Resonance (30 page)

"ParaDim," said Annalise. "Didn't I say?"

Graham stopped dead. How could she even think about going to ParaDim?

"It's okay, Graham. ParaDim's different here. It's not like the other worlds. Everyone's really open and friendly."

Graham couldn't believe it. "ParaDim's the same on every world. Kevin said it was something to do with the resonance effect. They can't help it."

He looked around. He felt uncomfortable talking about ParaDim so close to work. He grasped her arm and hurried her along the pavement.

"Trust me, Graham, it's different here. Gary and Tamisha are great."

"You like Tamisha?"

"Sure, why wouldn't I?"

Graham relaxed and released her arm and thought about a girl with orange hair. "Yesterday, I thought you were going to push her through a window."

Annalise looked worried. "Annalise Fifteen tried to push Tamisha through a window?"

"She thought about it. And Tamisha had been asking for it."

Annalise looked shocked. "But Tamisha's one of the nicest persons I've met."

"You wouldn't have thought so yesterday. Pressure does strange things to people."

"Yes, it does, doesn't it?" She gazed away into the distance, her mind elsewhere for an instant. "Anyway, Tamisha loaned me her ID until Gary can sort something out. She's in the States all week recruiting for the Resonance project. So, as far as this country's concerned I'm Tamisha Kent, ParaDim liaison to the DTI. Gives me access to you while you're at work and to ParaDim when I need to see Gary. Beats those cloak and dagger phone calls."

"Isn't there a picture on the ID? You don't look anything like Tamisha."

"Don't need to. ParaDim don't use pictures. All their security over here is automatic—retinal scans and fingerprints. Gary had Tamisha's file updated with my details. I tell you, anything the Resonance project wants they get. No questions. Gary said change the file and the security guy jumped to it."

It still sounded wrong to Graham. ParaDim was like a big, bloated spider with a foot on every strand of existence—it may let you walk softly around its outer edges for a while but that didn't mean it wouldn't rush out and bite you when it felt like it.

"They're really great guys down there," said Annalise. "They've given me guided tours and this pass gives me unrestricted access. I can walk anywhere I want and, believe me, there's nothing scary going on there at all. Just a bunch of guys trying to save the world."

"So why are we going there? You've seen the building and I must have had every medical test there is yesterday."

"Didn't I say?"

He shook his head.

"It's your DNA results. You know, they started coming through yesterday? The message in the changing room?"

"I remember."

"Well, they finally worked out what was going on. Gary stayed up all night double-checking the results from nearly ten million worlds."

"And?"

"They found your parents."

"Gary can explain it better," she said. "Do you want to sit down?"

"No, just tell me."

"Okay. Gary says you're some kinda composite. He thinks you must have hundreds of parents, maybe more than a thousand. It's difficult to tell because so many of the donors appear related."

"Donors?"

"Gary says it's like someone took genetic information from all your parents on all the worlds and combined it into a single Graham Smith hybrid. No one has a clue how. It's way beyond anything they can do here. Gary's downloading genetics data from every advanced world he can find to see if there are any parallels."

"I'm a hybrid?"

"Of all your parents. Some kinda Smith soup that blended together to form two hundred billion identical Grahams."

"Smith soup?"

"Sounds kinda icky, doesn't it?" She screwed up her face. "Howard came up with it and . . . it kinda stuck. Sorry."

They took the tube to Putney Bridge. ParaDim's office was over the river—a modern tower block ten storeys high, gleaming white concrete and black tinted windows. Annalise inserted her card, placed her palm on the security panel by the front door and stared into the retinal camera. Graham stood to the side, trying to peer inside but seeing only his reflection in the black glass doors. A green light flashed and the door opened.

A lone security guard watched them walk across the foyer. "Good morning, Miss Kent," he said. "Is this the gentleman to see Mr. Mitchison?"

Annalise agreed on both counts. "It is a good morning, isn't it?"

She seemed so happy. Graham couldn't understand why. How could anyone walk into a ParaDim office and feel happy?

He swept his eyes around the marble-clad foyer—so huge, so quiet, so deserted. Where was everyone? And why the one-way glass? He could see people walking by outside—ordinary people going about their business, shopping, sightseeing, taking the dog for a walk. Not one of them glanced his way. Not one showed any interest in the strange unmarked building in their midst.

"Keep this with you at all times, Mr. Smith," said the security guard, handing Graham a temporary pass.

"Come on," said Annalise, dragging Graham towards the lifts. "Watch this."

She placed her palm on a console panel. "Location required for Gary Mitchison."

"Gary Mitchison is in 5G, Miss Kent." A woman's voice—American, natural, not a hint of being computer-generated.

"Neat, huh? You can find anyone in the building." She held up her card. "We're tracked by these."

They took the lift to the fifth floor. The doors opened on a wide corridor that stretched nearly the entire length of the building, doors and entry consoles were dotted along both its sides.

But still no people. The corridor was deserted. There was no glass in any of the doors, no sounds from within or without save the steady hum of the overhead lights.

They found 5G, three doors down on their left. Annalise went through the motions, the green light flashed, the door opened. Graham wondered if he was supposed to do the same? Was there somewhere he should insert his pass?

Annalise flowed into the room. "Gary?" she called.

Graham followed. There were banks of desks and screens around the walls. Two men were talking by a terminal in the corner. They both looked round. Graham recognized the shorter of the two men—Howard Sarkissian. A feeling of guilt washed over him. Was the Howard that he knew dead?

"You must be Mr. Smith. Can I call you Graham?" said the other man—tall, early thirties, a hint of a Scots accent. He held out his hand and smiled as he advanced towards Graham. "I'm Gary and my friend in the corner is the redoubtable Howard Sarkissian."

"Charmed, I'm sure," said Howard, bowing.

Graham shivered. He'd heard the exact same words barely twenty-four hours earlier. The same words, the same voice, the same craggy smile, the same twinkle in the eye behind the same thick-lensed glasses. It was unnerving.

"Have you told him?" Gary asked Annalise.

"On the way over," said Annalise, smiling up at Gary.

"So, what do you think about your remarkable family history, Mr. Smith?" asked Howard.

Graham shrugged. He didn't know what to think.

"The data's still coming in," said Gary. "At the last count you had 472 fathers and 4,487 mothers."

Graham blinked. The numbers meant nothing to him. He had one father and one mother. The others were mere strangers, as anonymous as a page of Smiths in a telephone directory.

"We'd like to perform further tests. If that's agreeable to you," asked Gary.

"We know you can exchange your consciousness," said Howard. "We're wondering if you can exchange other material as well?"

"Like genetic material," said Gary. "Could the source of your remarkable genetic make-up be in part caused by a transference of genetic material."

"We're very much in the dark," said Howard. "Unfortunately, we're not geneticists."

"Which is why Tamisha's in the States busily recruiting. We're desperately short of expertise."

"Graham flipped yesterday," Annalise told Gary. "Is that any help?"

Gary looked from Annalise to Howard to Graham. He looked as though he could barely contain himself. "Before or after the medical?" The words came out slow and precise. "This is very important."

"After, wasn't it, Graham?" prompted Annalise.

Graham nodded. He didn't like the way Annalise was looking at Gary. She had barely taken her eyes off him since entering the room. And did she have to stand so close?

Gary exchanged glances with Howard. "This is exactly what we wanted," he said. "We can do a before-and-after test and look for anomalies." He turned to Graham. "You couldn't have come to us at a better time."

Three faces smiled at Graham. Graham tried to smile back but Annalise turned and touched Gary's arm. He watched her fingers curl and caress and move away. He felt betrayed and stupid and guilty and . . .

What was the matter with him! How could he be jealous? She was Annalise and yet he knew she wasn't
his
Annalise. She wouldn't step in front of a gunman and threaten to set herself alight. She wasn't Annalise Fifteen. Annalise Fifteen was unique. There could never be anyone else like her.

And yet . . .

And yet there she was, standing right in front of him. Annalise Fifteen in a different guise—maybe the girl that Annalise Fifteen would or could have been if circumstances had been different.

It was disconcerting in the extreme.

"I'll call Shikha," said Gary, picking up a phone. "She'll want to see you anyway. And she'll need time to coordinate appointments with the Cavendish."

"Where is Shikha?" asked Howard.

"Trawling the medical databases last time I saw her. Looking for any world that has experimented with ways of measuring consciousness."

Graham drifted away from the conversation flying around him and walked over to the window. The Thames was laid out below like a vast blue snake. Small boats skidded silently like many-legged insects—their oars moving in unison. Clouds scudded across the sky, cars filed slowly over distant bridges. Everything so normal, so far removed from CAT scans, electroencephalography and submolecular analysis.

Gary replaced the phone and spoke to Howard. "Shikha's already booked the Cavendish for this afternoon. She'll catch up with us in an hour when she's finished downloading."

Graham turned away from the window. "What's any of this got to do with stopping the resonance wave?" he asked.

Gary and Howard looked at each other.

"Ah," said Gary, for the first time looking lost for words. "Unfortunately, we're not sure. If it wasn't for the interest shown in you by other Resonance projects—specifically the ones that were closed down—I'd say, very little. There is no obvious link that we can find between you and the resonance wave."

"Other than the possibility that you were the result of an earlier resonance wave," added Howard. "After all, there are two hundred billion of you. You appear identical in all respects. Could that be the result of a resonance wave that forced all your counterparts to develop the same way?"

"The truth is—we simply do not know where or if you fit in. These Resonance projects—were they closed down because they were close to finding an answer to the resonance wave or because they were close to uncovering the truth about you?"

"We hope the former, but fear it's neither. All this could be an elaborate scheme of disinformation to send research teams down a blind alley."

"But, for the moment, you're all we've got," said Gary. "And, believe me, we've travelled the same path as every other Resonance project. We've considered creating an interference pattern to nullify the resonance wave. We've discussed the possibility of creating a counterresonance wave—something so large it could overwhelm all other resonance effects."

"But everything stumbles on one very important hurdle. We just don't know enough about resonance."

"We've tried simulations," said Gary, "but we can't find an accurate model. Schenck's Law is more idea than hard fact. There are no equations to verify. We have approximations, ideas, but there are too many holes, too many variables that we don't fully understand."

"And we've trawled the advanced worlds," said Howard, "downloaded every model we can find . . . but," he paused, "even their simulations—ones we barely comprehend—don't predict the intensity that we see in this resonance wave. ParaDim projects are being created ten times faster than predicted. There has to be a missing component."

"What do you think of our setup, Graham?" asked Gary as they waited for the lift to take them down to the ground floor. Annalise had persuaded the two men to give Graham a guided tour while they waited for Shikha to arrive.

"I thought Adam Sylvestrus didn't like modern architecture," said Graham.

"Who?" Gary looked puzzled, his brow furrowed for a few seconds. "Oh, him! He doesn't exist on this world. Kenny Zamorra runs ParaDim here."

Graham wondered what Kenny Zamorra was like. An Adam Sylvestrus clone? Worse?

"ParaDim's not evil on this world, Graham," said Annalise. "They do a lot of good. They've really made a difference in the Third World with their drug programs. They've cut through a lot of red tape. Saved a lot of lives."

"I don't think you could call ParaDim evil on any world," said Howard. "Not the company. There are a few individuals who put profit before compassion but the majority of ParaDim employees only want what's best for the world."

"Does that include New Tech weapons?" asked Graham.

"No," said Howard. "The proliferation of New Tech weaponry is an unqualified disaster. But not every world has to repeat that mistake. We haven't here. There are no plans to open a weapons research program anywhere within ParaDim."

Graham wondered if that was true. And if anyone would tell Howard if it wasn't. ParaDim was caught up in a resonance wave. If one person didn't create a New Tech weapons project, someone else would. It was inevitable. Whatever anyone's good intentions.

"ParaDim is totally committed to solving this resonance problem," added Gary. "Believe me, I should know. The Resonance project is top priority. Kenny Zamorra said so himself. Whatever we need we can have. No questions asked. If we want people, ParaDim brings them in. If we want more computer capacity, it's there the next day. Money's no object. The only thing that counts is finding a solution."