Feedback (20 page)

Jason stared at the folder.

“I'll go too,” Lily said.

“No,” Jason replied softly, opening the folder and looking at the first page. “Please, don't.”

Lily leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, smiling, “OK, then let me get you a fresh cup of coffee.”

“That would be nice. Thanks.”

Within minutes, Jason was engrossed.

Time seemed to come to a standstill.

Lily handed him a pad and pen. Jason arranged the photos across the table, shifting them around and linking them together. Photos were laid out on the floor, but not randomly. He was looking for patterns.

In among the formulas he saw the occasional word hastily scratched into the surface of the dark craft.

As he looked through the photos, he realized a number of terms had been repeated, so he tallied them. But whoever had taken the photos had been concerned with the formulas, catching only passing glimpses of whatever had been written elsewhere. It was stupid, Jason thought. He wanted to see everything written on the UFO, not just the scientific notations.

The writing was in English. That alone should have caught the attention of whoever took these pictures, he thought. They should have been trying to record everything, but they seemed to be interested only by the calculations, with some of the formulas being photographed several times from a variety of angles.

You're Damned x 14

Doomed x 3

Forsaken x 2

Pointless x 8

Death or Dead x 7

Cursed x 12

Fate x 4

Inescapable x 3

“What do you think this means?” Lachlan asked. He had returned from the cockpit some time ago. Stegmeyer was seated across from Jason, but he hadn't even noticed her sit down. He was startled by the professor's voice. He had lost track of time. The Learjet was beginning its descent. Jason glanced at his coffee. A thin film of milk had left a skin on the surface. Touching the cup, he felt how cold the drink was and resisted the temptation to take a sip.

“I think you've missed the real story here,” Jason said to Lachlan. “The formulas only paint part of the picture. Look at these words. Why are they here? What's their purpose?”

Lachlan picked up one of the images, the word “
Condemned
“ was visible on the edge of the picture, with only the lower half of the last three letters in the frame.

“What do you think it means?” asked Jason.

“I don't know,” Lachlan replied.

“If you're right, and this is a craft of extraterrestrial origin, then a number of questions spring to mind. Where's the pilot? Where's the crew? Why is the craft covered in scientific formulae and English notation?”

“I'm not sure,” Lachlan said. “DARPA are playing a long game with this thing. Rather than being invasive, they've gone for passive investigation, using sonics, x-rays, spectrographic analysis, even going so far as to build a massive scanner in place. They're convinced the alien technology is recoverable, but it's so advanced, so far beyond anything we can achieve they're scared of breaking things without realizing it. Imagine Socrates examining an iPad and you get an idea of what they're dealing with.”

“Do they have any thoughts on why the craft was defaced? Or who could have done this?” Jason asked.

“No,” Lachlan replied. “But some of those etchings are tens of thousands of years old.”

“That's impossible!” Jason said. “The English language is barely a thousand years old. How can they ...”

Jason's voice trailed off. He could see the knowing half smile on Lachlan's face.

“Time travel,” he said.

“Precisely,” Lachlan replied. “And on a scale that is unimaginable to us. We're not talking a few decades or even a century or a millennia. This craft traverses tens of thousands of years in the blink of an eye. Now can you see why they're willing to kill to keep this secret?”

“So,” Jason continued. “It's not so much a question of where this craft has been up till now, but when.”

Lachlan broke into a full smile, adding, “English may only be a thousand years old, but given what we're witnessing with the stability of existing languages on the Internet, radical changes are going to be the exception. Languages will continue to evolve, but they won't drift and languish as they once did. English could last in pretty much its current form for the next ten thousand years!”

“And me?” Jason asked. “Does that mean I'm from the future?”

Lachlan couldn't keep the smile from his face. He tried to, but he was clearly excited. He restrained himself, saying, “That's one theory, my theory.”

“But why send a child back in time?” Jason asked. “What happened to the craft? What caused it to crash?”

“I don't know.”

They were three simple words, but they were not the words Jason wanted to hear.

“We've struggled with this for decades,” Lachlan continued.

Jason saw Vacili's camera was running, catching their impromptu conversation in electronic format.

“There's a problem with your theory,” Jason said, gesturing at the camera. “If this craft is from the future, they'd know. They'd see this recording and could replay this conversation. They'd know something went wrong. They'd be able to reconstruct what was about to happen from their perspective, but what had already happened from ours. This should have never happened.”

“Unless?” Lachlan said.

“Unless somehow that knowledge is lost. But that's fatalistic. It implies all our efforts are in vain, that everything we do becomes buried in time.”

Stegmeyer piped up, saying, “Now you see why we're flying a bird into that power station? We need this to register on their radar.”

“But you don't understand,” Jason said. “If the developers of this craft haven't already seen that recording you're making right now, they never will.”

“We could be wrong,” Lachlan offered.

“We could,” Jason conceded. “But then, what other explanation is there?”

“The future isn't fixed,” Lachlan said. “Neither is the past. From our perspective, the past looks settled, but it's not. Time is like a river. Water flows from the hills to the sea, but even a river is not a closed system. There's evaporation, condensation and precipitation constantly renewing the river. In the same way, time looks like a closed system to us, but it's not. Quantum probability waves move backwards in time changing the outcomes in the double-slit experiment. It's a gross oversimplification to see time as fixed.”

Jason was quiet. He tapped the photos in front of him, thinking carefully before speaking.

“These equations,” he said. “They're not related to time travel. They're field strength calculations. They're looking at the consequences of time travel, the causal relationships between matter and energy. Whoever wrote these wasn't trying to figure out how to travel in time, they were trying to figure out the effect time travel would have on multidimensional space.”

A voice came over the intercom. “We'll be landing in approximately five minutes.”

Jason looked out the window. They were flying along a valley, dipping below the lush, green hills on either side. They touched down and came to a stop in sight of a sign that read:
Welcome to Portland, Oregon — Alis volat propriis — She flies with her own wings.

Being airborne had never felt better to Lee. Even in the darkness above a hostile country, he felt at home in the cockpit of a helicopter.

Sun-Hee's brother looked scared senseless. The whites of his eyes were evident as he yelled over the sound of the rotor blades.

“You are heading toward Pyongyang!”

“I can explain,” Lee replied, struggling to be heard over the sound of the helicopter. “Look for some headphones in the back and we can talk.”

Once they were well clear of the camp, Lee took the helicopter up a couple of hundred feet so he could get a feel for the lay of the land.

Broken clouds drifted across the sky. Patches of moonlight revealed dark shadows where the hills below gave way to gullies and valleys. Occasionally, a small village or a farm appeared. Lee adjusted his course, heading north-northeast in the general direction of Pyongyang.

Sun-Hee's brother rummaged around behind the seat for a while before emerging with several sets of headphones. He tried to hand a pair to Lee, but Lee yelled above the noise, saying, “You're going to have to put them on for me. With this hand, I can't put them on and fly at the same time.”

Sun-Hee's brother leaned across the cockpit and slipped the headphones over Lee's head, catching his ears awkwardly and twisting the cartilage. Lee plugged the loose cord into a phone jack and Sun-Hee's brother copied him. Jason had a pair of headphones on as well, but his weren't plugged in. Glancing over his shoulder, Lee could see the young boy was fascinated by their flight. He peered down at the landscape rushing by beneath them.

Lee held the control stick between his legs and adjusted the microphone on the side of his headphones before explaining his thinking.

“At night, a helicopter can be heard for anywhere from two to five miles, depending on altitude and wind conditions. By heading North, we're misleading them. Hopefully, it will take them some time to respond, and when they do start looking for us, we want them to look in the wrong place. This should confuse the fuck out of them!”

Sun-Hee's brother nodded, smiling. The North Koreans Lee had met so far seemed to shrink from profanity, but Sun-Hee's brother clearly understood what Lee meant and seemed to approve. Lee smiled as well, happy that his comment had helped put the soldier at ease a little.

“Look at the lay of the land,” Lee added. “There are several valleys running east to west. The shadows get deeper to the west as they lead down toward the sea. We'll drop down below radar and follow one of them out to the ocean.”

“And pick up Sun-Hee?” the brother asked.

“No,” Lee replied. “We'd never make the border. We need to ditch the helicopter. We've got to draw our pursuers off in a feint, double back and leave by sea. If we can get them looking in the wrong direction, looking for the wrong mode of transport, we just might stand a chance of getting out of here alive.”

A soft hand rested on Lee's shoulder. Jason couldn't have heard what was said, but he seemed to be expressing his gratitude for their escape.

Lee breathed deeply.

For the first time since he'd been captured, he had the luxury of relaxing. He was still nervous, but flying was second nature. To be cocooned within the familiarity of the cockpit of a helicopter was understandingly soothing for him. A slight vibration came through the cyclic control, renewing the ache in his hand, but it was an ache he welcomed, one he wouldn't try to avoid. He was flying, free. Freedom itself lay a long way off, but to feel the pulsing downdraft of the rotor blades with their steady rhythm was deeply reassuring.

“What's your name?” he asked the brother.

Lee thought he had perhaps five to ten minutes before the North Koreans were able to mount an aerial response. Right now, the biggest temptation he faced was to react too quickly and give away their true intention. He began a slow descent. Something that would be barely noticed on the radar, something that would be incidental rather than important to the various radar operators who were undoubtedly tracking their northward progress. His faux heading had to be convincing, so he made small talk with Sun-Hee's brother, wanting to settle the butterflies in his stomach.

Sun-Hee's brother didn't reply.

Lee looked sideways at him, looking to see if he'd heard him. The young soldier looked back. He seemed distracted. The enormity of what he'd just done was probably only now setting in. There was no going back, and that must have weighed heavily on the young man.

“Seung-Chul,” he responded reluctantly.

“Well, Seung-Chul. It's nice to meet you.”

There was silence for a few seconds. Lee eased his descent, feeling he was rushing. The helicopter continued to race forward, but the downward motion was slight. In the distance, Lee lined up a gully roughly a mile or so ahead that appeared to wind its way down to the lowland.

“What made you do it?” he asked, adjusting his rate of descent, wanting to bottom out at ten to twenty feet above an open paddock at the base of a sloping hill. By his reckoning, he figured they were two minutes out. Lee was careful to keep his airspeed consistent so there was no indication they were changing heading as they dropped below radar. A forest lay to one side with a large mountain beyond that. With any luck, it would look like they'd crashed at the base of the mountain.

“Honor.”

“Honor?” Lee replied, genuinely surprised by Seung-Chul's response.

“Grandfather said he would not rest until you were free and honor had been satisfied.”

Lee nodded.

Seung-Chul continued, saying, “Debts must be repaid. Anything less would bring shame and misfortune. Grandfather demanded you be freed. I told him, this would cost us our lives. He said he didn't care. I told him, you must take us to America. That was the only way I would agree to help.”

Lee smiled, understanding what Seung-Chul meant. His words were hyperbole, an exaggeration. America was too far away to be literal, but to the North Korean mind, South Korea was as decadent and extravagant as the USA. With US troops stationed across the border, just to make it below the 38th parallel would be akin to reaching America. For Seung-Chul, America meant freedom. Freedom was what he wanted. In rescuing Lee, he saw a means of escape for him and his immediate family.

“And Sun-Hee?”

“She is well,” he replied, with a deferential nod of his head. Apparently, nothing more needed to be said on the subject. “She and grandfather await us with a fishing boat in a cove beyond the village.”

“Good. Good,” Lee replied, noting the way the trees to his right swayed in the downdraft of the helicopter. Judging distances at night was never easy. Rather than relying on depth perception, he sought to use the trees, paying careful attention to how the branches at various heights swayed differently. He could see across the treetops. A few more feet and they would drop below the level of the tree tops, which he figured put them roughly thirty feet off the ground.

“Hold onto the boy,” he said. “From here on out, the ride's going to get rough.”

Working with his foot pedals, cyclic control and the handbrake-like collective, Lee brought the chopper through an arc to the left, turning west. Normally, he would have allowed the helicopter to drift into a high, banking arc that ensured good ground clearance, but they had to stay under the radar. Now, time was of the essence. Whatever aerial resources the North Koreans had deployed would be screaming in toward this point. He had to put some distance between them, and quickly.

Lee opened up the throttle, tilting the helicopter forward and racing along barely twenty feet above the undulating grassy meadow. He slipped into the gully, keeping to the moonlit side. Their shadow was slightly ahead of them, giving him a good visual indicator of their height.

Seung-Chul had turned to one side. He had his shoulder over the back of his seat, holding Jason firmly as the chopper swayed from side to side in the darkness, following the contours of the gully as they sped through the night.

“Some cloud cover would be nice,” Lee mumbled to himself, forgetting he was transmitting. Seung-Chul must have heard him, but he didn't respond.

Lee's eyes scanned the distance, noting the subtleties of the terrain, observing how the river wound its way through the widening gully. He had to anticipate obstacles like trees and cliffs well in advance.

At the breakneck speed they were tearing through the gully, his reaction time was roughly two hundred yards. If he hadn't responded at least two hundred yards before he reached a bend in the river or a stand of trees, it was too late and he knew it. His mind was focused. He barely blinked. Every muscle in his body was tense. The helicopter responded to the slightest twitch of his hands, the softest touch of his feet. In that moment, he and the machine were one.

The angle of the moonlight caused the landscape to look skewed. Shadows stretched to one side, obscuring the actual height of the trees lining the banks, making them look monstrous and hideously distorted. The river swelled in places, providing plenty of space for the helicopter. In other sections, it narrowed to no more than ten to fifteen feet wide, forcing him to pull up above the trees.

For the most part, the hills on either side were well above the helicopter, hiding them from any airborne search. At least there were no power lines, he thought. If he'd tried this stunt in South Korea, the all but invisible power lines would have cut the chopper into strips of metal ribbon.

The gully opened up into a valley, forcing Lee to fly in the dark shadows. There were places where he had no depth perception and no points of reference. In those areas, he eased up on their forward speed, wanting to give himself more reaction time. Against his desire to stay concealed, he eased higher out of necessity.

Not knowing where the North Korean radar stations were located or what search pattern the air force would adopt, he had no way of knowing how effective or ineffective his measures were. For all he knew, they were already following him. They could be sitting a thousand feet up watching his pathetic attempt at escape, waiting for him to put down, or holding off and observing as other air units converged on them.

Lee breathed in short bursts. His heart pounded. His concentration sharpened, focusing on the grainy view before him as his eyes strained to make out details in the dark.

He saw a fishing village well before he got to it, but there was no advantage in changing course. By the time he recognized the dark shape of the huts nestled together on the bank of the river mouth, it was too late. They would have already heard the helicopter. There was nothing for it but to keep going.

The hills parted, revealing the broad, flat expanse of the sea.

As they passed low over the village, Seung-Chul said, “It is OK. They have no radio, no phone.”

“Is this your village?” Lee asked, easing the helicopter to the left, following the southern shoreline and speeding away above the crashing waves.

“No. It is Byul-Ma-Ul. It is perhaps ten kilometers north.”

“OK, that's good.”

The helicopter was low enough to kick up spray with its downwash. Lee knew that that would make them more visible, but since the village had no way of contacting anyone, there was no point hiding from them. It was aircraft and radar that worried Lee.

They rounded the peninsula. Lee was tempted to cut across between the finger of land jutting out into the ocean, but the further he strayed from land the more likely it was they'd be picked up by radar. Instead, he cut back in, continuing to follow the shore as he weaved his way to the south.

“Where's this cove? Where will your grandfather be?”

“It is hard to tell at night,” Seung-Chul replied.

Lee wanted to swear, but he didn't. The young soldier had probably never seen the area from the air, let alone at night.

“Can you describe the cove?” Lee asked, slowing his speech, aware his mind was racing as fast as the helicopter. Patience was needed. “Is it to the north or the south of your village?”

“To the north.”

“OK,” Lee replied. “That's good. I can work with that.”

The coastline turned on itself, angling back toward the open sea. They followed another sprawling peninsula, mostly denuded of trees. Jagged rocks and broken cliffs marked the landscape.

“What else?” Lee asked

“There's a cliff,” Seung-Chul replied.

Lee had seen plenty of cliffs.

“How would you get there from your village?”

“To get there by land, we would follow the road north along the ridge for maybe five or six kilometers. The cliff has a sheer drop into the water, but there is a pebble beach to one side. A path leads down to the beach.”

There was no way Lee was going to be able to spot a path from the air in the dark, but the description of the cliff face was good. Most of the cliffs he'd seen had been formed by landslides or had rocky boulders at their base. Very few dropped straight into the ocean.

“Is the cove facing the open ocean? Or does it run along the peninsula, facing the far shore?”

“It faces the ocean.”

“Shit!” Lee cried, realizing they'd just passed the cove as they rounded a rocky outcrop on the headland. They'd begun heading back along the far side of the peninsula. He pulled the chopper around above the land, gaining height as he turned back on his path. There, anchored not more than a hundred yards off shore was a small fishing vessel, just a black dot floating on the waves.

“Look,” he said, pointing at the beach. Someone was standing on the beach beside the darkened outline of a rowboat. The man ran for the tree line as Lee brought the helicopter down, setting the craft on the pebbles. He eased the helicopter in, kicking up spray as the chopper touched down.

“Listen,” he said. “I need to ditch this chopper out there in the water. Our escape depends on stealth. If they find this helicopter sitting on the shore, they'll know where we left from. I'm going to have to sink this thing.”

“OK,” Seung-Chul replied.

“Take the boy with you. I need you to pick me up out there, OK?”

“OK.”