Fremder (17 page)

‘The rat was just lying there while we waited for it to come out of the anaesthetic. I checked the phase input figures again and the calibration of the hand transmitter and I set up a videocamera. When the rat was fully conscious and moving around I pushed the button on the newsfax and the 19:45 update slid out. The headline was CHS FOR UNDER-25S ONLY. I laid it on the table beside the cage where the camera could see it.

‘Helen put on a recording of Chopin mazurkas. It was the sixteenth of September 2022, the end of the day. The light in
the window was a sad kind of purple-blue. I started the video-camera at 19:48 BST.

‘I tuned the VMET to the WPR and at 19:50 I switched on. The oscilloscope showed in-phase as the rat disappeared. I jumped phase and switched off. I had that funny dropping sensation you get sometimes when you’re drifting off to sleep. I looked at Helen and she looked a little shaken. “You too?” I said, and she nodded. A terrible sadness took hold of me and I began to cry.’

You began to cry! I thought. You and your terrible sadness. For all we know you jumped us into a different world from what we had before. You jumped unborn me and everybody else into this world we’re stuck with now.

‘I remembered my mother giving me hot milk with butter and honey in it when I had a sore throat,’ Sixe continued. ‘I remember my father reading me “The Story of Kwashin Koji”, how a boat comes out of a picture and takes Kwashin Koji back into the picture and away.

‘We looked at the rat and it was only half a rat, the rear half. “Oh shit,” Helen said, “not again.” Then she went into the lav and was sick. I just stood there like an idiot looking at what was left of the rat. The front of the half-body was all scrunched up against the back of the cage – it was pretty messy and there was a lot of blood, it was as if someone had taken a cleaver and chopped the rat in half, severed arteries and split entrails and all that. The rat was backing up when he got the chop: his hind feet were dug in so hard he’d torn through the card he was standing on.

‘When Helen came out of the lav I said to her, “What did you mean when you said, ‘Not again’? Has this happened before?”

‘She said, “Not with a rat.”

‘“With what then?” I said. She didn’t answer. “Tell me, Helen,” I said. “With what?”

‘“You mean with whom,” she said.

‘I said, “Oh my God. What are you saying?”

‘“It happened with my brother,” she said.

‘“What?” I said. “What happened?”

‘“He did it in the middle of the night when I was asleep,” she said. “It was a Wednesday, the thirteenth of April. He’d set a timer to switch on the VMET and he’d got up on the table and arranged himself in the field. Then his head went somewhere but the rest of him stayed behind.”

‘“Where did it go?” I said.

‘“Who knows?” she said. “We lost touch.”

‘“Why did he do it?” I said.

‘“Hard to say,” she said. “He didn’t leave a note.”

‘“Did he do it with a phase jump, the same as we did with the rat?” I said. “Did he have the same kind of oscillator implant?”

‘“The one we used for the rat was wired from Izzy’s diagram,” she said.

‘“Well, if it didn’t work for Izzy,” I said, “why’d you do the same circuitry again?”

‘“It
should
have worked,” she said. “I checked it every possible way – the only explanation is that Izzy and the rat changed their minds and overrode the phase jump. Izzy certainly started out willing; he planned the whole thing very carefully. He’d been complaining of headaches and dizzy spells and he’d been to hospital for what he said were a couple of days of tests. He wouldn’t let me go with him – we had a regular driver who helped him into and out of buildings – and that’s when he must have had the implant done.”

‘“And you think he changed his mind at the last moment?” I said.

‘“Yes,” she said, “it’s the only explanation.”

‘“We’re talking quantum mechanics here,” I said. “How could changing his mind affect that?”

‘“Maybe all it takes is a little variation in the brain’s electrical
output,” she said. “Reality, after all, is subjective.”’ Sixe took some papers from his pocket, selected one, and read:

‘Centricity of event as perceived by a participant in the event is reciprocal with the observed universe: the universe configures the event and the event configures the universe. Each life is a sequence of event-universes, each sequence having equal reality subjectively and no reality objectively. Objective reality is not possible within the sequence, therefore subjective reality, regardless of consensus, is the only reality.’

‘What a load of bollocks,’ I said to Sixe.

‘Izzy wrote that.’

‘I think he must have been a couple of quanta short of a probability by then.’

‘Helen recited that to me, she knew it by heart. I said to her, “Do you really believe that?”

‘She said, “Izzy was a genius. You saw what was left of the rat; I saw what was left of Izzy: both of them changed their minds.”’

As Sixe spoke I saw again the face of Izzy Gorn spread across the darkness of space. Had it tried to speak? I thought I might be going mad. I thought of Izzy lying on the table with his head torn off. ‘What did she do with the body?’ I said.

‘That’s the same question I asked but it was no big problem -one of her medical friends signed the death certificate with cause of death listed as VMET accident, there was a fast and private cremation with a closed coffin, life went on, and here we were with half a rat. Between that and the subjective reality business I was pretty confused, besides which I was worried about that dropping feeling we’d both had.

‘I replayed the videodisc and the date on the newsfax was the same: 16 September 2022. The headline was still CHS FOR
UNDER-25S ONLY. The rest of the news hadn’t changed either: Top Exec A had resigned from her post following allegations of financial fraud and B was under investigation for having procured young girls for C; wirecar service would be disrupted by industrial action; and the latest survey showed that seventy-three per cent of those surveyed lied when being surveyed.’

‘But that doesn’t mean there was no change,’ I said. ‘Whatever recent past you recalled or saw evidence of would be the recent past that came with the collapse of the quantum wave into an alternative here-and-now, wouldn’t it?’

He ignored me. ‘The music on the audio beam was still the Chopin mazurkas. The clock said 19:59.1 looked all round the room, looked out of the window, looked at Helen. For a moment I didn’t know where I was and whether I’d ever seen that place and that person before. Then I was myself again but feeling weird.

‘The time was on every frame of the videodisc. There was the rat moving around in its cage at 19:48 when I started the camera. At 19:50 when I switched on the VMET it disappeared. When I jumped phase after that there was a blur that came and went. I restarted the disc and went to single-frame-advance. The blur was the very faint transparent shape of the rat as the light seemed to get brighter but it was impossible to say what was happening. The newsfax on the table seemed blurred as well. This ghost-image was only on three frames. I replayed and froze frame. The headline appeared to have another faint headline superimposed on it like a cross-dissolve. I zoomed up the frame and fiddled with the focus but I couldn’t get it clear enough to read. I took prints of those three frames and put them under a magnifier but had no better luck. The next frame after those three showed the newsfax and the half-rat as we’d found them after I switched off the VMET.

‘I said to Helen, “It’s the same world, isn’t it? The rat – half of
it anyway – jumped back from whatever it was getting into and maybe the headline started to change but it changed back.”

‘She said, “What do you expect when you send a rat on a man’s errand? We’re not going to get anywhere with this until we do it ourselves.”

‘I said, “I’ll be damned if I want to end up with my arse in one place and my head in another.”

‘She said, “How much difference would it make?”’

Sixe paused there. ‘Not a lot, I guess,’ he said reflectively, ‘not a lot.’ During this long narrative his apparently total recall had transported me to that long-past September; I’d been seeing my mother’s face and hearing her voice that I knew from recordings. She was gone and here I was with this yesterday man whose sadness was evidently little relieved by alcohol.

‘I could see she wasn’t in the mood for a rational discussion,’ he continued, ‘but I kept trying. I said, “I think before we do anything else we should try to figure out what happened here.”

‘She said, “Looks pretty simple to me: the rat chickened out at the last moment.”

‘I said, “Be serious, God knows what the implications of this are.”

‘“God!” she said. “He didn’t care about
my
arse. Why should He care about a rat’s? He didn’t care about my grandmother’s arse either, when they used her for their so-called medical experiments at Auschwitz. Don’t talk to me about God, He and I aren’t speaking these days.”

‘I said, “I wasn’t talking about whether or not God cares – I was talking about the significance of what happened to the rat.”

‘“Significance!” she said. “What it signifies is: make sure your arse follows where your head leads. If you’re going to do something, then fucking do it.”

‘“Maybe this just doesn’t want to happen,” I said. She didn’t answer; she switched on the videoscan and moved it from station to station around town. There was the Ziggurat in
purple standby mode, then Stilt City and Raftville, you could almost smell them. Sleazeworld and the central Fungames complex showing THREE BIG PUKIES TONITE – HORROR LIKE YOU’VE NEVER SEEN BEFORE! She punched in the street-level view and we saw Prongs and Arseholes, Shorties, Clowns, Funboys, Executives, and Wankers. She zoomed in for a good look at their tattoos and their paint, their shaven heads and their tribal hairdos. She said, “Maybe every world is a rats’ world. Let’s try again.”

‘I said, “What, with another rat?”

‘She said, “With us. Let’s get the oscillators implanted and do a jump before Heale decides to have a closer look at what we’ve been up to.”

‘I said, “But Helen, maybe Izzy and the rat didn’t change their minds; maybe the wrong phase-scaling got fed in both times or the oscillator circuitry wasn’t correct.”

‘She said “I’m sick of all this goddam arithmetic; Elijah didn’t have to piss about with numbers, he just fucking
did
it and the Lord took care of the details.”

‘“Don’t forget that you and He aren’t speaking these days,” I said.

‘“Maybe He’ll do it for old times’ sake,” she said.

‘I said, “I don’t think we can count on the Lord for that, he’s got a lot on his plate just now. And before
I
do a jump I’d really like to know where Izzy’s head and the rat’s front half ended up.”

‘“Wherever they are is better than here,” she said.

‘By then of course I realised that she was well and truly unwired and there was no knowing what she might do next. I was feeling pretty crazy myself – I mean, for all I knew we’d replaced the existing world, which was already one head short, with one that was missing half a rat. I was angry at God for creating a universe that could be mucked about like that. Why
couldn’t He, She, or It have made something solid and tamperproof?

‘Helen said, “As soon as I can get hold of Ulrike let’s do it.” Ulrike was the neurosurgeon who was going to do our implants.

‘I said, “Helen, don’t be crazy.”

‘She said, “Why not? Where has being sane got me?”

‘I said, “For God’s sake, try to act like a scientist.”

‘She said, “Is that what you are – a scientist? You just don’t have the balls to take a chance. And who are you to advise me anyhow? You’re a loser who’s been getting a free ride on me.”

‘That’s when I left the house for a long walk. I had a key to the Class A walkway but I didn’t use it, I felt like being down on the ground with the Prongs and the Arseholes and the rest of the street life. I was half-hoping I’d get jumped and not have to make any decisions for a while or maybe for ever. I walked as far as Stilt City past people kicking each other’s heads in and breaking whatever was unbroken. The streets stank of vomit and sewage and the air was full of noise but the nastiness of it didn’t seem as nasty as what we’d been doing quietly in our nice clean lab.

‘It was raining; London always looks more itself by night and in the rain – all black and shining and full of lights and colours like a nightmare. People offered me everything from slammo to little boys but nobody bothered me. I think I must have looked a little too weird to take a chance on.

‘I got back to the house about three o’clock in the morning and two guys jumped me at the front door – professionals. They didn’t waste any time talking, they just gagged me and cuffed me and shoved me into a hopper and flew me to a building in the Inner Exec Circle. No blindfold so I knew I was for it. They took me to a lab where they strapped me to a bed and a woman medic gave me an injection. When I came to I heard myself talking and I saw that I was hooked up to a downloader. The
medic was sitting by the bed and she whispered, “Listen but keep babbling. I’m a friend of Ulrike’s. I have orders to terminate you as soon as there’s nothing more to be got from you. Be careful when you leave.” Then she took off the electrodes, undid the straps, stuck a card in my pocket, pointed to the window, and said, “Quick, the fire escape – go!” So I went.

‘I walked to Sleazeworld and hired a Q-BO-SLEEP for the night. Next morning’s newsfax had this item.’ He took yet another photocopy from the wad. It was dated 17.09.22.

HELEN GORN BREAKDOWN

Physicist-neurologist Helen Gorn was found by a Corporation patrol at 02:20 wandering in her nightdress on the Class A walkway in OW 71. Gorn, 7 months pregnant, was taken to SNG Rest and Reassessment where she was diagnosed as suffering from clinical depression.

‘I’ve seen this before,’ I said to Sixe.

‘You’ve probably seen this one as well.’ He gave me another photocopy, dated 24.09.22:

HELEN GORN DEAD

Helen Gorn was found dead from a drug overdose early this morning in her room at SNG Rest and Reassessment where she had been in therapy for the last week. Gorn, 26, was seven months pregnant. The foetus was safely transferred to an artificial womb to complete full-term gestation. (See obituary p.4.)