 'nu ug-aya'?~ Kristen had already decided the eighth language she would learn was going to be alien.
~'Ug-aya' is to cry out in anger. 'Nu' is a negative imperative.~
~So, what you said to me was 'don't scream'?~
~Near enough.~
That made sense. Which was good, because little else did right now. Like exactly what she was doing strolling along a hillside footpath in the late autumn sun on a Saturday morning, chatting conversationally with an alien. Well, Kristen was the one chatting conversationally, she was pretty impressed with how calm and rational she'd managed to remain considering the situation. Kal, on the other hand, was only hesitantly responding to her questions and he hadn't asked any of his own. She didn't exactly blame him, she could sense how much he was distracted by his awareness of the total deep shit he was in. The guy had just bailed out of a flying saucer that was about to crash into the Earth, he was understandably a little bit jumpy. She really felt sympathy for him.
The conversation stopped as they reached the road. It hadn't taken more than twenty minutes to get to the bus stop, but it was already clear that waiting for a bus wasn't an option. There were helicopters circling with some regularity and in that twenty minutes they'd already had to dodge two military patrols. There were no cars on the road, no other tourists. It hadn't taken much for Kristen to work out that the area would have been sealed off, and it wasn't exactly likely the busses would be running under those circumstances.
The timetable at the bus stop had been very useful though. From it Kristen had been able to work out where they were, which direction the nearest town, Ambleside, was in, and that it was a fifteen minute bus ride away. From that she could guess at how far they would have to walk before they could get something to eat. Assuming Ambleside wasn't sealed off as well, but she figured she'd worry about that problem later.
Kal had watched bemused as she'd tried calculating the distances. ~I get how the number system works, weird, but hey. Two and a half miles to Ambleside. But how far is a mile?~
Kristen was intrigued by the question. ~Telepathy doesn't help there does it?~
~No. No common point of reference.~
~Common reference.~ Kristen thought for a moment. ~Speed of light. 186,000 miles per second.~
~Right.~ Kal stared blankly back at her for a moment. ~How long is a second?~
Kristen smiled and took off her watch. She handed it to Kal who stared at it a few moments before handing it back.
~Sixty seconds in a minute?~
~Right.~
~That's a unit that makes sense to me,~ he observed. He unpinned what looked like a small circular disk from his environment suit and appeared to use it to perform a few calculations of his own. ~That's about a forty-five minute walk then, given the uneven terrain.~
~Longer if we stand here talking,~ Kristen pointed out.
The guy shrugged and headed off walking along the road. Kristen shook her head. There were moments that the guy just didn't get it. He was nervous, No, he wasn't just nervous he was scared shitless, and yet he had no concept of the dangers of walking brazenly along the middle of the road like that. Kristen caught up with him and guided him off to the side. ~You looking for trouble? We walk through the trees.~ That way was going to be a lot slower, Kristen accepted, but it was also going to be a lot safer.
~How do you live like this, always hiding?~ Kal asked hesitantly.
Kristen didn't answer immediately, she could sense a deeper meaning to the question that she wasn't quite grasping. ~I'm not always hiding,~ she replied defensively as they weaved through the forest. Spoken not very convincingly, she conceded, she hadn't even managed to convince herself.
Kal said nothing. He'd clammed up again.
Kristen reflected on the situation for a moment. Did she really need to hide? Was she just being stupid? Then again she'd just escaped from a flying saucer and there were soldiers everywhere, maybe a bit of caution wasn't such a bad thing. But that wasn't what Kal had meant. He understood the need for caution, she'd sensed the soldiers bothered him the couple of times they'd had to dodge them, but she was starting to realize that he was more afraid of her than he was of them. If he didn't trust her then they were going to have problems, but she had no clue what his issue was. She couldn't think of a delicate way to phrase the question, so she came straight out with it. ~If I freak you out so much, why are you following me?~
Kal allowed his facade of self control to slip a little. ~Because I'm alone on an alien planet, surrounded by primitives with guns, and I don't know what the hell else to do. Satisfied?~
Kristen was hit with the intensity of the emotion. The guy felt so, so alien in that moment, and yet his fears and anxieties were really not that different from hers at all.
~You want to talk about it?~ She hesitated, then continued before he had a chance to reply. ~Don't answer that, I shouldn't ask questions like that, I'm sorry.~ Kristen glanced sideways at him, there were clearly a whole bunch of things going on here that he wasn't telling her, and she wasn't sure she wanted to know.
Kal finally found the courage to confront her with the question that had been bothering him. ~What happens to me when we get to this place you're heading to?~
It wasn't a question question Kristen had been expecting, it wasn't a question Kristen had an answer to. ~I don't know. Ever since we got here I've just been running. I hadn't stopped to try and think what happens next. I just wanted to get us somewhere safe first. I figured I would worry about what happens next when we didn't have to run any more.~
She could sense her reply had reassured Kal a little, but he was still nervous, reluctant to continue. Finally he spoke again. ~I just want to know if I'm making a mistake coming with you. If I should make a run for it and take my chances on my own.~ He stopped walking. ~Look, I'm not stupid. I've seen pictures of guns before. This is a closed world isn't it? Whatever you did, whatever crime you committed, it must be something serious for you to risk hiding out in a place like this.~ The guy finally lost his composure. ~And I don't want to know. I swear if you let me go, I won't tell anyone about you. I've got eleven days, that's the limit for any rescue mission to a closed planet. If I don't send out the call, they'll abandon the search, I'll be stuck here the rest of my life. I don't want that. Let me set up the relay beacon, get off this planet, and I promise I'll keep my mouth shut. I won't tell anyone about you. You have my absolute word, read my mind if you don't believe me.~
Kristen could sense desperation. The guy was genuinely not happy about the prospect of being stuck there, and was genuinely nervous about how she was going to react. And she had no bloody clue how to react, it was obvious there was a lot more to understanding each other than just being able to communicate words.
~I'll help you with the relay beacon.~ Kristen answered. She wasn't exactly sure what she was getting herself into making an offer like that, but she genuinely meant it. The guy needed help and it was her duty to help.
Kal looked at her, puzzled. ~I don't get you. You say that, and you mean it, but you don't even have a clue what a relay beacon is. What the hell planet are you from?~
Kristen stared at him, finally starting to understand his confusion. The guy had mistaken her for one of his own people. ~I'm from this planet,~ she told him simply.
He frowned, sensing she was telling the truth but not quite grasping the meaning of what she was saying. ~Right. Very Funny. You're starting to scare me.~
~I mean it.~
~You're an alien?~ he stared at her disbelievingly. ~Feels like you should be green and have tentacles. Seriously, I've met a few aliens. None of them looked much like you.~
~Is that a complement?~
~It's... I don't know what it is. Look, the dominant life form here might look spookily like us to a degree that defies rational explanation, and I'm a medical student, I know what I'm talking about there, but they're not telepathic, they have no awareness of the though processes of others, that makes them dangerous, violent, primitive. And you're not one of them...~ he tried to work the logic through.
~No.~
~Right. So?~
~So you evolved from non-telepathic ancestors?~
~Yeah, thousands and thousands of years ago...~ Kal stopped. Kristen could sense he had finally worked it out.
~Good. Now maybe we can go find us some breakfast.~
She headed off leaving Kal trailing close behind, still trying to resolve his confusion.
"Government officials declined to comment further on the origin of the satellite that crashed out of orbit into an area near Skelwith in the Lake District. U.S. officials have strongly denied that the satellite was theirs, Russian authorities have also distanced themselves from the incident. Speculation continues that the satellite was deployed by the British government, and that after it malfunctioned it was deliberately targeted to crash in a remote area of the U.K. so as to avoid creating an international incident. Speculation also continues that the satellite was on a secret surveillance mission, and the U.S. state department is demanding a full explanation as to why they had not been notified earlier of the existence of this satellite. We take you now live to my colleague Jim Matherson who is outside the U.S. embassy. Jim,..."
Damon turned the radio off. "It's getting boring, it's getting repetitive, and they're full of crap."
"So what's new?" Jake asked cynically. "Anyway, I need you to look up Skelwith."
Damon grabbed Jake's phone and pulled up the maps. "Pretty close to Ambleside, but Ambleside is as far as we'll get in the car. The restricted area they're sweeping for radiation contamination has all the roads West out of Ambleside blocked."
Jake shrugged. "I'm hoping we won't have to go into the restricted area, I'm hoping she can handle getting out of there on her own."
"You've got a lot of faith in her abilities. It's only been a couple of weeks for her."
"I got faith in all of us, little boy. Plus, outmaneuvering a military investigation into aliens, come on. Easy as piss."
"Says the guy who only just got the cast off his leg from last time he thought that."
Kristen and Kal crouched down in the trees. The forest had thinned out and they were running out of cover. Ahead of them the road turned sharply right and crossed a bridge over a river. There was a roadblock set up on the bridge, they weren't going any further that way.
Kal studied it. ~Not very effective is it, sat there on the bridge like that. How is that supposed to stop us crossing the river?~
~They're thick, they have no clue about teleportation. Once we're across we should be safe. Then we can stop and think. And get something to eat.~
Kristen was feeling a lot more relaxed. Kal's attitude towards her had completely reversed since she'd convinced him that she wasn't some Habiruan criminal in hiding. He was still more than a little unconvinced of the whole evolution thing, but seemed willing to take her on trust for now. Kristen mentally noted that she would have to ask more about the Habiruan at some point.
But right now safety was in sight. All they had to do was get across the river, and getting across didn't look all that tough. It was game over as far as she was concerned. Well, except for the part about setting up the relay beacon. But how difficult could that be?
Kal was getting a lot more talkative as well. In fact irritatingly so, he hadn't shut up asking questions for the last half hour. ~So you didn't learn the language, learn the customs here. You actually grew up with them. Kind of like you were brought up by wild animals...~
Kristen had to catch herself from abruptly laughing out loud, they were too close to the roadblock to want to make too much noise. She could just see her mother not taking too kindly to being called a wild animal.
~What I'm saying is that I don't doubt you can pull it off, passing yourself off as one of them,~ Kal continued. ~The thing is, we don't exactly look inconspicuous right now.~
Kristen accepted the alien guy had a point. Silver jump suits were not particularly conducive to keeping a low profile. ~I got my credit card, I can fix that pretty quickly.~
~Without raising suspicions?~
Right. Buying clothes wasn't the problem, Kristen figured, coming up with a convincing story to explain away why they needed them. She smiled, that wasn't so big a problem. All she had to do was get Jake to make up a story for her, and she was pretty sure she'd recovered enough to be able to contact him.
First problems first, though. They'd cautiously made their way down to the edge of the stream, it was only about fifteen or twenty meters across and they had good visibility to the other side. Kristen was confident of her ability to make the jump despite her lack of practice. She glanced back at Kal, nodded, then fixed her gaze on the far bank and jaunted across. It was only after she was across that she realized she hadn't checked to see if Kal was okay with jaunting, she'd pretty much just made the assumption.
Her unspoken question was quickly answered. Kal walked casually along the bank and had somehow managed to jaunt while he was still walking. Her own efforts felt clumsy in comparison, she knew she still had a lot to learn.
She scrambled up the river bank with Kal and the two of them and headed into the undergrowth. A couple of minutes walk later Kristen spotted a picnic bench just out of sight of the road and, figuring they were far enough away from the roadblock to be safe, she darted off towards it. She sat down so she could concentrate more easily, concentration was going to be important, it was always harder to make contact with people the further away they were. ~Jake, you out there?~ she called out.
~You okay? We were worried about you.~ Damon called back almost instantly.
Kristen was happy, all the pieces of the puzzle were starting to come together. ~Fine. Need some advice. I jaunted past the roadblocks, but I'm wearing a silver space suit. I'm looking for advice on how to explain that away.~
~It's a radiation suit, that's what you have to tell them.~ Jake fired back.
That was exactly the kind of excuse Kristen was looking for. ~Why am I wearing a radiation suit?~
~The cover story the news is running is about radioactive debris. You strayed into the contaminated area, you got scrubbed down and decontaminated, you're fine, but your clothes were confiscated and destroyed just in case. The army couldn't exactly dump you in your underwear, but all they had to issue you were radiation suits. You're kind of pissed at them for burning that Ralph Lauren top, but at the same time you're happy that at least you aren't going to die from radiation sickness.~
~Yeah, I loved that Ralph Lauren top,~ she laughed. If only. ~That's exactly what I needed.~
~You need to call your mom as well. You got signal yet?~
~Had the cellphone off, wanted to keep the batteries good. What am I telling my mom?~
~Apologize for not calling earlier, ask if she picked up the note, tell her you're at Hawley Lake. Tell her I haven't gone waterskiing yet, tell her you think I might be chickening out. Say you think you need to go wind me up about that, and that you'll call her back later. Keep it short.~
~Why the stuff about the waterskiing?~
~It's the details that make it sound good. It's the stuff you wouldn't bother making up.~
~So how was the waterskiing?~ she asked, momentarily frustrated she wasn't there enjoying a day on the lake with them.
~Bugger knows.~ Jake replied. ~We're less than half an hour's drive from Ambleside. Figured we'd come pick you up.~
The emotion threatened to overwhelm Kristen for a moment. All that insecurity about whether they would ever give a shit about her at all. Well, they'd just driven over three hundred miles to help her out. That pretty much answered any doubts she had about whether she belonged in their world or not.
~You sure you're okay?~ Damon responded to her momentary silence.
~Yeah, need to make a move though, if I stick around here too long I might get spotted. I'll get back to you. And guys...~
~Yeah?~
~Thanks.~
Kristen had to admit Jake was exactly the wizard with excuses that Misako had told her about. Kristen wondered if she was finally ready to stop feeling so insecure and start believing they did actually mean what they said.
~Who was that you were talking to?~ Kal asked cautiously.
~Friends,~ Kristen told him, and conceded to herself that she really believed that now. She could see Kal wanted to know more, wanted to know names. The guy had a thing about names she was starting to notice. ~Jake, short for Jacob, and Damon. They're good guys, I promise, they'll help you.~
"E-akub u Dam-on, abarasa?"
~Yeah, for real.~
~Jacob you hear from time to time, but Damon is rare, even among the Habiruan. And you never hear the names together, the Habiruan consider that bad luck.~
~Bad luck, why?~
~Because of the flood.~
Kristen was puzzled by the references. How much of that was real and how much was the telepathy translating things into concepts she would be familiar with even if the literal translation made no sense. Unfortunately there wasn't time to pursue deep questions like that when they were on the run. That was more the kind of deep philosophical question to ponder over a cream tea.
~We can't stop here. We need to keep going.~ She told Kal. ~We're going to start running into humans now. Keep your mouth shut, smile, let me do the talking.~
The traffic was stationary. They'd made it as far as Windermere without any trouble, but trying to head out the other side on the A591 was proving to be more of a problem. Jake wasn't too worried, they knew Kristen was safe and out of danger, they just had to get close enough to pick her up, there wasn't much left that could go wrong.
"Are we there yet?" Damon queried, trying to keep a straight face.
There was, Jake contemplated, a down side to knowing everything was going to work out okay. Damon's sense of humor, subdued as it had been all morning, was now back with a vengeance. "You want to take a jaunt on up the road find out what the hold up is?" he suggested half seriously.
"I might well do that. Better than dying of thirst." Damon was taking every opportunity to complain about the fact that they'd run out of things to drink. The traffic jam really wasn't helping.
"Relax, little boy, when we get there I'll buy you a cream tea."
"Whoa, careful, don't get me over excited." Damon took the piss. "I mean, if I'd wanted excitement then I could have spent my weekend having endless hours of fun doing my biology essay on morphospace diversity instead of being stuck here in the car with you dying of thirst."
The traffic started up moving again for a few seconds before once more coming to a halt. They'd rounded a bend in the road and the reason for the hold up became apparent. Just ahead they were approaching a roundabout, on the far side there wasn't so much a roadblock as a military checkpoint, the effect was the same, cars were being turned back.
Damon consulted the map. "It's over an hour's hike to Ambleside from here. Take a left onto the A592, we might be able to double back along Holbeck Lane. It'll still be blocked, but we might get as far as the country park there, that would cut it down to a half hour walk."
"Radio still says restricted area starts West of Ambleside."
"So, you're going to try and blag our way past a military checkpoint." Damon sounded doubtful. "You think it would help if I got out and showed some leg?"
"I'll let you know if I think that's necessary."
The car finally pulled up to the roundabout, Jake wound the window down as a soldier of some description approached.
"Good morning sir, there's been radioactive debris fallen from a satellite, it's all over the news. The road ahead is currently blocked off at Ambleside, so we're advising everyone to take a right onto the A592 here then left onto the A66 to rejoin the A591 at Keswick. If you wanted to get on the A593 out of Ambleside we recommend you go left here, head on down to the B5285. Currently the whole area around Skelwith is sealed off for safety reasons. No real danger, but you know how it is, no one wants to take risks with radiation."
Jake smiled the evil smile he always smiled before launching into bullshit. "We actually need to get to Ambleside itself. We're supposed to be meeting friends, they're staying in a bed and breakfast there, they're not going to be in any danger are they?" Jake knew the answer already of course, the soldiers had been told to say there was no danger. And once the guy told him there was no danger, it was going to be hard to contradict himself and advise them it was too dangerous to drive on up there. If the guy had any discretion at all about letting them pass, the guy would have to exercise it. Jake had him backed into the perfect corner.
"No danger, just not much you'll be able to do there right now, the town is pretty much locked down."
"The pubs open?" Jake asked.
The soldier grinned back at him. "The pubs are open, just don't be drinking and driving." He slapped the roof of the car a couple of times, Jake wasn't sure if the guy thought it was a horse, or was trying to get the attention of the other soldier at the checkpoint. Either way, moments later Jake was waved through and they found themselves on a completely empty road.
"Somehow I never seem to tire of watching you do that." Damon observed.
"Any chance we can change into the clothes here, I'm just, a bit, you know, sick of the strange looks I'm getting wearing this." Kristen asked the sales assistant. Although they probably could have gotten changed in the middle of the street outside for all anyone would have been around to notice, it was that quiet.
"I think we can manage that. Hold on, I'll just okay it with the floor supervisor. Wait there a moment," the sales assistant nodded at her, picked up a phone on the desk. "Irene? I have a couple of kids here... no, no problem with them, look..."
Kristen had a distinct sense that calls to the supervisor about kids were generally connected with shoplifting, Kristen wasn't sure if that was a reason to be ashamed of being a kid, or cynical about the assumption all adults made that all kids were only out to shoplift.
She'd never really connected with adults all that well, no adult ever really seemed to understand her. She wondered how much of that was because she was a kid, and how much because she wasn't human.
Still, they had clothes now, Jake's story had worked perfectly, no one in the shop had been at all suspicious, despite the fact that she and Kal smelled as odd as they looked. Then again, this was the Lake District, everything had an odor of sheep about it. The assistants in the shop were just delighted to have any customers at all. Although the town was outside the exclusion zone, it was clear the most people were steering well clear. Kristen figured she'd been pretty lucky to manage to find even one shop that had bothered to open under the circumstances.
She would be glad to get out of the environment suit. It was comfortable enough to wear, but she couldn't get it out of her head that it had come straight off the corpse of the person who had died wearing it last. Still the suit had served it's purpose, it had kept her alive on the flying saucer when she couldn't breath.
It occurred to Kristen that she hadn't explained to Kal about getting changed into the clothes in the shop before they headed out. She'd talked to the sales assistant about that, but he wasn't sure how much of that Kal would have picked up on. Maybe warning him was a good idea. ~She's trying...~ Kristen started to explain.
~I heard,~ Kal interrupted.
Kristen was curious. ~How?~
~Even with non-telepaths it's possible to pick up on some of what they're thinking. Plus you could hear and understand. I picked up enough.~
~But she wouldn't be able to understand you.~
~No, she isn't telepathic. Given enough time I could pick up words she uses, learn them, use them back. But it's not exactly the fastest way of learning,~ Kal explained.
"She says that's fine." The shop assistant put the phone down. "Come on, I'll take you back to the changing rooms."
~How much of that did you get?~ Kristen asked.
~Got all the words. Didn't understand the context. Why exactly do we need a special place to change, wouldn't it be easier just to change right here?~
Kristen stared at him oddly. It was sometimes the strangest things he failed to understand. ~We're in the way here,~ she tried to explain.
~But there's no one else in the store to get in the way of...~
Kristen could see the sales assistant giving them a funny look as she led them to the changing rooms in the back. ~Just, play along. Okay?~
~Okay.~
She directed Kal into the cubicle, then closed the curtain behind him after he'd started to pull the environment suit off in full view of everyone.
"Not from around here is he?" The sales assistant whispered knowingly at Kristen.
"No." Kristen conceded.
She took the cubicle next to him and started to worry what he was going to look like when he came out, she hadn't bothered to point out to him how the clothes were supposed to be worn. She had visions of him coming out with his underwear on the outside or something equally embarrassing.
Embarrassing to her, anyway. He clearly didn't care. Kristen knew how environment suits worked, she knew he wasn't wearing anything underneath, but the idea of closing the curtain on the cubicle hadn't even occurred to him. She was going to have to educate him on the concept of the social misdemeanor.
She only wished she'd had the patience to wait, they could have got changed down some back alleyway, and then she could have watched. On the surface he looked normal, but she was desperately curious to find out if the parts she couldn't see were as normal as the parts she could. He wasn't just totally cute, he was totally hot. Missing out on that opportunity, what kind of stupid was she?
It took her only a couple of minutes to change into her new outfit, it took Kal a lot longer. But he finally emerged looking like he'd pretty much worked it all out alright. His only real mistake was that he'd left the tags on all the clothes, which was easily rectified. The effect was exactly what she had hoped for. In regular clothes he was indistinguishable from any other tourist in the Lake District.
A confused tourist. She could sense more confusion. ~You okay?~
~Yeah, mostly. I admit I don't get the customs on this planet. And, I admit I don't entirely know how to react to what you're thinking about at times. Sorry, just, too much happening too quickly.~ He looked away, not wanting to catch her eye.
Shit. He'd seen everything she'd been thinking for the last few minutes, all her inappropriate thoughts. Telepathy had it's down side, keeping random thoughts like that under control wasn't something Kristen was all that good at.
She tried not to blush, pushed the thoughts out of her head and briefly thanked the sales assistant as she made a hasty retreat towards the exit. Kal had to hurry to keep up with her.
~So where do we go eat?~ he asked gallantly, trying to change the subject as they headed out into the deserted street.
"No sign of anyone in a silver space suit." Damon observed flippantly.
"Not much sign of anyone at all," Jake agreed.
They'd finally reached Ambleside, parked the car, and were now walking along the main street. The car parks had been deserted, and the streets looked much the same. Only a few shops were still open, there was very little activity anywhere to be seen.
Damon was feeling unusually positive, for once things really had been as easy as Jake had made out. By the end of the afternoon there was a good chance they could be back on the South coast, enjoying a relatively normal, relaxing weekend.
Damon smiled at the idea of relaxing weekend. He wasn't sure when it had happened, when he'd stopped waking up afraid every morning, but he finally felt back in control of his own life. It hadn't even been a battle to get his mother to let him go spend the weekend with friends, hundreds of miles from home, like she actually trusted him. The whole world seemed an order of magnitude more sane than it had been at the height of the hysteria. Even the biology homework he still had to get finished before Tuesday morning wasn't going to worry him right now.
Damon scanned up along the street they were crossing. "I don't know, I'm not even convinced there's anywhere open up that way for her to buy clothes."
"Starting to wonder if we're going to find anywhere open for cream teas. Last three places we passed weren't even trying."
"Hey, you promised me a cream tea, and I'm holding you to that one. We can find something in Windermere if we have to. Anyway I didn't think we were planning on sticking around here any longer than it takes to pick Kristen up."
Jake grinned. "Not that we believe in the radiation story."
"Alien spaceship crashes, the radiation part might just be true," Damon pointed out.
"What about that place up there, only place on the street where the lights are on."
"Cool, lets go check it out."
They headed directly across the street without checking for traffic, it wasn't exactly tough crossing the roads when there were no cars on them at all. Although Damon still kept looking over his shoulder just in case, the place was definitely a little eerie.
"I wonder what happened to the aliens, wonder if they got away," Jake got philosophical.
"Hope so for their sake. I've been caught and experimented on myself, and I can't recommend the experience," Damon quipped, cheerfully.
"You picking up Kristen yet?"
"No. I am definitely picking up a very clear sensation of cream tea though. And crumpet."
Jake raised his eyebrows. "I like a bit of crumpet."
Damon gave him a look of disbelief. "Jake, no offense, but you wouldn't know crumpet if it ate you."
"Damon, just piss off, alright."
They took a look in the tea shop window, it was one of the larger places in town, on the corner, looked like there was space for about twenty or thirty people. A traditionally rustic old place. It was also surprisingly busy, well, surprisingly busy given that the town was pretty much deserted. Being the only tea shop in town that was open was also probably a factor there.
"Two guys together, go in and ask for cream teas, that isn't gay is it?" Damon joked.
"Only if they both go for Earl Grey. I'm having the Darjeeling, which is only an indicative of being a bit of a prat."
"What's Ceylon tea?" Damon was contemplating his options.
"That's if you're into bondage I think."
They sniggered and headed in to the tea shop.
~Hey.~ Kristen interjected telepathically.
~Hey.~ Damon replied.
~Wasn't interrupting anything was I?~
Damon glanced silently across at Jake before answering. ~Just a discussion on the declarative connotations of tea-bags with respect to personal sexual preferences and fetishes.~
Kristen smirked. ~You guys are twisted, you know that?~
~We try,~ Damon smiled.
~Look, I'm sat in a tea shop in Ambleside having cream tea with an alien survivor from the crash and...~
~An alien in a tea shop, isn't that, kind of a bit, I don't know, likely to draw attention?~ Jake interrupted,
~He might be an alien, but he looks pretty human on the outside.~
~Right. Body snatcher, shape shifter?~ Damon challenged.
Jake had a more important question on his mind. ~And what kind of tea is he drinking?~
Damon smiled. ~Right, good question. what kind of tea?~
~Earl Grey I think. Is this relevant?~
Damon glanced across at Jake as they grabbed their teas and looked around the shop for somewhere to sit. "I'm not saying a word."
"A word about what?" Kristen asked. "And hey, by the way guys, I just want you know, I really appreciate you coming all this way to pick me up. I really mean that."
Jake grinned at her. "Hey, all for one and one for all. That's how it works, right."
Damon pulled up a couple of chairs and the two of them joined Kristen and Kal at the table.
You Can't Cling On To The Past
"Any reading on the relay beacon?" John asked.
"Doesn't look like it." Carol was still busy checking the signal levels, it wasn't so easy to read the way she was holding it. She was trying to keep the tracking device as inconspicuous as possible which wasn't easy standing on the top of Parliament Hill on Hampstead Heath. It was about the least discrete place there was to be trying to take readings, but they needed high ground and it had to be far enough out of London to avoid signal interference, this was the only place nearby that met all the requirements. And it still wasn't good enough, Carol wasn't seeing any signal at all.
She had to keep trying. The activity helped keep her from giving in to the tears she felt close to. She knew John was right, their dream of changing the world had ended when they'd abandoned the Earth. They'd failed. For someone as idealistic and as optimistic as Carol, though, that was a difficult reality to have to confront.
Not once in over forty years since she'd left the place had Carol ever felt homesick, not until now, not until John had pointed out she'd never be able to come back again. Saying goodbye to the place wasn't going to be easy at all, even knowing she had Narcissa waiting for her to return. She had a new life on another planet, a wonderful, wonderful life with someone she loved, a life in which she'd been able to seize so many opportunities and fulfill so many dreams, things she never could have done if she'd stayed on Earth. She stared at the skyline of London in the distance.
"Could be they deployed but couldn't get it high enough for us to pick up at this distance." Elizabeth wondered out loud, interrupting Carol's thoughts.
"You mean they couldn't find any hills in the Lake District?" John queried sarcastically.
Carol frowned at him. She didn't always appreciate his dry sense of humor. She wasn't much in a mood for any kind of humor.
"This Ra-dalhamun seems to have been an excellent pilot, the fact any of them made it this far is a tribute to that. I can't see someone like her failing to deploy the beacon correctly," John took a less acerbic tone.
"Nothing. No signal at all." Carol walked back towards them. "The problem is that none of them understand the time constraints. Ra-dalhamun will have them climbing the highest peak they can see, even if that takes them all day, because that gives them the best chance of being found. They think they have eleven days, they have no idea where they are."
"If we don't get a signal before nightfall then our chances of getting to them in time will be slim." Elizabeth sounded worried. "We didn't find Stephen, we didn't find Chris. If we don't find any survivors from the crash then..."
"We know." John pointed out. He glanced at his watch. "Thirty-two hours left. Well, we can continue to try jaunting towards Skelwith, or..."
"Of course we have to keep jaunting towards them." Carol was disgusted that John was even implying there was an alternative. Rescuing the survivors from the crash was all they had to keep them going, and it didn't make sense, there was no way any one of them would walk away from their mission.
"Or we could wait until we can get a signal from the beacon, then we could tie that into the jaunting belts and get ourselves there in a single jump," John clarified, obviously sensing Carol's concern.
Elizabeth shook her head. "Carol's right. We don't know how long that might take, the closer we are, the more ready we'll be. And if, for whatever reason, it turns out it is a range problem, getting closer to the place is the only course of action that is going to help. And on top of that, I can't just sit around and wait."
"Me neither." Carol chimed in. Sitting around would only give her too much time to dwell on things she would rather not dwell on. She watched John stare back at them, it wasn't often they ganged up against him like this.
"I wasn't planning on sitting around and waiting. What I'm trying to suggest is that as long as we head generally North, it wouldn't slow us down any to take a slight detour en route..." he tried to explain.
"Perhaps if you just came out with it and told us where you wanted to detour to?" Elizabeth interrupted, obviously feeling a little impatient with John's reluctance to tell them what his idea was.
"The last address we have for Chris is in a town called Beckindale, which is somewhere up in that direction." John confessed.
Carol found a half smile on her lips for the first time in hours, that was the John she remembered. All thoughtless and blunt on the outside, but secretly, deep down, he could be even more of a big girl than she was at times. "And you accuse me of being soft hearted and sentimental. Of course we can afford to take a detour for that."
John tried not to look mildly embarrassed as Carol and Elizabeth exchanged a smug glance.
Carol started to feel a little better. "And I suppose you've already worked out the coordinates, haven't you," she scolded John affectionately.
"No, I'm not happy. They're on foot, the entire area is locked down, this shouldn't be difficult. No more excuses, I want results." Sierpinski ended the call, cutting the soldier off mid apology. She wasn't interested. The search effort had been allocated double the number of troops that should have been necessary and anyway, there was nowhere out there for anyone to hide. Their failure to come up with anything smacked of incompetence, and Elaine Sierpinski loathed incompetence. Her patience was deteriorating.
The Lieutenant knocked on the door. She stared at him angrily. The Lieutenant, according to his record, was very competent. Well she'd seen bugger all evidence of that so far, he didn't seem to be making much of an effort. And if there was something she loathed more than incompetence it was laziness.
"Report. Make it fast, you're the least of my problems right now."
The Lieutenant hesitated, clearly not appreciating the insult. "Something you need to see," he told her.
She stared at him, waiting for him to continue, but he was clearly expecting her to drop what she was doing and follow him somewhere. She didn't have time for this. "What is it Lieutenant, another one of your Doctor Who fantasies?"
"Yes," he reported bluntly.
Elaine Sierpinski frowned. He was pissing her off, and no one pissed her off like that, not unless they had a death wish. Not unless they had something to show her.
She threw her cellphone down on the desk and stood up. If he had something to show her, he would survive her wrath. If not, she was at the end of her rope with him, this was all the reason she needed to have him replaced. She followed silently.
"The larger object on the same trajectory that we couldn't see, didn't just burn up on entry, it appears to have totally vaporized."
"No debris at all?" she asked him. That would certainly be unusual, but not unusual enough to satisfy her displeasure.
"We've been over the site with a tooth-comb, there's nothing. And no reports of anything else falling along the same flight path. These four capsules are the only physical evidence that exists that there even was an incident."
"Keep trying."
"Given the construction of these pods, I would have expected a significant part of the structure to have survived. The implication is that it wasn't intended to survive. It was deliberately set to self destruct."
"You're reaching."
They approached the garage workshop area, most of the analysis work on the samples taken from the capsules was being done in a temporary clean area they'd set up around the other side of the farmhouse, the workshop area was acting primarily as a storage facility now. The Lieutenant guided her round to where one of the capsules had been hoisted up onto industrial scales.
"Weighs 25Kg," he indicated at the figure on the display. "Light for the size."
"Lieutenant, you're stating the obvious. To be blunt, you're not impressing me."
"Crank shaft from a tractor, 30Kg." Completely ignoring her, he grabbed a large, oily steel crank shaft from the bench, and manhandled it into the capsule.
"And I'm about finished with you. Do better than this or you're off the job."
"Total combined weight, 25Kg."
"The scales are broken."
"With all due respect, I'm not that stupid."
Elaine Sierpinski hesitated. No, he wasn't that stupid. She reached out and pushed on the scales causing the figure on the display to fluctuate. Then she tried pushing on the inside of the capsule. Nothing happened.
"Gravitational shielding," the Lieutenant stated bluntly, challenging her to disagree.
"I'll admit, the existence of this kind of technology is beyond top secret, but we have it, and so do the Americans. Probably the Chinese as well."
"We know none of those three powers is behind this."
"Aliens again?" she asked him coldly.
"If you seriously expect me to dignify that question with an answer, then I would suggest I'm not the one who's lost their objectivity here."
Sierpinski allowed herself a smile. The Lieutenant had balls after all. "Conclusions, and I'll accept speculation."
"It's possible the reason for the deliberate destruction of the main craft was as simple as a safety mechanism making sure there was no chance of survivors being hit on the head by debris after they landed."
"But you don't believe that."
"Whatever the origin of this technology, it's way beyond anything we have around here. Our experiments with gravitational shielding fall a long way short of what you're looking at here. And these are just escape capsules, the main craft would have been far more advanced than this. I would suggest the main craft was destroyed to prevent it falling into our hands. Someone doesn't want us learning their secrets."
"But who the hell is it that has technology like that?"
"I accept that without more information, speculation there is worthless."
Finally the guy had managed to get himself some objectivity. "You just redeemed yourself, Lieutenant."
"One thing I am certain of though, is that you don't construct something like that with the intention of destroying it."
"Unless you're on a one way mission."
"They came in under the radar with stealth capabilities we don't understand. If you have that level of stealth technology, you don't draw attention to yourself, especially on a one way mission. If they had meant to come here, we wouldn't know a thing about it. Something went wrong."
"So, you're confident that them being here is an accident."
"As confident as I can be about anything under the circumstances."
Sierpinski stared at the capsule, deep in contemplation. That was the first intelligent conversation she'd had since her arrival. The Lieutenant had finally demonstrated some sense, she'd misjudged him. Was it equally possible she'd misjudged the competence of the troops out searching for the other two survivors?
"What technology do you think the other two have access to? You think they might be dangerous?" she contemplated out loud.
"Do they have access to advanced technology? I'd say that's likely. What technology? I can't answer that. Dangerous? They're on the run and hiding. I think we have to assume they're potentially dangerous."
"Are we secure here?"
"We have soldiers on the doors, no one in or out without authorization. We can defend ourselves."
Elaine Sierpinski shook her head. She'd been so busy shouting at other people for making mistakes that it hadn't occurred to her that she might be the one at fault. She'd made a mistake, she'd underestimated the risks, and the Lieutenant had correctly pointed that out to her. "We can defend ourselves can we? Defend ourselves against what, Lieutenant?"
He remained silent.
Sierpinski considered the situation carefully. Each hour that passed without any foreign embassy coming forward to admit responsibility made it more likely that this was the work of an unfriendly power. If she was dealing with unfriendlies then she was going to have to tread a lot more carefully. A few precautions wouldn't hurt.
"I want this place locked down. Bring in as many troops as you need. Keep them outside the building, but I want the building ring fenced and I want permanent patrols on every approach. Understood?"
The Lieutenant nodded and headed off. Sierpinski continued to stare at the capsule. Who the hell had that kind of technology? Even if it was laughable to think it might be aliens, the Lieutenant was right, there was something more than a little weird shit going on here.
The procedure for jaunting long distance without adequate navigation was not simple. It required time, concentration, maps, and above all it required a lack of distractions. Somehow Elizabeth had found herself stuck with the job of handling the bulk of that task. The hardest part had been finding somewhere on Hampstead Heath that was quiet enough to jaunt from without being seen. Thankfully the situation had become a lot easier once they'd managed to get away from London. A holiday weekend, Elizabeth contemplated, wasn't the best time the passenger shuttle could have picked to malfunction during a gamma radiation storm and spin out of control into an Earth orbit.
It had taken a little over two hours to make the three jumps that had been necessary to get them as far as Beckindale, allowing for a brief stop on the way to grab sandwiches from a supermarket in Leamington Spa. They'd been too impatient to stop for a proper meal, wouldn't have stopped at all except that they had to eat in order to have any hope of completing their mission. It took a lot of energy to jaunt nearly three hundred miles.
Elizabeth had enjoyed the opportunity to have a chicken salad sandwich again. It felt something of a guilty pleasure, there was a risk that eating anything would accelerate the effect of the poison, but it was a risk they had accepted to come on the mission in the first place. The sandwich had been worth it.
She wasn't too bothered by the idea she'd never get to have one again though. Like Carol she was only there to tie up loose ends. It would be sad to say goodbye to the place, but like Carol she had a new life now. Leaving Earth had forced her to re-evaluate everything, and she'd seized the opportunity, now she had a new life, a new career, and very few regrets. Carol had helped her a lot, there. Elizabeth had never really known Carol on Earth, and yet in the years since they'd left, the two of them had become extremely close friends.
For Elizabeth the strangest part of this mission to Earth was that she got to spend time with John again. She'd worked with him every day for twenty years, but then ironically after the evacuation their lives had taken completely different paths and she'd barely seen him more than a handful of times since then. There was very little about Earth she had missed, but she had missed John, missed him more than she had realized.
She was also starting to worry about him. On the surface John had given the impression he'd adjusted quickly to life in outer space, but Elizabeth could see now that he'd never really managed to let go of his old life, never managed to move on. He wasn't used to things falling apart like this.
Elizabeth braced herself, if there was going to be bad news about Chris then they would know soon enough. They were finally on the street that was listed as his last known contact address. The place was very rural, very village-y, not exactly the kind of place any of them would have imagined a city dweller like Chris ending up. The streets were lined with quaint, stone built cottages, and they were surrounded on all sides by farmland.
Carol had volunteered to go up to the house and knock on the door. She was the logical choice, she was the least threatening and most diplomatic of the three of them.
The emotions they were sensing from her as she chatted on the door step were mixed. It was hard to pin down what that meant, except that the news was clearly not entirely hopeless. They watched her thank the man who had opened the door, then she turned and headed back towards them.
She didn't wait until she was close enough that she could speak to them to launch into her account. ~He moved out because he couldn't manage in the house on his own any more. The council moved him into a residential care home. Apparently he wasn't too happy at that, still fiercely independent. He was also something of a local hero around here. They still forward the occasional letter on to him at the rest home. As far as they know he's still alive.~
~You have the address?~ John asked.
~Right here,~ Carol confirmed.
~What happened that he needs residential care? I mean, he's old, and I know he's a sap, but come on, he wasn't that much older than us.~ Elizabeth really didn't like the unspoken implications of that news.
Carol expanded on the story. ~He was injured, came under sniper fire while he was helping out at a school in Afghanistan. Saved the lives of over thirty children there, that's why he's considered such a hero around here. But there were complications arising from his injuries and his condition deteriorated rapidly after his return home.~
~Is this planet determined to crush us? We've had nothing but misery and despair thrown at us since we made it back.~ Elizabeth was starting to let her frustrations get to her.
"It wasn't much better before we left." John reminded her. "That's why we were forced to leave."
"Still no signal?" Carol asked as she caught up with the others down the street where they'd been waiting. She'd spotted John checking the readings again.
"Nothing yet."
Elizabeth took the scrap of paper the man at the house had given Carol and looked it up on her map. "Close enough we should be able to jaunt there in five minutes. Let's go find this address."
"I have enough problems. You want to give me more?" Sierpinski glared at Doctor Vidal. She was getting less happy by the minute. The reinforcements she'd requested were on their way, but wouldn't be there for another hour or two. In the meantime the search for the other two survivors was being hampered because she'd had to reassign a significant proportion of them to keep the farmhouse protected.
She looked around the barn. The old farm had consisted of three separate buildings arranged around a courtyard. One had been converted for use as a tractor repair shop, she was stationed in what had been the old farmhouse itself and the third building was an old barn which had also been converted into more partition offices. It was the third building they had appropriated as a medical facility. The partitioned areas had been rather brutally stripped out of their office furnishings and were now home to a couple of mobile hospital beds and a plethora of medical equipment. The place was completely unsuitable to the purpose they were using it for, and Sierpinski could see that restoring the place to its original condition after they were done there was going to be difficult. The owners of the place would have to be paid off, some kind of compensation, she was thankful that wasn't her problem, she'd be long gone by then. It was also a security nightmare that the three areas were all so disconnected.
Sierpinski returned her attention to the Doctor. He actually looked in a worse mood than she was.
"You said this wasn't a military operation but you've got the place out there crawling with soldiers. Is that to keep people out, or to keep us in?"
"Both, Doctor."
"And despite the fact that both the Lieutenant and myself have recommended we move out of here, you've decided to completely disregard those recommendations?"
"Yes. I do that sometimes," she replied flippantly.
"For the record then. These facilities are completely unsuitable. I have two patients here, and frankly, I consider the conditions I'm working under to constitute a significant risk to the health of those patients. And I need to eat. You may not like the idea that people need to take breaks sometimes, but if I don't get to eat at some point soon I'm not going to be able to function. And I can't eat in here while I work, before you come out with that stupid suggestion, it isn't hygienic and I won't allow it."
"Your concerns are noted, Doctor. Now get to the point, or get back to your patients."
The Doctor frowned at her. He clearly didn't appreciate her dismissive attitude at all. "I reported that the two patients were in a coma, and that given the extent of their injuries the rate to which that had slowed their metabolism was the only thing keeping them alive."
"Yes, Doctor, we've been all through this."
"The coma wasn't natural, it was induced. No trace of anything in their systems, how the hell you induce coma without drugs is beyond me, so there has to be something there, I just can't find it. Anyway, over the last few hours we've detected a slow rise in metabolic rate consistent with the drugs wearing off. I'm detecting trace cerebral function. They're waking up, and that's not good."
If the Lieutenant's problem was hyperbole, the Doctor's problem was understatement. Sierpinski was no Doctor of medicine and even she could see that the situation he was describing was significantly worse than not good. She could see it placing her on a collision course with the good Doctor. She pushed him for answers. "What can you do? Put them back into the same coma?"
"I can't isolate the drug that was used to put them under in the first place. Mixing treatments when I have no clue about the potential interactions, no, not an option. Not unless and until the condition is actually life threatening. And I'm not taking risks without first getting them into a proper medical facility."
"Then convince me of the risks, Doctor. What is it you want to try?"
"As I indicated before, someone has already been treating these patients. I don't pretend to understand the methodology, but given that the coma was induced, I'm starting to believe that person knew exactly what he or she was doing. So my proposal is to continue that course of treatment to the best of my ability."
"Which, you concede, is limited in comparison to the Doctor who was treating them before," she challenged him.
Doctor Vidal didn't seem slighted by the observation. "There are treatments would allow us to hyperoxygenate the blood. That might help keep them alive in the short term. Drugs to gradually thin the deliberate blood clots without causing further hemorrhaging. Beyond that it's a juggling act. If I can keep them alive like that for three months or so while the rest of their injuries heal, there's an outside chance they'll make a full recovery. The person who was treating them before obviously thought that it was possible. However, I would rate their chances realistically somewhere between 'remote' and 'it would take bloody miracle'."
"Alternatives?"
"Let them die. Which I will not be a party to." Sierpinski had no desire to indulge the Doctor in the opportunity for philosophical debate, but he was more likely to shut up and go away if she explained the situation to him. "Consider, Doctor, that these patients are foreign nationals who've crashed here by accident. In an hour or two we get a call from their embassy demanding to know how the survivors are."
"Then we need to be able to reassure then we're doing everything we can to help."
"International politics, Doctor, are never that simple."
The Doctor shook his head in disbelief, "We treat the patients to the best of our ability. What's the complication there?"
"If we step back and do nothing, the deaths would be a direct consequence of failing to survive the crash. If we intervene then we risk becoming the cause of death. Based on what you know about these people, and on the level of political tension that exists between this country and theirs, which of those will piss them off less?"
"I know nothing about these people to be able to give you an answer to that question."
"And yet the consequences of making the wrong decision could be an International incident far more costly than the lives of these two people. When the bodies are returned, they'll do an autopsy, you can count on that. If that shows death was a consequence of our intervention, we will have a problem."
Elaine Sierpinski hesitated for a moment. She hated politics. She understood why this frustrated the hell out of Doctor Vidal. His duty was to his two patients. Unfortunately she had a duty beyond that, and a much more complex balancing act to perform. "Doctor, I was in Iraq. I watched an idealistic young medic intervene desperately to save the life of an insurgent on the battlefield who was having a heart attack. He failed, there was nothing he could have done, but the militia watched and what they saw was an injured man who might have survived being attacked and murdered. That incident led to an escalation of the violence in which hundreds more died. That young medic among them. In your world things are black and white, in my world they aren't."
"You would let them die to avoid the chance of an international incident?" the Doctor whispered accusationally.
"I will recommend that treatment is approved. But the final decision will not be mine to make. And those we report to don't always listen to recommendations, do they? I'll talk to them. In the meantime, continue to do your best, but take no direct invasive action without first referring the matter to me. Understood?"
"Understood," the Doctor replied, but Sierpinski could see that the fact that the Doctor understood was no guarantee that he would comply when the time came. "You do realize when the condition of those two becomes critical, there won't be time to wait for a decision to come back. It's pointless being told I can treat them after they're already dead," he pointed out to her.
"Your concerns are noted, Doctor."
"I want authorization now to have the necessary equipment requisitioned and brought in. If you won't let me move them, then at least let me get the resources I need here and available. I want to be ready to act quickly when the time comes."
Sierpinski could see both the logic and the danger in the request, but the Doctor was right. "You'll have that authorization. And Doctor, I understand the constraints we're working under. Believe me, I understand."
The Doctor gave no indication of acknowledgement. He turned and marched stiffly out of the office.
The situation was in danger of spinning out of control. Sierpinski would make her recommendation, but she pretty much already knew what the response would be.
She was too good at her job, that was why they always gave her the impossible cases. Sometimes she enjoyed the challenge, but there was a fine line between enjoying a challenge and being a masochist. This assignment had just crossed the line. It wasn't fun any more.
"I know that voice." Chris Harding shouted across the lobby of the sheltered apartment complex.
John broke off from his conversation with Carol and looked around to see Chris wheeling himself across the lobby towards them.
The place had been really easy to find, the village was small and this was the only modern building there. Ten minutes was all it had taken them to walk there, no jaunting necessary. They'd spoken to the receptionist, introduced themselves as old friends of Chris, and the receptionist had been delighted to inform that Chris was definitely still living there, alive and well, and she was sure he'd be absolutely delighted they were there.
The only thing that had left John feeling a little uneasy was that the receptionist had acted like she'd known they were coming, implied that Chris had told her about the visit. Normally John would have written that off as the kind of white lies saps told to make strangers feel more comfortable, but he hadn't gotten any sense from her she was lying.
He let the matter drop. What mattered was that they had found Chris.
~Ouch.~ Elizabeth observed as she saw him.
It was as well Carol had warned them some about his injuries, she just hadn't warned enough. Chris was slightly slumped in the electric wheelchair that he was controlling with a small joystick in his left hand. One side of his face drooped slightly, it looked like he was partially paralyzed down the right hand side, and his head was being held upright mostly by an angled headrest mounted to the chair. His speech slurred slightly and his breathing sounded labored. His eyes, however, were as alive as they had ever been.
"It's okay, you can say it out loud, I know. You have this look on your face when you do that telepathic thing, and I might not be telepathic, but I know what you're thinking." Chris pointed out bluntly.
"Sorry." Elizabeth replied.
"We heard about you saving all those children, knew you were injured in the process. I don't think we realized the full extent of those injuries." John explained.
"This happened later," He told them. "I was patched up in the field, pretty well I thought. They took a piece of shrapnel out of my head by the roadside. Saved my life, no doubt about it. But the operating conditions weren't ideal and the repair job wasn't perfect. Turns out there was a blood clot left in there, or something like that, I don't understand all that medical stuff, but a year or two later I had a series of strokes. Now I'm stuck in this place."
"That must be so frustrating," Carol tried to sympathize.
Chris remained polite. "Everyone did their best, and I'm still alive. Different people take things different ways, I've had a lot of time to think about that this last few years. I decided I'm not one of those people who is going to waste his time sitting here feeling sorry for himself."
"You never were." John smiled. His initial reaction on seeing Chris had been one of devastation, the Chris he remembered had always been so active, so alive. It had hurt to see him looking so old, so worn out. But then Chris had started talking, and the years and the infirmity no longer seemed to matter. The wheelchair didn't matter. Chris was very definitely still Chris.
"The frustrating part was working out how I would get back in to London to get to the vault. Sure the people here would bend over backwards to help out, but I didn't know how I could open that deposit box without anyone seeing what was inside. Anyway, I knew I had a few more years before the cards expired, and I figured the lack of contact details wasn't going to stop you or Stephen finding me if you had to."
"And you were right." Elizabeth smiled.
"Didn't think it would take you this long though. I've been waiting. I've been pulling together all the information you'll need. Every last detail I could find. Didn't want to risk making contact myself, I knew you'd turn up sooner or later, figured anything that needed saying was going to have to come from you anyway. Look, come on, come back to my room, it's all waiting..." Without waiting Chris wheeled himself around and headed off. John and the others almost had to run to keep up with him.
The receptionist had been right then, Chris had been expecting them. John was impressed. "You've been working fast. The spaceship only crashed last night."
Chris glanced up, puzzled. "That crashed satellite was you lot? I suppose I should have guessed. What did you do, rear end it with your flying saucer on the way here? I never did trust your driving."
John was confused, Chris hadn't been interested in the satellite at all. "You were expecting us even before that?"
Chris arrive at his room, pushed open the door and then spun round to confront John. "I've been expecting you for months. You took your bloody time. But that's okay, you're here now."
"It wasn't a satellite that crashed, it was a space ship and we're here to rescue the four survivors from the crash," Carol explained as they filed in. "But they're taking their time activating their relay beacon. In the meantime we were worried that we couldn't reach you on the telephone number you'd left, so we came looking."
The place wasn't a bad size, the door opened into a living room area, there was a large window opposite that looked out across farmland. To the left was a doorway into what they could see was a small bedroom, to the right was a second door through into a small bathroom and an archway into a kitchen area. The whole place was spotlessly clean, Chris kept the place ordered and tidy. Tidy except for one table that had been set up for scrap booking. Chris had wheeled himself across to the table and pulled out a pile of scrapbooks from the table drawer.
"So you don't know anything about the murders?" He asked them a little disbelievingly, as he sorted through and pulled out one scrapbook in particular.
"No." Elizabeth frowned, looking at John and Carol questioningly. "What murders?"
John was starting to wonder if Chris's mind really was still quite as sharp as he'd thought.
Chris handed the scrapbook to Carol, who happened to be nearest. She opened it and glanced through. It was full of newspaper articles, meticulously arranged with dates, notes, facts marked in yellow highlight, page after page. She stopped on a page at random and started to read.
John was impatient. "What murders Chris, what are you talking about?"
"Oh dear God," Carol had been scanning through the newspaper article.
"Told you," Chris replied.
John stared questioningly at Carol. Even if he hadn't been able to read the overwhelming sense of shock she was feeling, her uncharacteristically strong language alone would have told him something was very, very wrong.
"Newspaper stories, articles, reports, everything." Carol sounded both stunned by the content and impressed at the thoroughness of the job Chris had done.
"It had to be comprehensive," he told her. "I don't know how much longer I have left. I'm not in great shape, and my condition is only going to deteriorate. I was planning one last trip to London, whatever the cost I knew I had to get this to you."
"Get what to us?" John's patience had run out.
Carol handed him the scrapbook.
John's face turned blank as he read, his mind racing. He closed his eyes then handed the scrapbook to Elizabeth who by now was reaching to grab it out of his hands.
John had no clue what to think. This was the last thing he'd expected this final visit to Earth to throw at him, he hadn't dared imagine anything like this was even possible.
Carol stared at him. "It means..."
"No Carol, we don't know what it means. We're just guessing what it means." John interrupted. He didn't want anyone jumping to conclusions, not about something this important.
Elizabeth handed the scrapbook back to John as Chris watched on, clearly enjoying the reaction he'd provoked. She was just as mind-blown by the revelation as the rest of them. "All four of us have obviously guessed the same thing though," Elizabeth pointed out. "And if there is the slightest chance there is any truth behind that guessing, if there is the slightest chance at all, then I'd say it's worth every risk we've taken to get here and more. If it's true it changes everything."
John was direct. "I know that. What bothers me is that we're getting our hopes up already. We've suffered enough disappointment already on this trip. It could be a copycat series of killings, it could be a complete coincidence."
"But it could be new Tomorrow People," Carol expressed the words they'd all been avoiding.
Elizabeth was resolute, "It doesn't matter how remote the chances are. You know that John. We have to find out one way or the other, whatever the cost."
John nodded his agreement, staring at the photograph of the boy in the last of the newspaper cuttings. He'd been ready to give up on the planet, and buried among the conflicting feelings that had arisen from being confronted with accepting that outcome had been a fragment of relief. After all those years being ultimately responsible for all the Tomorrow People, he was finally going to be free. Now he had to accept it was a responsibility he was never going to be free of, he wasn't going to find the closure on this mission that he was looking for. And for a moment he felt guilty, because he had been so much looking forward to being able to walk away and get on with his life.
"We've completed an exhaustive search of the exclusion zone. We found tracks from the crash site and initial sightings of the two civilians we're after. They crossed hills and got to a road. They headed North on the road towards Ambleside. We had dogs in, but, they were struggling to pick up any scent at all. We followed what we think might be the trail, but it ended abruptly before the bridge at checkpoint Baker West. No way they could have crossed the river without being spotted. They couldn't have made it any further forward that way and in the absence of any further trail we conclude they doubled back. But we've retraced their steps and found nothing. We now have blanket surveillance of the area, we've deployed thermal imaging cameras. They are not anywhere in the area that we can detect. We are also sure the cordon around the area has not been breached."
"They aren't there, and they haven't left. You understand what you're saying?" Sierpinski challenged the soldier.
"Yes. I know that's impossible. I'm just reporting it how it is."
Sierpinski nodded, she was done.
"Dismissed," The Lieutenant ordered.
"Sir." The soldier made his departure from Sierpinski's temporary office.
"Medical knowledge that has Doctor Vidal baffled. Engineering knowledge that has you baffled. Now this." Elaine Sierpinski addressed the Lieutenant.
Was it possible these people from the capsules were part of some kind of super secret organization with access to all manner of wild and wacky scientific gadgets? She couldn't believe she was seriously even thinking that, but all the other alternatives she could come up with were even more unbelievable, like the Lieutenant's suggestion it was alien technology. That one, thankfully, she could still dismiss; the survivors they had under observation were not green and they didn't have tentacles.
But wherever these people were from, Sierpinski couldn't afford to underestimate them. They were clearly more intelligent than the troops she had out searching for them.
The two survivors had hiked to the edge of the exclusion zone. If they'd had a more effective means of transport then they wouldn't have wasted all that time hiking, so, whatever their reason, it seemed likely they would still be on foot.
"What's the furthest they could have made it?" she asked.
"Since last contact, ten miles. Fifteen at the outside," the Lieutenant estimated.
"Set up a perimeter at twenty miles. I want reconnaissance of that entire area. I want a few open patrols, show a visible presence, let's get the locals a little nervous, but in parallel I want the bulk of the forces engaged in covert area reconnaissance, treat the area as hostile territory."
"That's no small area to be searching..."
"You'll get the resources."
"It would be easier if we could evacuate..."
"No. I want the military presence to look routine, I don't want the survivors to know we're looking for them. Let them think they've evaded us for now."
"And what do we tell the reconnaissance teams that they're looking for?"
She paused to think for a moment. "Tell them we're doing a census. Getting a list of people who've been in the area, routine, nothing to worry about, but if there are any issues with the radiation then we need to have a record of who was there. Deploy the automated face recognition systems. I know they aren't massively reliable, I know you'll get false positives, deal with it. I want real time cross referencing against the national identity card database. Anyone fails a check, I want to know about it."
"Understood."
"That's all, go."
Why North? What were they up to? It didn't make sense they would wander too far, if the crash really had been an accident then they would stay close to the crash site. They'd crashed down in the valley, was it possible they were just headed for higher ground? And who the hell were they?
That was the question it kept coming back to. Just who the hell were they?
Chris was in his element. For three years he'd been deprived of any opportunity to feel useful, now was his chance to make up for that. He was also thoroughly enjoying the opportunity to catch up with old friends, not that the news he had to offer them was all that cheerful.
"Megabyte picked up the telepathic recorded message you left after you demolished the lab, found his way to the vault no problem. He called me from a pay-phone near there, I wrote everything he said down, but it made almost no sense at all. He sounded nervous, paranoid. I mean, I'm not surprised, getting back and finding everyone gone, the lab abandoned, and you didn't exactly explain very much in the message you left..."
"It was all very confused towards the end, we didn't know what was going on, there wasn't much we could tell him," John admitted.
"Well, he was in a right state, seemed to think someone was following him. Anyway, he said Stephen had stayed behind in the Wastelands, Said that 'they' didn't know about Stephen, that there was still a chance Stephen could stop the armageddon. There was a whole bunch of stuff about owls as well, sounded like he had an obsession with them. He was rambling, I couldn't understand much, and he kept on saying he didn't want to say too much on the phone. I said I would meet him. I got there just too late, there was an ambulance, he'd collapsed apparently. He was delirious, I followed him to the hospital and waited, then he vanished. Jaunted away. I kept looking, but that was the last I heard of him." Chris shrugged, "They say people who go to the Wastelands end up either dead or insane."
"Stephen's still there." Carol reminded him pointedly. Chris didn't need to be telepathic to see she was upset and not dealing well with the implications of the story she was hearing.
He tried to diffuse the tension. "Yeah, but Stephen was crackers to begin with. When he comes back we won't be able to tell the difference." The joke worked well enough.
"The infection that kills us also has the rapid onset of dementia as one of the first symptoms. We don't know how long he'd been back, but I'd say it's very probable a large part of his confusion and paranoia were related to that and nothing to do with the Wastelands at all." John jumped in to further reassure Carol.
"Yeah well," Chris continued. "That's it, isn't it. If the same thing is going to happen to Stephen, he's better off in the Wastelands is all I can say. Or do you have some magic cure now, you didn't explain how it is the three of you managed to come back here yet!"
"No magic cure, I'm afraid. " John answered. "We understand it a little better now though. It seems to be a cumulative poison. Exposure takes about two days to disable, three days to kill. But if we can get away from the source of the contamination then over time the levels of the toxin slowly fall away. As long as we can catch people before it enters the terminal stages, then chances are they'll make a full recovery."
"So, you're here on a strict time limit. How much longer have you got?" Chris had worked out their problem. It would have been too much to expect they'd come back for good. Anyway, Chris had time limits of his own. All the more reason to make the most of what opportunity they did have.
"Twenty-nine more hours if we don't want to risk an irreversible level of exposure," Carol quantified the restriction.
"But there isn't any point staying longer than that anyway. The people we're here to rescue arrived here eight hours before we did. By the time we're in any danger, they'll already be dead." Elizabeth broke her brooding silence.
"The problem is they have no clue where they are, they don't understand the urgency of the situation, and they just aren't in any apparent hurry to set up the relay beacon we need to track them," Carol was showing her frustration.
"Affects aliens as well as you lot then does it, this poison?" Chris asked.
"It seems to be neurological, only attacks those areas of the brain that are different in telepaths. That's why it doesn't affect you saps, but does affect humanoid aliens." Elizabeth explained.
"Which is why I'm skeptical of the chances of anyone telepathic being able to survive here. Much as I would like to believe it," John pondered.
"I had my doubts as well." Chris countered him, he'd spent a lot of time thinking about this over the last few months. "Didn't know any of that stuff about brain poisons or anything, but as I figured it, the killings only stopped because you all left the planet. That was unfinished business. The killer, whoever it was, was never caught. Then suddenly, for no apparent reason he starts up again. Exactly the same method to the killing. Too many parallels for it to be coincidence, I'm not buying that. Copycat, alright, that's possible, but why? We know the killer was targeting you Tomorrow People last time. Why copy the rest, and fail to copy the one thing that was the entire reason for the killings?"
"I concede, it's tenuous as an explanation." John accepted.
Chris persisted with his reasoning. "And it's not just the parallels though that convinced me. You need to read that article on how this Damon escaped. It doesn't add up. Starved and delirious he manages to overpower someone twice as strong as him, then manages to make a run for it, when he can barely even walk, and the killer wasn't able to catch up. No. He was either helped by someone who magically managed to do so without leaving any evidence, or he jaunted. Which do you think is the more likely explanation? And this Jake's survival is equally improbable."
"You really have done a thorough job here," John observed as he studied the scrapbook. Chris appreciated the comment, John was not someone who was easily impressed or gave praise lightly.
"Still won't be easy to track them down." Carol reminded them. "We're having enough trouble tracking the people who crashed and they're supposed to have transponder beacons to make the job easier."
"Can't you just call them telepathically?" Chris asked.
"It isn't quite that easy." John pointed out.
"It never is." Chris had never quite understood why telepathy was always less useful than he felt it ought to be.
"You have to know where or who someone is to connect telepathically over a long distance. Think of it as like needing a telepathic telephone number to get through. The telepathic signal gets too weak over long distances to be able to just call out, you have to know their exact telepathic wavelength to get through," John tried to explain.
"Or," Elizabeth suggested, an idea occurring to her, "use telepathic amplifiers, like the one in the distress beacon."
John's face showed concentration as he considered the possibilities. Elizabeth was on to something. "Now that could be the start of a plan..."
"And once we find the four who crashed, there'll be eight of us to work on tracking them down." Carol was sounding chirpy for the first time since they'd arrived.
Chris looked up at John. John was a pragmatist, he was prepared for the risk of things not working out. Carol and to a lesser degree Elizabeth weren't. Chris wondered if John would take the path of being cruel in order to try and deflate their expectations now, or gamble on letting them enjoy their hope while it lasted.
John thought for a moment, "I'll head for Oxford, see if I can track down this Damon. You two need to continue on to Skelwith."
John had picked the second option. Chris smiled to himself, it seemed that John was getting soft in his old age,
"Our primary mission must remain rescuing the survivors of that crash." John continued. "Plus if I don't have any luck then Elizabeth is right, we're going to need that relay beacon."
"What about me?" Chris asked. He wasn't about to be left out, not after he'd waited patiently for so long for them to turn up.
"We'll make this a rendezvous point. We need you to keep on doing exactly what you've been doing. Monitor the news broadcasts, find out as much as you can about the cover story they're putting out. Then start looking at the area around Skelwith. I want maps, information about the terrain, hills nearest to the crash site and how high they are, look for places within the exclusion zone that they might commandeer. Get a list of military bases in the area. Any and every piece of information that might help us when we have to go in."
Chris smiled, that was something he could do. He was going to have to watch though, he was enjoying himself too much. He'd been warned about that, risking another stroke. But then if he didn't do this, what the hell use was his life? He'd just have to risk the excitement.
Sierpinski ended the call and glanced at her watch. The extended search was now well underway. It was mid afternoon, she'd be on the go for a little over twelve hours already. The Doctor was right, maybe they did need to eat. It was frustrating that she needed to be reminded about things like that sometimes. But then she lived to work, she accepted that.
Right now she ought to be off duty and enjoying a little Saturday afternoon shopping, instead she had a judgment call to make. She grabbed her cellphone from the desk and hit the secure dial option. Before she triggered a a major escalation she had to be damn sure of her facts, and right now the facts simply didn't add up, on the other hand there were certain precautions that needed to be taken regardless, just in case.
"Elaine Sierpinski here. Code Black Special." She waited for the reply, knowing those words would likely have caused something of a panic on the other end of the line. It took a minute or two before she was prompted to continue.
"Containment has failed. The threat level has not yet been established," she reported. "The Code Black Special is precautionary at this time... No sir, you can be assured that if there is any way to resolve this quietly, any way at all, I will take that option... Yes, sir. Whatever the cost."
