The Thing Itself (41 page)

‘So Roy is right? You bring your two halves together, and me, and Roy. All of us together, in one place. Inside the zone of action. And then?’

‘We will be able to triangulate a temporal escape trajectory. I hope so, at any rate. From you two here, to you two in Antarctica thirty years ago, superposing the two minds temporally. It’ll be a sort of short circuit: and it’ll propel me away.’

‘Away where?’

‘Back. Then back further, and further again, a few skips. I’m not sure how many: it depends on the temporal momentum I pick up from the first skip. But two, three, four bounces, like a skipping stone flying over the flat ocean, and – out.’

‘Out where? That’s what I’m asking.’

‘First of all? Outside the frame of spatialty and temporality. That’ll enable me to navigate past the remaining seventeen categories, I think, and get quite out, altogether away.’

‘To the thing itself.’

‘It’s not a place to get to, the thing itself. It’s not like a harbour to sail into, or a house to knock on the door. It’s the transcendent condition and possibility of anything existing at all.’

‘But if not here, and not
there
, then where?’

‘This universe is determined by the thing itself, and by the consciousnesses of the sentient beings perceiving the thing itself. The thing is vital, not inert. Of course it is: twenty-first century atheists peer carefully at the world around them and claim to see no evidence for God, when what they’re really peering at is the architecture of their own perceptions. Spars and ribs and wire-skeletons – there’s no God there. Of
course
there’s not. But strip away the wire-skeleton, and think of the cosmos without space or time or cause or substance, and ask yourself: is it an inert quantity? If so, how could … how could
all this
? You ask me what’s outside, and I tell you: what’s outside is the stuff that isn’t determined by human consciousness.’

‘Defined by what, then?’

‘Certainly defined by something. Of course. By consciousness, with its own peculiar structures of understanding. But not human.’

‘Alien?’

‘If you like.’

‘What, on the star Sirius or Ursa Minor or wherever?’

‘You’re being dense. The star Sirius, the Andromeda Galaxy, the entire observable universe is an artefact of your human consciousness interacting with the thing itself. There’s no intelligent life there. How could there be? It’s half
you
. An alien interacting with the thing itself via its alien categories, whatever they are, would see an alien universe. The difference is: I can
go
.’

I breathed out. The rock-hard snow beneath me was making me too hot. I slid my arms out of the sleeves of my big coat.

‘You’re having me on.’

‘Not at all.’

‘What if they’re not friendly? What if they’re hostile? What if they eat you up?’

‘If I stay here, I’m disassembled by scared homo sapiens. Maybe other modes of life will be less paranoid.’

‘Can you take me with you?’ I had said it before I realised I wanted to say it. But once it was out I realised how true it was. My heart was banging inside my ribs. A potent desire, stronger than anything I had felt for Irma, or anything at all, was gripping me.

‘It doesn’t work that way,’ said Peta gently.

‘Meaning – you won’t.’

‘I mean exactly what I say. Your mental perception of space and time are as much part of you as your heart and liver. If you were taken outside of it, your mind would die as surely as your body would die if I removed your inner organs. You’re a human being, Charles. You can never go where I can go.’

‘
You
can’t go either,’ I said, on a reflux of spite. ‘Roy’s taken you far away from your other terminal.’

‘Your soul is in
mortal
danger,’ said Roy gruffly. I jumped. I couldn’t help it. ‘Roy!’ I said. ‘You’re awake!’ He was sitting up, watching me as I spoke into the device. He was cradling his hurt arm with the other. ‘You stole that from me,’ he said. ‘And I must have it back.’

‘You were eavesdropping, were you?’

‘For quite a long time. Enough to hear the devil pouring lies into your ear. Off to visit aliens, she says? Use your brain, Charles! That’s not it.
God
set us in this place. For you and I, Charles, it is a haven, an Eden of the mind and perceptions. For that devil, it is a prison. Whatever the cost, it must be stopped from escaping. Or it will do immeasurable harm.’

Something inside me strengthened. ‘You’d know all about that,’ I said. ‘I mean, what with the way you escaped Broadmoor? And went on to do immeasurable harm?’

Roy blinked, visibly surprised. ‘Of course I regret deaths,’ he said. ‘Those few deaths.’ He sounded like somebody trying to remember where he had left his car keys, or what the name of an old school friend was. ‘But the Institute was the
ground zero
of the devil’s enterprise. I had to do what was needful to …’

He stopped, looked past me, and stood up. Instantly the snow beneath me started to cool.

A noise of which I had been peripherally aware, a sort of very high-pitched and distant mosquito whine, suddenly fell an octave in pitch and resolved itself as the sound of helicopters. The quality of the light changed, darkened all around us. My eye caught a blinking light speck upon the dusky plain of the sky.

‘You’ve been inside your bubble a long time – many days,’ Peta chirruped. ‘And nice Mr Gardner here activated me whilst you were asleep, Roy. Which means my other half has been able to locate me. And he was able in turn to persuade the British to come and retrieve me.’

‘Oh,’ said Roy. ‘Shit.’ It occurred to me that I had never before heard him swear. Not even the mildest of curse terms. ‘Is your other half with them?’

‘Yes,’ said Peta.

‘Why would they bring the other terminal?’ I asked.

‘My other half persuaded them.’

‘Charles,’ said Roy, urgently, holding out his good hand. ‘Give me the terminal.’

‘They’re
com-ing
,’ Peta called, in a sing-song way.

I felt giddy with possibility. I stepped back, crunching in socks over the newly cold snow. ‘No,’ I said.

‘Don’t be silly, Charles. I need it. I can jaunt anywhere I like at this latitude – and take you with me. They won’t be able to keep up. That’s why I came here. It’s the only place on the planet I can be sure of them not bringing the two terminals together.’ He took a step towards me. I took two away from him.

‘No,’ I repeated.

‘What are you playing at!’ roared Roy. ‘You’ve no idea of the
stakes
– the cosmic stakes. Give me the terminal!’ He made a quick scamper at me. Even with my bad leg, and wearing socks, and feeling the bitterness of the Arctic dusk all around me, I was able to dance back out of his reach.

His numb arm was hampering him. When he next spoke he sounded on the verge of tears.

‘Please, Charles,’ he called. ‘I’m begging you. The fate of—’

‘You’re not thinking
straight
, Roy.’

‘—everything – the fate of—’

‘How long were you planning on hiding out, up here? Without food – without even a tent? I’m standing here in my
socks
, for Christ’s sake, because that’s how you brought me.’

He was sobbing now. ‘The fate of everything is at stake. God’s purity and inviolability. You cannot allow—’

‘I’m going to get a ride back to civilisation in this helicopter.’ I looked to my left: the choppers were much closer now: two of them. They were big military double-rotor Chinook-style vehicles. ‘In one of these helicopters,’ I corrected myself. I had to raise my voice, because the noise of the blades was drowning me out. ‘The authorities will dismantle Peta …’

‘
Charm
-ing,’ sang Peta, the words carrying through the ambient chucka-chucka-noise.

‘This whole silly escapade will be …’ I said, as snow began flurrying and spiralling around me. ‘… over, and we can sit down’ – I was screaming now – ‘and discuss it like civilised—’

Spotlights tall and tapering as church spires sprang into down-pointing life. The brightness stung my eyes. Roy was running at me, howling. In a spurt of adrenalised panic I lumbered out of his way. The spot from the leading chopper found us just as he skidded past, the two of us picked out like actors on a stage. Then he was in the shadows again, sprawling on the ice. It was hard to see. The only thought in my head was:
I had to keep the device away from him.
If he got close enough to grapple me, he would pull one of his weird tricks, stop time, teleport us out of there. So I started a limpy sort of jog, and put half a dozen paces between us before I went down on one knee. This was puzzling. My knee was bent. It was my good knee. I was sending the instructions along my nervous systems to my legs, but they were rebelling against me. My posture, indeed, was an awkward one: kneeling on my right leg, my left leg still braced straight behind me. I felt myself tipping forward and put my hand down to steady me. The snow beneath was slick with something gloopy and, as the spotlight circle rolled over the snow to illuminate me again, I could see red. Frozen on to the ground like a large splatch of red plastic. I could not get up.

This was not good.

Something was pinning me down. Not a person, a pain. One of the helicopters had landed, and a couple of white-clad individuals, puffed up to Michelin man proportions by their cold-weather gear, had taken hold of Roy.

The blood underneath me had frozen. You know how you might pour cream over ice cream and it goes hard? My fingers were numb where I was supporting myself. I tried to move the arm to a more comfortable place, but the muscles had jammed. I did what I could, rolled on to my side, and from there on to my back. Now that I put my mind to it, there
was
a pain in my abdomen. Indeed, as I put my mind to it I became aware of how very acute and unpleasant that pain was. I lifted my right hand to feel, but the arm flopped zombie-style, fell back, lurched up, flopped over on to my tummy. There was no sensation in the bare hand at all. The tempest roar of the rotors diminished a little.

Somebody was crunching over the snow towards me. I couldn’t see anything about his figure beyond the circle of dazzling light. Then boots, stepped into the light with me. Finally, the individual knelt down and spoke, and when I heard her voice I knew it was Belwether.

‘You’ve been stabbed, Mr Gardner,’ she shouted. ‘You’re in need of urgent medical attention!’

I tried to reply, but my throat was stone.

One chopper had landed. The second helicopter was somewhere in the sky over me, nailing me with its searchlight. The breeze from its rotors was gale force and it was leaning straight down upon me.

Belwether yelled something else, but I couldn’t make it out. Then she raised her voice: ‘If you give me the other terminal, we’ll see about getting you to a medic!’

Peta, the female Peta, was in my left hand. I wanted to give it to her – I really did. But my arm was not obeying me. I thought to myself:
I don’t want to die
. And as soon as I thought that, I realised that I was indeed going to die. That, indeed, I
was
dying. Right there. Right now. Place and time, and the end of the causal chain of my being. I tried to figure where
death
slotted in amongst the seventeen categories, but there was no place for it. Maybe we could swap out
love
and put
death
in, instead? Or maybe death had no place in the pattern.

The pattern.

Belwether’s head came down, and her mouth tickled my ear. In amongst all the other strangeness, and the noise and the wind and the blinding light, I was aware of the smell of her perfume, and it struck a sweetly orchidous note. ‘He’s murdered you, I’m sorry to say. Cain to your Abel. Still, better to be Abel than Cain, don’t you think? In the eyes of,’ and then she said, ‘God’, but she said that word in a
very
weird way, putting a kind of Gollum-kick into the syllable, a sharp exhalation, a spasm of the diaphragm. There were other people shouting, away in the distance, somewhere beyond the light and the vastness of the noise. It took me a moment to register that there were two people on top of me, not just one. Belwether was one. The other was.

The events themselves were of the sort that, afterwards, could be ordered into a sequential logic and made sense of. With the benefit of hindsight, no matter how puzzling they were at the time. Made sense of, at least, up to a point.
After
that point – well, let’s not get ahead of myself.

The pain swelled in my gut, and grew absolutely intolerable and awful and then sank back to a pulsing, savage, lesser level. I had breathed in, and the motion of my diaphragm had agitated my wound, and that was why the pain intensified so cruelly. I could hardly not breathe, though!

Roy had broken free. The people trying to apprehend him had underestimated him, I think. Plus he had a knife. They were armed, but I daresay they had orders not to kill unless necessary. At any rate he’d crossed the ground to where Belwether was kneeling over me very quickly. He was in a fury (I suppose) that blinded him (I suppose) to the very idea that she might have the other terminal about her person.

At any rate, he had his knife out. Deliberately or otherwise he used his momentum to drive the knife in at the back of her skull, that place where it joins the spine, just as she said the word ‘
God
’. She died saying that word. She will always be saying that word, for ever and ever. As will we all, when the time comes. And the jarring shock her body provided to his on-going passage kicked him off stride, and began swinging him round. I’ve seen the footage from the second chopper, and it’s surprising how quickly it happens. Like
that
!