Saskia Brandt: Deja Vu Part 5

He was in an empty luggage store. A blank table separated him from his interrogator. He noted the clear, hanging bag and tried to guess which chemicals it contained, but the only memories at his recall were sentimental. His father painting the house with a brush like McWhirter's moustache. Two-tone. Black and white. His daughter as a little girl, drawing a house on sugar paper.

'Beautiful, Jenny. Do you think you can draw it without taking your crayon from the paper? Good girl. And can you do it again without tracing the same line twice. Jenny? Hey, clever girl.'

'How long have I been in here?'

'Let's start at the beginning. Why did you come, Proctor?'

'You invited me as a consultant.'

'Why?'

'To talk to Bruce. To find out why he came. Is he still down there?'

'Yes. Why?'

Jenny asking, 'Why?' and David answering over and over, each explanation a cheerful retreat, until he backed into atoms, to orbits, quarks, the G.o.d particle.

'I'll tell you everything if you'll tell me one thing.'

'Let me guess. You want to know if the research centre has been evacuated.'

A sucking, heavy despondency pulled at him. What did McWhirter know? What drugs had they given him?

'Why?' asked Jenny.

'Yes.'

'Looking for this?'

McWhirter held Ego in his fingers.

'f.u.c.k.'

'My security staff found enough explosive in the expansion slot of this computer to finish the demolition job on your laboratory. You weren't happy with the destruction you caused the first time. You wanted a second go. But why this? You would have killed your friend, man.'

'The Onogoro computer needs to be destroyed.'

'Listen to me, David. See that drip? You're on the cusp of irreversible brain damage. You'll feel the lights going out, one by one. Now. Why destroy Onogoro?'

'To stop...'

'Concentrate. Who?'

'Hartfield.'

'What does it have to do with Hartfield?'

'And to kill Bruce.'

'Bruce is your friend.'

'Dead anyway. Viruses.'

McWhirter flashed his knuckles across David's forehead. 'Wake up. How did you expect to get away with it?'

David licked his lips sleepily. 'Relied on a weakness.'

'What weakness?'

'You.' David opened his eyes. Woke in this gap between moments. 'As head of security in 2003, you failed. Now, in 2023, you will fail again.'

'Talk to me.'

'You're a one-trick pony. I knew you would order a fast search of the laboratory, find the card, and wave it in front of me. But think. How could I, above ground, expect to communicate with a computer in the research centre?'

'A timer,' said McWhirter.

'Then why would I ask if the centre had been evacuated? The logical solution, Colonel, is two computers. The Ego unit in your hand has already interfaced with the local ELF transmitter. Now it is ready to trigger the second Ego unit I hid somewhat more expertly. Is this not true, Ego?'

'Yes, Professor,' said the card.

McWhirter held his stare. 'You have control, Proctor. I concede that. Now easy. Think about it.'

'Get f.u.c.ked.'

Ego bleeped. 'Ignition signal transmitted, Professor.'

'David, you understand that nothing will be the same again?'

'I understand.'

The explosion came like a croak of thunder. The table buzzed against the metal band of McWhirter's watch. He did not move his eyes from those of David, and when a uniformed officer returned with news of smoke from the evacuation shaft, McWhirter spoke in his ear.

The minutes collected like sediment. David watched the questions pa.s.s. They did not touch him. He smiled and remembered the questions of his daughter.

Jenny asking, 'Why?'

Chapter Nine.

Night terrors for the kommissarin, whose dreams carried her to a campfire on a dark plain. Around it sat three old women. Clotho, she spun the thread of life. Lachesis, she measured a length. Atropos, she cut it.

Spin, measure, snip.

She faced the sharp autumn air that came through the Brandenburg Gate and wondered if her memory of pa.s.sing beneath it was implanted. Greened steel horses looked east. Saskia turned too. Pariser Platz stretched out. A drum skin. Her eyes dropped to a human street cleaner. He was too distant for her to see his epaulettes. She thought, again, of the Soviet memorial to the west.

I know what Soviet means, at least.

I know what meaning means.

Its sad blocks, its darkness, its gold lettering: these said nothing to her. What did those with memory read in the stones?

Her coat was swept open by the wind. It exposed the dark handle of her gun in its pancake holster. She gathered the coat about her, embarra.s.sed, and walked towards the shadow of the Gate. She collided with a man. He took her wrist and said, 'Seien Sie vorsichtig, Frau Kommissarin.' The Russian accent was strong like his grip. He opened and closed an FIB badge.

'Klutikov?'

Coffee in a dark, long room where flowers in wire spirals sagged across the tables. Amaretti biscuits. Coffee with her past in the form of an overtall man called Klutikov - FIB, Moscow Station. He had a translucent raincoat. It hung now behind them on an antique coat stand. Saskia's jacket remained in place. It covered her holster, her speedloader and her shape as a woman before the eyes of the man who could thumb through her ident.i.ty. Coffee with memory. Klutikov licked sugar from his palm.

'Cigarette?' he asked.

'Here?'

'It's the only place.'

'I don't smoke.'

'Take one. Draw it beneath your nose. Now. Want a cigarette?'

'G.o.d yes.'

He laughed as he put the lighter to the cigarette. Saskia saw something important in its golden reflection, but he withdrew it before she could trace the source of her curiosity. The smoke left her mouth slowly. She spread out in her chair.

'Better?'

'Sure.'

He showed her his empty palm. Then he touched his fingertips in order: 'One, no names, ever. Two, after this coffee, you forget you saw me. Three, smile.'

Saskia blushed. She drank some coffee. It was ashy, like the cigarette.

'Any synaesthesia?' asked Klutikov.

'What's that?'

'You never need to ask that kind of question again. Ask yourself.'

'What?'

'Do it.'

What is synaesthesia?

An answer entered her head. It had a fundamental strangeness that took her a moment to identify: it did not use the same voice as her thoughts.

Synaesthia, in this context, is the experience of sensation in a modality that did not trigger the initial sensation. For example, a voice might be described as 'c.u.mbly, yellow'.

'What was that?'

'Intel. Don't worry about it. The important thing is that you haven't any synaesthetic experiences. It's an indicator that the operation went wrong.'

'Operation?'

Klutikov exhaled smoke from his nose and beckoned Saskia. Again, her understanding lagged. Oh, he wanted her to lean forward. When she did, he put his hand on the back of her head. He touched a scab that Saskia had not noticed.

'This is where they fired it in.'

'You lean forward.'

Klutikov paused. Then, with a nod, he bowed. He let Saskia search his hair. She found a knot of skin no larger than a vaccination scar. Klutikov sniffed and checked the other customers. 'You have one too,' she said.

'The chip is a small computer, but quite powerful. One of its talents is telecommunication.'

'It connects to the Internet?'

'Just so.'

'What else?'

'The specifications aren't well known. To me, at least.'

'Who made it?'

'No idea.'

'Does it suppress my memories? Why can't I remember anything?'

'No, that's not it.' He jammed his cigarette into the ash tray. 'Your brain is made of little cells, following? The reason that I'm me and you're you is that the cells are wired differently. One pattern of wiring is me, one pattern is you, and another is the King of England. It's all about the pattern. If you took a recording of my brain and imposed that pattern over another brain, then that brain, and therefore that person, will start to sound and act like me. They'll think that they are me, and, in important ways, they will be. Your chip contains the memories of another person in a compressed, digital form. Reasonably high fidelity. It would take an expert to tell the difference.'

'An expert?'

'The chip is connected by tiny filaments to over half the neurons in your neocortex. Your neocortex is where the more "human" functioning goes on. The chip remains in contact with your brain and constantly imposes the donor pattern over your own.'

Saskia looked at her hand. She realised that she did not know whose hand she was looking at. The chip is like a parasite with its feeding tube in my brain. She moved a finger. No, the parasite moved the finger.

'That's enough, Klutikov.'

I'm the parasite.