zero point

one

Time, Jeff Tracy had discovered, was a fickle bitch. What she gave with one hand she stole away with the other. In fact, he thought, as he squinted bleary-eyed at the document displayed on his screen, he could feel her, now, breathing down his neck and greying his hair with every exhalation.

Jeff looked down at his hands where they rested on his desk – they were his father's hands now, the skin creased with the years and burned brown by the relentless rays of the Pacific sun, and the blood slowing inside them so that it didn't quite reach the tips of his old-man fingers. Jeff closed his document and rubbed his palms together, his hands cold despite the tropical sun that blazed hot and yellow on the leaves of the palm trees beyond the windows.

'Ginkgo biloba,' Tin-Tin pronounced from her position on the couch. She turned another page of her magazine, not looking at him, but living with him long enough to know that the rubbing of hands would shortly precede a cigar on the balcony as he warmed himself up. Jeff liked to think that tropical living had made him soft, but Tin-Tin had other notions about too much red meat and a liver weakened by too many glasses of Jack, and through an unknown process of deliberation had decided that gingko biloba was Jeff Tracy's only hope for vascular salvation.

'You know where you can stick your gingko biloba,' Jeff muttered as he pushed his chair out from his desk and got to his feet, stretching his back with an audible crack. 'Ah, shit,' he said at the sound, the expletive falling from his mouth so unexpectedly that he glanced guiltily across the living room at Tin-Tin, who idly turned another page of her magazine. Time wasn't hurting Tin-Tin, Jeff lamented to his inner self as he strolled across to the bar. She remained as fresh and dewy as when she'd first moved to the island – no doubt thanks to the two-hundred dollar pots of face-cream that Alan lavished upon her, along with the jewellery and the fine silks and whatever the hell else the desperate bastard was smuggling onto the island.

'Funny you mention that,' Tin-Tin said, one page after Jeff had muttered about where she could stick her gingko, 'because a suppository would be the most efficient mode of transportation. I'll have father prepare one for you.' She licked a finger and turned another page, making Jeff laugh as he poured his whiskey and chinked ice into the glass.

'No, thank you.' Jeff aimed his drink towards her in cheeky salute, even though she wasn't looking at him. 'Best medicine on the planet,' he said to her anyway, downing a swallow and winking when she glanced up from her magazine and gave him a good-natured scowl.

'Really, Mr Tracy – '

'Really what, Miss Kyrano?'

' – how you're not – '

'How I'm not what?'

' – how you're not – '

The video phone on Jeff's desk trilled. The company line. Tin-Tin lifted the magazine to her nose again.

'You're not going to get that?' Jeff inquired with well-calculated male-chauvinist piggery.

'It's Saturday,' Tin-Tin informed him as her thoughts drifted back to the pink and black number on the page in front of her. Time was that Tin-Tin would have jumped for that phone. Back in the day she could never do enough for Jeff – his messages, his typing, pouring his coffee and draping sprigs of parsley across his egg-salad sandwiches. But the world had changed since then – Time had her sticky fingers in everything around here.

'Is it?' Jeff looked down at the ice in his depleted glass, wondering if dementia was kicking in or if it was time to give up the hard stuff. 'I thought it was Friday,' he muttered to the top of Tin-Tin's head as he walked back to his desk and looked at the calendar. 'Yes, it's Friday,' he confirmed over the still ringing phone.

'It must be Saturday somewhere on this planet,' Tin-Tin smirked at her magazine, making Jeff grimace and vow inwardly that he would keep her away from his sons from now on. It had taken a few years, but they were finally starting to rub off on her.

Jeff settled behind his desk and activated the vidphone, angling the monitor around to better face him. 'Hello Claire,' he said as the plump face of his secretary filled the screen, the creases between her brows made deeper by her anxiety at the amount of time it had taken for somebody to pick up the phone.

'Oh, Mr Tracy, I didn't think anybody was going to answer.'

'Sorry about that.' Jeff put what remained of his whiskey on the desk, the ice clinking as it settled in the glass. 'My assistant,' he said, glancing at the potted peach draped idly across the lounge, 'is on a break at the moment. What can I do for you?'

'I have a call for you, Mr Tracy. The gentleman wouldn't wait for me to reschedule at a time that better suited you, and since it's Spectrum, and since it seems official… '

Jeff stared at his secretary's earnest face, his heart lurching with something that might have been dread.

'Alright, Claire.' He picked up his pen and pulled a blank pad of paper towards him. 'Put the gentleman through. Oh, and Claire, secure the line, please.'

For all Jeff knew, Spectrum were contacting him on business – probably wanted Tracycorp to tender for transport to their Mars base, one of the worst-kept secrets in the aerospace industry. But there was also the Faulkner Labs incident lurking in their mutual pasts, and the thought of Faulkner Labs being dredged up again made him sick to his stomach. Jeff considered reaching for what was left of his whiskey and realised that his hands were trembling.

'Mr Tracy. Forgive me for intruding on you at home.'

Without Jeff's noticing it, his secretary's face had been replaced by the stern features of a caucasian male on the downward side of middle-age, his white hair making him look older than he probably was, and the whole accentuated by the snow-white colour of his uniform. Jeff looked at him, at the clean-shaven jaw, at the pale blue eyes in a hard and immovable face that all but screamed career soldier, and was relieved to find that he didn't know this man. Had never met him before. Yet the shaking in his hands continued.

'I'm Colonel White,' the owner of the pale eyes said, making Jeff's gaze flicker down to the snowy expanse of kevlar on the colonel's chest. Of course you are, Jeff thought distractedly, remembering the Spectrum officers that he'd met at Faulkner's in their paint-pallet uniforms, their identities safely hidden behind their garish colour-codings. Jeff's gaze met the colonel's again, White's impassive expression as hard and unyielding as a glacier.

'Mr Tracy,' the colonel continued. 'There is no easy way to say this, but we have a man in custody who we believe to be your son.'

Across the room Tin-Tin lowered her magazine.

Why couldn't he stop his hands from shaking? 'I have four sons Colonel White, and they are all currently accounted for.' Jeff's eyes met Tin-Tin's. Are they? Tin-Tin nodded.

'I understand. But the man we have in custody has been tentatively identified as Virgil Tracy.'

Jeff stared at the screen, vaguely aware of Tin-Tin moving in behind him and placing a hand upon his shoulder. 'That's not possible,' he said at last, before uttering the words he had avoided for best part of two years. 'Virgil passed away – '

'I know. I have the Faulkner's incident report here on my desk. I also know that despite the best efforts of International Rescue and Spectrum retrieval units, that no body was or has since been recovered.' The corners of White's mouth moved briefly, the barest flicker of an apologetic smile. 'I'm sorry, but before we can proceed I need a positive identification.' The image on the vidphone changed. 'Is this your son, Mr Tracy?'

Jeff stared at the image that now filled the screen. 'This isn't possible,' he repeated as the shaking in his hands threatened to overtake his body. 'That can't be my son.' Jeff's voice was torn around the edges, broken, as if it had been dragged screaming over stones. 'My son is dead.'

Colonel White's ice-cool visage returned to the screen.

'It is Spectrum's experience, Mr Tracy, that the dead can, and do, walk again.'